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Notes -
I just watched a 2008 movie called "Baby Mama" starring Tina Fey.
In the movie, Tina Fey is reading a book about childbirth and is given a "nightmare" by the possibility of her child being a hermaphrodite or, in her words, "a chick with a dick". It's clear that this is being played for laughs even though, like the rest of the movie, it wasn't really funny.
It's crazy how far things have swung in just 15 years.
Perhaps the most striking example is this comedy film from 2002 about a basketball player who gets suspended from the men's league and tries to pass himself off as a woman so he can compete in the women's league.
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Imagine where we might go in another 15...
The more I see of the modern political landscape, the more I want to advocate for a gradualist approach. At least for social conventions and laws, if not for technology. Then again I would sacrifice the measly technological gains we've made in the past 15 years to go back to that time period from a social and legal standpoint. ChatGPT is amazing, but not worth it.
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Thirty years ago I flirted with a career in comedy/TV writing. One of the most reliable tropes, I was taught, dating back hundreds of years (at least), was putting a man in a dress. The evidence that this nugget was a steadfast laugh-generator was apparent in a continuous stream from Shakespeare to Doubtfire. Now, it's the one thing above all others that can never be acknowledged as out-of-the-ordinary.
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