Carbon Fiber Masculinity WTH is this?

Post Reply New Topic

http://research.gold.ac.uk/11135/

What the hell?

No it is not a satire, the is the head of a PHD program.

http://www.gold.ac.uk/educational-studi ... /index.php

This is the same university which has Bahar Mustafa the student union welfare and diversity officer who made the Kill all Males twitter statements and was investigated for hate speech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9uMArSeg38

Wat, I don't even.

Surfaces are sexist

I honestly don't think Private Eye or the Onion could have done a better job.

However I hope this will spawn a meme of "[Insert Random Material or Object] Masculinity" abstracts.

Btw Goldsmith's is not a minor university.

Central St Martin's, Goldsmith's and the Royal Academy are the most well known and respected Arts universities. Royal Academy is only post graduate.

Clearly what we should take away from this is Pistorius was infected by by toxic masculinity through his prosthetic, which made him act as the masculine monster he became. Had he been free to be his true disabled and feminine self, none of this would have happened.

Case closed.

Of course the disabled should be able to viewed as masculine so long as they aren't actually male or or using carbon fibre. There is no confusion here.

I...but....well...I'd say that I have no words, but I think the more true statement would be that there are no words. How is this woman an educator?

How dare you. You are privileged drone of the patriarchy.

She is an educator becuase for years women from middle class suburban Sidney have been squashed flat under the weight of patriarchy and prevented from obtaining Doctorates of this quality that they so rightly deserve. Yet Goldsmith's College saw her brilliance and was willing to take a chance on her to heading such a ground breaking PHD program, despite such rabid opposition.

However she its not done yet, what she really want to do is create a new discipline combining human and tree surgery tied together interpretive dance. However the powers that be are doing everything in their power to prevent this vital work from happening.

"Mascwomen", who are slaves of the patriarchy, are being used create the false impression of women's inclusion in fields, projecting an exclusively male and very violent interpretation of careers.

So this is what she is up against.

It's a paper in sociology/social psychology of very, very limited appeal or interest, or indeed consequence. It is someone talking in very specialised language to others who are similarly versed in that language. If it weren't written in that language, it may seem less obscurantist/absurd to the casual eye.

I think I get the gist of the abstract (had to look up a few terms). I'm unable to access the paper. We gender things all the time (some languages do it explicitly). I don't see why carbon fiber can't be gendered. Think of a block of sandpaper - a rough, hard surface. Male or female? Think of soft, smooth, plump pillows and bedsheets - male or female?

Right.

Masculinity is performed. People are not - or not only - masculine in themselves, they perform it, as actors do a part. It is a way of displaying masculinity. Gore Vidal once remarked that there are no heterosexual or homosexual people, only heterosexual and homosexual acts. It's a bit like that.

Not sure what a/the 'hegemonic male body' is here. Maybe the 'ripped' and 'athletic' thing? The kinds of bodies that come to mine when one thinks of 'male'/'masculine', I guess.



Disability is something which increases one's reliance on others, makes one more vulnerable, is often associated with a 'lack'. As such, it is feminine rather than masculine. This 'femininity' of disability may be 'overcome' by technology that is seens as 'masculine'. The technology in this case is carbon fiber.



I know it's an abstract, but that strikes me as shoddy writing. Anyway, though carbon fiber is masculine, it allowed Pistorius to perform as feminine. That is, he was a disabled ('feminine') athlete at the non-disabled ('masculine') Olympics.



Okay, so the writer is considering the qualities of carbon fiber that may be interpereted as masculine. Could be an interesting read.

I just put 'carbon fiber' in Google images. Have to say, I find 'masculine' a quicker and easier association than 'feminine'. Try it:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=carbo ... 80&bih=878



Seems to be pretty much arguing the toss. It's not exactly unheard of for male athletes to be misogynistic, violent dunderheads. But, it could be an interesting analysis.

^ Well done Hopper! That makes quite a bit of sense.

That is a terrible explanation. For one the language is not absurd becuase of the obscurity or academic nature. It is not as if we are not able to understand the words mean and we have humanities graduates on this forum. It is not beyond us. She is really using words like that to make tenuous associations that are not falsifiable. She has started with premise and she ends with a premise.

The idea that she is "investigating" anything is an insult intelligence. Just becuase people can use accdemic language doesn't lend academic merit.

Also why single out carbon fibre, besides the fact that carbon fibre has material properties that make it light and strong, which is what make it good for performance prosthetics? Oh right becuase she wanted to make a point about Oscar Pistorius and masculinity.

This is the classic starting with your conclusion and proving yourself right spiel, the opposite of empiricism. There would be no other reason to group together such random subjects without knowing exactly what she wanted to insinuate.

This is not some humorous supplementary magazine columnist either, this is someone proportioning to be a serious academic, writing an academic paper in a real university.

Maybe she would actually want to wish learn about the impressive properties of material like carbon fibre work and how they can be used rather than focusing on how they are "gendered".

This reminds me when the European Space agency landed a probe on a prove traveling 80,000mph all some people could was comment on the was shirt that the project scientist for the Rosetta Mission was wearing. Despite the fact it was given to him by a friend who was a woman, and that none of the many women working in ESA and the mission itself had any complaints about his eccentricities. Nor have they claimed such trivialities have held them back in their STEM fields.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 06 Jan 2016, 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ASCULINITY

It also supports my view that some feminist groups attempt to appropriate other causes to bolster their own theories of discrimination, rather then letting them stand up on their own.

Disability rights can't be a problem in of itself. I has to bee seen as feminised, therefore adding weight to their perceived discrimination.

Ethic minority issues can't be a problem in its own right becuase women of colour have it worse than even white women in obtaining jobs. Despite the fact that black men are more likely to be unemployed than black women. Not by a large margin, but significant enough to indicate that race is probably the main issue there rather than gender, and if gender is an issue it is not women that are coming off worse than men in that case.

These groups aim to sow division, rather than practically tackle real equality issues.

One of things they are most unhappy about is the result choice has brought to wome's careers. It didn't produce the results they wanted. The countries with the most women engineers are actual countries that are very patriarchal like Russia. There is much more limited career options and the economy is basically petro-chemical. They want to earn some money and not live in poverty given the chance.

No I'm not in favour of actually Patriarch societies, I think choice is great and women engineers are fantastic. I would love to see more. I went to an engineering university, they tried hard to increase the 2-3% of women joining to no avail. It is not that easy, when they have so any options of courses they can take.

It really has nothing to do with what shirt people wear. I know that. The highly technical field of veterinary medicine has complexity change from almost entirely male career to one dominated by women. So there is no reason why women can't do technical field if they want to. This doesn't change that there are career trends. They may change in the future, who but one thing I know is the "Patriarchy" is a piss poor explanation of trends. I is just a lazy way of looking at things which explains very little. Like a catch all conspiracy.

Thanks!



I don't share your outrage. I imagine this thread is as much attention as the paper has been given anywhere, and mostly it's people mocking it. I do not see what is necessarily 'humerous' about it.

Not having read the paper, I can't give a fair opinion on it or its structure.

Maybe you don't gender things. I think that in itself is something worthy of investigation. But I do, and I don't think I'm alone. And I think this, amongs may things, is an area of life worth thinking about. I think its worth inventing and improving carbon fiber as a material. I also think its worth considering the meaning and assumed social properties and 'thingness' of carbon fiber.

There's more to the examined life than empiricism. In its own field, the paper may be persuasive or unpersuasive. Ditto for the lay reader. It may well be closer to an essay in that regard.

Thanks for the link - I'll have a look at it tomorrow. I'm starting to nod off now.

As I said, the paper itself is of minimal interest and importance. This is a small section of academia talking to itself, as many professions do.

I will agree that there is a problem politically. In that, I am largely sympathetic to the politics on display. But what strikes me from the abstract is that it becomes something like a conspiracy theory (to be clear, I am not calling the writer a conspiracy theorist), in that it induces helplessness. Because the struggle can seem so overwhelming, even impossible.

As such, considering the masculinity surrounding carbon fiber is of genuine interest to me. But it is an abstract interest.

So, I defend the writing of the paper, in principle. But as someone whose politics runs along similar lines, I think there is a danger in getting overwhelmed with the minutae of this stuff. I also have a suspicion, or maybe a projection from my own behaviour, that the point of this smalltime talking-amongst-ourselves is because its a distraction from the shittiness of the world at large. Also, publish-or-perish is probably ever more pressing.

Any idea what that has to do with research? Just sounds like stoned beatnik poetry.

You'd find way better stuff on ccru.net in that vein.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 06 Jan 2016, 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Carbon fiber is most heavily advertised to: men. In that respect it has indeed become a symbol of masculinity.

Want to sell something as top-of-the line, super high performance and exotic?
Make it out of CF and make sure to feature the unique appearance.
Focus on how including carbon fiber will make the purchaser the top dog.