Sassywho went ahead and tagged me last week with the 8 random things meme. I don't usually do memes, but how can one resist our most prolific commentor? Thought about responding on my personal blog, as FA seems perhaps not the right forum, but then I realized what the heck, the personal is political and all that:
Eight Random Things About Me:
1. I used to be a lifeguard at a waterslide park, but I was only trained to save lives in shallow water. I still have my nametag that reads: Shallow Water Lifeguard.
2. I'm a dutch boy.
3. I love cherries, and hate anything strawberry flavored.
4. I'm a bastard, in the literal sense.
5. I used to be a libertarian, and fan of Ayn Rand.
6. I'm nonmonogamous.
7. When I was a little boy, my grandfather and I would sell corn door-to-door. In order to sell more corn, grandpa would dress me in torn clothes to make me look more poor. It worked.
8. I was born with an extra hole in my heart, which closed up on its own when I was seven. Some people say that I should believe in god because of this 'miracle'. I ask them: Why the hell did god put that extra hole in my heart in the first place, the jerk!
Ok, Dave, Geo and Orion: Tag.
8 comments:
Wellllllll!
1. I applied for conscientious objector status in 1969 and after my second appeal to my state appeals board in late 1970 it was approved.
2. During my junior year in high school I was in the band, orchestra, dance band, lettered in track and cross country and was taking economics classes at a local university with juniors in college.
3. My father died on Friday, the 13th, when I was 13 years old.
4. I am Not superstitious at all!
5. My son was born on my 36th birthday.
6. I am a Marx brother.
7. In 1969 I got drunk for the first time at my first Janis Joplin concert. Later in 1969 I saw the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin (on their first American tour - I'd never heard of them), Jimi Hendrix (with The Chicago Transit Authority [later Chicago] as the 2nd band), many bands at The Atlantic City Rock Festival and Woodstock and Joan Baez. In 1971 I met the producer of the 1969 and 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festivals. I told him that I wish that I'd gone to the First Ann Arbor Blues Festival (which I'd originally planned on going to) rather than Woodstock. He told me that he wished he'd been at Woodstock.
8. In September, 1969 - upon "starting college" at The University of Wisconsin I went to my first physical education class barefoot. The instructor told me to Never do that again. Several minutes later the instructor indicated that all students who had completed 24 (or 25) college credits did not need to take physical education and could leave. Because I had completed 28 semester hours at Purdue University while in high school which had transferred to the University of Wisconsin I was able to leave and not come back to this class.
Because I write so much (*%#@*) - I doubt anyone will dare tag me again!
Huh!
Geo...you live such an interesting life! I think you should post this on the main page. I'd do it for you, but that would seem to be stepping on toes a bit.
Your history of concert-going alone warrants it's own blog. :)
Along those lines, more seriously, I would love to hear more about your early experiences with dealing with gender issues, how your conscientious objector mindset may have influenced your feminism, and the like. Not to trap you in the past--your posts on current events are just as welcome!
5. I used to be a libertarian, and fan of Ayn Rand.
As a profeminist and Rand fan, I now feel obligated to recommend this essay:
http://folk.uio.no/thomas/po/female-hero.html
i really enjoyed both of your top 8's, it's amazing who you meet online....
Z.M.--
Thanks for the link (I finally got around to it)--that's a fascinating read, actually, even given my current stance(s) on Rand and 'Objectivism'. I think the author is right on in a lot of ways about some of the ways Rand gets gender and sex wrong. I particularly like the Amazonian hero stuff.
My opposition to various flavors of libertarianism doesn't directly come from my feminist principles, but it could have, I think. Objectivism (it seems to me) takes psychological egoism as a central assumption (and, unfortunately for Objectivism, an assumption that one must take on faith, in a way, given that it's not disprovable), and I don't think psychological egoism matches up very well with the world I live in, or with the flavors of feminism that resonate for me.
I'm glad that Rand thought that women and men were on equal footing regarding lots of stuff, but I still have trouble with the views of social atomism and psychological egoism that are required for Objectivism.
(Not to mention that, libertarianism in the forms I have seen, seems to discount the fact that while the 'market forces' sort things out, people can live whole, terrible lives, which I find unacceptable.)
Objectivism (it seems to me) takes psychological egoism as a central assumption [...]
Not at all. Rand denied psychological egoism; she espoused a form of ethical egoism. (I intuit that will strike you as even worse.)
For the record, I'm not an Objectivist, and I'm only a libertarian in what I imagine to be a rather loose gloss of the term. Still, I think Rand's sort of individualism--"social atomism," even--has a lot of importance to feminism. But to elaborate would be to threadjack, and it is late.
ZM--
We definitely have different reads on Rand, though admittedly it's been 15 years since I read her philosophy stuff.
I appreciate the thoughtful avoidance of thread drift, though I don't think thread drift counts on an 8 random things meme. ;)
Perhaps I'll write about the article you linked to, and bring this discussion into the realm of the ways feminism might inform libertarianism and vice versa.
(For the record, there are probably modified versions of ethical egoism that I could ascribe to--I just have serious problems with the ideas that center around "The Virtue of Selfishness"--I think too much is left out.)
"[...] and bring this discussion into the realm of the ways feminism might inform libertarianism and vice versa."
If you're really interested in the topic, I have another (!) essay recommendation:
http://charleswjohnson.name/essays/libertarian-feminism/
Post a Comment