More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
4 August
Ten headlines from aol.co.uk's home-page
Text : Sexism, pinkification and our daughters
Sub-text : Ostensibly, we're taking this seriously, but really...
Text : Revealed : World's silliest hotel request
Sub-text : (1) Yes, there is none sillier, and (2) We know this, because we're AOL®, Fount of All Wisdom !
Text : Elle Macpherson 'marries billionaire'
Sub-text : We've got you guessing with those idiot quotation-marks, haven't we... ?
Text : Cringiest ever celebrity music videos
Sub-text : A numbered list made intriguing by a grotesque contortion of the language
Text : Carla shows off incredible bikini body
Sub-text : My blog (link above) tells you all that you need to know...
Text : The people who affect house prices
Sub-text : We're not going to tell you any more than you already know**
Text : Baby Cambridge's top 10 play dates
Sub-text : Not that you have any idea who these people and their kids are, but You need to know !
Text : Annoying telephone customer services
Sub-text : We want you to interpret it as how to do a Henry Root on call-centres
Text : Revealed: World's silliest hotel request
Sub-text : I just put that in twice to see whether you were 'keeping up', but, whilst you're here : In my headline, quoted also from AOL®, Mary Beard is made to appear to be the subject, not the (indirect) object...
Text : PC maintenance could save you cash
Sub-text : It 'could', but will it ? Just AOL® promoting itself by trying to attack your pocket mentally ?
End-notes
* Not that there was anything wrong with synonyms such as received, got, had.
** In a numbered list, of course - with sarky comments.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Friday, 23 November 2012
Do I self-classify, or do others, sometimes more importantly, label me ?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
24 November
So, taking up that idea of self-classification, what about where someone else doesn't let me be what I choose or am ? :
1. I am descended from a couple who immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago at a time when the UK encouraged them to come here (albeit to drive buses or collect fares on them), but they were my grandparents, my parents were born here, and so was I. Yet those who stir up hatred and talk about 'repatriation' try to deny me two things: being - whatever that is - as British as they are, and relatedly the fact that this is my home country and culture, too.
2. I have a mental-health condition. Let's say that it's unipolar depression, and so I am prone to my mood going low, or that I have other conditions that fluctuate and which, when they are at their worst, mean that, if I can function at all, I can barely do so. If I have, before I learnt by experience, shared that I have such a condition, people may not actually say 'But there's nothing wrong with you', but you can see it in their face, in their eyes, because they see you when you are functioning. Worse, they are people with power to see you when you cannot function, and who think that you aren't trying, are pretending. And the same can be the experience of those with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), who can be taken for being drunk (so hurtfully) when there is lack of balance or control.
3. I identify as being female, and dress accordingly, but do not want to change my physical gender. Often enough, without reference to me, I'd be called a man in a dress, and people would make all sorts of assumptions.
4. In my local supermarket, in the throng around the reduced items, a female member of staff is talking loudly to her colleagues, saying 'All men always...'. By being a man, I am included in her extreme generalization, because:
All men always do X
I am a man
Therefore I always do X
And that is the pattern for much of this - lumping people into together because of one characteristic that they may (or are assumed) to share, and ascribing to them all (or most of them) some behaviour or other characteristic, ignoring who they are, or what they have to say about it: all benefit claimants are scroungers, for example...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
24 November
@theagentapsley I struggle with the idea of man-flu. There are the genuinely ill, the walking wounded (as I currently am) and drama queens.
— Sarah Parkin (@SarahParkin1) November 23, 2012
@sarahparkin1 That may be true, but who can rightly allocate anyone else to any such category ? And is that the root of -isms... ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 23, 2012
@theagentapsley surely more true of some -isms than others? I trust people to self-classify as a rule- though maybe not the drama queens.
— Sarah Parkin (@SarahParkin1) November 24, 2012
So, taking up that idea of self-classification, what about where someone else doesn't let me be what I choose or am ? :
1. I am descended from a couple who immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago at a time when the UK encouraged them to come here (albeit to drive buses or collect fares on them), but they were my grandparents, my parents were born here, and so was I. Yet those who stir up hatred and talk about 'repatriation' try to deny me two things: being - whatever that is - as British as they are, and relatedly the fact that this is my home country and culture, too.
2. I have a mental-health condition. Let's say that it's unipolar depression, and so I am prone to my mood going low, or that I have other conditions that fluctuate and which, when they are at their worst, mean that, if I can function at all, I can barely do so. If I have, before I learnt by experience, shared that I have such a condition, people may not actually say 'But there's nothing wrong with you', but you can see it in their face, in their eyes, because they see you when you are functioning. Worse, they are people with power to see you when you cannot function, and who think that you aren't trying, are pretending. And the same can be the experience of those with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), who can be taken for being drunk (so hurtfully) when there is lack of balance or control.
3. I identify as being female, and dress accordingly, but do not want to change my physical gender. Often enough, without reference to me, I'd be called a man in a dress, and people would make all sorts of assumptions.
4. In my local supermarket, in the throng around the reduced items, a female member of staff is talking loudly to her colleagues, saying 'All men always...'. By being a man, I am included in her extreme generalization, because:
All men always do X
I am a man
Therefore I always do X
And that is the pattern for much of this - lumping people into together because of one characteristic that they may (or are assumed) to share, and ascribing to them all (or most of them) some behaviour or other characteristic, ignoring who they are, or what they have to say about it: all benefit claimants are scroungers, for example...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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