finished (?) draft of "A Common Misunderstanding; Or ..."

diff --git a/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md b/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md
index 92e4179..6b6fc01 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md
+++ b/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Title: A Common Misunderstanding; Or, The Spirit of the Staircase (24 January 2009)
-Date: 2020-01-01 
+Date: 2017-12-02 05:00
 Category: other
-Tags: personal
+Tags: anecdotal, personal, two-type taxonomy
 Status: draft
 
 I remember (and the Diary entry helps, too) there was a party/meetup at someone's place down in Sunnyvale, perhaps in honor of Robin being in town. This was a little less than nine years ago, back during the golden age when the Sequences were still being written, when the _M_ and _R_ in _MIRI_ were still an _S_ and an _A_, respectively—before the Eternal September, before everyone was poly, and _long_ before everyone was trans.
@@ -10,25 +10,17 @@ I worked the 0600 to 1500 bookkeeper/customer-service shift at my supermarket da
 
 (I still have the "radical notion" pin, but it's no longer proudly pinned to my backpack. Ideology—in the general case—is not my style anymore.)
 
-The party was amazing, as always, but there's one exchange that haunts me to this day, a moment when I was caught off guard by having been _seen through_ in a way that, at the time, I couldn't permit myself to anticipate or understand. I wish I had an actual transcript of it, so I could pencil in "corrections" of how it should have gone
+The party was amazing, as always, but there's one exchange that haunts me to this day, a moment when I was caught off guard by having been _seen through_ in a way that, at the time, I couldn't permit myself to anticipate or understand. I wish I had an actual transcript of it, so I could pencil in "corrections" of how it _should_ have gone. (Narrative optimization should be a _deliberate_ process: you should keep separate track of what actually happened and what _should_ have happened, rather rather than letting them get blurred together in the murky, unauditable process of reconstructing the scene from an eight-and-change-year-old memory and a Diary entry from the Monday after.)
 
+A blonde woman wearing a red dress and black high heels stuck out among the predominantly male throng of geeks. I struck up a conversation with her. (It turned out that we had previously had a tense exchange on the blog in which I had protested that gender-stereotypical behavior shouldn't be conflated with the fact of one's sex, but I didn't know that was her at the time.)
 
-Narrative optimization should be deliberate: you should keep separate track of what actually happened and what _should_ have happened, rather than blurring them together.
+At some point (to my eternal regret, I cannot recall the exact context), she casually said something about my desire for social dominance. She said it matter-of-factly, as if she were commenting on something as innocuous and indisputable as my height or hair color.
 
-(rather than the narratively-convenient reconstruction of an eight-and-change-year-old memory and a Diary entry from the Monday after), so that I could pencil in corrections of 
-
-[...]
-
-A blonde woman wearing a red dress and black high heels stuck out among the predominantly male throng of geeks.
-
-casually referred to my desire for social dominance.
-
-
-I stammered out a shocked and perhaps unconvincing denial.
+I stammered out a shocked and probably unconvincing denial.
 
 She regarded me skeptically. "You _look_ male," she said.
 
-"But that doesn't mean I'm _happy_ about it!" I burst out defensively, to the apparent surprise of 
+"But that doesn't mean I'm _happy_ about it!" I burst out defensively, to the apparent surprise of the other Robin, who was listening nearby.
 
 The woman's skepticism was unmoved. "I'm not getting a tranny vibe from you," she said.
 

diff --git a/content/drafts/the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md b/content/drafts/the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md
deleted file mode 100644 (file)
index da070dd..0000000
--- a/content/drafts/the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md
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@@ -1,21 +0,0 @@
-Title: A Common Misunderstanding; Or, the Spirit of the Staircase (24 January 2009)
-Date: 2020-01-01 
-Category: other
-Tags: two-type taxonomy
-Status: draft
-
-
-
-A blonde woman wearing
-
-I stammered out a shocked and unconvincing denial.
-
-She regarded me skeptically. "You _look_ male."
-
-"But, but, that doesn't mean I'm _happy_ about it!"
-
-Again that skeptical look. "I'm not getting a tranny vibe from you."
-
-
-
-"Right, you're thinking of the good kind," is what I _should_ have said. "I'm the bad kind."

diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt
index d822212..235244c 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/post_ideas.txt
+++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 CURRENT PUSH—
 1 Dec— Ainslie vs. Pareto
-2 Dec— Lesser-Known Demand Curves
-3 Dec— A Common Misunderstanding; Or, ...
+2 Dec— ✓ A Common Misunderstanding; Or, ...
+3 Dec— Lesser-Known Demand Curves
 4 Dec— Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes; Or, ... 
 5 Dec— ✓ Interlude XII (four lights)
 6 Dec— There's a Land That I See; Or, The Spirit of Intervention