Apparently there was a bit of a hissy-fit over use of the term "mewling quim" by Loki in The Avengers. I was surprised to discover this because I didn't think that many people realized what Loki said, there. In fact, my reaction to the line was a little Beavis-and-Butthead snicker while I wondered how many people knew what "quim" meant.
I'm always a little surprised when people get wound up over name-calling and pejorative terms. I mean, I get that it's sexist, hateful, racist, mean, etc, etc, etc. That's what makes it name-calling. If it were nice, you wouldn't get called that.
The part that surprises me is that anyone gets particularly bothered by it. I think this stems from the fact that I've been called literally every applicable name in the book and quite a few that weren't, and after awhile, it just ceases to register as "insulting" anymore. I worked 3rd shift as a waitress for a few years and I have heard it all. (If you want to hurt my feelings, you need to bring your A-game, folks.)
For me, having my feelings hurt or being really offended or insulted stems more from the person and their intentions than any particular word or language they use. By way of example, 99% of the time I'm perfectly fine with being called "hon," "sweetie," "babe," etc by random men (and occasionally random women, but that's not as common). But every once in a rare while, some skeezy old fart drops a patronizing "hon" on me and seriously, I just want to drive a stapler into his eye socket.
I expect that's why use of the "mewling quim" line didn't bother me. I highly doubt Joss Whedon actually thinks of his female fans as cunts, and I didn't think he was using the situation as a proxy to call me or women or his female fans names. It was just a nicely archaic-sounding way to call another character a dirty name, with an extra 12-year-old-boy giggle added because he was getting away with something really naughty.
#ImSoBloggingThis #TheAvengers
Embedded Link
Those who are about to be flamed salute you
Okay, I'm having to explain a fragmented discussion to so many people that I want to recap it in one place. I am probably going to get my ass kicked for this. I am trying to convince myself that I reg…
Also, it's an article that supports a widely-held stereotype, so that makes me automatically suspicious. I'm also raising a dubious eyebrow because I thought I read somewhere that "subliminal" basically equals BS, but I dunno about that. At any rate, I'm not sure I'm buying this, but it is an interesting thought.
Homophobia Is Totally Gay, As Proven By Science [Science]
It's long been theorized that many hardcore, anti-gay homophobics are often repressed homosexuals themselves. There certainly has been a lot of anecdotal evidence from notable political figures to support this theory, but now science is stepping in with some raw data. The paper, recently published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, covers six studies conducted in the U.S. and Germany, using a total of 784 university students. Students were first asked to rank their sexual orient…
This is horrifying on a level I can barely contemplate, and I spend my spare time sitting around thinking up horrifying things to write, people.
The school district insists it has been portrayed unfairly. Superintendent Carlson points out it has been working hard to address the mental-health needs of its students by hiring more counselors and staff – everything, it seems, but admit that its policy has created problems for its LGBT community. "We understand that gay kids are bullied and harassed on a daily basis," and that that can lead to suicide, Carlson says. "But that was not the case here. If you're looking for a cause, look in the area of mental health." In that sense, the district is in step with PAL. "How could not discussing homosexuality in the public-school classrooms cause a teen to take his or her own life?" PAL asked Rolling Stone in an e-mail, calling the idea "absurd," going on to say, "Because homosexual activists have hijacked and exploited teen suicides for their moral and political utility, much of society seems not to be looking closely and openly at all the possible causes of the tragedies," including mental illness. Arguably, however, it is members of PAL who have hijacked this entire discussion from the very start: Though they've claimed to represent the "majority" opinion on gay issues, and say they have 1,200 supporters, one PAL parent reported that they have less than two dozen members.
This school has purposefully set out to build a culture where it is acceptable to literally bully gay teens to death, and then has the unmitigated gall to proclaim that the resulting epidemic of suicides is not their fault. Every member of their school board should be fired. Hell, the whole damn district should be cleaned out, and replaced by people who can bother to remember that part of their job is to protect children.
These people are setting themselves up for a school shooting. It's nothing but luck that one of these kids didn't decide to bring a street sweeper to school and turn their misery outwards, instead of inwards.
I think someone's got their knickers in a knot over a couple of things that aren't technically G+/Google's fault, here.
1) If you quote someone else's work, you should attribute it, full stop, regardless of the platform you share it on. On social media networks, it can get a little tricky to share links and do proper attribution. One of my favorite tools is the bit.ly extension available for FireFox and Chrome. (And possibly IE, but seriously, why are you still using that? Stop it.)
[Bit.ly for Chrome, shared using the Bit.ly extension. Bit.lyception! Here: http://bit.ly/xCJzml ]
On the rare occasions when I'm posting an excerpt of an article to a social network but not using the embedded link feature that goes along with Facebook or G+ (like the embedded article below), I use Bit.ly to link to the article I'm quoting. It makes a short, tidy URL, as opposed to the giant-assed thing you copy and paste out of your browser's address bar.
To link to a person, I either use Bit.ly, or I use G+, Twitter, or Facebook's built-in linking system – + the person's name on G+ or @ the person's name on Twitter and Facebook. (No spaces between the + or @ and the beginning of the name, of course.)
Attribute when you quote, folks, and make your quotes and excerpts as obvious as possible. It's only polite.
2) Google has been catering your search results to your personal tastes for quite awhile – since well before G+ was a thing. I log out and clear my browser cache when I want to do a Google search and want to make sure I'm getting unbiased results. The rest of the time, I stay logged in, because for most searches I do, I want to help Google make the search as relevant to me as possible.
There's a great TED Talk on the "Google Search Bubble." You can (should) watch it here: http://bit.ly/xwHnX7. It's about ten minutes long and worth every second.
The problem the author is complaining about here, though, is that G+ links are taking precedence over other types of links in Google search results, whether you're logged in or out.
I haven't yet seen a particular problem with this, myself, but maybe I don't search for the same kinds of things as the author. Google mentioned at the beginning that G+ results would take precedence in search results, so I suppose that's technically fair warning, but still. If I'm searching for information, I want the information, not what you said about the information. No offense, guys, but except in fairly rare cases, I can't quote most of you as experts.
3) If G+ has become too "noisy" for you – if you've got so much crap in your news stream that you're having a hard time keeping up, then you need to learn to use your circles properly. Start at +SocioloG+, here: http://bit.ly/z4AFSY.
I can't say I'm happy with +Google+ futzing with search results. I think that's a dangerous game to play when you've spent years setting yourself up as an information provider. I also can't say I agree entirely with this article, because I think a lot of what's being complained about in here are the result of users, not Google.
Overall, I'm still much happier with G+ than with Facebook.
As Google ships "the Google part" of its new Google+ identity, it's breaking the Internet it once helped build. I can't take it anymore.
Embedded Link
Google+ Is Going To Mess Up The Internet
I hate Google+. Can't stand it. It is agonizing to use. The stream is so noisy, it won't even bother me when the inevitable Google ads arrive. Culturally, it feels like walking into a religious school. It swarms with disciples of the + waiting for the messianic downfall of the Evil Internet, so t…
This story makes me so happy I can hardly stand it. Well, not this specific story, although I do like it, but the fact that someone over at the RIAA pirated an absolute metric crapton of TV episodes.
And then to make the "Well, it was just someone using our IP address" excuse… People, it doesn't get any better than that. Particularly when you can prove that, no, those IP addresses actually do belong to the RIAA.
It's like the happiest little Christmas story ever.
