3 good articles

[ironphoenix]

Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge (Fiona MacDonald) (short) Halelujah, and more power to her. The paywall sites are charging exorbitant amounts given how low the real costs of publication are.

Attention Fellow Introverts: It's Time to Stop Beating Ourselves Up (Ashley Lauretta) (medium-length) I'm not an introvert (I'm a moderate extrovert), but I know and love many, and this article rings true to me.

The opposite of rape culture is nurturance culture (Nora Samaran) (long!) This is a really good synthesis of a lot of ideas about masculinity, development, and relationships. Highly recommended, but don't be in a rush. For people who are wondering how masculinity can fit with feminism, this is a really good place to look.

Comments

[khall.livejournal.com]

Last one. Neat article. But...feminism-as-politics has too much shaped her view of rape. I wonder how to study it honestly, without the skein of politics. The idea that rape is about violence, not sex, is...inherently flawed. It posits that someone can be so selfish as to not care about damaging you for a lifetime, and yet, so other-focused that they are intentionally doing so to damage you. It's a huge cause of cognitive dissonance and I feel, harms people who have been assaulted, as a result. At least she didn't randomly flip back and forth between stranger-rape and acquaintance-rape like they're the same subject or that conflating the two is not intellectually dishonest. So many people work so hard to be experts...

I think she has a lot of valid points. I just don't think...the instance of someone 'accidentally' raping someone, because they didn't get the social/emotional cues exactly explains the 95-98% of rapes that are not done by a stranger.

K.

[khall.livejournal.com]

To be clear, I believe that rape can be a form of abuse. A way of physically abusing the weaker partner. It can also come from selfishness. And, unfortunately, it can also come from a need to get off and a lack of compassion or...other-focus. None of these are 'right' or 'better'. But...telling a woman (for instance) that the guy who did that to her is basically a serial rapist and only did it to have power over her, when she was in the situation and knows that he just wanted to climax and didn't care what she wanted, so it was about his selfish enjoyment, is a great way to lead her to years of therapy. And the inability to progress. Cognitive dissonance is one of the most powerful and yet, barely on the radar, forces in human society. It shapes almost all politics, and a huge amount of emotion-based interaction. The reason you flip off the driver who cut you off is because he violated the expected norms. Triggering your sense of outrage and shaking your 'identity' block of how the world works. To...intentionally leave someone bearing that, due to organized feminism's politics-based perception that all rape is X, is...criminal and horrific to me.

K.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

I didn't really get that from the article; if it's there, it didn't jump out at me.

Extremist politics in general works by ignoring nuances and polarizing the issues. That's as true of feminism as it is of right-wing politics, for example. I don't really engage in debate with extremists because I haven't found it useful for myself, them, or any onlookers. Debating against their views as I understand them without involving the people themselves is an exercise not to overindulge in: it's good to clarify what one thinks, but not to treat the exercise as a glorious victory.

So. I generally agree with your central point. I hope that you got more from the article than an urge to express this.

[khall.livejournal.com]

I agree with almost everything else she wrote. She's pretty much right. I focus on women's self defense and as a result I've made studying people who assault others, particularly women, a priority. It does tend to make me read anything that can be taken as survival advice or relating to assault with a leery eye. I've been doing this for 8 years, studying, asking questions, reading, discussing. I barely know anything about the subject, no one does, so...it feels important, to me, to challenge things about the subject that seem...hinky.

K.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

In the third article, I twitched a bit at the use of the phrase "attachment science" rather than "attachment theory". But, otherwise, an excellent article.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

I'll grant that it implies more certainty than might be warranted. Like most classification schemes at early stages of their development, it tries to be a little too sharply delineated: I'm pretty sure there is actually a spectrum of some kind there.

I'm glad you liked it otherwise!

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure there's some useful/good stuff to attachment theory, too. And, yeah, it is going to be a spectrum, rather than sharply delineated. It was more the "science" rather than "theory" labeling when, as far as I know, "attachment theory" is the standard term used in the field that made me twitch, rather than how the author applied it.