no boys allowed in the room!!!!

(also sorry for sidestepping the gender discussion which is interesting but I felt a little unqualified to wade into)

Hi Branwell! Welcome back and please do talk about other things!

Hi rushomancy too and likewise, I enjoy your music lists fwiw although I am p. uncultured and have usually only heard of 10% of the things on them

In terms of salons I believe the rule is that if someone is in business for themselves and they are pocketing the whole cost of your cut then you don't have to tip. But most stylists "rent" a chair from an owner or business, and in that case the tip is meant to be compensation for them over and above what percentage or flat fee they pay or are paid by their employer.

Although now that I say that, after I followed her through 3 other salons, my longtime stylist now co-owns the salon where she works along with a few other ppl and I still tip her so...shrug emoji.

OH LOOK IT'S AN ILX THREAD ABOUT TIPPING soz

ha the girl I had a crush on in High School runs a hair salon in Brooklyn.

you also talk about movies though, yeah?

― sarahell

i don't think so? i haven't really seen a lot of movies lately. i do talk about music sometimes but i seriously have barely been listening to anything in the last two months - just haven't had the time!

maybe it's just, uh, spotlight effect. i hate feeling like the center of attention :(

i was just writing a message to a friend and the phrase "keep it simple and set yourself free" popped into my head. it was immediately followed by "from the extras that you really don't need"
just like that my thoughts turned into a tampon commercial!

lol

can we talk about "extra" ... as it is tends to be applied to non cis-men ... in terms of behavior, etc? As in "she/you are so extra" relatedly "too much" ... I feel a bit dorky for saying this but, (not too much really) a lot of my "pop culture" awareness comes through astrology memes. ... So there's a lot of "extra" around now because it's Leo season. ...

I dunno; it's more like fucken politics infects everything. It's not even possible to have a cute little conversation about movies or music without this stuff coming up in some way or another. And it's the old Melissa McEwan thing of... keep it to yourself and stuff it down inside you so that you get endlessly more angry/depressed or... BRING IT UP AND RUIN THE WHOLE AFTERNOON!!!! It's an impossible choice.

Been watching a lot of movies about Berlin Gay Culture, from classics like Taxi Zum Klo to more modern takes like Mein Wunderbares West Berlin and Desire Will Set You Free, because Yay! Gay! and Yay! Germans! Except, then, watching a film like Mein Wunderbares West Berlin, honestly, it has more men named Wolfgang in it, than it has AFAB voices. You have to ignore that, to enjoy the film. (Desire Will Set You Free, OTOH, was a cheesy, cheesy film, but genuinely made an effort to have a wonderfully full range of genders.) I can no longer discuss films without noticing the gender imbalances in them.

I got Gentleman Jack on DVD, like wow, how can this not be great? Period lesbians in period costumes, woooo! #RelevantToMyInterests or what? But... the gender stuff was handled in a really interesting way, yes. It was really gratifying to see a queer, gender non-conforming AFAB handled in a sensitive and multi-dimensional light. But... OF COURSE because this is a British Costume Drama, they have to shove the Downton Abbey style Tory Agenda Bullshit right down your craw. Landlords and Mine Owners are GOOD! The only people who support Chartism or redistribution of property are bad, stinking, wifebeating alcoholics. I can no longer watch television without noticing the tacit political agendas in them.

I joined another music forum, for a German Experimental Group I am particularly fond of. I love this band more than is reasonable or maybe even healthy. But the overwhelming culture of Music Messageboard Dudes and the endless performance of cis-boy fandom of list-making and thing-collecting was just so oppressive and ... the leader of this group is famously bisexual and quite queer and playfully genderfuck (his partner flat out told me "he hates cis masculinity even more than YOU do!") ... and so those are the interpretive readings that I bring to his work, and yet the blank hostility from the threatened wall of $50 Box Set Men Proper Fans was ... well, it was really off-putting and unfun.

It's like... I dunno. I try to enjoy the things I enjoy with the awareness that ~everything is problematic~ and there is no Perfect. And yet this shit keeps coming up and slapping you in the face because it's impossible to live outside this system.

The good news is, though, that this past year I've started a Queer Theory reading group, where myself and a few people who do enjoy interrogating this stuff on a deeper basis CAN dig into it and go through it. That makes me feel a lot less crazy. And I have a really supportive work environment. (This is going to sound really ridiculous, but the Sys Admin has had the comic Dilbert displaying on the front page of the IT team's intranet. Yesterday, the comic was so openly transphobic that I brought it up with my boss, and my boss actually made the sys admin take it down saying it was not the culture that our organisation wanted to promote - which felt like something good.)

But then, every time I come back on ILX, I just feel this constant... *anxiety* that I'm going to be ripped to shreds if I venture outside this thread. (And often even on this thread, TBH. Like, anxiety does not discern.) It's just easier not to engage at all.

Sometimes I just wanna be really shallow and be like clothes! haircuts! memes! Y'know?

I don't know if it's been brought up on this thread, but I really would recommend everyone on this thread read Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne.

It's one of the most smart and clear-sighted analyses I've ever read, about what misogyny is, and what it isn't, and how it functions on so many different levels. And answers the question: what it's for.

It's such an amazing book, and I've seen it get so little traction anywhere. I mean, yeah, it's written in a slightly dry academic tone rather than a pop culture tone - but I suspect that's so it would be taken seriously, as the rigorous work it is, and not dismissed as light ~pop feminism~. I just think it's a really important book and I wish more people would read it.

It's 35 minutes later, and I've only just realised that that question about films wasn't even directed at me.

Because: autism. Duh.

But I wish I could assuage the anxiety that other people won't recognise, "Branwell gets this shit wrong, because autism" and not have this wave of anxiety about how people are going to assume it's because I'm an asshole and inconsiderate and self-obsessed.

But... OF COURSE because this is a British Costume Drama, they have to shove the Downton Abbey style Tory Agenda Bullshit right down your craw. Landlords and Mine Owners are GOOD! The only people who support Chartism or redistribution of property are bad, stinking, wifebeating alcoholics. I can no longer watch television without noticing the tacit political agendas in them.

I adore the show Madame Secretary but it is relentlessly "centrist"-pandering and mindlessly pro-military service. It can still make me cry in 10 seconds flat though.

It's 35 minutes later, and I've only just realised that that question about films wasn't even directed at me.

sincerely sorry! it was meant for rushomancy, and on top of that, I had them confused with someone else entirely ... but the anxiety at feeling like a failure at communicating and understanding is "real" ... and I feel like, in general, it's worse for AFAB people because of social conditioning.

Sometimes I just wanna be really shallow and be like clothes! haircuts! memes! Y'know?

Absolutely! I think this is why I have gotten super into astrology memes. There was something I read recently about astrology memes and queer culture and anti-hierarchical structure (maybe) that was gratifying.

this might have been it ...
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/06/astrology-memes-unite-micro-targeting-and-celestial-mythos.html

I adore the show Madame Secretary but it is relentlessly "centrist"-pandering and mindlessly pro-military service. It can still make me cry in 10 seconds flat though.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Wednesday, July 31, 2019 1:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, this is totally it. Like, it's way, way sub-sub-sub- "Your Fave Is Problematic" (because frankly everything is problematic) but it's just the constant realisation how deeply these kinds of narratives are interwoven through anything which has managed to jump through all the hoops to get on television. It's complicated. Like, how to turn off the internal critic long enough to just enjoy a dumb show as relaxing entertainment.

(I generally don't really like television as a medium, *because* I find it emotionally manipulative. Like, if I'm reading something in a book, I can underline and write "fuck your patriarchal assumptions" in the margin and carry on reading, feeling like I've expressed my disagreement. But television is really enveloping and specifically goes at provoking emotional reactions... but that's an argument for another day.)

Absolutely! I think this is why I have gotten super into astrology memes. There was something I read recently about astrology memes and queer culture and anti-hierarchical structure (maybe) that was gratifying.

― sarahell, Wednesday, July 31, 2019 8:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

In *theory*, I really like the idea of astrology as resistant culture and queer culture? And I always pay attention to what people say when they talk about astrology, because when they say "I'm like ~this~, because I'm a Taurus..." they are giving you the gift of information about themselves? It's good to discover how people view themselves, and find out how they want to be treated, and saying "my sign is like..." is a low stress way to express that.

But I also hate astrology because every single astrology meme treats my sign like the absolute asshole of the zodiac and all I can think every time I see one is "fuck you, go swive" (of course playing right into the stereotype, ugh)

((Also, I just have to post the meme that ~Economics is just Astrology for white men~ because it makes me laugh.))

(Thanks for being understanding. I'm not in the greatest place at the moment, and could really just do with friendly chatter.)

But I also hate astrology because every single astrology meme treats my sign like the absolute asshole of the zodiac and all I can think every time I see one is "fuck you, go swive" (of course playing right into the stereotype, ugh)

I don't really do astrology but that might be partly because I was born ~on the cusp~ of two signs and everyone who has learnt this fact has enthusiastically agreed that I had all the many bad aspects of both but was clearly largely the latter sign because that is the sign for stubborn rude selfish assholes like me

(me and my birthdaymate Hitler, yay)

this is now extra funny because iirc - sorry for .xls-ing, hope you don't mind but I'll modreq deletion if you do - you're the former of those two signs (and the one most British horoscopes think I am, whereas most American ones put me as the latter) so it seems either way there is no escape from my inherent star-ordained assholishness

btw nearly everyone I've ever dated also had their birthday on the 20th or 21st of the month, maybe we ~cusp people~ are a thing

Oh, don't worry about it! It's fine! You and I have known each other since the early days of ILX when happy birthday threads were a regular thing. (Another plus for astrology - I am shit at remembering birthdays but good at remembering star signs!)

I guess this is the thing about being born under one of the asshole star signs, is, y'know - asshole to whom? I tend to get along with the principled (stubborn), forthright and honest (rude) and well self-contained (selfish) asshole signs just fine. You always know where you stand with either your sign or mine. Unlike some of those more ~people skills~ signs where they will tell you whatever they think you want to hear to your face, and something completely different behind your back, haha. See you can make this go any way you like.

(it is weird that for a long period of my life, 2/3 of my close friends were either born within a couple days of my own birthday, or in the same 3 days of Leo.)

The annoying thing is that "what 80s band is your starsign?" meme that goes round regularly like clockwork and one of my close friends always reblogs it because her starsign is Bowie and she's a massive Bowie fan. But my starsign is a really shitty band I can't stand. (And they stick Kraftwerk under some random sign, when Kraftwerk was founded by an Aries and a Leo, and the band itself is an Aries based on its foundation date? Like, do your research, Astrology meme fans!)

xpost i am birthday mates with Trump so I feel you, spacecadet.

(me and my birthdaymate Hitler, yay)

― a passing spacecadet

if it makes you feel better you can think of your birthdaymate as dank nugs

my particular brand of questionable assignation of personality traits is the myers briggs type inventory - so far as i can tell it's not actually more meaningful or accurate than horoscope or blood type but it's useful for self-stereotyping. (i read once that someone did come up with a scientifically valid way of grouping personality types, but all they managed to determine from it was that teenage boys are assholes.) what i like about it is that i can (and did) change my myers briggs type from the asshole (the one they always gave me was woodrow wilson, i guess because hitler would be a bad portent) to a non-asshole type; astrologically i'm stuck being the asshole, not even on the cusp

I'm not getting into an argument about MBTI (I don't think it's rubbish - just extremely misused, i.e. it has no business being anywhere near an HR department, but it's quite fun to think about as a tool for self exploration or understanding) buuuuttt...

No way is INTJ the Hitler of MBTI. ENTJ is the Hitler. (Haha, we had to do it for work, and my boss got ENTJ and he is the least Hitler person you ever met, so... as I said, useless for HR purposes.)

The cusp is not a thing.

Also, don't all signs come off as assholes in astrology memes???

I am absolutely nothing like what my sign says I’m supposed to be like and so I think it’s all bullshit but still part of me wants to find out I have a moon inside a cave or something that explains it all. I’m a Capricorn btw.

what does it mean if you have no desire (maybe even negative desire) to self-stereotype via lighthearted or misused-by-HR-depts methods?
am i the hitler of astrology?!?!?! :)

Astrology being entirely socially constructed, A Cusp can be A Thing because people meaningfully believe, and act as if it is A Thing. Ergo, A Cusp is actually A Thing.

I think, LL, as with anything, that it's fine to not like a thing. And it's fine to not want to participate in a thing. So long as it stays there! (However, as with many things, if a bunch of people are using that thing to facilitate social interaction, and to share observations and social information about themselves and others - it's churlish to tell others not to do so, or to try to discredit the thing. It's the latter that makes someone a Hitler of a thing; not the mere not-liking of the thing.)

However, I am an INTP, so I analyse the fuck out of absolutely anything. ;)

I have had a couple of gemini parties in my life because I realized I had become good friends with several geminis. I should see what Trump is up to next year.

Def not trying to stop the enjoyment of anything. I’m not Hitler yaaaay

Oof I'm complicated on astrology but more or less take it as Branwell said

And I always pay attention to what people say when they talk about astrology, because when they say "I'm like ~this~, because I'm a Taurus..." they are giving you the gift of information about themselves?

...and one of the things they're telling me about themselves is that they are willing to be identified as a person who at least superficially "believes" in astrology. As an ex-evangelical I'm both programmed to reject astrology as the devil's doorway and also I'm kind of allergic to any discussion of unseen forces or whatever? Sooo all of that is on me.

LL, I get your vibe.

The devil's doorway sounds like fun!

We took Meyers-Briggs tests for a class in college, and I would always get different results.

Except for I, always an I.

I always thought it was Acid House that was the devil's doorway?

http://factmag-images.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/acidhousetriptohell-4.12.2013.jpg

AMAZING.

Everything is the devil's doorway to Evangelicals. Yoga, meditation, masturbation, college.

I refuse to be categorized, that’s part of my most stubborn stubbornness. Shrug!

Branwell, I bought Down Girl a few months ago, but it is on my ever increasing pile of books to read.

We took Meyers-Briggs tests for a class in college, and I would always get different results. Except for I, always an I.

Same here, always an I, but iirc the others are usually close to 50/50 and fall one way or the other depending on my mood and the phase of the moon.

My line manager wants to send the team (~10 people) on some not-quite-MBTI personality test so we can "learn how to work together better". That sounds nice*, but half of me thinks they're basically meaningless or at least measure something barely relevant to "how to work together", and half of me is scared it'll confirm all my character flaws and it will become an accepted truth of the office that I'm a terrible person who will ruin everything and should be micromanaged and disdained.

* tbh it doesn't even sound nice

Also even apart from the end result I'm scared the quiz will have lots of questions like "I immediately start work on all my tasks and work very efficiently at them until they are done" and, haha, uh... it's a trap, right? Who gets to see these?

So yes, keep these things away from work and HR and "teambuilding exercises" and hiring decisions, please.

(Some smart and good ilxors once recommended the book by Martin Seligman on learned helplessness, which I fear is relevant to my life situation, except one of the early chapters was about him applying his theories to a personality test used by some big company to make hiring + firing decisions, and I immediately disliked the guy...)

every single astrology meme treats my sign like the absolute asshole of the zodiac and all I can think every time I see one is "fuck you, go swive"

if you go deep into the whole chart (as opposed to just the sun sign), it can be more interesting or liberatory or just give people like me, who can be analytical and nerdy, more stuff to be analytical and nerdy about ... and that's not even getting into synastry. Basically, I am "absolute asshole" rising, but my sun sign is "the worst person ever" ... but one of the best types of astrology memes are the ones that critique overly simplistic astrology memes: like Aries --> Angry! Angry! Angry!; Taurus --> Food ...

It's good to discover how people view themselves, and find out how they want to be treated, and saying "my sign is like..." is a low stress way to express that.

I think this is really astute! ... And relatedly, I feel like, one of the challenging things about working through your own issues/inner conflicts is being able to find language you feel comfortable with using about them. All the clickbait about young people feeling more comfortable communicating in emoji makes me think of this as well. And part of me feels like a stereotypical "woo woo Californian" talking about my personal issues in astrological terms, but I also have a tendency to be very "closed off" and a desire to be viewed as "bulletproof," and if in order to deal with shit and not destroy myself, my self-talk is about "my Saturn in Cancer problem" or my "Sun-Moon square aspect" then, that's what it is, for now.

APS, is it the Margerison-McCann Team Management thing?

Hey Branwell, always good to see you here.

also APS I have webmailed u

ugh using a standardized "personality" test for a job sounds lazy and would make me paranoid.

i had a job use it on me 1x and it did indeed make me paranoid and i filled out the survey accordingly

it's great that even when franklin is doing jack chick-style propaganda he still makes the effort to objectify women, that's a sign of someone who's committed to the total package

branwell thanks for reminding me about ENTJs i tend to forget extroverts (is it that or extravert? XTC has me confused) exist, yes they are definitely hitlers, except for the ones who aren't

when i was 12 i was all down on the J side but starting at about 20 i flipped to being half P and half J

my recent change has been swinging hard (hello jazz thread) from T to F, i'm pretty happy about that one

my company did one of those personality things five years ago, it was before i got there though and the only people who still have them up are people who have been there forever

My line manager wants to send the team (~10 people) on some not-quite-MBTI personality test so we can "learn how to work together better". That sounds nice*, but half of me thinks they're basically meaningless or at least measure something barely relevant to "how to work together", and half of me is scared it'll confirm all my character flaws and it will become an accepted truth of the office that I'm a terrible person who will ruin everything and should be micromanaged and disdained.

Also even apart from the end result I'm scared the quiz will have lots of questions like "I immediately start work on all my tasks and work very efficiently at them until they are done" and, haha, uh... it's a trap, right? Who gets to see these?

― a passing spacecadet, Thursday, August 1, 2019 2:55 PM bookmarkflaglink

I've done at least two of these things. One was, as you describe, full of kind of "I always prioritise my company's interests over my own!!!" type questions - and this was part of the hiring process! They wouldn't even interview people without taking it. So I filled it in as if I were a total sociopath and told their headhunter I really didn't think the company was a good fit for me. (They didn't disagree, but IT people are hard to recruit.)

The other thing was weirder, but ended up being more interesting - I think the company was called 1n$1ghts? (Can't remember what the name of their test was.) It was a much weirder test - you had to pick one out of groups of really nebulously defined words. (1) Convoluted 2) Glutinous 3) Scintillating 4) rhizomatic - pick one, and I'm only half joking) They only measured 2 of the MBTI scales (I vs E and T vs F) and came up with four colours / work styles, which were...

Red - little Hitler
Blue - unfeeling logic robot
Yellow - total drama llama
Green - whiny snowflake

(OK, those weren't the real descriptions but that was kind of the gist.) We did genuinely get something out of it? But I think it was more that our company, and our particular group dynamic, we did find it helpful because people here do seem to *want* to make things better? Oddly, I thought it would be the Reds that I bumped heads with, but I got long fine with all our Reds. (I was Blue with a disturbingly large streak of Red.) But all of the people that had clashed with here, every single one of them was Yellow. And they genuinely had some tips and practices to help you get along with other types? But that is the one and only one case where an MBTI-based thing has helped at work - and honestly, it's much more down to the organisation I work for. But I could easily see it being hell in a different field.

(Then last month we had some stupid crap ~diversity workshop~ thing, and I kid you not - one of my colleagues literally started mansplaining at me in the diversity workshop so I said "OK, this clearly isn't going to do any good at all" and walked out. Win some, lose some.)

I think this is really astute! ... And relatedly, I feel like, one of the challenging things about working through your own issues/inner conflicts is being able to find language you feel comfortable with using about them. All the clickbait about young people feeling more comfortable communicating in emoji makes me think of this as well. And part of me feels like a stereotypical "woo woo Californian" talking about my personal issues in astrological terms, but I also have a tendency to be very "closed off" and a desire to be viewed as "bulletproof," and if in order to deal with shit and not destroy myself, my self-talk is about "my Saturn in Cancer problem" or my "Sun-Moon square aspect" then, that's what it is, for now.

― sarahell, Thursday, August 1, 2019 4:20 PM bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I don't know if this was Captain Awkward or just therapy, but it was a life-changing realisation. That if someone starts talking about "oh my moon is in Aquarius" or "Mercury is in retrograde!" it is extremely unhelpful to start lecturing them on astronomy. They're giving you information about their feelings in a language that feels comfortable for them. It's OK to ask for a little help, and say "hmm, I don't know any Aquarians, what do they tend to be like?" or slowly start to grok that "Mercury is in Retrograde" means that they are in a bad mood or feel really overwhelmed like everything's going wrong at once. But these are feeling-languages, and you don't come back to feeling-language with Logic Robot answers. Meeting people where they are is important. And often, these languages that are designed for feelings, *are* better at communicating feelings.

one of my colleagues literally started mansplaining at me in the diversity workshop

oh dear .... is he usually insufferable, or is this someone that is normally "one of the good ones"? ...I think the social justice stuff about "sitting with discomfort" regarding privilege, white supremacy, etc. is good, in that it is realistic. That these systemic problems and power imbalances are challenging! Change is awkward. ... Anyway, I have a male colleague that is 95% of the time, a "total comrade" ... but a few weeks back, he got super angry and defensive and did something similar to another colleague.

Today I saw that a nursery school friend has opened up a law office down the street from a shop I frequently go to. Should I drop in and say hi? I haven't seen her in nearly 40 years.

Yes! Few things are more tender to me than remembering and being by remembered by someone I knew/knew me as a wee child. This is usually the role of family and if one doesn’t have that, classmates are the next best option! How sweet!

I have ... complicated feelings about people and places from my past.

me too ... I do not want a #GilroyStrong t-shirt, thanks.

everyone does! i was just thinking that preschool memories have got to be some of the most wholesome, yknow? little teeny kids learning how to share and whatnot.

I liked pre-school! There were cubby holes, and carpet squares.

ACTUALLY this post made me look up my pre-school by name and I found the founder's obit from 2014 and it's amazing how as a kid I knew NONE of these wonderful things about her but I sure loved going to her pre-school!

https://obits.mlive.com/obituaries/grandrapids/obituary.aspx?n=janet-m-jones&pid=171817480&fhid=25468

A passionate and acknowledged expert in educationally and emotionally nurturing children ages three to six, her nursery school was authoritatively considered by many the finest of its kind in Michigan, providing children a peaceful, happy, innovative, exciting, and ultimately successful learning experience. For Janet, it was personally and professionally always all about each child's personal development. Every educational decision she ever made first included the question, "What would be best for this child?" An active and accomplished artist throughout her life, she spent her early retirement focused on both landscape painting and portraiture, with family and friends the beneficiaries of her talent. And later, even after her Macular Degeneration became pervasive, her artistic capability still shone through. She continued to paint until nearly the very end.

Amazing. The people in your life who are shaping you all the time and you don't even know.