New subject: [Gendergap] Relevant Post “About Female Action Heroes” + Thoughts about empowering women and youth

24 Mar 2013

Hi all,

happy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover (a.k.a: Pesach) and upcoming Western
Easter (which some people may know as the day before the day with all the cheap
chocolate) and hope you are enjoying the Northern Hemisphere spring where
spring is present.

««««
Note: this post is both opinionated and a bit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfeminism and post-Buffyist (there was a post
about some post-Buffy shows on http://moshez.livejournal.com/ , but Google does
not find it), and so may offend some people. It was not the first post I made
to this list and while being a straight male, I'm honestly not a sexist person,
so I'm going to risk it. 

Feel free to let me know if you have problems with anything I said here and
I'll try to reply in the Verbal Judo fashion -
http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html 
»»»

Well, anyway, you may wish to peruse reading this post that I've written on my
blog as a reply to a different and older post by the wonderful Katrina Hill
( https://twitter.com/ActionChick ) on her http://actionflickchick.com/ blog:

* http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/2396.html - “About Female Action Heroes”.

* Original post -
http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wired-interviews-the-action-flick-c…
- part of my motivation for publishing the post on unarmed.shlomifish.org is
because the original page ate my original comment and because the second
comment became devoid of links.

-----

Anyway, in the post I start from the premise of the post of discussing
awesome female ass-kickers, go on to discuss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_%28TV_series%29 and other
shows I watched back around the Web 1.0 days, and their influence on my work
as a writer of fiction and essays. Then I cover the so-called Judeo-Christian
ethics and why they have discriminated against women (and to a lesser but
also important extent - men), followed by what I think is an action hero.

Then I cover several prominent Jewesses who championed the break from the
Judeo-Christian ethical system.

-----

Anyway, part of my theme in my stories (see
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/stories/ ) and some of the recent essays (and
I hope you don't take it the wrong way) is that in order to gain true
liberation, females should be:

#. Competent
#. Confident
#. Resourceful
#. Not feel bound by many invisible or stupid rules.
#. Take decisive action and risks
#. Not read into the minds of people who open doors to them. Seize
opportunities.
#. Realise that "reality to be conquered must be obeyed", and not try to make
unnecessary enemies by semantical accusations ("Girl? Does she call you a
'boy'
by any chance?").
#. Interact with men rather than exclude themselves from them.
#. Be forgiving and not hold a grudge against people for their past sins. 
#. Etc.

And all that while not depriving themselves of sexuality and sexiness among
members of the appropriate sexes (MOTAS), in part because being sexually
attractive (and naturally - not only physically) is indicative of
competence and values, rather than the opposite as was sometimes implied
recently.

Slashdot reported that
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/06/2228210/how-men-and-women-badly-…

men are thought to be smarter than women despite the fact that males and
females are fairly equal overall in intelligence tests, both men and women
think that their fathers are smarter than their mothers, and that their sons
are smarter than their daughters. I think part of the problem is that men are
conditioned or encouraged to be more showy in what they know and do (not
saying why this is the case), and flaunt their knowledge and intelligence, even
if they are not 100% sure that what they say is true, and they take risks more
doing that. This is while women tend to need to be sure that what they say and
do is 100% right and flawfree.

-----------------

I think that technology not only empowers females, but also youth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith was a female and was only 10 years
old when she helped end the cold war, by the simple act of writing a letter.
Similarly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Aragon was female and 10 y.o when
she became an Internet sensation by doing a simple piano+vocals cover of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_This_Way (but one which I like better than
the original).

Paul Graham discussed the empowering of youth here -
http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html (What You'll Wish You'd Known - advice
for high school students) and here - http://www.paulgraham.com/lies.html (Lies
We Tell Kids), and I'm planning to cover it here:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/putting-all-cards-on-the-ta…

There is no good reason why young people should necessarily always be less able
than their older peers, just because we've recently been conditioned to expect
children and teenagers to be locked in a pre-school environment which is
distanced from the outer world. During the middle ages, craftsman finished
their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece (which now means something
completely different) at a young age, and got married at a much younger age
than today.

Thanks to technology (both tangible and mental) we can expect youth
to become empowered again. I'm glad I started my long journey into software
development using XT BIOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC and other dialects
of BASIC because it was a bona fide programming language for its days (back in
1987 when I was 10 years old) that trusted me with power and allowed me to
shoot myself in the foot, whereas the only thing you could do with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29 was draw some
drawings, and it treats its users in an infantile way, which I think no one
really appreciates (including not children).

( I would not recommend learning BASIC anymore because the world moved on since
then, but I hope you get my point. )

-----------------

Well, hopefully you were not too bored up to here, so I can just in
another self-promoting way recommend you take a look at my stories, especially 
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ (The Human Hacking Field Guide,
recently subtitled “Who said girls can’t code?”) which tells the whereabouts of
several teenagers in 2005 L.A. who extensively deal with working on open source
software, and to a somewhat lesser extent free/open/Internet “content”
authoring, and also includes several instances of social engineering (or "Human
hacking").

The abstract reads:

<blockquote>

Jennifer is a trendy and popular high school senior who is living and studying
in the vicinity of Los Angeles. Her best friend, Taylor, convinces her to try
to become a developer of open source software. He puts her under the tutorship
of a different friend of his, the female open source contributor Eve, who
prefers to be called “Erisa”, and who is a self-conscious and rebelling punk,
with whom Jennifer finds it hard to deal. Jennifer remains determined to learn
how to become an open source developer from Erisa, but there are some surprises
along the road. 

</blockquote>

The story is available under CC-by-sa under this interpretation -
http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/ - and you can also buy exemptions
from it. Finally, like I said in
https://twitter.com/shlomif/status/315159699735580672 “In my stories, I aim to
project reality as it hopefully will become, rather than as I or other people
perceive it and take it forward towards better perfection.”. Moreover, I also
would rather err on naïvety than on cynicism.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Free (Creative Commons) Music Downloads, Reviews and more - http://jamendo.com/

There is no IGLU Cabal! Home‐made Cabals eventually superseded the power and
influence of the original IGLU Cabal, which was considered a cutting edge
development at its time.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .