The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXXI

[Chukchi Husky]

This is a question I was asked recently.

Why do people like anything that's made by Joss Whedon?

 

[Broken_Erika]

Firefly Rules!

 

[warpus]

Joss Whedon is great at character creation, from what I've seen anyway. I've met plenty of people who disliked Buffy, Alien: Resurrection, etc. though so I don't think the question stands up to scrutiny.

I also don't understand what sort of name "Joss" is.

 

[Gori the Grey]

This is a question I was asked recently.

Why do people like anything that's made by Joss Whedon?

Buffyspeak.

 

[Traitorfish]

This is a question I was asked recently.

Why do people like anything that's made by Joss Whedon?

He writes accessibly relatable characters, he knows how to mix action and narrative, and he's got an ear for dialogue with falling into self-indulgence.

He's also been very good at cultivating a brand, and I don't really mean that cynically, because I think it's most inadvertent, the result of being an active early-adopted of social media with a built-in audience through the Firefly and Buffy fandoms. Even thought not a lot of his output in the last decade has itself carried a clear "Whedon" brand, he's been quite good at reminding people that he exists and is active, and I think people respond well when they can put a product to a face, especially when the mainstreaming of nerd culture, and of superhero movies in particular, has been dominated by anonymising house styles.

I also don't understand what sort of name "Joss" is.

My guess is, short for "Jossums".

edit: Wikipedia say it's "Joseph". Boring.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Jossemaiah

 

[Mouthwash]

Question for progressives: can someone transition to a different race or species? If not, how do they differ from gender-transitions?

(Not trying to be contentious here, I'm just interested in the answer.)

 

[Traitorfish]

Question for progressives: can someone transition to a different race or species? If not, how do they differ from gender-transitions?

(Not trying to be contentious here, I'm just interested in the answer.)

The common wisdom is that transgenderism has a real if still somewhat mysterious physical basis, that it's rooted in a mis-match between brain and body; that it's fundamentally a question of sex, and the whole complicated issue of gender follows from that. Race is a way of categorising physical traits, not a physical trait or set of physical in itself, so there's no mechanism by which a person could plausibly be born into a body of the "wrong race". Species pretty much speaks for itself.

 

[The_J]

Question for progressives: can someone transition to a different race or species?

Microbes can (yeah, I know, not what was asked for).

 

[warpus]

Didn't Michael Jackson transition from one race to another successfully as well?

 

[Mouthwash]

The common wisdom is that transgenderism has a real if still somewhat mysterious physical basis, that it's rooted in a mis-match between brain and body; that it's's fundamentally a question of sex, and the whole complicated issue of gender follows from that. Race is a way of categorising physical traits, not a physical trait or set of physical in itself, so there's no mechanism by which a person could plausibly be born into a body of the "wrong race"

So you reject non-binary sexual identities?

Didn't Michael Jackson transition from one race to another successfully as well?

By changing his skin color. It wasn't merely a matter of him identifying as white.

 

[Traitorfish]

So you reject non-binary sexual identities?

I'm dubious. I don't want to rule it out categorically, but I haven't encountered a convincing explanation of how it's supposed to work, mechanically.

 

[Mouthwash]

It's refreshing to hear someone advocate transgenderism on the basis that it is something real, not because it is how someone 'identifies.'

 

[Gori the Grey]

There was Rachel Dolezal.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's refreshing to hear someone advocate transgenderism on the basis that it is something real, not because it is how someone 'identifies.'

That was the progressive common sense until very recently. Still is, I think, for most people. It seems to me that some quite vocal people have simply gotten carried away with certain trains of thought, a little too impressed with how internally-coherent their reasoning seems to worry about verifying it empirically, and that a lot of other people, who are perhaps more anxious about being progressive than being right, have adopted certain aspects of their jargon and rhetoric without really considering about how or even if it's compatible with their rest of their assumptions about sex and gender.

 

[Arakhor]

By changing his skin color. It wasn't merely a matter of him identifying as white.

Jackson had a skin condition. He may have had plastic surgery, but I doubt he could have done much about his skin colour.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Had he lived another 10-20 years his skin would have probably turned transparent.

 

[Arakhor]

Vitiligo doesn't make the skin go transparent, from what I've heard. It just turns it dead white, which is noticeable even amongst fair-skinned people.

 

[Zkribbler]

Didn't Michael Jackson transition from one race to another successfully as well?

He claimed to have a disease which turned his skin white. IMHO, he was skin bleaching.

Here's the problem with changing races. There are IIRC 17 genetic markers which biologically determine race. People can have them in any combination. If you have 16 white and 1 black, you're going to look white. If you have 15 black and 2 white, you're going to look black. But how many to you need to switch in order to transition?

Legally, it's a whole new kettle of fish. States' Jim Crow laws differed. IIRC, in one state, if you were 1/64 black, you were black. In another if you were 1/64 white you were white. In another, you had to be 33/64 white in order to be white. Nowadays,, I don't believe there's a legal definition.

The larger question is should it makkter. Shouldn't people be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin?

 

[Takhisis]

There was Rachel Dolezal.

Prose? Seriously?