Letters from the Imp of the Perverse I am the little voice on my shoulder

I remember, early on, being very impressed by the fact that I was dating more than one person at once, ZOMG 11!111eleventy!!!11 I was completely sure this meant I was a bad, bad girl. Bad, bad, so bad, etc. Men and women! I was a threat to good people everywhere (start theme music)

Another advantage of age (number 50 billion) has been being able to get past, if imperfectly, the facile desire to think of it like an accomplishment to knock off my bucket list, the other people involved utterly incidental to my list of prospective sexy times.

To some degree, we're not encouraged to see the person we're fucking, instead of the confusing mash of stereotype and the desire we're supposed to have, the preset patterns of relationships popularized in the media and by upbringing, religion or custom. One of the hardest tasks for someone who would be a prospective lover of many is learning to see the other person, not what we wish they were or think they're supposed to be: to see failings and successes, able and willing to accept those, if merited, in one's lovers.

When people learn I have slept with more than one person at once, they are often titillated by that idea. A real live woman who does that sort of thing, a curiosity (though less as time goes on) to be questioned, a representative for the entire class of weirdos doing that kind of thing.

I have discovered, as I have lost my affinity for much of the culture and as I spend more time researching, talking to people who are in similar situations as I and reading websites which perform critical analyses of society, that the person I am sleeping with has become more interesting.

My lovers are wonderful mysteries: why this one is so reserved, the sound of their surprised laughter. Their fears, the things they hope for, the feel of their bodies against mine, the sound of their voice, their political beliefs and the way their voices soften late at night when we talk about what we would do with the lottery.

Their individuality is also a wonderful mystery, only highlighted by the time I spend with the other. I travel between lovers in a profound sense of gratefulness; time spent with one makes me think more about the other, appreciating their differences and generosity, at letting me see parts of their selves I might not otherwise notice.

To my mind, that's the difference: age has bought me generosity, mine and others. These relationships are a sweet generosity, for which I am grateful.

FTB is abuzz about the remarks of DJ Grothe. Just up front, I'm going to say I think he's a douche, but anyone who finds out their buddy is engaged in sex with underage prostitutes and responds to questions by talking about lowering the age of consent is no one I am going to particularly like. Just that pairing makes me nauseous, but then I've done survival sex work, some of which was done when I was 16.

I'm going to go on the record and say that no minor should be involved in sex work. The idea that using people whose ideas, brain and behaviors are forming to sate the sexual urges of people who are older and more affluent, while historical, is abhorrent.

I've been reading the storm of posts, and I'm... tired. I guess, like any newb to a community, I had high hopes of the online atheist community. I accepted that portions were going to be rotten, even flattered myself to think that they would be considered outliers. For me, feminism and atheism are inextricably linked: to be aware of the destructiveness and social control of religion is to be aware of the exploitation of gender which is so much a part of religious communities. It's not even like women are the only people exploited in religious hierarchies: the poor, people who are queer or in any way gender deviant and people who are not white also all suffer from poor treatment here in the US, and as far as I know with the Judeo-Christian religions, also abroad. I even figured there might be some consensus on those issues, because I presupposed that part of identifying as an atheist involved an exploration of the harm done by religions, including our homebrews here in the US.

I'm rather saddened, and sometimes down-right insulted to find this is not true. While there's a tendency to mention that religion is bad for women and minority groups, there's also a nasty, vocal minority in the atheist community (my local atheist group unfortunately hosts Ben Radford and the occasional scientist with interesting ideas about women) who uses a nasty mash of "I am man therefore my ideas are important" and "wommenz brains are too pink and fluffy and emotional for real thinking." For me, it is easy to move from a critique of the way religion treats women to the ways society also treats women, as mirrors of each other.

But since my cock is detachable, my critiques had better move quickly past gender, lest I be considered 'whiny'. I tend to leave when one of those assholes shows up, as dumping my drink on him, while satisfying, is only 'proof' of my wommenz brains.

I also though scientific literacy would be more common in this community. It appears to be common to the persons writing posts, and about a quarter common in the comments. I do appreciate FTB because psuedo-science is treated so derisively by regular posters and by the people writing FTB blogs. I have, however, been sort of stunned to find it in the comments. The same, Lamarkian bullshit idea that traits are directly heritable, debunked in Bio 101, pops up regularly. It tends to be paired with what I like to think of as 'magic cavemen'.

Cavemen who echo an ahistoric, ignorant and oversimplified version of history, in order to support whatever nastiness the poster has in mind. If you can't tell your caveman from a particularly douchey frat member, there are serious problems with your conception of that caveman (also history, biology, anthropology, palentology, etc.)

I guess I also thought more people had been exposed to the social sciences. I may be frustrated with my program, but there are some well-researched, well-proven concepts (better than 60 years of theory and experiments) in social science which are apparently either not known, or the idea of scientific testing on these subjects is somehow invisible to people. Hell, even google scholar has some of these things. I'm astounded that a community of persons who are interested in reason has, in many cases, not even bothered to google the concepts.

Even if the only thing someone commenting wants to do is discredit, the least they could do is read the damn studies. A lot of the studies in social science on these subjects are actually PDFs, not just the abstract.

I also, I suppose, expected some of the basic ideas in statistics to be better known. Apparently, as I have found from some commentors and even people on my friends list on social websites, statistics mean nothing. Or at least they do when I use them.

I suppose, in some way, I should expect online discussions to be craptastic, simply because anyone can make an account and say shitty, stupid, ignorant things. This particular shitstorm, as with ElevatorGate, which I spent a considerable amount of time commenting during, has just reinforced that unpleasant, annoyed and creepy feeling I get when I see the previous pop up.

Perhaps I will have the energy to deal with it at a later date, but for now, the subject exhausts me. It's not because I don't have to answers, can't prove it, don't care about it, aren't affected by it and/or don't have the time to comment on it.

It's because the commentors using those objections don't listen, don't care, lie, dismiss, don't read, are arrogant, abusive, refuse to come to any sort of consensus on even little issues.

And because they all say the same fucking thing. Every fucking time, as if reading a damn script. I have a lot of sympathy with the FTB regulars who have started responding with obscenities.

How long can you repeat the same damn thing to someone who uses your body/gender against you?

I read ManBoobz often, though I occasionally have to stop reading because the urge to punch my screen is too high.

One of today's ManBoobz articles is quite literally the funniest thing I've read in awhile. Portions of the Manosphere have decided that the sight of cleavage and/or legs is at least as bad as assault, and sometimes worse, since these clothes are obviously designed to tempt men who are not allowed to 'do anything about' that temptation. Apparently, I've been assaulting men for years with my cleavage, making me a career criminal.

Oh, the humanity. Men can see my tits but are not supposed to rape me, therefore I am irreparably wounding them.

I'm going to really enjoy wearing tank tops this summer.

One of the more startling things I've found as someone who has an English degree (the MFA is in nonfiction, and I've done a double shit ton* of free lance editing and technical writing), is that people seem to believe that writing and design are easy enough to relegate that task to people who may have no qualification for those tasks. It's not uncommon for professionals with no training in how to write manuals and/or brochures, design, editing and gauging an audience to be given a very small amount of time to do so.

The typical results are things like laughably bad manuals, design which is stuck somewhere in the 80s and steps which are impossible to do in the order suggested. Some professionals are, of course, capable of this kind of writing and design. However, it should not be assumed that someone who is incredibly competent in another field will automatically do a good job of design and technical writing.

Writing is actually a thing, and a demanding thing.

I have a friend who is facing that sort of problem right now; he's a more than just competent programmer, but his bosses have handed him the task of writing technical manuals for the servers he administers and for the projects whose frankencode he's been handed. (He says the code is awful.)

The problem which is currently frustrating him is fundamental to technical writing: where do you start assuming competence in an audience? This particular problem is actually something which is takes professionally trained writers years to get a clear sense of; the classes I've taught for composition and rhetoric dealt with this problem over four months, because it is incredibly difficult to clearly conceptualize and execute.

He's asked for some guidelines to consider. Without further ado, I give you my personal ones.

Bob** the Pragmatist's rules of thumb for estimating audience competence:

Is the audience the general public or some subsection of the general public?

If the audience is the general public, you'll be best served by over-explaining in a conversational tone. Think furniture assembly instructions: take the plug with the pink ring and match it to the plug on the back of your computer, near the bottom, which also has a pink ring. Good job!

If the audience is a subsection, particularly a technical or highly educated subsection of the general public, you can assume, whether it's true or not, access to technical jargon for the field and some task skipping.

Think of this as the PB&J rule. The hypothetical general public has never made a PB&J before. If you tell them to make a PB&J, but don't include instructions, they have no idea what you're talking about. And you can't just start with grab a loaf of bread, because they may never have made a sandwich. You have to figure out some way to describe sliced, presumably commercial bread to them so that they can locate it by sight. Same goes for the peanut butter, the jelly, and a butter knife to spread.

It's tempting to think of them as idiots at this point. Resist temptation; ignorance is not always stupidity, though I freely admit when I write for newspapers as a columnist the breadth of vocabulary I have to not use makes me want to head-desk myself unconscious. Assume, rather, that they are reading your manual because they want to understand. It's a rhetorical assumption, yes, but an effective one in many situations (obviously not one you're always obliged to take).

Now, if you're talking to people who have already made a PB&J about making a fancy fried banana PB&J (Uh-huh-huh, hip swing), the good news is that you don't have to explain what bread, peanut butter, jelly and a sandwich is. The bad news is that you have to explain any alterations to the pattern for making PB&J which they already know, and fold it into the explanation for how to make the sandwich so they do it in the right order. You must fry the bananas before assembling the sandwich, and you might want to include a description for what a fried banana looks like when it's done.

This means you still have to write the instructions, unfortunately, but instead of starting with locate bread in a grocery store by the presence of clear wrapping around a product which is soft and springy, sliced into sections a third of an inch wide with a distinctly darker edge around the outside and is not stored in a refrigerated section of the store, you can start with assembling bread, peanut butter, quince jelly, vegetable oil, one sliced and slightly green banana, a shallow frying pan large enough to fit the sandwich, a butter knife and a plate.

It makes for slightly less writing, though I've seen manuals which have a glossary. If the manual is online, hyperlinking can eliminate the need for a glossary.

Assuming that you are writing to your peers eliminates many of the definitional tasks, though it is generally best (unless you are talking to persons with broad experience or persons with extensive education) to limit the number of very large, very technical words if you can.

Based on these criteria, the assumption of basic competence includes the following criteria:

--They can read the language you're using (if not, add translations to other languages).
--They are either the general public or a subsection, both of which have different requirements for definition and tasks.
--They are best served by sequential ordering in tasks and are willing to do the tasks in the order suggested.
--They will try to find the answers to reasonable questions in your manual, which means you ought to try and anticipate those questions based on what an average person from their level of expertise might ask.***
--They will be best served by both an overview of steps and a detailed explanation of steps, including reminders of the final goal in addition to detail involved in steps. Even professionals need to be reminded of the end goal, especially in any manual which requires more than eight steps.
--They need the steps broken down based on changes in one of the following: a change in equipment used, a new sub-task (plugging something in versus sorting out the cables), a change in location, a change in type of task (importing libraries in code versus writing a function) so that they can effectively follow the stream of tasks which you assume they are trying to perform.

This is sort of technical writing light, and I'm pretty sure you can think of exceptions, but those are some of the fundamental assumptions of competence which tend to get used.

Oi there, buddy: when you read this, feel free to ask questions.


* That's the official measure of this blog-- a shit ton is more work than you can get done in a year.

** When I used to work at gas stations, I got tired of being aggressively hit on by men, especially since I was working alone. I chopped my hair and made a 'Bob' name tag. It only helped a little. Now I use Bob as a pseudonym during gaming: my current character's name is Lady Isobella Violetta Charmisa Margarite Coeur de Leon the Third, Bob for short.

*** Yeah, I know. That's a huge topic which is highly situational, so it's best if I offer you an example. Technical professionals are not going to ask what a computer is, but they are likely to ask what software version you're using because some functions are not covered in earlier versions. If they're programmers, they'll want to know why you're using that version, not their favorite version. The answer is NOT because I want to, that's why.

Some people say they fall in love with their characters, that they identify intensely with their character's struggles during a path, that they are truly bothered when their characters die.

Many (MANY) years ago, I took the first round of drama classes, mostly out of curiosity (and to use up some electives). The professor assigned me the role of Emily Dickenson, at a press conference. If you know her history, you know she would never have submitted to one after her public humiliation at the hand of local literary critics, and that press conferences, such as they were, would not have been held for her. He gave me a day to research her, then I had to perform her.

As a character, she's an odd mix of brash and shy. I thought it would be appropriate to have her trembling, barely able to lift a cup to her mouth, hands fluttering like birds around her chest, trying vainly to be unseen, unless asked about her work. She was a lion when asked about her work. While I didn't fall in love with her, I felt I understood her.

The Traveller game we just started has me playing a noblewoman who is vapid in society and sharp in private. It's a lot of fun to play these characters, to step into those shoes and try to think like someone who had been taught to be a social ornament, but longs to be a captain of industry.

I played tabletop a little when I was young (not much, as it was the eighties and D&D meant you were asking to be possessed by Satan.) I don't remember having nearly as much fun with it as I am now that I know I'm not being possessed by demons and I less ashamed of my nerdiness.

Each game we start gives me a new chance to be someone else. It's fun to escape from work and life for awhile and be an explorer in a personalized universe.

If this don't touch you (especially if you know the singer and the song's history), I don't know what would.

I've come the long route to the things I am passionate about, though my family labelled me dangerously over-passionate most of my childhood. I remember my childhood as quite passionate; like an exhibit behind glass, I scrabbled at an invisible wall in a suffocating space. No matter what I wanted, I would become just what the card in front of the glass said: "Female, North American, Native Habitat: Domestic, Reproduction. Incapable of independence, relies on provider."

Not so much human as a curiosity; someone who would deny the self-evidently natural script for our lives.

My nightmares were often of being married to a middle-class fellow, trapped in a home with 2.5 children and given only home-decorating and child-rearing as an outlet for ambition. I am not exaggerating when I say that dream used to wake me up in a sweat, thinking of my mother and father.

Sometimes, it woke me up literally screaming. The people who have shared my bed tended to laugh at my explanation that my nightmare was of being a housewife.

I have to believe my mother also wanted more for me, despite beating me and telling me that I would never be loved, since I was so ugly: in a twisted way, this was her charity. If I were ugly and unloveable, I could devote myself to pursuing my passions, instead of being trapped in a home, as she was. After all, a woman cannot have both a career and love. As she told me often, that meant I could be seen as competing with men, and they would be forced to punish it out of me. No love, no softness, no femininity, else I would fail to have my own desires.

And what cost would you pay, reader, to follow your passions? What cost have you already paid?

My MFA dissertation compared this to a tide, drowning my mother and I, filling the rooms of the house with the slap of waves. To be immaterial to your own desires and ambitions, to live every day with the knowledge that you will have no life of your own, only what the men and women who are willing to collaborate around you believe to be appropriate.

To have others be genuinely surprised that you did not passionately, with every fiber of your being, want nothing more than to find a nice man to marry, then stay home, have kids and never have to work. Isn't that what women want?

Your passionate refusal, of course, is evidence that you are mentally ill, defective. How could you not want this existence?

I suppose it's probably no surprise that my relationship to my passions is a bit distant. I had to kill something of myself to go to college, something which I will not get back in the same form. I am no longer capable of casually assuming good intentions in others and that society is essentially a fair place.

The difference for me, and something I'm continually surprised so many people think is irrelevant, was seeing women able to have careers. It was seeing women who were mathematicians, atheists, and scientists. There've been several threads on FTB about female role models, the most recent of which is Jen's.

Someone inevitably shows up, like pidgeon shit on park benches, to strafe the conversation with the idea that it's the artist's choice, or that there really aren't any women to admire, or that women don't contribute to the sciences.

And once again, for a minute, I feel the glass.