A little light comedy for all you fine people in Hubskivania.
- Being single, we’re told in film, television, music, advertising and even the Supreme Court, is a state of existence that is lonely, pathetic, hopefully temporary and meaningless. Being single is a life that is more expensive. Being single is a life lived wrongly. There is no adequate art, culture, politics or law that understands singleness on its own (often satisfied) terms as something other than a bitter life of being unlucky in love.
I don't think I laughed this hard at a media hit piece masquerading as a concern troll in at least a week or two. I realize that this is a bit of the Baader Meinhof but the reaction of the advertising industry to people like myself who don't watch TV and block almost all web ads are at least in my mind increasing. Ad blocking is theft, after all
I'll stay single and keep my money, thanks for the chuckle but no thanks, Washington Post.
Dunno about you, but the use of the word "cisgender" in a sentence tells me that this article isn't for me. If I have to perform the mental aerobics necessary to configure myself to the opposite of transgender, I can safely assume that the article was written for a different audience.
I was first exposed to the term back in the late '90s when my girlfriend at the time was getting her Masters in social work. It was the term used within the trans community used to describe individuals whose gender identity and sexual preferences were normative - in discussions where minority gender and sexual preferences were the subject. Gender studies ain't my expertise, but back in those halcyon days the intention was that "straight" was everybody that wasn't "queer" or "LGBT" and "cisgendered" were those people in your transgender discussion that didn't need their gender explained. I can't say for sure, but I suspect that had you asked back then, nobody would expect the average person to wrap their heads around being "cisgendered" unless they were comparing themselves to people who weren't.
Just to put it out there, did the use of words like straight make the article seem as though it was written for a different audience as well ? I imagine a few generations ago people took issue with the word "heterosexual" in the same way people take issue with the word "cisgender" these days. It's funny how little we actually change as humans.
We use "straight" to distinguish heterosexuality from homosexuality (or any of the other non-cis-whatever stuff that all of a sudden people are offended over). You don't have to ask 'would you like cold water?' if you aren't offering hot. cisgender is used to distinguish from transgender, which is nowhere in the article. ctrl-F it. I'll wait. Here, it's used for far stupider, far more insulting reasons: Here's the phrase: We could therefore say, for instance, that gay transgender men and gay transgender women rightly don't worry about their appearance... wait, what? Somewhere out there are people who are not concerned about their appearance? Oh, right. Because everyone else is so shallow that they'll fuck a rich dude for being rich. In this case, we use the word cisgender to inoculate the author against accusations of being a prejudicial shithead. And it's bullshit.We could say, for instance, that gay cisgender men and straight cisgender women rightly share similar worries about aging and dating, since men of all sexualities are frequently youth-and-looks-obsessed. Conversely, straight cisgender men can put off long-term romantic coupling for much longer, if they are wealthy, powerful or successful enough to be attractive for reasons that outlast their waning physical appeal.
Conversely, straight cisgender men can put off long-term romantic coupling for much longer, if they are wealthy, powerful or successful enough to be attractive for reasons that outlast their waning physical appeal.
No no, you said the use of the word in a sentence said this article wasn't for you. Somebody else said later in a comment that they didn't like HOW it was used for no reason. It wasn't exactly taxing for this person to write that out and if that's the thought you meant to express from the get go it wouldn't haven't been taxing for you either. Nothing in your original comment suggested that and actually made it seem like you were having trouble "performing mental aerobics" to figure out you were the opposite of transgender. That's not generally a difficult task by the way. You're more than capable of expressing your thoughts well so it's your own fault you didn't bother too with your first comment. You can't get your panties in a bunch because somebody assumed you had used your ability to express a full thought. Your original comment merely placed you among the tons of people who don't like new words. Now that that's out of the way, what is going on in your life lately that has made you so sour ?
If you must know, the wife is being sued for malpractice and the job from hell? Yeah, not going to get my back pay and I won't get any hours from it, so I'm also going to lose my health insurance. Satisfied? So. Words like "straight" imply that in some form or another we'll be talking about "straight" vs. "gay" or "queer" or "literally any sexual persuasion outside normative practices." I also had exactly two minutes to type out what I said, then spent the day battling the union, dealing with contractors and getting mired in a 4-hour lunch downtown, and spent the ten free minutes I had dashing out the two comments on this page. If I had it to do over again, I would have said "the way cisgender is used in this article demonstrates it wasn't written for me" instead of "in a sentence" but, you see, the phone rang to let me know that my career might be over so I hit "reply" and moved on with my day. So yes. I could have been more nuanced in my speech and yes, it hasn't been the best of days. I sincerely appreciate you being condescending about it.
I'm sorry if I'm sour to people because of shit going on in my life that has nothing to do with them I won't be upset they were a little rude to me when calling me out. That's because ultimately I am responsible for my actions no matter what's going on in my life. Everything you told me here is a reason I can be understanding but not a reason I'm going to feel bad for calling you out. I sincerely hope things in your life start to look up and that you do something like take a bubble bath to decompress.
But dude - you're still doing a shitty job of calling me out. The fact remains: "cis"anything is not an inclusive word. It's a word designed to exclude me. And I'm not being sour to people - I'm making a statement and then you decided to jump down my neck. In effect, you're saying "I don't want to acknowledge your argument, how 'bout I take it personal?" In effect, I said "the argument still stands, if you wanna take it personal I happen to have ammo today. Your move." Your response? "I'm not going to feel bad for calling you out." This discussion we're having is you "putting it out there" that "straight" means the same thing as "cisgender." It doesn't, though, and it doesn't have the same context. My acknowledging that the context is different isn't me needing "a bubble bath" it's me arguing that the "inclusive" language used is exclusive of normative gender alignments when not used comparatively. You took it ad hominem, it didn't work, and here we are. The argument still stands: "cisgender" is a term used to counterbalance transgender discussion. Outside of transgender discussion it's exclusionary. I sincerely hope you'll address my arguments, rather than attempting to change the subject through ham-handed attempts at pathos rhetoric.
Honestly, I just don't believe that's what you meant with your original post. I think you just don't like the word because that's exactly what your original post suggested. Except you don't want to say that now so you took somebody elses opinion and are pretending it was what you meant the whole time. I'm not arguing with that person because they actually had a good point. So obviously when you pretend their point was yours I'm not going to argue against it. I'm saying you should decompress because in a few days of being on the internet I've managed to know there was likely something wrong in your life. That should probably raise some questions about how you conduct yourself under stress.
Is it that much stranger than "partner" becoming the term for every sort of significant other, so it takes some effort to figure out whether people are talking about their love lives or their law firms? It's an awkward term, but torturing everyday language is, for better or worse, part of social change now. The term exists because if it's not an explicit category then it's assumed and transgendered people are oddities. It's not a word I'm going to start using anytime soon either, but it's an awkward term with a function.
It's that much stranger because "partner" is an inclusive term meant to blanket everyone. "cisgender" literally means NOT transgender. My wife is part of a two person committee whose sole role is to convert all of her professional organization's writing and copy into gender-inclusive language. cis-anything is gender-exclusive; the fact that it is used almost entirely by the transgender community to discuss things that aren't theirs does not promote inclusivity in the slightest. Ain't nobody in Tuscaloosa, Alabama ever gonna think of themselves as "cisgendered." You can probably get them to accept Caitlin Jenner eventually, but they're always going to be "normal." Yeah, yeah. Transgender is "normal" too, I get it. But nobody is doing anybody any favors by requiring 65-year-olds to wrap their brains around a latin prefix so that nobody has the opportunity to be offended.
Being older and married without kids is only marginally better, from the advertisers perspective, oddly enough. My sweetie and I have all the toasters and tvs and gadgets we need, and are no longer looking to validate our existence to others by buying new ... shit. With no kids to drive the urge to spend, the advertisers just can't get traction with us. And, if the advertisers aren't talking to you, then you don't exist.
I'm single but largely in the same place. I don't need a new widget. Making the world even more difficult for advertisers, if I do need a new widget, I'm going to research it, look for alternatives, read reviews and only purchase it when I'm convinced it meets my needs. Some advertising gets through (you know maybe it IS time to replace my ancient, extremely loud vacuum cleaner), but it's tempered by needing to be useful and being the best at meeting my needs.
I was just saying to someone that I think now would be the golden age for being single. So long as you're mildly successful and attractive it would be fun, at least I would think so. The hardest part was always meeting people but with the advent of online dating this is alleviated. Maybe I'm naive, but you youngsters don't know how hard it used to be. It involved making a move...IN PERSON. Hard to believe, I know. You could be single and have romantic flings. EDIT: To be clear, being young and ANYTHING sort of sucks. Being my age and being single would be fucking easy though. Age = confidence, money and ability. Youth has none of those things.
Nobody cares that you are single anymore. From what my dad has told me, if you were single in the 70's people thought there was something wrong with you, or you were gay. Now, the majority of US households are singles so really there is no longer a social stigma. With jobs demanding mobility for younger people, being tied down in a relationship can even be detrimental to your earning potential as growing with a company for most of us is not going to happen anymore. I've been looking into the business of advertising more lately just on a whim, and the whole world is collapsing in slow motion under the feet of the old guard. With a number as high as 85% of men and boys under 25 not watching traditional TV, ad-blocking on the Internet, fewer people reading magazines, the over saturation of "real life" ads causing people to tune it out like white noise, and the "long tail" effects, ad people are scrambling to catch up to the eyeballs. It is sort of amusing to watch people who are supposed to be in tune with the public flail around trying to figure out the new world we live in.I was just saying to someone that I think now would be the golden age for being single. So long as you're mildly successful and attractive it would be fun, at least I would think so.
It's a little less amusing from the inside. The jobs that are left are crappier, the people who are left are meaner and the projects that are left are lamer. The entertainment industry is going from a career to a stopgap - that thing you did for the ten years between graduation and moving back to Dayton. For those of us who do it for a living it's kinda chilling. I mean, I know the guys who mix the Grammies. I know the guys who mix the Emmys. I have a friend with four parking spots on the Radford lot just from all the shows she's on. And I know that on the last gig I worked, only one dude on the sound team was under 35, all the PAs were being treated like shit and the project was deliberately designed to burn through people for money.
The people under 35 wanting to do what you do are all on Youtube where they don't have horror stories of casting couches and movies like Swimming With sharks etc to scare you back to an 8-5 job.And I know that on the last gig I worked, only one dude on the sound team was under 35
Online dating isn't all it's cracked up to be really. When you meet someone in person you have less time to talk yourself out of it but when you meet someone online you have plenty of time. This has at least been my experience but I'm also pretty good at talking to strangers unless I've had time to think about how they'll murder me. Others may feel differently.
It's true, I'm sure some people have had success with it but I know far more people who haven't. I do have sympathy for people who aren't able to strike up conversations in person though as I know for some it's rough. I imagine online dating must seem like a great idea at first for someone like that but it's almost like finding a needle in a haystack.
I spend more time hearing about how I should be sad that I'm single than I do even realizing I'm single. I like how the article took the time to remind me as a young woman I'm supposed to be worried about aging. The only people who ever try to act like this should be a concern of mine wound up cynical from their garbage love lives and then think people will actually take their advice. All fools wasting their time, being single is great at this point in my life.