1. That it’s designed to go massively viral
2. That Nike is a soulless corporate bully that exploits children, women, poverty-stricken communities of workers, and the environment
3. That corporate monopolies oh goddammit I do care about all of these things
So what do we do when a corporation does not have our best human interests at heart and still makes some goddam killer ad campaigns?
This is the most touching “It Gets Better” video I have seen. I think it’s literally impossible not to cry while watching it.
via Gawker
I fucking love this video.
Today is National Coming Out Day. It’s important, of course, for members of the LGBTQ community to wear their identities publicly and with pride today–but it’s also important for allies to show their support. In a nation where more than half of us still believe that marriage is a privilege that must be earned and not an inalienable right, mainstream political candidates can treat homosexuality as an abomination and still garner 34% of likely voters in pre-election polls, a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell can be blocked by Senate Republicans despite overwhelming public support for dropping a ban on gays in the military, and–most crushingly of all–young people are bullied and even driven to suicide based on real or perceived differences in gender identity and sexual orientation, we need LGBTQ allies to stand up proudly.
It’s still not safe to be out in America. LGBTQ allies can’t change this fact, but they can make it clear to the world that it’s safe to be out around them.
Last week, I had the incredible honor and thrill of sitting in on a Skype conversation with learning theorist Michael Cole. Mike–which is what I call him now, since we’re like this *crosses fingers to demonstrate close friendship*–is one of the most prominent educational researchers currently working in America. There are two main reasons for this: First, Michael Cole introduced America to L.S. Vygotsky, thereby changing the course of psychology and learning theory for good, forever. Second, Michael Cole showed us how to use L.S. Vygotsky, through his work with the 5th Dimension and his enormous collection of published articles, chapters, and books.
Michael Cole has been working in psychology and educational research for more than 50 years. That’s 50–five-oh–years. So there’s no reason why he would feel particularly interested in talking with a bunch of bright-eyed and shiny-faced graduate students about learning theory, mediation, and Russian psychology.
Can’t hurt to try, right? And it turns out that sometimes asking is all it takes.
Well, okay, I should also make it clear that Michael Cole is one of the nicest academics I’ve ever spoken to, and that he carries a reputation for his commitment to supporting young scholars. So he gave us an hour and a half of his time and ended the conversation by offering to join us via Skype for even more conversations in the future.
Video of the conversation is embedded below. It was recorded with Call Recorder, a Skype add-on for Macs that I recommend heartily.
For all you Vygotsky fans, I want to direct you to two really important points made by Mike in the conversation: First, Vygotsky’s book Mind in Society is not about learning; it’s about instruction. And second, we have it wrong when we say that Vygotsky argued that learning leads development.
See, up until Vygotsky, people assumed the opposite: that development precedes learning–that a child’s brain develops, which makes it possible for the child to learn to do something new. The opposite approach–that it’s through learning, or accomplishing a new task, that development is made possible–is at the heart of sociocultural approaches to cognition and instruction.
But according to Mike, what Vygotsky actually said was not that “learning precedes development” but that “learning can be organized in such a way that learning can precede development.” Which to my mind suggests two important things: First, that it’s not necessarily the case that learning leads development; and second, that it’s desirable to create instructional conditions such that learning can lead development.
Okay, anyway. Here’s the video.
Michael Cole on learning theories, mediation, & CHAT from LSGSA Indiana University on Vimeo.
Summary: my Facebook friends’ status updates hold more surprises in any five minutes than this film can muster in 2 hours.
As I was waiting for my friends to arrive at the movie theater for the 7:00 showing of The Social Network, the newly released film chronicling the early years of Mark Zuckerberg’s rise as the co-founder of Facebook, I accidentally got the zipper pull on my sweatshirt stuck in the mesh of the bench I was sitting on. I found this out when I stood up, felt the pull and heard a metallic *pop*.
That was the last unexpected thing that happened within my field of vision for the next two and a half hours.
This film centers around a pair of lawsuits filed against Zuckerberg, played with great subtlety and nuance by Jesse Eisenberg, for copyright infringement, intellectual property theft, and an extremely vaguely described allegation by Facebook co-founder and former Chief Financial Officer Eduardo Saverin that he was cheated out of his share of rights to the site. Guess what–Zuckerberg turns out to act like sort of an asshole, both in real life and in the movie. If you follow social media or business news, you probably knew about his reputation for dick moves in real life. In the movie, you’re notified of Zuckerberg’s assholishness in the opening scene when he launches into a horribly dickish tirade to his girlfriend about elitism, his desire to get accepted into one of Harvard’s exclusive clubs, and his struggle with distinguishing himself from his Harvard classmates despite scoring a perfect 1600 on the SAT. (The girlfriend is surprised here: “Does that mean you didn’t get anything wrong?” she asks. It’s hard to believe, incidentally, that the movie version of Zuckerberg wouldn’t have informed his girlfriend of his perfect score long before this point–as in, during the opening minutes of their first date.)
The rest of the movie is a confirmation of what the first five minutes establish: That Mark Zuckerberg–the film version of him, at least–is indeed an asshole, and that his behavior is the result of a deep need to be accepted, admired, and respected. At the risk of tossing in a spoiler, every time Zuckerberg is presented with a choice between doing the right thing and making a dick move, he chooses the dick move. Every. Single. Time. By the end of the film, Zuckerberg isn’t a more complex, more nuanced, or more tragic asshole; he’s just the exact same asshole who would brag about his perfect SAT score to his girlfriend, except with more money this time.
But don’t worry, because there are many other things to learn from this film! It turns out that nerds are people, too! And that nerds with ambitions toward world domination want the same thing that ambitious non-nerds want: Respect, power, and girls! I know–surprising, right? The Social Network is just filled with surprises exactly like this!
That the film refuses to surprise us, either with its characters or with the narrative itself, is fairly disappointing. There is, after all, a nice social critique to be made of the fact that Zuckerberg and his archrivals, the more privileged, wealthier, and better connected Winklevoss twins, orient to peers and authority figures with approximately the same degree of entitlement. It’s just that the Winklevosses wear their entitlement as if it were the skin they were born in, whereas Zuckerberg–mousy, awkward, unconnected Zuckerberg–has to constantly insist, in word and deed, upon his right to have everything he wants handed directly to him. That Zuckerberg ends up looking like the asshole while the Winklevosses end up looking like some combination of self-righteous, misguided and spoiled–well, that’s arguably at least partially the fault of a culture that uses class, education, and physical appearance to distinguish between confidence and arrogance.
Alas, this is a critique left unexplored in The Social Network, which instead spends its time showing off its witty dialogue, era-appropriate technologies, and superb acting. (This is a point mentioned by many other reviewers, but one worth noting here: The acting, by everyone in film, is so good it is simply astonishing.)
A lengthy early scene features Zuckerberg running through the streets of Cambridge, MA, and across the Harvard campus. It’s actually more of a jog than a run, and it’s really not clear why he’s running. Maybe he’s cold and wants to get indoors as quickly as possible; maybe he has a lot of homework to do; maybe he has a new programming idea he wants to try. At one point, as he’s passing a busker playing a violin, Zuckerberg slows to a walk and you think, okay, now something’s going to happen!
But nothing happens. He walks past the violinist, then picks up his pace until he’s running again. When he gets to his dorm he’s not exhausted, he’s not agitated, he’s not excited; he’s not really anything at all. He’s just…done running.
Which makes you wonder: Why in the world did I watch that whole thing? And why, for godsake why, did the filmmakers spend so much time and money putting that together, no matter how lovely and well filmed it is?
The Social Network is rated PG-13 for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language. Also, women are treated as nameless receptacles for dicks.
I want you to know some things about my approach to gender performance.
I want to tell you because my friend Lina asked me today how I think about gender and gender performance, which got me thinking, which made me realize that I have some strong ideas about this, which made me wonder if it’s time to state them out loud.
So here we go.
Typical cultural activity associated with “womanness” include: femininity and / or motherliness; degree of attractiveness to men; and engagement in sexual activity with other people.
I wear primarily men’s clothes and wear my hair short, in a men’s cut. I am regularly mistaken for a boy, more often by men than by women; (I think this is because men are less likely to look directly at me, since I’m clearly not going to really hold their interest. Based on what they see out of their peripheral vision, they assume I’m a boy. So when they call me ‘Sir’ and I respond in a female voice, they get startled and confused. Women seem more likely to look before assuming, and they’re therefore more likely to refer to me as ‘ma’am’ or ‘miss.’ More on this in a second.) I think children are the bees’ knees, though I don’t have any kids of my own and don’t spend much time with children outside of my research. I’m not involved with anyone at all right now, and haven’t been for some time.
So much for the key indicators of “woman-ness.”
Yet for the first time in my adult life, I am comfortable identifying as a woman. That’s weird, right? That
embracing gender ambiguity would make me feel more comfortable inhabiting a genetically female body? But it does. See, I’m comfortable in this body now. I’m comfortable holding forth from within it.
But let me tell you what I’m not trying to do:
1. I’m not trying to ‘pass’ as a male. I think that for the most part, anyone who looks hard enough can figure out that I’m female, albeit a really queer looking female. But I’m also fine with being mistaken for a male, even though it’s not exactly what I’m going for. I have female friends who feel bad for people who mistake them for males, because they’re usually so embarrassed when they find out their mistake. I say fuck ‘em. It’s their problem for making assumptions and using those assumptions to substitute for paying attention. I say you play with gender, you have to own the whole ball of wax.
2. I’m not trying to straddle male and female gender norms. Nor do I consider myself to be a little bit of each gender. My identity performance falls somewhere between the two poles, which by the way were just arbitrary social constructs in the first place. I don’t have times when I feel or act more feminine, or when I feel or act more masculine. There are days when I dress in a more feminine way and days when I wear more masculine clothes; there are times when I’m more emotional or when I’m more of a dick; but there are never times when I think of myself as more girlish or more mannish.
I know. This is tough to understand. It’s even tougher to explain. Bear with me.
3. I’m not trying to wear my gay for the world to see. And I also sort of am trying to wear my gay for the world to see. A year ago, all I thought about was how gay I looked. I obsessed over it. I thought about it all the time. I don’t obsess anymore, though I do like making my queerness evident to the world. Basically, I don’t care if you think I look gay, and I also care if you think I look gay.
Rock Ruffergood, a performer in the Bloomington, IN-based Gender Studs
Someone asked me today why LGBTQ life gets easier with time. I can’t speak for everyone in the LGBTQ community, but I can say that for me, the biggest change and the biggest relief came when I began to embrace an identity that felt more authentic to me and, by default, less a reflection of cultural values. I’m sure that for many women, their self-concepts align fairly closely with how our culture tells us female identity should look; it just happens that cultural values and my (gendered) identity don’t overlap very much at all. Eventually, as I explored this fact, I realized that the coming-out process was also a sort of (re)gendering process, and one that led to a small shift in almost everything–the way I carry myself, the way I sit in a chair, the jokes I tell, the way I wear my hair, where I choose to stand in a room. Everything changed, just a tiny bit. Everything shifted just a tiny bit toward a body and a self that I’m far more comfortable being inside of.
And lord, it’s been such a relief.
"you don't just give up / you don't just let things happen / you make a stand / you say no //"
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