Tim's journal

I frequently line my rabbits' cage with the Oregonian, since it's not good for much else. This time, though, Bhagat Singh did not approve of a headline in the food section:

She then made short work of it:

The International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2010) program
committee is delighted to inform you that your paper #64 has been accepted
to appear in the conference.

Title: A Certified Framework for Compiling and Executing
Garbage-Collected Languages
Authors: Andrew McCreight (Portland State University)
Tim Chevalier (Portland State University)
Andrew Tolmach (Portland State University)

Uh, so, yeah. We're going to Baltimore!!!!111 And for those who didn't know, this is my first academic publication, ten years after attending my first ICFP and nine years after entering grad school for the first time.

What is this, and why am I posting it?

Somewhat explicit personal sexual content behind the cut! You have been warned.

( Sex, and children. Not really in combination. )

What is this, and why am I posting it?

No particularly graphic or sensitive details behind the cut this time.

( Media portrayal, identity, social interactions )

What is this, and why am I posting it?

I don't mind sharing details about my body and sexuality in public (and would be happy to elaborate on why I don't mind), but if you don't think you would be comfortable knowing those sorts of details about me, you may not want to follow the link (or go behind the cut, depending how you're reading this). The same disclaimer may apply to the previous post in this series.

( Pronouns, medical interventions, discrimination, feminism, and queer theory, oh my )

Arguing with people on the Internet is compelling for me because I have a thing about not being heard, and almost all the time, when someone disagrees with me (and bothers to engage with me about it), they don't believe anything fundamentally different from what I believe -- or so it seems to me. It's just a misunderstanding, and if only I keep trying to explain the truth well enough, to be a good enough teacher, the other person will see the light and agree with me.

When it doesn't immediately descend into profanity (which is boring, but which actually usually doesn't happen), talking to people on the Internet about gender is even more compelling, because it's just so easy to expose fundamentally wrong assumptions with a few well-honed questions.

For example, everyone is convinced that chromosomes are what make a person a man or a woman -- what give people some fundamental essence of being male or female that is both socialy significant and that no amount of social or medical adjustment can change -- but everyone is also happy to fling about "man" and "woman" all the time for people whose chromosomes they have never examined.

Everyone is convinced that it's easy to spot a transsexual, but nobody actually knows how many people they've seen and believed were transsexual actually weren't trans, or how many people they've seen and believed were cissexual were in fact trans.

Everyone is convinced that, even if one makes the politically correct concession of calling trans people by the right name and pronouns, it's still appropriate and meaningful to call a trans woman "biologically male". But nobody can conjure up the objective, biological characteristic that differentiates cis women from trans women. No, it's not the subjective, social characteristic of having been assigned female (or not) at birth; no, it's not the internal, psychological characteristic of knowing oneself to be a woman or a man. Then what is it? Everyone knows there's something there, something measurable, that denotes your woman-ness or man-ness independently of your beliefs or those of a specific person or group of people observing you. But no one can actually name or describe that very concrete, very objective criterion... whatever it may be.

Of course, you can tell people as many times as you want that some boys are born with penises, some girls are born with penises, some boys are born with vulvas, some girls are born with vulvas, and some people are born with either but aren't girls or boys, and none of these groups are intrinsically more authentic than any of the others. But it's much more fun to try to find the right questions to ask that will force them to say that themselves, if you can get them there before the Shitcock Effect sets in.

Thanks to badasstronaut:

From a comment on a blog post about Gabor Somorjai, sent to me by David:

"He's also a real slave-driver. He once said to a friend of mine who was his grad student: 'Eef I thought eet vould make you vork har-r-rder (rolled 'r'), I vould SKVEEZE YOUR-R-R BALLS!'"

I have no further comment, but perhaps some of you might.

Before I post anything suggesting that an advertisement might be funny or interesting, this quotation is prophylactically required:

"An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair."

--David Foster Wallace

With that said, this article about a new ad campaign for feminine protection products (or, paraphrasing a Bloom County cartoon, powderpuff-pink machine guns) is hella funny:

Another spot, which will make its debut next month, opens with a woman strolling confidently toward the camera. “I’m a believably attractive 18- to 24-year-old female,” she says. “You can relate to me because I’m racially ambiguous. Market research shows that girls like you love girls like me.”