“All in the name of good fun” is usually a shield for some behavior that gives pleasure to the receiver at the expense of someone else. In some cases, the expense may be quiet bearable, so it doesn’t seem so bad.

Let’s look at one of my favourite pasttimes: social dance to live music. The musicians play for dancing because they love the music that we dance to, and they get paid (not enough to make a living from, but they do get paid). The dancing is communal, and best when everyone participates and helps everyone else out.

And yes, a custodian has to care for the space that we use, and in winter the space is heated, and the heat has to come at the expense of some fuel. But the custodian is paid, and they’d have to heat the space whether it was used for “fun” or for “work.” The dancing does not take place at anyone’s expense, though it’s not free to participants (an evening costs $8, which might be prohibitive).

The activity is not inherently costly to anyone. Nobody loses. Nobody really wins, either. It’s a non-competitive activity.

Granted, some people may find participation in this type of dance very challenging—certain physical disabilities would not work for some types of dance, and as a community, we’re not as good as we could be at adapting what we do to accomodate people’s physical limitations, though we’re happy to take suggestions—but not being able to do something is not the same as having that thing happen at one’s own expense.

And that something requires effort in order to happen doesn not mean that those expending the effort are losing something, at least not in the “someone wins/someone loses” sense.

Not one of them comes close.

Surely that can’t be the only possible path to having oomph. And yet, I crave more oomph myself, so the impulse to go after it is understandable.

So I did go see the Three Dollar Bills, and it was not all that entertaining. I think the reason is because most of the tunes they covered were by Eminem & Ludacris and the like, and frankly, the way those guys move is already very feminine. The diva model, not the fainting flower model, but feminine just the same, so there was nothing remotely strange about watching women do it.

On the other hand, the best show of the night was a queen (trannie? not sure) doing Tina Turner, even though Tina strikes me as having more of a masterful strut as compared to the silly prancing of the hip hop boys. Why is a guy doing a masterful strut entertaining and a woman doing a silly prance just old hat? Maybe I just like Tina better as a musician and a personality and there is no grand theory here. Maybe it’s what someone said upthread about men’s clothes being genderless, especially the baggy hip hop clothes. Not that I want them to go back to codpieces or anything.

Now Tina was dressing like a slut back before slutty was a raison d’etre, and yet it’s difficult for me to think of her as a tool of the patriarchy. Not once she got past 40 or so anyway. I wonder how much of her expert manipulation of ideas about race and gender and power was conscious and how much was subliminal?

Heh - I can wander because everyone is on to the next post anyway.

Wiping one’s nose on one’s sleeve is equally disgusting no matter who does it. Come on, we don’t really own the patent on basic sanitation.

I’m just sayin’

“All in the name of good fun” is usually a shield for some behavior that gives pleasure to the receiver at the expense of someone else. In some cases, the expense may be quiet bearable, so it doesn’t seem so bad.

But, I believe it to be irrefutable that there’s an energy transaction in all human interactions. And, inevitably most are inequitable. Sometimes due to larger amounts of greed in one than the other. Sometimes due to larger need from one than the other. But, the equation is rarely balanced by any standard of measure we’ve come up with so far.

We’ve even taken to naming the imbalances with romantic names, like “love,” “fun,” “faith,” etc. But, if you look closely, most times, the giving has an expected return attached.

Sorry if that sounds cold, but, it appears to be a plain fact.