Bill Cammack

Reader “Justice” writes:

Ladies I have to be completely honest with you. I’m sure some of you understand and know what I’m about to say. But, I’m going to put it out there anyway.

I know a lot of you still think that you are somewhat old fashion. But come on! In this day and age how many of you are really old fashion? OK, do you know what I’m getting at yet? Alright, here is my point.

Last night I was at a bar with some friends just having a good time and chilling at our table. I was admiring and checking out the woman and yes, believe it or not, there were a decent amount of good looking women in this place. I will be going back there! But back to the discussion. While I was sitting there having a good time with my friends a pretty young lady comes up to our table and just starts up a convo and asks me to dance. I gladly accepted. We danced and had fun and that was it. No dirty dancing or talking shit to each other. She said she loved to dance and I told her if she wanted to dance again she knew where I was sitting. Well about 15 minutes later she came back for another dance. We danced two songs and then she went back to her friends and I went back to mine. We didn’t talk for the rest of the evening. At the end of the night as I made my last pit stop I stopped to say goodbye and that it was nice to meet her. She proceeded to ask if I came here much and would I be coming back. I told her it was my first time there but I think I will come back. She told me, point blank, that she liked to dance and would love to go out dancing with me sometime. I said that would be great and she said, “Here, let me give you my number.” I took her number and we took a picture together, set up a date for next week and said our goodbyes. All in all a very good night.

Now, let me stress the point here that this was not some slutty, ugly, crazy ass girl. She was very pretty, well dressed, well spoken and very sweet. OK, Ladies do you know what I am about to say?

The actions that this girl took last night made my week!!!! She knew what she wanted and took the initiative to make it known. I didn’t ask her for her number, ask her to go out, approach her or anything like that. There were no games! I HATE GAMES!!!!! Ladies, it is ok to be agressive sometimes. Don’t make us guys have to make that move all the time. You know why? Because in those kinds of games you could be losing out on something very good! In my case, I am a shy man. Don’t get me wrong, once the initial contact is made and the convo gets started I’m fine. My weakness is that I am shy about approaching and starting that convo with a lady that catches my eye. Unfortunately, some woman say that I seem kind of unapproachable at times. I don’t understand that because I’m about the friendliest person you will ever meet. But, my shyness does inhibit me a little.

Look, I don’t know where this chance meeting from last night will go. But, I can tell you that I have the utmost respect for this woman for making that move. So, ladies, drop the act that you are too good to make that move. If you like a guy and you want to meet him… don’t stand there and act like you are too good to strike up a conversation. If you do you may miss out on a really good guy. Here is a hint for you. You may like bad boys, but you will almost always regret getting involved with one. Most of the good guys are too shy to just walk up to you and start talking shit. In my case I’m a good guy but I can also be a very bad boy once you break me out of that shell.

So once again I say be aggressive and take a chance ladies! Chances are you won’t regret it!

NO SITTING ON COUCHES!!!… NONE! :/

Here’s the deal, fellaz… Kicking it to chicks is a PROCESS. It takes TIME. It takes TECHNIQUE! :D

If you’re running game @ a party, and you find yourself chickless @ 2:30am, you are now in PANIC-MODE. DEFCON-1!!! [wikipedia: This refers to maximum readiness. It is not certain whether this has ever been used, but it is reserved for imminent or ongoing attack on US military forces or US territory by a foreign military power. Use of nuclear weapons is authorized. (State of Emergency.)] It’s time to do one of two things… Step up your game…. or GO HOME AND TRY AGAIN IN THE MORNING!

Do NOT… I repeat… DO NOT SIT ON COUCHES using your regular sap-rap to chicks after 2am. :/ It’s too late for that. You don’t have time for all that “what do you do?” and “where are you from?” garbage. It’s not 2 in the afternoon… it’s 2 in the morning, and it’s time for you to put up or shut up. Let her know what you want and either get on or go home. Period.

I mean, think about it… Do you think she doesn’t KNOW what you’re trying to do, effin’ SOCIALIZING with her @ 2am? Most people in this town have been asleep for hours, but noooooo… here you are, sitting on a couch with this girl you just met, talking about birds and flowers and trees. Talking about how you grew up in XYZ country and how you love poetry and politics. $#*^((@ that! She knows you’re trying to get on. Everybody else at the party knows you’re trying to get on. The only one being fooled is YOU! Stop wasting your time, and get to the point. She’s with it or she’s not with it. Find out what time it is, ASAP.

This is the point… The girls you can “pick up” @ 2am….. are the girls you can pick up @ 2am! :D Capisce? If you can get her starting that late at night, you don’t have to put in any work. Just offer her something, and if she wants it, she’ll take it. It’s too late to act like you met her standing on line @ Shake Shack or sitting at a table in Bryant Park @ lunchtime. Nope. It’s 2am… EVERYBODY knows what time it is and what you’re trying to do. Stop pulling the wool over your own eyes and either press up on her or GET.UP.OFF.THAT.COUCH and call yourself a cab home.

DatingGenius

A reader sent in a question regarding guys getting money from girls for sex in the same way that girls get money from guys for sex……

————-

The thing about being a ho… male or female… is that you have to understand what you’re going to get and what you’re not going to get. You can get people to spend their time with you and spend their money on you, but you’re not going to be respected AT.ALL.

People that are for sale are worth the amount of money that they’re selling for. Not only that… They’re not selling anything different from the next ho, so there’s no loyalty involved or care or love or anything like that. If hoes are in it for the business, then fine, it works for them. If they’re in it thinking they’re having real relationships, they’re going to be in for a rude awakening when they get replaced by a better or cheaper ho. :)

Having said that…

In order for a male ho (called a gigolo) to match the abilities of a female ho (called a ho), you’d have to associate with women on the monetary level of the men that the hoes are dealing with. You can’t “get pizaid” off of a chick that’s working fries in the fast food establishment. It doesn’t work the same way with girls that it does with guys. A GUY could work fries ’till payday, cash his check and blow his entire savings on one night with a girl then eat cereal with water for the next two weeks, with beans for dinner. :/ Girls have things to do with their money… such as SHOP and EAT. A guy can only count on getting A PERCENTAGE of a girl’s money, while the girl can count on getting ALL of a guy’s money. :D Therefore, you have to associate with VERY well-off women if you want to score the perks that females score off of even minimum-wage-earning male ‘tricks’ (guys that pay for sex).

In general, it’s very tough for guys to get paid for having sex with girls. This is why you see so many brothels containing women for sale to men, and you don’t see ANY brothels containing men for sale to women. NONE! I think they tried it a couple of times in Amsterdam or something, but they went bankrupt. :D

The other problem is that women are actually into personalities, while men are into bodies. You’ll notice that men have Playboy Magazine and women have Harlequin Romances. You can’t REALLY be a player without having MANY skills to bring to the table. If you’re attractive and stupid, you can’t win. If you’re unattractive and smart, you can’t win! :D Meanwhile, the girls just have to look good, and they’ll have guys falling all over themselves to take them out and buy them stuff in the hopes of getting on.

What should you have done differently? ….. Hang out @ the country club instead of the mall. :D

DatingGenius

Group hug for Blip and Blip lovers, originally uploaded by gpiper.

Bill, Mike, Dina, Charles & Grace @ Slate for PodCampNYC

I wanted, and received, the understanding of what it takes to put together a weekly internet show absolutely from scratch. Before the ides of March, hehe, I had absolutely nothing….. I mean, besides outstanding equipment and infinite skillz. :D I had nothing. All I had was an idea to do a show based on films that adhered to certain parameters that friends of mine (who know who they are) told me were attractive features to have in an internet show. I chose films because I’ll never run out of them, and I chose the format because I could do everything myself and wouldn’t get hung up for shows if other people dropped the ball, like they always love to do. It’s Monday right now, and I haven’t even CONSIDERED doing a show for this Friday, except doing out-takes from “American Pimp”, and I could do that show in one afternoon. The point is that as I sit here now, I know what it takes to deliver a show four days from now that’s virtually indistinguishable from my other three episodes (Not counting the two BlogHerBiz episodes, 1, 2). That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I have.

I may or may not do a new episode of “The Lab” for this Friday. I haven’t had the chance to devote brain cell #1 to ANY of the fantastic ideas I got from BlogHer Business ’07, and I still have clips to upload from the conference. I have two very interesting ideas on the table to discuss with a couple of the BlogHer ladies, regarding text blogging, audio blogging or video blogging. I also have to start thinking about practical implementation of Justin’s ideas.

It’s also currently videoblogging week, 2007. There’s a wiki about VBW’07 @ http://videobloggingweek.pbwiki.com/, and you can search for videos tagged “videobloggingweek2007″. I might use this week to test out a daily version of “The Lab”, and STILL do my film show for Friday…

’cause I’ve Got It Like That! ;)

In response to The Lab Episode 02: American Pimp Randolfe wrote:

Now, this was really entertaining and very cool. I’ve always been fascinated by the world of prostitution.

Thanks. :)

Initially, I didn’t think the world of prostitution was interesting at all. It’s just not sporting… paying someone to have sex with you. It’s like how when you were a kid, in order to get candy that you liked, you had to wait for your parents to buy it for you and then you got it in the rations they allowed. Later in life, you have your own money, so you can afford to buy as much of that same candy as you want, whenever you want. The candy’s just as good, but there’s… I suppose “wonder” missing from the situation. It’s not a surprise that you’re getting it. You planned it, you went out and bought it. Same thing as buying chicks. *yawn*

Another problem with prostitution is that it takes YOU out of the game. If anybody can pay this chick do do what she does, you’ve accomplished nothing by paying her except guaranteeing that you get whatever service(s) she provides. That’s completely lame compared to getting out there and seeing what you can do. Same thing with strip clubs. Lame. Why go to a location where you can give the girls money, but not (legally) mess with them… instead of going to a regular bar or something and meeting a girl that you can do whatever you want with for free? I know the draw of the strip club is that the women are supposed to have fantastic bodies, but if you live somewhere like NYC, it’s just a numbers game. There’ll be another fantastic body coming down the street in about five minutes, depending on where you’re standing or what establishment you entered.

What became interesting to me about the situation was the “why” involved. I wanted to know WHY a chick would give her money to a pimp. I mean, I know WHY chicks “ho”… because they can make more money than they could with whatever skills they learned in school, or by NOT going to school. As long as she’s having sex with random guys anyway, she may as well get paid for it. What I didn’t understand was what was in it for the ho to give her money to a pimp, who seems to be doing nothing but shopping for himself, or misappropriating the funds to his benefit, as Brainy so properly explains. The pivotal statement about that is the part where the guy says “doctors need nurses, so hoes need pimps”. Once you realize that the pimp isn’t the leader, but rather the assistant… things start making perfect sense.

Personally, I have an unusual resume in this area. I believe I am one of the few men alive who has been a prostitute, a john and a madam at different times in my life.

That appears to me to be a relatively unique collection of titles, being that they require different motivations. It’s not tough to be a john, though. Just about everybody’s a john at one point or another, purely by definition. Everybody that’s ever bought a chick a drink with the intention of having sex with her is a john. He’s paid for sex, whether he got it or not. Everybody that took chicks out or spent any money or resources on them with the intention of eventually (and hopefully sooner rather than later) having sex with them is a john. Everybody that married a woman in order to (attempt to) lock her down from having sex with other guys is a john.

It’s tough to be a pimp (madam, as you describe it) for most guys, because nobody wants to go out with a ho. Nobody wants to date a ho. They want them around when it’s time to have sex, but that’s about it. In order to be a pimp, you’d have to accept that your girlfriend is going to be having sex with other guys….. which completely defeats the purpose of calling her your girlfriend in the first place, so cognitive dissonance usually screws that one up.

I traveled the world for four decades, off and on, with a Woodrow Wilson Scholar who spoke seven languages, was brilliant and a chronic alcoholic. We spent an inordinate amount of time drinking in Red Light Districts.

He was exclusively homosexual but loved talking to the girls, barmen, cab-drivers and patrons about their lives. I was a “situational bisexual” who’d setlle for a real girl if a feminine male couldn’t be found.

YIKES! hahaha You remind me of the discussions where people like to claim that men that have sex (intentionally) with men in jail aren’t homosexuals… BECAUSE… there weren’t any women around! HAHAHAHAHA

You understand how women came to be deemed “property” when a woman in Brazil gives you a card with her home address on it and asks you to come visit her in the afternoon (after you’ve screwed for money) because she is looking for “any man” to support her and rescue her from the life.

Well, I mean, it wasn’t until August, 1920, according to that women were allowed to vote in all states of the USA. , Page 4, “Most states adopted the English common law system which provided that a husband and wife were one person, and the one was the husband. All personal property owned or acquired by the wife became the property of the husband, and he had the absolute right to control all real property owned by the wife”. There’s tons more stuff that I don’t feel like finding right now that indicate that seeing women as NOT property in patriarchal societies such as ours is a relatively new concept.

The point being that without the ability to vote and make laws that would benefit them and without the ability to get jobs that guys just wouldn’t let them have, there’s no way a woman could own property. If she can’t own property, the only way she’s going to get it is if she marries someone, and then he leaves it to her in his will. Even under those circumstances, if she got married again, by law, her husband would have absorbed whatever she had gained from the previous marriage. There was no way for a woman to ‘get ahead’ at the time, so renting herself out permanently to a marriage or temporarily in order to make ends meet isn’t much of a stretch… and I’m talking about America, hahaha FORGET about Brazil! :D

I’d hesitate to even call women in the condition you describe “property”, since they can be had for so few $USD. There are enough sites that I’m not going to link to that have endless descriptions of what you can get in whatever country with some ridicuolus economy. You can have women all night and all the next day for what you might spend out with your friends for a night having drinks in Manhattan.

What’s so amazing about “pimping” (from my point of view) is that a pimp turns the normal straight world upside down. He has these women going out and slaving away to give him all their earnings. Meanwhile, the traditional husband goes out and slaves all day to turn all his earnings over to his wife & kids.

Well, that’s exactly what it is, a reversal. Like I mentioned earlier, it makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of the woman as the pivotal character. It’s not so much that pimps are CREATING hoes, as I originally thought. It’s more that the women are hoes ALREADY, and as such, require or look for a certain type of man to involve themselves with. The pimp appears to the ho as someone who’s worth paying for in order to procure their time and/or attention. The pimp likes the money more than the ho, and the ho likes the pimp more than the money, so it’s a fair exchange. She gets to hang out with the pimp, and he gets to go shopping with the money she makes on the corner.

In a traditional husband situation, the value is in the female. She represents his opportunity to have sex at the drop of a hat instead of going out in the street and trying to find and convince a chick to have sex with him. She also represents the opportunity for him to procreate, as well as someone to raise the kids while he’s at work. This starts all the way back at dating, like I mentioned before. The guy gets used to buying her drinks and paying for her to eat or go to the movies, and it’s only a natural continuation that he continues to go to work to ‘bring home the bacon’.

The potential consequence for NOT utilizing money to maintain the relationship is infidelity, which could lead to his ONE girlfriend or wife or whatever leaving him (thus taking the immediate availability of sex with her), or much worse than that….. He might end up on the Maury show with seven other guys who might be the father of “his” new baby. :O

The way prostitutes toss around money when they have it is puzzling. Some believe it is an “easy-come and easy-go” mentality. Several prostitutes, male and female, have told me that they will go out clubbing and blow most of all their night’s earnings on partying and drugs “because you have to do something to relax after all that you’ve gone through to make the money”.

That’s interesting. I have nothing to add to that because I don’t know any actual hoes. I mean, I know “easy” chicks, but not actual professional get-paid-to-have-sex chicks. The easy chicks either have sex just because they enjoy having sex or because they feel it’s an indication that SOMEBODY likes them. Either way, since they don’t make any money from that, I’ve never heard of what you just mentioned.

I always tell people that “working Hollywood Blvd for one summer in the late 1950s” was the best 3-months of life education I ever received. Indeed, it enabled me to get up and go to a 9 to 5 job for the rest of my life with no regrets.

Another concept I don’t have an educated opinion on, due to no experience whatsoever with prostitutes. I would guess however that the randomness and potential danger of the situation would point out how easy it is to get on a subway every morning, spend all of one’s daylight hours in a job, having regurgitated conversations at the water cooler, then coming home, eating dinner, watching some completely biased news and then some form of find-the-criminals-by-science show and then going to sleep only to wake up and do the exact same thing again when you wake up. It’s like even though you’re only making minimum wage, at least you’re guaranteed a certain amount of money at the end of a two-week period. Fringe benefits being stuff like it’s incredibly unlikely that someone’s going to toss you out of a moving car while you’re working “fries” at the fast food restaurant.

Actually, the pimps profiled in the clips here remind me of “pitch men” of sorts. I think their ’sharp’ manner of talking and ‘being operators’ resembled Bill’s persona. Now, I’m not advising Bill to become a pimp (if given the opportunity). Nor am I advising him to decline the opportunity should it arise :-).

hahaha Nope! Not my style. Too much work. :) The ROI is incredibly low. Not only that, but the fact of the matter is that you’re depending on someone else (or several chicks) to give you money. If something happens to that chick, you’re DONE! :D It’s like gambling… like trying to make a living playing the lottery every week. Besides that, I’d be skeeved out that some chick was messing with several guys all day, then wanted to come hang out with ME! hahaha YEESH! :) Pimping is for guys that like money more than chicks…. I’m not one of those guys.

Having said that, I’m not advocating spending money ON chicks. That’s trickin’, like I mentioned before. I’m just saying… Given the option between wasting 8 hours doing some job to get money and hanging out all day with a chick I enjoy… you’ll find me in Belmar sipping Maragaritas. :D

For sure, he’d be perfect to play the role of a “slick pimp” in some future blockbuster movie. However, he’ll probably do just as well pimping some new “techie thing” instead of some new “titty thing” :-).

I rarely receive such intelligent (and somewhat flattering) responses to my thoughtful postings on vlogs. But I felt my insights were greatly appreciated last time around so I thought I’d chance sharing them once more.

Obviously, you have some unique viewpoints. You might need to start your own “street life” blog. :)

Bill, here’s looking forward to seeing you at the Oscars! :-)

I’ll let you know when someone offers me a project that I think might go. ;)

NewTeeVee.com reports that Viacom sued YouTube and Google today over the display of copyrighted materials.

Of course, this makes sense with all the pirated material on YouTube….

Another NewTeeVee article may shed extra light on the situation, since Viacom has signed on to be a content partner with Joost. An amount of your value to a particular site as a content creator or producer is that people HAVE to go to that site to see your content. If people are ripping your videos to YouTube, your effectiveness is diluted, AND _your_group_ doesn’t get any credit for the hits or popularity of your own content. It all goes to the pirate, along with whomever subscribes to that channel in the hopes of finding even more of your content.

I’m still waiting to see what YouTube’s going to do about revenue-sharing with non-professional content creators. I’d like to see what their plan is to monetize the channels of the popular YT characters like Boh3m3 and TheHill88 and LisaNova an even the proven-to-be-scripted Lonelygirl15.

Hopefully, there’ll be money left over for people who are actually creative on YouTube after deals are made to pay off the lawsuits about the blatant and rampant piracy of previously-made, copyrighted content.

Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack

Reader “Justice” writes:

Ladies I have to be completely honest with you. I’m sure some of you understand and know what I’m about to say. But, I’m going to put it out there anyway.

I know a lot of you still think that you are somewhat old fashion. But come on! In this day and age how many of you are really old fashion? OK, do you know what I’m getting at yet? Alright, here is my point.

Last night I was at a bar with some friends just having a good time and chilling at our table. I was admiring and checking out the woman and yes, believe it or not, there were a decent amount of good looking women in this place. I will be going back there! But back to the discussion. While I was sitting there having a good time with my friends a pretty young lady comes up to our table and just starts up a convo and asks me to dance. I gladly accepted. We danced and had fun and that was it. No dirty dancing or talking shit to each other. She said she loved to dance and I told her if she wanted to dance again she knew where I was sitting. Well about 15 minutes later she came back for another dance. We danced two songs and then she went back to her friends and I went back to mine. We didn’t talk for the rest of the evening. At the end of the night as I made my last pit stop I stopped to say goodbye and that it was nice to meet her. She proceeded to ask if I came here much and would I be coming back. I told her it was my first time there but I think I will come back. She told me, point blank, that she liked to dance and would love to go out dancing with me sometime. I said that would be great and she said, “Here, let me give you my number.” I took her number and we took a picture together, set up a date for next week and said our goodbyes. All in all a very good night.

Now, let me stress the point here that this was not some slutty, ugly, crazy ass girl. She was very pretty, well dressed, well spoken and very sweet. OK, Ladies do you know what I am about to say?

The actions that this girl took last night made my week!!!! She knew what she wanted and took the initiative to make it known. I didn’t ask her for her number, ask her to go out, approach her or anything like that. There were no games! I HATE GAMES!!!!! Ladies, it is ok to be agressive sometimes. Don’t make us guys have to make that move all the time. You know why? Because in those kinds of games you could be losing out on something very good! In my case, I am a shy man. Don’t get me wrong, once the initial contact is made and the convo gets started I’m fine. My weakness is that I am shy about approaching and starting that convo with a lady that catches my eye. Unfortunately, some woman say that I seem kind of unapproachable at times. I don’t understand that because I’m about the friendliest person you will ever meet. But, my shyness does inhibit me a little.

Look, I don’t know where this chance meeting from last night will go. But, I can tell you that I have the utmost respect for this woman for making that move. So, ladies, drop the act that you are too good to make that move. If you like a guy and you want to meet him… don’t stand there and act like you are too good to strike up a conversation. If you do you may miss out on a really good guy. Here is a hint for you. You may like bad boys, but you will almost always regret getting involved with one. Most of the good guys are too shy to just walk up to you and start talking shit. In my case I’m a good guy but I can also be a very bad boy once you break me out of that shell.

So once again I say be aggressive and take a chance ladies! Chances are you won’t regret it!

http://www.renzogracie.com/news.aspx

January, 2007 News

1/5/2007

Congratulations to Carlos Feliz for recieving his blue belt!! Carlos came back from a dislocated shoulder to earn his blue belt with true Gracie Jiu Jitsu spirit. Congratulations again to Carlos for his big heart and hard training mentality!

Congrats to Carlos, because of whom I was privileged to watch the Renzo Gracie vs. Carlos Newton fight in person @ Mohegan Sun last month!

Their caption says it all… almost…

What it doesn’t say is that Renzo Gracie himself was instrumental in making sure that Carlos’ injury wasn’t as bad as it DEFINITELY COULD have been. I know Carlos has thanked him personally and sincerely, but I’d like to add my thanks as well to Renzo for going “above and beyond” what’s expected or perhaps required of someone running a school or leading any kind of group. That love for and attention to his students is what has created the enthusiastic and hard-working family that surrounds him.

CONGRATS, CARLOS!!! :D

As I was wasting my day, I stumbled into Yahoo 360. I’m not sure how I got there. I think I was browsing MyBlogLog and one of the members in my contact list had a Yahoo 360 page, and when I clicked on it, I found out that I had a Yahoo account, but not a Yahoo 360 account. I figured this was similar to having an XBOX but not having an XBOX 360, so I joined up right quick. It’s a simple process, and your avatar transfers automatically.

ummmmmmmm…..

So now what do I do with this? Apparently, from the home page, there’s a page to get you to the news, there are pages so you can set up your profile and check your mail, and then there’s “search”. That’s it…. When you go to search, you can either search people by location and age, or you can search people or feeds by key words. From there, you can read stuff and invite people to your friends list. oh… There’s also a list that someone creates for you called “Interesting Pages on Yahoo 360″… Interesting to whom? Who chose this stuff? I’m not seeing the 360-ness of this aspect of Yahoo.

If you go back to regular Yahoo, there’s a bunch of stuff on the main page. I decided I needed to see what other people found so interesting about 360, so I googled “benefit of yahoo 360″. I got a lot of pages of people that weren’t getting any benefit from it at all. Three pages into the google listings, I spied “dykes do digital”, so you KNOOOOWWWWW I had to click on THAT! :D

http://www.dykesdodigital.org/yahoo-360-mandatory-binary-gender-choice-sucks/

“… I’m REALLY REALLY disappointed that I have to a) choose male or female as a gender and b) I have no choice about making it public or not.. it’s mandatory that the bit is made public, and searchable.

It stinks.

At the very minimum, I should be able to choose whether I want that info public or not. Better: I could tag my gender, or at least get a text box. Something. Throw us people of complexity a bone here. And, in the best of all possible worlds, *I wouldn’t have to be asked in the first place because no one would give a crap* in some sort of ridiculous institutional put-people-in-boxes sort of way because we feel the need to LOCK DOWN and CONTROL every bit of stray METADATA we think might be appropriate. I love metadata, too. But not when used against people, to fix them down and gloss over things that are really, really important and complex, like how you feel about your gender. In case anyone has been living under a rock since the dawn of time: GENDER IS A COMPLEX, PROBLEMATIC ISSUE. Complicated by the vast long history of sexism, culture, sociology, biology, technology, politics.

You can’t just collapse all of that INTO A LITTLE CHECKBOX.

Okay, I’ve had my tirade, now, thanks. ;)”

Hmm… The title of “her” post was “Yahoo 360 mandatory binary gender choice sucks”. So I needed to go look up “gender”. :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

So now, things start to get ‘interesting’. “She” was complaining that there was a binary (meaning only two) choice for gender. That would make Male (1) and Female (2). ummmmmm….. How many more genders does she want? What’s she expecting the distinctions to be? Or perhaps her idea is for there to be no distinctions at all. You can just be whatever you feel like being, whenever you feel like being it. Like… if someone engages you in conversation, instead of not declaring a gender at all, you get to say “I’m vague, thank you” or “I’m ambiguous” or “Is it Tuesday? I’m kind of a chick on Tuesdays… but not really”. I suppose if someone walks up to you and accuses you of being a human, you’d like to be able to say you’re a beetle… or perhaps a cow. So I read on to see what wikipedia had to say.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

“Since the 1950s, the term gender has been increasingly used to distinguish a social role (gender role) and/or personal identity (gender identity) distinct from biological sex. Sexologist John Money wrote in 1955, ‘The term gender role is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It includes, but is not restricted to, sexuality in the sense of eroticism.’[5] Elements of such a role include clothing, speech patterns, movement and other factors not solely limited to biological sex.”

Disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy, man, girl or woman? So, if a guy decides to “disclose himself as a girl”, that’s supposed to make him a girl and there’s supposed to be a gender choice on Yahoo 360 for “guys that disclose themselves as girls”? :?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

“Many societies categorize all individuals as either male or female.. however, this is not universal. Some societies recognise a third gender[6].. for instance, Native American Two-Spirit people, and hijras of India and Pakistan[7].. or even a fourth[8] or fifth.[9] Such categories may be an intermediate state between male and female, a state of sexlessness, or a distinct gender not dependent on male and female gender roles. Joan Roughgarden argues that in some non-human animal species, there can also be said to be more than two genders, in that there might be multiple templates for behavior available to individual organisms with a given biological sex.[10]
There is debate over to what extent gender is a social construct and to what extent it is a biological construct. One point of view in the debate is social constructionism, which suggests that gender is entirely a social construct. Contrary to social constructionism is essentialism which suggests that it is entirely a biological construct. Others’ opinions on the subject lie somewhere in between.
Some gender associations are changing as society changes, yet much controversy exists over the extent to which gender roles are simply stereotypes, arbitrary social constructions, or natural innate differences.”

How interesting is THAT? Maybe she’s onto something! :D

side note: I’m going to have to get back to that “Native American Two-Spirit people” idea…..

So, let’s say Yahoo 360 is released in India… People there should be complaining that there are only two divisions as well. Do you get the extra genders if you register in India?!?! :D hehehe Maybe she should make a foreign account and see what happens.

While we’re at it… Where’s the part where we get to declare that we have several wives? Shouldn’t the sultans be up in arms about this? How come we can’t go on Match.com and declare that we have 8 wives and are looking to date? :D All we get to put is stuff like “married” “single” “in a relationship”… Isn’t this as bad as *ONLY* having Male and Female to choose from in gender selection? :O Where’s the selection for “I’m screwing several chicks right now, and I’m looking for more women that want to get with this program?” hahahaha

Well… I’m off to research how gender is a social construct and learn about the Two-Spirit people! :D

So I’m talking to this chick, and she’s telling me she thinks her baby knows what her name is. The baby’s only a few months old, so there’s clearly no way this is possible.

Babies don’t come out of the box equipped with the ability to parse statements in the language of their parents. This means that it’s just as easy for the baby to select someone’s name from a bunch of gibberish which happens to be English for me to select someone’s name out of a sentence spoken in Swahili. I do not KNOW Swahili, so I would have no idea of knowing which bunch of syllables is a proper name. I wouldn’t know which words represent verbs and I wouldn’t know which words represent nouns. I’m not saying “if I were a few-months-old-baby”… I’m saying RIGHT NOW! :D I would have NO IDEA what someone is saying in a language that I don’t understand. The only way I would have a chance is if the name in that language is similar to a name in English, the language that *I* speak and understand. That comes from years of hearing and understanding people’s names as well as having a grasp of the English language, as well as being more than a few months old.

This is why you can teach babies any language you want. They don’t come out with abilities in English, Swahili, French… none of that. The baby learns language from whomever teaches the baby language. First of all, babies don’t understand that people are called by NAMES at all. That’s a construct. If people called each other by numbers, this same person would swear that the baby knew that that set of numbers pertained to her. :D Every time someone uttered those numbers in that sequence, the baby would think they were talking about her. This assumes that the baby understands numbers. This assumes that the baby understands sequences. This assumes that the baby can parse sentences. This assumes a lot of things that just aren’t true.

I’m sure women would LOVE TO BELIEVE that their children know their names the first time the doctor slaps them, hahaha but it’s just not true. Also, it assumes that people call that woman the same thing over and over. What if people call her different things in front of the baby? I’ve gone to a few places where someone foreign to American customs was not aware that Bill is another name for William. They had NO IDEA that both of those names refer to the same person. These were GROWN PEOPLE in service-industry jobs. Why is it that they had no idea it’s the same name? Because it’s not in their custom… It’s not what they grew up with. They also wouldn’t know that Chuck is a name for Charles or that Dick is a name for Richard (Dick Nixon?). Similarly, babies don’t come equipped with the understanding that when someone utters several syllables in a row, or even worse, one syllable made up of a couple of consonants and a vowel, that it’s a representation of ANYONE, including their own mothers.

If you believe this is true, feel free to record someone saying your name over and over, and see how many times your baby thinks that recording is talking about you. :D Maybe have someone hold your baby and have them say your name over and over and see how many times your baby looks in your direction. Better yet… have someone say your name in Swahili, since you think babies understand languages they haven’t been taught yet right off the bat! :D