I thought some of the earliest fanfiction which predate the internet were the startrek ones in book form. Maybe there's an academic analysis of those kinds of paper form fanfic. Would be obscure though. Not sure how you would obtain something like that.

Does it bother anybody else that Victorians like to ejaculate when they speak?

If you go through the verbs found in Doyle and Wodehouse and also I think in Agatha Christie though she's not a contemporary of the other two, some of the verbs they use in place of "said" would cause a modern reader to go WTF?  But apparently Victorians were perfectly fine with literary characters ejaculating speech. Nope nothing sexual about that at all

I think Protestant England is one of the reasons why the Industrial Revolution took place in England.

The Industrial Revolution required two prerequisites to happen. 1 abundant resources due to expansive empire (England and Spain both qualify here) 2 relatively unrestricted atmosphere for science and innovation.

This might be a huge generalisation but I think Spain being Catholic was much more restrictive toward the sciences than was Protestant England and this was one of the pivotal reasons why Industry was born in England and not in Spain.

And an early merry xmas to orthodox Russians who won't get to celebrate xmas until January 6th.

Next year will be huge in Australia and New Zealand when comes April 25th, it will be 100 yrs since the Gallipoli Campaign from WW1 and we will be chucking a massive party to celebrate one of the biggest military losses in our history.  Yeah us Aussies have this thing with losing - Gallipoli, Ned Kelly and the Eureka Stockade are all celebrated coz the protagonists in them lost, lol Even our national song (Waltzing Matilda) is about a suicide.

Have you guys noticed a tendency in films for them to approximate? eg: they might hire a Dutch person, get them to speak Dutch and then claim that they're Germans or something coz main body of show is still in English.

Happens a lot with Chinese characters. The story will be set in China and not one of the actors hired will speak Mandarin at all, usually the dialogue is delivered in Cantonese (you can get away with it if it's set in Hong Kong but not for mainland China). The worst version of this was when the "Chinese" character actually spoke Korean, the film makers were like "no one in the audience will notice".

Just wondering if they do it to other languages as well. It can't just be faux Chinese that shows up in English shows.

If human society was like ants and everyone descended from a common queen, who would you want us all to be descended from? Can be a person from either gender.

With regard to skirt sizes, it has to be culturally appropriate. Not that this will stop Walmart or which ever chain that's promoting skimpy skirts. Some cultures like to emphasize large butts (African/Pacific Island), some cultures like to emphasize big boobs (European) and some cultures like to emphasize small feet (Asian).

Whatever you're selling or promoting has to strike a balance between gender appropriate and cultural defined. If we break the gender stereotype for specific cultures, it will do more harm than just plain "leave us girls alone". It's a very delicate balance and like religion, culture is extremely difficult to break and is one of the main things sustaining gender differences.

 

silverblaze wrote:

My background is in psychology and neuroscience and from my perspective, the idea that everything is nurture just seems bizarre.

If feminism was an individual trait then you would be correct but it is more of an attitude and a collective attitude at that so nurture (especially culture, which is a bloody curse but inescapable as a mammalian trait) does play a big part in it.

Any fellow feminists here? People tend to think of feminists as being with the hippies and New Age group but I think you don't have to be a liberal progressive person to hold feminist views. You can also be a conservative feminist.

The fact that human trafficking, female abuse (including FGM) and female slavery is still prevalent across the globe means that feminists haven't actually come as far as they think they have.

Women still have to justify their choices while men can do whatever they want. If you're a man and you happen to be single or you choose to not have children, it's completely normal but if you're a lady, good luck trying to explain what planet you come from