You know how the gender binary is so strong that people assign pets to masculine and feminine traits? So dogs are seen as masculine, and cats are seen (and sexualized) as feminine. Despite the fact that they’re, oh, for starters, two distinct species.
I just had a conversation that was even more surreal, and that I can only hope is not mainstream:
Apparently, according to this man, fossil fuels are masculine! And renewables like solar and wind are, therefore, feminine!
This was said in response to me talking about wanting to put solar panels on my (hypothetical) future home, and him interrupting, saying that he didn’t want a “girly house” and that I should just go get a gas-powered generator in the next aisle over (we were in Home Depot).
A short conversation ensued, with me being rather, and increasingly, incredulous as it went on, as this fellow tried to impose his (literally toxic) view of masculinity on me, and eventually just started swearing at me (using gendered slurs) for failing to conform. That part I wasn’t surprised by; it’s not the first time I’ve had such arguments with men whose masculinity is as fragile as spun glass and the only way they have of buttressing it is by imposing it on others.
No, the part that has me going “buh?” is seeing the extension the gender binary view to infrastructure.
This explains so much though. So much about the conservative resistance to renewable energy and the refusal to acknowledge the toxic environmental effects of nonrenewable resources.
And tangentially, I’ve noticed a significant overlap between people who hate cats and massive, revolting sexists.
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*re-reads my own story*: Damn this is some good shit
*gets to the part where I stopped writing*: WTF WHERE’S THE REST OF IT HOW DO I GET MORE
Brain: You’re the author, if you want more you have to write it
Me: *flips tables*
why do all children know the floor is lava game do we all just learn it from older children and inadvertently share it with each other like some natural inevitable cycle why do children discover the floor and the concept of gravity and up and down and suddenly pretend to be afraid of it why do we play with the physical limitations of our world
This has been explored. Apparently there is a thing called Children Culture. Some of the skipping songs and jump rope songs we learned as kids have no known origin as ever having been written or performed by adults. Some games have no known origins as well. Essentially, kids like to tell each other things and pass them around and sometimes if something particularly cool or interesting gets made, the entire school learns it. And then those kids teach their siblings or cousins or friends from other schools and they teach their whole school until it becomes a whole mass knowledge thing by all kids and continues to be for years and years.
It’s conceivable that the lava game is another aspect of kid culture.
I know my kids don’t seem to know it and they were pretty separated from other kids growing up.
Confirmed: all children are part of a telepathic cult.
in season 1 of doctor who we had a man in his 60s playing the doctor. his companions were from coal hill school. he didn’t have a sonic screwdriver, and the TARDIS had roundels on the walls. although there were serials, each episode had its own individual title
and now, 52 years later, we’ve come full circle
now I just need to see Hartnell rocking out on a guitar
