And still right now there are more or less 4 - 6 women who show up regularely and comment or uprate comments. That is not much.
Maybe then another question might be, what kind of topics would be of greater interest to women? I have been wondering about that too?
I do think that diaries that can touch on daily experiences are a way for non specialists to comment. eg when you've discussed your experiences of dealing with your child's school, or when people have talked about their experience of healthcare.
It is a shame ephemera didn't stick around. And hopefully when Sassafras is back on form we'll see her on occasion again. Ad astra per aspera
i know she's reading, but i hope she/you has/have more time soon to comment more, lovely photodiaries too.
deAnander too ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Where is Izzy, stormy....??? Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
Is that what this is about?
You're a woman and you regularly write about your life and about issues of inequality. I don't think much more can be asked of you. I don't think the answer is to come up with some sort of composite portrait of the average woman and her interests and then go and find someone to write diaries matching those interests. Or is it?
"Women's topics" is whatever it is that women discuss (yes, it sounds like circular reasoning but it is not). Therefore the way to get more women's topics on the site is for the existing women on the site to lead more discussions in it. And a diary is just that, an excuse for group discussion.
You said elsewhere it's not as simple as just writing more, but there is no other way. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
In my sole opinion which no one is required to share, I don't think the crux of the matter is that the topics don't appeal to women. Women are diverse and have interests and opinions as varied as men do. I personally appreciate blogs directed to women, but don't think that's the solution. I suspect it is more in how the topics are presented and the overall tone of the conversations... "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
So although they also do the technocratic thing on the front page, they have a balancing effect in the general contributor diaries looking at things from the other end of the telescope. So the site has a more personal feel.
We have very few personal experience diaries here, I've written a few (some of which were very personal and I had some offline criticism over them), but there have been others. rg's series on music is a wonderful example that it isn't just a girl-thing. But, generally, technocratic is the site's comfort zone. keep to the Fen Causeway
I also feel if I have not a few links to back up my opinions it's better not to post them.
:D
Honest to god, when I post here, I post the most personal stuff in the world. I post insane opinions unacceptable in most circles, which are only now becoming accepted here because I've continued to post them. Certainly not everything I write is based on facts and figures. I realize I am the last person who should be giving advice on the subject (but maybe all of my experience has made me wise - how do you know?) But if you have something you are passionate about and you think would be beneficial to impart to the world, and a great outlet like ET to use for your medium, go for it. Of all the people here besides J, you've probably made the biggest investment in ET. I don't think you should have to feel the way you do. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
They say men prefer to talk about events in terms of problems and solutions. Maybe women prefer to talk about events in terms of personal experiences. I have no idea if there is any truth in that.
BTW, I wanted to tell you, there was a trans-gendered girl on America's Next Top Model this season. It's probably lame that I feel the need to tell you that. But I thought it was interesting. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
I was aware of the Isis thing, and but I know that she was on the receiving end of some of the very unkind commentary, both by her fellow contestants as well as the more cerebrally challenged of the US commentariat.
As for the difference about how men and women approach things, again, I think it's true as a tendency across populations, but not necessarily for individuals. I have a female friend who keeps telling me her problems and I sense her frustration when I try to "solve" them for her when she really just wants sympathy. But equally I don't think she quite gets how distressing it is for me to listen to her problems and not be able to help cos she won't take advice. keep to the Fen Causeway
She is probably the most prominent lesbian "feminist" writer in the UK and never hesitates to give the transgendered a kicking. And when we, who have no such pulpit from which to transmit our distress, protest we're told we're bullying and silencing her views.
The most annoying thing is that Stonewall are powerful enough that they have managed to actually get two prominent transgender advocacy organisations to back down on protests. There is a suspicion that some people were told their career prospects in the wider LGB community were under threat if the protests became "official", so we got shafted. keep to the Fen Causeway
But if you have something you are passionate about and you think would be beneficial to impart to the world, and a great outlet like ET to use for your medium, go for it.
Well said.
Fran, if someone tries to say your personal experience can be disproved - that's their problem. But if you presented your personal experience as proving something general, they are entitled to question that. You would only need to back up your report on your own experience with links to evidence if you were claiming some general significance. If not - as poemless says - "go for it". Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
links that proved that science showed that my experiences are wrong.
About fifty years ago Kurt Godel demonstrated that any axiomatic mathematical system that could prove as true all propositions known to be true would also prove as true propositions that could be shown to be false, and conversely. And that is for mathematics. Unfortunately, the implications for other fields are often ignored. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Um, more like 80 years ago (1931), and what Gödel proved is that 1) a formal system that contains arithmetic contains true propositions unprovable within the system; 2) the consistency of such a formal system cannot be proved within the system.
I don't know that the theorem has implications for fields that don't contain arithmetic, except in lowering our expectations of consistency and completeness.
It's not about experiences being right or wrong, but about being generalisable. And you're right about the issue being one of interpretation even if there is agreement on the phenomenon. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Who's Korzybski? A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
I think the main implication of Incompleteness is that some truths are axiomatic and based in (horror...) subjective experience. They can't deduced because they're primary qualia.
If put two similar things next to each other, you experience the twoness of the similar things rather than eighteenness similar things. (Ceteris paribus, etc.) The experience of numberness and of basic addition and subtraction is probably innate, although some cultures develop it much farther than others, while others barely develop it at all.
Some animals can count too, after a fashion.
Subitizing, coined in 1949 by E.L. Kaufman et al.[1] refers to the rapid, accurate, and confident judgments of number performed for small numbers of items. The term is derived from the Latin adjective subitus (meaning sudden) and captures a feeling of immediately knowing how many items lie within the visual scene, when the number of items present falls within the subitizing range.[1] Number judgments for larger set-sizes were referred to either as counting or estimating, depending on the number of elements present within the display, and the time given to observers in which to respond (i.e., estimation occurs if insufficient time is available for observers to accurately count all the items present). The accuracy, speed, and confidence with which observers make judgments of the number of items are critically dependent on the number of elements to be enumerated. Judgments made for displays composed of around one to four items are rapid[2], accurate[3] and confident.[4] However, as the number of items to be enumerated increases beyond this amount, judgments are made with decreasing accuracy and confidence.[1] In addition, response times rise in a dramatic fashion, with an extra 250 ms - 350 ms added for each additional item within the display beyond about four. ... So, while there may be no span of apprehension, there appear to be real differences in the ways in which a small number of elements is processed by the visual system (i.e., approximately < 4 items), compared with larger numbers of elements (i.e., approximately > 4 items). Recent findings [7] demonstrated that subitizing and counting are not restricted to visual perception, but also extend to tactile perception (when observers had to name the number of stimulated fingertips).
The accuracy, speed, and confidence with which observers make judgments of the number of items are critically dependent on the number of elements to be enumerated. Judgments made for displays composed of around one to four items are rapid[2], accurate[3] and confident.[4] However, as the number of items to be enumerated increases beyond this amount, judgments are made with decreasing accuracy and confidence.[1] In addition, response times rise in a dramatic fashion, with an extra 250 ms - 350 ms added for each additional item within the display beyond about four.
... So, while there may be no span of apprehension, there appear to be real differences in the ways in which a small number of elements is processed by the visual system (i.e., approximately < 4 items), compared with larger numbers of elements (i.e., approximately > 4 items). Recent findings [7] demonstrated that subitizing and counting are not restricted to visual perception, but also extend to tactile perception (when observers had to name the number of stimulated fingertips).
But is this qualia? Applying sequential attention within the subitizing range doesn't lead to different results. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
But is this qualia?
No.
Qualia is the mental state of "knowing what it is like" to have a particular mental state.
Axioms can't be deduced because they're axiomatic. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Also, thinking again about subitizing, it is not only repeatable but also people can agree on the result. The qualia (what it feels like to subitize four as opposed to counting to four) is irrelevant to a large extent. It's just extremely interesting that we can subitize and it may even have linguistic implications for grammatical number, but just because your native language doesn't have counting numbers doesn't mean you can't learn them, and the possible connection between perception and grammar is not so surprising since both perception and grammar involve the same brain. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
I'd be surprised if basic arithmetic - certainly addition, possibly subtraction, probably not anything more advanced - wasn't similarly rooted in experience.
But the basic point was that arithmetic is rooted in experience, and doesn't exist independently of it. Trying to prove it using formal logic makes for an interesting scenic trip, but eventually you end up standing over a hole which logic can't fill for you.
Axioms - to use the term strictly - establish the Rules of the Deductive Game you're playing, intellectually speaking. Nothing prevents anyone else from declaring other axioms and playing other games. This is exactly how non-Euclidean geometries is/are developed.
Deductive Truth arises from the manipulation of the Terms and Operations, within the Axioms, of A Deductive System - as guided by the particular Interpretation of that system. Even within the good old Categorical Logic there are two Interpretations: Aristotelean and Boolean.
Verification of the results - the Truthyness of the Truth Value ;-) of a particular Axiomatic System - is a whole 'nuther topic.
Who's Korzybski?
He created General Semantics. I mentioned him several times here. "Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
I just don't like writing about myself - why should my personal experience be of interest to anyone else? It's safer to write about what can be reasonably expected to be a shared experience. I guess one of the things I'm wary of is getting feedback that my writing is narcissistic because I'd be writing about stuff which is primarily interesting because it's about me.
Interestingly, I don't think other people's personal writing is narcissistic and almost always recommend it. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
I'll let others supply the name.
that's what the site was born around, then it attracted some women, and though way out of balance still, the women helped make this ET more colourful, more human, more connected, more feeling, more soulful.
i see ET as reflecting the world as it is, mostly male-dominated, mostly bent on solving problems women would probably not have allowed to occur in the first place.
i'm also guessing that there are way more men online than women at any point in time or space. internet probably existent more because of males than females, who are more connected to the real world, rather than the cybersphere, with its somewhat virtualised realities.
i think the males are probably more interesting in real life than we allow ourselves to be on the net, speaking as one currently inhabiting a body of the male gender(!).
i wish there were more women here, as i'm not alone in this, i expect ET will attract more females in time, though i don't expect it to be a particularly swift evolution, for some reason.
while the main subjects and issues raised and debated here remain those that are traditionally male-oriented, then the disparity will reflect that reality.
it would have been amusing if it had been inverted. say the blog originated with a woman, and the subjects around which it rotated had been more traditionally 'female', maybe shoe-shopping, maternity leave, child-raising, fashion, whatever, and to every 50-or-so women there was a man, throwing in comments and diaries about global oil prices, currency exchanges, windmills, and the latest political machinations...
when i think of ET reversed, it gives me greater understanding of how i'm intuiting fran feels, and i am even amazed there are any women on the blog at all.
as Jung says, we are all both and we need to fully experience both sides of our natures to be completely human.
i'm physically male, but my soul is female. to understand that, studying how women are (the feminine principle) is fundamental to balancing the apparent contradictions between the genders, within me, and reflected into the greater world around my little sack of skin.
ET's best attributes transcend gender, imo, but after periods of transcendence, it's wonderful to have the female input here. i can appreciate that if i were female, i would probably notice much more how 'male' this site is.
ET is a public sphere, and we after all are private people, there's only so much of myself i'm happy to put online for all to see, because i am not that much of an exhibitionist, at least in this medium anyway lol.
women are shyer than men, and intellectualise less than men, in my experience. they also take less conversational risks, and tend to more conservative mindsets. before you flame this transparently sexist comment, i want to add that this site would be FAR less interesting if it were all-male, and i wish for more female input as much as anyone, maybe more.
in the interests of balance...
the women here at ET contribute mightily, and i suspect are as unconventional and progressive in real life as their contributions, which make be numerically less, but make up for that in many subtle, delightful ways.
gender anonymity adds to the mystery also... i like not knowing, and guessing!
:) ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
If the expectations are that small and that rigid, it is not surprising that males feel so threatened when any woman cannot fit into them. It doesn't take much. Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
Just.write.more.diaries
on different topics. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
I gave it a go and it went ok so I stayed and I'm very glad I did, but it is much easier to not get involved with a site like this. What I and others are interested in is attracting newcomers and keeping them interested and active, and that involves identifying what keeps people from contributing in the first place. Ad astra per aspera
I'm sorry but just because people don't find something interesting they don't descend into the comment thread and attack the diary and this site is terribly civil in its debate standards so I don't know why people need to feel intimidated by "what may come their way". As for not thinking their subject will be interesting to others a diary is like somebody's personal blog and they have wide latitude in the choice of topics, and in fact there is a quite broad selection of topics covered on the site. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
And Migeru, I can see metavisions point in challenging melo and I also think melo can handle it - I even have a hunch that he might enjoy this kind of "fight"/Challenge. What is more it might lead to another interesting discussion, which I would be very much interested in. :-)
Write.more.diaries.
Look, the traffic on this site is not that high - it tekes less than 5 recommendations for a diary to make the recommended diary list. Sometimes we have diaries where the discussion in the comments is basically carried on by two or three people and the writers don't complain.
You can attract different people just by writing different diaries. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
that's how you perceive my comment?
obviously i shold post less, or not on this topic, if i am
a. that densely chauvinistic
b. that inarticulate
c. that insultingly suffocating without realising it.
back to square one.... :)
er, thanks for the feedback, meta-v, i am less reconstructed than i had fondly hoped, obviously. thanks for the gentle judgement, points duly taken on board! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I don´t know, but the parts about the ´gender dominated´ and the ´gender subjects´ and women´s qualities just don´t fit for me at all. I don´t want to be classified by those, I have had roles and molds all my life and I don´t want any more.
This doesn´t have to stop you from writing anything, or disagreeing with me, you know that, so don´t give me the abc´s. You know your square is fine with me, even if this time I don´t agree because I don´t fit. Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
i think it's just that the progressive blogosphere, like most techy things, is presently male-dominated.
as the net becomes more 'normal', and as more women become progressive bloggers, i expect things will even out, to common benefit.
i'm very interested in the psychology of gender, which is why i take the high risk of misunderstanding in participating, and worse, being misunderstood, in these dragon-infested realms!
sorry if my thinking is still boxy, i'm working on it, thanks again for the educational feedback... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
