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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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That Time John McAfee Developed One of the First Social Networks

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Let it be said that we must live in particularly interesting times when John McAfee, one of the most controversial people the world of technology has ever produced, can get arrested in a foreign country for tax evasion … and people barely even notice.

But that’s what happened earlier this month—and as a result, McAfee is sitting in a Spanish jail, waiting to be extradited.

A lot has been written about him over the years, but I’d like to focus on one part of his life that has perhaps been overshadowed by his unusual existence over the past decade: The fact that, in the late 1990s, he was a social media innovator.

That innovation? A chat app called PowWow that, despite a certain McAfee imprint, was well ahead of its time. Here’s why you probably don’t remember it.

1994

The year John McAfee resigned from McAfee Associates, the company he founded in the 1980s that became a major distributor of antivirus software. The company, a multibillion-dollar giant today, nearly sold to Symantec years before it hit its later peaks, but McAfee was talked out of selling his namesake firm by a low-level analyst at a venture capital firm that realized the fundamentals of the company were quite good. While he later left, he did so with a lot more money than he would have had previously.

Image: Steven Weeks/Unsplash

How John McAfee turned a Winnebago sabbatical into his second startup

Everyone has likely heard the story of how Jeff Bezos quit his job in the financial industry and came up with the business plan for Amazon while on a cross-country trip to what would become his new home in Seattle. (Bezos, of course, didn’t drive as he hashed out this plan; his then-wife, MacKenzie, was behind the wheel.)

Less heralded, but perhaps more interesting, is the trip that John McAfee took throughout the Western U.S. after he quit his leadership role with his namesake antivirus company.

Like Bezos, McAfee’s excursion led to the launch of a new company. Unlike Bezos, this was McAfee’s second round in the Winnebago, which is where the antiviral legend got his start when he was first trying to pinpoint computer viruses sometime in the late 1980s.

As recounted in a 1997 article in the legendary tech business magazine Red Herring, McAfee’s second encounter with a Winnebago came after he had a minor heart attack, which led him to sell his company and go on an extended trip to the Rockies, where he encountered various Native American tribes. Those tribes directly inspired his follow-up company—and its inevitable location in the relatively tiny Woodland Park, Colorado, near Pikes Peak.

When McAfee gave away his antivirus software in the 1980s, he did so because of a New Age philosophical approach that suggested that software shouldn’t be sold. Likewise, he found inspiration in the Native American tribes he visited during this mid-’90s journey. Per Red Herring:

There’s an entrepreneur living in the shadow of Pikes Peak, Colorado, who thinks software is a living tree and can’t be sold. So in his last venture he gave it away. He sees the Internet as the physical manifestation of what Indian shamans call “the golden thread,” and his latest project, Tribal Voice, is an attempt to capitalize on this mystical vision.

And where did that mystical vision lead him? It led him to multimedia chat software that was years ahead of the instant messaging trend that would eventually take hold thanks to AOL, ICQ, and later Skype.

An example of the PowWow chat software, which was also an early example of instant messaging.

The software Tribal Voice created, PowWow, may have been one of the first social networks, thanks to its focus on “tribes” as an organizational strategy. It was a great spot to converse—if you could look past the website.

“PowWow lacks the robust business-oriented features of packages such as WebPhone, but if you’re looking to specialize in a chat-room atmosphere and don’t mind enduring the ham-radio quality of the conversations, PowWow might be just the ticket.”

— A passage from a 1996 review of PowWow in PC Magazine, which noted that the application’s big strength was the size and reach of its community. Not so hot? The voice chat, which didn’t work so well on the modems of the era, at least at the time of testing.

Tribal Voice, as it appeared in 1996 and 1997. Image: Internet Archive

Tribal Voice’s initial marketing strategy appropriated Native culture—with a huge side of cringe

The software was good, but Tribal Voice had branding that very much reflected its unusual founder. It had a website (at tribal.com, of course), that was in many ways pure cringe … that seemed to almost make a mockery of the Native American culture that inspired the company.

On one early version of the Tribal Voice site, the about page included a photo of McAfee and company, under the banner “The Outlaw Geeks,” brandishing various types of guns. (Given what we know about McAfee now, it checks out.) And another page featured a “Tribal Voice Yuppie Catalog” which makes one wonder what exactly McAfee learned from his time visiting Native tribes.

A staff shot from the Tribal Voice website, circa 1997. So yeah, that happened. Image: Internet Archive

The company’s active borrowing of Native American imagery and wording drew the ire of an early online Native American activist, Paula Giese, who called the material on the site “sacreligious.”

“Our Sacred Pipe, sweat lodge, cedar, tobacco, all of our most important symbols, ceremonies, objects, places are not just exploited but desecrated, trashed, by this Tribal Voice corporation, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing its commercial site, but has advertised itself all over the web as ‘Native Culture,’” Giese wrote.

Giese, who died in 1997, had a notably tense online interaction with McAfee, which is saved on the Internet Archive for all to see. (McAfee’s defense? “This is probably not an appropriate site for teenagers. We are focused on adult issues,” he wrote.)

It also did no favors from a PR standpoint. Gary Flood, a reporter for Computer Business Review who was doing a profile on McAfee, recalled being weirded out by the site’s many inside jokes and garish color scheme. His thoughts:

Initial impressions: geek city, lots and lots of feathers and cosmic colors, man, a major section of the site being devoted to the self-admittedly crazy ramblings of an escapee from the Pikes Peak Mental Facility who is obviously some loon one of the programmers thinks is cool, and what seems way too much stuff about ‘adult’ web sites and marijuana.

Nonetheless, despite the somewhat disturbing web branding scheme (which Flood had been told was likely going away at the time of his early 1998 interview), the software’s community-building mentality, something of a combination of IRC and Skype, found a lot of early success. Despite the cringey way the site showed its inspiration, the tribes concept did lead McAfee and company in the direction of social media years before most people cared.

An early Tribal.com page dating to 1997 pinpoints more than 700,000 separate users on its “white pages,” which were pages that people could sign up for to find people to chat with. (Unlike, say, Twitter, you actually had to look people up as if you were using a phone book.) PowWow, says McAfee, attracted numerous walks of life.

“We let people set up whatever tribe they want. We have, for example, a gay Hispanic tribe,” McAfee told Red Herring. “Our biggest tribe, believe it or not, is an Icelandic tribe. We also have an enthusiastic user community in Rio de Janeiro.”

Forgotten today, PowWow was a nice little success at the time—especially after it ditched the weird website. On the way to making things more professional, they even brought in a new CEO, Joseph Esposito (who, true story, once pushed back on a story of ours that discussed his prior employer, Encyclopaedia Britannica). And McAfee, still just a few years off from leaving a hugely successful company that he created, had no trouble attracting investors, unusual site or not.

But the PowWow software attracted a major enemy that would eventually land a body blow: AOL.

$10M

The amount McAfee made from selling half of Tribal Voice in 1997. McAfee would later cash out entirely, selling the company to a dot-com incubator, CMGI, in 1999, for $17 million. (Not a bad payday.) In a 2010 piece on McAfee in Fast Company, Tribal Voice employee Jim Zoromski implied that McAfee was actually scared off by the company’s success—just as he was with McAfee Associates years earlier. “When John was at Tribal Voice, the growth rate was incredible,” Zoromski said. “But when it got to be too popular, it started to feel too much like work, and John wasn’t interested.”

PowWow supported AOL Instant Messenger. AOL didn’t like that.

How AOL took a bite out of Tribal Voice

With Tribal Voice, John McAfee and his rag-tag crew of programmers in small-town Colorado were early to one of the most important early trends in technology during that period—instant messaging.

But the fact that PowWow is basically forgotten while its most high-profile competitor, AOL Instant Messenger, is fondly remembered today, may not exactly be an accident.

By 1998 or so, McAfee’s follow-up company was seeing real success in one of the hottest areas of the early internet—in part because McAfee knew a lot about both building communities and selling technology to the public.

(McAfee, infamously, helped to hype up the craze around the Michelangelo virus in 1992 … which helped to boost the profile of his antivirus app.)

He could also sell technology to companies: Shockingly, given the photo I just shared with you above, Tribal Voice scored a partnership with friggin’ AT&T, with PowWow helping to power the instant messaging capabilities of the telecom giant’s WorldNet service.

Part of what attracted WorldNet to PowWow comes down to its ability to work on multiple networks, including AOL and MSN Messenger. This gave PowWow—and AT&T—a competitive advantage, as it could work across networks with ease.

This wasn’t something, however, that AOL liked. In fact, AOL didn’t like anyone encroaching on its instant-messaging turf and took steps to protect it at all costs: It outright purchased ICQ, attempted to block competitors from using similar terminology to AOL Instant Messenger (a fight it fortunately failed at), and took steps to block Microsoft’s MSN Messenger from its users.

Smaller IM services during the period were trying to make a case for interoperability, so that users of one network could reach friends on any of them. For a time, AOL offered guides that described how this was done to allow for the development of Unix-based clients for AIM. The problem was that its competitors read those posts as well, and PowWow found itself pulled into a messy battle as it attempted to raise up its own application by adding AIM support, and admitting it was doing so without any approval from AOL.

Tribal Voice created a mortal enemy with this move, and it likely hastened the demise of the PowWow tool, which found itself at the center of a high-profile battle with AOL that worked to make the case for interoperability between instant messaging clients. It was a game of chicken for a while; PowWow would add functionality to enable AIM support, AOL would shut it down.

At one point—which should be noted, came after McAfee had left the company—Tribal Voice and other clients found itself making this case in front of the FCC.

According to a New York Times article from the era, new CEO Ross Bagully evoked Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Case, on behalf of the IM industry and users everywhere, tear down this wall!”

But ultimately, the cause of encouraging open IM support came at the cost of the original weird Native American-inspired thing that McAfee built. The new owner lost interest in PowWow entirely, and shut the app down at the beginning of 2001 … while claiming continued interest in IM technology as a whole.

“After careful review of CMGion’s business objectives and strategic direction by its new management team CMGion feels that the PowWow technology is not an integral part of CMGion’s mission,” an FAQ from the shutdown stated.

One has to wonder, if McAfee stayed with the company he started instead of leaning on the easy payout, where it might have gone. After all, he waited with McAfee Associates … and look where that company is now.

It’s so bizarre to think about this product in retrospect.

PowWow was a genuinely innovative product, one that predicted the success of about half a dozen apps that followed it. But even folks that did use it only have faded memories of it. I’m sure I used this program in 1996, but I completely forgot about its existence until I started writing this and went, “Ohhhhh.”

It might come down to the fact that it was simply too early.

Image: a PowWow Facebook fan page

Jason Pontin, then the editor of the MIT Technology Review, argued in 2005 that one of the reasons that PowWow didn’t see the level of success that McAfee’s antivirus suite did, despite also being sold for free, was that the market wasn’t ready for his inventions. He was a first-mover in a second-mover market—something that was not true of his first startup, which innovated most effectively thanks to its business model.

“Tribal Voice was the innovator in two emerging markets, now much in the news, whose dynamics are still only partially known. The first is multiprotocol IM. The second is social networking,” Pontin wrote. “Today, thriving companies like Cerulean Studios and LinkedIn can be found in both markets. But John McAfee was there first, even if he didn’t know how to make money from Tribal Voice.”

Today, McAfee is a colorful figure, one of tech’s most interesting and controversial. But despite his success in antivirus software, there’s a strong case to be made that he also should be celebrated as a social media pioneer.

Well, if you can look past the photo.

That Time John McAfee Developed One of the First Social Networks syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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queernuck · 7 years

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The Worker, The Quarterback

Largely, when leftists discuss sports, it is in providing an example of affinity groups around capitalist intensities: the city, the state, the stadium, and the sport above them all. Teams such as the Packers and Steelers harken back to a certain working-class life, and in fact the symbolically public ownership of the Packers presents a model through which socialized sport can eventually be realized. Conversely, reactionary names such as the Patriots, or the use of a racial slur by Washington’s team, shows the way in which filiation around reactionary culture is not terribly uncommon and must be considered if one is putting credence into Laclau’s notions of Radical Democracy, or into Maoist notions of organizing backwaters, the postmodern peasant classes, not uncultured but rather subcultural, metacultural. However, another line of critique may be made around the concept of sport and the particularities of leagues such as the NFL. The figuration of a subjectivized celebrity off of the field through their action on it is indeed an operation of capital that is similar to the way in which it treats actors, singers, artists.

Indeed, just as the three latter groups often retain some liberal trappings of radical consciousness in late stages of their career, there is indeed some radical consciousness among athletes at certain moments. Colin Kaepernick is a phenomenal example of this, as well as many of the players who joined in protest with him. Marshawn Lynch demonstrated a radical process of silence when refusing media attention in the face of mandatory media engagement, specifically adhering in an ironic fashion to rules on press conferences by offering a non-answer whenever asked a question. And a recognition of the specifically fascist character of American governance at this moment can be glimpsed in the decision of Patriots players to defer on the usual White House visit, and do so publicly.

But this is not the primary place in which a leftist critique of sports lies. Massumi provides an interest grounds on which to describe the intensities of sport, but these are about the sport itself, toward an aesthetic-topological account of sports as extending from the body that harkens to more basic questions about sport. These questions will become useful in exploring sport in a radical context, but first I must establish another line of critique. The way in which Marxist concepts of labor are in fact rather plainly articulated by sport, often on the parts of athletes and owners themselves, is part of what makes them such a fertile avenue for critique. Moreover, the particular labor involved in football as a sport involves a deployment of the body that deals with intensities of labor far more directly than almost any other profession, leading to the way in which one considers it compensated to become eminently problematic.

To establish a basic critique, one must conceive of players as workers. There are bosses, managers, Mao’s well-to-do-peasants within the ranks of the league, most often found at the position of Starting Quarterback. Tom Brady is the preeminent example, others being Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers, and to a certain degree even Cam Newton (although the considerations one must make to deal with the implicit, or often explicit, antiblackness in critique of Newton’s play and personae is another issue entirely). The figuration of Tom Brady, particularly, becomes interesting when one remembers his status as a backup for the Patriots, behind Drew Bledsoe, a skilled quarterback in his own right. Bledsoe went down with an injury late in the season, Brady took over and won his first game in relief. He started the next week and lost, but was given another chance. The Patriots went on to win the Super Bowl that year. Bledsoe soon fell by the wayside as Brady, coached by Belichick, went on to become one of the most accomplished quarterbacks in NFL history. Tom Brady is, in short, the dream. And his supposed apoliticism, while on a team called the Patriots, is distinctly humorous while stunningly unfunny: after displaying a “Make America Great Again” hat in his locker before Trump was even a frontrunner within the GOP, later questioning about the now-President was answered by a bewildered Brady who did not understand why a friendship was of interest to the media. In the days following Trump’s reactionary restrictions on immigration and travel, Brady was asked about “recent events” at a Media Availability conference and responded by saying that he had not been paying attention to “recent events” and that he was merely a “positive person” with the implication being that he would prefer to avoid potential distraction in engaging with unhappy news.

Tom Brady is a perfect subject for the NFL. For our consideration he is far less perfect, but still part of a useful line of critique. Brady’s success is impossible without the team surrounding him, both in an aesthetic and in a literal sense. The producing of a productive offense relies on having a strategy that can adapt to different defensive weaknesses while avoiding the opposing team’s strengths. Atlanta had one of the best defenses during the regular season as well as the playoffs, but in the second half of Super Bowl LI, they were decimated. Touchdown Tom was, on any given play, in a state of crisis. The Patriots, in playing from so far behind, were given free reign to take strategies of desperation, of causing dramatic ruptures, and were able to do so for an entire half of a football game. The Patriots were playing Deleuzean football usually reserved for the last 5 minutes of a game for a full 30. And it worked, the whitest team in the NFL completing an unprecedented comeback to win the Super Bowl. While Brady’s play was unmistakably vital to structuring that comeback, it involved linesmen, cornerbacks, linebackers, running backs. Players who risk far more in the conflict of intensities that constitute any given play, for far less than Brady.

At a vital level, football follows Massumi’s reading of Deleuzean concepts of intensity onto the body, in a fashion far more direct than that seen in the soccer that Massumi describes within Parables for the Virtual. While concussions are relatively rare, football would not produce such dramatic brain damage if they were more common. Rather, the meeting of intensities at the line during play, the blocking and evading that constitutes the game itself, produces brain damage through lower levels of trauma sustained and repeated over a course of years and years. Even a short stay in the NFL requires of most players a long course of preparation that begins in High School, and continues through the NCAA. The NCAA’s exploitation is racialized, is comprehensive, and lies beyond the scope of a discussion on labor in the NFL, in that it in fact follows so many of the same norms but in fact is even more directly exploitative. A great deal of the NCAA’s justification comes from the promise of a career in the NFL, or in coaching, or in some way connected to the sport. To return to the point at hand, most positions in football require triangulating the body in a certain Oedipal relationship between the coach, the team, and oneself, such that it reflects the larger capitalist organization of the workplace rather directly.

Football asks of its players that they subject themselves to traumatic injuries not as an accident or as ancillary to their occupation, but rather as the main characterizing factor within their labor. Football players are at risk of injury in a manner far different than other workers, in that it is not whether injury is included in their job, but how often and to what degree. Season-ending and even career-ending injuries are incredibly common, even celebrated when they lead to the discovery of a player such as Brady. Conversely, the pay that many players get is enormous, into the ranges of multiple millions of dollars. A sort of Faustian bargain occurs between the players and their teams, a slow sacrifice of the body and the way in which that body can be considered human, rather than as a prosthetic extension of the coach’s body, a transformation into Oedipal subjects upon the field.

The labor in question, a hallowed game that is more clearly becoming constituted by traumatic injury upon a Body without Organs on the gridiron, is well-compensated, but the question of if such labor can be tolerated is at its base the question facing the NFL as well as its fans. Can a sport that so deeply involves trauma to a fully realized body be continued? The way in which this particular sort of labor involves articulations of, striations upon, the Body without Organs entirely constituted by injury and decay compared with the structure of compensation provides dramatic relief within the consideration of players as laborers, as workers. The sort of naturalized concept of worker that is employed by many tendencies of Marxism, rather than the shifting concept of worker influenced by postmodern vocabulary creeping into Marxism-Leninism, or the considered, differentiated, and particular worker-peasant-intellectual-so-on of Maoism, is both called into question and able to be examined in relief through the NFL and its larger cultural presence. Considering the possibility of a worker-quarterback, a radical critique of an often reactionary cultural structure, is an exercise with allows a great deal of freedom and examination of the definitions employed by one’s critique of labor, its artifice, and its significance.

#long post #marxism #marxism-leninism #maoism #Gilles Deleuze #Felix Guattari #Brian Massumi #tom brady #bill belichick #football #NFL #new england patriots #patriots

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torentialtribute · 5 years

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As women’s football searches for a World Cup legacy Arsenal’s Joe Montemurro calls for realism

Joe Montemurro stands in a corner of the training complex of Arsenal in London Colney have his photo taken. & # 39; You look beautiful, & # 39; one of his players says, grinning past.

Montemurro is unabashed. He could be Nice Guy Eddie from Reservoir Dogs, but without the threat. The photographer asks him to rest his chin on the back of his hand. "Ah," Montemurro says, "The Thinker."

The Arsenal manager looks around as the champions enter England. Chairs stand in pairs on the artificial grass, ready for interviews.

Camera crews are in position. Leah Williamson, the English defender who has signed a sponsorship agreement with Swarovski, wanders to the spot where a journalist she knows sits on the floor, lap-top on his knee, and shakes his hand.

Arsenal Ladies boss Joe Montemurro has great ideas for the growth of the sport

Jordan Nobbs, who recovered from the serious knee injury that cost her a place in the English World Cup team last summer, chats animatedly with another writer before they sit down.

Danielle van de Donk Larks around with a photographer camera, photographing Beth Mead while Mead is interviewed for a football magazine.

Outside, in another world, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang glides through the gates of the training grounds in his golden sports car, a symbol of the distance that has grown between fans and playe lol in the men's game. That distance does not exist in women's football. "We can't lose that," says Montemurro, 49.

And yet with the greater reach of the game, the distance craves inwards. It is inevitable. "I still can't get used to the fact that I can no longer just go shopping," said Jackie Groenen, the new signing of Manchester United.

Women's football is on the spit. It has almost reached a turning point where popularity cannot be reversed and where acceptance is no longer requested, but given.

It's not there yet but sponsorship comes in and FIFA recognizes that it can sell the sport without including it as an addition to the men's game. Women's soccer is split.

Montemurro warns that women's football only gets one chance to make itself huge

Montemurro has a wealth of talent in his Arsenal -side, such as the Danielle of the Donk of Holland

[19459002Limitsstillhavetobeexceeded

The Women's Super League season began on Saturday, Arsenal began their defense of their title today with a home game against West Ham and Montemurro, which is admired for the way in which it revived Arsenal's fortunes with an emphasis on smart, creative, passing football, and being respected for its openness and honesty, knows that a search for meaning is on the way.

BBC coverage of the US semi-final defeat by the US in July drew an audience of 11.7 million, a record for women's football, and provided more evidence that the sport is leaving its place in the shadow and mainstream moves. The arrival of the new domestic season will help to gauge the accuracy of that optimism.

The growing popularity of the WSL, which received a huge boost when Barclays paid £ 10 million to be the title sponsor of the competition, is the next important step to be taken so that there is no longer the kind of attention deficit between major tournaments that characterize the way sports like rowing and cycling are treated between the Olympic Games.

The competition started on Saturday with a big statement when 31,213 fans watched Manchester City play their newly promoted Manchester United at Etihad Stadium in the first Manchester derby ever. That was also a record in which the previous highest turnout for a WSL game was broken. Today the Chelsea game against Spurs takes place in Stamford Bridge. A capacity of 41,000 people is expected. There is a heady sense of change.

After decades, when it was banned, underfunded, ridiculed, ridiculed, or simply ignored in various ways, every World Cup takes the sport one step ahead. The quality of football in France in the summer – especially the quarter-final between the US and France – increased the match.

The competition started with a big statement because 31.213 fans played Man City rivals United

saw play

Last week the Finnish Football Association emulated their Norwegian counterpart by announcing that the national women's team would be paid the same as the men. A fight for equal pay, led by articulated, convincing and charismatic players such as Megan Rapinoe, also set the stage for the American triumph cup.

The issue is not only limited to sport, but is often in the sport where it is most visible. Last week, the New York Times accompanied their coverage of US Open tennis with a history of the fight and endorsed it: & # 39; The long fight for equal pay in sport. & # 39;

It all adds to the feeling that women's football in this country is at a critical point. It has made enormous progress since the days when our leading players had to wear men's hand-me-downs for their gear and combine their careers with a part-time job. More and more are able to become professional.

Many players today are still grateful for the opportunity to earn a living by playing the game they love, still grateful for the sacrifices and efforts of those in the generation below

But that gratitude changes into the realization that it is athletes who deserve recognition for their talents, women who are about to become cash registers.

Montemurro, whose team from Arsenal plays their home games at Borehamwood & Meadow Park grounds and other wise voices within the sport such as the English boss Casey Stoney, dampen their own optimism that the competition itself surpasses, but there is still a feeling that this is a sport on the rise.

Part of the reason that there is so much interest in the start of this WSL season is that up to now there has been a disconnection between the interest in the World Cup and the often scarce pressure in the WSL. . The number of visitors has decreased, not increased. Last season, the average turnout of the WSL was 833 compared to 1,128 in 2016 in the aftermath of England that reached the semi-final of the World Cup in Canada the year before.

& # 39; We must be careful in women's football, & # 39; says Montemurro, & # 39; because if we expect Stamford Bridge or the Emirates to be full every week, it won't happen. Once, yes. The derby, yes. But if we expect middle teams to get 30,000 or 40,000 people, this will not happen. We have to be smart with that.

The spotlights were firmly on women's football when the lionesses reached the world cup semis

& # 39; The fact that all the England World Cup matches were free was fantastic. Now there is association with players. The normal fan who is interested in football, but perhaps has no understanding of women's football, can associate with Ellen White or Viv Miedema or Leah Williamson. They know who they are.

"It is the sustainability of the public that interests me. Most that we put games on television, most people will watch it, most people will come, most people will say: "There is a great game around the corner, Arsenal is playing."

& # 39; But we also have to accept that hosting a game in the Emirates is expensive. We do not want a situation where we say that there were only 5000 people and that we have lost "x" pounds.

"We cannot afford that. We cannot afford that in the ladies game. If there is a TV deal that we know has a & # 39; x & # 39; amount in dollars and we can assign seven games to the Emirates because we have the money, then absolutely.

& # 39; But we don't do it right now & # 39; t. So let's fill the stadiums in which we now play. Let's fill Borehamwood. Let's make a statement and say that we get 10,000 or 20,000 requests to come to Borehamwood and then you have a case. But we don't have that at the moment. We must therefore also be realistic and honest. & # 39;

Part of Montemurro's vision for the clubs to play in the purpose-built & # 39; boutique stadiums & # 39 ;, places where fans can enjoy a modern competitive experience without diminishing the sport in the gigantic Premier League arenas. The last time Chelsea's women's side played in Stamford Bridge, the Champions League draw against Wolfsburg in 2016, only 3,783 fans showed up. That can begin to change.

Arsenal currently plays in their modest Borehamwood stadium with a capacity of 4,500

Saturday at the Etihad was a step forward. Later this season, Montemurro & # 39; s Arsenal Spurs will play on White Hart Lane, another that should attract a large crowd. Every WSL match is available via a FA Player service. Visibility, awareness, accessibility is growing.

"We are in an upward curve," says Montemurro. "It's all brand. You get an Arsenal-Barcelona semi-final in the Champions League in women's football, you go get the audience. Specially built boutique stadiums with 10,000 or 15,000 capacities, let's fill them, let's make them attractive.

& # 39; Then the product becomes attractive on television. Viewers see a game in a beautiful little stadium, great football, more attractive, more fans. These athletes are amazing and the growth will happen, but let's grow it organically. Let us not take three or four steps back.

"We don't get many chances in women's football. We only get one chance to demonstrate and make it right and it must work. If this is not the case, go back to the dark ages and we cannot afford it.

"Let's make it targeted. There will be select games such as the North London derby in larger stadiums, but we have to grow carefully and grow smart. & # 39;

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adambstingus · 6 years

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A Feminist’s Guide to Critiquing Hillary Clinton

Fair warning: This blog is not going to be angry. It will not be written in all caps. There will be no vulgarity. And it probably wont go viral. I dont care.

What I do care about is the fact Ive read over 70+ articles in the past two weeks alone discussing the 2016 election and what I see is a total lack of nuance and a lot of critiques that overgeneralize or underplay the very real role gender plays when people talk about Clinton and/or any other women who dare to step into positions that for so long have only been held by men.

What I do care about is how on my Facebook feed and elsewhere, I see well meaning folks called out as sexist jerks for simply offering legitimate critiques of Clinton and what a Clinton presidency might look like.

I like nuance. I like messy. I dont like soundbites and simplicity. So, lets play the nuance game. For folks who love Clinton, realize that not every critique poised against her is based in sexism. For those who love Sanders, realize that sexism is very alive in 2016, and that you can love your candidate AND embrace the reality that politicking while female is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Imagine that. Both/and. For those who havent yet made up their minds, or dont fall into either of these categories, this is for you, too.

So, here is my attempt to create a list of productive ways to critique Hillary Clinton without being a sexist jerk.

1). Do not talk about her voice. Really. Just dont. Earlier this week (and pretty much throughout Clintons existence), weve seen pundits and others criticize her shrillness, her voice, and her masculine speaking style. Soraya Chemaly argues, Anger in a man doesnt make the world wonder out loud if his hormones have taken over his brain and rendered him an incoherent idiot who cant be trusted with Important Things. How many words for angry men are there? Ones that have the powerful and controlling cultural resonance of , and ,, ? Or, yep, . Karlyn Kohrs Campbell wrote an incredibly thoughtful piece discussing how our culture has negatively responded to Clintons inability to fit within the parameters set in terms of how one should act and speak as a woman in the political sphere. She says Clinton symbolizes the problems of public women writ large, the continuing demand that women who play public roles or function in the public sphere discursively enact their femininity, and that women who do not or who do so to only a limited degree, women whose training and personal history fit them for the roles of rhetor, lawyer, expert, and advocate, roles that are gender coded masculine, will arouse the intensely hostile responses that seem so baffling (15). Overall, what Campbell is arguing is that women in the political sphere, in order to be taken seriously, must enact just the right amount of femininity and masculinity, and that Clintons failure to be appropriately feminine has hindered her for decades.

She continues to thoughtfully lay out a masculine and feminine rhetorical style of speaking and discusses what that sounds like. In rhetorical terms, performing or enacting femininity has meant adopting a personal or self-disclosing tone (signifying nurturance, intimacy, and domesticity) and assuming a feminine persona, e.g., mother, or an ungendered persona, e.g., mediator or prophet, while speaking. It has meant preferring anecdotal evidence (reflecting womens experiential learning in contrast to mens expertise), developing ideas inductively (so the audience thinks that it, not this presumptuous woman, drew the conclusions), and appropriating strategies associated with womensuch as domestic metaphors, emotional appeals to motherhood, and the likeand avoiding such macho strategies as tough language, confrontation or direct refutation, and any appearance of debating ones opponents. Note, however, that feminine style does not preclude substantive depth and argumentative cogency (5).

Presidents Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton use/used a feminine rhetorical style of speakingsomething which men can do and not be criticized for. Reagan was the great communicator. Both Clinton and Obama have been called some of the greatest orators in American history.

Hillary Clinton cannot perform femininity and her inability to play into this script Campbell argues reveals *our deficiencies*not Clintons. Campbell states, Our failure to appreciate the highly developed argumentative skills of an expert advocate, when the advocate is female, reveals our deficiencies, not hers. Legislation attendant on the second wave of feminism opened doors for able women who seek to exercise their skills in all areas of life, including the formation of public policy. If we reject all of those who lack the feminizing skills of Elizabeth Dole, we shall deprive ourselves of a vast array of talent (15).

2). Please dont talk about her likeability. As with the sound of her voice and her rhetorical speaking style, her likeability should have nothing to do with whether or not she would make a qualified president. Yes, I realize all candidates have to somewhat pass the likeability test, but for Clinton, because of the years long Hillary hating stemming from her time as first lady, this issue is in fact gendered, and to criticize her for not being likeable reeks of sexism. Henry Louis Gates Jr. argues, Hillary hating has become one of those national past times that unite the elite and the lumpen. Gary Wills notes, Hillary Hate is a large-scale psychic phenomenon. At the Republican convention there was a dismemberment doll on sale. For twenty dollars you could buy a rag-doll Hillary with arms and legs made to tear off and throw on the floor. .. . Talk shows are full of speculation about Hillarys purported lesbianism and drug use. Fine conspiratorial reasoning sifts whether she was Vince Fosters mistress or murderer or both. The Don Imus show plays a version of the song The Lady is a Tramp with new lyrics about the way the lady fornicates and menstruates and urinates, concluding, Thats why the First Lady is a tramp.’

As Nico Lang points out, She was a working woman and full political partner with (gasp) feminist tendencies. Among would-be first ladies in the early 1990s, these were exotic qualities. Clinton has continued to occupy thatsame space for the better part of three decades now, a one-woman culture war whoplays the political game the same way the men around her do. But unlike those men, Clinton is chided for being disingenuous and a political insider. Everyone else just gets to do their job. There are real reasons to have reservations about a Clinton presidency including her oft-cited ties to Wall Street and her hawkish foreign policy but how often are they the central force of the criticism lodged against her campaign? In an August poll, Quinnipac found that while political respondents felt that Hillary Clinton was strong and a candidate with experience, the words they most associated with her are liar, dishonest, and untrustworthy. These designations appear to be motivated by her Emailgate scandal and the ongoing questions about Benghazi but none of the myriad investigations into eitherhave turned up anything close to a smoking gun.

Rebecca Traister also notes, Recall the days following the 2008 Iowa caucus, when the media took advantage of Clintons defeat to let loose with their resentment and animosity toward her. That was when conservative Marc Rudov told Fox News that Clinton lost because When Barack Obama speaks, men hear Take off for the future! When Hillary Clinton speaks, men hear Take out the garbage! It was in the days after Iowa that Clinton infamously got asked about how voters believed her to be the most experienced and the most electable candidate but are hesitating on the likability issue. In late January, columnist Mike Barnicle told a laughing all-male panel on Morning Joe that Clintons challenge was that she looks like everyones first wife standing outside of probate court.’ In Diana B. Carlin and Kelly L. Winfreys analysis of the various ways Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were portrayed during the 2008 campaign, they note, Women who exhibited too many masculine traits are often ridiculed and lose trust because they are going against type or play into male political stereotypes that voters are rejecting (328).

More recently, Sady Doyle argues that, This plays out on the level of personal expression, too: Women are supposedly over-emotional, whereas men make stern, logical, intelligent judgments. So, if Hillary raises her voice, gets angry, cries, or (apparently) even makes a sarcastic joke at a mans expense, she will be seen as bitchy, crazy, cruel and dangerous. (Remember the NO WONDER BILLS AFRAID headlines after she raised her voice at a Benghazi hearing; remember the mass freak-out over her emotional meltdown when someone thought she might be crying during a concession speech.) She absolutely cannot express negative emotion in public. But people have emotions, and women are supposed to have more of them than men, so if Hillary avoids them if she speaks strictly in calm, logical, detached terms, to avoid being seen as crazy we find her cold, call her robotic and calculating, and wonder why she doesnt express her feminine side. Again, shes going to be faulted for feminine weakness or lack of femininity, and both are damaging. Okay, so she can never be sad, angry, or impatient. Thats not a ban on all emotion, right? Youd think the one clear path to avoiding the bitchy or cold descriptors would be to put on a happy face, and admit to emotions only when they are positive. Youd think that, and youd be wrong: It turns out, people hate it when Hillary Clinton smiles or laughs in public. Hillary Clintons laugh gets played in attack ads; it has routinely been called a cackle (like a witch, right? Because shes old, and female, like a witch); frozen stills of Hillary laughing are routinely used to make her look crazy in conservative media. She cant be sad or angry, but she also cant be happy or amused, and she also cant refrain from expressing any of those emotions. There is literally no way out of this one. Anything she does is wrong. Given these constraints, Doyle argues it is impossible for Clinton to be likeable.

Look at how shes tried to address this issue. Dancing like a fool, talking about fashion, laughing more. What has it gotten her? Nothing but backlash.

Dave Holmes writes in , Youre not fun. Stop trying to pretend youre fun. writes an entirefaux op-ed from Clinton entitled I am Fun painting her attempt at being fun as insincere and manufactured.

In the eyes of the American public, Hillary Clinton will be fun. Or likeable. Or someone youd want to have a beer with. And it shouldnt matter. Period. So quit it with the likeability stuff, already. Its stupid and petty. I dont care if my president knows how to dance or even knows how to dress well. And you shouldnt, either.

3). Do criticize her on substantive issues. As Kevin Young & Diana C. Sierra Becerra argue, Clinton is the embodiment of corporate feminism. In their piece, they cite many areas where Clinton could have been and could still be a better advocate for womens rights. Its a fair critique but one that falls under the radar when were so concerned with her voice, appearance, and dance skills.

4). Know your history, do some research, and when criticizing, be fair. One of the claims I often hear as to why some dont trust Clinton, or why some feel shes untrustworthy is because she sat on the board of Walmart. Ok. But lets dig a little deeper. Ann Klefstad notes, Not to take anything away from Bernie and Jane, but think what an advantage this is: to build a career in a location of your choosing, with the strong support of a highly qualified and intelligent person who is unconditionally loyal to you. This was also Bill Clintons situationafter Yale, finding Hillary, heading home to Arkansas, and building a brilliant career in politics. But heywhat about Hillary? After getting a law degree from Yale (an all-male institution a few years previously) she meets Bill. She dumps her career as a congressional aide to move to Arkansas with Bill. I can imagine her dilemma. This was the 1970s. If she wanted to be with Bill, she would be riding on the ship he was captain of. There were consequences to that. She would be a partner in creating a political career that would accomplish many of the goals she wanted to accomplish. Bill very much admired her superb intellect and political skills as well. So they embarked. Theyre in Arkansas. Vermont politics have a pretty clean record. Arkansas? Not so much. You do make your own choices, but the context youre in, well, it matters. The Arkansas economy was in the toilet. The only bright star was the Walton family and Walmart, which was on track to become the biggest retailer in the world. They provided (in Arkansas) an expanding number of well-paid jobs. Bill was governor. Should Hillary have dumped his political career for a chance to spit in Sam Waltons eye? Well, that wasnt going to happen. She sat on the Walmart board and did what she could to both ensure the prosperity of the state of which her husband was governor and to do the right thing. She has almost always chosen the path (sometimes not the one youd pick) that would enable her to accomplish some good actions, rather than the pure path that tends to lead to inaction, or to exile from the power than enables you to make change.

Still dont like the fact she sat on the board? Fine. Dont like her stances on foreign policy? Totally ok. But understand the choices Clinton made in the context in which she livednot in a vacuum. This goes for all of her political choices. Never assume anything about any candidate without doing a little research first. Its amazing how much you can find out on this magical thing called the interwebs.

5). Dont assume critiques against Clinton are automatically rooted in sexism, and when calling out someone for critiquing Clinton, dont assume they, are in fact, sexist either. Take the #BernieBro label, for example. According to Glenn Greenwald, Have pro-Clinton journalists and pundits been subjected to some vile, abusive, and misogynistic rhetoric from random, anonymous internetsupporters of Sanders who are angry over their Clinton support?. Does that reflect in any way on the Sanders campaign or which candidate should win the Democratic primary? . The reason pro-Clinton journalists are targeted with vile abuse online has nothing specifically to do with the Sanders campaign or its supporters. It has everything to do with the internet. There are literally no polarizing views one can advocateonline including criticizing Democratic Party leaders such as Clinton or Barack Obama that will not subject one to a torrent of intense anger and vile abuse. Its not remotely unique to supporting Hillary Clinton: Ask Megyn Kelly about that, or the Sanders-supporting Susan Sarandon and Cornel West, or anyone with a Twitter account or blog. Ive seen online TV and film critics get hauled before vicious internet mobs for expressing unpopular views about a TV program or a movie. Amanda Hess pushes further arguing as soon as the Bernie Bro materialized, the conversation around it deteriorated. As the meme gained momentum, some popularizers stopped bothering to marshal any kind of evidence that Sanders supporters were sexist … . This is a familiar online phenomenon. Just as mansplaining morphed from a useful descriptor of a real problem in contemporary gender dynamics to an increasingly vague catchall expression, ass Benjamin Hart put it in 2014,the Bernie Bro argument has been stretched beyond recognition by both its champions and its critics.What began as a necessary critique of leftist sexism has been replaced by a pair of straw men waving their arms in the wind.

If the label applies, absolutely use it. Call out sexism and misogyny-especially if its coming from someone who claims to be progressive. However, I worry the label is being thrown around loosely and being applied to many well meaning, non-sexist male critics of Clinton. And that only silences debate. I dont want anyone to feel as though they cannot legitimately critique Clinton for fear of being called sexist, a BernieBro, or other names.

Overall, as with most of my writing, this piece was for me. Every time I read an article about Clinton or Sanders or sexism or the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party I find myself wishing for more nuance, less click-bait, and sound and civil discourse. Im tired of seeing the same soundbites repeated on my Facebook wall, seeing good friends of mine unfriend each other or worse because theyre on Team Sanders or Team Clinton and cant find common ground to have a legitimate debate about what this election is really about. In the words of my good friend Greg Wright, If you can imagine a better opportunity to demand the world we want, Id like to hear when you think it will come. When will better circumstances reveal themselves again? What political climate are you relying on to thrust the most unlikely candidate into the realm of possible? You want to know what will make this all the more likely to happen again? Demanding that it happen now.

We are at a historic moment in American history, not unlike the 2nd wave feminist movement. Gloria Steinem once said of Betty Friedan I believe that she was looking to join society as it existed, and the slightly younger parts of the movement were trying to transform society. And those were kind of two different goals. Like Friedan, I would argue that Clinton wants to work within the structure we have, while Sanders wants to transform society. He wants a revolution. In the words of Robert Reich, Ive known Hillary Clinton since she was 19 years old, and have nothing but respect for her. In my view, shes the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have. ButBernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because hes leading a political movement for change.

Sexism is real, and I love the fact that we are even talking about the ugly face of sexism in politics. However, we must be able to criticize a female candidate without resorting to sexist tactics, or be called sexist for critiquing her in the first place.

Overall, as many have pointed out, both Sanders and Clinton would be undeniably better as our next commander in chief than anyone currently running in the Republican arena. So I would caution democrats to get too entrenched within their teams that they refuse to see the bigger picture of the need to elect a Democrat in this next election. There are ways to disagree with one another that dont need to devolve into name calling or soundbite repeating. On Facebook and elsewhere, engage with those on either side in mindful and productive ways. This is an incredibly important election for so many reasons, but that doesnt mean we cant have thoughtful debates. So keep reading. Keep posting. Keep fighting for your team. Just dont embrace the ugly. Theres enough of that out there already.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/a-feminists-guide-to-critiquing-hillary-clinton/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/169872294377

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allofbeercom · 6 years

Text

A Feminist’s Guide to Critiquing Hillary Clinton

Fair warning: This blog is not going to be angry. It will not be written in all caps. There will be no vulgarity. And it probably wont go viral. I dont care.

So, here is my attempt to create a list of productive ways to critique Hillary Clinton without being a sexist jerk.

Look at how shes tried to address this issue. Dancing like a fool, talking about fashion, laughing more. What has it gotten her? Nothing but backlash.

Dave Holmes writes in , Youre not fun. Stop trying to pretend youre fun. writes an entirefaux op-ed from Clinton entitled I am Fun painting her attempt at being fun as insincere and manufactured.

5). Dont assume critiques against Clinton are automatically rooted in sexism, and when calling out someone for critiquing Clinton, dont assume they, are in fact, sexist either. Take the #BernieBro label, for example. According to Glenn Greenwald, Have pro-Clinton journalists and pundits been subjected to some vile, abusive, and misogynistic rhetoric from random, anonymous internetsupporters of Sanders who are angry over their Clinton support?. Does that reflect in any way on the Sanders campaign or which candidate should win the Democratic primary? . The reason pro-Clinton journalists are targeted with vile abuse online has nothing specifically to do with the Sanders campaign or its supporters. It has everything to do with the internet. There are literally no polarizing views one can advocateonline including criticizing Democratic Party leaders such as Clinton or Barack Obama that will not subject one to a torrent of intense anger and vile abuse. Its not remotely unique to supporting Hillary Clinton: Ask Megyn Kelly about that, or the Sanders-supporting Susan Sarandon and Cornel West, or anyone with a Twitter account or blog. Ive seen online TV and film critics get hauled before vicious internet mobs for expressing unpopular views about a TV program or a movie. Amanda Hess pushes further arguing as soon as the Bernie Bro materialized, the conversation around it deteriorated. As the meme gained momentum, some popularizers stopped bothering to marshal any kind of evidence that Sanders supporters were sexist . . . . This is a familiar online phenomenon. Just as mansplaining morphed from a useful descriptor of a real problem in contemporary gender dynamics to an increasingly vague catchall expression, ass Benjamin Hart put it in 2014,the Bernie Bro argument has been stretched beyond recognition by both its champions and its critics.What began as a necessary critique of leftist sexism has been replaced by a pair of straw men waving their arms in the wind.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/a-feminists-guide-to-critiquing-hillary-clinton/

0 notes