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Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

theguardian.com

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Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#91
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that the phrase "greedy Frenchmen" can only be reasonably interpreted as the speaker believing it is typical for Frenchmen to be greedy. That isn't agreeing with me! My point was that both meanings are expressed by the phrase. I also think the phrase "fundamentalist Christians" does (in practice) contain an message about Christians, as well as acting as a qualifier that excludes many of them. I'm entirely n…

> That isn't agreeing with me! My point was that both meanings are expressed by the phrase. Apologies. I disagree with that then. I think it's quite safe to assume that if someone uses the phrase "greedy Frenchmen", that in almost all contexts they are trying to create or reinforce an association between being greedy and being French. In that specific example, the technical meaning of the phrase has become irrelevant…

Surely there's a sense in which the precise meaning of "greedy Frenchmen" still exists? It's obviously a bit difficult to discuss without context, but entirely discarding the accurate meaning based on there being "questions about the motive of the speaker" seems, I dunno, hasty? "I helped my uncle jack off a horse" still has two meanings, even though only one of them is the punchline.

My point, linguistically, is just that " " paradoxically both qualifies "" and also links "" and "". I think that is just how language works, (I'm admittedly not a proper linguist and kind of freestyling). I think that's true of "greedy Frenchmen", "fundamentalist Christians", "fundamentalist Muslims", "toxic masculinity", "gold-digging women", and, well, just in general.

Whether it matters, whether you care, and what you want to do about it, are separate questions. But I think it's useful to understand that language functions that way, whether you like it or not. I don't think these phrases should be verboten, but I do think it's good to understand what it is you're communicating. Even if what's being understood is not what you intended when you transmitted it, I think communication entails a responsibility for the speaker to consider the impact of their speech on the listener.

Completely honestly I'm a bit bewildered by your bewilderment. While it's obviously a huge, toxic rabbit hole and I don't really want to go there, I think perhaps you're not appreciating that people have genuine sensitivities about things you presumably don't. Maybe if I put it like this: There are contexts in which "toxic masculinity" or "fundamentalist Christians" aren't going to land well, and some people spend a lot of time in those contexts.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#92
post #30

i wonder what implications this has on mating? will she find a mate? Presumably the male would need to dominate her in order to procreate, that does not appear to be the case, currently. Will she attempt to assume the male role in the mating process? Lots of questions here around this issue.

It would also be interesting to see if the mating strategies and behaviors of the males change too. Let's hope they are thoroughly monitored and studied.

Bench pressing macaques on instagram soon.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#93
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That isn't agreeing with me! My point was that both meanings are expressed by the phrase. Apologies. I disagree with that then. I think it's quite safe to assume that if someone uses the phrase "greedy Frenchmen", that in almost all contexts they are trying to create or reinforce an association between being greedy and being French. In that specific example, the technical meaning of the phrase has become irrelevant…

Surely there's a sense in which the precise meaning of "greedy Frenchmen" still exists? It's obviously a bit difficult to discuss without context, but entirely discarding the accurate meaning based on there being "questions about the motive of the speaker" seems, I dunno, hasty? "I helped my uncle jack off a horse" still has two meanings, even though only one of them is the punchline. My point, linguistically, is jus…

> My point, linguistically, is just that " " paradoxically both qualifies "" and also links "" and "".

I think that's broadly speaking correct. The point I made in my first reply to you was that I don't think this happens to the same extent for every word combination. Among other things the degree of linkage seems to me to be inversely correlated to the degree to which your adjective and group inform one another.

That is, to be clear, an attempt by me to put into words why I intuitively feel the phrase "greedy Frenchmen" is strongly dominated by linkage, whereas "fundamentalist Christians" is not. I cannot prove this. But I don't think I'm an insulated case here: I've never seen anyone being called out for being insensitive by using the phrase "fundamentalist Christians"; I have seen it for phrases like "greedy Frenchmen" and, in this very thread, "toxic masculinity".

Nevertheless, even though I might not fully understand a certain sensitivity, I'm happy to adapt my language to be less prone to misinterpretation. But I'm curious whether you have any workable suggestions. If you want to talk about the fundamentalist subset of Christians, what phrasing would you use that avoids offending people?

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#94
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's a sense in which the precise meaning of "greedy Frenchmen" still exists? It's obviously a bit difficult to discuss without context, but entirely discarding the accurate meaning based on there being "questions about the motive of the speaker" seems, I dunno, hasty? "I helped my uncle jack off a horse" still has two meanings, even though only one of them is the punchline. My point, linguistically, is jus…

> My point, linguistically, is just that " " paradoxically both qualifies " " and also links " " and " ". I think that's broadly speaking correct. The point I made in my first reply to you was that I don't think this happens to the same extent for every word combination. Among other things the degree of linkage seems to me to be inversely correlated to the degree to which your adjective and group inform one another.…

I'm not necessarily claiming to have better ideas! I think it's really hard, and the internet has made it very hard to second guess the context in which your messages will be received.

* It's usually best to go with something more tailored and thoughtful, and avoid politically charged clichés if you can. For me, this is the real reason "greedy Frenchmen" seems innocuous and the other examples seem problematic.

* A low-effort hack that sometimes softens things a bit is prefixing with "some" and / or suffixing with "people" ("some Christian fundamentalist people...").

* You don't have to live in constant fear of offending people, maybe sometimes you can just say what you want to say and hope your audience doesn't take it the wrong way. I don't want to overstate my concern for Christian sensitivities. Your chances of avoiding offence are obviously dependent on the context and your audience.

Again, I'm not necessarily saying I'm good at this! I think I'm better than I used to be, which is an extremely low bar.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#95
post #9

This is awesome. To get the top job, she: beat up her own mother; then took on the existing alpha 4x her age, and probably larger; then in the next 'peanut session' he had to backdown and let her eat first; and now she walks with an erect tail and goes and shakes trees for fun--It expresses her power. How cool is that! It just goes to show, it's never about gender, just about choices, ambition and how brave you choos…

It's interesting, but brutal. I wouldn't call this "awesome". Beating up your mother isn't "brave". This is literally a monkey dictatorship. That alpha is probably really shitty to be around.

you're judging everything from a human point of view but that's not what I'm doing here. It's awesome because she achieved what she wanted to achieve using whatever means necessary and so your moral fear about this comes from the idea that it's somehow wrong to beat up your own mother. Sure in our society it would be--what you're really going to take it as like I'm saying yeah that's a good thing? Haha--but in the monkey society that's how things work. And we're not that different to monkeys you know violence kind of rules at the end of the day when you look at military technology and so on. but the other side of it maybe the mother was really abusive mother or just was a really terrible monkey person. but I'm not assuming that I'm just assuming that this girl did what she needed to do to get to the top in that monkey society and that is what is awesome truly fucking awesome. I didn't care about your human morals applied to this monkey situation. Get out of here! :)

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting, but brutal. I wouldn't call this "awesome". Beating up your mother isn't "brave". This is literally a monkey dictatorship. That alpha is probably really shitty to be around.

Quick search, macaques's lifespans are roughly 20-30 years. The old alpha was 31... so, in human terms (roughly), it's like a 20-ish year old woman beats a man in his 60s-70s... and she's "brave".

you want to like respond to the weakest version of what I say so you can pretend that I'm so bad for saying this so you want to connect all the words in the worst possible interpretation. First point is it's only a bad interpretation if you want to take it from a human moral point of view I'm not doing that--so you need to impose your different moral view on my comment and judge it from the point of view where you can find something bad. I'm considering it from the monkey point of view. secondly I'm not even saying that's the brave thing. The brave thing is this this female monkey took the alpha position and did what she needed to do to get there... like female alphas are rare so you got to be brave to do it right? I know you want to hate on my comment and pretend it's so bad but why don't you hate on it from the real version like if it's really so hatable for you why do you need to pretend it's the weak version in order to hate it why not just hate on the strongest version? Hahaha.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, I suppose, people seem to have forgotten that.

Forgotten what? If gender doesn't matter then why is this newsworthy? And if people forgot something then why did they forget it in the first place?

Hahaha this is funny even if we agreed you couldn't say anything nice because you hated my first comment so much. I think you should think about that why would you hate something fundamentally empowering for people about choices unless you had something to gain from people being disempowered?

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgotten what? If gender doesn't matter then why is this newsworthy? And if people forgot something then why did they forget it in the first place?

Gender doesn't matter, except when it matters. We just seem to not be able to agree where and when it matters.

I'm clear on it. I'm against people saying gender matters because it makes me weak and a victim and I can't do anything and therefore people should give to me because of my gender rather than me having to create for myself. so people forget that it's about choices and ambition and bravery just like I said in the monkey comment. I'm for people saying gender matters where it's like whatever qualities you want to associate with your gender as something that you draw strength from. I'm against the sort of self-hating insecurity about gender that seem to come out of Western American culture.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#99
post #33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtedly, the writers at the Guardian were thinking the same. However, one would do well to doubt whether the above described behaviors would be good were they to be performed by humans.

I'm struggling to see how physically fighting to get dominance can possibly be portrayed as a good thing. :( Noteworthy and circumstances make it a good story. But... It seems to fly in the face of modern sensibilities.

Haha yeah well you're ignoring how much our society is like a monkey society. We are still ruled by ape brain shit and violence still rules today but it's not a good thing in our society and that's right.

But in this case it's a good thing cuz this girl is doing the rare and brave step of achieving alpha status by doing what she needs to do. I think that lesson even from a different species has applications in our own society--you can do what you need to do in our society to achieve the rare heights of being an alpha whatever your gender. It doesn't mean you have to beat everyone up that's incorrectly applying the moral standards from this other species to our own; but it means like do whatever the fuck you need to do: make your choices, be brave, have ambition right? and then score your wins. kind of hilarious that people want to push back against that sentiment and pretend they're standing for women's rights but that makes sense to me because the people who often pretend they're standing for women's rights are really just standing up for the disempowerment of women through fake narratives about how women are always these fake victims. Who can't do anything for themselves and need to be given everything. but it's actually makes sense to me and he's really predictable for those people who pretend to stand up for women's rights would really hate on and be threatened by a comment where a woman was making choices and being brave and having ambition and doing something that's actually empowering for her rather than being playing the fake victim game and disempowering herself all the time, stuff which plays into the hands of those people who only pretend to stand up for rights.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#100
post #9

This is awesome. To get the top job, she: beat up her own mother; then took on the existing alpha 4x her age, and probably larger; then in the next 'peanut session' he had to backdown and let her eat first; and now she walks with an erect tail and goes and shakes trees for fun--It expresses her power. How cool is that! It just goes to show, it's never about gender, just about choices, ambition and how brave you choos…

I am really not sure if this comment is ironic or not. It reads like it has to be, but today you never know.

Well see you guys need to be nuanced and maybe you're not capable of seeing the nuance in the current binary love hate zero nuance Zeitgeist discourse. there's irony in there but my beliefs are clearly very different to yours so the irony is different to your irony. But my sentiment is totally true it is all about choices about being brave and having ambition that's how you can get what you want rather than playing the fake victim demanding others give to you and always being disempowered and pretending that somehow to empowerment.
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