Live data from Hacker News

Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

english.elpais.com

41–50 of 196 posts

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years. They've gotten consistently worse since about 2015. I started transitioning in 2009 when I was 18. I come from a very conservative environment and growing up I'd even tried to come out as gay a few times only to be "shot down" more or less but in college I used my own money and I found doctors to help me look how I wanted and I started dating me…

I am happy if gender therapy helped you I think it is fine for society to be critical however. I don't want to see documentaries in 20 years about people having regrets. Sadly any discussion is immediately considered a personal attack so we two camps.

> I am happy if gender therapy helped you

It did thanks.

> I think it is fine for society to be critical

Of course. Critical in the sense of skeptical. However a lot of "critics" of trans people act much more like schoolyard bullies or people worried that rock 'n roll music will make the children worship satan than people with fair concerns about the wellbeing of others.

> I don't want to see documentaries in 20 years about people having regrets

There isn't any decision that people can make that will leave 100% of people satisfied. Gender therapy has existed in its modern form for about 100 years now and in that time study after study shows that people who go through with it are happy with the results 90%-98% of the time. This is higher than most treatments of any kind.

You'll find that almost every commentator who talks about detransitioners or trots some out for a political show has the end objective of ending all gender affirming care for all people and replacing it with conversion therapy due to their ideology. In the case of someone like Janice Raymond that reason is radical feminism. For someone like Matt Walsh it is traditional Catholicism. In both cases they are misleading the public by insinuating that gender therapy is some sort of factory process where hapless victims are swept onto a conveyor belt and mutilated haphazardly.

People who transition and then regret it will always exist. Just like people will regret getting any sort of elective surgery. Just like people will come out as gay and then later regret it and then later regret that they regretted it and so on.... It's a story as old as time.

This study tracked people over a 50 year period and found a regret rate of 2%.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analys...

> The FM:MF sex ratio fluctuated but was 1:1.66 for the whole study period. There were 15 (5 MF and 10 MF) regret applications corresponding to a 2.2 % regret rate for both sexes. There was a significant decline of regrets over the time period.

The worrying thing is not that 2% regretted their decision, the worrying thing is that the people who are against trans people would be LESS happy if the figure were to be 0%. They want 100% of trans people to regret transition and repress because that would make reality conform better to their ideological leanings where "men are men" and "women are women" because God made them that way.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#42
post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

No post body was provided.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#43
post #23

I visited the Moog museum this summer with a friend while visiting Asheville, NC. I asked if they had any Wendy Carlos related memorabilia and they didn't seem to. I think may be there was a Switched on Bach vinyl up on a wall in the back.... It made me feel a little sad. I think living with gender dysphoria hurts people's self-esteem tremendously. She also lived in a time when April Ashley, who was the image of femi…

Quoted post unavailable.

> This is unfortunately yet another gendered imposition, with women feeling like they have to adhere to a beauty standard that comes from the male gaze.

Women who are trans feel this pressure enforced against them with public humiliation, overt misogyny, and violence.

> It doesn't help either when males who opt-in to this beauty standard for their own pleasure get praised as if they are being good women.

Trans women aren't males and don't opt-in to the male gaze. Are you referring to drag queens? There's a more nuanced conversation to be had there, but not in the current climate of terroristic acts against transgender people. Drag is often a critique of gender roles.

There is nothing grotesque about femininity or a trans woman expressing it.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years. They've gotten consistently worse since about 2015. I started transitioning in 2009 when I was 18. I come from a very conservative environment and growing up I'd even tried to come out as gay a few times only to be "shot down" more or less but in college I used my own money and I found doctors to help me look how I wanted and I started dating me…

I am happy if gender therapy helped you I think it is fine for society to be critical however. I don't want to see documentaries in 20 years about people having regrets. Sadly any discussion is immediately considered a personal attack so we two camps.

It is actually not fine for society to be "critical", when it means discarding the metaethics of reducing suffering in favor of the metaethics that flows out of believing that their interpretation of a 2000-year-old book is the absolute truth.

What percentage of detransitioners have been taken in by anti-trans panic and social contagion? What percentage will regret detransitioning? There are already quite a few examples: Elisa Shupe and Ky Schevers, who were both politically active in anti-trans movements, later retransitioned (and/or found a gender identity that works better for them) and regret the time they spent organizing against trans people.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems sensible too. What then do you make of Carlos' quote there from 1979? Maybe not even true for her as she was saying it? (why might she have said it then?) Or she somehow had very unusual experience? (for unclear reasons?) Other? Who knows, but you don't think it was an accurate or representative thing to say?

Look back in the article at what she was sacrificing in order to avoid potential problems. She had Stevie Wonder and George Harrison in her house and couldn't make herself walk down the stairs to meet them. When she did meet face to face with people, she pasted on sideburns and dressed in a suit to appear as a man. I mean, think about that last part for a moment. Gender dysphoria caused distress in Carlos. Transition…

Makes sense. Do you think a public musician today might have the experience of "“The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent", though?

It still seems to me that something has changed here, for the worse. That it's very unlikely that such a public figure today could discover that despite their fears"the public" was largely indifferent and unconcerned about it. sassyonsunday below, who I was replying to, seems to agree at least in part too. Which doesn't necessarily conflict with anything you said.

Anyway, either it is or not, we can have different takes, and we're not going to work out the answer here!

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#46
As a trans woman; semi-professional musician, producer; audio engineer, and for whom Stanley Kubrick is my favourite artist of any medium, Wendy Carlos is one of the single greatest inspirations of my life.

I can’t personally imagine the struggle she went through all that time ago; having the courage to be herself when even today it’s been a personal struggle.

Gems like her really only come around every once in a while.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

I'm trans myself, and my general belief is that Steinem's position is far more defensible if we didn't have our personal lived experiences with gender dysphoria, or the evidence for things like regret rates for gender-affirming surgeries being very low. Second-wave feminism on trans issues was largely incorrect and harmful, but that is mostly a contingent fact rather than a necessary one. This is as opposed to second…

> This is as opposed to second-wave feminism on, for example, sex work issues, which is necessarily bad because it is more interested in moralizing than in caring about freedom or materiality.

The radical feminist position on prostitution is about reducing harm to women as a class. That a minority choose to willingly engage in sex work doesn't negate the structural issues at play here. Most women in prostitution are from marginalized backgrounds and many are trafficked. Where is their freedom?

Fundamentally this is about men holding physical, sexual, and economic power over women, enforced by violence or the threat of it. Treating women as a product to be consumed and profited off, rather than co-equal individuals. What is so bad about wanting an end to this?

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#48
post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

Quoted post unavailable.

You should get out a little, then.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Discogs marketplace seems to have plenty of them. https://www.discogs.com/artist/16261-Wendy-Carlos

You have no idea how long I've looked for this, thank you so much lol. edit: wait, is this just a place that sells physical copies?

Looks like it :-/ was hoping I could find digital recordings.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trans myself, and my general belief is that Steinem's position is far more defensible if we didn't have our personal lived experiences with gender dysphoria, or the evidence for things like regret rates for gender-affirming surgeries being very low. Second-wave feminism on trans issues was largely incorrect and harmful, but that is mostly a contingent fact rather than a necessary one. This is as opposed to second…

> This is as opposed to second-wave feminism on, for example, sex work issues, which is necessarily bad because it is more interested in moralizing than in caring about freedom or materiality. The radical feminist position on prostitution is about reducing harm to women as a class. That a minority choose to willingly engage in sex work doesn't negate the structural issues at play here. Most women in prostitution are…

I'm specifically talking about people like Andrea Dworkin, who said:

"Prostitution in and of itself is an abuse of a woman's body. [...] In prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. It's impossible. And no woman gets whole again later, after"

This doesn't distinguish between survival sex work and people who are doing it more by choice, nor does it seek to improve the material conditions behind the lives of those forced into sex work, so that they have other choices and survival sex work can organically disappear. Nor does it connect survival sex work to other sorts of difficult jobs with great bodily risks.

Instead, politically, second-wave feminism has sought to orient the full weight of the carceral state against sex workers (i.e. the Nordic model), with all the expected consequences.

Post reply on HN