emmaki

If I may once more put my controversial hat on (let's pretend I took it off), misogyny as a social ill just isn't very important. I point you towards the public debate on people who have "transformed." Lose the -formed; I'm unsure if this is a bad word, so I'm just going to call them transformers from now on, if necessary. Anyone who doesn't like that can take it up with the bad word filter and the art of self-censorship - quite frankly, I'd rather use the nomenclature but that's auto[badword]ing for you.  

Tangent over. Anyway, I'm sure you and others reading this saw the recent stories about M2F athletes participating in women's sport; the swimming one is probably the most notorious. Now, I think most people are going to share an opinion similar to mine which is "I don't care about their personal lifestyle choices, but they shouldn't be participating in women's sport. Perhaps it's time to consider a third sporting category?" However, there are parts of the population (seemingly all on Twitter) who will absolutely fight you on that point, and I'm not even going to get into the more loopy TERF wars stuff too much - the, uh, degenderizing of a woman's, sorry, person's fun time of the month and pregnancy serve as two very mild examples (women's jails less so - and that brings up a whole can of worms full of bad words). 

At the end of the day, look at what corporations and institutions are doing when it comes to this kind of misogyny (the argument here being that this is, in essence, men encroaching in and on women's spaces). It's an interesting debate, and I feel that it shares a lot with the modern racism debate. Is it really helpful? It seems to me that it creates division more than anything, and for what? 

All of this can be boiled down to one thing: the misogyny issue goes quite a lot deeper than some dull [bad word] with a Madonna/"Lady of the Night" complex making tired sexist insults or whatever. The dull [bad word] is the superficial, familiar face of a pig, just as a stereotypical redneck or Bernard Manning type might be our familiar racist - but in the modern world, it's like the world's nastiest onion, full of unsavory layers to peel back. Sometimes, those layers cheapen what are grievous social ills - compare the horrors in Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit with somebody crying racism because they got disciplined for breaking the rules, for example - to the point that wedges can be driven where there were none (or fewer) previously. And sometimes, just sometimes, the refusal of "authorities" to take action for fear of upsetting whatever group might be upset is counterproductive.  

I look forward to the insanity the rest of the 2020s has for us. The past 2 years have proven quite eventful, and I have no doubt that as recession/depression sets in people will get even crazier, with businesses bending over backwards to cater for it because well, $$$ 🙂 Of course, such trying times would also signal an unwelcome new seller influx not dissimilar to the COVID invasion... one wonders if Fiverr will ever become pay to play, or if some expert has already warned them of the horrid racism such a policy would have. 

So, that's what I reckon. To finish this, I'd like to announce that we need to stop doing things like turning "history" into "herstory." That is not "feminism," it is blinkered stupidity on a par with everything I mention above. Etymology, people. 

Personally, I've no objection to how people identify themselves - sorry, self identify - or what they do, with whom or where.  Consenting adults, blah, blah ... Although, those female athletes, who have always been female, who are found to have high tostesterone levels and banned from their sport as a result, well, that makes my blood boil. It's natural, they were born that way and, frankly, banning them is unfair.  And misogenistic.  

However, to get back to my point, rather than yours,  here on the FF we now have paid [people who should know better], who rarely do anything. At all. 

The old - legacy, you might say - ones, who are still here tend to look at males who skirt the rules as  meh, shrug, but females  ... oh, no - she's a bad person who must be disciplined!  Even when their behaviour doesn't warrant it.  More specifics would get me in trouble.  This is your everyday misogeny, practiced not just here, but all over the world to one extent or another. 

Complaints have been made, posts and gigs reported, but some people seem to have enchanted lives. Or, as I like to call it, male lives. 

Females are accused and shamed.  No enchantments for them ...

Well, the swimming thing got nipped in the bud today! 

Yes, I am a little surprised about the paid sheeple management not being more, uh, well, they're being paid, get my drift? I haven't noticed that a more heavy hand with female users, but that's mostly because I haven't really been here very much. Interesting, though. Still, perhaps not unexpected... 

 What's with the spy tech of seeing who viewed your profile? 

Just click on your profile image and you will see the following on the left hand side.

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

Enable

This forum IS hard to navigate, there's just... so much of it. Great tech for sure, but probably oversized for many people's forum needs. What I really like - that you can have a profile picture that's different from your main one. The old forum was definitely easier and faster to.... master.

Experiment with the different views to find the one you like most.

My tip: After clicking "Forum", scroll down to the very bottom, click "Forum List View". Then, on the right side, you can tick "Casual Conversations", "Ranting Pot", and whatever may sound promising to you, and will only see posts in those categories (I sometimes have to re-click, but usually, my choices last for a while):

Over time, I found that my best bet is to just rely on looking at my notification list where I only see stuff from people I follow (but too much of that, too, due to not enough fine-tuning options), and then click on what looks somewhat interesting, and I only sometimes "browse". 

You can also choose to get a "digest" to your mail, by the way, daily or weekly, which might be useful, and could be a different way to navigate/use the forum.

Thank you! I seem to remember we all moaned about how "complicated" Discord was when we first got that too. Now Discord seems like a model of simplicity. Oh, and I figured out the chronological thing, it's the "questions" upvote/downvote thing that messes everything up but it's only in that specific category. 

Good to see you. Come back soon! 🙂

I do! That was what, 2 forums ago? 

Don't ask me how, but I knew you'd get back on this forum one day. I actually thought you'd do it by outliving the thousand-year ban, just to get one up on Fiverr.

Hope you're well.

Time really flies, a thousand years gone in the blink of an eye. Give me a second to compose something in honour of your return (and of Edward Lear) ...

There was a young lady living in Greece,

Her favourite food green peppers, not cheese,

It came to my ears she got banned for a thousand years,

That whimsical English lady of Greece.

Yay for new forum amnesties!