now i kinda wanna do a gender poll about "is life about having appliances" but i'm not actually sure how to phrase the question properly
Conversation
alright whatever let's just do it
poll: what is your ~gender | is life about having appliances? (please see the next QT for some context elaborating on what this question is trying to probe)
- ~m | yes21%
- ~m | no55.3%
- ~f | yes11.2%
- ~f | no12.5%
385 votesFinal results
Replying to
it's awkward to point to this whole discussion but start here and scroll up
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Replying to @s_r_constantin and @QiaochuYuan
Atomized modernity: did you mean "young women can move to the city alone, earn their own money, and have sex with people not chosen by their fathers?"
This appliance means freedom.
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this feels related in some deep sense to the Discourse about men sleeping on mattresses on the floor with no bedframes
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this is really well-put and feels really important to me re: the gendered split in the responses
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
I feel like it’s about the thing where men have fewer close friends and so experience atomized modernity differently than women do.
Women are liberated by appliances from the oppressive aspects of a social fabric in which they are always already enmeshed. Men crave connection.
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gonna go with yes on this one. this might be the decider huh
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Feel like the anti-materialism/ bias might be rearing its head in these results
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Is a plow an appliance? is my F-150 or my set of power tools appliances?
At some point - definitely my life is about personal agency and certain things, non-exclusively:
rule of law, power-grid, and labor multiplying tools are each nearly must-haves for personal agency?!
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Not if its attached to an ox, yes, yes
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My life isn't "about" them, but I would find out just how much they materially assist me in my life if I were deprived of them.
Having stuff does not a life make, but having no stuff that /helps you/ is a miserable existence by any standard.
Even serfs have material needs.
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appliances are an insufficient but incredibly necessary condition for a society in which people can live good lives
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( thank you for bringing up this whole issue, it’s triggered a really interesting and clarifying discussion of things that usually go unsaid and generated a lot of good questions)
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