LaskyaClaren

*waves to the undead old guy*

Speaking (as Derek has divined that I would) as an "oversensitive feminist," I can only say . . . What a very silly question! What exactly do you mean by "chivalry"? What is this thing? If by that term you mean the medieval ideals associated with the cult of courtly love some 600 or more years ago, well, yes, it's very much dead. Along with other such charming relics of that bygone age as feudalism, witch burnings, and the Black Plague. Do you mean the highly-romanticized (and historically inaccurate) resuscitated neo-gothic version of the 19th and 20th centuries? The one built upon entirely unrealistic expectations about the relations between men of a certain socio-economic status, and the women of their peer group? Well . . . mostly the class to which that applied (a gentrified middle class with pretensions and aristocracy) are dead and gone now too. And, as Pussycat has noted, it really only applied to white women -- and women of a higher social status -- anyway. It was always kind of a myth rather than a reality. Just ask the women and children who were massacred along with prisoners at Ayyadieh in 1191 by that Paragon of Chivalry, Richard the Lionheart. Or by chivalry do you mean basic courtesy, politeness, and kindness? I don't think that THAT is dead at all. In fact, I like to think that I practice it! Am I allowed to be chivalrous if I am (just) a woman? And an oversensitive feminist too?

I would like to take a moment to thank the unsung forum moderator who moved this thread to what is self-evidently its rightful place: the Technology Forum. Bravo, Madam or Sir! Well played! I eagerly await the contributions of those here in this new location. I am quite certain that LSL, for instance, is replete with punning possibilities that will put our earlier, non-technical efforts to shame.

LlazarusLlong wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I'm content to think that our survival depends on us, and that we can do it if all (most?) of us pull together. If you (and Laskya) take off your rose tinted spectacles for a second you might notice that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell - if such a thing exists in a secular worldview - of this. The human race is 100% either selfish or non compos mentis, by nature's design. Civilisation has generated a degree of recognition of deferred gratification among the more intelligent who present their hidden self-centredness as a charitable attitude, although it would have been difficult to identify this characteristic in the bars of the western world last weekend, or even in recent weeks among the parents competing to video their little darlings singing better than all the rest (or at least louder) in their school nativity events. I wish you the Christmas you would wish yourselves, but don't drag me into the fake "love to all men" thing. Sorry, old man! You don't get an exemption from our goodwill wishes without a note of permission from a registered Metaphysician. Enjoy the holiday in whatever way most accords with your own views. And don't forget: they have pills now to help you with that dyspepsia.

Dillon Levenque wrote: A Merry Christmas to you as well, Laskya. I enjoy this time of year just because of the positive energy it brings; I don't think my absence of religious belief means I can't appreciate the importance some things have to believers. My spirituality is pretty vague but I believe it's there. I have a belief (based upon the most cursory examination of the evidence) that humanity as a whole is more good than evil, and in fact the percentage in favor of the good might even be increasing, generations at a time. Now if Snugs can just crack the whip a little and get Maddy's oar back in the water, I'll sit back and play the ukelele. Merry Christmas! Karen, that's a lovely card. :-) Thank you, Dillon! Here's to those who insist upon the value of glasses with at least a bit of rosy tinting to them! Far better to have hope, surely, than to succumb to self-fulfilling misanthropic tunnel-vision! Never really understood the ukelele. I look forward to being educated about its charms. :-)

sirhc DeSantis wrote: A Secularist - One who waves the banner of the split between 'religiion' and 'state' yet feels secure enough to pik n mix from other faiths/sects/practices and blend in schmaltz faux camaraderie and a tinge of consumerism. Plus time off work because, you know, 'the holidays'. Amusing. Almost as much as the Humanist - who embraces 'Science (sorry 'rationalism, empiricism') except 'Not those bits which contradict stuff I like'. I wish you Joyeux Noël and peace on Earth too - and if you find some - please share. Well, I hope you'll forgive me from observing that you seem to be speaking largely from an American perspective. I'm a Canadian, and "secularist" means something rather different in an Anglo-Canadian context. We aren't, for instance, really hung up on the issue of the separation of church and state -- at least, not to the degree that your constitution makes you. Remember that our titular head of state -- the Queen -- is also the head of the Church of Engliand. I'm far from disagreeing that the term is problematic sometimes, but I mean it really just in the sense of "without faith in a particular religion." As for picking-and-choosing from the religions that I have otherwise rejected, I stand, in my OP, self-convicted. But I don't have a problem with cherry-picking the best and most worthwhile parts out of other belief systems. To refuse to do so, even where I see value, would be to act in as unthinkingly doctrinaire a manner as I sometimes criticize the religious for adopting. And, um . . . can I also remind you that Christmas isn't actually marking the birth of Christ, but is rather piggy-backed on the Roman Saturnalia? Am I allowed time off for that? As for Humanism . . . well, the term, and the way in which I use it, predates the scientific revolution by at least a century and a half. Humanism, as proposed by Renaissance thinkers such as Erasmus, mostly proposes relocating the locus of value and meaning with and in humanity and the human. Science is very much a late-comer to that movement. I haven't found peace on Earth yet. Probably never will. Not going to stop me looking and hoping for it, though.

Madelaine McMasters wrote: I'm in approximately the same boat Laskya, though absent any desire to believe in an overarching presence or grand plan. I'm content to think that our survival depends on us, and that we can do it if all (most?) of us pull together. I hope that those who recognize the oars in their lives pick them up, row and experience the fellowship of collaboration and the satisfaction of a job well done. And I hope that those who don't won't be too alarmed by the wood swinging over their heads and will not constantly ask "are we there yet?" I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season. Very nicely put, Maddy. I'm not so much into wanting to see evidence of a guiding plan or personal god, as I am in wanting to believe in the kind of all-powerful love that is embodied in this particular story about this particular "God." And I agree absolutely in the importance of pulling together; that's why "community" is such an important part of Christmas for me. So, if you have an extra oar to spare . . . :-)

Thank you! And to you and yours. :-)

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." (John 3.16-17)I am in no very recognizable way a Christian. My own upbringing was pointedly secular: I was never taken to church, and really only got to know the Bible as a young adult. But, like most children in the West, I was brought up to love Christmas. It meant family, and celebration, and food, and, of course, presents. It is still wrapped, for me, in a sort of hazy, happy aura of joy and community. And although I don't have children myself, I glow a little with vicarious, remembered pleasure when I watch the young experience the holiday as I did. Christmas, to this non-Christian, will always be special. But, to adapt the words of Paul, that was when I was a child, spake as a child, and understood as a child. The irony is that, as secular adult, the other meanings of Christmas have actually become more important to me. No, I don't personally believe in the virgin birth or the incarnation, or in the salvation supposedly bought by what to me represents a bloody and pointless martyrdom. But what I do believe in -- what I cling to -- is a belief in the spirit of Love embodied in a holiday that marks the birth of a child, a gift freely given out of Love to all humankind. I want very much to believe in a God that "so loved the world," but even if I cannot accept the existence of a personal god, I can embrace and hug to myself the beautiful and generous idea that this story represents. So, in that spirit, the spirit of a Love that unites and liberates without condemnation or discrimination, this secular humanist would like to wish you all, in the hope that you will accept it in the spirit with which it is intended, a very happy and loving Christmas. May this peace and goodwill be with all of us for all the days of our lives.

bigmoe Whitfield wrote: /me taps perrie nose. NOT all of us are deviants now The vast majority of bisexual furry skunks whom I have know have been thoroughly decent types, upstanding citizens, etc., etc. There was just this one particular skunk . . .

Madelaine McMasters wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: She (Scylla) asked me to drop by and let you know that she agrees largely with what Pussycat says, and that she doesn't think that there is any necessary relationship between what (or how little) one wears and one's relative power in a culture. Mark Twain wrote: Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society. He WOULD say that. Can you imagine what Mark Twain would look like draped over a couch wearing Leia's slave outfit?

Perrie Juran wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I lost my breadable a dozen years ago. And with only one breadable, the best you can make is an open face sammich. The main reason for sammiches is to keep your fingers from getting messy. If you don't mind messy fingers, there's no reason for breadables. There might still be a use for honey, though. The butter? I'll pass. I'm pretty sure that there is a paricularly ribald subtext to all of this but being a notoriously innocent naif, I can't, of course, even begin to comprehend it. Perhaps illustrations or flowcharts? Honey butter on corn bread would be a sure way to catch that wayward skunk. Or I could leave a trail of ex-husbands as bait.

LlazarusLlong wrote: Look away NOW, Scylla! Adam Buxton is a very funny man. Scylla couldn't make it tonight -- she's attending a seminar on intersectionality, homosociality and misogyny in My Little Pony -- but she asked me to drop by and let you know that she agrees largely with what Pussycat says, and that she doesn't think that there is any necessary relationship between what (or how little) one wears and one's relative power in a culture. The key, of course, is choice. Being a slave means that one has none, and the skimpy costume therefore, in that context, becomes a signifier of that loss of power. But the same costume, when worn in a different situation and deliberately chosen by the wearer, could actually quite powerfully signify a woman's power and right to express her own sexuality, beauty, or simply aesthetic sense.

JessiSweeney wrote: Very insightful answers. I guess the bottom line is trust your gut feelings. It's all up to the individual. Thanks all for the response. I think, in a sense, that the premises of the question are wrong. In part this is because it assumes a sort of static relationship between how we represent, and how we see ourselves in RL, and in part because those things are perhaps not as distinct as we often think. To begin with the last first, your metaphor suggests that you see virtual representation as a form of "acting," of assuming a fictional role. One problem with your analogy to the theatre is that plays are conscious artifice. When we watch a play, we know, always, however much we may get lost in a play, that it is a fiction. Were this not true, we'd be utterly horrified and traumatized watching murders on stage in a play such as, say, Macbeth, rather than entertained. When the fourth wall is broken in a play, it is really just highlighting an artifice that we already know exists, but that we allow ourselves to conveniently 'forget" as we watch -- Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief." In SL, on the other hand, we don't have a proscenium arch or stage that separates actors from audience. There is no "fourth wall" in a sense because the three others aren't there either: we are all performing, simultaneously. Additionally, I don't think we are "acting" something we aren't in the same way that an actor takes on a role in a play. For one thing, we are not mouthing someone else's lines: our identities in SL are of our creation. And secondly, I think that identity in SL -- even when apparently at its most distant from our RL "selves" -- always reflects something about how we see ourselves. If I represent as a robot, or, say, a bisesexual furry skunk, in SL, it is not because those relate to who I am in any literal way, but because they in some way "speak" to how I see myself, sometimes quite subtly. In other words, if I chose to represent as something "different," I am likely doing so because it allows me to give expression to part of myself that may well not be evident in RL. To take up my first point, about how we represent and relate to others not being "static," I know very few people who are pure augmentationists or immersionists. Most of us can be located on a sliding scale that changes according to context and the person with whom we are interacting. For the most part, for instance, I am probably on the "immersionist" side of the scale. But there are certainly some people to whom I have revealed a great deal about my RL, and even a handful who know exactly who I am, or have actually met in RL. And the additional thing is how willing I am to share that kind of information with an individual can, and will, change over time or according to context. I wonder if it isn't more useful to think not in terms of binaries -- our RL vs. our SL selves -- but rather in terms of dynamic performances of self unfolding over time and changing according to context?

Madelaine McMasters wrote: I lost my breadable a dozen years ago. And with only one breadable, the best you can make is an open face sammich. The main reason for sammiches is to keep your fingers from getting messy. If you don't mind messy fingers, there's no reason for breadables. There might still be a use for honey, though. The butter? I'll pass. I'm pretty sure that there is a paricularly ribald subtext to all of this but being a notoriously innocent naif, I can't, of course, even begin to comprehend it. Perhaps illustrations or flowcharts?

TDD123 wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: You have a RYE sense of humour. (HAHAHAHAH!) With that dry humour of yours, I suspect your breadable went to hide from you in here : I think we KNEAD to stop this particular digression in this thread. ;-)

KarenMichelle Lane wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: So Id like some advice on where to find my breadable please. Laskya, He's gone to Breeding Heaven and can come back to you as a VKC pet, no feeding [fake food, Lindens or L$] to them ever. Bonus, tthey are so smart! - Virtual Kennel Club (VKC https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/63657 Here is a picture of my baby, Porthos They are worth every L$ they cost.... OMG that's pretty adorable. :-) And yes, "smart" would be a nice change -- both from my missing Breadable, and my ex-spouses.

Perrie Juran wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: You didn't happen to see a Bisexual Furry Skunk hanging around before he disappeared? Yeah, he's around a LOT. I wonder if LL does restraining orders????? I don't know about restraining orders but I have heard rumours that sometimes LL descents them. As I remember it, he was looking pretty indescent when I caught him with my (ex)husband.

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: Sounds more like someone's gigolo bot than a breedable. :smileyvery-happy: Actually it hardly ever gigoloed, but it did have a sort of loud laugh sometimes. Especially after I'd paid it for its food.

TDD123 wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: So Id like some advice on where to find my breadable please. Maybe it turned into this and it simply walked away from you, because you only have wheat or rye ? :robotindifferent: You have a RYE sense of humour. It's a PITA you don't use it more! It might make you a lot of DOUGH!!!! Or maybe you've got better things to do that LOAF around here. (HAHAHAHAH!)

Perrie Juran wrote: You didn't happen to see a Bisexual Furry Skunk hanging around before he disappeared? Yeah, he's around a LOT. I wonder if LL does restraining orders?????

Vulpinus wrote: wait... Are we talking about a pet, or a husband, here? * Have you searched your inventory for a notecard called "Certificate of divorce"? Or, perhaps check your friends to see if your breedable has transferred to one of them who has more available cash. Personally, I'm worth far more but cost a lot less that L$4500, I could offer a fair bit of breeding for L$500 a week, and I've just upgraded my attachment to stupid-looking 2.0. Plus, I don't complain and I can sound almost human too. * is there a difference? LOL no. Husbands are waaaaaaaaaay more expensive. I should know: ive had a few. And the LAST one I had thought HE owned ME! (HAH!!!)

Yeah so, I bought this Breadable from a guy who said they were very new and special and VERY EXPENSIVE so that you couldnt even get them on the Marketplace yet, but he had one he could sell me. It cost me L$4500 which seemed an aweful lot but when I saw it it was REALLY REALLY Worth it because it looked so good. Mine came with a leather jacket and very tight jeans which was very good, so I didn't have to buy him clothes, and he talks so well and so much that its ALMOST like he's HUMAN. Almost! But I had NO IDEA how much extra money he was going to cost! First off, you don't buy them food like other Breadables I have: you just give them money and they buy their own food, which is GOOD because I hate buying food for my RL cats which is so heavy carrying it home, but THIS food is so expensive that it costs $L500 a week! And he COMPLAINS REALLY LOUDLY if he doesnt get it. ALSO he didnt like the pen I bought for him that I used to use for my chickens and instead he wanted a WHOLE HOUSE! And then apparently if I want my Breadable to bread you have to buy an ATTACHMENT which cost $L$1,200! Apart from being REALLY REALLY STUPID LOOKING LOL!! (I whish I had of taken a picture!) So anyway I was short of Ls last week and so I couldn't feed him his L$500 and now he has TOTALLY DISAPPEARED. I thought hed just go back into my inventory but no its not there! I thought when you bought something in SL it was FOREVER????? So Id like some advice on where to find my breadable please.

Dillon Levenque wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Hmmm. Or this might be even more appropriate? LOL. Perfect, even if it is a slight derail. Or maybe not: you are the OP, after all. The thread is yours to do with as you wish. It is entirely up to you to determine the warp and the woof. I might have said 'woof' when Goldie Hawn stuck her tongue out. Yeah, Goldie knows what she's doing, I guess. To some degree, her character here exemplifies what I called "fluffy" (above), except that being a star and all, she's waaaaaaaay better at it than I am. ;-) It's not a complete derail, either. Seller's character's sexual success is based on making the women he desires feel desireable. Tell someone they are "lovely," and they will be believe it, because they want to believe it. I think we are shaped by the perceptions, and opinions, of others in this way in all kinds of different regards.

Hmmm. Or this might be even more appropriate?