Apple Cider

Put up your Patreon, I'll put up mine! http://patreon.com/justicepoints (well it's for my podcast)

A lot of times it's a fast way to give people a rough yardstick on your feelings, even when it encompasses a really huge set of beliefs and they are endlessly nuanced. A lot of sexual politics gets debated in feminism anyways but sex positivity is a term that's become more popular without really a good term for people who look at a different set of issues from that. I wouldn't even say I'm NOT sex positive but it's generally not my area of interest or focus for my politics. Overall, I think sex criticality is a better broad term.

If anyone wants to dig into what modern sex criticality encompasses, a lot of it is just dealing with negotiating consent in a patriarchal world, why pornography largely and harmfully focuses on heteropatriarchal norms and espouses violence, dealing with sex and sexual content as survivors/victims, how much of sex is tied up with power dynamics, use of sex as control, and how rape culture operates, too. Sex positivity focuses a lot on women's ability to make sexual choices and enact sexuality in a way that is healthy and healing for themselves. I really do like to focus on power dynamics and some of the more negative aspects that sex CAN have due to heteropatriarchal norms. Societal structures have made navigating and creating sexual content for ourselves really difficult because we're still so entrenched in shit.

I tend to use sex negative myself, because despite it having more conservative roots, there were some values from second wave feminism that I felt were accurate, even if misguided. Second wave sex negative feminism had incredibly opaque views on pornography and sex work even if their attack on the structures were mostly on-point. In the sex positive camp, it's been really good in a lot of ways but sometimes sex posi has a habit of running too far into liberal choice feminism and generally ignoring why sex is not a topic openly available or accessible to every feminist or even every woman. So in general, for my work, I use "sex criticality" to encompass the whole she-bang. There's also the same jackboats in "radical" feminism that shit on sex workers and trans women as well. There's ways of supporting and respecting sex workers, their work but also know that a lot of pornography or sex work is not healthy or respectful to said workers.

I patreonize Cameron Kunzelman (he does small game creation, video game critique, game media) and Lana Polansky who does really amazing arts writing in general.

I don't even agree with Anita's assessments on things sometimes (such is the nature of feminist critique), but she's doling out really incredibly 101 level critiques and people want that to be the basis of rejecting her humanity. It's so bizarre.

We actually talked about that particular issue this week, since Tzufit wrote a piece about it. Pretty fascinating.

I think our GOTY cast was good because we absolutely had no interest in consensus, hah! We know we have too different of taste.

Yeah, I've fallen back on this defense a lot, especially when I was writing about only World of Warcraft. Guess what, Warcraft's lore is shitty because the writers made it that way, they wrote the women that way, they made those choices themselves.

I also was similarly upset by the Isometric GOTY episode because Brianna seriously stomped on people's opinions. Also, podcast feedback was well-received and I stepped up the quality of our podcast this week, hopefully. http://justicepoints.com/2015/01/06/episode-78-a-whole-new-year/ (Only issue was our gain was too high so you can notice some bleed through, but I think I caught most of it.)

Yep, Last Crusade will be my favorite for that reason. Also because Raiders had snakes and Temple of Doom had that fucking scene with the bugs and I suspect that's what's given me a lifelong phobia to bugs, actually. The idea of putting my hand through bugs makes me so fucking grossed out, even more than the heart-rip-out thing.

My interest in the Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters franchises was augmented by the time periods they came out in in that I was too young to have really seen Raiders when it came out, I definitely saw Temple of Doom WAY too young (so much so that I had nightmares about the Kali Ma guy) and Last Crusade was at the best time to be slightly older and also appreciative. Same with Ghostbusters vs. GB 2 - I have way more memories of 2 than 1, given that I was slightly too young to really be watching GB1 but saw it anyways.

I think Hank struggles between his true calling, which is being a thug, and his desires to appear, manipulatively so, like a good, clean honest husband for Norma. Both Hank and perhaps even Nadine, have a rapt interest in making the physical manifestations of a "true" marriage in their lives because I think they both know deep down that they don't have one.

I really like that Anita has such a signature look as to make her highly identifiable.

This is completely bizarre.

Yeah, we splurged on some nice mics, though I might even upgrade even further now that I have some income.

I absolutely agree that it is important! I also think there's quite a huge difference between unlistenable and then small fixes that can take it from merely amateur to professional sounding and that people with way better setups or advanced understanding of production ultimately shape the curve for what people expect. My gripe about difficulty is that someone like me is producing two podcasts for fun inbetween working 40 hours a week and I'm really lucky that our fans donate to a Patreon for the main one I do - there was no way I would have been able to afford a better mic when we first started out. There's also the whole "chasing down and learning how to" time cost too - I taught myself or else badgered people to teach me how to fix some things in Audacity and had to rely on memory of very outdated audio production classes (I actually learned to cut physical tape, that's how long ago it was) for some of the basics. Podcasting is super fun and rewarding but expectations tend to run pretty high when a lot of people who want to get started don't necessarily have the know-how or money to sink into a setup that gives them the best quality possible. That's all I'm sayin'. (That also being said, I ride myself incredibly hard on our quality because it's one of the few kinds of feedback we get.)

This, which is why I get a little sad that people are so hard on audio quality. I know audio quality is really annoying to listen to but the time and effect and even money that it takes to sound crisp and professional is really daunting! Speaking of, I am attempting to do the single person audio track/audio sync method finally and hope it goes well without adding too much time to my editing process.

Professional sex pal.

Escort?

Trust me, I would love to be happy go lucky and playing games, and while my life personally in and out of video games was somewhat positive this year, it absolutely was shitty for us as a community in general.

The proximity to the consumer product, people within video games finding the military complex exciting, etc.

Point #1: I've had a cheeseburger on Krispy Kreme donut buns. I have lived. It is not an experience you ever, ever repeat. All things in moderation. (It was at least not the stick of butter fried up and put on a stick. Oh Wisconsin, you amuse me so.) Point #2: As a counterpoint to "reading the most negative" into something Dan said about just having fun in video games, a frequent refrain to my criticism of video games from a feminist standpoint has very loudly been, "Oh my god, will you get OVER yourself already? video games are for FUN. You take this WAY too seriously." It's not a far stretch to see the link between those things versus assuming some of us are pulling this reading of it out of thin air, that's all. It's very rare that I make a conjecture on someone's meaning with no evidence behind it. I've just unfortunately had so much static from gamer dudes for picking apart their favorite games, and a lot of it had to do with how video games are for fun and how I'm a big sourpuss feminist killjoy.

Just a note here: I believe that both the terms hooker/prostitute are somewhat outdated/offensive terms, I use solely sex worker at this point. I am kinda amused that the campaign to prove that violent video games doesn't make you violent worked, but in a lot of ways, it conflated that point in a lot of ways that makes it hard to push for better representations of marginalized people, since that IS something that is impacted by portrayals in the media. It largely has to do with how enacting violence in an interactive way and how enacting or interacting with representations are two different things from a psychological and sociological standpoint. Enacting violence in real life is often based on a different set of parameters and has not as much relation to how it is enacted in the virtual world. However, all THAT being said, I find it really unnerving how the overlap between the military complex and video games is getting larger. Video games being used as training or inspiration for the military (along with TV shows, no less) or having ex-game devs go on to talk about how rad Call of Duty is being applied to military procedures is incredibly scary.

Or even the Log Lady (who by the by, was on the extended cut of the Brunch episode of Portlandia, I just noticed.)