I've been meaning to move this blog from Blogger to Wordpress for ages, but was always too lazy. Then I realised it was ridiculously easy to migrate, so now you can find me at:
http://chainbear.wordpress.com/
You'll probably need to update your RSS feeds if you were following on RSS. Having said that, I redirected the old RSS to the Wordpress, so maybe you won't?
You can tell I'm good at this, can't you?
Ramblings from Chain Bear.
April 30, 2013
April 24, 2013
More on Dawkins. Morekins.
A further thought upon my blog post about Dawkins last week.
I made a suggestion that Richard Dawkins should stick to spouting wise about evolutionary biology instead of burping out whatever thought comes into his head about feminism, Islam and all the rest. I also, maybe as a lemma, suggested he wasn’t worth listening to unless he was speaking about evolutionary biology. But this isn’t strictly true and kind of poisons the well somewhat.
See, Dawkins is actually good at writing and research. Even when he writes outside of biology, his back-of-the-book bibliography is still ten miles long. His writing in The God Delusion was forceful, but generally considered. This comes with the benefits of writing a book. With a book you spend time scouring resources, references and witnesses; you can do rewrites and edits; you get peers and editors to check your work. By the time you’ve actually published your book, you’ve produced a (hopefully) finely honed piece of work.
Tweets are often none of the above. Dawkins’s tweets in particular tend to be whatever idea has rolled over inside his brain at any particular moment. Due to Dawkins’s quite substantial credentials and following, he tends to think every thought he has it worth sharing. It is not.
I guess we’re just not used to seeing raw Dawkins (Rawkins?) and perhaps this is a good opportunity to learn a valuable lesson in:
a) Research
b) Editing
c) Peer Review
d) Arrogance
e) The old classic, ‘Engage Brain Before Opening Mouth’
April 22, 2013
National Treasure
I'd quite like to be popular enough on twitter that hundreds of people rush to my defence no matter what stupid shit I say. I mean, I'd be somewhat uncomfortable with it and of course I'd tell them to stop being to silly. But it would be nice.
In fact, maybe I'd just start saying more and more outrageous and clearly unhinged stuff to see how much it would take for my little twitter army to turn on me. It could be my own little social experiment, my own twitter version of Joaquin Phoenix.
Now that I think about it, maybe some people are already doing this. I can't wait to see their results.
In fact, maybe I'd just start saying more and more outrageous and clearly unhinged stuff to see how much it would take for my little twitter army to turn on me. It could be my own little social experiment, my own twitter version of Joaquin Phoenix.
Now that I think about it, maybe some people are already doing this. I can't wait to see their results.
April 18, 2013
'Crazy' and Other Words (Pt 1)
I've been thinking about this for a little while, and in light of some heated discussions that have occurred in my line of sight, I thought I'd vomit out a few thoughts.
Some people use words like 'crazy', 'mad', 'insane' and many, many synonymous terms (seriously, there's like a bazillion of them, most of them food-based) to describe people with, let's say, erroneous opinions. Other people call out this use of language as slurring of the actually mentally ill, similar to other social slurs like 'Paki', 'tranny' or 'sand monkey'.
(Incidentally, the Public Shaming blog has made me aware of a whole range of bizarre racial epithets that I never knew existed. America's multi-culturalism has brought with is multi-cultural racism.)
Now, it's rare that I can say this, but I actually have a foot in the door with this discussion. I suffer from depression - not as badly as many, but the waves come and go and still cause me problems. Depression makes me crazy. See, craziness or insanity is a description of the disconnect between reality and one's mental interpretation of reality. JT Eberhard in his quite wonderful talk on his own mental illness reminded me that it was OK to consider myself crazy (at time), because that was accurate. When I'm in the good part of my depressive waves, I can look back to the troughs and realise, 'Shit, the way I saw things was completely wrong, I was so blinded by the fog of depression.'
My point in the above is to actually define what craziness is. There may be a clinical, chronic insanity, where you are near-permanently separated from reality and there may be bouts of insanity, which you can escape from. People with body dysmorphia (often including eating disorders), for example, are constantly fighting their own minds interpretation of their own bodies. It's crazy.
So, when people call another person's opinion crazy, it really tends to be a description of the difference between what they've said and what's real. For example, if someone told me the Earth was flat, I might call that crazy. Or insane. It is my opinion (thus far) that this a legitimate use of the word 'crazy'. Alternatively, you might call the person making the statement crazy: 'You think the Earth is flat? You're crazy!' Again (and this depends on each context), the suggestion of this phrase is really that the statement is crazy and not that the person is crazy, or mentally ill. But what if it didn't? What if the accuser was suggestion that there's was something problematic in the Flat-Earther's mind that made him unable to connect the facts and appreciate the reality of a round Earth? It's a euphemistic, metaphorical parallel to mental illness, I guess. Is this wrong?
This is where I start to get a bit hazy. And now we have to consider what calling someone crazy actually suggests about genuinely mentally ill people. From my perspective, I do not think calling someone crazy suggests that mentally ill people are bad. Calling someone a slut (pejoratively) does. Calling someone or their argument crazy tends to speak to the argument, statement or position they hold.
However, this is just from my perspective and I've barely had any societal push back for my particular mental problems, which is great for me. So, I've titled this blog post, "Pt 1" so that I can try an engage with other people of mental illness and see if this kind of language has affected them. Then I'll come back once I have a better idea.
Some people use words like 'crazy', 'mad', 'insane' and many, many synonymous terms (seriously, there's like a bazillion of them, most of them food-based) to describe people with, let's say, erroneous opinions. Other people call out this use of language as slurring of the actually mentally ill, similar to other social slurs like 'Paki', 'tranny' or 'sand monkey'.
(Incidentally, the Public Shaming blog has made me aware of a whole range of bizarre racial epithets that I never knew existed. America's multi-culturalism has brought with is multi-cultural racism.)
Now, it's rare that I can say this, but I actually have a foot in the door with this discussion. I suffer from depression - not as badly as many, but the waves come and go and still cause me problems. Depression makes me crazy. See, craziness or insanity is a description of the disconnect between reality and one's mental interpretation of reality. JT Eberhard in his quite wonderful talk on his own mental illness reminded me that it was OK to consider myself crazy (at time), because that was accurate. When I'm in the good part of my depressive waves, I can look back to the troughs and realise, 'Shit, the way I saw things was completely wrong, I was so blinded by the fog of depression.'
My point in the above is to actually define what craziness is. There may be a clinical, chronic insanity, where you are near-permanently separated from reality and there may be bouts of insanity, which you can escape from. People with body dysmorphia (often including eating disorders), for example, are constantly fighting their own minds interpretation of their own bodies. It's crazy.
So, when people call another person's opinion crazy, it really tends to be a description of the difference between what they've said and what's real. For example, if someone told me the Earth was flat, I might call that crazy. Or insane. It is my opinion (thus far) that this a legitimate use of the word 'crazy'. Alternatively, you might call the person making the statement crazy: 'You think the Earth is flat? You're crazy!' Again (and this depends on each context), the suggestion of this phrase is really that the statement is crazy and not that the person is crazy, or mentally ill. But what if it didn't? What if the accuser was suggestion that there's was something problematic in the Flat-Earther's mind that made him unable to connect the facts and appreciate the reality of a round Earth? It's a euphemistic, metaphorical parallel to mental illness, I guess. Is this wrong?
This is where I start to get a bit hazy. And now we have to consider what calling someone crazy actually suggests about genuinely mentally ill people. From my perspective, I do not think calling someone crazy suggests that mentally ill people are bad. Calling someone a slut (pejoratively) does. Calling someone or their argument crazy tends to speak to the argument, statement or position they hold.
However, this is just from my perspective and I've barely had any societal push back for my particular mental problems, which is great for me. So, I've titled this blog post, "Pt 1" so that I can try an engage with other people of mental illness and see if this kind of language has affected them. Then I'll come back once I have a better idea.
I Can Solve This Whole Richard Dawkins Problem
Richard Dawkins was a big player in reigniting the atheist movement and possibly the skeptic and humanist movements too, with the release of The God Delusion. This made him a sort of focal point for a lot of 'New Atheists' and people of that ilk and caused religious groups to equate with a Pope-like figure.
Now, really we should all know that we have, in the (borrowed) words of Margaret Sanger, 'No Gods, No Masters.' We should hold no one up to the standards of near-infallibility. The whole point of skepticism and its subsidiaries are to reserve doubt, to question and not to follow blindly. So the first and most obvious point to make is that, obviously Richard Dawkins is not the final word on everything and people who just sponge up everything he says need to stop it.
See, Richard Dawkins, now that he's strapped himself into the social media machine, has continued to brain-fart across the twittersphere for all and sundry. This has revealed his ignorance and his privilege when it comes to social justice issues that many in the skeptic arena are moving to embrace. He is often as arrogant and dismissive as you might expect a septuagenariat white, male emeritas professor and best-selling author to be; his plasticity is somewhat rigid at this point.
This doesn't excuse the crap he says (with annoyingly increasing frequency), but I think we need to remember this: Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist. That's his expertise. Those are his credentials. That's not to say people can't speak knowledgeably and legitimately outside of their fields but Dawkins is no social scientist, feminist or theologian and often hasn't done the legwork required to give his brain-farts the acknowledgement being given. When he dismisses modern feminism, I like to think as if he's dismissing House music or Danny Boyle films. Why should we care what he says about these things? He has nothing to do with them and knows little about them.
Of course, the problem is that people do care about what he says, whatever he talks about. He's a lauded figure. But we need to uncouple these experts from the things they know next to nothing about. Just because you're a respected and listened-to figure in certain areas, doesn't mean that every word leaving your lips turns to gold. If we can keep reminding ourselves that the further speakers are from their expertise, the more evidence we should demand from them to back up their assertions.
Or, stop listening to Dawkins unless he's talking about the Gene Theory of Natural Selection.
Now, really we should all know that we have, in the (borrowed) words of Margaret Sanger, 'No Gods, No Masters.' We should hold no one up to the standards of near-infallibility. The whole point of skepticism and its subsidiaries are to reserve doubt, to question and not to follow blindly. So the first and most obvious point to make is that, obviously Richard Dawkins is not the final word on everything and people who just sponge up everything he says need to stop it.
See, Richard Dawkins, now that he's strapped himself into the social media machine, has continued to brain-fart across the twittersphere for all and sundry. This has revealed his ignorance and his privilege when it comes to social justice issues that many in the skeptic arena are moving to embrace. He is often as arrogant and dismissive as you might expect a septuagenariat white, male emeritas professor and best-selling author to be; his plasticity is somewhat rigid at this point.
This doesn't excuse the crap he says (with annoyingly increasing frequency), but I think we need to remember this: Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist. That's his expertise. Those are his credentials. That's not to say people can't speak knowledgeably and legitimately outside of their fields but Dawkins is no social scientist, feminist or theologian and often hasn't done the legwork required to give his brain-farts the acknowledgement being given. When he dismisses modern feminism, I like to think as if he's dismissing House music or Danny Boyle films. Why should we care what he says about these things? He has nothing to do with them and knows little about them.
Of course, the problem is that people do care about what he says, whatever he talks about. He's a lauded figure. But we need to uncouple these experts from the things they know next to nothing about. Just because you're a respected and listened-to figure in certain areas, doesn't mean that every word leaving your lips turns to gold. If we can keep reminding ourselves that the further speakers are from their expertise, the more evidence we should demand from them to back up their assertions.
Or, stop listening to Dawkins unless he's talking about the Gene Theory of Natural Selection.
March 21, 2013
I Don't Like Labels Anymore
While we’re at it with naming stuff, I think I’ve decided I
don’t like labelling myself anymore. I’m not sure I was ever super comfortable
with it, but it’s becoming increasingly frustrating.
I’m not intending to come at this from a hipster,
alternative, underground, ‘man, what are labels but shackles, man?’ angle,
though that might well be what actually bothers me. I could call myself a ‘sceptic’,
for example. But I think I’d prefer to say, ‘I like to be sceptical’ or ‘I believe in thinking sceptically about {x,y,z}’.
The latter describes the way you do things and can be used in more specific
circumstances; it’s less constrictive upon me as a person. The former phrasing
invites a boxing in of my identity and character, allowing people to impress
assumptions and expectations upon me. ‘You’re a sceptic, so you must be A and B and do C, D and E,’ people could say. Whether these
people are wrong or right about the conclusions from my label is moot. The
point is that is I say I’m a {whatever} I immediately force people’s brains to
create an image of me and fit further observations of me to that image.
Furthermore, I’m not sure I feel complete enough as a person
to identify as anything in
particular. I’m forever learning and growing and changing and discovering. I’m
not a sceptic because there are lots of circumstances in which I let my
feelings lead my and surrender my disbelief and inquisition to them. Sometimes,
this is a good thing: if I’m watching a blockbuster film, it’s a serene
experience not to question why the hell everything is blowing up or how that
ninja dodged a bullet. I’m not always a feminist because I still get easily
trapped by biases, right there in my sneaky subconscious. I’ll always try to be feminist, but that’s a different
story.
See, I’m an adjective man, me. I’d like to describe myself
and my actions than give myself an identity.
Thinking about this further, this may actually be a product
of low self-esteem than most of what I said above. Hold that thought.
The Power of Technical Language
Deputy Editor of the New
Statesman, Helen Lewis said something interesting on the Pod Delusion this week. Speaking to
James O’Malley about feminism she said that ‘intersectionality’ was a great
idea, but that she hated the word.
Let’s quickly step back a moment. Intersectionality studies
the overlap (or ‘intersections’, I guess) between all the minority groups; the
idea of bringing intersectionality into feminism is to prevent it becoming a
white, middle-class action. By understanding that discrimination and the fight
for equality blends across racial, sexual and social classifications, people
can become better and more informed about how to narrow the equality gap. I
think it was Beth Presswood (GodlessBitches) who described the revelation as a rhetorical question
(paraphrased): ‘if you were to stack up the different types of people: who has
a more privileged position – a black man or a white woman?’
So, back to Helen Lewis (and I’m not actually responding to or
rebutting Lewis, rather rebounding from a singular point she made). The point
Lewis was making was that she believed words like ‘intersectionality’ are
useful in that they describe a concept as yet uncollected, but the word itself
remains in the domain of more rigorous debate. It’s useful to actual egalitarian
thinkers when engaging in discussion but isolating to the layperson to whom you
may be trying to open an understanding.
What’s this boils down to in a more general sense is – is technical
language a barrier to discussion and introducing ideas?
I have an urge to answer ‘no’. This might be because I tend
to approach things (if I’m interested) in an academic way and make the effort
to explore and understand if I’m going to engage with a topic. So there may be
some personal bias here, I’ll admit. But language and words are powerful gateway
tools to understanding. The concept of intersectionality may take a little bit
of introduction, but once I understood it, it was an incredible useful term. It
describes quite a lot in seven syllables. If I was exploring why there aren’t a lot of women in (say)
architecture and someone told me to think more intersectionally, I would
understand more immediately that whatever the issue was, it ran across several
minorities. It’s made understanding other new words like ‘kierarchy’ much
simpler, because kierarchy is just the intersectional form of patriarchy.
Introducing technical or academic language takes a little
more time, but over the long term (even the length of a conversation) it allows
you to make larger leaps forward, making secondary and tertiary concepts much
more accessible. For example, I could spend ten minutes clearing up nuclear
fusion and nuclear fission and then we could have a much more involved
discussion about the ramifications of the difference fuel and reactor types.
Without including people in your language you may never be able to allow them
the deeper understanding that gives them the power to make decisions and form
opinions in the future.
Granted, if you’ve got seven minutes on LBC to convey an idea in an interview (as Lewis described) then you
don’t have the power to do that. I understand that. But I wouldn’t go as far as
called the word ‘intersectionality’ and other academic language ‘terrible’. Oh,
no.
March 19, 2013
Penises: Not my Cup of Tea for Some Reason
So, I was talking to this bisexual guy the other day and we happened to get chatting about sexuality in general. I can't remember how we got to that, but I'm sure it was an awesome segue.
He said, 'I don't know how you monosexuals do it; you're cutting your sexual opportunities in half,' or something to that effect. This dissolved into a mindfarty dialogue in which I started to wonder what the hell it was that made me attracted to women and not men. I mean, I do like a bosom. Anyone who knows me will tell you that, even if you don't ask. But is a bosom the only thing that pulls me towards women?Yes No.
I'm going to binerise gender a little bit here as my experience and exposure to the spectrum is limited to the point of negligable. I haven't forgotten those outside of that binary, I just have nothing meaningful to say at this point.
I had a long think about people I had been attracted to, whether or not that led to anything requited. These people are pretty much all women. But these women are scattered across a range of qualities, both physical and personal, and I was struggling to nail a predictable pattern to them. Other than the obvious quality of being able to sustain an interesting or entertaining conversation for more than two minutes is a good start - having common ground tends to make for better coupling - there really wasn't too much to go on. There certainly wasn't anything particularly 'feminine' about their common qualities other than their bodies in any sense that dragged their circle out of the overlap with my male friends. Sure, they'd wear make up and do womenly things, but their interests and expressions thereof were no different to my close male friends.
So is it just a bodily thing? If I took someone I totally fancied the pants off and body swapped them with a man, would I suddenly stop fancying them? I probably would. And that's weird, isn't it? I guess it's not weird in the evolutionary sense in which a heteronormative urge to procreate ends up being pretty useful at the species level. But we humans tend to think ourselves above our biology, smarter than our instincts and gutteral drives, don't we? I don't like the fact that something that simple can change everything for me; it puts me in the position of marionette, with biology working the strings. Am I not allowed to master my own order of attraction?
The further question is: how much of my sexuality is shaped by genetics and how much by societal structuring of sexuality (and heteronormativity)? Kenneth Miller's research with twins has shown that sexuality is influenced by genetics, but how much is left by our early exposure to what one should deem attractive or not? This is all unresearched waffling, of course, but you can see among all ages how people who follow contemporary trends and fashions tend to be viewed as more attractive than those out of step. Look at heartthrobs and sexy peoples as they were in the 80s - they look hilarious and would be near-undateable if they presented today as they did in that fashionably confused decade. Make-up, clothing, body size and hair all undulate from cool to laughable over the decades and centuries and our sense of what's attractive moves with it. So my question is - how much does sexuality tie in with this sense of 'expected attraction'?
I don't have any answers to this by the way, I just want to know why I don't want to touch a penis. I mean, another penis.
He said, 'I don't know how you monosexuals do it; you're cutting your sexual opportunities in half,' or something to that effect. This dissolved into a mindfarty dialogue in which I started to wonder what the hell it was that made me attracted to women and not men. I mean, I do like a bosom. Anyone who knows me will tell you that, even if you don't ask. But is a bosom the only thing that pulls me towards women?
I'm going to binerise gender a little bit here as my experience and exposure to the spectrum is limited to the point of negligable. I haven't forgotten those outside of that binary, I just have nothing meaningful to say at this point.
I had a long think about people I had been attracted to, whether or not that led to anything requited. These people are pretty much all women. But these women are scattered across a range of qualities, both physical and personal, and I was struggling to nail a predictable pattern to them. Other than the obvious quality of being able to sustain an interesting or entertaining conversation for more than two minutes is a good start - having common ground tends to make for better coupling - there really wasn't too much to go on. There certainly wasn't anything particularly 'feminine' about their common qualities other than their bodies in any sense that dragged their circle out of the overlap with my male friends. Sure, they'd wear make up and do womenly things, but their interests and expressions thereof were no different to my close male friends.
So is it just a bodily thing? If I took someone I totally fancied the pants off and body swapped them with a man, would I suddenly stop fancying them? I probably would. And that's weird, isn't it? I guess it's not weird in the evolutionary sense in which a heteronormative urge to procreate ends up being pretty useful at the species level. But we humans tend to think ourselves above our biology, smarter than our instincts and gutteral drives, don't we? I don't like the fact that something that simple can change everything for me; it puts me in the position of marionette, with biology working the strings. Am I not allowed to master my own order of attraction?
The further question is: how much of my sexuality is shaped by genetics and how much by societal structuring of sexuality (and heteronormativity)? Kenneth Miller's research with twins has shown that sexuality is influenced by genetics, but how much is left by our early exposure to what one should deem attractive or not? This is all unresearched waffling, of course, but you can see among all ages how people who follow contemporary trends and fashions tend to be viewed as more attractive than those out of step. Look at heartthrobs and sexy peoples as they were in the 80s - they look hilarious and would be near-undateable if they presented today as they did in that fashionably confused decade. Make-up, clothing, body size and hair all undulate from cool to laughable over the decades and centuries and our sense of what's attractive moves with it. So my question is - how much does sexuality tie in with this sense of 'expected attraction'?
I don't have any answers to this by the way, I just want to know why I don't want to touch a penis. I mean, another penis.
February 19, 2013
On Dystopian Power
This is a quickie: more of a tweet that exploded into a larger thought.
Last night during Black Mirror, I tweeted that post-apocalyptic dystopian future worlds (of which Black Mirror's was in the sense that all the people in it had lost their minds and were unable to function as a society) always bothered me in that most of them seemed to still have electricity.
I worked for a time in the energy industry, though Lord knows I was not particularly good at it. Now electricity is produced on-demand, which means that when you turn your TV on, you need generation happening somewhere to provide you that power. Power stations don't (for the most part) store any of their energy - it goes straight into the electricity grid and pops out at your plug socket. This is simplified* but essentially true. You can think of the National Grid as a system of pipes with water being pumped in one end (electricity generation from power stations) and being siphoned off at the household end (electricity demand for your TV). You have to keep 'pumping' energy in at one end for it to be available for all the millions of siphons in homes around the country. On top of that, you have to keep the frequency at a steady 50Hz - i.e. you have to generate at almost exactly the rate that it's being used - or everything goes bananas (technical term).
My overreaching point is this: if you don't have a massive, populated infrastructure of people running your power stations and grid, electricity simply won't work. So, when I see Will Smith watching a DVD in I am Legend, I wonder where his energy comes from? How does he pump petrol into his car? It makes me think there is a secret twist that actually the rest of the country is fine and Will was the last to know.
As a further point, it should remind us of how much we rely on one another. There really isn't much 'going it alone' as we rely on everyone else to do almost everything for us, without realising it. Be it generating energy, dealing with waste, preparing food, building all our stuff, we need each other.
This is handled very well in Gone - a book series in which every adult disappears and the kids left behind realise they not only don't know how to do anything - they can't do anything.
*Actualy, energy companies and the grid predict how much energy the country will need at any time in the day and attempt to match that demand GW for GW.
Last night during Black Mirror, I tweeted that post-apocalyptic dystopian future worlds (of which Black Mirror's was in the sense that all the people in it had lost their minds and were unable to function as a society) always bothered me in that most of them seemed to still have electricity.
I worked for a time in the energy industry, though Lord knows I was not particularly good at it. Now electricity is produced on-demand, which means that when you turn your TV on, you need generation happening somewhere to provide you that power. Power stations don't (for the most part) store any of their energy - it goes straight into the electricity grid and pops out at your plug socket. This is simplified* but essentially true. You can think of the National Grid as a system of pipes with water being pumped in one end (electricity generation from power stations) and being siphoned off at the household end (electricity demand for your TV). You have to keep 'pumping' energy in at one end for it to be available for all the millions of siphons in homes around the country. On top of that, you have to keep the frequency at a steady 50Hz - i.e. you have to generate at almost exactly the rate that it's being used - or everything goes bananas (technical term).
My overreaching point is this: if you don't have a massive, populated infrastructure of people running your power stations and grid, electricity simply won't work. So, when I see Will Smith watching a DVD in I am Legend, I wonder where his energy comes from? How does he pump petrol into his car? It makes me think there is a secret twist that actually the rest of the country is fine and Will was the last to know.
As a further point, it should remind us of how much we rely on one another. There really isn't much 'going it alone' as we rely on everyone else to do almost everything for us, without realising it. Be it generating energy, dealing with waste, preparing food, building all our stuff, we need each other.
This is handled very well in Gone - a book series in which every adult disappears and the kids left behind realise they not only don't know how to do anything - they can't do anything.
*Actualy, energy companies and the grid predict how much energy the country will need at any time in the day and attempt to match that demand GW for GW.
February 15, 2013
A Guide to Perving Appropriately
Today both The Sun and The Daily Mail (and probably others, though I am unsure as of writing) have chosen to illustrate the murder of Reeva Steenkamp with assorted bikini and lingerie pictures from her modelling career. This came as a surprise to some, as it seemed like it might possibly be edging towards bad taste to perv over a recently murdered woman. But, what do I know? I'm just a layman - the tabloids have been working on appropriate perving for decades and if anyone knows decency -- it's the tabloids.
If you study the actions of the tabloids -- what they've chosen to print, and what they've demonised for being in print -- we can build up a solid picture of when it is and is not appropriate to leer over certain people. And by 'people', I mean 'women', obviously.
It is NOT appropriate to perv if the subject is:
If you study the actions of the tabloids -- what they've chosen to print, and what they've demonised for being in print -- we can build up a solid picture of when it is and is not appropriate to leer over certain people. And by 'people', I mean 'women', obviously.
It is NOT appropriate to perv if the subject is:
- An heir-giving princess in the nude.
- An heir-giving princess wearing a bikini while pregnant.
- The Queen (probably? untested)
It is entirely fine to perv if the subject is:
- An heir-giving princess in a bikini while not pregnant
- An heir-giving princess in underwear
- An heir-giving princess, pregnant, but not in a bikini
- A princess (Eugenie and Beatrice are often papped at the beach due to their large bosoms)
- A celebrity consensually modelling for photographs
- A celebrity out in public
- A celebrity doing something so outrageous that they have to show you all the details just so you can understand exactly how outraged to be
- A celebrity, shot from a long lens on a private holiday
- A pregnant celebrity
- A pregnant celebrity in a bikini
- A celebrity, who's large breasts might mean cleavage is inevitable
- A celebrity's accidentally exposed body parts
- A celebrity's teenage daughter
- A celebrity's pre-pubsecent daughter
- A celebrity's infant daughter
- A celebrity's foetus
- An underage celebrity (link is particularly "hilarious")
- A teenage celebrity (there are somany of these I didn't know where to start)
- A child celebrity
- A recently murdered celebrity
- The wife of a head of state
- An A-Level student, having received your results (especially after being pimped out by your own school)
- A sports professional
- A woman
- A woman whose weight fluctuates
- A woman who's too thin
- A woman who's too fat
- A woman wearing flattering clothing
- A woman wearing inappropriate clothing for her body
So that's that sorted, then.
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