Five questions from boxofdelights

[oursin]

1. Do you have just the one partner? Have you ever had more than one?

Just the one. There have been complications in the past, such as the time when someone who was very much Unfinished Emotional Business came back into my life in the early days of my relationship with partner. There was also the brief period when I had several relationships of no great depth or meaning going on, because Deep and Meaningful had been just too much upheaval and pain.

2. Has your online experience changed the way you think about privacy? Has your scholarly-consultant-to-the-media experience?

Not really, I think. Clearly some people don't think through the implications of having information out there and readily accessible. My take on the subject is probably more inflected by the conflicts between my responsibilities as an archivist and my feelings as a researcher. Even as an archivist I'm not wildly happy with the Data Protection legislation I am bound to operate in compliance with, because it's very inflexible and doesn't really accommodate the ways in which certain kinds of personal record can be used for impersonal research without identifying the actual individuals or violating their privacy. I also think that the owners of papers sometimes perceive a much higher degree of sensitivity than exists in any eyes but their own.

3. The Anthropomorphic Personification of Justice has given you a year's leave of absence, with a decidedly decent stipend and no commitment from you about what you're going to do with the time. What do you do?

If the funding was adequate for the purpose, I'd treat it as a paid sabbatical for research and writing and spend it whizzing around to various archives all round the world for concentrated periods of research. Some time relaxing in spas might also be involved.

4. As a sex-positive feminist, how do you react to statements like this?

I find that worrying. It's woman-on-woman blaming, especially as she never really defines what this slutty dressing consists of. I'm as worried about the tendencies to undue sexualisation women in our society as anybody, but this whole 'provocative dressing = evil temptress' dynamic is not in the least helpful. Provocative to whom, huh? This is the sort of argument that leads to the advocacy of burkhas, because men, poor dears, can't be expected to control themselves, or not to be influenced by womanly charms.

5. Do you ever fake it? Why or why not?

Fake what? I sometimes feel that when I'm being a Nexpert a lot of it is faking, or at least, I'm managing to skate over the thin ice of areas where I'm entirely ignorant. In the sexual sphere, no, though in my earlier years I became cynically aware that it wasn't actually necessary to do the whole 'When Harry Met Sally' imitation orgasm thing anyway for men to assume that of course everything had gone off to everybody's mutual satisfaction.

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Wow. Not only did 4 inspire a post, it required, as Ranj said, that I remove the Ranty Pants of Doom from their titanium hanger.