Carbon Fiber Masculinity WTH is this?

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I don't think that qualifies carbon fiber as a 'masculine material' or a 'prosthetic form of masculinity', as is being claimed here. Stainless steel has been frequently used in products that are marketed at women. Does that make it a feminine material? Can we consider a stainless steel knife to be a 'prosthetic form of femininity'?

This notion of granting materials human qualities is endearingly poetic, but entirely dependent on subjective interpretation.

I'm also quite certain that it doesn't mean carbon fiber has "associated attitudes of misogyny", as per the unsupported conclusion of Hickey-Moody.

Succinct.

Truly, it is the black ash of modern times.



Not quite. Where something exists in a nexus of (implied, sought) associations and interpretations, it may very strongly seem - and effectively be - that that thing has those qualities.



Spoilers! I haven't read the paper yet!

But, looking at those pictures, it doesn't seem much of a leap.

So subjective interpretation then.



Not to anyone whose brain has been conditioned to view anything that isn't anti-male as inherently anti-female, no. To such that would take no more than a slight shuffle to the right.

For the rest of us, those are (in order) an overpriced motor-vehicle that looks either cool or ugly (or anywhere between) depending on the tastes of the observer, two humanoid forms doing battle with some cool (or ugly) arms and armour, a wallet and something to sit on while you use the toilet.

If you see any -isms in the pictures, you're adding them yourself.

Carbon fiber is used in a lot of stuff that a lot of men find cool.

Thus, a lot of men believe carbon fiber is cool.

This is an insight worthy of (at most) a 15 minute crash-course in marketing and advertising, not a pompously worded academic paper which brings back memories of the Sokal hoax and invokes Poe's Law every other sentence.

Maybe we need a Carbon Fiber Autism. Anyone want to write an abstract on that?

CF has a higher strength to weight ratio, is more expensive to produce and manufacture items from, than comparable materials so the attributes above are very much connected. It's unlikely that I would want to associate with the owners of any of your featured items.

Any athlete, of either sex, who requires prosthetics will choose to use a CF product if they can afford to.

All criticism of Pistorius is valid and welcome, but I struggle to see the connection in this case.

That's a simplistic understanding of it.

People living under a theocracy, born of subjective interpretations of ideas which cannot be 'proven', will find they have very real effects on their lives. Further, they will have very real effects on how they think.



My brain has not been conditioned so.

Something can be cool and ugly. It can be cool because it is ugly.

The study and use of aesthetics is not an oddity. It happens all the time. Decisions are made in how a thing looks and how it is presented in order to provoke certain reactions/associations in the perceiver.

Actually, that's a simplification (or indeed a refinement) rather than a simplistic understanding. The insult is, however, duly noted.



So still subjective then. Perhaps I was mistaken and you're actually trying to clumsily agree with me?



Excellent. You're in the 'rest of us' category then?



I covered that point with "or anywhere between"



Definitely clumsily agreeing then. Glad we could clear that up.

An insult? That would be your subjective interpretation.

I don't think so, no. I get the impression that saying something is 'subjective' is a way to dismiss a matter - do I have that right? I don't think 'subjective' or 'objective' are useful terms here. I am interested in a particular analysis of a particular phenomenom.

You said, in another thread:



which I heartily agree with. And to me, an analysis of artefacts and symbols is as interesting and important as that of language.

But I think I've said all I can to you on this matter. I still owe the OP a reading of the paper (I was more interested in defending the principle of such a paper than reading the paper itself). In the meantime, I've got some procastinating to get on with.

Not necessarily. It's immaterial either way. I chose to note it rather than take it, so we can still be chums. I do, of course, reserve the right to return it at a time of my choosing.



That might well be the case. However, it would be imprudent of you to assume that such was my intent.



To have opinions based on little-to-no data? I'm not sure that's a right so much as an inevitable result of human existence.



What term do you believe would be an appropriate (or useful) way of describing arbitrarily assigned character traits to compounds? Incidentally, labelling my observation as 'not useful' is most certainly dismissive.



None of which is a rebuttal of the point I made within this thread. Fnord was at least partially correct in the other thread, insofar that words alone cannot change the material substance of a thing. Even if we were socially conditioned to believe that diamonds were made of the tears of unicorns, our collective subjective opinion would be inapt.

In other words, even if you can convince a million people to pm me saying that "carbon fiber has traits X, Y and Z and we are in agreement that such traits are masculine", the masculinity remains a subjective projection onto, rather than a property of carbon fiber.



I'm sure you would be able to say a great deal more had you read the paper - not that I recommend doing so, even out of sheer curiosity. GGPViper's assessment was, frankly, perfect.

I welcome the fact that you disagree with me and wish to challenge my position, but you really need to articulate your reasons in order for useful discussion to take place.

So what? Yes it is true that carbon fibre is used when there is no performance benefit. They sell the surface to who it appeals to. If it appealed to women they would sell it to them. They are not going to limit their customer base.

Carbon firbe doesn't have to be exposed. So its look doesn't need to be seen to get the benefit. That covering layer can take the same thickness an weight as a clear coat.

What is the point of the paper? That is what I'm thinking.

Carbon fibre is uses for performance sport equipment for men and women. It is also used to help disabled athletes, both men an women.

The only probable reasons for singling out Pistorius is his rise and fall, especially the controversy around him. I don't think that is a coincidence.

Saying the performance is masculine implies those women involved performance sport are masculine. I don't think that is cut an dry but if she has a problem with that image tough. Masculinity is not any worse that femininity. There is nothing wrong with masculinity. For a long time feminist were worried about being femunised against their will and wanted to do masculine things.

Also she is on the one hand complaining that disability is feminine (something I didn't agree with) on the other hand she is implying rather codedly that the masculinity of performance material is a bad thing.

Yes overall men have the most muscle mass (with significant overlap in some percentiles), however these people can also be heavy. Carbon fibre is light and strong.

I gave you a link.

I'll give you a summary:
She doesn't really expand much on her original premise and basically waffles about the same thing a lot. She hides behind the terminology and big words to pad out the paper. She cites opinion pieces as if they were the only authority, and make no real effort to establish a causal relationship or to back them up with evidence.

I totally get that you don't get with the fuss is about. That is probably becuase you you are unaware of what has been going on in universities in the past few years. If you were aware you would realise that this is part of a political movement, rather than genuine independent academic inquisition.

In fact the department is a supposed to be a mix of arts and pedagogy, however what it involves is quite vague. There has been a movement to insert a particular brand of identity politics into various degrees, in some cases they have secured compulsory courses.

These could be psychology, arts, education, history, politics, philosophy, languages, literature, childcare, etc. All of these sort of department and faculties which this movement is trying to inject a particular ideology into . Then they set rules that are counter to the spirit of challenging ideas, such as using the devices of "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" to prevent direct criticism of their ideas. Teaching ideas without room for criticism is not different from teaching opinion as fact.

In UK universities, for undergraduate we have already chosen our majors. A Levels are a bit like your first years of university, which we take before applying to university. So the student are already specialised.

Masters degrees usually continue that discipline or are typically related. PHDs generally are related however can be broader so long as there is merit. It is not really clear what discipline this person is working in, it appears to be an homginised mix of odds an ends. Just becuase she uses big words doesn't make what she says more meaningful. This would all be fine if some public money wasn't involved in her employment.

This isn't an an innocent somewhat bizarre by harmless research paper. It is part of a movement to politicise courses in universities. Courses which have a track record of closing down debates.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 07 Jan 2016, 7:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I happened to work for a company that plans public exhibitions in museums and such. Last year we did an exhibition on CF, funded by germany's CF-industry and research facilities.
Among the funders was BMW.
So we had to deal with their marketing team on how to present the whole thing.
And they were very insistent on a specifically masculine focus. Guns, cars and fast things.

It was a battle for us as a design company to create an exhibition -and promotional material for it- that did not focus completely on these applications, but would also appeal to.... Well.... Science geeks (who else would want to go see an exhibition on carbon fibre?)

Anyway, the most striling thing is that CF is woven, it is textile and in that respect, has distinctly feminine connotations. Yet BMW wanted us to show it as a hard, crystalline structure, like a diamond. Edgy. Pointy, and shiny. We went for woven, flowing and silky.

The exhibition had moderate success, but it was interesting to deal with big-industry marketing and how they tried to decidedly brand CF as this ultra-masculine substance, while it really doesn't have the properties people are advertising it with (except the strength and lightness, of course)

On the original source, or rather, some opinions about it: this is eventually philosophy. There have been complicated, seemingly, and often actualky meaningless texts been written by academics over the course of history, and those texts in themselves have no use, - but they might inspire others to think certain thoughts, and eventually, that's their purpose.

I'm right now contemplating a 21st century remake of a japanese cyberpunk classic, and it will be called "kuro, the carbon fibre man".

Thinking about it, he'll look like christian bale's batman, though..

The department's page

http://www.gold.ac.uk/cal/

Make of that what you will. I wonder if critical in the phrase "critical processes" is referring to using criticism rather than something important.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 07 Jan 2016, 7:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If a carbon fibre exhibition is funded by the car industry it not really surprising that it is marketed as male. They know who their customers are. Generally in business, if you have success in a market to try to find similar market before expanding. Or you expand within the market.

There are completely unrelated uses of carbon fibre which are not in of themselves gendered for instance music and acoustics, and single fibre electrodes used in neurosciences.

As GGPViper pointed out, that fact a material is gendered is not indication that it or its use is misogynistic. We all can use aeroplanes, for example . There is nothing stopping women buying carbon fibre products. Carbon fibre itself is not sexist.

They are also invisible to x-rays, which makes them great as a material for use in CAT-scanners.

No, the material of course is not sexist.
But the connotations which our society decided to attach to it are so heavily gendered they become exclusive, thus emphasizing polarization of genders.

That can't be too good, and feminists are struggling against this polarization. Not CF, itself.