#with the caveats that 'psychoanalysis' covers a lot of things

[tunnels-end]

It is deeply, deeply beneficial to TERFs if the only characteristic of TERF ideology you will recognize as wrong, harmful, or problematic is "they hate trans women".

TERF ideology is an expansive network of extremely toxic ideas, and the more of them we accept and normalize, the easier it becomes for them to fly under the radar and recruit new TERFs. The closer they get to turning the tide against all trans people, trans women included.

Case in point: In 2014-2015, I fell headlong into radical feminism. I did not know it was called radical feminism at the time, but I also didn't know what was wrong with radical feminism in the first place. I didn't see a problem with it.

I was a year deep into this shit when people I had been following, listening to, and looking up to finally said they didn't think trans women were women. It was only then that I unfollowed those people, specifically; but I continued to follow other TERFs-who-didn't-say-they-were-TERFs. I continued ingesting and spreading their ideas- for years after.

If TERFs "only target trans women" and "only want trans women gone", if that's the one and only problem with their ideology and if that's the only way we'll define them, we will inevitably miss a vast majority of the quiet beliefs that support their much louder hatred of trans women.

As another example: the trans community stood relatively united when TERFs and conservatives targeted our right to use the correct restroom, citing the "dangers" of trans women sharing space with cis women. But when they began targeting Lost Little Girls and Confused Lesbians and trotting detransitioners out to raise a panic about trans men, virtually the only people speaking up about it were other transmascs. Now we see a rash of anti-trans healthcare bills being passed in the US, and they're hurting every single one of us.

When you refuse to call a TERF a TERF just because they didn't specifically say they hate trans women, when you refuse to think critically about a TERF belief just because it's not directly related to trans women, you are actively helping TERFs spread their influence and build credibility.

[theartistknownaslymond]

Oh and cursed playlist concept. What kind of music does Gabriel put on at the ashram (Pune or Nevada) to decompress from intense group therapy… (from research I’d say overarching - general vibes: happy, maybe danceable; lyrics: English or Hindi probably :P)

aka the desire to be subtle vs the desire to be funny: FIGHT

A Purely Spiritual Love

A band AU playlist for running away from the world aged nineteen and accidentally falling for your cult leader. Or just for chillin' post dynamic meditation, that's cool too.

Nazia Hassan - Aao Naa

ABBA - Me & I

Asha Bhosle - Dum Maro Dum (pt. 2)

The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star

Asha Bhosle - Koi Shahri Babu (pt. 1)

The Monkees - I'm a Believer

Kishore Kumar - Ye Jawani Hai Diwani

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime

Lata Mangeshkar & Kishore Kumar - Jai Jai Shiv Shankar

Carly Simon - You're So Vain

Kalyanji-Anandji - Dharmatma Theme (pt. 1 - instrumental)

The Human League - Don't You Want Me

Nazia and Zoheb Hassan - Dosti

Don McLean - American Pie

Lata Mangeshkar - Bangle Ke Peechhe

The Beach Boys - Sloop John B

Kishore Kumar, Mahendra Kapoor & Shailendra Singh - Amar Akbar Anthony

The Beatles - All You Need is Love

Usual deal: explanation below the cut. Album cover featuring Joel Kinnaman's chin.

Caveat and apologies that I don't always have a very detailed explanation for why all the Hindi songs are on here because for some I just couldn't find English lyrics/descriptions of the film they're from, they're just here because they're bops. Caveat and apologies that the English songs are really NOT subtle and I had way too much fun picking them.

Nazia Hassan - Aao Naa Not Hindi, but also no great explanation beyond: what a CRACKING album opener!! Jerott's probably got the cassette and has playlist privileges at Nevada.

ABBA - Me & I Frankly ALL of Super Trouper is on the ashram playlist. The Winner Takes It All? GRM approves! But for supreme trolling-through-playlist purposes, get boogie-ing to this disco track about psychoanalysis: Sometimes I have toyed With ideas that I got from good old Dr. Freud Nothing new of course It may seem to you I try to break through open doors Oh no, oh no I just wanna say a lot of that applies to me 'Cause it's an explanation to my split identity 3) Asha Bhosle - Dum Maro Dum (pt. 2) This was an epic hit, from the film Haré Rama Haré Krishna (1971) which involves, ooh, international bigamy, cults, selling off artifacts to rich Westerners, suicide, hippies beating people up, and all sorts of things that people suspicious of Rajneesh's movement would recognise as threats. I think it would tickle Graham Reid Malett to have people dancing to the big song from a film warning about the dangers of his type. 4) The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star Cheesy, a bit sad, a bit sinister even, but everyone can dance along and everyone knows it. 5) Asha Bhosle - Koi Shahri Babu (pt. 1) I'll be honest and say that Bollywood thriller plots are somewhat impenetrable when reduced to short Wikipedia summaries, but this is from Loafer (1973) which seems to be about love across rival gangs and spying on one another. The song is about falling coyly for a guy who gives you a gift. And Asha is the queen, so we put as much Asha on the playlist as we need to. 6) The Monkees - I'm a Believer :))) be happy! Your dynamic meditation has finished and you have taken another step towards enlightenment/entrapment by Graham Reid Malett. 7) Kishore Kumar - Ye Jawani Hai Diwani No explanation, couldn't find the lyrics anywhere BUT what a tune!! Kishore and R.D. Burman, more icons. The film it's from (Jawani Diwani, 1972) has people leaving/becoming estranged from their families for love and intergenerational repeats of that so. A bit of a Jerott vibe. 8) Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime People from well-to-do background suddenly asking themselves 'how did I get here?' and packing it all in to give their money to the ashram…? 9) Lata Mangeshkar & Kishore Kumar - Jai Jai Shiv Shankar Laughter therapy, praising Shiva (god of meditation, among other things, Rajneesh discoursed on him a lot). And from a film (Aap Ki Kasam, 1974) where paranoia and possessiveness ruins relationships. 10) Carly Simon - You're So Vain Do I think I'm funny? Yes. Yes I do. It's about the death of the ego babe, let go of yourself! But genuinely, you could sway along and dance to this when you were exhausted from meditation! And when Carly Simon finally tells us who (else) it was about you mark my words, Graham Reid Malett will be on the list :P You had me several years ago When I was still quite naive Well, you said that we made such a pretty pair And that you would never leave But you gave away the things you loved And one of them was me 11) Kalyanji-Anandji - Dharmatma Theme (pt. 1 - instrumental) The film (Dharmatma, 1975) is apparently based on the Godfather but set in Afghanistan. So absolutely the kind of thing that would appeal to teenage Jerott, who never knew his grandparents who spent time around the (then) India-Afghanistan border. Plus teenage boys love gangster stories. Plus Jerott doesn't realise the similarities between the ashram set up and that of a mob. 12) The Human League - Don't You Want Me A man who feels entitled to another person because he plucked from obscurity and 'made something of them'? Remind you of anyone? I picked you out, I shook you up and turned you around Turned you into someone new Now five years later on you've got the world at your feet Success has been so easy for you But don't forget, it's me who put you where you are now And I can put you back down too I feel like the background story to this song's release is also relevant: the band hated it and thought it was a filler track and didn't want to release it as a single, the record company forced them to, and it was a huge success. Reminiscent of Francis and GRM's interactions in PiF. 13) Nazia and Zoheb Hassan - Dosti Just another of Jerott's cassettes with good Pakistani disco pop on it! :') 14) Don McLean - American Pie It's just….it's such a GRM/Jerott kind of vibe? The disappointment, grief and sense of loss for something you never quite had, the crushing of hope, the nostalgia for something half-remembered as life-changing, but all sounding so beautiful and dreamy and it kind of cheers everyone up to be able to sing along? The idea of the American Dream as an ideal that can never be lived up to as well, kind of like what Jerott is hoping to find from the ashram vs what he gets. Oh, and there we were, all in one place A generation lost in space With no time left to start again So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick Jack Flash sat on a candlestick 'Cause fire is the devil's only friend Oh, and as I watched him on the stage My hands were clenched in fists of rage No angel born in hell Could break that Satan's spell And as the flames climbed high into the night To light the sacrificial rite I saw Satan laughing with delight The day the music died 15) Lata Mangeshkar - Bangle Ke Peechhe Another I couldn't find the lyrics for, but it's R.D. Burman again and was a massive hit. It's from Samadhi (1972). 16) The Beach Boys - Sloop John B Another one that kind of sounds cheery until you listen to the lyrics when it's actually really miserable! Jerott are you ok? The first mate, he got drunk And broke in the captain's trunk The constable had to come and take him away Sheriff John Stone Why don't you leave me alone? Yeah, yeah Well, I feel so broke up I wanna go home 17) Kishore Jumar, Mahendra Kapoor & Shailendra Singh - Amar Akbar Anthony From a 'masala' film of the same title, about three brothers separated and raised as Hindu/Muslim/Christian, so I figure a good ashram vibe for bringing people together in a synthesis of teachings… Also look out Francis. Look out Jerott. <Two are better than one Three are better than two The bride and the groom are not together There's music but not a wedding procession The bride and the groom are not together There's music but not a wedding procession There's nothing to fear This is a night of union and not of sadness Smile my friends, why do you have such a crying face Smile my friends, why do you have such a crying face When the three of us get together in one place> 18) The Beatles - All You Need is Love Can't have a playlist about a rich white guy exploiting an already exploitative Indian cult to make himself powerful without putting some Beatles on it, right? Sure Graham, 'love'. There's nothing you can do that can't be done Nothing you can sing that can't be sung Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game It's easy Nothing you can make that can't be made No one you can save that can't be saved Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time It's easy

[contemporarysex-blog]

Doing Anti-Diversity Wrong

So let's talk about this Google employee's "anti-diversity" memo. And I mean talk about it, not just freak out over it.

(If you haven't read the thing itself, do. If the author is right about one thing, it's that different points of view deserve to be discussed on their own merits, rather than dismissed up front for seeming outrageous.)

And let's not kid ourselves, whatever that memo is, it is definitely not hate speech. The author makes his argument in a polite and nuanced ways, clearly states his intentions (which are far more benign than the "women don't have a place in tech" reporting makes it seem), and makes some legitimately good points. He still gets a couple of crucial things wrong, and that's what I want to address in this post.

First, here's a basic breakdown of the author's argument as I understand it:

PREMISE 1: Statistically, men and women as a group are interested in (/good at) different things on average. For example, men are more likely to be "thing-oriented" and women more "people-oriented". (strong, with caveats)

PREMISE 2: This difference is rooted in biology and unlikely to change because of social measures. (has a point, but is not the whole story)

PREMISE 3: The purpose of diversity measures in companies such as Google is to make sure that there are as many women working in every field as there are men. (very weak)

CONCLUSION: Trying to enforce equal representation while drawing from an unequal population is tilting against windmills at best, and counterproductive at worst. (shaky as hell)

(You might notice that I'm not going into the whole "nobody's allowed to say that" and "diversity of opinions" self-victimization thing here. That's a rhetorical device, not an argument, and also it is not what most people seem to be reacting to.)

Let's start with premise 1. We don't need to debate the factual point; of course men, taken as a group, have different preferences on average than women, taken as a group. If you pick a random woman out of the general population, the probability that she is interested in [STEM stuff] is lower than it would be for a randomly selected man. Duh. But there are two caveats here:

Caveat 1: What is true for the general population is not necessarily true for those women who apply for jobs at Google. If you pick a woman who applied for a technical position at Google at random, your priors that she's interested in / good at it should be the same as for a man who applied for the same job. Why? Because selection effects, obviously. Women who apply for jobs at Google are not a representative sample of the female population. Also duh.

Caveat 2: Be careful about your constructs. I haven't looked into the literature, but "people-oriented" and "thing-oriented" strike me as both very general and very loaded ways to frame the difference. I'm not saying it's not a valid distinction to make, but we need to remember that there is a difference between the actual data (which can be made sense of in multiple ways and usually presents a complex picture) and the labels we use to carve it up.

Which brings us to the second premise. Yes, men and women today have different preferences; but where do these preferences come from, and are they necessary and unchanging in the way the author suggests?

Now, I will not discuss evolutionary psychology here. EvoPsych has a lot of interesting things to say, but I will not get bogged down in just-so stories about how this or that might have been adaptive at some point or not. For the most part, these have about the same predictive power as psychoanalysis, meaning none; they serve to "explain" a status quo, but you could tell a completely story and "explain" the same data just as well. Let's not do that here; let's please leave EvoPsych to the professionals.

But I have to discuss reductionism. There is this tendency among people who've read a little EvoPsych, nicely exemplified by the manifest's author here, to look at some feature of the world, find an evolutionary explanation for it, and then say "that's it, feature explained". That's not only a cheap way to shave off complexity, it also reifies the status quo in a way that does not allow for human agency. Once you accept that you can explain the same facts in different ways, choosing between competing explanations becomes an engineering problem: Which of these explanations can I actually do something with? If an explanation leaves you helpless and cynical, saying that "things just are like that, there's nothing you can do", you are probably operating at the wrong level of detail.

So let's have some (still very low) complexity. Sure, if a broad distinction can be observed for men and women all across the globe, it is likely to have some sort of biological basis. (Though you could also say that patriarchal societies are dominant pretty much across the globe... but let's concede the point here, because it doesn't make much of a difference.) But that's not all there is to it. Society (and, on a finer level, human psychology) takes these biological tendencies and builds on them. It weaves them into narratives that evolve over time and tell you how to behave, above and beyond what biology alone "requires", and changing much quicker than biology itself. We build identities and scripts and rituals, based on and influenced by our biological tendencies, sometimes exaggerating them, at other times sublimating them, warping them, even resisting them. (Just look at how many religions are built on a foundation of resisting some of our "natural impulses".)

What does that mean for diversity programs, then? It means that we do not, as the author suggests, simply have to resign ourselves that a lack of diversity in a given institution is biologically determined and there's nothing we can do about it. Some of the root causes may be biological, but that does not mean we cannot or should not examine our institutions to see where they don't conform to our values. Because that is what should be the driving force behind our aspirations: realize our values, based on a good image of reality; not looking at "reality" with a reductionist lense, shrugging and saying, "well, bad luck".

Of course we can, and should, debate those values. You can say that "having equal numbers of men and women in all professions and positions" is a stupid terminal goal to have, and I would probably agree. However, the purpose of all diversity programs that I know (I don't know much about Google's, but I'd suppose it's similar) is not to achieve a perfectly balanced male-female ratio, but simply to make it easier for those who tend to have it harder (because they're in the minority, because the work environment was not designed with them in mind, or whatever) to do the job that they are good at. In other words: (good) gender diversity measures are not about getting more women into certain positions at all costs, but about making it possible for qualified women to get there, without having to expend too much energy on surviving in a hostile environment. So much for premise 3, which is nothing more than a straw man. It's easy to attack your enemy if you misrepresent their position as something extremist and stupid as "we need more women here, no matter how qualified they are".

Which brings us to the conclusion. If enforcing equal representation is not the goal, and if corporate culture and institutional design have an effect beyond the biological base rate, and if the pool of women who apply for a job at Google is not representative of that base rate anyway... then yes, we can do at least some good by making it easier for those women who are interested in and good at [STEM stuff] to get into positions where they can use their talents without constantly fighting an uphill battle. Or more generally: If humans have any agency beyond the behavior "dictated" to them by their genes, then we can call them out on what they do and don't do, and they don't get to hide behind biology to say "can't help it".

And finally, to answer the obvious question why we should value diversity at all (except, you know, for reasons such as basic fairness and maybe complying with the law), here's the obvious answer: because a company such as Google affects lots of people of all kinds, including women, and it's a good idea to have interested parties from as many different kinds of people pitching in when it comes to all the decisions that are made there. This is not just out of a sense of responsibility or democratic spirit or whatever; it's simply good business. Unless you have a perfectly objective sexless raceless identityless AI to vet every decision, you're better off if you have a multitude of perspectives inside your company (and yes, that includes a multitude of political perspectives, just so we've got that covered as well).