eppur si muove

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Tiger Beatdown › Girl Culture and the Race to the Bottom: About that Rant About Women

So, that Clay Shirky piece about how ladies don’t self-promote so much! Perhaps you have heard about it? Because I sure have. I have, in fact, been writing around that very piece for a while now, trying to explain how I feel about it. Because Lord knows no conversation is complete until we have all HEARD ABOUT MY FEELINGS.

The thing is, I am actually not the most impartial commenter on this particular piece for any number of reasons. For one thing, I need to do the FULL DISCLOSURE thing, here, and tell you that I like Clay and consider him a friend. He is a very nice man, that Clay Shirky! And I’m not trying to say that my having a good opinion on the writer of the piece means that I have the Best Perspective Ever on this particular topic. I’m just saying that I do have a perspective on it, which I need to acknowledge. Because here is maybe the reason I am the least objective and impartial about it: I have had conversations with Clay Shirky which demonstrate, exactly, the particular dynamic he is talking about. These conversations, they have gone like this:

“I, Clay Shirky, believe you to be capable of more than you are doing right now! Allow me to offer you some advice on this particular front.”

“Oh, my goodness, NO! I believe you to be severely deluded as to my capabilities! Allow me to present you with a list of reasons why I would not be qualified for doing anything, ever, in the entire world.”

FIVE HOURS LATER:

“And so, Clay, those are the reasons that I suck. I can provide you with further proofs of my sucking, drawn from personal history reaching back as far as kindergarten! But I think you have the basics. You see why you must rescind your advice and belief in me as a person, as clearly I would only bring shame upon you. I am but an idiot child, who spills things frequently upon my wretched frame. How did I even get dressed this morning? I don’t know! It is a fluke, clearly.”

“Um, okay. But I was trying to help…?”

“CEASE THIS FUTILE CRUSADE AT ONCE! I must go now, and mortify my flesh, perhaps with whippings. As I do so, I shall review my sub-standard grades from middle school, that I might never aspire above my due station. Thanks for coffee!”

 

 

 

via tigerbeatdown.com

The best response I've seen to Clay Shirky's rant about women. Not because I agree, necessarily, but because I believe in Sady Doyle, and I believe in her awe-inspiring ability to leverage language to persuade.

Filed under  //   clay shirky   feminism   gender politics  
Posted January 28, 2010
// 0 Comments
 

A Rant About Women « Clay Shirky

The difference between me and David Hampton isn’t that he’s a con artist and I’m not; the difference is that I only told lies I could live up to, and I knew when to stop. That’s not a different type of behavior, it’s just a different amount.

And it looks to me like women in general, and the women whose educations I am responsible for in particular, are often lousy at those kinds of behaviors, even when the situation calls for it. They aren’t just bad at behaving like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks. They are bad at behaving like self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so. Whatever bad things you can say about those behaviors, you can’t say they are underrepresented among people who have changed the world.

 

via shirky.com

 

Filed under  //   clay shirky   ethics   feminism   gender   self-promotion   social media   social revolution  
Posted January 16, 2010
// 0 Comments
 

plasticbag.org: Should we encourage self-promotion and lies?

There's something in American culture in particular which values the pushy and the determined, but we've all worked with people whose confidence massively outstrips their abilities, who cannot work together with other people because they think they're superior to everyone else. And we've also met a whole bunch of people in the industry who do nothing but self-promote, working day and night to sell themselves, and achieve positions massively disproportionate to their tangible abilities. There are people in our industry in positions of substantial power whose reputation is built upon the way in which they present themselves as being visionaries and experts. Some of them have found that it's simply more efficient for them to spend their days building that reputation through PR and self-promotion than it is to demonstrate it through the things that they make, the value that they create.
via plasticbag.org

just who is the self-proclaimed "queen of twitter" identified in the comments below?

Filed under  //   clay shirky   feminism   gender   social media   teamwork  
Posted January 16, 2010
// 0 Comments