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Holy Men in Tights! Academic Superhero Conference
Malfourmed writes "The University of Melbourne's Cinema Studies Program, School of Art History, Cinema, Classics & Archaeology is hosting a four day conference (and fancy dress ball and movie programme) on superhoeroes and supervillains. The interdisciplinary conference will address the varying roles, identities, and social functions that these superheroes serve. Topics include censorship; industry and franchise differentiation (eg DC vs Marvel); mythology; the female superhero ("It has been a very much male-centred universe," co-convener Saige Walton said. "They need some more chicks."); ethnicity, class and race; diverse media formats (cinema, comics, computer games, television) ; the resurgence in the cult of superpowers in recent cinema; super-auteurs (eg Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Tezuka Osamu, Grant Morrison); fan culture; the science and physics of the superhero; ancient superheroes; and the 'hero' who isn't 'super'."
"
When? June 11th ~ 8pm
Where? The Bat Cave
"
Oh shucks. My bat cave attire is at the cleaners that day.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Why not just leave it at being entertainment.
Making it a science takes all the fun away.
When you think you misread the title of the article, then realize no you didn't... it is what /. posts at night when all good geeks are in bed.
What always makes me laugh is how otakus try to justify their objectification of women in comics as somehow empowering to women. By cladding the female characters in skin-tight suits that leave nothing to the imagination and giving them powers, they are somehow less objectified than you'd assume at first glance. Oh no, they are totally powerful, according to the geeks.
Of course, at no point are they ever in charge, in normal clothes, homely, or out of the control of some male superhero.
I've jacked off to Rogue in her undies many times, so I ought to know a thing or two about objectifying comic book women. That doesn't excuse the industry for its blatant subjection of women, though, it only reinforces the stereotype of geeks as misogynists.
"It has been a very much male-centred universe," co-convener Saige Walton said. "They need some more chicks."
Interestingly, a male would lose some edge saying that.
I salute you Saige, and your message. I just wish that wording the message the same, in my shoes, as a man, wouldn't get me an unsavory label.
Now it can finally be put to rest!
Batman and Robin are straight.
You have been eaten by a Hurd of GNU.
So he says to me he says, "Do you want to be baaaaaad?" And I say, "Yeah baby YEAH! Surf's up space ponies! We're making gravy WITHOUT THE LUMPS!!! AAAAAAAAAAAhahahahahaHAAAAAA!!!"
"-- What's a Nubian?"
History tells us that many of the Celts went into battle naked. This was disconcerting to their foes. I wonder how popular That comic would be?
On another note, "Holy Men in Tights!" sounds like the next scandal.
The King
Rural Alaska nuclear power gets legislative backing
When I saw "Holy men in tights", I thought it was about another Catholic sex abuse scandal.
Must admit that I almost read it superwhores:)
Having been to numerous scientific conferences even the idea of men in tights in an academic conference made me shudder.
The owls are not what they seem
I can't be the only one to know abou the best super-villain ever...
I say bring back Power Girl by Wallace Wood.
Oh, and bring back Wally, too.
No sense in having a discussion about the blatant sexism in comic books. Nosiree.
http://www.superdickery.com/
Superheroes being dicks.
And other stuff so amazing it... sucks.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
A CowboyNeal comic...
maybe some panels of him bitch-slapping Zonk for posting dupes.. yeah i'd like that.
Bruce Wayne is a normal guy that everybody can relate to. He has no special powers to rely on; only the technology that his wealth affords him. He keeps in shape through rigorous training and is skilled in martial arts. He is a self-made superhero. None of that bullshit radioactive nonsense (what superheor ISN'T brought into existence by some type of radioactivity?). Gotham is a dark, lonely, unforgiving place. I think the animated series captured it the best, although the Dark Knight graphic novel was pretty good. Batman embodies what a superhero should be, and yet he doesn't play by the rules. He wasn't "gifted" or "chosen"; he took it upon himself to make a difference in a cruel world, and to strike back and get revenge. Batman is the best superhero because he is the most human.
Hum, combined with the article about the Japanese nerds, were in the cafes the waitresses dress up to meet the expectations of the customers, this gives me the following idea:
Let them hire those waitresses to get the balance back a bit.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
"It has been a very much male-centred universe," co-convener Saige Walton said.
Now that she mentions it, I can't think of any female comic writers. Please, could someone recomend a few?
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Superman
Wonder Woman
Green Lantern
The Flash
Hawkman/girl
Martian Manhunter
Aquaman
hmm, maybe the justice league is radiation prejudiced
Not Free SF Reader
You mean like how all men in romance novels are super buff and handsome? How can we stand for this! We must stop the objectification of men in romance novels now!!! Come on man give me a break. Here's an experiment for you: Go to your local book store and go take a look at the covers of romance novals and then go take a look at the covers of all the comic books? Do you honestly think you will find more barely clothed women on the front of comic books then you will barely clothed men on the front of romance novels. Yeah that's what I thought.
Creative Demolition
No I'm saying that blaming the male gender is absolutely rediculous because it is seen equally throughout the female gender. Any responsible person would point out that it is taking place in both genders, and not make men out to be some kind of monsters and say nothing about females.
Creative Demolition
Holy Men In Tights?
--
Toby
...its to do with time when most of the famous characters were created I think, there was a great deal of interest, and post 1945, collosal anxiety about radiation. I expect to see more modern creations having something to do with genetic modification and perhaps nanotechnology in their origin stories. These things don't necessarily happen by accident, I understand Stan Lee was thinking of issues of race and prejudice when he came up with idea of the X-men as being mutants persecuted for being who and what they were born as. Professor Xavier can be seen as a sort of Martin Luther King to Mangento's Malcolm X. In more recent times I've had the suspicion that this form has been reworked slightly to have more resonances with regard to society's treatment of homosexuality (I definitely got that feeling in the second film in the scene where, was it Iceman(?), goes home and his parents get upset when they find out what he is. Would appear to mirror many a "coming out" story).
This reflection of anxieties in popular art forms as a way of exploring or dealing with them is fairly well noted; for example, Bram Stoker's Dracula has an underlying theme of fear of supressed female sexuality, whereas Frankenstein is clearly all about fear of science. Its all the same thing really.
As an aside another reason Batman wins over his only DC rival, Superman, for readers internationally is that Superman is a little overly wrapped in the stars and stripes (of course "Red Son" had much fun playing with that aspect the strip) to the extent where his popularity waxes and wanes with regard to how people feel about the USA. He was big in the 1980s when American culture was at its zenith of being "cool" in Europe. Right now nobody wants to know really. He's always been and still is popular in countries that target the USA as a migration destination.
On closer examination though I think Superman is very symbolic but I think that Bruce Wayne/Batman is probably nearer the American dream ultimately. By day he's an enlightened capitalist in the modern American mould (rigorous businessman but very charitable etc) who still finds time to be a 'self made man' and act in a sort of "Wild West" state of mind by night.
Hang on, inherited wealth, wild west mentality, hangs out in a technologically advanced underground bunker...Batman=GWB? Holy known unknowns and unknown unknowns Batman! Makes you wonder if Wayne Industries had the contract for repairing the damage to Gotham done by the Batmobile and the Joker blowing stuff up. Meh, politics.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
done. Now for my well deserved break. ZZZZzzzzz... Seriously though, Joss Whedon is the god of superhero women. (Hmm, ok, maybe not seriously, but you get my point).
Learn to separate truth from illusion. Because in this world, it's the hardest thing to do.
About 10 years ago I taped The Tick Vs. The Tick episode from the old cartoon of the same name.
PURE UNADULTERATED COMEDY GOLD!!! XD (^_^)
I have it on tape twice. The second time full and complete.
Unfortunately, not long after that, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed.
After that, this episode of THE TICK appparently was never aired again.
Terrorism sucks on so many levels...Most importantly the tragic loss of life and senseless destruction of property. To a lesser extent, in the aftermath of such events, the entertainment industry gets 'cold feet' putting out 'related' content so close to tragedies like this.
Case in point: Collateral Damage and Big Trouble were mothballed in the wake of 2001-09-11 but, eventually, they were commercially released.
Apparently, there was too much money invested in both those films to shelve them for good unseen in the wake of 'related current events' which prevented them from enjoying a 'normal' release.
I could go as Bruce Willis's character from Unbreakable. Thanks to the latest Bizzaro World IT developments I could even do the moody, "what the fuck is wrong with my life" attitude.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
N/T.
Thanks slashdot. Did I mention that I'm a former Catholic? Yeah, trust me, the kind of imagery created by this title for me are not good. That was the last thing I wanted to think about.
Just imagine the Spanish Inquisition in tights. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, would expect that.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Also, Finns are the most homosexual people in the world ... a mere coincidence?
I DON'T THINK SO!
Original, enjoyable, better than The Crow.
Laws are for people with no friends.
It is if the woman can keep it a secret. In many species, including humans, females will mate with other males while their partner is otherwise engaged. That way they vary the genetic mix of their children, while still keeping a male partner to look after them.
But for some of us, devouring puerile comic book entertainment and debating it as if they were something worthy of serious analysis appeals to the immature smart aleck eleven year old in us.
[disclaimer: the following was written by my inner child]
Now, for a demonstration of black belt level irony: those of you say we shouldn't talk about comic books actually hold the same opinions and have the same attitudes as those who say we shouldn't read them at all. Opinion: You both agree that the idea that comic books are anything based on them could have any literary value is absurd. You only differ in that you find comic books entertaining and they do not; they find pretentious intellectual blather entertaining and you do not. Some of us like both. Attitude: Both the literary stuffed shirts and the literary know-nothings share the attitude that people who don't like the same things as them need to be corrected. In short, you are both prigs. But I mean that in a nice way.
[/disclaimer]
Now, for you pleasure (or mortification (or both)), I will repost my K5 diary in which I analyze Spider-Man 2 on a level that would probably get me beaten up if I did it in my high school English class. By my teacher.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I've organised a paypal account (geeksex@unimelb.edu.au) for donations to help hire some local working girls (many of whom will turn around and hand that money right back to the university in the form of student fees) to dress up in spandex and give the comic-buying geek academics something to live for in the small hours after the speeches are done.
So far, I've worked out the costumes for Libido Girl, The Thigh Mistress, Ms Pneumatic and (my favourite) Gyneodia.
For the (small but significant) gay academic contigent, there may possibly be an appearance by 'Krotch,' the rubber-wearing unambiguously gay superhero who punches you if you ever utter the name 'Batman' within his hearing.
'Tony Stark was an inventor and businessman, he headed Stark Industries a company supplying state of the art weaponry to the military. Whilst on a trip to the East, (I guess it could not have been from eating fried foods and smoking) Stark was injured in the chest and invented an artificial heart in a chestplate that he had to wear at all times to survive, the chestplate became the basis of his Ironman armour. After further development he had a complete powered suit and took the Identity of Ironman, head of security at Stark Industries and crimefighter, although no one knew he was secretly Tony Stark.' It made me read engineering books when I was little.. I wanted to jump buildings and here there was a possibility to do it. Rather than Superman.. 'Mum are you sure you did not find me, as a baby, in the middle of the road while driving on the countryside?'
But I agree the Batman animated cartoon series rocks!! That and the Tick are my favourites.
The only cartoon in print that I have ever read or been interested on was Tank Girl.. it has it's own style of drawing and laying out the cartoon story.
Cheers, A.
And then you've got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy.
In voice only.
Lucas hired James Earl Jones to be the voice of Darth Vader. If you've seen Episodes III to VI in the STAR WARS movie series, it is easy to see why: Jones' peformance in the films gives the vocal embodiment of pure villiany for the most (in)famous bad guy in movies ever created to date. Race had nothing to do with Lucas' casting decision. Though David Prowse was deeply annoyed to find out he would be dubbed in Episode IV, it didn't stop him from appearing as the body of Darth Vader in the two follow-up sequels, Episodes V and VI.
On a related note, I have seen a hilariously insightful move about race relations, perceptions, and prejudices if anyone openminded and mature enough is interested: The Gristle.
The science of superheroes. The science of Star Wars. News for nerds, as promised ;)
-phozz
I had a "Boom baby boom! I'm the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight" quote in my sig for a couple weeks. I think it cost me a few karma in the hours after 9/11 before I realized and changed it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Oh man what a shame. The Tick vs. The Tick is possibly the best episode of a show where every show has great moments, and over half of them are at least extremely good.
That's almost as much shame as the fact that you probably won't see the animated The Tick on DVD for decades down the road. Rights issues suck.
After decades in limbo due to the music rights, Heavy Metal finally came out on DVD. For this reason, WKRP In Cincinnati will probably never come out on DVD -- Paying for the music rights would make the series too expensive to buy on DVD.
I find that talking about super heroes without talking about their origins kind of invalidates the conversation. How much do these comics owe to myths and legends, earlier stories like The Three Musketeers and Gulliver's Travels, or even Thomas Cochrane, Horatio Nelson and the various stories modeled after their lives? Can a valid conversation take place about super heroes without reference to these earlier incarnations?
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Look up Chasing Amy next time you're in the video store.....
Dinosaur Neil!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Battle Pope
I'm not saying that there's no advantage. But it's not as advantageous for women as it is for men.
The advantage of having 'genetically varied children' is not as valuable as having more children.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant / Who was very rarely stable.
Actually 'sexy' means 'biologically strong'. A female is perceived as sexy because her body shape 'promises' healthy children, and thus survival of the genes. The same goes for men.
This line of Darwinian rationalism is so flawed that I'm surprised many intelligent people even proffer it. Humans do not select mates based on phenotypical signals of reproductive fitness. Period. What you argue about body shape "promising" healthy children is ludicrous. China and India both come to mind. Furthermore, even a cursory survey of sexual icons and fetishes over the last 500 years reveals enough of a range--fat, thin, black, white, tall, short, disabled, herculean--that any argument about sexiness being a biological predisposition to reproductive capability is just plain wrong.
blog
Excellent. I can rob a bank during the conference and make my escape. NO ONE CAN STOP ME! HA! HA! HA! HA! (Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!)
*Ahem*
L. Luther
So lemme see, you're obviously right and obviously _every_ woman's secret dream is to be represented as a cheap slut, because:
1. you call names any dissenting opinion ("anti-male feminist bullshit")
2. you call names everyone who dares have a different opionion ("total loss", "male mysoginist")
3. You briefly drop some pretentious sounding pseudo-science babble ("comprehension of human and cultural evolution", or "primate neuroscience"). Of course, without any further details as to _which_ recognized works in those fields actually paint the women in that light.
Blimey, just because you knew a complicated word like "neuroscience" (wrong field, but eh) everything you say _must_ be the absolute truth.
Bah. That's the most weak-ass attempt at a self-serving fallacy and proof-by-intimidation I've seen in ages. You're on slashdot, boy, not on some Power Puff Girls board for preschoolers. You'll have to do _much_ better than that.
If you're gonna verbally bully someone on slashdot, you know, _the_ place where "you're all idiots" is the _baseline_, just calling us weak stuff like "male mysoginists" or "total loss" doesn't even start to cut it. Stop being that diplomatic. Anything short of a numbered list of 10 ways in which the dissenter sucks hairy ass doesn't even start to intimidate anyone into submission.
And pretentious references at "neuroscience"? Boy, you can do better than that. Name-drop! Try "I was talking to my friend Dr Kurt von Muenchausen, a respected researcher in primate neuroscience, and he said <insert made up theory as to why female primates are hard-wired to enjoy a humiliating role>"
Better yet, make up a book name and page number too. Now that's more like it. Before anyone figured that there's no such researcher or book, you've already hand-waved a logical hole you could drive a bus through.
Or, of course, you could actually _prove_ your point, instead of lame hand-waving and name-calling. Do you know something about neuroscience or anthropology (since that's what studies cultural evolution) that we don't? Exactly _which_ respected researcher proved that women are hard-wired to dream of being represented and treated like a disposable sex object? In which article or book? Name, ISBN and page number.
Not that I actually expect that to happen, but eh, I'm prepared to be surprised.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
We do select based on genetic traits.
Another example was the strong chin in males. Stronger chins have a correlation with weaker immune systems, so the logic is that a specimen that can support the chin and be healthy has a stronger "baseline" immune system than a specimen w/o the strong jaw.
Here's an article outlining some of my points.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Let me tell you a secret: There's a reason the thin models get silicone implants to have big breasts. The reason is human biology.
There is a fundamental problem with the current brain-fucked ideal of beauty (as represented in comics too), namely anorexic with huge breasts. The problem is that it tends not to happen in normal, healthy humans. By the time the body has been forced to eat its fat reserves, or didn't have enough food to build them up in the first place, guess what? It doesn't have enough fat for big breasts either. Those reserves went too.
The current ideal of beauty is something that deviates far enough from the biological average, or from a normal human metaboloism, to count as a _mutant_.
So you're telling me... what? That you're expecting normal healthy kids from a _mutant_? Now I would understand a fascination with mutants in comics as a source of super-powers (after all, most super-heroes are mutants). But as a means of propagating normal human genes to healthy human offspring, it's outright idiotic.
And as was already mentioned, this ideal is very new. In some parts of the world, as new as late 20'th century. (See recent stories about Asian girls ending up with metabolism problem and other illnesses, by starving themselves or making themselves puke, to fit the beauty ideal Hollywood raped their coutries with. Countries where until recently the idea of beauty was a slightly fat woman.)
See, for most of human history, the beauty ideal was actually someone who by modern standards would be considered overweight. And you know the fertility figurines the cavemen made? Now those were seriously overweight.
_That_ was the kind of shape that guaranteed survival the next time there's a famine or you catch a disease. An anorexic wife would most likely have died long before passing those genes along. Someone with fat reserves would have survived.
And then there are other bleeps on the history radar, such as the Greeks and Romans. You may notice that those did have statues of thin women, for a change. They also had tiny breasts. In fact, the Romans are noted as having invented the bra... for the purpose of _hiding_ breasts. In effect, a strip of cloth tied over the breasts to make a woman look like she had none.
Oops, that ideal of beauty was different from ours too.
Or then, yes, were the Chinese, whose idea of beauty was more centred around crippled feet. A woman was apparently dead sexy for them if, before anything else, her feet were crippled to the point of barely being able to walk.
Oops, that differs from our beauty ideal too.
So give me a break. There is no correlation between our current _mutant_ ideal of beauty and survival in anything even vaguely resembling natural condition. And there is _no_ constant ideal through human history to suggest that somehow chasing that idea is built into the species.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
While he may have trained his body to physical perfection, it was ultimately his intellect that put him in the same league with the more "conventional" superheros. This is why I think he was ultimately so successful.
As far as other "non-super" superheros...there's
Dick Tracy (don't look at me like that, he counts)
Iron Fist (I think...unless someone corrects me)
The Shadow (He achieved his power through training - I like his concept as well)
Dr. Strange (see "the shadow" above)
The Lone Ranger
The Punisher
probably a lot more, but you get the idea.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Iron Man is one of my favorites. Tony Stark IS one of the most human heros. He has flaws, including alcoholism, but when the chips are down, he's a true hero.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
uh inst darth vaders costume BLACK .. i mean black .. i mean black .. do you see the point!
And thats why Firecrackers and kittens don't mix.
There is no species which deliberately handicaps itself, and their is no case where that's necessary to curb a species' spiralling out of control.
For starters, all species have a built in balance between available food and number of members. In most cases it involves some predator-prey relationships too.
E.g., if too many rabbits are born, more foxes have food, which naturally curbs the rabbits' expansion. If there are less rabbits, some foxes starve.
There is no way for a species to spiral out of control. Eventually the species will either become the main course for others, or hit the limits of its food supply.
What most such pseudo-science theories seem to mis-represent as such are other factors which the species needed, and which are _not_ there as handicaps.
E.g., human breasts, since you mention them are there _not_ either as handicap, nor as the "sex signal of having a butt on the chest" idiocy. They're there because that's convenient for a primate to hold its baby, and they're that size in humans because a human baby needs a _lot_ of food. The brains alone needs ridiculous quantities of proteins to even keep working. (See why the evoloution of human brain size kept step with the availability of food sources: e.g., fire allowing us to eat plants.)
E.g., other signals (such as colours) in various species are _not_ there as a handicap, but to solve problems like finding each other. See, being well hidden from predators doesn't help that much if you also don't find a partner to mate with. Or like the kid being able to follow the mother.
A subset of those evolved in situations where the species had no signifficant natural enemies. No, not as a way to attract more enemies, but because lack of those changed the priorities. The advantage of easier finding a mate or being easier to follow by your kids, trumped the disadvantage of being more visible to an enemy which didn't even exist.
But noticing that would require some real science, including some healthy applying of Occam's Razor. While most such pseudo-science bullshit is just working towards a pre-set agenda: trying to rationalize why thinking with your dick instead of with your head is good. And then "facts" are twisted or outright made up to fit that pre-set conclusion.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I have repeatedly said that the whole "Batman is a normal joe without superpowers" thing is BS. Batman DOES have powers. He has the absolute best powers a person can have! THE POWERS OF UNLIMITED FUNDING!
Do you want to drop of the face of the earth and learn with the best martial arts masters? No problem, the trust fund will keep up the house and pay the help as you vacation in Asia.
Do you want a nifty belt that has time warping effects so you can pull an elephant out of your pocket? No problem, you can pay for the design, developement and implimentation.
Do you want a jet that has super-stealth technology that not even the military has? Not a problem, you own a military research company.
Do you want an orbital weapons platform complete with dormitory for thousands of superheros? No worries, it's not even a drop in the bucket for your R&D budget.
Yeah, Batman has no special powers. Sure he doesn't.
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
I realized this during a Women's Studies writing course I had to take - despite the objectification, comics and shows written for men show much stronger female characters than anything written for women.
Think about it - the female lead in almost any comic book, despite being terrible underdressed and having boobs the size of torpedoes, is an independent, intelligent equal whom works with the super-heroes as a team, or works on her own. Female villains are almost always the most dangerous due to their ability to outsmart the superheroes and charm to them their advantage.
Aside from the spandex, comic-book women are almost *exactly* the stereotype of the strong-minded, independent women that feminists are always saying women want to look up to!
Compare this to almost any show designed for girls, where the role models are concerned with dresses, flowers, and relationships and whose major plot revolves around getting her man despite the other girls after him. The women there are almost entirely submissive and domestic. Even if they are high-powered businesswomen, they are never happy until they meet mister right and have a ridiculously overcomplicated relationship with him that is generally spoiled due to their own weakness and pettiness, but is eventually saved because he is willing to put up with them.
I know which things I'd rather have my daughter reading. My guess is that nerds, who value intellectual discourse so much, actually *want* a woman who is an equal, whereas society really doesn't.
was that the event will be secretly taped for the upcoming movie 'The Watchmen', so wash off those bloodstains (or cheesestains) and make sure you give them the jutted jaw angle at all times.
Why not just leave it at being entertainment.
Making it a science takes all the fun away.
Being involved in cultural studies, I've noticed that some people tend to consider any analysis to be overanalysis. To some extent, I can sympathize with this point of view (I've often said, "You can't dissect something without killing it").
However, ad hoc, I can't distill for you enough of what cultural analysis is about in order to convince you that comic books are not, and never will be, just about entertainment.
But, at least consider that cultural studies (i.e., Comparitive Studies), are ultimately about self understanding. Comic book superheroes and plots may seem innocuous, but myths and popular fictions--and the ways in which they're presented--speak volumes about us. They serve a function; they fulfill needs. That function transcends entertainment by (super) leaps and bounds.
But the stories are nothing like say christianity
I don't get what you mean.
(A note to those following this: I'm not trying to present a view of Christian faith in order to proselytise or to disturb any faith you hold. I just want to get what Kjella's on about.)
Are you saying that these stories don't have comparable super-characters in the Christian writings? If we consider the cultural background of Christianity, we find its myth is the cultural history of another people-group (this is only one of many ways to characterise the Bible). There is mention of super-men before the Flood story of Genesis and before the wandering people of Isreal took Palestine; Samson is another "impossible super-hero" and King David's battles also pick up -- within the text itself -- a sense of oversized worship for the hero himself.
(We could argue that this is because of the people who wrote the stories; that's another discussion at a different place. I want to talk about the anti-heroic Jesus Christ.)
Kjella, do you mean that the Jesus who, in Albert Schweitzer's words, "dreamed the impossible dream of the kingdom, bringing about the end of world history. When this did not happen, and the great wheel of history refused to turn, he threw himself upon it, was crushed in the process, but succeeded in turning it none the less."
That statement kind of makes Jesus look like quite an impressive villain from a graphic novel...
" I'm not saying that there's no advantage. But it's not as advantageous for women as it is for men."
This is slashdot, you know. There are some science geeks that hang around here. Do you have any numbers to back up this claim?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
A man is capable of having children with multiple women. For a woman to do the opposite is not as advantageous.
:(
It is if the woman can keep it a secret. In many species, including humans, females will mate with other males while their partner is otherwise engaged. That way they vary the genetic mix of their children, while still keeping a male partner to look after them.
Either way, its morally wrong to engage in such behavior. But then this is the Jerry Springer generation so I guess its considered 'normal' and 'ok' to do such things.
Am I the only one who misread the first part of the title??? At first I thought "I bet this strikes fear in the heart of Alter Boys everywhere!" Then I read the rest of the title.
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
I thought they were releasing it but with 'rok muzak' dubbed in place of the great rock'n'roll for just this reason. Hell in a handbasket...
The slashdot fortune cookie that I received upon reading your tract should be your new tagline. It is latin, so people will be awed at your brilliance.
SEMPER UBI SUB UBI
Always where under where
On a discussion note:
Are you trying to emulate Discordianism or is this a case of a philosophy whose time has come?
Now if someone would just kill Bill Gates in front of his kids, we could look forward to a couple of decades of kick-ass crimefighting.
I misread the content of your post. I thought you said that all /. geeks were good in bed.
Please keep a large banner saying "No, this is NOT the time traveler's conference, thank you".
Because, with all those outfits, the people we invited could get confused, youknow.
You sure knocked her down good!
Unfortunately, it seems that you see feminism less as a complex and nuanced socio-political critique, and more as the aggregation of opinions you've read in Cosmopolitan and/or heard women talk about.
It may be a waste of time to try to explain, but for the sake of those who may have read your comment and thought "Hey, yeah! What business does she have making me hold the door? I'M oppressed!", here goes:
You must not have had many relationships... Not meant as in insult, it's just that any man whose been in relationships with women know that this is completely false.
Just because your wife can make you do the dishes does not mean that women as a global class are empowered. This is the kind of folsky wisdom that is hilarious when it's in a "Cathy" comic, but when applied to reality, it's a dangerous denial of the fact that:
"as many as 95% of domestic violence perpetrators are male.
A Report of the Violence against Women Research Strategic Planning Workshop sponsored by the National Institute of Justice in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1995."
(according to http://www.abanet.org/domviol/stats.html)
Ahhh yes, bringing about equality through inequality. "I WANT TO BE TREATED THE SAME AS A MAN! NOW HOLD THAT DOOR OPEN FOR ME!"
Most women (I would claim the vast majority) would gladly pick "Not being objectified, cat-called, occasionally terrorized, and generally humiliated based on my gender" over "Not having to open doors or pay for dinner". I'm not saying that some women don't want it both ways (and who can blame them? I like it when someone pays for my dinner, too!), but that gets back to the fact that you don't seem to have a very clear understanding of what feminists really want, as opposed to what some random women you know want.
There's a lot of FUD surrounding gender issues, mainly because everyone thinks they understand "men" and "women" as social classes based solely on their own interpersonal experience.
It's a lot bigger than that.
I expect the University of Kansas Jailbirds will be holding something similar, soon.
I recall reading a statistic 70% of all printed works in Japan are manga. Yes, most of it isn't about superheroes, but a good, large enough percentage is, and it should be noticed by these people speaking.
Manga is definitely changing the expectations the average comic book reader has even in the US with the advent of anime, which in many cases directly adapt manga series.
King Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, a medieval despot of Morocco, sired over 800 children by the women in his harem, and the first emperor of China, around 3000 years ago, was reputed to have sired even more through his much larger harem (Betzig, 1986). By contrast, the world record for a woman is 69 children, many of which were triplets (Daly & Wilson, 1983). Even under relatively egalitarian tribal conditions, some men can father several dozen children by several different women, whereas no woman bears more than 10 or so children (Chagnon, 1983).
Thus, a man's reproductive success generally increases with his number of sexual partners (in the absence of contraception), whereas a woman reaches her reproductive limit rather quickly as her number of sexual partners increases. This is because males can opt out of parental investment in a way that women cannot -- nature can't enforce child support laws any better than modern governments. Of course, women under ancestral conditions probably used abortion and infanticide to avoid maternal investment during difficult times (see Hausfater & Hrdy, 1984), but they could not induce another woman to bear a child for them. Maternal investment was obligatory in hominids; paternal investment was not.
http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/mate_choice.htm
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
If the mother survives and will reproduce again, that is certainly a factor of evolution. More offspring == better survival chances for the species.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
"People find attractive what they find attractive and you just have to deal with it."
:)
No arguments there. We can aggree there very quickly.
But that wasn't the point. The point is merely that there is no such thing as "see, there's this darwinistic hard-wired built-in ideal of beauty, which is the perfect body shape to bear healthy children." The current mutant idea of beauty, yes, it's what it is, and we all just have to deal with it. But built-in or having _any_ darwinistic advantage (considering that it's opposite to what humans and human physiology evolved to) it isn't.
That's all I'm saying
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm sure I've read a dozen comics and seen a dozen movies where that was the plot. Just shows that Samson should have read the Evil Overlord's List ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Seriously though, Marvel seems to not have too many problems in, at least, making their male superheros not always paragons of good looks. The females, on the other hand... short of the Morlocks (which had their share of stunning good looks), there aren't many ugly female superheroines. ^_^ Reminds me of a semi-serious article I saw once postulating that the mutant physiology resulted in no overweight mutants outside of those whose powers tended that way. Essentially, if you look at the massive amounts of energy these people expend or simply put out, they must be eating like horses just to keep from wasting away. Which, of course, doesn't entirely explain the large breasts, although the fact that they must be mainly muscle tissue explains their defiance of gravity...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
'cause I'm the Midnight Bomber,baby , what bombs at midnight!
The Tick deserves a movie. It's a shame the live series fell on dud veiwers. Pat Warburton was the perfect choice for actor.
Personally, I think the times call for an Elric figure, the quintessential anti-hero, and iconic of utter paradigm shift.
be just and fear not, The Tick(anim.) is available on DVD, NOW. I simply Googled and found it cheap, the whole series. so I sez to these guys I sez
groovy
In a situation where you have a women with ~10 children from, say, 3-4 different fathers, don't those women have more male resources to draw on (for food and protection) to care for the children? (assuming that men may not be certain about paternity, or that the mother will share equally resources provided by one or more children's father).
I think the real numbers we need to look at is the reproductive success of those children.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Well now, let's not forget the OTHER costumed Vigilante from DC.
Green Arrow is even less trained then Bats - He only started in his 20's, not his teens like Bats. He was a playboy, but had to struggle to survive after a plane crash. He learned to use the Bow and Arrow to survive.
Unlike Bats, Arrow was actually changed. While Batman has basically been the same person sence age 8, Oliver Queen grew a concious. He grew angry with the treatment of other people - and himself, after he lost his wealth. We see the best reflections in the GL/GA crossovers of the 70's. His selfless death, combined with (IMHO) the best Post-Crisis revival of any second-tier hero really got my addicted to his story.
But I digress. Arrow's been a long-time favorite, and while he's not the fighter that Batman is, I think he's much more interesting character.
Still Bats is more interesting then 90% of Marvel. God I frigging hate Marvel Comics.
Feminism isn't a nuanced socio-political critique and attacking databyss on this point shows that you're merely trying to frame the argument in such a way as to get your agenda across.
,whether they stayed home or not, rather than join the workforce full time).
Feminism is and can be many things but in practice it is: an ideology, a socio-political agenda to advance the rights of (genetic) women, and a belief system much like a religion that appears to hold women as victims above all else/others.In some hands it is even a human and civil rights struggle.However, given the level of oppression in thought and of others (treatment of bisexual women, transgenders and men)I don't see feminism as the paragon of virtue you apparently do.
You're jumping all over the place here. Just how you get from one person's personal experiences to extrapolating an entirely specious statistic (Did you not read what the project was about? It isn't about Domestic Violence in general) is a leap of logic (by way of a particularly horrible comic strip) that defies description.
You have not credibly shown by your comments that women as a class are disempowered. You have also not credibly proven that women haven't in some form or fashion chosen these roles even if true (I clearly remember times when women were chastized for raising children
Additionally there is no possible way that any reasonable accounting of domestic violence not account for: male on male, female on female and female on male (and this isn't even taking into account transgender and intersexed people) violence making any commentary on a mythic 95% entirely suspect.Certainly when those other potentials are eliminated (and they haven't been explored in general amongst U.S. studies).While you're formulating your response I offer these links to other positions on domestic violence:
http://www.mensrights.com.au/page13q.htm http://www.mensrights.com.au/page13c.htm http://www.dvmen.org/dv-28.htm http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/domesticviolence4 2.htm http://www.batteredmen.com/batfact.htm http://www.dvmen.org/dv-32.htm#pgfId-1353321 http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm http://www.teamcares.org/alternative_abuse.html http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/whodv.html http://www.wyrdsmiths.com/index.php?fid=lawrdv
Where are most women generally humiliated? Unless this is the case in Podunk, Arkansas I don't see it. I also don't see how it is that women don't objectify or attempt to enforce their own versions of "appropriate" gender roles. I've certainly seen it often enough.
First of all databyss never said he knew what feminists want. Heck, I'd argue that feminists don't know what feminists want. By stating that you know what "feminists" want is to state that there is a single unifying delineation of what feminism means and stands for. Despite the attempts of many to have the "one true feminism" there's a great deal of debate on what those goals should be. I'd argue that your "feminists" are merely a different selection of random women than databyss's. Still, nice of you to excuse women wanting to have it both ways
"There's a lot of FUD surrounding gender issues, mainly because everyone thinks they understand "men" and "women" as social classes based solely on their own interpersonal experience."
There is indeed a lot of FUD surrounding gender (or rather in this case - sex)issues and you're contributing
This is about 'reproductive success' not morality.
A person can say that torture is effective in warfare. That doesn't make it right.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Can that single guy provide for his 100s of children?
That's often the case with harems.
But guys more often use more than one pattern. i.e.
Sleep with as many people as you can when you're young and have few resources. Marry, enforce your paternity and provide for children when you're older.
OK, so a few sultans can father potentially dozens of children. What about all the other guys in the tribe?
What about them?
Male reproductive success has higher variation than female reproductive success, which is the point I was trying to make.
How many of the women in the tribe are getting their 10 babies used up on one guy?
I don't know. I'm pointing out that the upper limit is lower for women. There are a few male outliers who are very reproductivly successful, and will dramatically increase the variation of reproductive success between men and women.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I was thinking V for Vendetta, Cerebus (though Dave Sim has other issues with women), Sandman and Bone. What were you thinking of, for comics not involving big-titted naked ladies?
Oh, and especially Sandman Mystery Theater. Nobody's particularly good-looking in that.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Not to give credence to the original commenter, but now that you've tooted your own horn to such an extent, aren't you going to grace us with your own theory?
Kinda seems like your comment stopped mid-think.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I heartily concur with your comments about the Superman/Batman dichotomy. Superman is a tool; he's a gullible fool ready to swallow whichever ideology gets to him first. (For a rather well-done example, read Superman: Red Son, where Superman lands 12 hours later/earlier, crashes into the verdant farmlands of the central Ukraine; he grows up to defend truth, justice and the expansion of the Warsaw Pact. Bonus points for having Batman be a Russian terrorist fighting Superman's police state in a furry hat that somehow still has bat-ears.)
See, my idea is that heroes need to be nerfed. Star Trek ran into this problem, and had to pretend that lots of overpowered tech simply ceased to exist. Likewise, Superman has to be nerfed by making him exceedingly stupid, gullible, etc. Which is why Batman---who requires little to no nerfing, being a simple meat-and-water human like the rest of us---is so much more interesting. Well, when done right.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Societies with large reproductive opportunities for a few men like Sultans and not much for other men tend to be less successful and less stable (go figure) over time. The increased opportunities every generation from stable single-family societies tend to add up over generations from this model.
Women certainly CAN find kids with other men besides their mates, but they run the risk of losing the man's support if he suspects the family's children are not his own, and just as importantly the man's extended family. The same goes true for the theory that men are bio-evolutionarily programmed to kill unfaithful wives; this incurs the wrath of the other family, and kills the primary caregiver of any existing children which may be his.
Moreover, marriage is NOT just for procreation, but also companionship which is damn important for social animals like us humans. There are important checks to unfaithfulness on both parties; and as economic disparities between the sexes are flattened it seems men have powerful incentives not stray as well.
Over time, societies that encourage single family faithful partners that invest lots of resources in children tend to be the most successful and outcompete tribal, sultanate, polygamous, polyandrous, and other weird types of societies that just don't cut it in the modern world.
Even with limited government safety nets (which is very limited and very recent); marriage and monogamy is the proven success for economic advancement and general comfort and emotional support in a complex and fast paced society.
We are not hunter-gatherers on some plain in Africa, getting picked off by lions and leopards and hyenas. Marriage and faithfulness have real economic and social advantages.
The "clothes might come right off" some 20 year old girl on Spring Break, but it's pretty damn unlikely that the same girl at 30 would risk her marriage and social, economic, and emotional future for some meaningless hookup (or guy either); as long as the risk was real.
People are generally pretty good at mitigating risks and optimizing success. Long term relationships are one of those success strategies. Chimps may be close genetically but their societies are not even a thousandth of our complexity and dynamism.
Actually, what you say re-enforces my argument
I'm going to give you one example (there are many more) that proves sexual attraction has little to do with reproductive capacity: bestiality. All arguments which suggest sexual attraction in human beings is about reproduction are wrong. Humans are weird that way.
blog
It seems that you're overlooking the fact that the women's upper limit also apply to men. What I mean is that men don't have an infinite supply of women; each women that he mates with has this upper limit. So, if you take a guy that has hundreds of children, he's 'using up' the potential children of other males. So a guy has an upper limit of the aggregate upper limits of all potential females.
I think the discussion needs to look at the entire pool of potentially mateable men and women, over several generations. If one guy is impregnating all the women, and this occurs over succcessive generations, then soon you have very inbred people.
Yes, there are a few instances of harems around the world. But, there are some animals which *always* have a harem -- I think, for instance, lions and gorillas. There are one or two males to have access to all the females and impregnate all of them. When a new male comes into power, he kill s all of the immature offspring of other males. But, *people don't do this consistently*.
Another social arrangement is lifetime monogamy. I think this is another ideal that doesn't match reality.
I think the 'natural' human situation is much like it is today with 'mixed marriages' (yours, mine, and ours) -- both parents will have children with 2-3 partners.
High class society strives for lifetime monogamy. Middle class, which is a relatively recent development in human society, used to strive for that, but I think in modern day Europe and America, it's more like children with 2-3 partners. And, of course, the 'low' class has always been 'yours, mine, and ours'.
So yes, in some societies, you see wealthy members with harems, or lifetime monogamy, but I think that is an expensive social structure to maintain. (Royalty have gone to great lengths to maintain the perception of lifetime monogamy, when that isn't always the case). I think biologically, humans have children with 1, 2 or 3 partners. Harems or monogamous relationships can be maintained by the wealthy, but they have to be actively maintained or they will break down into the natural human setup. You know, harem owners will share their harems with relatives and close friends -- and if the harem owner hits hard times, he can be bailed out by relatives and friends, probably in exchange for women. And I'm sure you know how monogamies break up.
Anyways, if you look at people as biological organism, we don't have queens and workers, we don't have male-dominated harems. We have children with 1, 2, or 3 partners. If you ask people they might *say* you shoud have a harem or a life-long monogamy, but the ideal is the exception.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
So a guy has an upper limit of the aggregate upper limits of all potential females.
True, but that's still considerably higher than the upper limit for women.
It's this upper limit that I'm focusing on. The top 1% of children for men, vs. women. Think "Magic Johnson" having sex with 1000 women. How many kids might he have had from those liasons? I have no clue. Probably a few, since he didn't seem to be using protection.
I realize that there are all kinds of complex patters for the lower 99% of men and women and I agree with what you've said about classes. I also realize that harems with 600 children may not be all of the harem master, even if it's his harem. Even if he doesn't intend to share.
I was trying to point out the fact that men and women have different strategies, on the average. Sure, there's overlap. Strategies are not widely divergent. But they're not identical either. And in a culture where people are supposed to be equal and identical, somtimes that kind of comment gets a lot of negative feedback.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Now I understand your point. You are correct. Men and women do have different strategies, and it is due to the upper limit of their reproductive capabilities.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso