#(a very enjoyable one for me where I provide 50% of the ideas and do <5% of the hard part)

[etirabys]

if AI completely "obsoleted" writing/painting I'd

paint about as much as I do now – how well other entities paint compared to me has <3% bearing on my own internal drive to paint

write almost not at all – my drive to write is >90% driven by the dearth of other entities who are writing what I want to read

[the-boy-who-sought-freedom]

Role-Play Rules/General Guideline

I normally only roleplay 'extreme' literate. That means at least over five sentences. (400 - 1000 words.) This, of course, doesn't always apply in certain cases. Sometimes a reply may be small, so be it. Feel free to DM me if you need an example of how I write. I will gladly provide you with an excerpt from a previous RP I have done, or even link you to my AO3 Account. Please have somewhat of a strong grasp of grammar. If you don't know the difference between their, there, and they're, as well as your, and you're, then we're probably not a good match. Punctuation is an exception since I myself sometimes struggle with this! I RP THIRD-PERSON POV ONLY!

I have zero triggers! This doesn't mean that I will do absolutely anything. This just means that if you have an idea and I like it/am interested, then I will accept it. Aka gore, incest, smut, LGBTQ+, Homophobia, different types of AU's, prostitution, alcoholism, drug abuse, self-harm, mpreg, etc. I should be okay with it. :) Note: I will not RP Canonverse/Canon-Divergence.

I have the right to refuse you as a partner or end the RP for any reason at any time. I am not obligated to finish it. Frankly, I don't owe you shit, just as you don't owe me anything. I mean this in the nicest way possible. I respect you as a person and I only wish the same in return. If you are unable to reply for a while, simply let me know! I will try to be understanding since real life always comes first!

DON'T SPAM! This is the fastest way to get yourself blocked. If I don't reply immediately, that probably means that I am busy. I consider myself very swift to reply to you, or at the very least let you know if I will be able to reply that day/week/month or not. If you haven't replied in over a week with no explanation I might simply nudge you. It'll possibly look like this: 'Hello, just wondering how you're doing?' 'Hey, are you going to reply this week/day?' 'Are you growing bored of the RP? Need me to do anything?' etc. Again, this is not a job. I do not get paid, so I have the right to relax. We both should. Roleplaying is how I wind down for the day/is a healthy distraction from everyday life. I'd assume it's similar for you. Take care of yourself first as I will ultimately do the same!

No God-modding, please. Unless you specifically ask, or I tell you that it's alright because I recognize that the scene calls for more action on either of our parts in order to move forward, then I will have absolutely none of that. A character can be strong, yes, but it's simply overkill if you won't allow another character to fight back, make them rich and famous and the other dirt poor... I hope you understand what I mean. RP should be 50/50 so that it is enjoyable for us both. (This rule can be exempt in certain circumstances/settings.)

Starters. This is a big one for some reason. I am willing to write a starter as long as we've spoken ahead first. I'd like to know the general plot so that I don't fuck up an idea you had/have or get the setting wrong. Again, if we message each other we should have no problems. I'd prefer if you asked first as I will always ask if unsure before writing my reply.

Where do I roleplay? Good question. I DO NOT roleplay in reblogs. I DO however roleplay on sites like Discord, Chatzy, or on Tumblr in DM’s, though my favourite is most definitely Discord.

Characters/Ships. I actually consider myself a multi-shipper and thus I tend to be generally okay with any pairing. Some examples of my favourites are Jean x Eren, Erwin x Levi, Floch x Eren, Zeke x Eren, Zeke x Levi, Hanji x Levi, etc. I don’t mind if there are ships within the RP. I actually love it when there’s things like an ex-boyfriend, one is still married, cheating, etc. It gives it some flavour. ;)

Plot! Plot is very important to me. Although I do write smut from time to time, I'd much rather RP plot with a fair bit of smut rather than purely NSFW. That simply isn't as enjoyable to me as a generally nonsexual person even though what I write on AO3 seems to be hypersexual at first glance. I know how to write it- have written it well as far as I've been told -so I will initiate it from time to time if the mood is right. Friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, strangers to friends to lovers... Let's just say I eat that shit up. Bring on the AU's!

Finally, the last thing I can think of at the moment besides the whole 'I hope you understand and accept' deal, is if you have any more questions, my DM’s are always open! I may not get to them right away but I'll make sure to check as often as I can! Thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate it.

Once again, this is just a general guideline to follow. I am willing to be flexible, as well as disregard certain aspects if necessary!!!

[idontmindifuforgetme]

just saw your post abt rejection! do you have any tips on how you'd push yourself to get out there despite rejection anxiety and/or how you deal with getting upset from being rejected?? i'm trying to push myself to deal with it better too but it's tough

hi!! i’m still mastering this myself, but i’ve come a long way ever since i embraced the idea of rejection as being a good thing for me. my tips/mental hacks for this are:

recognize that everyone you know in your life got rejected at some point. the person who’s interviewing you, your professor, your crush, your best friend, your neighbor, your favorite celebrity, people you idolize. everyone goes through it. absolutely everyone. rejection is inevitable, and trying to avoid it is much the same as trying to avoid air. it’ll always catch up to you, so there’s no point fearing it.

remember that rejection builds character. it’s a positive feedback loop: the more rejected you are, the less you’ll care, and the more you’ll be willing to go outside of your comfort zone.

as for how to apply these principles: talk to strangers. i know this sounds odd, but it works so well bc you’ll never see them again. if you start a conversation with a stranger & it’s very awkward/stilted, you can always walk off & not have to deal with the repercussions of being rejected by them. if you’re an anxious person, that’ll provide a safety cushion of some kind: the idea that you won’t have to deal with the aftermath of a rejection. the purpose of doing this would be more so to focus on getting used to the feeling of rejection itself.

put yourself out there, but couple that with an activity. what i mean is: if you want to approach people/make more friends, do it in a context where if you fail, it won’t be so disappointing. if you’re really into bowling & join a bowling club, half the fun will be getting to bowl. the other half will be making friends along the way. if you’re not so successful at approaching people, at least you’ll get to bowl. it won’t feel entirely like a failure to you. putting yourself out there is important but exhausting; if you can do it in a way that’s enjoyable, it’ll make it so much easier.

see rejection as an opportunity to grow. if you got rejected for some shortcomings, your next step is to improve on them & make yourself a more attractive choice—whether it be for a job prospect, love interest, etc. don’t let rejection destroy you, but use it as a vehicle to motivate yourself to be better.

recognize your own worth! it’s not just you missing out on them; it’s also them missing out on you. learn not to only operate through a lens of what people think of you, but also through a lens of what you think of them. people are faulty, & sometimes their rejection/reaction to you will be unfounded. be critical of that & recognize it’s not always you that’s the problem. recognize that rejection can sometimes have nothing to do with you and everything to do with the other person.

believe in yourself. believing in yourself is 50% of the struggle. you can always pull yourself back up. if one opportunity didn’t work out, the next one will. there’s always a Plan B. this world is so vast & the possibilities are endless.

embrace the journey of self-improvement. it’s okay to be a work in progress. don’t despise yourself for not “being there yet.” just keep working to get better, keep asking yourself how to do things differently, and keep becoming a better version of you day by day.

don’t take things so seriously!! life is a roller coaster of ups & downs. that’s what makes it fun. just go w the flow & always try again!

[familyfriendlyweed]

makeup sessions (karl jacobs x fem reader)

a/n : hi! this is my first tumblr post. i have written stuff on wattpad in the past, but it’s still quite new to me, so please be nice :]] i accept positive critism and advice, as that most definitely will help me grow as a writer!

 Y/n let out something between a squeal and a scream at the same time when she saw Karl's tweet. her face was beat red and her lips couldn't help but curl into the stupidest grin ever.

the tweet read :

hey @) y/nhasursocks wanna do my makeup at my stream today :]]

 it was the simplest tweet, yet it meant so much to the girl. Karl and Y/n were always really good friends, they often streamed minecraft together, but never in a million years did he yet ask her to be in his stream in real life.

 Y/n picked up the phone with trembling hands, already seeing a bunch of likes, comments and retweets to Karl's tweet. before answering, she got curious to know what the people say. cautiously opening the comments section, the girl scanned it through with her eyes. a bunch of "awwwwws" and hearts could be seen, which worsened her already red cheeks.

With her heart thumping hard against her ribs, she started writing her reply :

sounds great! <3

 for a moment Y/n hesitated to press the "reply" button with the "<3" emoticon in the comment, but then she figured she and Karl sent lovey dovey emojis/emoticons in the past to each other anyways, so, she pressed the "reply" button at last.

 in an instant, her reply started gaining more and more likes, comments and retweets. Y/n was never really popular, having her clout was only because of Karl being her friend, so seeing this much attention was weird to her. but she didn't care about that right now. all that Y/n cared about at the moment was the fact that Karl appreciated her enough to actually invite her over.

 a little bit later in the day, Y/n received a private message from Karl, which said :

hey Y/n! I'm really glad you're up to stream together <3 i planned on starting the stream at 4 pm, but you can change the time if you're busy :] here is my address (don't tell anyone! :D) - (random address lol)

 Y/n answered :

 thanks for inviting me bestie!! 4 pm is cool, I'll be there! <33

 she set the phone down, unable to remove the blissful smile from her face. she has never felt this way before - it was really weird, but the constant butterflies in her tummy reminded her that it's a good feeling. taking a few deep breaths, Y/n reminded to herself that all she has to do is to go to Karl's house and have a good time AS FRIENDS - no romantic stuff is needed.

  ~~~~~time skip~~~~~

  Y/n got off from the bus at 15:50, but she still had about 5 minutes to reach Karl's house. in what felt like forever, the girl felt a sting of what was unmistakably fear and guilt - what if she was late? and what if Karl would be annoyed with her for that?

 slowly she broke into a panicky run. passing careless citizens, who all looked at her fear-stricken face curiously, she finally made it to the front door of Karl's home. Y/n pulled out her phone and found the code that she was supposed to enter next the main door. she quickly dialed it, a beep beep beep was heard and she entered.  

 finally making it to Karl's apartment, Y/n stopped to smooth her hair and straighten her clothes so she doesn't look too shabby. her body seemed to be moving on its own - her finger pressed the doorbell automatically.

 Karl opened the door almost in an instant - he wore a warm smile and before Y/n could stutter a "hello", he pulled the girl into a big welcoming hug.

 "hey Y/n! it's so cool you made it!" Karl exclaimed, still holding her close.

Y/n's head was spinning, she needed more time to process what was happening. but nevertheless, she finally lifted her own arms and hugged the guy. burying her face into his sweater, she inhaled Karl's scent deeply - he smelled something like honey and warm days.

"hello, Karl." she mumbled with a grin on her face.

"come on, do you want to eat something before the stream?" Karl asked, letting go of the girl and taking her hand into his instead, leading Y/n into the house.

"oh no, I'm full. let's get straight to business." she answered, the blissful smile and content blush never leaving her face.

"alrighty! you already know, but we'll have an eventful makeup session, and then I thought maybe play some minecraft so the stream isn't too short?" the guy asked, opening his bedroom door.

"sounds great!"

Karl smiled and went to his computer :

"you ready? I'll start the stream now."

the girl quickly fixed her hair again and gave him thumbs up :

"ready."

Karl started the stream with facecam on and as soon as the chat saw Y/n, it went absolutely wild.

"guys, give her a rest, poor girl just came!" he laughed, drawing her a chair. Y/n thanked quietly and sat, waving to the chat timidly. in the corner of her eye, she saw comments like "she's so adorable" and "look at Karl being a gentleman" in the chat and her cheeks grew more red, but this time from satisfaction.

"well, as you guys know, Y/n agreed to be in my stream today, and since some of you don't really know her, she's a really good friend of mine who also streams and does youtube videos - so go support her!"

from that moment Y/n relaxed more and more with each minute. it was fifteen minutes into the stream when she already felt as if at home.

"Karl, you have a hell lot of lipsticks, where did that come from?"

"uhhhh, I only bought them for the stream today!"

"oh really? why are they all used, then?" Y/n asked giggling and showing them to the stream.

"hey- don't expose me like that!"

"chat, clip it, CLIP IT!"

all was going really well, Y/n was having a really good time with Karl AS FRIENDS. it was really nice. but all hell broke loose when the time to put eyeliner came.

"alright, I have no idea why, but you have four eyeliners."

"they're my sister's."

"haha, yeah, yeah, alright. Which one do you want big man?"

"hmmm, the one in your left hand!"

Y/n set the other eyeliners on the table, quickly glancing at the chat. her cheeks grew very very red…

"Y/N DO THE MEME SIT ON HIS LAP" "SIT ON HIS LAP" "THE MEME, DO THE MEME!!!"

  a/n: if anyone is confused, this is an example of the meme i’m talking about :

the girl tried to act as if she hadn't seen the comments, but Karl was already by her side, reading them with her.

"meme… what meme?" he wondered out loud. Y/n got the impression that he was genuinely confused.

'chat, shut the fuck up, please shut the fuck up.' thought Y/n, but of course chat was just being chat.

"SHE SHOULD SIT ON UR LAP" "THERE'S A MEME WHERE A GIRL DOES A GUY'S EYELINER WHILE SITTING ON HIS LAP" "WE'RE NOT FORCING BUT YOU GUYS WOULD LOOK SO CUTE"

Y/n hid her face in her hands, unable to control her blushing. Karl just chuckled sweetly :

"chat, calm down, she's going to die from blushing."

he put on the "please stand by" screen and scooted over Y/n :

"hey, it's fine. we won't do it if you don't want to," Karl then leaned closer and whispered, "I'd be pretty glad if you agreed, though."

Y/n lowered her hands, showing off the big red hue on her cheeks. for a split second Karl's eyes widened -  she looked really adorable.

"I'd also be glad." the girl said, almost not believing her own words.

Karl's adorable smile came back and he leaned back:

"well then, come here."

Y/n stood up shyly and straddled his legs, grabbing the eyeliner in the process.

"do you want me to turn on the facecam?" Karl asked quietly.

the girl nodded :

"I don't mind."

he turned it on and put his hands onto Y/n's hips. even without looking at it, Y/n knew the chat was blowing up at the moment.

"you guys better subscribe, because we're providing very good fanservice." said Karl jokingly and Y/n laughed. turning to him, she opened the eyeliner and put it next to his eye, only to find him staring at her in an awe. the girl blushed as a strong urge to kiss him kicked in. it looked as if Karl wanted the same thing.

at the precise same time, they both leaned in and pressed their lips together, Y/n putting her hands onto Karl's cheeks to hide the view from the chat. the kiss was very short and with no tongue included - but it was the most sweet kiss Y/n has ever shared with someone. she pulled away, an identical grin to Karl's on her face and hugged him very tight - they almost fell off the chair.

laughing, she continued to do Karl's makeup as if nothing happened and everyone watching the stream wasn't fainting and clipping the kiss. this will be talked about for a long time, but as before, Y/n didn't care about that, and nor did Karl.

a/n : anddddd cut! it’s quite wonky, but i believe it’s pretty swell for my first mcyt fanfic :]] let me know what you think of it and if you have any tips or advice on how to make my future stories more enjoyable! thanks for reading and i hope to see you around <3

[comrade-meow]

‘Sex work’ advocates and the Nazi propaganda playbook

Last month Nordic Model Now! was asked to participate in a University of Exeter student debate on the proposition that “This house believes that sex work is real work.” As a group, we are ambivalent about taking part in such debates. On the one hand, they are seldom a conducive forum for understanding nuanced and complex issues – but on the other hand, if we don’t participate there is a risk that the audience won’t hear the feminist analysis of prostitution. No one else in the group was able to take part that night, so reluctantly I agreed.

From the comments on social media during the debate, it appears that most of the students were won over by the arguments of the two proponents of the proposition – even though it was clear to me that they both had powerful vested interests in a booming sex industry, that much of what they said was palpably false and much of their argument relied on ad hominem attacks on myself and the other speaker against the proposition.

I was awake much of that night wondering why the students at one of the top universities in the UK appeared to be so unable to see beyond the self-satisfied veneer of the two speakers for the proposition. By the morning I’d resolved to analyse the arguments for the proposition and place them in context, with the aim of providing some help to those coming to similar debates in the future. This article is the result.

The Nazi Manual of Propaganda

Yale professor and expert in the history of fascism, Timothy Snyder, talks of the 1924 Nazi manual of propaganda that advised finding simple slogans and repeating them over and over and framing opposition as disloyalty or worse. Many people, he says, have taken up these tactics in recent years, leading not only to an erosion of the understanding that politics should be about reasoned debate leading towards constructive and informed policy, but also to politics being viewed as a battleground between ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’.

You would need to be blind to not recognise that these tactics have become increasingly common in the UK and US in recent years, and how they have been used to manipulate the public into support for policies that are not in their best interests and that might have catastrophic consequences. Depending on the arena, dissent is framed as hatred, ‘anti-science,’ or not ‘evidence-based,’ and this acts as a powerful silencing force that shuts down critical thinking and coerces acceptance of what is often little more than hot air.

These tactics obscure who are the real beneficiaries of the propaganda – usually people who gain power or who benefit in financial or other ways from whatever is being promoted. Bizarrely, we can observe these practices on both the right and left of the political spectrum.

These tactics were on display in the University of Exeter Debating Society debate. It was by no means the first or only such debate I have taken part in or observed, and nor was it the first time that I saw those promoting the idea that ‘sex work is real work’ consciously or unconsciously using tactics from the Nazi propaganda playbook.

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can read the transcript of the debate and I’ll illustrate my claims through an analysis of the key arguments used by the two speakers for the proposition.

Jerry Barnett

The first speaker for the proposition was Jerry Barnett, who’s the author of the book, Porn Panic. He regularly writes on sex and the ‘economics of sex,’ and runs a YouTube channel called ‘Sex and Censorship.’ In other words, the sex industry indirectly provides his daily bread and butter.

After introducing himself, he defined work as: “A voluntary exchange of time or labour for money or some other payment.” He didn’t mention that this definition deviates significantly from the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition, which is based on mental or physical activity, and he didn’t explain how you can exchange time for money.

One of the key arguments against prostitution being considered normal work is that although it involves some mental and physical activity (pretending the punter’s a great guy, cleaning up afterwards, etc.) the core feature of prostitution is that he uses her body – he gropes and penetrates her. This is not about her being actively engaged in mental or physical activity but someone doing something to her.

What other work involves someone doing something to you while you lie back and endure it? The only thing that I can think of is participating in medical trials – but that’s not considered work – even though you might be paid for taking part.

So, he sneakily expanded the definition to make it easier to argue that a man penetrating your orifices is a normal form of work – although of course he didn’t mention penetration because, like most sex trade lobbyists, he buries such fundamental realities in euphemism and obfuscation.

Interestingly, he did admit that it is invariably men who are the customers (or punters as we call them) and nine or more times out of ten it is women who are being penetrated – or earning an income from ‘sex work’ as he euphemistically described it.

His arguments hinged around two key contentions: First, that ‘sex work’ is well-paid, enjoyable work that has short hours and is particularly suitable for anyone who needs flexibility. I will leave aside the questionable ethics of promoting such a skewed reality to an audience of impressionable young women and men.

Second, that opposition to ‘sex work’ is based on false statistics, the conflation of trafficking and consensual ‘sex work,’ and moralistic values from people who are anti-sex and who attack women’s rights, and refuse to “listen to sex workers who say it’s empowering.”

Most of the time, he expounded on one or other of these claims, all presented with utter conviction, while implicitly framing anyone who disagreed with him as the enemy – the enemy of women’s rights, of rational debate, of men, of more or less everything that he considers good in life.

He dismissed my arguments as “anecdotes” even though most of his were based on wishful thinking rather than hard evidence – while at the same time claiming they were “evidence-based.”

For example, I mentioned that the murder rate of women involved in prostitution is the highest of any group, including in the UK, and that where prostitution is legalised, the murder rate of women in prostitution usually remains high.

His immediate response?

“Anna is good with anecdotes but when she tries to use statistics, they don’t seem to add up at all. I think the last time I looked, the professions with the highest [murder rate] were police and fast-food delivery people who are overwhelmingly men. But yeah, the anecdotes stack up, the statistics don’t.”

I didn’t manage to respond to this until much later in the debate, when I quoted a senior police officer who, when giving evidence at a Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry in early 2016, said:

“We have had 153 murders of prostitutes since 1990, which is probably the highest group of murders in any one category, so that gives the police cause for concern.”

I didn’t have the stats for police murders at my fingertips but I looked them up later and found data that suggested there had been about 28 murders of police officers in the UK during the same period (1990-2015). So, there were more than five times as many murders of women involved in prostitution as police officers. I couldn’t find any data on fast food delivery drivers other than a few isolated press reports.

So much for his grasp on statistics. But the damage had been done.

Charlotte Rose, the other speaker for the proposition, compounded the damage by asserting more than once that there had been no murders recorded of women involved in prostitution in New Zealand, where the sex industry is fully decriminalised.

But again, this is untrue. The German women who run the Sex Industry Kills project have documented 10 murders of prostituted women in New Zealand since the sex trade was decriminalised in 2003 along with a number of attempted murders. That is a significant number given New Zealand’s small population (currently less than 5 million).

One of my key arguments was that the sex industry normalises and eroticises male dominance and one-sided sex, and feeds men’s entitlement and reduces their empathy – which are the very attitudes that underpin the current epidemic of rape, child sexual abuse, and other forms of male violence against women and children.

Jerry’s response? That there was not an epidemic of male violence against women. He based this assertion on another made-up definition centred on “a steep sustained increase” – unlike the Oxford Dictionary, which centres the definition merely on a disease being widespread.

He said that not only was there not an epidemic of male violence but that the prevalence of such violence has been on a steep decline for 50 years.

But this is not true. Research has shown that male violence against women has risen significantly in the UK since 2010 and that new forms of gender-based abuse are increasingly prevalent. Even the UN describes male violence against women as a pandemic – which is an epidemic that has spread to cover multiple countries.

I mentioned that the judge in a judicial review about Sheffield Council’s relicensing of Spearmint Rhino (a lap dancing club) had castigated the council for rejecting a large number of objections from women and community members who said that the club had made the streets less safe on the basis that these objections were nothing more than “moral values.” The judge was clear that the objections were not about morality but were issues of equality.

Jerry responded as follows:

“There was briefly the anecdote about Spearmint Rhino and that women didn’t feel safe in the area. The fact is I’ve been involved, I’ve got stripper friends who’ve been involved in these campaigns to keep the venues open and these claims are false. They come up over and over again – that the presence of a strip club in an area makes women less safe. This has been de-proved, debunked, using evidence over and over and over again. So, the idea that women don’t feel safe in the area is a different thing.

Unfortunately, if women don’t feel safe, that’s sad but then they should acquaint themselves with the facts that actually the presence of a strip club in an area does not lead to an increase in sexual violence. And yet these kinds of things are continuously claimed to make it look like this is a woman’s rights movement rather than a morality movement, which it is.”

As for his claim that the increased violence in the vicinity of lap dancing clubs and similar has been “debunked” many times, well I couldn’t find any clear evidence that supported that. Rather I found much to the contrary. The Women and Equalities Select Parliamentary Committee in its report on its inquiry into Sexual Harassment of Women and Girls in Public Places, accepted the considerable evidence that sexual entertainment venues, such as lap dancing clubs, “promote the idea that sexual objectification of women and sexual harassment commonly in those environments is lawful and acceptable.”

But that is not good enough for Jerry. He sticks to what he knows is effective, and repeats sound bites that are simply not true while dismissing solid evidence and presenting any opposition as irrational and the work of moralistic enemies.

As to a man telling women they are being irrational to fear male violence, what can I say? I am not sure anything I would like to say is publishable.

Charlotte Rose

The second speaker for the proposition was Charlotte Rose, who was wearing a t-shirt advertising Fan Baits, a new commercial sex industry advertising platform. She introduced herself as, “a former multi-award-winning escort, current radio presenter and advocate for decriminalisation of sex work.”

She went on to say:

“I just want to discuss something that may affect your moral judgement. How do you all feel when I mention people who work in abortion clinics, abattoirs, factory farmers, nuclear power station workers? To name just a few. For me I do not like it. But just because we do not like what these people do, it doesn’t give us the right to state that their work is not legitimate.”

Since when have people campaigned against factory farming or nuclear power because they didn’t approve of the people who work in those industries? Eccentrics aside, the arguments are always around the impact of those industries on the environment, human and animal health and welfare, and other wider issues – and any personal disapproval is reserved for those who, knowing the damage caused, profit from those industries.

The inclusion of abortion clinics in this list is a sneaky attempt to associate our opposition to the commercial sex industry with extreme anti-woman protestors against abortion. This is a classic example of suggesting guilt by association. For an audience of students whose average age is likely to coincide with the peak age for abortions, this is particularly reprehensible.

Charlotte then said that “until you’ve worked as a sex worker, you’ve got no right whatsoever to dictate anything against [sex work].” This is an argument that we hear repeated over and over in true propaganda playbook style, making people lose their critical faculties and the ability to say, hang on a minute, I’m entitled to have an opinion on factory farming and nuclear power and other industries that have a wide impact, why on earth can’t I have an opinion on the sex industry?

And the truth is, of course you can have such an opinion, and indeed as a concerned citizen, you should – but they don’t want you to. Because once you really look at the sex industry, it’s hard to ignore the rampant abuses and negative impacts on us all, particularly young people.

Like Jerry, Charlotte expounded on how “consensual sex work” has nothing to do with sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking. But of course, it does. There is no separate market for trafficked women – they are on the same street corners and in the same brothels and so-called massage parlours as women who may have made some kind of choice to be there. From the outside you can’t tell what led a woman to that place – nor what is holding her there.

As we have written elsewhere, most pimping meets the international definition of human trafficking and most women involved in prostitution have one or more third party (i.e. pimp) feeding off their prostitution. And the evidence of the violence inherent in prostitution is overwhelming.

Charlotte may not be a male chauvinist pig as all the evidence suggests that Jerry is, but she was equally happy to misrepresent our arguments and frame us as hateful and dangerous. She claimed several times that we want to “delegitimise” her work. (What work? Didn’t she say she was a former sex worker?)

In an attempt to convince everyone that her work really is real work, she went into a long explanation of what it entails: dealing with emails (80 a day), text messages (120/day), phone calls (50), notifications, advertising, website SEO, updating her photos, social media and special offers, booking hotels, etc.

She then asked whether that sounded like work – which of course it does. But that was missing the whole point of the debate because she didn’t mention the core aspects of prostitution – sexual intimacy with a stranger who pays you to have his every whim and fetish met with a smile.

She claimed that “delegitimising sex work” damages her credibility and means men won’t see it as legitimate work and means she “can’t get a mortgage by writing down that I’m a sex worker.” But later when she was asked why she was against legalisation of the sex trade (she favours full decriminalisation), she said:

“Legalisation is what happens in Amsterdam, but women, or sex workers […] have to pay for a licence. So, first of all, they’ve got to give a large amount of money to be able to get a licence to give them the ability to work and be in a legitimate premise.

Number one, they cost a lot of money. Number two, their details are known so there’s no anonymity. If someone wants their business not to be known to the government, then unfortunately they won’t be able to work. So, these two massive factors are why we don’t want it to be legalised.”

But hang on a minute… Isn’t she arguing for ‘sex work’ to be considered ‘real work’?

And isn’t one of the things that distinguishes ‘real’ – or legitimate – work from scams, drug dealing and other illegal activity, that when you earn money from ‘real work,’ you fill out a tax return and inform the government about where your income comes from.

So actually it sounds like she doesn’t want it to be regular ‘real work’ after all.

She made other arguments that were equally dodgy. She claimed several times that by expressing our views, we are causing actual harm to sex workers:

“One of my morals is not to cause harm to other people. I would never use my morals to cause harm to anybody. Your moralistic view is causing harm to sex workers.”

She is talking about an industry in which women involved in it have an extremely high murder rate – almost invariably by male punters and pimps – and yet she suggests that the problem is naming and describing this reality.

I explained that our position is that nothing can make prostitution safe and so we need to reduce the amount that happens. Anything that normalizes it means it will increase – it will increase men’s demand for it and more women will be sucked in and be hurt. As her position is that prostitution should be legitimised and become a normal job, you could therefore argue that her position will cause harm – like she claims about us. However, we prefer to argue on the facts and actual evidence.

Conclusion

Judging by the comments on social media, the young audience were swept along by Charlotte’s glamorous and suave act – in the face of which our attempts to focus the debate on the depressing realities of prostitution appeared about as alluring as a school assembly address by Miss Trunchbull on a bad day.

But reality is what we must deal with. Basing public policy on wishful thinking and propaganda invented by those with powerful vested interests is a recipe for disaster. You only need to consider Brexit to understand that.

The Brexit debate was dominated by sound bites and hot air underwritten by hedge fundies and other capitalists salivating at the prospect of looser and weaker regulation of business and commerce. But large sections of the British population were swept along by the propaganda and were blind to the likely dangers. It is only now, four years later, as the actual reality of Brexit is becoming impossible to ignore that opinion polls are showing the majority turning against it and realising it is almost certainly a terrible mistake.

You can’t help wondering in this context why schools and universities are not educating students about the dangers of propaganda and how to recognise and resist it. All of us, but especially young people, need to understand how to identify vested interests, easy answers and soundbites that oversimplify complex subjects, attacks on opponents and unevidenced assertions that they are motivated by hate or worse, and to see these as red flags.

Much of life is complex and messy and inequality and abuse of power is rife. There are no easy answers. Real solutions require hard work and challenging powerful vested interests – not following them like sheep.

[whispersovertime]

what started it all

Friday, August 6th. The morning of, I was strategically planning my outfit, mindful of the fact that I wanted to look good but also “professional” as these were ex-coworkers I was meeting, even if we were close-ish and more peers, but oblivious to what would happen later that night. Oh, and I was also going into the office, so yeah. I probably actually would have just worn yoga pants if it wasn’t for that.

I decided upon a cute brown knitted crop top (probably the most elegant yet cute top I own) and my new favorite dark blue a-line skirt that not only hides my muscular legs but also makes my waist look tiny. And a short grey cardigan to really complete the librarian look.

Driving from work to ktown, I learned that both of my ex-coworkers had not driven to the restaurant/bar. J had ubered, and JS basically lived there. Well, I was just going to eat and drink a few drinks and then drive home, right? 

I was the last to arrive naturally. Having not seen either J or JS in a long time, I noticed J looked too tall and slightly awkward as usual. (How did I use to have THE biggest crush on this guy?) JS looked alright, wearing baggy street-style clothes that I generally dislike but with the classic Korean perm that I like. A negative and positive to balance each other out.

After being seated, JS looked me over and spoke. “You look different? Why do you look different?” “Well, I dyed my hair.” “Yeah I can see that.” “I’m not wearing glasses like usual?” “No, it’s not that...” “Oh, maybe because I lost some weight?” “Ohh that makes sense. No wonder you’re dressed so aggressive.”

Aggressive? Uhm okay JS, way to attack me like that. I’ll just attribute that to your non-native English skills. I’m sure you meant something along the lines of “wearing feminine clothes you don’t usually wear which surprised me so much I felt almost attacked”? 

Little did I (we) know that that was the first subconscious warning of what was to happen to me (us).

JS also asked shortly later whether I was still “dating.” I was understandably confused, as “dating” implied something non-serious. JS, c’mon man, you met him yourself. JS was oddly very surprised I still was. Should I be offended that you have so little faith in my relationship-keeping abilities?

During dinner the three of us split 2 bottles of soju mixed with 5 beers. I learned that my old crush had come to the conclusion he was gay during months of pandemic-induced contemplation. Congratulations to him, no seriously. By the time we left, I was definitely feeling the alcohol, as was JS probably. J not so much but we were going to change that.

I had learned after going to the bathroom during dinner that I needed a new pad pronto. Ah yes, I totally forgot to mention that I was on my period. The worst day too, mind you. I also needed to go to the bathroom very badly yet again after leaving the restaurant. I wasted no time proudly announcing, with just a little embarrassment, that I needed a pad asap. J and JS were as understanding as they could be being 2 males, and we headed off to hmart.

While I picked out some absorbent-looking pads, J and JS had somehow picked up a bottle of grey goose and some chasers. It was definitely looking like the kind of “dinner, a few drinks, and drive home night” that I had envisioned. We trotted off to JS’s apartment which turned out to be a dingy little studio with almost no furniture except a bed, a desk and a chair. I went straight to the bathroom to change my pad.

We decided we were definitely going to go clubbing and find “someone” for JS and J. More so for JS because I knew J was now definitively gay and I wasn’t sure how apt a night out in ktown would be for that. JS changed into something more “presentable.” A pink shirt and light blue jeans. Something something grey goose shots something something more grey goose something yes I was definitely very drunk by the end. We all were.

We trotted back out to arena. There, we discovered that because we had come relatively late at night (11pm I think) there was a $50 cover charge. Each. Well, hell no. J got tacos while we debated where to go. I personally debated whether I was going to throw up or not into the nearest planter. Regretfully, I decided I was not going to at that moment. 

We all piled into an uber and went off to Terra Cotta because Free. Somehow, we made it inside relatively quickly. The music sucked. It was some hip hop with no rhythm or melody that I could discern and certainly wasn’t danceable or enjoyable. It was also packed with Asians. I tried sitting down at a table and was shooed away by a drink girl. 

I then proceeded to vomit behind a couch for at least several minutes in full view of everyone. It was never-ending, remotely embarrassing, and orange. It also provided relief and a little clarity. Two beautiful, wonderful, kind girls suddenly popped up and asked if I needed help and whether I wanted to go to the bathroom and get water. Yes please. They herded me away from J and JS (no idea what they were doing, though JS later told me that, in his own drunken stupor, he had tried to catch my vomit with his hands). The girls told me they had come to rescue me because the guys I was with looked lost and clueless. Truly angels.

In the bathroom I primly wiped my mouth with toilet paper and washed my hands and rinsed my mouth with water from the girls. I profusely thanked them and told them I was okay. I was okay, right? They guided me back to J and JS. I remember learning against the wall telling them, please go have fun, I’ll just stand here in this corner and wait. J and JS, either feeling bad or just not feeling it, decided we should all just return to JS’s apartment on account of my state. We piled back into another uber and off we went.

Upon entered JS’s apartment, I immediately plopped myself down on JS’s bed and passed out to the sounds of J and JS discussing food options.

...

“Jose left. I thought he was getting the food we had ordered so I went down to help him but then suddenly I realized he had actually called an uber home and was suddenly saying bye to him.” Okay. I guess? I nodded my head in response, I think.

...

“I got the food, do you want any?” I shook my head in response. I think. My eyes remained shut.

...

Fingers brushed against my upper torso. What was happening? The fingers continued, pushing up my bra and onto my breasts. Huh? I didn’t move. My eyes remained shut.

...

My body was caressed. Something, someone, pressed on top of me, but not painfully. The touch was gentle but firm. Lips met mine. I let them part mine and let them bite, suck, and pull. I may have responded. My eyes remained shut.

...

I felt the cold air displaced and the wooosh of water running. “C’mon, let’s get in.” Arms pulled my unresisting, somehow naked body into the shower. Water ran over my dyed hair that I was normally so careful to keep dry and on a once-a-week wash routine with only purple shampoo. Soapy hands began rubbing my body and catching the ends of my hair. I instinctively clung to the only other body in the shower. “Wow, I’m so drunk right now. K, I think I’m really drunk right now.” a voice breathed into my ear. The water stopped and the other body got out. Hands pulled me out and wrapped me in a towel.

I finally opened my eyes to say “I need my underwear, I’m on my period. Where’s my underwear? I don’t want to get blood everywhere.” I kept my eyes peeled to the ground and spotted the underwear and instinctively put them on. I then followed him back into the bedroom and fell on the bed.

...

More lips on mine, More caressing.  I had never felt this kind of touch before. It was soft yet firm and purposeful. The only way to describe it would be... loving. What was happening? I kept my eyes shut.

...

My hand was guided to something hard and fleshy. Before I knew it, it was near my mouth. He parted my lips and suddenly I was bobbing. I didn’t resist. I didn’t bite. I kept my eyes shut.

...

My legs were spread open. My underwear was pulled to the side to expose me and suddenly, it was in with one thrust. Others followed quickly. It didn’t hurt. It felt... good.

“No, stop it. You’re not using a condom. Stop it.”

He stopped. I kept my eyes shut.

...

More caressing, touching, kissing. He took my head again and put himself in my mouth again. I didn’t move. He then firmly head my head and moved it for me. “Yeah, do you want it? You want it.” I didn’t respond. I kept my eyes shut.

...

He spread my legs open again and inserted himself yet again.

“No, stop it. No no no.”

He relented. I finally turned my body over.

Everything came flooding back. Realization. Shame. Horror. Shock. Lust. Pleasure. Desire. Logic. 

“What’s happening? What happened?” 

I opened my eyes.

[yeslahrt]

Commission Details & TOS

The prices indicated on my commission sheet are base prices for the examples shown on the graphic. Here is more information to help clear up any additional question you may have. Once I am commissioned, it will be assumed that you have read through the information below!

WHAT I WILL DRAW:

Animals! I can draw a variety of animals and would love to have more practice to expand on my portfolio.

Mythical animals! I will do my best to illustrate your fantasy animal.

Monsters! I will take a stab at drawing your weird creature and make it look awesome.

D&D characters! Anthros! If it has a skeleton, I will do my best to draw what you want.

Yes, I am open to drawing sensual illustrations per my taste.

WHAT I WILL NOT DRAW:

I am still working on gaining more experience with using perspective, therefore I will not draw mech. One day, though.

I do not have the experience to draw gore.

I do not have the experience to draw chibis.

No, I will not draw pron for you.

WHAT TO EXPECT...

INQUIRIES & ORDERS: All clients should tell me everything that I need for your quote. If the client is too vague, I may not be able to accurately portray the character in the same fashion as you would like. (See below for info regarding references). Once we are ready to move forward, you will receive an invoice at the PayPal email you provide me.

I will not start working on your commission until the invoice is paid. If the invoice is not paid within 72 hours, I will send a confirmation of cancellation of your commission and discard your project. You will then have to wait until I have slots available again.

Repeated offenders will be denied service and potentially banned from my services.

Responsibility of following copyright notices and laws will fall solely on the client. Please do your own research and due diligence when commissioning licensed characters that do not belong to you. *

WHAT I NEED FROM YOU:

PayPal Email: (Please note that I only take USDs.)

Commercial or Personal Use? (If commercial, please explain.)

Printed and Framed? (Yes, I can have your illustration printed, framed, and sent to you for additional costs.)

Type of Illustration: (Please tell me what to illustrate for you. IE: Icon, extra small (XSm) portrait, regular portrait, half body, full body, etc.)

Do you want flat color for your illustration? (+$10 for regular portraits, +$15 for half body, +$20 for full body illustrations)

Do you want full color and shading? (+$30 for regular portraits, +$40 for half body, +$50 for full body illustrations)

More characters? Additional characters per illustration START at half cost as a base idea, but prices will vary depending on your commission and how much added work it will be.

Quick Personality: (Used to get a sense of the character I will be illustrating.)

Extra additions? (Do you want them smiling? Crying? Serious? What do you want them doing, if applicable?)

Do you have references? (If yes, I will ask you to email them to my business account. Do not send them to me via Tumblr.)

REFERENCE GUIDELINES

Please send me pictures of your character(s) for reference! Things to consider: potential hairstyles, outfits, color palettes, preferred skin tone, other illustrations of your character that you commissioned from other artists, etc. Anything to better help me portray your character correctly is good.

I also need a few words about their personality for setting a mood for your character. This should be no more than three sentences max.

If you have a pose in mind, please reference the pose. Otherwise I will take artistic freedom with the rough sketch.

WARNING: Do not send me a link to your toyhouse or website where I have to get the references myself. Otherwise you risk your inquiry being rejected.

Yes, I am okay with clients sharing a google folder of references specific to your commission with me.

WiPs & WORK PROCESS

You, the client, will receive periodic WiPs of the initial rough sketch that will lay down the foundation of your commission. This is the time for you to tell me if there are any major concerns or adjustments that should be made to avoid incurring additional work fees.

You will eventually be asked to confirm the rough sketch before I begin working on finalizing the line work and illustration. Once confirmed, minor details can be requested to be altered and changed, but the main part of the illustration will not be altered without incurring additional fees.

Once the line work has been finalized, I will begin working on adding flat colors. I strongly recommend you to send me color palettes if you are very particular, otherwise I will take artistic freedom with the illustration. You will again be sent a WiP to make any color corrections. If any of the flat colors are off, this is the time to tell me before I finish your commission with the final shading.

POST PERIOD OF REVISION: I will make minor alterations within reason after the first 72 hours of completion. Any changes that require me to go back and rework the line art, which will lead to me fixing colors/shading, (ex: a different outfit) you will incur an additional 50% - 75% of the original commission cost.

PLEASE BE ADVISED: If you are having me design your character for the first time and your thought process is exceptionally particular concerning your character, you may incur an additional 30% conceptual design fee for the additional time I will spend with you to make the actualization of your character the best it can be.

DELIVERY OF COMMISSION: I will send you an email with a link to your finished commission (usually via Google drive). Unless you have specifically requested for a printed and framed bundle, there will be no physical product or merchandise exchange.

WHAT ABOUT DEADLINES?

The client is more than welcome to suggest a date that they may need the commission to be completed by. Depending on the type of turnaround you are requesting, you will be charged a rush fee of 35 - 50% of the original cost of the commission.

Otherwise the commission will be done in the order received and you may be given a rough estimate of when the work should be started. The completion of the project will take between 1 week and 2 months, give or take, once you have been notified that the work has started.

ART SCHEDULE & SOCIAL MEDIA

Please be aware that I hold a job outside of social media. I sadly do not have a set schedule for my job. I find my creative drive spontaneous throughout the day, therefore I do not have a predictable drawing schedule. If you wish to watch me draw, then you can find the link in my bio to follow me.

Sadly, because of Tumblr's algorithms of hiding/shadow banning posts, I cannot add a link to it here for your convenience. All I can say is if you have the ITCH to watch me draw, you know where to find me, if ya' catch my drift? 'Eh? 'Eh?

ADDITIONAL FEES

If you, the client, are requesting thorough concept art of your character, which include reference sheets alongside of an illustration, I will ask for an additional fee for the service I will provide when spending extra time making sure that your new character is just right and providing a character reference sheet.

As a rule, I always add my watermark to a small portion of every commission that will not hinder your view of the work. If you wish to have a file without my watermark, please expect an additional fee added to your commission price. Personal use only.

If you wish for a high-quality illustration for printing, please expect an additional 50% minimum fee added to your commission. Personal use only.

The print-and-frame bundle will incur additional costs and time. Please contact me for more details.

CANCELLATIONS AND REFUNDS

Every client has the right to cancel their commission any time before I START work on their commission. Other refunds may be issued based on client relation, otherwise all payments are non-refundable once I have started work on your commission.

I also reserve the right to cancel your commission for any reason, for which you will see a refund if you have paid.

HOWEVER: If I terminate your commission due to the harassment of myself or my followers on social media, racially charged behavior or hate speech, threats of violence, obsessive or otherwise disturbing behavior... YOU WILL NOT GET A REFUND REGARDLESS OF THE STATUS OF YOUR COMMISSION.

I reserve the right to refuse your inquiry and/or commission for any reason I feel necessary. If I refuse your commission inquiry, please do not inquire about said commission again in the future.

— TERMS OF SERVICE —

MY RIGHTS — My right as an artist grants ownership of the copyright of my artwork. I do not however claim ownership of a client’s character or ownership of characters from television shows, movies, games, books, etc. In addition, I control the display and exhibition of my work, and the distribution of the work. Clients and/or followers cannot:

Re-post my work without my written consent.

Use my work for their Wattpad novel colors.

Upload my work on other social media platforms without my written consent.

Claim my work as their own, even if it's a commissioned piece.

Use my work with the intention to redistribute, promote themselves, generate revenue off of my work, or take away from my bottom line. I am a business owner and my artwork is my brand.

PERSONAL USE TERMS — As default, all commissions will be assumed that they are for the client’s personal use and enjoyment. Any intention to use my work in any way that may promote you, generate revenue, or that will redistribute my work will require a commercial user license.

COMMERCIAL USE TERMS — If you would like to commission artwork from me in a way that will promote you, generate revenue, or that will redistribute my work, (such as, and not limited to: promotional material, merchandise, raffles, giveaways, indie games) will require you to sign an official agreement. Commercial based commissions have different fees. Once signed, my illustrations will not include any watermarks and will come to you with a high-quality resolution. This will not allow you to change, edit, or repurpose my illustrations and I will ask you to credit me for my work in some form. You are required to clearly state if your commission will be used commercially.

Extended License — This license is an agreement that will grant the client full ownership of your commissioned artwork. You will receive my work with no watermarks, at a high-quality resolution, and you will be able to edit, change, repurpose, redistribute the product at your leisure with no credit to me as the artist is so desired.

Licenses are not eligible for discounts. Non-negotiable.

Again, responsibility of following copyright notices and laws will fall solely on the client. Please do your own research and due diligence when commissioning licensed characters that do not belong to you.

— DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION —

I acknowledge that I sometimes collect sensitive information from my clients. You have a right to privacy. I do not collect, sell, or otherwise give out your personal information. Your inquiries and orders are confidential unless I feel a reasonable threat is being made and/or must report such information to the authorities.

If the client requests that I do not display their commission in my online portfolio, I will respect that request to the best of my abilities. However please understand that I reserve the right to print and display my artwork for my physical portfolio and that your request will not extend to my physical gallery unless other arrangements have been made.

[commemorators-pedebusiadmix]

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For more information and to apply: http://www.convergys.com/company/careers/work-at-home/

To join the Convergys Home Team, you will need the following:

·   A home office environment that is quiet and free from distraction

·   A PC that meets the requirements of the Home Agent platform. You can test your PC during the on-line application process).

·   PC must have a vendor manufactured date less than six years in age as some older models are not compatible with our secure environment (Example: If today’s date is 1/1/2012, the PC manufacture date should be no older than 1/1/2006)

·   High speed Internet access (DSL or Cable only)

·   An Internet Service Provider that Supplies 2 or more IP addresses OR an Internet Service Provider that supplies 1 IP address and is connected to a router.

·   Employees working as Remote Agents are required to have and maintain one (1) dedicated internet connection. Popular gaming systems, Smartphones, and any portable device that may use wireless connections within the home must be turned off prior to and during scheduled shift hours.

·   A USB headset with a built-in digital signal processor

·   A telephone* with a mute button to be utilized during training, team meetings, and individual coaching and technical support sessions.

·   Power Bar/Surge Protector that is UL 1449 Recognized – This will assist in protecting equipment plugged into the power bar, in the event of an electrical storm or power surge

PC Specifications:

You can test your current PC configuration for the following requirements through our site when you start your application:

·         3.0 GHZ Processor (minimum of a Pentium 4 processor or equivalent processor running at a clock speed of 3.0 GHZ)

·         PC must have a vendor manufactured date less than six years in age as some older models are not compatible with our secure environment (Example: If today’s date is 1/1/2012, the PC manufacture date should be no older than 1/1/2006)

·         2 GB of RAM for Windows XP, Vista users* or Windows 7 users

·         12 GB of Available Hard drive space

Additional equipment requirements include:

·         Monitor - 17" minimum (capable of 1280 x 1024), Flat Panel Display highly recommended

·         USB Headset with noise cancellation.

·         SanDisk Cruzer 8GM USB Flash Drive

·         No Wireless Devices, i.e. headset, keyboard, mouse

·         Telephone with a mute button available during all scheduled work hours to be used during training, team meetings and feedback sessions (All monthly telephone and internet charges are the responsibility of the employee and are not reimbursed by Convergys.)

·         Wired router - such as those sold under the brand names Belkin, Linksys, Netgear and D-Link

·         At least two available USB ports with unnecessary peripherals removed while working to free up the ports(cameras, printers, game controllers etc)

Computer Software requirements include:

·         One of the following Windows Operating Systems

·         - Windows XP 32-bit OS - Windows Vista 32-bit OS - Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit OS

·         Current anti-virus / spyware software updated and installed at all times. Convergys recommends for support purposes one of the following:

·         - Microsoft Security Essentials (free) - Norton - McAfee - Symantec

·         A full anti-virus system scan completed within the last 30 days

·         If hired, a full anti-virus system scan is required EVERY 30 days to maintain security

·         Internet Explorer 6.0 SP2 or better

·         Minimum Windows Media Player 9.0*

·         Adobe Flash player plug-in version 9.0 or above installed*

·         Minimum Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0*

*You can get the latest versions of Adobe Flash player and Adobe Acrobat Reader FREE at the Adobe site www.adobe.com. You can also get the latest version of Windows Media Player for FREE from www.microsoft.com. PLEASE NOTE: You must apply from the same PC/system from which you plan to work if hired as a Convergys Home Agent. During the application process, your PC will be validated to ensure that it meets the minimum system requirements.

[justforbooks]

I wish more people would read ... How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher

Intended to rally home cooks during the second world war, this is food writing that addresses privation ‘with grace and gusto’

‘Essential” has become the most wearing word of the lockdown. The order is to only leave your house for “essential supplies”, but what counts as essential? Every venture into public, every social contact, comes with the possibility of spreading death or bringing it back with you. “Popping to the shop” is obscene, impossible. The way of eating that I’ve learned as a comfortably-off adult – a casual, desire-led, last-minute way of eating, where I could decide what I fancied for dinner at 6 and have shopped for and cooked it by 7 – no longer works.

This is hardly the first era to be forced through such an adjustment. “There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the last war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the 20s. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution,” wrote MFK Fisher in How to Cook a Wolf. First published in 1942, Fisher’s cookbook was reissued after the war with Fisher’s later commentary on her work incorporated in square brackets; in one of my favourite bits, she rebukes her past self for speaking only of her sons and neglecting the daughters.

How to Cook a Wolf has a simple, stark purpose: to provide “a streamlined answer to the pressing problem of how to exist the best possible way for the least amount of money.” The wolf of the title is the one at the door. When I first read it, about four years ago, the message seemed quaint – not a practical guide, but a reminder to enjoy my own good fortune. I’ve never cooked from it. It lives on my bookcase, rather than on the kitchen shelf with my oil-splashed Delia and broken-backed Slater.

But now, as I peer into my cupboards and calculate how long my stash of tins will last, I go back to Fisher’s book as a supplicant. Teach me how to live this way. This time, I’m listening. Of course, the idea that my privations match the ones she was writing for is itself a mark of my nonchalant extravagance. Her chapter headings include How to Be Cheerful Though Starving and the striking How to Stay Alive, which consists of directions for making a kind of “sludge” that Fisher reckoned could feed one person for a week at a cost of 50 cents.

I will not be cooking sludge. (Yet.) But Fisher’s practicality makes her a reassuring companion at the stove. “Use as many fresh things as you can, always, and then trust to luck and your blackout cupboard and what you have decided, inside yourself, about the dignity of man,” she writes. This sturdy advice makes working out what to do with the last egg feel like a higher pursuit, rather than an access of desperation. She does not counsel us to eat offal out of parsimony, but because we must “savour to the fullest the beasts we have killed” (though I imagine she drew the line some way before bat).

How to Cook a Wolf is a passionate argument for the necessity of pleasure. Even sludge, Fisher claims, can be made “delicious” (if less economical) by frying it in slices. And things ought to be delicious whenever possible: “Since we must eat to live, we might as well do it with grace and gusto.” To eat with delight, she says, “is not wicked sensuality”, but positively moral. It bespeaks a “thoughtful system of deliberate choice” allowing one to “weigh values, not only sensual but spiritual.”

This philosophy is deeply welcome at time when “nice things” are being treated as ethically suspect. Is it acceptable to buy lemons during a national crisis? After all, you could live on sludge. But, objects Fisher, if you can eat well and choose not to, you are hardly living at all. When we “nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy and ever-increasing enjoyment”, she writes, it is a way to “assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war’s fears and pains”. That, too, is essential.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[everydayhybridity]

The last couple of months seem to have been a renaissance for ‘older’ skateboarders. Having published research on this topic before and being a greying skater in his mid-forties, the topic is far from new to me. However some changes seem to be afoot that can be described as somewhat typical responses to our collective plight during 2020. On various social media platforms it seems I have encountered growing numbers of videos from older skaters either trying out for the first time because of the lockdown, or returning to skateboarding after a protracted gap sometimes trailing back to their teenage years.

This is all good news and older skaters have been around... well, for a long time.

When I first started investigating older skateboarders I was partly drawn to the fact that older skaters remained quite visible in the professional circuit. Take Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero as examples, but also consider AVE who was awarded SOTY  at the age of 35. Mark Gonzales at 52 still inspires and recently had a video part with the 2018 SOTY Tyshawn Jones. This was  aptly captured in their ages at the time which were used as the title to the video 20|50.  Gonzales has also just released a new book, remaining influential in a sport typically associated with youth. Influential beyond the niche world of core skateboarding, Tony Hawk re-released his iconic THPS video game which has no doubt inspired people to touch base with their long forgotten boards. Similarly the Tony Alva documentary released by Vans is another slice of nostalgia that is set to fan the flames of a certain demographic of older skater. Poignantly the Alva story is narrated by Jeff Grosso, the unofficial statesman of old school skate nostalgia and sadly one of skateboarding’s greatest losses this year.

In one of Grosso’s final videos he also touches upon another important part of the ‘older skateboarder’ revival, or most recent transformation. Interviewing LGBTQ skaters we see that over the last few years the inclusivity of skateboarding has expanded further. Many of the skateboarders who have come out and made space for LGBTQ skaters are some of the old guard. So it is not just that older guys are finding skateboarding, or re-visiting it. Now the older skater can be literally anyone, no longer typically the white male, but also people of colour, trans, disabled, you name it.

One enjoyable blog post from Josh Sutton involves a discussion with Esther Sayers. Josh started skateboarding in his early 50s and Esther started skateboarding in her late 40s. It is an enjoyable discussion and highlights how we don’t need the validation of professional skateboarders or the latest SOTY to prove that you can skate at any age. I remember being struck by what Esther said at the Pushing Boarders conference, where she noted that at a certain age women become somewhat invisible . By skateboarding we redefine the notions of age and challenge them. We start to claw back control and shape the narrative about our own abilities and competencies. Some fantastic research has been performed in this area of lifestyle sports. Belinda Wheaton has really provided some first class contributions on surfing and also my colleague Indigo Willing, herself a convert to skateboarding in her forties, has written about the Tired video and also the Bones Brigade documentary.

In my own research (which you can download here or email me for a copy), I spoke to a variety of skateboarders both male and female who skate into and beyond their forties. One of the elements that I came across repeatedly was the sense of community and meaning that older people get from skateboarding. What is remarkable about this, is the fact that as you get older, friends, community, and meaning seem to be harder to establish or hold on to. I think this helped me turn my research focus to skateboarding and religion. After a lifetime of skateboarding many of the people I interviewed had developed some kind of spiritual attachment to the activity. But then again these ideas were not absent in youth. Similarly my friend Sophie Friedel taps into this soothing potential of skateboarding and wellbeing and explores how skateboarding can be part of therapy for all ages.

The other really important thing about older skateboarders is their roles as receptacles of history. Indeed the explosion in skateboarding podcasts has been a great way to delve into the stories of pros and compile an oral history. I am no fan of mawkish nostalgia stealing the limelight from the current state of skateboarding, but I do think having a dialogue with the past is valuable. I recently read the doctoral thesis of Neftalie Williams in his exploration of race in skateboarding. One of the fascinating parts of his research is the history of skaters of colour (SOC). He does an important job of compiling a history that in an even handed way highlights that skateboarding has historically been far from the toxic and exclusive culture some have argued it to be. Through an exploration of the experiences of older SOC and a deep delve in skateboard media, Neftalie highlights that skateboarding in the USA has historically been more progressive about race than many others sports and elements of popular culture. 

The very best thing about being an older skater is that you don’t have to live in the past. You get to be there and participate in how skateboarding continues to evolve and continues to be a space for all.

[malaysian-rants]

so what do we REALLY think of Sex Work?

If there’s one thing quarantine in Melbourne’s lockdown has brought me, it is the endless curiosity to understand our thoughts and unpack them. So at least once a week, I do a poll on my Instagram page feed into my nosiness and see what thoughts people around me have on different topics - exploring our stances on our mortality to orgasms to parenthood. Last week, I decided to understand where people placed themselves in regards to sex work and BOY, did the whorephobia jump out!!!!

“ Whorephobia can be defined as the fear or the hate of sex workers. Sex workers like me would argue that it also embraces paternalistic attitudes that deem us a public nuisance, spreaders of disease, offenders against decency or unskilled victims who don't know what is good for them and who need to be rescued.” - Thierry Schaffauser

Let’s rewind a little bit though. The people that responded to the poll were mostly friends from Malaysia and Australia. Malaysia being where I grew up and Australia where I’ve spent some of the most telling years of my young adulthood. Growing up, we have stignamised ideas of sex work, a very narrow-minded understanding of the various FORMS of sex work, and an even more warped perception of WHY people choose Sex Work (SW). The word of the day is choice - the agency to choose sex work. All the choices are worthy of our respect. In Malaysia, most view sex work in a very derogatory sense. We, unforunately, perceive sex workers as dirty, unsafe, in need of rescuing - saviour complexes, or an easy getaway card out of “real” work. It’s funny the amount of times teenage/young adult women will say, “should we just drop out and become strippers? hahahah” as if the sex work industry doesn’t involve immense skill and tact that is not necessarily a natural skill; it has to be learnt - like many of the skills a lot of us use in our jobs. Coming to Australia, the perception shifts. Some forms of sex work are decriminalised which create safer working conditions for SWs. It’s not perfect though, there still lies a lot of racism within the sex work industry especially against Indigenous SWs and there is still stigma in presenting as a sex worker in public situations.

SO LET’S SKIP AHEAD TO MY QUESTIONS AND DEBUNK SOME OF PEOPLE’S PERCEPTIONS ABOUT SEX WORK!

Question #1 Are Strippers Considered Sex Workers?

46% answered YES and 54% answered NO. *drumroll please* The answer is YES! Strippers/Dancers do fall under the umbrella of sex work. 

Let’s take a brief dive into this. SEX WORK actually an umbrella term coined by SW activist Carol Leigh to create an alliance between the marginalised groups of work & to counter the whorephobic second-wave feminism's derogatory terms.This term also helps to combat "lateral whorephobia" - another useful term to remember. SEX WORK as a term helps to unite a diverse range of workers. It combats strippers/dancers from saying "well at least I'm not a whore", cam girls from saying "at least we don't f*ck our clients", pornstars from calling escorts dirty - because ALL ARE SEX WORKERS. It takes away the stigma that people WITHIN the industry put onto different types of work - whorearchy as SWs call it! There are so many types of work that fall under the umbrella of sex work, a few to name being - strippers, dancers, cam girls, phone sex operators, pornstars, sugarbabies, people that work in brothels, pro-DOMMES, pro-SUBs, escorts, online workers, street workers, and the list goes on.....

(to flag: the next few stats may be inaccurate as more than half of the people that did this DID NOT PERCEIVE STRIPPERS AS SEX WORKERS - which may/may not change the future questions’ answers)

Question #2 Do You Know A Sex Worker Personally?

43% answered YES and 57% answered NO

Question #3 Should We Decriminalise Sex Work?

Around 75% answered YES and 25% answered NO. The real answer is YES! We 100% need to be decriminalising sex work and working towards unlearning our biases surrounding SW and sex workers.

Question #4 What Are Our Ideas of What Sex Work Involves?

“prostitution, escort services, massage services with happy endings, bartering”

“stripping, escorting, phone sex operating, sexting services, online entertainment”

“paid services for cash” 

“using your body as entertainment for another’s pleasure/enjoyment”

“people that sell any form of body pics (eg nudes) to escorts”

“exchanging sexual activites for something eg. cash, benefits”

“anything that involves direct touching from both parties” “lap dances”

“consensual services provided by adults”

Now.... there were HEAPS of people that replied with prostitution. Now that’s the first word to DELETE from your vocabulary. Sex workers don’t appreciate when people call them this. Below are more helpful ways to refer to SWs

Question #5 What Are Your Opinions of Sex Work?

“if you’re that comfortable in your body and feel safe at work then all the power to you”

“it needs to be acknowledged as an actual industry” “it’s work and should be protected and provided benefits as all jobs receive”

“I’m here for all women getting their coin! why it’s a taboo, I will never understand”

Sex work is Work. 100%, scream it from the rooftops! Here’s a response that I think is quite commonly held across the board.

“It depends on why they’re (sex workers) doing it. If they want to then YAS if they have to/no other options then :(” At the end of the day, whatever reason people go into sex work - we must give them ALL THE RESPECT and continue to advocate for safer working conditions to prevent exploitation,abuse and assault. There are a multitude of reasons why people go into sex work:

It’s a side job to earn more income

It's survival work

Sex workers also play a HUGE role in disability support. Having access to sex work services can assist with building self-esteem and give people with disability a greater degree of autonomy in being able to fulfil their desires independently.

Our work structures (because of capitalism) are INHERENTLY ABLEIST - people with chronic illnesses and disabilities that need FLEX work seek out SW as an option 

Question #6 Would You Date Someone That is Currently A Sex Workers?

It was a clean 50/50 split and THIS is truly where the internalised whorephobia jumped out because look at the next answers

Question #7 Would You Date Someone That Was Previously A Sex Worker?

82% answered YES whilst 18% answered NO. Here are some of the reasons why people answered NO for either of the questions and let’s debunk some of these!

MYTH #1 - “Cause I believe in monogamy” You can still be monogamous and date a sex worker. Way back when, monogamy was described as one person for LIFE and nowadays it’s evolved to one person at a time. This where the distinction that sex work is WORK becomes important. Sex workers are working when they interact with their clients/members in whatever form. 

MYTH #2 - “I’m a selfish boyfriend” This isn’t really a myth per say but it’s a popular line of thought. It interesting that we internally perceive our partners as ours/our property/someone we have onus over. I loved the honesty in this answer because like they say, it’s selfish. So yeah some people see dating a sew workers as “sharing” - as if SWs were engaging in the same capacity to their partners as they were to their clients. Well fam, I’m here to tell you that sex workers can make that distinction and if anything, are BETTER at establishing boundaries than the most of us. 

MYTH #3 - “I just think I wouldn’t feel safe having sex with them” This rhetoric only continues the damaging narratives that are projected onto sex workers which perpetuated the stigmatisation and discrimination sex-workers receive on the daily. Take a step back and unpack why you feel this way. What about sex workers do you perceive as dirty? In regions where sex work is decriminalised and destigmatised, workers have safe access to medical check-ups which means they’re probably getting tested more often than your average joe!

MYTH #4 - “I would feel less experienced (sexually) which would make me less comfortable” this.... well, is pretty common and stems from our own personal insecurities. some of us have felt this way REGARDLESS of whether our partner is a sex worker. It’s important to note that not all SWs work in the same way - some forms of sex work don’t require you to be physically present with another human, some just require a lot of imagination, creative and emotional intelligence ie phone sex operators.

So that’s all the questions! 

I’ve decided to start a #SexWorkSeptember series to talk about sex work across the globe to probe more open conversations!

Here a some phrases that are WHOREPHOBIC and we’ll unpack them in the coming weeks!

“I respect them and power to them but personally.... I couldn’t cause I have principles and morals ya know”

“I just couldn’t date someone that’s a sex worker :/”

“It’s alright if my friends and peers do it but oh no my mother/sister/niece/aunt could never! no that’s not okay!”

A final thing to remember is that sex work IS NOT easy nor the easy way out! Sex work can be difficult. Sex work requires marketing skills, assertiveness, confidence and a sales-like hustle. It’s as easy and difficult as your own jobs!

Over and out,

Lama :)

[foreveratlas]

Eulogy For My Grandfather

On June 13th, my grandfather passed away. It has been an emotional nightmare to process. Two days after he passed, it was requested that I write eulogy. These are my thoughts and words for the man who raised and supported me better than I could probably understand. Be aware this is written for my family in attendance at his funeral.

Many people knew him as Charles. His closest friends called him Dean. Dad to his daughters; Uncle Dean to his nieces. But I was given the honor of bestowing his most important name of all time, and that was Poppy. But it wasn't just an endearing nickname replacement for "grandpa." It stood more as a title or a badge of honor. He was Poppy. And to all my friends, he introduced himself as Poppy. Though he may not have been blood to them, I really do think that when he encouraged people to call him Poppy, he was infact adopting them to be his surrogate grandchildren. I'm only slightly jealous because he was my Poppy, no one else's. Whenever I brought a new friend home, he would introduce himself as Poppy. If he came to school to visit, he was Poppy, not Nick's Grandpa. The name Poppy was as much a part of his personality as was his enjoyment of wine or gin and tonics.

The name Poppy has a backstory. A long time ago, when we lived in Texas, he had a favorite restaurant he enjoyed taking me to, Papa Tio's. It was just like any other Tex-Mex grill, complete with a mariachi band. We'd go and dance and laugh and carry on. And at first, he was Papa Tio, but eventually that just shortened to Poppy, which he wore proudly. If you asked him how he came to be called Poppy, he would recall the story of how the name became his, and even recite the song that he got the mariachi band to play, which started "A rappe papa Tio." He twirled his R's and would dance in his seat to the memory. He found such joy in those little memories even with the end approaching as it did.

That was his best trait, his ability to recall these elaborate, excruciatingly detailed accounts of his life, reaching all the way back to his youth. Everyone in the family has heard at least one story: Whether it was the infamous bicycle rally where his mother wouldn't buy him an actual bicycle, so he removed the wheel off the one side of his trike and came riding around the neighborhood with the other kids, just so all the neighbors would laugh and carry on. His father made sure he got a real bicycle. Or of the time he had earned an ice cream, but when his father had stopped to get the sweet treat, he didn't realize the back passenger door was still open, and drove right into a light pole, ripping the door right off its hinges. Or one of my favorites from when he was a bit older, how one Christmas his mother-in-law complained so much about the Christmas tree's needles falling that he picked up the whole tree and threw it right out the front window. His stories live on in us, especially if we were paying attention. And he had a lot of stories. He didn't like how I used a bit of creative license to compact some of thosr stories together when I started writing the fictional adaptation of his life, but the stories are all still here. And going forward, I'd like to invite people let me know their favorite story of his so I can chronicle it and finish the book he wanted to see written.

We all know of how he rose through JCPenney and eventually retired among the upper echelons of the company. I always aspired to find a job like that, a job that didn't feel like work. He always said, "If you love what you do, you won't work a day in your life." Finding that today is difficult, but he did something I don't believe many people really consider. He worked from the ground floor up, literally started by sweeping the stock room, and eventually retired as Vice President. That's nothing to scoff at, and it proves his tenacity and work ethic. That's one job he held for almost 50 years. I'm thirty one, and my position now is my longest held job at three years. So I can't really wrap my mind around doing one thing for so long. But he didn't really do just one thing. He was all over the country, opening stores and providing for his family the best way he knew how. It wasn't always perfect, but it was what he felt was best.

Poppy loved his family more than anything, and some of his fondest memories came from his daughters. He used to tell me of how during New Years, he, my mother, and my aunt would go around the house banging pots and pans to welcome in the New Year, and then they would go into a dark room, and Poppy and Aunt Dena would go hide, leaving my mother alone, before they would jump out and scare her. He found so much joy in those moments, and did everything he could to bring as much joy as possible to every moment. He always made sure we were taken care of and supported, even when we screwed up in life and had to ask for help. Having that safety net was so important and I never realized how much I was taking advantage of those kindnesses.

I was five years old when Poppy married Andrea, and the inclusion of the DiBrienza family into the Saddler family was nothing short of exciting, fun, and very, very loud. I walked right up to Andrea, put my hand on her belly and asked, "Is there a baby in there?" Which, understandably, freaked her right out. But, Poppy's love and adoration that he received from his connection to the DiBrienza's was so profound and so important. He wasted no time indoctrinating his new nieces into the fun. He used to make up stories that the Middle Branch Reservoir was the site of an old mining community called Middle Branch. He told the stories to my cousins that they had to flood the old town, and late at night you could still hear the old church bell ring. He'd then give a loud, "Bong!" And my cousins, who were wiser than their years at such young ages would unanimously proclaim, "Oh Uncle Dean!"

When I got the call late Saturday night, I honestly couldn't process what was happening. I had just spoken to him the day prior. I tried to call every day. He would always answer, "Hello my dear lad, what's new?" To which I would immediately respond, "Not a whole lot, just thought I would call and say hello." I had no idea that that conversation, which felt so innocent, and so normal would be the last time. And maybe that's how he wanted it to be, not something full of despair, not something full of long winded goodbyes. No lengthy moments of "Is this it? Is this the moment?" It was just normal. He asked me if I needed anything, like he always did, and then told me to have a tasty dinner and a good weekend. And that stuck with me, especially after the news arrived late Saturday. I have felt a myriad of emotions based on that last conversation but at that moment, my focus was on how could I have a good weekend? The biggest part of my life had departed. In therapy, I have been told that it's ok to be upset at that, to feel like all my weekends won't be good. It's ok for me to grieve that way. But I know someday, the weekends won't hurt anymore, and I'll be able to wake up Saturday morning, and Poppy's words, "Have a good weekend," will give me peace. Just right now, I don't think I'll be fond of Saturdays for a while.

I have to believe that this was a part of his plan, in a way. As most of you know, he was bed ridden, unable to see, losing his hearing rapidly. He was very adamant in his faith, and I believe that that faith is what guided him in the end. The Bible says that heaven is a paradise, where the crippled may walk and the blind may see. I can only hope that he is able to walk again, able to see again, able to be every bit the amazing potential he remembered himself to be from his youth. And I hope his loud scream-sneezes are scaring the crap out of everyone with him. But most importantly, I have to trust that this was the right time, and that his faith and adoration of his family will guide us, make us stronger, and help us live and love better. He wouldn't have left us knowing we couldn't stand tall and keep moving forward.

There are so many things I wish I had said to him and so many moments I realize now that I have taken for granted. I always believed I had more time, when really, he was trying prepare me for the inevitable. It was easier to believe that he would always be here as a central piece of everything. If immortality was possible, it was my belief that my Poppy could accomplish it. Every time he said that he wouldn't be here forever was a moment I'd respond with, "You'll outlive us all." He would remind me every day that I was the last of the Saddler line, and I honestly didn't want to give that thought any weight because he was still here. Still very much the powerhouse that his name commanded. And now that I am here to carry his legacy forward, I feel like I am hardly worthy of the weight that has been gently handed to me. I'm not ready to live each day without him, and it will be a long time before I wake up and say that I am ok. This past week has been difficult. Every day going forward will be the equivalent of wading through slowly drying cement. But, I imagine, if he didn't think we would be ok without him then he would have held on a little longer. So maybe, I need to trust that belief in us that we will be ok.

Grief is the living honoring the departed. It hurts, it hurts more than words can adequately describe. But it's proof that that person is one who held so much love and adoration. And Poppy was loved dearly by all. His light will fill us every hour and encourage us to be better than ourselves, to enjoy the moments, take stock of the memories, and live every day with love. He loved us, and he still loves us. Our family is strong, and despite the fact that he is not physically here, so long as we remain connected, his love stays with us. It will be like he never left. I am looking forward to all the memories and all the love his light will bring.

We will get through this together as a family.

One day at a time.

One step at a time.

And he will be with us, in our hearts, on our minds; never lost, and never forgotten.

[anewkaiju]

Top Chef Los Angeles Recap: Episode 1

These are strange times. There has always been an element of the unknown to our day-to-day, but typically it's only ever discussed or thought about in terms of limitless potential and never-ending, never-ceasing possibility. Of course, there's also always been a flip side to that element of unknown. You know it. The dread-inducing one. The one no one ever wants to bring up, delve into, wrestle with, or even talk about really. It's hard to say for sure, but that may be where we are now. Or maybe it isn't, and all will be well eventually. This shit is so strange and is going to take time to figure out, but we all have to figure it out and our best chance at figuring it out is considering our community and working together. So, we got that going for us.

These are also strange times that require certain measures to be taken to keep everything hammered down and in place. Put another way, a little TV is needed in order to provide some sort of sense of stability. Put yet another way, it'll help keep shit together. Which is how, we have ended up here. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me (yet) an idea formed in front of me that this latest season of Top Chef (the 17th one) needs to be written about. So, here we are.

The first thing to note about the new season of Top Chef is that it is an All-Star season, which just means that these are all contestants who have been on the show before and have now been invited back. This raises immediate questions in my mind concerning how one becomes a Top Chef All-Star. On what basis exactly is a chef measured to make this sort of call? This doesn't feel like something we can compare to the NBA's All-Star selection process. There, they have the fans for the starters and then league coaches and members of the press vote for the reserves. So, with this cast, are we supposed to believe these are fan favorites or have these chefs been chosen because the people who watch food most closely believe them to be the best? Little of both?

One of the other things about Top Chef and watching Top Chef, at least for me, is that maybe that stuff doesn't matter. You could try to handicap this show and identify the frontrunner and the number one contender and track everyone's progress through that lens, but that grows old eventually. In my mind, the show is at its best when someone is dialed in and making what feels like the best food they've ever made in their entire life. A lot of the time this individual making what feels like the best food they've ever made is painted as the underdog, and that's fine. Watching an underdog zig and zag their way through a competition, defy the odds and then take the title makes for pretty good entertainment. It's also one of those things where there's a lot of talk about James Beard nominations and "features in Food & Wine magazine" and it all sounds really impressive, but what do those accolades actually mean, and more importantly for our purposes, what do those accolades mean for TV? Where's your resume when you're cooking in the snow on the side of a mountain? Also, what does pedigree matter when so often on this show the judges slam someone for cutting corners or ignoring fundamentals? It's also important to note that I know almost nothing about food aside from what I have discerned from watching this show.

How food is thought about and talked about on TV and the internet has changed considerably over the last few years. In the early to mid 2000s, 'good cooking' was more often than not presented and defined as all about splashy presentation, style and a million other things going on at once. The term "celebrity chef" originated around this time to describe someone who is now famous because they cook. Your signature could just be a wild looking plate. This isn't meant to put down food artists, but perhaps some passes were given that shouldn't have been. It's like if you could talk it up enough and find the right wrapping for it then, magically, no questions are asked and what you are putting out into the world doesn't have to be fact or quality checked. This all works on the timeline too as this was also a period in history were there lots of bad rappers at the top (50 Cent, Ja Rule, etc) and the NBA was mired in this weird post-Jordan funk.

It's almost as if things had to pivot back in on itself. These days, simplicity is celebrated. Or maybe it has always been essential and I am just dumb. Either way, let's call this foggy idea the Chef's Table Effect. Now, with chefs, you want to know about their approach to food and what their mindset is like. We want to know how they look at food and how they get it. We want to learn about real, living, breathing chefs and not just be told about someone who is now famous because they cook. In early seasons of Top Chef, there were more personalties, people who just wanted to rub elbows with celebrities and put their names on restaurants. Over time, that has subsided some and when it does happen it comes across as much more transparent. The good chefs emerge no matter what. Their personalties reveal themselves in their own time (call this the Kawhi effect if you must,) and because they are making 'good' food it's all that much more enjoyable/rewarding to watch. We are in this time where food is considered in more serious terms, and as a result, we get more grounded, thoughtful food TV programming. I like to think of it as more of an actual uprising. Everyone collectively all at once had one too many exploding shrimp cocktails bathed in brandy and bedded in dry ice and began asking questions about what we are doing here exactly. With that in mind,

The episode itself was fairly straight-forward. The chefs show up. They are asked to do a mise en place, which is like a prep work drill essentially but since this is a competition show there's a real emphasis on speed and accuracy. There were artichokes, oranges and almonds, and it was explained, that the first five chefs to break down their artichokes would form a team and be allowed to leave for a kitchen right away. When this happens, all remaining chefs would stop with whatever artichoke business they may have left and shift their attention to the oranges. Once five chefs had handled their oranges sufficiently they would then become the second team and then be allowed to head for the kitchen. Everyone left with the almonds would take on the mantle of the third team, and be allowed to move to the kitchen once they were all finished. This opening challenge served mostly as a shakeout session to get things moving and for viewers at home to see if anyone is trying out a new style, whether it be a cooking flourish or a new haircut.

After the mad dash mise en place, the chefs are once again sorted into teams, although, this time around, they go into five teams of three as opposed to three teams of five. For the main challenge of this episode, each team has been asked to make a cohesive, family-style seafood meal over a single open flame and an open flame only for a table of esteemed, established chefs and cuisine writers.  

here is what they presented:

Melissa: Grilled Swordfish with hot & sour sauce, ember grilled radicchio and fresno chiles

Karen: Grilled scallops, gingered plums, nuoc cham and nappa cabbage slaw

Angelo: West coast oyster with smoked bacon rice porridge

Bryan: Sea urchin, spot prawns with hibiscus ponzu and burnt avocado

Joe: Sesame and semolina flatbread with clams, fried garlic, sea urchin, pickled peppers and miso parmesan aioli

Lee Anne: Shoyu Tare Glazed Halibut with charred sweet corn and cabbage, sea urchin and uni miso beurre blanc

Gregory: Charred salmon with grilled peaches and roasted chili dressing

Jamie: Steamed mussels with ember scaled cream and toasted bread

Stephanie: Brined prawn with charred tomato sauce and roasted corn dressing

Jennifer: Spiced tuna loin over grilled kale with red pepper tahini sauce

Nini: Grilled scallops, carrots, tomatoes with charred brussels sprout & fennel salad

Kevin: Eye of swordfish braised in chorizo with coal-roasted onion, olives and peas

Lisa: Charred shrimp and scallop ceviche with candied squash, mushrooms and avocado

Bryan V.: Sablefish with corn porridge and charred leeks

Eric: Chesapeake boil with grilled prawn

It's striking looking at all of these dishes written out. Granted, this is being written from a position of hindsight, but it's so clear which dishes were a hit and which were not. Again, I'm not very bright so this isn't a food know-how thing. It's just a words thing. The most composed, concise dishes were the ones that elicited acclaim. This should maybe be a working rule. If the description of your dish runs over a line long, then you might be in trouble. (You might be looking at Lisa's dish and noticing that it runs over, but it's just barely. She's a great chef who is being oddly slept-on already. She went all the way to the final in her season and has a very no nonsense, quiet drive.)

Anyway, the judges loved Gregory, Jamie and Stephanie's meal with Gregory taking the overall win. Joe, Lee Anne and Bryan had far and away the least liked dish. The challenge called for a family-style meal, indicating that everything will end up on the same plate, so the two sauces made that one flatbread mad soggy. Joe went home for it. (Lee Anne ran into some issues on the grill, but these things happen and Padma said there was a lot to like about her dish. Lee Anne was also on the very first season of Top Chef and the last time anyone saw her was a few seasons back when she surprise-returned. In that episode, the challenge was to cook over an open flame in four feet of snow on the side of a Colorado mountain. Lee Anne was four months pregnant. After she knocked out her dish, she seemingly achieved clarity and announced to everyone that she was going home to prepare for the birth of her child.)

For whatever reason, it tends to take a few episodes before the show really starts moving. There will probably be a few more wild-sounding challenges under even more wild-sounding circumstances. Based off of the "this season on Top Chef" tease shown at the end of the episode, the competitors visit at least one museum and at least one stadium. The official title of this season is Top Chef: Los Angeles which would suggest that everything will be contained to the city of Los Angeles as opposed to the entire state.

There was also a moment in the tease where actor Danny Trejo, star of Machete, Machete Kills and the forever-stuck-in-development Machete In Space, can clearly be seen visiting the Top Chef kitchen which is wildly encouraging.

[nerdygaymormon]

Do you think that the church will one day allow gay marriage? I truly hope it will - I don’t think it would be as big a doctrinal change as many conservative members seem to believe

I’m no church leader. I’m not entitled to receive revelation or determine policies for the church and I’m certainly not privy to the thinking of the leaders about future changes. But to me, it seems inevitable that gay marriage will one day be allowed, and here are some reasons why I believe so: 

The many reasons the church has used to explain homosexuality have all been disproved. Not so long ago, our leaders finally acknowledged that homosexuality isn’t a choice, that’s a significant shift in their understanding. It was upon this earlier belief that the existing rules and doctrine were created. This change has already led to some softening of rhetoric and I hope it also leads to more substantial changes. 

As the church tries to explain the reasons it opposes gay marriage, usually by reducing marriage down to fertility and ability to have children, it ends up negating many straight marriages. This again is a sign that there’s a problem in how it understands & defines marriage.  

A majority of LDS members in the U.S. age 18-29 already are in favor of marriage equality. The percentage of the overall US church membership that supports gay marriage already is in the 40-something percentage range. It won’t be long before it crosses the 50% threshold.  

Currently LGBTQ people are absent from the Plan of Salvation. There’s no path to complete the covenant path that leads to exaltation for gay people unless they enter a mixed-orientation marriage. More and more people are wanting answers, which is reasonable to request from a church with a prophet and apostles and on-going revelation. 

There’s theological teachings, which are backed up by academic studies, that the greatest happiness in life is to be found in being connected with another person. Current policies forbid gay people from this deep level of satisfaction and all the positive benefits it has in a person’s quality of life. Why would loving and fair Heavenly Parents create someone only to deny them a shot at real happiness? 

————————————————————    

There have been significant doctrinal shifts that the Church has made in several areas and is the better for having done so. It can do so again. 

For one thing, the Church doesn’t use the Bible to explain or justify its teachings about homosexuality. I can’t remember the last time I heard any General Authority use Biblical verses in such a way. I assume it’s because they know the Bible isn’t so clear on the subject, it doesn’t say what a lot of Christians think it does.

Plus, there are things in the Bible that are clear which we don’t follow, such as Christ’s prohibition on divorce & remarriage except in cases where one partner cheated on the other. Getting past that seems like it would be difficult, but not so. Why would allowing same-gendered couples be any more difficult when Christ didn’t speak against them? 

————————————————————    

Taylor Petrey, in his presentation “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology,” imagines the possible future of LDS doctrine regarding homosexuality. (It can be downloaded here). Essentially he says by bringing back some of our theology and ritualistic practices of the past the Church can accommodate same-sex couples. 

He points out that we teach that God organized intelligences into spirits. That doesn’t sound like sex, does it? Currently the Church talks about needing a man & a woman to sexually create a spirit child and that’s why it’s a no-go on same-gender couples. 

Also, there doesn’t appear to be any women involved in any of the creation processes until Eve is made. It’s all men working with other men. Together they even created Adam. 

A former ritual he refers to is how people chose to be sealed to other people they weren’t related to, nor lived with. They talked about the “law of adoption” and sealed themselves to each other, men to men as father/son, as a way to link families. Wilford Woodruff ended that practice. 

Today we let LDS families be sealed to non-biologic children whom they’ve adopted or who came to them via surrogacy. 

Both these types of sealings can allow a gay couple to have have the same sealing blessings as non-gay couples.  

Petrey is critical of the Church’s teachings about gender. He points out how confusing it is. 1) It’s the one physical trait that our spirit has pre-mortal, mortal and post-mortal worlds. Why is gender the one thing that is fixed? 2) Gender in nature and in humans is not strictly binary, so how does this work with the idea that gender is eternal? 3) The Church is very concerned about gender confusion, meaning that gender roles have to be taught and same-sex couples confuse things. Including such things as who presides, who is the nurturer, the provider? 

How can gender be a fixed thing, but also be something that must be learned?

Plus Heavenly Father seems to inhabit the nurturing role that the Family Proclamation says belongs to females. And we don’t hear much about Heavenly Mother doing much “mothering.” So clearly heavenly gender roles don’t match earthly gender roles. 

Dr. Petrey uses the Church’s manual A Parent’s Guide to show that we don’t have to stick to the current binary thinking regarding gender and gender roles. 

“There is nearly as much variation within each gender as there is between the genders. Each human being is unique. There is no one model except the Redeemer of all mankind. Development of a person’s gifts or interests is one of life’s most enjoyable experiences. No one should be denied such growth.”

LDS ritual and rhetoric could embrace this variation, which could include homosexual relationships.  

————————————————————     

I appreciated Shawn Tucker’s My 22 Point Opinion on Temple Sealings

1. People don’t choose to be gay, to be only sexually attracted to people of their same sex.2. No one, I believe, would make that choice, since it is so socially frowned upon and since it does not lend itself to the advantages (of which there are many!) of heterosexual marriage.3. Since they don’t choose it, and since it is really born in them, I believe the gay people I know when they say that they do not feel that their attraction is wrong or a sin.4. Mormons typically think that such attraction is inherently wrong and against God’s plan, while gay people, especially gay Mormons, do not believe that their attraction is wrong or sinful.5. Mormons see heterosexual attraction as normal, natural, and even God-given.6. I believe gay Mormons when they say that they believe that their homosexual attraction is normal, natural, and God-given for them.7. Homosexual marriage seems to interrupt God’s plan, since such couples cannot have children in the traditional manner.8. That is the common argument against gay marriage.9. This, I believe, is partly why the church is placing so much emphasis on the family—to put up the traditional, heterosexual couple as the norm and their families as the only way to fulfill God’s work and plan.10. But I think that this emphasis has some bad consequences.11. This emphasis tells single people that they are not actually fulfilling God’s plan.12. It tells couples that cannot have kids that they are not fulfilling God’s plan.13 It tells couples that feel like they should not have kids that they are not fulfilling God’s plan.14. I believe that God can have a plan for His children that does not include having children—this happens for singles, for the infertile, for those who believe they should not have children.15. This can happen for gay couples.16. People who do not have children can be of great, great benefit to their ward, stake, church, and world.17. Their work can be just as important as having children. (This is a very important point—you might want to repeat it in your mind.)18. I can imagine God being happy with that work, in fact just as happy with that work as any other.19. I can imagine God very happy with same-sex attracted people finding each other, loving each other, fully committing themselves to each, and expressing that love and commitment physically.20. I can imagine God fully sanctioning gay marriage as right for that couple.21. I believe that the love that they share and develop here in mortality will accompany them in the next life, and that the “same sociality which exists among [them] here will exist among [them] there.” (D&C 130:2).22. I can imagine God sanctioning temple sealings of gay couples.

[heresince93]

Full transcript of Gillian’s Sunday Times Interview

Gillian Anderson interview: Sex Education, phalluses, and why she’s hot for comedy

A coming-of-age comedy from Netflix puts therapist Gillian Anderson on the couch with her teenage son. She’s got ‘the chat’ down pat, she says.

Two things are striking from a tour of the set of Sex Education, Netflix’s new coming-of-age comedy. The first is how much a disused university campus in Newport has been made to look like your favourite US high-school TV show. There are sports pennants on the wall, the corridors are lined with battered lockers and the oversized serif M of the fictional Moordale High is on every pane of glass. You have to remind yourself it’s Newport, Wales, not Newport, California (though the drizzle helps).

Gillian Anderson was so taken with the set that she took pictures to show her friends. “Would you like to see them?” she says, passing me her mobile. “I think 50% of the pictures on my phone are now of one kind of phallus or another. Look at that. It’s a chess set that’s been made out of penises and vaginas. Aren’t they amazing? All those little penis pawns.”

The set she’s showing me is the house belonging to her character, Jean, and the reason there are so many phalluses is that Jean is a sex therapist. Sex Education is about Jean and her 16-year-old son, Otis (Asa Butterfield). Jean has no filter, is a prodigious oversharer, introduces her son to her various lovers and hands out condoms at parties. All Otis’s life, she has been a constant embarrassment to her son.

As a result, he is terrified of intimacy and can barely even look at his own penis. But when he runs into trouble at high school, his extensive sexual knowledge, gleaned through listening to sessions through cracks in the floorboards, turns out to be a gift that is much sought-after — so Otis sets up a clinic of his own on campus.

“The original idea actually came from a Channel 4 documentary called The Joy of Teen Sex,” says Laurie Nunn, the show’s creator. “Someone at the production company saw it and came up with the pitch, which was about this kid who’s been raised by this sex-therapist mum, but he has problems with his own sex life.”

To that premise, Nunn and the director Ben Taylor (Catastrophe) have added an unusual backdrop: Sex Education is set in a British secondary school that feels as if it has been teleported into a John Hughes film. The pupils wear backpacks and arrive in drop tops; the soundtrack is MOR hair rock; there are verifiable jocks, nerds and bully boys; and, although everyone speaks with an English accent, the sky is always a Californian blue.

“I’ve always said to my agent that my dream gig would be an American-style high-school comedy — quite rare in this country,” Taylor says. “This is a genre I’ve grown up loving, and I’ve really been frustrated that this country doesn’t seem to produce a ‘positive school experience’ on screen. There are movies like Gregory’s Girl, but I was looking for something of that tone on television. I found it in abundance in Laurie’s script.”

A character such as Jean in a series such as Sex Education marks a decidedly different tack for Anderson, too. From Scully in The X-Files to Miss Havisham in the BBC’s Great Expectations to Stella Gibson in three series of The Fall, she has made her name as the nation’s favourite ice maiden. Ice maidens aren’t generally hilariously confident failing mothers; ice maidens don’t make dick jokes.

“This script was so refreshing,” she says, “not just because it’s different, but also because I don’t get to be funny often in my career. The stuff I get is FBI agent, CIA agent, period stuff or women who commit suicide. With this, I just laughed and laughed and laughed at every script. I just felt like I couldn’t say no.”

It’s not that she can’t do comedy, she points out, it’s just that she doesn’t get offered it that much: it’s often forgotten that a portion of The X-Files episodes were comedic, at least in part. “I think back then I found I could do them as well [as serious material], and some of the theatre I have done has been comedic, but I don’t often get offered straight comedy.

“I might be offered a comedy, but I’m the straight man as opposed to getting to be goofy or erotic in a humorous way.”

In the case of Sex Education, Jean is both goofy and humorously erotic. It is also a subject Anderson knows a little bit about — not so much the sex-therapist bit (though she gives a good explanation of scrotal dysfunction to this wide-eyed innocent) but the mothering. She has two boys aged 10 and 12, as well as a 24-year-old daughter: she has had plenty of time to think about the whys and wherefores of “the chat”.

“My sons are literally about to start a new school,” she says. “They’re about to go through all of this. What’s fantastic about the series is, aside from being incredibly funny, it just puts front and centre what all kids are dealing with on a daily basis.”

Through her children, Anderson recognises that when it comes to teenage sexuality, smartphones have changed the game in a single decade. “It’s because of social media. There’s so much… almost dysmorphia about it. Everything is so out of proportion and not where the focus should be in terms of intimacy.

“Ultimately, sex is the most intimate thing one can do with another human being — how do you teach kids that? It’s fabulous in this to be able to draw attention to all the misguided versions of what sex is today for teenagers.”

Asa Butterfield, 21 but looking much younger, is about as close as you’ll come to a teenager on the Sex Education set. He thinks the show will provide a helping hand to teens lost in the morass of 21st-century sex. “It almost takes the pressure off people, because we deal with these issues in quite a blunt and straightforward way. It’s just saying that everyone has these issues, and it’s all normal. It shows them that it’s not a big deal to be scared or be behind.”

Anderson, sporting a short platinum bob that happens to make her look more icily unapproachable than ever, says filming Sex Education has made her less afraid of speaking to her own children. “That’s all it is, really — fear. Fear about approaching the subject, then the awkwardness and not wanting to be awkward, not wanting to make them awkward. There was a situation recently when I noticed I could have taken the conversation into a broader arena, and for some reason chose not to. I thought, ‘Have I not learnt anything?’”

Sex Education, it should be pointed out, is not a public-information film: first and foremost it’s a laugher. Inevitably, there’s plenty of sex and nudity (from the very first scene), but, as with Taylor’s Catastrophe, the sex is either awkward or joyous, never gratuitous. “One of the challenges,” Nunn says, “is always trying to keep the tone right — because they are teenagers. It’s still having the sex scenes and dealing with some quite graphic stuff, but keeping it totally appropriate and fun.”

Netflix has high hopes for the series, and you can see why. In one sense, it’s the perfect Netflix product, with Jean’s story playing to an older demographic, the John Hughes nods appealing to gen X nostalgia, and Butterfield, a child star from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a gawky but gutsy shoo-in for the 16- to 24-year-olds.

“Fingers crossed,” Nunn says, “that the generations can watch it, because I think the Jean stuff, particularly, exists in its own world. You can watch that and get a lot of enjoyment out of it, alongside the teenage characters. But in some ways older people could watch the teenage characters, too: it’s more about being a teenager than being just for teenagers. And everyone’s done that.”

Sex Education is available on Netflix from January 11

[andrea-jacobs]

COMM 3P18

Chapter 5 - Uses and Gratifications

Media and messages are such a large part of our everyday lives, that we may consciously partaking in viewing and media consumption without much thought. When I’ve had a long day and climb in bed and put on Netflix, I, without much thought, turn on a show like Friends, or This Is Us and watch. What we may not consciously think about, but what still plays a large factor in our media selection is the uses and gratifications theory. As explained by Sullivan (2013), this theory attempts to understand why people choose specific media to consume and what motivates these decisions. The theory focuses on how people use media in their everyday lives as opposed to how the media influence people. When I think about it, I choose a show like Friends after a long day, as opposed to say, an information documentary, for a reason. I am searching for something to fulfil some needs – a show that can be easily consumed and is not too though provoking, something I can relate to my own life, and thus find a sense of belonging in, a show that is popular, so that should one of my roommates come in and ask to join, they can watch too and can even converse about, provided they know the specific show. All of these factors of gratification play a role in what may seem like an arbitrary selection. Because all of these factors arise in my own head and may even seem unconscious, it is hard for researchers to understand all motivations and gratifications that come into play when audiences member are making selections.

Some instances in which we make choices regarding media consumption are much more conscious and deliberate. For example, setting plays a large role as to what we choose to consume. It is probably obvious that when I am visiting my parent’s house, and have control of what we watch as a family on TV, I will not choose to stream a movie like 50 Shades of Grey for its mature content and themes that likely would not be comfortable to watch in an open setting with my family around. That said, many other factors will come into play when I make a decision, if my father is in the room, I will not choose a movie or show that would fall into the romance category, as he dislikes that genre. If my mother is in the room, I will not choose a movie or show that would fall into the action category as she dislikes that genre. As Sullivan points out, different scenarios, demand different gratifications to be met. At a time like this, with my family, we would likely watch a classic family movie or sports together. Both would trigger feeling of nostalgia and togetherness for us, as we used to watch those when I was younger together, and now with me being moved out, rarely get to experience that. We also search for something that relates to all of our interests. Sullivan also makes reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in which scholars use a formulated hierarchy to explain human needs from the basics of food and water, to self actualization. In keeping up with the example above, of my family watching tv together, we are able to place ourselves on the third step of Maslow’s hierarchy – belongingness and love needs. Together we are able to consume a specific media text and find common meaning and value in it. We are also physically brought together and can use the connections these texts offer us to better connect to each other in our physical world.

This leads to the idea of even more social media consumption, and how certain media texts play such an integral role in how our society operates. As media messages today are simply unavoidable with technology constantly at our fingertips, the ones we choose to consume over other, especially in regards to news, speak to the idea that audiences seek out content that will give them gratification. For example, popular news stories that get shared around the world make for common topics of what can seem like universal interest. No matter your preferred news source, all will cover the same large topics, such as political elections, natural disasters, and other universally impactful events. That said, they will all have these stories told in a different way and will also have different smaller scaled stories in their publications. This was very evident on my last family road trip to Florida. We drove through many states, and stopped at many restaurants and gas stations along the way, almost all, always playing the news. At this time, the 2017 federal election was taking place and all news stories were focused on that. What I found interesting, was that depending on the state or even community we were in, determined the news channel they watched. In states like North Carolina, where we stopped for a night on the way, all the news stories we saw favoured the Republican Party, as many of the residents in this state agreed with Republican policies and ideologies. These publications met the desires, emotional needs, and even social needs, as it provided opportunity for conversation with others of many of the people in this community.

Chapter 6 - Interpreting and Decoding Mass Media Texts

Messages, no matter the type, can be interpreted in many different ways. Many factors contribute to one’s understanding of any given text. Sullivan (2013) explains that be it social class, gender, age, or any other demographical barrier, as well as simply having (or not having) prior knowledge, one person’s understanding of a message can be completely different than that of someone else. To send a well received message, the author must first have an intended audience and create the message in a way that will best resignation with them. When I was little, I had an older sister. Sometimes my parents would explain something to her that made absolutely no sense to me, just because of lack of knowledge on the particular subject. They would then have to reconstruct the message, or encode it, in way that would make sense to me, being four years younger. Sometimes I would assume I understood the message, and act as though I did, when really my decoding was not successful. As Sullivan (2013) outlines, individual’s values play a large role in their perception and understanding of media messages. As an example they use women’s responses to soap operas. This highlighted perception based on gender made me think of audience experiences I have had in which I had a different perception based on my identity. I have never had an interest in action movies, be it fiction or non-fiction, especially war movies, as I do not find an interest in learning about the severity of the violence of the war. That said, growing up I had a close friend who’s dream was to join the army. His grandfather was in the military and he was brought up to respect and admire the troops. He loved movies and books about war found deep meaning in them. As he was also a part of cadets, and had a general interest in the military, he understood all the coded language used by soldiers in these movies, he also understood the different rankings in the military and could identify certain badges and medals of honour that I did not. For that reason he was always very keen on watching movies about the wars and war heroes, where I was not. When we would watch war movies together as children, I could see the excitement and enjoyment he got from those films that I did not.

I think sporting events are one place where I really see mixed perceptions of the messages and mixed audience experiences. Viewers who understand the game are going to have a different experience from those who do not. Just like how those in attendance with emotional connections to one team playing are going to have different experience and find different meaning than those who do not. This was especially clear to me during the 2019 NBA finals this year when the Toronto Raptors won the O’Bryant Trophy, the entire country seemed to be excited and behind them, but for many different reasons. I have some older friends at work who have followed the raptors since the team first formed. For them this was a very emotional and meaningful event. They watched interviews of players and raved about the feelings of excitement they got when watching promotional ads and messages that supported their beloved team. This is because they had a deep connection to these texts. For myself, I have only watched a handful of basketball games in my life, and have a very basic understanding of the game. This was an exciting time for me, but mostly because everyone else was excited. I used it as an opportunity to visit Toronto to watch games in the street and felt part of a community, but did not feel much emotional investment in the games. I didn’t get anything out of post-game interviews or promotional ads because I didn’t even always understand what they were talking about. This also speaks to how polysemic the texts are as they were interpreted in many different ways.

Granelli and Zenor (2013) explain their theory on audiences interpretations of morally complex characters, using the show Dexter. Their work makes reference to four different dominant audience perspectives and use them to explain how audiences member react to texts in different ways. Personally, I resonated most with the perspective labeled as referential. I tend to compare texts, especially music to my own life in order to find meaning in it. I enjoy music that I fell most accurately depicts what I am currently going through. I tend to listen to country music as I find this genre to be the most storytelling of genres, with themes that I can relate to my own life, for example, the song The House The Built Me by Miranda Lambert depicts her going back to her childhood home, years after her family has moved out. In the song she explains how her father built that home from the ground up for her mother, and explains how she longs to go back to the place she made crucial memories. I too moved from my childhood home, that my father built and resonate with what she says, finding meaning in the message of the song. My friend, however, who has lived in the same house her entire life and has yet to move out, does not get these same feelings out of that song, because it does not relate to her life in way that she can easily connect with the message.

Chapter 7 - Reviewing Recetion Context and Media Rituals

I never really knew my grandmother, but my father always told me that when his family got their first tv, his mother believed the people behind the camera could see into their living room, and insisted they and the living room, was alway presentable in front of the tv just in case. This obviously is not the case, so how do content creators know what their audience is, what they want to watch and who in the family is watching? The way people watched tv in the 60s and 70s is quite different from the way in which we watch it today, witch is also different from how it was watched in the 90s. From the content shift on tv to the physical changes of tvs and living rooms, even in my lifetime, the way we consume media has changed drastically. The Social contexts in the moment that we are (or are not) consuming media has everything to do with how we consume it.

I grew up in a very tv friendly household. My mother was a stay at home mom until I was about six years old, and again when my younger sister was born when I was eight for two years. Although she considered herself very fortunate to be able to afford years off of work to raise my sister and I, she has admitted to me that at that time she felt very lonely all day, with no one around to talk to (for a real, adult conversation) until my father got home from work. I can remember as a child having not just tv on throughout the day, but specifically talk shows. These gave my mother a sense of contact and communication with others, though one way, talk shows have a way of making those watching feel as if they are part of a conversation. Rituals in our house also loosely followed the scheduled tv programming. In the early 2000s, my bedtime was 9pm. At that same time, there seemed to always be an “adult show” that came on tv that I was not allowed to watch. When the timer on the tv switched the show to NCIS, or Greys Anatomy, I knew it was time for bed. For me, this was annoying and I always almost put up a fight. For my parents, this was when leisure time began. Once they were finally able to put the kids to bed, they gave themselves one hour a night to watch whatever weekly special aired at 9pm.

The rituals my family had when I was young surrounding tv have changed quite a bit with the new convenience of streaming services. We no longer have to wait until Thursdays at 9pm to watch Grey’s Anatomy, as re-runs can be viewed at anytime via Netflix. Time is a huge determinate of media consumption. For example, as a student, I have very little free time. This has an impact on what media I chose to consume – if I have only two hours, I have to decide if I am going to use it to watch tv, read, socialize with friends, etc. As technology has progressed, we have the ability to watch what we want wherever we want. If I feel like watching tv while, cooking for instance, I can watch on my 5’ phone screen. This convenience, however, changes the viewing experience. Instead of distraction free-watching, on a large screen, we have the choice to consume media at any time and any place.

Viewing habits may also change depending on the dynamic of those living in the home. When I was younger and we only had one tv and what we watched was ultimately up to my parents. They had to make sure when my sisters and I were in the room, that what was on was appropriate for us. My parents generally agreed on what to watch, as there were somewhat traditional gender roles in my home, however, my father would never refuse to watch a program of my mothers choosing over it being to feminine, and vice-versa. That said, the remote was always in the hand of my father and if there was ever an issue in regards to connection being lost, needing to use new feature on the tv box, etc. It was up to himself or my older sister to figure it out.

When I was about eight years old, we got a second tv, that my parents decided to put in our family room, that my older sister and I used as a play room. I remember my mother and father spending hours re-arranging the entire room, just to add a box with a scree. They had to make sure the tv was against a wall with multiple outlets, that he could also run a cable to for the satellite. Then they had to reposition the couches and chairs in that room, so that they faced the tv, rather than each other. Although I loved having a tv in my playroom, this addition changed the dynamic of the entire room making the main focus the TV set. Having two TVs made a big difference in my home, as I finally had the opportunity to watch what I wanted all day, rather than having to suffer through my father’s desire to watch nothing but Sportsnet all day, and my mothers’ to watch talk shows and reality tv. There still, however, were some shows that we all watched together.