Rum Doings Episode 203: Single Parents
by John Walker on Nov.11, 2015, under Rum Doings
In our 203th ever Rum Doings, our topic is, instead of building HS2, shouldn’t we just fix those potholes?
After moaning about being tired, John recalls his recent holiday to Wales, and then move on to talk about the current dreary trend for being offended, and our opposite approaches to the inherency of equality.
Things soon move on to whether we hate anyone, then a rather extended musing on the nature of love. Then we ponder why we’re not having a world war.
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[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/203_rumdoings.mp3]
November 11th, 2015 on 14:29
Thanks for another great podcast.
Was just thinking about the topic cultural appropriation the other day after reading an article on the topic and watching youtube video made by some american university students (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uveb8-L3YHY) .
I wondering what they would say about my appropriation of the english language and my interest in english and american pop-culture. Also i’m sure my predilection for a traditional Ethiopian hot drink would raise strong objections.
But in all seriousness. what, I think, they’re really objecting to is the appropriation of the cultural artefacts of the oppressed by the (perhaps former) oppressor. Particularly when this is done in a trivialising manor.
November 12th, 2015 on 08:15
That episode of Dr Who was rather good, actually. I suspect the speech he made was somewhat knowingly placed on the day before Remembrance Sunday for a reason, and makes sense from the view of an immortal after all (would a 1000 year old being who travels in time get frustrated with the cyclical nature of conflict?). It’s also worth noting that the zygons were positioned as essentially terroist/revolutionaries who disagreed with the majority population, rather than a genuine popular uprising.
There were some weird clunky metaphors there (zygons had to remain hidden, which could easily be conflated with sexuality) but I quite liked the main thrust.
You know while I agree that in the case of something like talking about menstruation, over sensitivity feels a bit ludicrous, the idea that we could just taboo words and everything would be fine is… silly. Words don’t come from nowhere, they’re constructed by society. Women and men are treated differently in lots of important ways that tabooing the words wouldn’t really remove unless we utterly altered society along with it.
I also found it amusing that you talked about how native Americans or American Africans must feel about a history of oppression but have mocked the concept of privilege more than once…
John, the only reason “love yourself” seems nonsense to you is because you have decided that love is defined a particular way. The general population don’t seem to agree with you however, and seem to agree that loving yourself is absolutely possible.
November 18th, 2015 on 08:41
Yes mister k, but the general population, as so often is the case, is wrong.