George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Not to put too fine a point on it but are you saying that you still consider yourself a woman but wish now to be involved in a relationship with a woman? But you are "presenting as" (to use your terminology) a "regular guy" (whatever that may mean...I guess male who watches football and drinks beer?) This seems as if it should inform a great deal about your dating strategy.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
You are MtF trans? I don't mean to get overly personal. I would suggest my advice to you a few weeks ago regarding online dating was misplaced, as I haven't the foggiest notion how the dynamics of dating a woman would be for a MtF trans person. Apologies.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I wonder what your definition of "remotely okay" here is. I do not have the same perspective as you at all here, and I would hardly call my current situation that of a churchgoer.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
From the Wiki page for the film, in the Themes and Analysis section:
Themes and analysis
Critics noted that the film was a work of metafiction, designed to intentionally antagonise audiences who were fans of the first film. Rather than capitulating to expectations of the predecessor's fanbase, the film serves to rebuke those who idolized the character of the Joker after the original movie. As a deliberate anti-audience effort, the film pushes against the notion of fan service, instead creating a self-aware narrative that is a commentary on its own existence.[111][112][113][114][115] The film features off-key musical sequences that contrast with fan expectations following the original film, during one such scene Joker acknowledges, “I don’t think we’re giving the people what they want”.[111] Gaga's portrayal of Lee Quinzel can be viewed as a stand-in for audiences who were fans of the first film, with her comments about becoming obsessed with Arthur after having seen a TV movie based on his life reflecting the audience.[114][115] The finale where Arthur's crimes are trialed and he is made to seem sad and pathetic represents an effort by Phillips to subvert and undermine audiences who saw Arthur as heroic in the first film.
Admittedly this entire section could be edited differently within the hour.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Berberine is known to interact with other drugs, have you noticed any effects?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I don't perhaps need to rehash the numerous threads on the Motte discussing the mostly cons of female promiscuity. I think it's quite easy for men, particularly younger men with surging hormones, to live in appreciation of girls who behave with wanton abandon, and to forget that for women having sex has a whole different set of risks than it does for men.
Of course you are correct there are fathers who don't care; there are far too many parents who neglect their children on nearly every level, for different reasons. And there are no doubt dads who only seem to care about their daughter's promiscuity while neglecting everything else about her.
The point was not simply about one's daughter having sex, but "having sex with dozens of guys," as @Goodguy suggested. He did add the caveat "as long as she's safe while doing it" but that itself bears clarification. Safe how? By hiding her behavior from her female peers, who will inevitably judge her? By using contraception, or screening partners carefully for STIs? By ensuring somehow that the guys are upright and respectful enough of her that they won't tarnish her reputation by telling bawdy stories about her by name? By somehow verifying the guys she chooses to sleep with are not going to violate her in ways she wouldn't want because they consider acquiescence to sex a kind of carte blanche to do as they will?
This is just off the top of my head. I have only the vaguest idea what it might be like to be a woman and I don't, myself, have daughters, but I'm old enough that I've seen my friends daughters from little bitty babies to now university graduates. Many of the previously listed points are traditionally taken care of by a girl knowing a guy for longer than a night, or a few days.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I've never been a father
Please locate me in the world someday when you are a dad to a daughter and let's revisit this topic.
Graduated UA undergrad in 1990. The Greek system there is, depending on whom you ask, a destructive pathogen that infects nearly everyone, an indispensable generator of alumni dollars, a wild fun time, or a necessary evil. It's probably all of the above. When it maneuvers politically it is known as The Machine. There have been articles written about it in TIME.
The sorority girls have as their counterpart of course the frat boys. Houses in each (Sigma Chi was the power frat in the day; I believe it was suspended several times and maybe disbanded for some dubious activities. And in those days the really gorgeous but respectable girls were ΑΧΩ.) have their own hierarchy of clout. Freshmen Greeks drive to campus in Porsches and Mercedes and similar.
To not pledge makes you a kind of social outcast and, if you're male, in large part cuts you out of consideration for dating. There are also the GDIs, or "God Damned Independents" who make hating the Greek system an identity (we did not use the word identity like this back then, but it fits.)
This is all a very unwelcome memory, like having an LSD flashback but insert Greek letters. I was not in a fraternity so my views are through a glass darkly.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Maybe he wasn't being ironic. Typically "the patriarchy" isn't used around these parts unironically, but I may be misunderstanding.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Ok no one else is asking so I'll ask. How so? Would you care to clarify or expand on this?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Don't let me put words in your mouth, but I think that while what you are implying (her, whoever her is, discomfort level should not be the sole falconer guiding our flight) is reasonable, there are in fact circumstances that exist where she would be be justified in feeling discomfort. And thus justified in making a complaint. True?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I don't disagree. I do think your earlier characterization ("She has the opportunity to introduce a status hierarchy that benefits her [women are morally superior and intrinsically more valuable and worthy of protection and provision than men] to counteract one that doesn't [he's the boss, she's a temp]. So she does it.") is overgeneralizing. My defense here (Not all women) has the potential to become caricature, so I'll leave that there.
I also would be firmly in this woman's corner if
a) My wife were in her corner, as I trust her instincts to be pretty exactly the same as mine in these regards or
b) if the details were different, i e. he asked not just her birthday but the year of her birth, plus her number, or her cup size, or anything that is obviously past the zone of friendly (even partially flirty) office chat.
In other words claims of harassment have their place even in my world of tolerance for men being manny and a general relaxed atmosphere the preference.
As I thumb this out the high school kid on the 5:03 am train across the car from me has his head lolling back in contented slumber with his right hand unconsciously down in his pants, presumably cupping his balls. To my immediate left a guy I used to see every morning in a blue jumpsuit and a red flashlight baton tucked in his bag (i.e. not necessarily Einstein on his way to the library) has reappeared and is muttering sweet nothings to himself absent-mindedly. Two dudes are unconsciously (?) manspreading so that the aged woman who gets on halfway to my stop (we just passed that halfway point) cannot politely sit down. All this neither here nor there but I felt the need to give an account.
There are many non-Japanese around me who are far more fluent than I, and I have tagged (in my motte dossier) more than one user with the phrase "Japanese is better than yours," but even I can pick up on this, in particular when hearing non Japanese women speak Japanese like males. It can be off-putting even for me, and it takes a bit of thinking to realize why.
Note: I also hear this in Japanese women who have learned English from hanging around a bunch of American/British/or Canadian dudes. One in particular, she notably swears a lot (in English) and often when it seems uncalled for (even when for me sometimes a swear word would be natural--I realize some here, some males even, eschew harsher forms of speech as a personal rule.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
It's surprising because it's uncommon here, or, at least, has been in the 20 something years I've been here. Notably my wife (also female, for verification here) has never made such claims against any of her work supervisors, the vast majority of whom have been men, and with one exception straight men, and this through her prime years of attractiveness, as it were, suggesting that the kind of dynamic you imply is to-be-expected among women is possibly not as universal as you propose. None of her female colleagues have made such strategic moves either. (I might point out that my wife was a temp for a year and was hired full-time, poached from the temp agency, based on her unusual level of competence, so she has been in the shoes, as it were, of a temp worker herself.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
? I'm honestly perplexed. My wife thinks the man is totally innocent. Her point was that the woman is overreacting and she is questioning whether this type oversensitivity is possible if normal work is to progress
- Sorry if that wasn't clear.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Thank you and thanks for the perspective. My own experiences with HR in various places (of course never in my wife's place of employment) are considerably less positive.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Do you see any of this as sexual harassment? I certainly don't. What's your birthday? That seems incredibly benign.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I probably sound like a woman most of the time I speak Japanese. Except when I don't. But everything from how to say "I" (men say 俺 ore or 僕 boku, and only women really say 私 watashi, except of course when men decide to say watashi in certain circumstances for subtle reasons, or when a woman decides for funzies with her galpals to call herself ore) to question tags (yaro vs. dessho at least here in Kansai) to word choice can be marked masculine or feminine. This is not even getting into issues of power where the sempai will use words to the kohai that the kohai should not use back to the senpai. As a foreigner I am exempt from a lot of this, but this also means I am constantly perceived as linguistically limited (which I am) and therefore not fully part of the program.
When in doubt, listen to the view of the Japanese person, who will be getting all the subtleties. That said, I am of the belief that one person can't give the one right answer any more than any random American can tell you how to interpret a given social situation at the shopping mall in Columbus, Indiana.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
The fact that she's a temp may give them some room to just not renew her--but then she may consider this the reason (which it probably would be) and see that as actionable, i.e. "They didn't want me back because I pointed out their harassment" or similar. I am not actually sure how it will play out.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
To be clear, I am not sure it's a lawsuit. It seems to be a machination within the company, but that could have dire results. And as far as I know he was not asking her to "friend" him, just asking for clarification based on the Facebook algorithm suggesting that profile--and then trying to confirm if it's her. (This could be a subtle way of him asking for a friending, I'm not sure, but at face value it's innocuous.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
There may be a non-trivial age difference in the two, but I don't know. He didn't even ask to "friend" her as far as I know, just asked did she have a Facebook account and was this her? Possibly a senior asking a junior this is the issue? Not sure.
I don't typically post primary level comments in CW threads but I was having a conversation with my wife last night that prompted me. It's not particularly explosive and treads much of the same ground as many more nuanced posts before it.
Last night I'm in the middle of sorting out a chicken lasagna among other things and I get this text from my wife: Something shocking happened at work today.
I checked the clock. I sleep very early most nights and I calculated roughly what time she'd be getting home, added how much time she'd need to decelerate and actually sit down for dinner, how long after that she'd get the story tellable in her mind, then how long it would take to hear it, factoring in my own responses, if any, her reactions to those, and keeping in mind the obvious unknown variable that maybe the story would, indeed, be shocking. I knew I'd be sleeping later than usual.
Because none of the trivialities of my day mean anything to anyone here I'll get to the point. A temp worker at her company under her tutelage has made noises that she may be leveling some sort of harassment suit (edit: complaint) (power probably). Not against my wife, but against her direct supervisor. The reason? This temp worker has three complaints that I can tell:
-
She was said to resemble a well-known (by other people, not me) celebrity chef on her first day. It may be relevant that I do not know what this chef looks like or whether being compared to her might be taken as an insult or compliment. This, to me, seems to matter, but maybe it doesn't, as simply the acknowledgement that the temp worker has an observable appearance and that this appearance has made some impression may, in the end, be the sin at hand.
-
She was asked if she is on Facebook.
-
She was asked her birthday.
2 and 3 were asked because apparently the supervisor was prompted by Facebook to "friend" a person with the same name as the relevant temp worker. Unsure and with no profile photo to go on, but assuming it might be her as the kanji for her name is rare and matched that of the recommended person, he unwisely and perhaps naively made his inquiry. I assume he asked her birthday for the same reason (that seems to be the case.) All of the above was done in full earshot and view of my wife and others in the office. This suggests it was not a hamhanded prelude to some attempt at making contact for an out-of-office assignation.
All this has erupted in now a series of slightly delayed-reaction texts from this woman to her work group (of which my wife is a part.) Asking whether the company has any sort of guidelines on this (my wife used a different word than guidelines but I can't remember it) and prodding that her complaints be sent up the company chain-of-command. Presumably to the mainest of main offices. The first step of this is already occurring.
I sat there listening and kept thinking to myself how Japan always seems to import the worst of American culture. From shitty hiphop styles (I'm old) to self-entitled behavior when dealing with service personnel (many convenience stores now have a term: customer harassment [kasuhara] because people are such assholes to workers. And I mean assholes. Like getting the worker to dougeza because of some imagined infraction. It doesn't help that this is a country where people commit suicide over hurt feelings.) To now a willingess to go Defcon 4 over what, to me, seem the mildest of social grievances. The triumph of HR.
I've no idea if this woman has a legitimate legal case. Recently a Hyogo prefectural governor came under fire for the kind of inappropriate behavior one would expect from a Thai royal. Or is it? In some ways it's par-for-the-course in what has always been a very hierarchical society. Sempai lord their authority over kohai who grumble but then become sempai a year later and do the same thing to their underlings. But the Hyogo guy's vwry public scandal has put the term powaah hara in the public lexicon.
But then I don't necessarily expect much from the law here, which sometimes seems applied with such bizarre reasoning it makes me wonder if I should GTFO now.
The terms sekuhara, powaah hara, kasuhara and whatever else are all abbreviated forms of borrowed terms from English (sexual harassment, power harassment, customer harassment, etc.)
Anyway we'll see. My wife is upset because she wonders at the repercussions on her supervisor, whom she likes, and with whom she has a friendly working relationship. "If it becomes like this," she said, "how will anyone be able to work together at all?"
Possibilities: I'm hearing this at least once removed. Tone, language used, body language, eye contact, all are unknown to me (but will also be unknown to anyone who adjudicates this). Maybe this supervisor guy leers at the tempworker and my wife just isn't aware of it. Maybe the temp company assured her that at this work no one would ever ask her anything personal about anything and now that's happened. Maybe the temp worker is aware of some other infractions that have occurred in her sight and this is her way of bringing all into the harsh cleansing light. Maybe, as Jordan Peterson has suggested, men and women just may not be able to work together, despite common sense western (and eastern) assumptions.
I nodded. She was right: It was shocking. But I slept earlier than I had expected.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
No idea. It's interesting how this kind of metric (self-reported on presumably a Likert scale of a subset of a population, probably only surveyed once) is typically ridiculed on the Motte, but here it seems to be just accepted.
Interesting. Thanks for being so forthright. As a straight male who has been wooed, it's not my fantasy and I'm not a fan. Just to get that out there.
I don't have much to offer, I'm afraid. Way different Weltanschauungen. Miles apart. But then perhaps I'm miles apart from many here, in different ways.
Probably IRL we could sit down and maybe I could straighten you out. Just kidding. We could have an interesting chat though, I bet.
I didn't click the embedded link. Maybe I will on my computer tomorrow.
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