Hi all, happy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover (a.k.a: Pesach) and upcoming Western Easter (which some people may know as the day before the day with all the cheap chocolate) and hope you are enjoying the Northern Hemisphere spring where spring is present.
«««« Note: this post is both opinionated and a bit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfeminism and post-Buffyist (there was a post about some post-Buffy shows on http://moshez.livejournal.com/ , but Google does not find it), and so may offend some people. It was not the first post I made to this list and while being a straight male, I'm honestly not a sexist person, so I'm going to risk it. Feel free to let me know if you have problems with anything I said here and I'll try to reply in the Verbal Judo fashion - http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html »»» Well, anyway, you may wish to peruse reading this post that I've written on my blog as a reply to a different and older post by the wonderful Katrina Hill ( https://twitter.com/ActionChick ) on her http://actionflickchick.com/ blog: * http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/2396.html - “About Female Action Heroes”. * Original post - http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wired-interviews-the-action-flick-chick-geek-cultures-26-most-awesome-female-ass-kickers/ - part of my motivation for publishing the post on unarmed.shlomifish.org is because the original page ate my original comment and because the second comment became devoid of links. ----- Anyway, in the post I start from the premise of the post of discussing awesome female ass-kickers, go on to discuss http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_%28TV_series%29 and other shows I watched back around the Web 1.0 days, and their influence on my work as a writer of fiction and essays. Then I cover the so-called Judeo-Christian ethics and why they have discriminated against women (and to a lesser but also important extent - men), followed by what I think is an action hero. Then I cover several prominent Jewesses who championed the break from the Judeo-Christian ethical system. ----- Anyway, part of my theme in my stories (see http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/stories/ ) and some of the recent essays (and I hope you don't take it the wrong way) is that in order to gain true liberation, females should be: #. Competent #. Confident #. Resourceful #. Not feel bound by many invisible or stupid rules. #. Take decisive action and risks #. Not read into the minds of people who open doors to them. Seize opportunities. #. Realise that "reality to be conquered must be obeyed", and not try to make unnecessary enemies by semantical accusations ("Girl? Does she call you a 'boy' by any chance?"). #. Interact with men rather than exclude themselves from them. #. Be forgiving and not hold a grudge against people for their past sins. #. Etc. And all that while not depriving themselves of sexuality and sexiness among members of the appropriate sexes (MOTAS), in part because being sexually attractive (and naturally - not only physically) is indicative of competence and values, rather than the opposite as was sometimes implied recently. Slashdot reported that http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/06/2228210/how-men-and-women-badly-estimate-their-own-intelligence men are thought to be smarter than women despite the fact that males and females are fairly equal overall in intelligence tests, both men and women think that their fathers are smarter than their mothers, and that their sons are smarter than their daughters. I think part of the problem is that men are conditioned or encouraged to be more showy in what they know and do (not saying why this is the case), and flaunt their knowledge and intelligence, even if they are not 100% sure that what they say is true, and they take risks more doing that. This is while women tend to need to be sure that what they say and do is 100% right and flawfree. ----------------- I think that technology not only empowers females, but also youth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith was a female and was only 10 years old when she helped end the cold war, by the simple act of writing a letter. Similarly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Aragon was female and 10 y.o when she became an Internet sensation by doing a simple piano+vocals cover of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_This_Way (but one which I like better than the original). Paul Graham discussed the empowering of youth here - http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html (What You'll Wish You'd Known - advice for high school students) and here - http://www.paulgraham.com/lies.html (Lies We Tell Kids), and I'm planning to cover it here: http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/putting-all-cards-on-the-table-2013/ There is no good reason why young people should necessarily always be less able than their older peers, just because we've recently been conditioned to expect children and teenagers to be locked in a pre-school environment which is distanced from the outer world. During the middle ages, craftsman finished their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece (which now means something completely different) at a young age, and got married at a much younger age than today. Thanks to technology (both tangible and mental) we can expect youth to become empowered again. I'm glad I started my long journey into software development using XT BIOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC and other dialects of BASIC because it was a bona fide programming language for its days (back in 1987 when I was 10 years old) that trusted me with power and allowed me to shoot myself in the foot, whereas the only thing you could do with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29 was draw some drawings, and it treats its users in an infantile way, which I think no one really appreciates (including not children). ( I would not recommend learning BASIC anymore because the world moved on since then, but I hope you get my point. ) ----------------- Well, hopefully you were not too bored up to here, so I can just in another self-promoting way recommend you take a look at my stories, especially http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ (The Human Hacking Field Guide, recently subtitled “Who said girls can’t code?”) which tells the whereabouts of several teenagers in 2005 L.A. who extensively deal with working on open source software, and to a somewhat lesser extent free/open/Internet “content” authoring, and also includes several instances of social engineering (or "Human hacking"). The abstract reads: <blockquote> Jennifer is a trendy and popular high school senior who is living and studying in the vicinity of Los Angeles. Her best friend, Taylor, convinces her to try to become a developer of open source software. He puts her under the tutorship of a different friend of his, the female open source contributor Eve, who prefers to be called “Erisa”, and who is a self-conscious and rebelling punk, with whom Jennifer finds it hard to deal. Jennifer remains determined to learn how to become an open source developer from Erisa, but there are some surprises along the road. </blockquote> The story is available under CC-by-sa under this interpretation - http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/ - and you can also buy exemptions from it. Finally, like I said in https://twitter.com/shlomif/status/315159699735580672 “In my stories, I aim to project reality as it hopefully will become, rather than as I or other people perceive it and take it forward towards better perfection.”. Moreover, I also would rather err on naïvety than on cynicism. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Free (Creative Commons) Music Downloads, Reviews and more - http://jamendo.com/ There is no IGLU Cabal! Home‐made Cabals eventually superseded the power and influence of the original IGLU Cabal, which was considered a cutting edge development at its time. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
