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

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

#111

Post by yunch »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #71
lostgame wrote: post #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 whi…

Lynn Conway is another woman I look up to. The trans women who lived between 1950 and 1980 and still managed to advance their careers impress me, and I do my best to emulate them.

No post body was provided.

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

#113

Post by jacquesm »

mt_ wrote: post #73
bane wrote: 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…

Create art about whatever you want but if you bind it with your identity and sexuality you're more an idealogue than a craftsman.

There is nothing more closely tied to your identity (and consequently, your sexuality, which is strongly intertwined with your identity) than art.

In fact, that is the one thing that sets art and craft apart. So for 'ideologue' insert artist. A bricklayer is a craftsman.

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

#114

Post by notch565b »

jacquesm wrote: post #109
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite strange that someone clearly nuts like that pastor can be considered sane, wise, and morally authoritative. While in the same circles a trans person like Carlos is considered inherently deviant and somehow immensely threatening - even though all they have to offer is a life-long list of creative achievements, and absolutely no evidence of harm to anyone.

My conversations with my deeply religious grandmother left me with the impression that religion is a very dirty game: it inserts itself into your psyche in a way that it can become nearly impossible to distance yourself from it without massively breaking open what you consider to be your identity. This makes what the OP did all that much stronger, to be able to overcome that conditioning. My grandmother never managed…

It's foolish to think that lack of religion makes you experience any less of a dirty game.

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

#115

Post by golemiprague »

gertrui wrote: post #63
sassyonsunday wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit In retrospect this was sort of mean of you to say: > It doesn't help either when males who opt-in to this beauty standard Do you go around telling girls they have to try to look less pleasing to men and more pleasing to your own sensibilities? Aren't you just taking the place of the "male gaze" at that point and replacing it with your own gaze and your own demands to be satisfied? I like looking a certain way. I…

> Aren't you just taking the place of the "male gaze" at that point and replacing it with your own gaze and your own demands to be satisfied? No, women should be free to present however they please, that's my point. We shouldn't feel pressure to conform to imposed ideals of femininity, to be praised for it or knocked for not complying.

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

#116

Post by jacquesm »

notch565b wrote: post #114
jacquesm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My conversations with my deeply religious grandmother left me with the impression that religion is a very dirty game: it inserts itself into your psyche in a way that it can become nearly impossible to distance yourself from it without massively breaking open what you consider to be your identity. This makes what the OP did all that much stronger, to be able to overcome that conditioning. My grandmother never managed…

It's foolish to think that lack of religion makes you experience any less of a dirty game.

That may be so, but religion seems to go out of its way to embed itself in the psyche of its subjects to the point that they experience severe identity crisis when trying to break free of it.

There are other groups that employ the same mechanisms.

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

#118

Post by honcraft »

jacquesm wrote: post #107
honcraft wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a narrowly individualistic view of the role of medicine in society. Medicine has a social context as well. This relatively recent idea that someone can become more female or more male through drugs and surgery is one that has repercussions on how we as a society view the two sexes, what constitutes a woman or a man, and what is an acceptable expression of one's masculinity or femininity. Maybe it's the right i…

I don't have a right to determine how you use and/or modify your body and you don't have that right over me. That's called bodily autonomy, and is about as clear cut a human right as you'll be able to articulate. The social context has nothing to do with it, that's just a way to say that if enough people say that you can't do to yourself what you want to that that makes them right, which has historically led to all k…

That is your opinion, but consider another topic: elective disablement. Some people are very insistent on having their spinal cord surgically severed or getting their arms and legs chopped off or being permanently blinded, or similar.

If you naively consider the topic only from a bodily autonomy perspective, then the answer is deceptively simple: get the blades out and start slicing. But this ignores the wider medical ethics concerns over whether it's the right thing to do for the patient, if the surgeon is causing harm by doing so, if gratifying the patient's short-term desires genuinely helps them in the long-term over their entire life, if it's reasonable to expect a surgeon to perform such a procedure and how they may feel in the aftermath, if there are any other interventions that would be more effective. And societal questions over whether it's ethical to deliberately add new members to a population who already find it difficult to find the support they need, how this will affect others who may now be situational obliged to assist with this person's new disability, and so on.

It makes no sense to focus solely on the individual and ignore the wider context, when there are so many other factors to consider.

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

#119

Post by dang »

renonn wrote: post #102
bane wrote: 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.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#120

Post by notch565b »

jacquesm wrote: post #116
notch565b wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's foolish to think that lack of religion makes you experience any less of a dirty game.

That may be so, but religion seems to go out of its way to embed itself in the psyche of its subjects to the point that they experience severe identity crisis when trying to break free of it. There are other groups that employ the same mechanisms.

No post body was provided.
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