From 301ccd7fe0ab8659f9df0882c22380753d613267 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2017 14:42:13 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] finished (?) draft of "A Common Misunderstanding; Or ..." --- ...spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md | 22 ++++++------------- ...spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md | 21 ------------------ notes/post_ideas.txt | 4 ++-- 3 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 38 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 content/drafts/the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md diff --git a/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md b/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md index 92e4179..6b6fc01 100644 --- a/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md +++ b/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ Title: A Common Misunderstanding; Or, The Spirit of the Staircase (24 January 2009) -Date: 2020-01-01 +Date: 2017-12-02 05:00 Category: other -Tags: personal +Tags: anecdotal, personal, two-type taxonomy Status: draft I remember (and the Diary entry helps, too) there was a party/meetup at someone's place down in Sunnyvale, perhaps in honor of Robin being in town. This was a little less than nine years ago, back during the golden age when the Sequences were still being written, when the _M_ and _R_ in _MIRI_ were still an _S_ and an _A_, respectively—before the Eternal September, before everyone was poly, and _long_ before everyone was trans. @@ -10,25 +10,17 @@ I worked the 0600 to 1500 bookkeeper/customer-service shift at my supermarket da (I still have the "radical notion" pin, but it's no longer proudly pinned to my backpack. Ideology—in the general case—is not my style anymore.) -The party was amazing, as always, but there's one exchange that haunts me to this day, a moment when I was caught off guard by having been _seen through_ in a way that, at the time, I couldn't permit myself to anticipate or understand. I wish I had an actual transcript of it, so I could pencil in "corrections" of how it should have gone +The party was amazing, as always, but there's one exchange that haunts me to this day, a moment when I was caught off guard by having been _seen through_ in a way that, at the time, I couldn't permit myself to anticipate or understand. I wish I had an actual transcript of it, so I could pencil in "corrections" of how it _should_ have gone. (Narrative optimization should be a _deliberate_ process: you should keep separate track of what actually happened and what _should_ have happened, rather rather than letting them get blurred together in the murky, unauditable process of reconstructing the scene from an eight-and-change-year-old memory and a Diary entry from the Monday after.) +A blonde woman wearing a red dress and black high heels stuck out among the predominantly male throng of geeks. I struck up a conversation with her. (It turned out that we had previously had a tense exchange on the blog in which I had protested that gender-stereotypical behavior shouldn't be conflated with the fact of one's sex, but I didn't know that was her at the time.) -Narrative optimization should be deliberate: you should keep separate track of what actually happened and what _should_ have happened, rather than blurring them together. +At some point (to my eternal regret, I cannot recall the exact context), she casually said something about my desire for social dominance. She said it matter-of-factly, as if she were commenting on something as innocuous and indisputable as my height or hair color. -(rather than the narratively-convenient reconstruction of an eight-and-change-year-old memory and a Diary entry from the Monday after), so that I could pencil in corrections of - -[...] - -A blonde woman wearing a red dress and black high heels stuck out among the predominantly male throng of geeks. - -casually referred to my desire for social dominance. - - -I stammered out a shocked and perhaps unconvincing denial. +I stammered out a shocked and probably unconvincing denial. She regarded me skeptically. "You _look_ male," she said. -"But that doesn't mean I'm _happy_ about it!" I burst out defensively, to the apparent surprise of +"But that doesn't mean I'm _happy_ about it!" I burst out defensively, to the apparent surprise of the other Robin, who was listening nearby. The woman's skepticism was unmoved. "I'm not getting a tranny vibe from you," she said. diff --git a/content/drafts/the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md b/content/drafts/the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md deleted file mode 100644 index da070dd..0000000 --- a/content/drafts/the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,21 +0,0 @@ -Title: A Common Misunderstanding; Or, the Spirit of the Staircase (24 January 2009) -Date: 2020-01-01 -Category: other -Tags: two-type taxonomy -Status: draft - - - -A blonde woman wearing - -I stammered out a shocked and unconvincing denial. - -She regarded me skeptically. "You _look_ male." - -"But, but, that doesn't mean I'm _happy_ about it!" - -Again that skeptical look. "I'm not getting a tranny vibe from you." - - - -"Right, you're thinking of the good kind," is what I _should_ have said. "I'm the bad kind." diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt index d822212..235244c 100644 --- a/notes/post_ideas.txt +++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ CURRENT PUSH— 1 Dec— Ainslie vs. Pareto -2 Dec— Lesser-Known Demand Curves -3 Dec— A Common Misunderstanding; Or, ... +2 Dec— ✓ A Common Misunderstanding; Or, ... +3 Dec— Lesser-Known Demand Curves 4 Dec— Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes; Or, ... 5 Dec— ✓ Interlude XII (four lights) 6 Dec— There's a Land That I See; Or, The Spirit of Intervention -- 2.17.1