Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

typicalgirls - [TypicalGirls] HumanifestX March 2025 Update: Cultural Commonalities, Collective Conventions, & Constructive Commitments

typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Dina Hornreich <hornreichdina AT gmail.com>
  • To: undisclosed-recipients:;
  • Subject: [TypicalGirls] HumanifestX March 2025 Update: Cultural Commonalities, Collective Conventions, & Constructive Commitments
  • Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2025 12:09:38 -0500

As Women’s History Month <https://jwa.org/feminism/resources> is here, and I reflect on the upcoming calendar events involving “Springing Forward” customs (in addition to the ultimate Jewish feminist & “cosplay” holiday of Purim), I revisit my definitions of feminist ontologies and epistemologies. One thing is certain: “Mean girls antics are not feminist practices.”

As Carol Gilligan, Sherry Turkle, & Helene Cixous continue to remind us, the intentions, norms, institutions, agencies, and identities that reflect a feminist mosaic need to better support social intuitionism as a moral foundation for more effectively removing the sociolinguistic structures which perpetuates the subjugation of femininity (and other “double-standards”) as they are lingering in essentialist, foundationalist, and fundamentalist aspects of Western culture.

The necessity of transcending binaries, dualities, and similar polarities which further perpetuate in this ongoing filibustering that is accepted as contemporary political discourse is a non-partisan crisis situation that requires a realignment entirely. As such, I persist in my mission in building a taskforce of nonviolent communicators who are:
  • Promoting an informed, engaged, & wise global citizenry and participatory transnational Democracy. 
  • Elevating “Conceptual Age” skills (design, story, symphony, empathy, play, & meaning) in order to remedy the shortcomings of residuals from the preceding "Information Age" and "Industrial Age."
  • Preventing media pollution, information disorder, & “techno-lust” from further disrupting our social, cultural, political, & economic ecosystems.
  • Championing mindful “meta-literacies” (i.e. becoming adept bullsh*t detectives) involving the creation, selection, organization, presentation, diffusion, consumption, & preservation stages for "processing" IMT artefactual innovations.
  • Adopting the principles of "Data Feminism": Examining power; challenging power; elevating emotion & embodiment; rethinking binaries & hierarchies; embracing pluralism; considering context; and making labor visible.
Enculturation awareness requires an expansion of relational contexts to recognize the importance of democratice heterogeneous interpersonal relationships for successful goal attainment as lifelong learners who are informed, engaged, and wise particpants in a transnational democracy. The inclusion of women in the workforce since World War 2 has shown that we have been ill-equipped for the inclusion of both males and females (and everyone in-between on beyond) for far too long. It’s clear that elevating “feminine sensibilities” for all humans requires the acquisition of competencies that better promote meaningful negotiations, expansive interpretations, exploratory commentaries, and similar kinds of communicative exchanges that better understand our new pluralities in order to become the Reunited States of America! We each complete our own composite of preferences, styles, orientations, aptitudes, and modalities which offers ways of understanding ourselves, each other, and the surrounding environments we navigate on a daily basis (analog, digital, and ganic).

We require a new kind of shared lexicon for recognizing the utilities of past dichotomies without unwanted interference by the logical contradictions and paradoxes that ensue. These will be new conventions for transcending historical stereotypic taboos (e.g. it isn’t masculine to show sadness or feminine to show anger). The universality of human experiences (both internal and external ) should not invite these ongoing disconnections which are causing unnecessary discordances from manufactured, artificial consumerist needs, wants, and desires which are the shortcomings of advertising practices that turn our daily living habits into marketing data for exploitative gains – leaving us feeling like we are hamsters stuck in this wheel of “rigged games” given our normal tendencies involving tribalism (i.e. ethnocentric biases and other shortsighted stereotypic approaches).

As I continue to assert that "the medium is the lesson," I am revisiting a variety of inspirational musical artists who have served as ethnographic subjects for my theses, antitheses, and other avenues for social progress and transformative justice. Christopher Small calls this approach “Musicking” and I recommend this work: <https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/37975693> as it supports mind-body connections through the language of the spirit and reconceptualizing music as an active experience (rather than another commercial product for consumption) -- and why documentaries became the preferred format for this work: <https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/985447230>.

Here are some examples of musical experiences that I find that helped me to transcend that mindset:

I know that "confirmation bias" perpetuates artificial barriers giving us unnecessary preferences for competition over cooperation -- which are false illusions that are exploited in numerous manifestations that further stigmatize feminine traits. Scientific rationality teaches us that “ad hoc” hypotheses weaken a theory; as such, ideas that become self-defeating in the long-term tend to reveal themselves as “short-term” coping habits becoming self-defeating as lifelong habitual patterns. Normal processes of “trial-and-error” should allow for a normal margin of error or learning curve; but behaviorist practices seem to invite exploitation for unethical gains. Collective wisdom will be for allowing ourselves to “let go” of anything that creates unnecessary obstacles for accomplishing our personal goals for the long-term. We are going to need the full spectrum of “tools” in our collective “toolboxes” because relying on the same approach will cause the whole “pile” to topple over. If we blur the traditional domains of masculine and feminine, then we may need to “wise up” in order to revisit our cultural infrastructures in order to avoid a repetition of unequal reciprocates, unhealthy dependencies, and similar problem-deficit approaches.

Happy March: “In like a lion, out like a lamb”?

-D
Dina L. Hornreich, MS, MLIS 

linkedin.com/in/dina-hornreich-113a79283
medium.com/@dina-hornreich

hornreichdina AT gmail.com

413-315-0485
c/o FOH & CSO @29 Industrial Drive East, Northampton, MA 01060


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Advocating for better consumer safeguards and sustainable economic reform in the age of surveillance capitalism for "wising up" from rationality to morality in this emerging "Conceptual Age." 

Stopping the epidemics of misinformation, disinformation, & malinformation (propaganda) from disrupting our information, media, & technology (IMT) ecosystems by facilitating the effective, appropriate, & ethical comprehension/production of IMT artefacts on our journeys toward integrative recovery & holistic wellbeing.


Facilitating the acquisition of lifelong literacies, instead of reinforcing the perception that "natural vulnerabilities" are "permanent deficiencies," as a community of learners struggling to fight the onslaught of unhealthy messages generated by practices which condone/promote the exploitation of typical human fallibilities reinforcing the greedy, violent, and misogynistic approaches of a plutocratic tyranny who resorts to criminalizing, pathologizing, and otherwise blaming the victims of their wanton ludicrousness.


Alerting consumers to the impact of numerous illusions and other deceptive efforts that turn our individual differences into manufactured deviations (and other forms of "learned helplessness"); thereby revealing systemic injustices that are perpetuated by ongoing inequitable power dynamics (i.e. colonialism) and other accessibility barriers to the basic resources that support our universal human needs, wants, & desires.


Building a taskforce of nonviolent communicators who are:

  • Promoting an informed, engaged, & wise global citizenry and participatory transnational Democracy. (cf: listography)
  • Elevating “Conceptual Age” skills (design, story, symphony, empathy, play, & meaning) in order to remedy the shortcomings of residuals from the preceding "Information Age" and "Industrial Age."
  • Preventing media pollution, information disorder, & “techno-lust” from further disrupting our social, cultural, political, & economic ecosystems.
  • Championing mindful “meta-literacies” (i.e. becoming adept bullsh*t detectives) involving the creation, selection, organization, presentation, diffusion, consumption, & preservation stages for "processing" IMT artefactual innovations.
  • Adopting the principles of "Data Feminism": Examining power; challenging power; elevating emotion & embodiment; rethinking binaries & hierarchies; embracing pluralism; considering context; and making labor visible.


  • [TypicalGirls] HumanifestX March 2025 Update: Cultural Commonalities, Collective Conventions, & Constructive Commitments, Dina Hornreich, 03/04/2025

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page