From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V8 #134 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Saturday, April 10 1999 Volume 08 : Number 134 Today's Subjects: ----------------- comic relief? [Eb ] Re: This is going to suck. (Girls and boys) [Ross Overbury ] Re: comparative plastics [Aaron Mandel ] Re: Boys are Girls [Ross Overbury ] Re: comparative plastics [Ross Overbury ] Re: comparative plastics [Eb ] hey, i'm back [Bayard ] Re: comparative plastics [S Dwarf ] Re: comparative plastics [dmw ] Re: Boys are Girls [Ben ] one last post, before my car crash [Eb ] Re: one last post, before my car crash [Ben ] Re: Linguistics of song [David Librik ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 19:25:37 -0800 From: Eb Subject: comic relief? >Goth Legends Bauhaus To Appear On The Simpsons > >Bauhaus are set to join the ranks of Smashing >Pumpkins and Spinal Tap, as the band will soon be >immortalized in an upcoming episode of TV's longest >running animated program, The Simpsons. > >But don't get yourself all revved-up to see Bart and >Lisa rock out to "Bella Lugosi's Dead" -- the band >will not be performing. In a storyline featuring the >guest voice of Mel Gibson, the band is seated in the >front row of an audience at an event where Gibson >accepts some kind of an award. Apparently, the four >members' distinctive appearances are captured so >authentically that each will be easily recognizable. > >The airdate for what will surely come to be known >among goth Internet newsgroups as "The Bauhaus >Episode" is not yet known, as it's not listed on the >Fox television roster for the next few weeks. >Original sketches of Bauhaus members Peter Murphy, >Daniel Ash, Kevin Haskins, and David J. drawn >specifically for The Simpsons episode will be posted >on the official Web site for Bauhaus >(www.bauhausmusik.com) in about two weeks. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 22:15:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Ross Overbury Subject: Re: This is going to suck. (Girls and boys) This is getting way too tense and way too fancy for me, but if any of you aren't fed up yet here's some more. On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, Capuchin wrote: > > I shouldn't do this, but I have so much work to do (therefore I'm > procrastinating). > > First, on Fri, 9 Apr 1999 overbury@cn.ca wrote: > > So if we're not allowed to speak in generalities, is the whole > > field of psychology to be declared a lie? Every person is > > different. How dare they assume they know what I'm thinking! > > Did I ever tell you about the time I made my psychology professor cry? She > threw me out of class, wouldn't let me attend or drop, and gave me a Very > Poor grade at the end of the term. Note: Write a memo to Marketing warning them that the demographics studies are useless. > > I can think of a few songs by guys who say "I can't say I love you > > in person so I wrote this". I bet there's a disproportionate number > > of those penned by men, and I don't think I'm a sexist for saying that. > > For one, I think you're sexist for assuming it. If you're just thinking > about what you recall, well, then you have a much better knack for > remembering songWRITERS than I have and you're not making any particular > judgment call so that's just dandy. Thanks! > > > Is freedom to be defined by the avoidance of issues that might make > > one seen in this light? > > Woah. Freedom is defined by the smallest ruleset (in number and scope). > I'm not saying we should avoid the issue. Talk about what you like. > You're still going to piss me off. More on this in just a moment. You no doubt read my correction to that editing mistake and you're now wringing your hands over your response, right? > > > This was penned as hastily as Jeme's letter, and not meant to offend, > > but I think we need to defuse this thing fast. > > Defuse what? The topic? Oh yeah. I'm not going to drop it for at least > a day. I'm glad we kept this up. Nothing like watching my friends duke it out for Friday night fun. > > > On Fri, 9 Apr 1999 MARKEEFE@aol.com wrote: > > Now, c'mon, you can't deny that trends and tendecies exist in the world. > > Absolutely not. There are trends and tendencies. And they do absolutely > fuck-all in helping us determine how we interact with individuals. Right, and Joel wasn't talking about anything of the sort. You read all sorts of subtext into what he said. That's your problem. Well, it *was*. > > > Women and men are socialized in vastly different ways. And, sure, these > > differences are also very much perpetuated by ignorant and/or casual > > stereotyping in the media and in interpersonal interactions. > > And the stereotypes are also perpetuated by things like (let's just pick > an idea out of thin air) papers based on an initial assumption that men > and women communicate differently SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THE SAME > SEX. Trend, or all? Like Joel, I was made to feel very odd indeed because I didn't like to join in on the jock talk or discuss how much this years Mustang sucks compared to last. There's a trend, and I was made to feel very aware of that. Luckily, it's not an imperative, so I have managed to find enough friends of both sexes with whom I can communicate just fine. > > > On the other > > hand, to just deny the similarities amongst the members of one sex or the > > other actually works *toward* maintaining these stereotypes, because you're > > saying that these trends shouldn't even be looked at and questioned. > > I would argue (and often do) that just the opposite is true. The more you > talk about the differences between groups of people, the more you validate > those differences. You say that it's ok to divide folks up that way and > make grand statements about huge segments of the population. If your > initial assessment of a situation involves evaluating the race of the > individuals involved, you're racist. Same goes for sex. That's true if you say "your initial assessment of an individual". If you say that sports will appeal mostly to men then, you're a sexist. And if you don't you're either paralysed from fear of accusation of sexism, or you suffer from the same malaise that led to Zeno's conundrum. To taste is to know. It was already said, but quickly forgotten, that observation of the state of something doesn't mean you endorse it, or that you believe that it's not due to other factors, or that you believe that it always must be so. > We can take particular examples. No, you can't because Joel was talking about a trend. > > Possibility the first step toward them being erased? Well, > > reform begins with understanding (either that or a good militia!). Teach us > If we nail down exactly the difference between the GENERAL way in which > men write songs versus the GENERAL way women write songs, what good will > that do? Will you evaluate a new artist on their gender first and then > give it a listen to see if they conform? Of course not. You're going to > judge them individually anyway, so what does it matter if 51% of female > songwriters take an aggressive stance on needlepoint. That doesn't mean > shit to the next release by anyone. Good, so you're not getting all excited about the consequences of a paper Joel's been assigned to write, then. Time to go upstairs and oppress the Little Woman. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 23:06:41 -0400 (EDT) From: normal@grove.ufl.edu Subject: Re: Linguistics of song I wonder exactly how songs written by men for women and vv. would fit into this. Would Rew's Katrina & the Waves stuff fit into masculine or feminine writing categories, objectively. (Or the stuff Carol King wrote for herself v. the stuff she wrote for The Monkees.) Terrence Marks, who's trying to remember if his civ 2 high score was in the 300%s or 400%s Unlike Minerva (a comic strip) http://grove.ufl.edu/~normal normal@grove.ufl.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 22:03:45 -0700 From: Joel Mullins Subject: Re: The linguistic differences blah blah amadain wrote: > I'd say one way would be to ask me, rather than to tell me that Alanis > Morissette is a woman's spokesperson and then get mad if I say she doesn't > speak for me. I'm not assuming that any one female is a spokesperson for all womanhood. The purpose of the paper is to look at songwriting as a form of communication and see if there are any trends that might shed some light on the way males and females communicate with each other or just the culture in general. Or even more basic: are there any differences in the way males and females communicate through songwriting, and if so, what are they? I never said anything about spokespeople. I definitely wouldn't want people thinking that someone else speaks for me. Joel ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 23:09:06 -0600 From: amadain Subject: Re: The linguistic differences blah blah >I'm not assuming that any one female is a spokesperson for all >womanhood. I didn't say you did that. I said that it's happened to me and is infuriating. Actually I had an ex who was very bad about that. He would get really annoyed that I didn't like Alanis Morissette, because he thought she had THE LIBERATED WOMAN'S POV, and would give me shit about it on a regular basis, as if this meant that I therefore hated my own gender. He felt the same way about Liz Phair. I am not making that up I'm not talking about you or anyone now present, but in fact, him and generally the kind of person who does that. If you ask them who represents the MALE POV or some such, they're often kerflummoxed ;). If one posits that Alanis is female angst personified, as opposed to say, Gwen Stefani, who is not, then who is male angst personified and who is not? Kurt Cobain? Neil Hannon? Wyclef Jean? Lyle Lovett? They haven't got all that much in common aside from all being male. It'd be interesting to see articles on those lines in addition to ones desperately attempting to draw comparisons between the likes of Shirley Manson and Lucinda Williams, who couldn't be further apart artistically, but are both women so get unnaturally lumped together. These kinds of seemingly unnatural comparisons yield interesting insights sometimes tho, which is why I'd personally (speaking just for me, and not against anyone else! :)) like to see more articles about "visions of masculinity in the works of blah and blah", as a balance to the numerous "Women In Rock" ones. Lots of these articles are well-intentioned, but they've sometimes got the effect of "ghettoizing" people as "woman's artists" or "gay artists" or whatever. This may well be part of the worry that's behind some of the reactions to your paper idea. I can also see enough to see that that really is not what your paper is about, either. This has pretty much all angled off somewhere to the side of the actual post that started it :). Love on ya, Susan must stop posting.....must stop posting ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 22:48:02 -0500 From: GSS Subject: Boys are Girls Some boys are just like girls and some girls are just like boys. Some girls have testicles and some boys have clits. It's all pretty weird. Here is the strangest thing that ever happened to me. I went to a bar one night and met this really cool girl. We talked for a while, had a few drinks and we danced. A week later I went back to the same bar, and she was there. So we did the same thing as the week before, except this time we exchanged phone numbers. This girl was all girl, the hips, the butt, everything was perfect. She had long straight red hair and the most gorgeous blue eyes I have ever seen. A few days later I called her and we met up, had a few drinks, danced and then went for a walk. After we had walked for a while I got up enough nerve to hold her hand, and it all went down quick from there. At the next intersection, while we were waiting to cross, she kissed me. At the following intersection, I kissed her and then she suggested we go back to the bar. We had just walked through the doors and she said, 'why don't we go somewhere else'. I thought she meant another bar and asked her something like, 'well should we go in one car or do you want to follow me'. And she said, 'isn't there a Holiday Inn a couple blocks away'. You coulda knocked me down with a feather. I couldn't say anything. She grabbed my hand and lead me away to heaven, or so I thought. After quite a bit of foreplay, with most of clothes on and the best oral sex I have ever had while at her request just laying there, I insisted on a returning the favor, before giving her a really good whollop. She said ok, but cautioned me to be careful and to not be surprised. Well, I thought she might be just really sensitive and maybe she had shaved herself or something, so I worked my way down slowly, only to find a big beautiful red bush and a little tiny penis. For the second time in one evening, you coulda knocked me down with a feather. After the initial shock, I yanked on my underwear, grabbed my clothes and ran out of the room, down the stairs, through the lobby and straight to my car. When I got there I was shaking so bad that I couldn't get the door open and had to ask someone for a hand. I got in the car and got dressed and then went into the bar and drank till the bar closed. I decided to go back to the hotel sleep off the drunk. I was hoping she had gone home, but her car was still parked by the bar. I snuck by the front desk and took the stairs so I wouldn't have to explain anything to the desk lady, because she had seen me run out the front door. I knocked on the room door and she answered naked. I didn't look down at her thingy but when she turned around and walked to the bed, all I could see was woman. Long red hair, and a body that could get the pants off anyone. I took off my pants and shirt, got into bed, turned over and fell asleep. The next morning I woke up to her massaging my back and rubbing herself against my leg. So of course it didn't take long before I was standing at full attention and she once again performed oral sex. After it was over, she stood up, got dressed and went away. I never called her, but I often think about her. I have been back to that bar fifty times, just hoping she would show up so I could at least say I was sorry for my reaction, but she never has. I don't know if I could actually do anything to her sexually, but I will never forget her. C triple sharp rang: > > Hey, women are only good for one thing, anyway: SQUARE-DANCING! Who's > with me? Huh? Huh? Huh? Woman can't dance. That is a fact. Or maybe just white women can't dance. Ok, maybe some white women can two-step, but all those white women who look like they are dancing, are really just men. Like TGQ, pulling the wool over all our heads. Unless he's really a woman, dancing like a man but talking French and dressed like a Scot. I think if women just danced like nobody was watching then maybe after a while they could figure it out. White women that is. Ooh look, that's racist, sexist and maybe even homophobic. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 23:46:34 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: comparative plastics On Fri, 9 Apr 1999 DDerosa5@aol.com wrote: > what I don't understand is why CDs must come in plastic jewel boxes, which > suck and break. Why don't more companies use cardboard cases?) cardboard cases can't be replaced. dog-eared CD cases suck. and CDs in cardboard sleeves (as opposed to the ones with plastic trays glued in) are horrible; you can't get them out without scratching them and usually getting fingerprints on the underside. digipaks also have a tendency for the spine to try and become parallel with either the front or back cover, making a shelf full of them an unreadable sawtooth-shape. but what do you expect from an industry that took years to figure out the right way to store two CDs in one jewel case? a ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 00:09:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Ross Overbury Subject: Re: Boys are Girls On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, GSS wrote: > I snuck by the > front desk and took the stairs so I wouldn't have to explain anything to > the desk lady, because she had seen me run out the front door. Good god! It's "sneaked", not "snuck". ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 00:15:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Ross Overbury Subject: Re: comparative plastics > > what I don't understand is why CDs must come in plastic jewel boxes, which > > suck and break. Why don't more companies use cardboard cases?) I'm waiting for those 5" square poly bags I ordered from Bags Unlimited. It's that or move part of my CD collection out of the living room. You put the front cover booklet/sheet in the poly bag and they'll stack about 12 to the inch, compared to 3/inch in jewel boxes. Just the thing for a packrat who can't throw out still-playable 8-tracks. I wonder if polycarbonate smokes as smooth as vinyl? - -- swingin' Chadbury ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 21:44:24 -0800 From: Eb Subject: Re: comparative plastics Aaron: >cardboard cases can't be replaced. dog-eared CD cases suck. and CDs in >cardboard sleeves (as opposed to the ones with plastic trays glued in) are >horrible; Personally, I'd rather have a dog-eared CD case than a cracked, scratched and finger-smeared jewel box. I like Digipaks, though sometimes they're a pain if they're not the same dimensions as a jewel box (see Bowie's Outside, Stereolab's Aluminum Tunes or Vic Chesnutt's last album, for instance). I do really hate releases where the discs are either in paper envelopes or in "pockets" (see Victoria Williams, Neil Young or -- again -- that troublesome Vic Chesnutt), however. Every time you access the disc, you inevitable add scratches to it. Blah. >you can't get them out without scratching them and usually >getting fingerprints on the underside. I don't agree with that statement. Eb, officially awarding GSS the much-coveted "Too Much Information Award" for 1999...I really can't see even Susan mounting a challenge to that particular missive ;) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 01:20:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Bayard Subject: hey, i'm back i've been away for a few days and got behind on listmail for the first time in years. so, what's new on the list? anyone care to summarize? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 23:11:17 -0700 (PDT) From: S Dwarf Subject: Re: comparative plastics Eb wrote: > Aaron: > >cardboard cases can't be replaced. dog-eared CD > cases suck. and CDs in > >cardboard sleeves (as opposed to the ones with > plastic trays glued in) are > >horrible; > > Personally, I'd rather have a dog-eared CD case than > a cracked, scratched > and finger-smeared jewel box. but you can always replace a farged up jewel box (though if the tray is a weird color, you might have trouble replacing it exactly. a screwed up digipak or envelope just remains mangled. on a slightly related note, does anyone know of anyplace that sells abandoned booklets and whatnot, as i accidentally thrashed my booklet to _magic & loss_ a few months ago and would kinda like to replace it, but don't want to buy a new album.... _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 02:41:44 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: Re: comparative plastics On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, Eb wrote: > Eb, officially awarding GSS the much-coveted "Too Much Information Award" > for 1999...I really can't see even Susan mounting a challenge to that > particular missive ;) n) fer gods sake, man, it's not even the ides of april. y'all don't *really* want me to, er, rise to the occasion, do you?? i think the details of my last outpatient surgery would easily top this, let alone any number of other escapades of assorted ilks. (my personal theory is that the anesthesioligist (sp?) scarfed up the drugs that were supposed to stop me feeling the probe...cause i weren't at all woozy, and i were distinctly aware of every trivial aspect of the goings on) o) are these "poly" bags of which y'all speak polyethelyne? given what polyethelyne is alleged to do to comic books over a ten year period, is that safe i fyou really want your grand kids to hear the love theme from _titanic_? ('cause god knows, that's important to me) p) i always thought it was alan alda who was upposed to be the spokesperson for males, not that i agreed much with that, either. - -- d. who left the wedding present cd at work, along with the passcard to get back in. damn! p.s. i'll add mine to the chorus of voices vetting the entertainment value of the current residents tour "pictures of perfection make me sick and wicked." -- miss jane austen - - oh no!! you've just read mail from doug = dmw@radix.net dmw@mwmw.com - - get yr pathos:www.pathetic-caverns.com -- books, flicks, tunes, etc. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 02:40:06 -0400 From: Ben Subject: Re: Boys are Girls GSS wrote: > Some boys are just like girls and some girls are just like boys. Some > girls have testicles and some boys have clits. It's all pretty weird. Y'know, with this as the opening sentence, I should of stopped there. But no, I HAD to read the rest. Now I am sitting here, tears streaming down my face, with a revolver positioned to blow my brains out. Goodbye, cruel world..... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 23:58:40 -0800 From: Eb Subject: one last post, before my car crash S Dwarf: >but you can always replace a farged up jewel box (though if the tray is >a weird color, you might have trouble replacing it exactly. a screwed >up digipak or envelope just remains mangled. I dunno, I still sorta enjoy the sentimental, lived-in comfyness of a beat-up, used LP. And I don't mind having the same quality in a CD, at least in the packaging (though I am fairly anal about scratches on the CD itself). But to me, a tattered corner means an album has been loved and enjoyed. That's nice. But a cracked jewel box is nothing but a jewel box that broke. It's not the same. >on a slightly related note, does anyone know of anyplace that sells >abandoned booklets and whatnot, as i accidentally thrashed my booklet >to _magic & loss_ a few months ago and would kinda like to replace it, >but don't want to buy a new album.... Find a used copy for sale, and steal the booklet. ;) Hey, all you fans of sunny, Jellyfish/Jason Falkner/World Party-type, well-produced guitar pop: Check out the new self-titled album by Owsley, on Giant Records. It's going to take another listen for me to get over the mild "genericness" of the arrangements and production, but I think I'm going to really like this one. Eb, who hopes to be seeing the Residents on the 23rd ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 03:39:54 -0400 From: Ben Subject: Re: one last post, before my car crash Eb wrote: > S Dwarf: > >but you can always replace a farged up jewel box (though if the tray is > >a weird color, you might have trouble replacing it exactly. a screwed > >up digipak or envelope just remains mangled. > > I dunno, I still sorta enjoy the sentimental, lived-in comfyness of a > beat-up, used LP. And I don't mind having the same quality in a CD, at > least in the packaging (though I am fairly anal about scratches on the CD > itself). But to me, a tattered corner means an album has been loved and > enjoyed. That's nice. But a cracked jewel box is nothing but a jewel box > that broke. It's not the same. And CD's don't have that musty smell, y'know the one that hits you when you walk on a used record shop? It's great, I wish you could get it in a bottle. ("Used Vinyl", the new fragrance from Calvin Klein. Soon to be followed by "Comic Book Shop".) But a used CD shop doesn't have that smell, although CD stores often have other unrelated smells. On the other hand, I do enjoy standing next to people in CD shops and having a race to see who can flip through the rows of discs faster. Clik clik clik clik clik. The Trilobite wins! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 05:07:31 -0500 From: David Librik Subject: Re: Linguistics of song Joel Mullins wrote: >Hey, I about to begin research for a paper I have to write for a >linguistics class. My original idea was to do something about the >differences in the way males and females communicate, including the >forms and styles of language that they use and the content and purpose >of their speech. > >Basically, I want to use the same idea, but apply it to songs as a form >of communication. I would look at songs written by men and songs by >women and try to compare and contrast these according to the 1) style of >language, 2) purpose of communication, 3) success in achieving >communication, and 4) anything else I can come up with that describe >song lyrics from a linguistic perspective. This is a sociolinguistics class, I'm guessing. It's a neat idea for a topic and I hope you run with it. It's something I've always thought would make for an interesting paper, but I've never had the determination to see it through. This is where I tip my hand a bit: I got my Master's in Linguistics from U.C. Berkeley a couple years ago, and was partway through beginning a Ph.D. when I bailed. I got to meet and work with some of the coolest and most insightful people working in this field, including the professor whose work ignited the chain of amazing sociolinguistic discoveries about "gendered" langauge use that are now taught in intro courses. So I'm going to get pretty longwinded here, and if you're not interested, skip it all now... :-) Sociolinguistics studies language use by different social groups. That different social groups have different forms and uses for a more common language is hardly news to anyone, and -- except for a few bigots and daring biological speculators -- everyone understands that these differences don't arise from biology or any inherent properties of the speakers. AAVE (African-American Vernacular English, or "Ebonics") speakers don't pronounce verbs like "running" with a final /-in/ because they're "lazy" or because it's in any way "naturally black" to do so. The top name in sociolinguistics is a guy named William Labov at the University of Pennsylvania -- he and his grad students have been pulling tons of insights about how language changes, how a community of speakers keeps a standard, and how small differences in language use serve to signal social divisions (while other, even larger, variations are unconsciously ignored), all just from intensely studying Philadelphia English. But in 1973, Robin Tolmach Lakoff wrote a paper arguing that there are sociolinguistic differences in the speech of men and women, and this was at first greeted with intense skepticism. Sure, black folks and white folks form separate enough social communities that different variants of English could arise and persist -- but men and women? We mix freely from earliest childhood -- there can't be significant, structured, coherent, pervasive sociolinguistic variations, right? But there are. Of course these are just general tendencies, not biologically-linked rules, but just as men and women absorb other cultural behavior patterns, language use is no exception. However, because the variation isn't as great as between different languages or dialects, people who use one or the other gender-linked variant aren't even aware there *is* a difference: we assume we speak the regular ordinary way. (Kind of like accents -- "I don't have an accent, but those other folks drawl, and these guys mince their words..." etc.) The best popular books on this phenomenon are by Lakoff's student Deborah Tannen. (You could also read Lakoff herself, but she's tougher sledding.) Tannen's first book, _That's Not What I Meant!_, lays out the explanation and the patterns very well, so I won't try to go into it here. Specifically, though, she focusses on what are called *pragmatic strategies*: ways of using language to get things done. How discussions are carried out, how consensus is reached, what tasks are accomplished by communication. It's really, really fascinating reading -- I totally recommend her books, especially _You Just Don't Understand_. She doesn't just describe the linguistics, by the way -- her points are that: (1) These two variants of English usage exist. (2) Speakers of one variant are usually not aware that there ARE two, and so misinterpret the import of sentences in the other variant. (3) By being aware of the differences, we can learn to "speak" (or at least understand) both systems, and thus bridge the gap that's causing communications problems. and, oh yeah, (4) The two systems of strategies seem to line up approximately with men and women, respectively. Even those who don't use the "typical" speech style of their gender are usually aware of it as an alternative. (They're "bilingual.") John Gray, on the other hand, is an idiot. Worse than that, he's a malicious idiot, though he may not even be aware of his own malice. Rather than assert there's a difference we can become aware of and thus use or overcome, he just says, y'know, Men Are This Way, Women Are That Way, and you shouldn't try to change things or differ from the Way Things Are. It twists Tannen's gentle feminism into a nasty backlash view where cultural gender roles ARE who you're supposed to be, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Rubbish. Most of the really important discoveries in the human sciences in the last thirty years (whether in linguistics, ethnic studies, gender studies, cultural anthropology, or critical theory) rest on the fact that all human beings ingest a huge amount of cultural programming as part of becoming human, and that programming forms the basis for our "common sense" -- we're as unaware of it as early humans were unaware of the atmosphere. It means that Jeme's idea is doomed: by not paying attention to the existence of built-in biases, we make ourselves MORE likely to follow the ugly parts of our cultural programming, and LESS able to change the culture. OK, on to music. DMW is right, of course, that there are psychological similarities shared between people who perform music. But what Joel was talking about were sociological patterns, and these tend to be a lot more pervasive and a lot less conscious. They're certainly there, and if you start out by assuming they follow the same system as in ordinary speech, I think you can go a long way towards showing what musicians like Ani DiFranco, Liz Phair, or Jeff Mangum are doing -- and just how they do it. (Phair, I think, is especially interesting ... but you have to be careful. First, leave off stuff like "Flower" -- Liz The Slut is a common view of her, but it misses what's really interesting in her lyrics, which I won't go into here since this isn't a L.P. list. Second, she's obviously taken her Women's Studies courses or at least spent enough time in the Oberlin academic atmosphere to be *very aware* of games played with typically male vs. female language use in rock music. The Girlysound tapes are really illuminating; you can see her consciously try -- and sometimes fail -- to force a set of "female" images into an exaggeratedly "male" lyric. You're not going to get authentically unselfconscious data from her.) As for Robyn Hitchcock -- I'd like to know what you conclude about him. My initial impression (but don't let me skew your view) is that, though he often incorporates a lot of female imagery into his songs, and messes with gender identities, he's still not writing the sort of immediate- present feelings-centered lyrics more typical of female singer-songwriters. He's got a long way to go before he's Dar Williams. (And it's a good thing, too.) - - David Librik ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V8 #134 *******************************