#eadm words

[elalmadelmar]

Hot take: at the end of the day, privilege is a material, measurable phenomenon. We identify privilege when we identify that the privileged group, taken as a statistical block, experiences a range of particular improved outcomes versus the overall population average.

Whenever I see people talking about whether or not trans men experience male privilege, I see them talking about hypotheticals and anecdotes. "What if a trans man who has had...." or "well this one trans guy I know has said he..." Privilege isn't about a trans man or some trans men. Does the population of trans men experience this?

Pointing at individuals to argue against the disprivilege of groups is nonsensical. Alice Walton is worth US$101 billion; her fortune does not disprove the overall economic subjugation of women. Stephen Hawking was a household name, and remains easily recognizable years after his death; his prominence does not disprove the overall public marginalization and invisibility of disabled people.

When you're talking privileges, you're talking the concrete aggregate experiences of real people, not the demographic equivalent of a perfectly spherical cow in a vacuum. That's what your hypothetical fully passing trans man who has had all possible surgeries is; he has no inconvenient biology, he has no social ties to his previous life, he has no history, and he ultimately has no material reality. And somehow, he gets treated as though if he can be admitted into the patriarchal class of the privileged, then that must be the ultimate truth of the transmasculine experience.

Perfectly Passing Georg is an outlier and should not have been counted.

[elalmadelmar]

I have a question for the librarians/ library workers of Tumblr

Is it annoying or bothersome when library patrons place requests for items that are not especially competitive or are just sitting there on the shelf at the branch they ask for pickup at? I tend to do this because I'm crap at a) remembering the thing I want to look for and b) finding what is sitting directly in front of my face. I know using the library is good and intended, but I worry about the library workers feeling like I'm using them to do my legwork.

Requesting things that don't require requests because they're already there and available

I hate it when people do this. OP should stop.

I don't love it, but it's not the worst

Meh, I don't care.

This is not necessary but is not a problem

I love it when people do this!!

Nuance I'll provide below

Not a library worker

Voting ended onJan 8, 2025

[elalmadelmar]

There is a huge, critically important difference between "things people should not do" and "things people should not be allowed to do." Blurring the distinction between those categories happens in every part of the ideological map, and every time, it's lowkey horrifying.

The second you get that word allowed in there (or any variant on the concept) you've suddenly brought in a whole truckload of presumptions around detection, determination, and enforcement that don't exist when the statement is simply shouldn't do it. When you say shouldn't be allowed to, suddenly you're saying that an authority figure of some type, whether it's law enforcement, the justice system, an employment tribunal, a regulatory organization, or a group leader, should be empowered to determine the truth of whether the infraction has occurred or not and should have the power to leverage a penalty against transgressors.

And like, sometimes that's valid! I'm not saying that no action at all ever should be outlawed. What I am saying though is that we should carefully consider, in isolation from the question of whether or not a particular action should be done at all, is whether that action should be punishable.

You shouldn't be rude to random people on the street. Why? Cause you're inflicting hurt, however small and temporary, on people who have done nothing to you. You're increasing the negativity in the world for no reason. Okay, that's a fine concept. But when you turn it into you shouldn't be allowed to be rude to random people on the street, now we're in a horrible dystopia where there's Pleasantry Cops on the corner and if you don't smile at random passersby, you're in danger of getting arrested. That's horrific.

And even with more serious infractions. You shouldn't cheat on your partner. Okay. I think we can all generally agree on that! (Reminder that consensual polyamory or open relationships aren't cheating; cheating as a concept specifically entails breaking the agreements the relationship is founded upon.)

But in places in the world where infidelity is legally punishable, it's a weapon of state morality enforcement that 1) somehow mysteriously (ha) only gets leveraged against women, and 2) is very frequently used to further traumatize women who have been raped and dared to seek justice. And even if you posit that a state could potentially enact a ban on infidelity that is equitable and does not punish victims of sexual assault, you're still inviting state scrutiny into people's bedrooms and consensual sexual behavior, something that has never, not ever, in the history of the entire world, gone well.

That's all true, and still, cheating on a partner is bad and you shouldn't do it! But you should absolutely be allowed to do it because the alternative is so much worse.

And of course, flip side, there are certainly things that you indeed shouldn't be allowed to do. I am perfectly fine and comfortable with saying you shouldn't be allowed to murder people. It is reasonable that when someone has met a violent death, the state apparatus gets involved and starts digging into how that was done, by whom was it done, and why was it done. There's certainly ways that prohibitions on killing can be implemented inequitably, but it's generally recognized that preventing bloodshed and indiscriminate slaughter is a useful purpose of civil society and the implementation of the same is by and large more beneficial than harmful.

Taking the time to separate "should people do this" from "should people be allowed to do this" is critical to discussing public policy in any kind of meaningful way, and I encourage people to always ask these questions and consider them separately and independently of each other. What would disallowing X action entail? What are the boundaries of defining X action in a legally enforceable way?

The key takeaway, if anything, is that everything not prohibited is allowed, and the passive voice "be allowed" in saying people shouldn't be allowed to do that takes a massive sidestep around the questions of by whom and how would the thing be prohibited and punished. Don't let the sidestep simply happen. Tackle the questions face on. If a thing should be prohibited, what are the prevention and enforcement mechanisms? Are they fair? Are they worth it?

[elalmadelmar]

Wheel of Time 30-Day Challenge 12/30

Prompt list here

12. What are the main weaknesses of The Wheel of Time?

Oh geez, that's.... that's a pretty broad topic! I have loved this series for.... over a quarter century at this point (holy fuck) but even I have to admit that it's got some significant shortcomings as well as strengths. I can't possibly cover everything in this post, but I'll try to hit the things that always jump out at me hardest.

Since this is a generally negative kind of post, I'm putting it under a cut.

Stereotypes. While Jordan is generally good at treating his various factions as being full of individual people who aren't necessarily in ideological lockstep with each other, he still very aggressively assigns each group 1-2 dominant traits that every! single! member! must portray in constant overwhelming spades. And when I say "faction" I mean groups of any size and particularity from individual Ajahs all the way up to "all women ever." The most egregious is the "slut" trait. There is absolutely zero reason, none whatsoever, for the Green Ajah to be the "man-crazy" Ajah, other than a sort of oppositional parallelism to the Red, but that stereotype is chokingly pervasive. Similarly, every single Domani woman is almost obsessively seductive. Is there not a single woman from Arad Doman who isn't lounging around in skin-tight clothes and fluttering her eyelashes at men? C'mon.

Feminism. I'm ambivalent on this one, because it's really clear that Jordan is doing his absolute damnedest to write a traditionally-styled high fantasy epic that empowers women and treats them as equal players, and in the context of the time that WoT was being written, he does a really good job! Contrast with contemporaries like ASOIAF, Shannara, etc, and by comparison Jordan's practically knocking it out of the park. But man, he still falls flat on his face in so many places. This is related to the stereotypes point above: his women are not nearly as varied in personality and particularly interpersonal skills as they ought to be, and in particular they are almost always controlling, backstabby, and mildly-to-majorly condescending toward the men they interact with. While the women in WoT are empowered and capable, the gender segregation (everywhere except among the Seanchan and Darkfriends, interestingly) is deeply pervasive and nigh-impregnable.

Romance. I'm willing to forgive Jordan this one more than the previous two, because it's a little clearer to me that this is more about what stories he's interested in telling or not, but man. None of his romantic relationships are even a little bit emotionally compelling, you know? Characters fall in love because he points their faces at each other and goes "keep running into each other until you kiss." There's no sense of compatibility, no sense of characters actually meshing in interesting ways, there's absolutely no internality of romance or real connection that I can find. Jordan's not here to write love stories -- he's interested in how romantic relationships function as tools in the larger narrative rather than in the characters' internal experiences. Because of these connections, how do characters act? What accesses to other people do they gain, and what accesses do they lose? It's an approach that echoes the theme of the Pattern being woven around the characters, where romances are more about who needs to be able to do what (ie Perrin having Faile to push him and overcome his natural reserve and inertia, or Mat's connection to Tuon maneuvering him into place to lead the Seanchan as well as the Randlanders during Tarmon Gaidon) but without the internality, it all feels like jamming Barbies together and pretending they're kissing.

[elalmadelmar]

Wheel of Time 30-Day Challenge 9/30

Prompt list here

9. Which of the Chosen is the most effective villain, and who is just a complete disaster?

Ooh, interesting division. Because the division between effective and disaster is not really black-and-white, you can be a real hot mess and still get shit done. Like, through the Watsonian lens, in terms of overall impact in favor of the DO's plans and strategies, I think Demandred was probably the most overall effective? Bringing in the Sharans was huge, even though it means on a Doylist level Demandred was Sir Not Appearing In This Series for 99% of the runtime, so his impact on the reader is minimal. From a more Doylist, as-the-reader perspective I would hand the crown of overall effectiveness to Taim/M'hael. There's this fantastic slow-rolling disaster where you can see Rand critically fumbling his relationship with Taim from the very start, in ways that are fully realistic and in-character for Rand as someone who is having to learn all his leadership skills at the sprint. And boy, stealing the majority of the Black Tower right out from under Rand's nose and turning them over to the DO is a massive coup for the Shadow!

As for complete disasters, I think Moghedien probably wins that one. Thanks to her letting Nynaeve collar her when Nynaeve could barely channel, the Aes Sedai relearned several critically important weaves that had been lost to them for millennia, and there's nothing Moggy really did for the Shadow to offset that critical failure. Though, I do give her props for absolutely destroying Liandrin. That was a very satisfying scene.

[elalmadelmar]

Wheel of Time 30-Day Challenge 14/30

Prompt list here

14. Does Mat’s love for Tuon humanize a tyrant, or does it make Mat complicit in her crimes?

Hmm, that's a heck of a weird dichotomy set up there! And quite honestly, I'd challenge the premises both sides are set up on.

-> Does Mat's love for Tuon humanize a tyrant? Well, humanizing a tyrant would kind of have to involve showing us human traits in that tyrant, which Mat's odd sense of love for her doesn't really do, y'know? What he feels for her tells us about him, not her, particularly with Jordan's deep reserve in writing matters of romance (and while Sanderson can write better romances, I get the feeling he was far too busy running around desperately trying to put plot threads to bed with some semblance of good order to spend time on The Grand Love Story of Mat and Tuon, you feel me?) So, Mat getting little heart flutters around Tuon doesn't make Tuon any less of what she is.

-> or does it make Mat complicit in her crimes? Given how explicitly and entirely he has no idea what he's getting into with her and with the Seanchan in general, I'm very leery of the idea that he can be considered complicit at any point during the on-page story. Sure, if he stays with her in the long run he'll end up getting molded more and more into what being the Prince of the Ravens is all about, and complicity will come there, but the simple fact of falling in love with Tuon doesn't equal automatic complicity in the iron fist of the Seanchan Empire.

Overall, too, I think the framing of this question kind of misunderstands one of the themes of the series. Jordan is pretty clear, although less explicit than with some of his other themes, that being a leader means sometimes having to be a complete bastard, and also that someone newly come into leadership can't just march in and completely upend generations of ingrained cultural practice. They can make changes, sure, and even pretty big ones, but those changes come at a huge cost, especially when the newly-minted leader in question doesn't have the benefit of being ta'veren (ie wearing plot armor). The farther they push their people away from what those people have always known, the more resistance, rebellion, or outright failure they're going to encounter, and making changes is always better done through maneuvering and careful long-term pressure rather than simple fiat.

And, similarly, crime is very much in the eye of the beholder -- or rather, the society of the beholder. The Seanchan Empire is a dictatorship, no doubt about it. What they consider criminal, and what they consider perfectly hunkydory, are deliberately quite alien to the people of Randland, to the Aiel, and probably even to folks beyond the Waste, though we don't ever get their opinions on the matter directly. But then, some of the standards of Randland are equally cockeyed to us as the readers. And judging Tuon by standards altogether different from the ones she was brought up with and trained to her bones to uphold.... eh, I don't really buy it.

And as a final point, I'd say it's pretty clear throughout the series that loving someone doesn't mean agreeing with them or justifying their actions. To say that Mat's love for Tuon either makes him complicit in her tyranny or humanizes her (which, she's human isn't she?) is to suggest that love implies some shift of guilt, either off of Tuon or onto Mat. And I just don't think that's true -- either in general or in the context of the story!

[elalmadelmar]

Wheel of Time 30-Day Challenge 13/30

Prompt list here

13. Is Egwene al'Vere a hero who did what was necessary to save the White Tower, or did she become as manipulative and power-hungry as the Aes Sedai she sought to reform?

Ohhh, do not come to me with this foul slander against my best girl Egwene! Not only does she do what's necessary to save the White Tower, she also takes on additional challenges beyond what's already facing her in order to set it up for success in the changed world she anticipates after Tarmon Gaidon. Her arc isn't about becoming manipulative and power-hungry -- it's about recognizing that the Tower was critically stagnating and taking charge in order to not only get it through the Last Battle without going utterly to pieces but also about revitalizing it, building new connections with the channellers in other societies, and leading from the front rather than playing spider behind the scenes. The Amyrlin Seat is always going to be a political position, because when you're dealing with groups of people you are always, always, ALWAYS going to be dealing with politics, that's just how people work! But Egwene starts from a position of profound weakness as a figurehead and plays by the rules they hand her until she can show them how those rules are a weakness rather than a strength and push for a better Tower.

[elalmadelmar]

Wheel of Time 30-Day Challenge 10/30

Prompt list here

10. Does gender play a role in the “Good vs. Evil” struggle, or is the One Power the only place where gender truly matters?

See, I think this is the wrong bracketing. The Good vs Evil struggle is the one place in the series where I would say gender truly does not matter, and everywhere else -- the One Power, worldbuilding, character relationships, politics, gender provides one of the fundamental underlying tensions of the series. BUT! In the matter of good and evil, Light vs Shadow, Creator vs Dark One, Jordan is so so so specific that both women and men are equally likely to be drawn to evil or good, equally likely to turn to the Shadow whether for good or deeply petty reasons, and equally likely to reject the Shadow for the same. I appreciate that about his writing. Given how fully gender is baked into everything else, he really went out of his way to make sure he wasn't imputing any kind of objective moral state to either gender.