erin

All the labels are made up, there are no rules, and you might identify with multiple categories. I use the labels bisexual, pansexual, and lesbian interchangeably, because they have different connotations and familiarity to most people. Need to communicate that I’m with a woman? A lesbian relationship. Want to make it clear that I’m attracted to all sorts of gender identities? Bisexual/pansexual, depending on who I’m talking to and what terms their familiar with/how specific I feel like being.

The labels don’t have hard and fast rules. I’m attracted to women, I’m gay, I’m lesbian, I’m non-binary, etc. It doesn’t matter. They all apply to me and can overlap to varying degrees. I know a trans guy that calls himself both a gay man and a lesbian. I know trans women that refer to themselves as twinks. Specificity and semantics aren’t as important as communicating what you intend to whoever you’re talking to.

Gender and sexuality aren’t hardwired rules, but influenced by our culture and environment. This is true for everyone. This isn’t to say that someone’s gender or sexuality isn’t intrinsic to that person, but how they think about those and present them are part of an ongoing performance for themselves and others. If you’re interested in learning more on the subject, I can recommend some excellent books on the subject, or feel free to ask followup questions here or in DMs.

Thanks for replying! I also resent the breaking down of communication and the twisting of semantics in our post-truth world. I can only hope that I get to live to see it start to improve, or at least plant the seeds for those after me. My wife and I do the exact same thing in the company of the types of men that deserve it. Our friend who was uncomfortable is very respectful and understanding, but I understand not wanting to hear venting framed in such a way to include the entire gender he’s desperately trying to be accepted as by the rest of society. I appreciate your perspective.

Do you find this form of venting helpful? My wife and I just had a talk about reducing the amount that we make statements like yours, as they’re ultimately just feeding into a cycle of reactionary politics. A friend of ours, who is a man (and trans, not that it should matter) was uncomfortable due to such statements, despite obvious hyperbole (though I can’t say for sure whether you’re being hyperbolic or not). When you break it down, it’s just more gender essentialism, and impossible to back up, without being either obviously exaggerated, or overtly transphobic/homophobic via exceptions. In women’s only spaces, or between trusted individuals, I don’t think these statements are harmful, but in shared spaces they lead to discomfort, guilt, and insecurity. I want men to be aware of their privilege, not to make people that already have my back and do check their privilege feel any personal fault for the gender they align with.

I could break into the entire territory of performative gender, but I don’t think these statements necessarily align with the gender essentialist beliefs they imply when followed to their logical conclusion. I’m genuinely interested in your perspective, as I’ve had this conversation several times now with other women with various perspectives, and my personal perspective has shifted several times. I’d be curious if you, like myself and my wife, use it as a method of hyperbolic venting, or literally, or as a litmus test for the wrong sort of men, or whatever other reasons you have. Do you feel justified in making them, or do you make them in defiance against an unjust society regardless of their actual justification?

I hope this doesn’t come across as personal criticism. I hold my own beliefs, but I constantly update and change those, so I know my views have flaws and don’t presume any authority over your views formed from your own very different experiences.

Oh right, straight sex. Duh. I suppose there are reversible surgical options to prevent conception, but I imagine most people don’t do that. Completely slipped my mind that sex can result in children because of how that has never affected me, despite my wife and I joking about trying to get each other pregnant all the time.

Getting tested is easy and usually free. I get tested just for the hell of it every time I see my endocrinologist. Seems like most people I meet for hookups also get tested relatively frequently. It’s just way easier when you can show a potential partner a recent health report.

If you’re exclusive and both have no STDs, why not?

Don’t use tipped services if you’re not going to tip. There are alternatives. You’re offloading your “political action” at the expense of the worker, while the owners won’t care. Support legislative change, don’t use your politics as an excuse to harm the workers of a service you chose to use.

Please, do not repeat this, because it’s terrible advice that causes people that otherwise could benefit greatly from antidepressants to avoid them completely. Don’t spread misinformation.

It’s true that antidepressants don’t make you happy, but they don’t categorically make you feel nothing. Every person works differently, and a drug that for some regulates emotion and prevents stress in others suppresses emotional extremes completely. For me, Lexapro made me feel nothing. For my mother, it made her feel normal again. I have a combination of drugs that make me feel normal, but for my wife, might make her feel awful. Antidepressants don’t “make you feel nothing.” Some might have that effect, but it’s the job of a psychiatrist to find the right blend for each person. It took a few tries to find mine. If your antidepressants make you feel nothing, you need different antidepressants.

Those are great questions to be asking. An artist may intend one thing, and the viewer gets another. That’s the nature of art. There is no objective right answer. I always ask myself, why did the artist make the choices they did? What is this painting trying to say by the choices in techniques and composition? Those might be hard questions to answer, depending on how much context you have, but thinking about them anyways is valuable.

Personally, I get what Pollock was going for, but it falls flat for me, whereas Rothko and others made that point more effectively. When I first view a Pollock, for example, I think, what is the subject of this painting? There is no obvious center of focus, and the play between positive and negative space is relatively even. Perhaps the subject is color, or contrast, or randomness, or even art itself. I consider each option. On first glance, I see randomness. I look closer, I see that there is intentionality, but the technique was simple (dripping). The artist is clearly capable of more advanced techniques (the background is evenly applied with precise brush strokes, and perhaps I’ve seen another painting of his that uses different techniques) but chose something simple instead. Why? Maybe to say art doesn’t need skill? Maybe to say that simplicity is beautiful?

There are no right answers, but by asking these questions I develop my critical thinking ability and understanding of art. You might ask these questions and still arrive at the answer, “I hate it, and it’s dumb.” That’s okay. It is still art, and art can mean different things to different people. It just wasn’t for you. Pollock isn’t for me, but I still gained something by thinking about the meaning and the purpose behind his paintings.

If you are interested in developing a greater appreciation, or at least understanding, of art, study the history. Even a cursory understanding of the social, political, and artistic movements of a time can tell you a lot about why an artist made the choices they did. Impressionism was a movement born out of an era of photorealism and perfect proportion. Pollock’s paintings came from an era of established subjects and rigid techniques. Regardless, you don’t need to know the history to think about art.

No, it’s a tort. A crime is a criminal offense. A tort is a civil offense. Both are illegal, meaning against the law, but whether that is civil or criminal law is the distinction.

You clearly didn’t read my whole comment. Your argument is the exact same that was made against Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, etc. It’s not about the artist. I didn’t say it was, and I don’t understand why you replied like I did. It’s about the meaning behind the art, the statement it is making. It has nothing to do with whatever influencer thing you’re talking about, and everything to do with what the art is saying.

By rejecting the traditional realism of their time, artists like Van Gogh and Monet made a statement that perfection and realism weren’t all there is to art, and that impressions of the subject can be beautiful. Artists like Rothko made the statement that the subject does not have to be literal, but can be the art itself. Cubism was all about this. Pollock is doing the exact same thing, but pushing it to an even more dramatic extreme.

IT ISN’T ABOUT THE ARTIST. Do me the basic respect of understanding this one part of my statement. It’s about art meaning something because of what techniques were used, how it is presented, when it is presented, and the context that inspired it.

What is on the page is important, but why it’s on the page and what message the art is conveying is equally so, and I’d argue much more. You continue to misinterpret this fact as not only less than quintessential to art, which any artist will tell you that it is, but insignificant and silly to consider.

Why? Why ignore the process? Why does the idea of thinking critically about what the art means and not just how the art looks make you uncomfortable? You don’t have to do anything, but trying to make an equivalence between someone taking actions in their field to challenge established ideas and someone who is only known as an artist due to unrelated atrocities is ridiculous. You’re making the exact same arguments that traditional painters made against impressionism, now widely recognized as masterful artworks (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc), which were similarly making statements about what could and could not be considered art. Just as with any of those other artists, you don’t have to like Pollock’s work, or agree with the statement he was making with it, but to act like it isn’t art, or that the things we’re saying with art don’t matter, would be pretentious.

I don’t like Pollock’s art. I don’t think the statement he was making was particularly revolutionary, and I think other artists he was contemporary with accomplished the same statement far better (Rothko). However, this “just focus on the paint on the canvas” thing is silly, and artists have widely rejected it. Art should mean something. It’s why human design and intent will always be worth more than AI’s best Monet facsimile.

What’s with the random dunking on social/sporting clubs? It’s one of the few ways available for many people to enjoy their hobbies and make new friends. “Ew?” Are you serious?

Well, almost half of women that voted supported him! Guess we’ll just have to abandon the whole lot. Problem solved.

Hitler didn’t kill millions of people to make you think about his art. Pollock intentionally wanted to create art that makes people think about what counts as art. His methods certainly worked.

There are leftist and progressive streamers making a lot of money. I would guess that more than half of streamers are not conservatives. Most successful streamers are very supportive of progressive causes and inclusivity.

It’s simply unrealistic and excessive to expect people to stop using one of the most accessible services that comes built in to most phones, and has features that cannot easily be replaced. All my privacy and data options are restricted in maps, but I’m sure they still collect some data. I have no intent though to stop using a service that is incredibly important to organizing and planning my life (traffic, community driven reports of detours, construction, cops, etc, weather specific reroutes, fuel efficiency route selection) because someone online has absolutely unrealistic expectations of others’ data privacy. Navigating to someone in maps is not the same as uploading a picture of them. Google sees my location and my destinations already. All that changes when I turn on my location tracking is that so does my wife. Your argument doesn’t make sense and is unreasonable.

That’s not “the truth,” that’s blatant transphobia. That is a statement that trans women aren’t “real” women.

Are you seriously arguing that navigating to someone’s house with Google maps is violating their privacy? When I do share my location, I’m sharing through Google maps, directly to my wife’s Google account. Google can already see my location for maps purposes. They have obtained no new information. If you are in fact arguing that using Google maps violates the privacy of anyone you navigate to, then I just don’t agree and can’t take you seriously. If you’re arguing that somehow sharing my location to my wife’s account in Google maps is somehow fundamentally different for privacy than using Google maps is already, then I just don’t understand you. You’re okay with people using maps but not sharing their location within those maps apps. That’s a very confusing moral stance.

This has nothing to do with the tracking. You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone. Turning on GPS tracking for me and my wife has not given Google new data on our locations, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I’m violating someone else’s privacy by doing so. I’ve also opted out of any app using my location without my express permission. You certainly wouldn’t have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don’t trust the corporations on the other end, because you have no idea what service, what precautions they’ve taken, and if they’re actively sharing. If you were going to do so, then you should also inspect people’s phones for having location turned on, and check all their apps permissions for location.