S21CEC6- Part 1

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to, uh, now less than six part one.

Uh, we were talking about in the last part of

less than five.

We were talking about strongman and steel man.

Now again, Strongman is and still strong.

Man is a problem.

It's something you should not do.

And you should be careful because it's easy to do.

You have an opinion and the other person has a

different opinion.

And when you try to argue with them, you don't

actually listen to everything that they say.

You listen only to the main things that you want

to, and you kind of create a picture of their

argument that's very like a stick man.

It's not really doesn't look like a person at all.

In other words, it's simpler, and it's And the reason

you make that stick man is because the stick man

is easy to just get rid of, because look how

simple his ideas are.

Her ideas, and so you just eliminate them, say, See,

I'm right.

That's a bad thing to do.

What you want to do is the opposite, which is

called Steel Man like Ste.

L Steel.

Like the material like the hard metal you want to

when you listen to someone give an argument about something

you want to give.

You want to listen to everything and you want to

understand that you wanna understand their argument from their perspective.

So the judge the test is is that when you're

arguing with someone, when you when you are listening to

what they think you repeat back to them what they

what you say.

Look, this is what is this right?

Is this what you're saying?

Is this your opinion?

Is this fair?

Is this honest?

Is you have to stay honest, but is this fair?

Is this reasonable?

Is this right?

Is this what you think?

And you repeat, You said this.

This this this.

So you think this this is that right?

And if they agree with you, they say, Yeah, that's

that's what I believe.

Then you have steel, steel, man them.

And that's a very good thing to do, because then

when you argue against their steel man idea, you actually

are doing it real.

It's not you kind of kind of doing anything you

can to win.

You're actually really defending your actually really debating the article.

or the topic or the with the opinion, and that's

that's how.

And it also shows respect to the other person because

you've considered their perspective and you've let them present themselves

fairly before you start pointing out where you disagree.

So again, that's something that we need to do.

And we have to be careful about Straw Manning.

Okay, so anyway, uh, let's get back to this.

I'm going to read the article like I like I

like to.

I'm going to just go through and narrate for you

quickly and pay attention to these five questions and see

if they change for you.

Pay attention to the pronunciation and the emphasis here.

Especially, I think, in this article you're going to see

that attitude of the author is we learn a lot

from I think, the way that the author wrote this

story. Okay, so again, you're going to casually talk about

it on the warm up plus five page Okay, the

board game that turns feminism into a joke.

I played Miss Monopoly so that you don't have to.

First we have to choose.

The pieces will play with.

There are many options.

An airplane.

That's how I get around the world at a moments

notice. The game's packaging explains.

Bar Bell Love My Mornings at the Gym, A journal.

It's full of ideas, a wine glass.

Put your energy into empowering others, and your glass will

always be half full and to watch.

Don't you agree it's time for some change.

There is also a standard top hat, this one painted

white. Mr.

Monopoly isn't the only one who can rock a top

hat and that whites and that white sure makes a

statement shrugging.

I picked the wine glass, shrugging.

Andrew picks the hat.

We set up the board.

We're playing Miss Monopoly.

Not so much because we thought it would be fun.

I don't think I have ever in my life had

fun playing Monopoly, but because I was curious and Andrew

is patient.

I've just seen the ad promoting the game, the one

that resurfaced this week after it was originally posted last

fall, and that is, if you haven't seen it already.

You should probably just watch it.

And so I asked Andrew, a man to join me

in a round of the game that is supposed to

celebrate womanhood.

I wanted to know how Monopoly a game premised on

the notion that the zealous accumulation of wealth is a

fun way to pass the time would treat feminism.

The answer is pretty much in the way you'd expect

only somehow.

Worse. The game, one of the many spinoffs of Monopoly

that Hasbro has dreamed up in recent years, is centered

on the character of Ms Monopoly, the niece of Mr

Monopoly, the game's top hat it and mustachioed avatar.

The idea is that she's a Silicon Valley style investor

who is focused on the inventions of women.

An explanatory note informed us with no evident Morency, that

the niece of Mr Monopoly himself a character who is

also known as rich Uncle Penny bags, is a self

made investment guru.

This was a hint of what was to come.

The board mimics the layout of the original monopoly along

its perimeter in place of the standard properties, our goods

and services that were invented or partially invented by women.

Windshield wipers, bulletproof vest, round edged makeup applicators and so

on cards list the products on one side, fire escape

and on the other, a brief explanation.

18 87 before Anna Connolly's fire Escape bridge, people had

to parachute or repel from burning buildings.

The goal is to buy up those products so that

ostensibly you you.

As you learn about women's achievements, you can profit from

them. In Ms Monopoly, it is possible to own and

then to charge rent on modern shapewear.

At the center of it all on the board is

Miss Monopoly herself, clad in a blazer, heels and skinny

jeans. One of her hands is on her hip, and

the other clutches a portable coffee cup.

It is printed with the word boss.

Ms. Monopoly turn by turn echoes the logic of the

original move around the board by properties.

Pay rent on other players.

Properties get money for passing go.

It is all fairly familiar.

Still, the most consistent emotion Andrew and I experience while

playing the game is confusion.

One of Miss Monopolies Primary Gimmicks is that it is

the first game where women make more money than men.

It's instructions stipulate that the lady players should start off

with more money $400 more than the guys and also

get $240 for passing go while men get the traditional

$200. We dutifully follow the directions, roll the dice, move

forward by pay.

Repeat. Andrew lands on community chest.

This is what his card says.

You see the newest superhero movie with a female lead,

and it's awesome.

Collect $50.

If you are a man, collect $100.

We understand that this is a board game intended for

ages eight and up and probably shouldn't be over thought.

We get that it's probably meant to be played by

women and that there might be something quietly powerful in

the way it's instructions and assertions to default.

Corrective Lee to the women's perspective.

But still we are confused is the idea that women

start with more money.

But then, over the course of the game, watch that

readjustment swing back in favor of men.

Is it simply that men should be rewarded extra for

seeing a film that stars a woman?

Why $400 more for the woman for the women at

the outset?

Why $40 more?

With each rounding of the board?

How is the Hasbro Corporation defining woman?

The instructions themselves offer few explanations, and the subsequent rounds

keep reminding us that we should resist attempts to find

coherence in this game ified treatment of corporate feminism.

But even fun in this condensed economy is in notably

short supply, a chance card and forms Andrew.

At one point you dropped your phone in the toilet

and then announces that his punishment will be to move

back three spaces on the board.

Another shares the good news that your office replaces its

glass ceiling with solar panels.

A community chest card requires me to pay $25 to

the bank because I buy a new pair of high

heels and ouch, they were probably designed by a man.

The line between celebration and condescension, I am remembering, is

a thin one.

Today's monopoly is a version of the landlord's game, created

by Lizzie Maggie in the early 19 hundreds, a time

when American culture was treating board games not just as

tools of diversion but also as methods of communication.

Her game, Maggie wrote, was intended as an argument against

Gilded age inequality, a practical demonstration of the present system

of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences.

Until recently, though, monopolies mythology insisted on a different origin

story that it had been created by a man named

Charles Doro.

Doro had merely learned of the game from a friend

and then sold it to Parker Brothers in the 19

thirties, ultimately making millions.

The woman invented the man got the credit.

The original game argued against inequality, the game that caught

on made entertainment out of exploitation itself.

So you can see Ms Monopoly for all its cartoonist

cheeriness as a belated act of atonement.

You can see it as yet one more reminder of

how commonly women's empowerment is understood to be an outgrowth

of capitalism.

Being just a game monopoly inoculates itself from the need

to answer.

Fun is its own reply.

But circling the board, I keep thinking about, well, how

well meaning parents might by Ms Monopoly for their kids.

I keep thinking about Maggie's insight that games are also

instruction manuals, money as an easy sport, women as an

easy monolith, empowerment as an easy fix around and around

it goes.

How much longer are we going to play?

Andrew asks.

Not much.

I'm tired, too.

We put in a few more rounds ice cream maker,

hairbrush, dishwasher before we decide to call it he ends

up with $1655.

I end up with $4340.

But in this game, there's no winning.

Yeah, so did you see I should pause for a

second and say, Did you notice how I added the

tone? You know how the tone of the author, the

attitude was very present in this article?

How very strong it was.

So and you notice that she's talking about her and

Andrew, Do you notice how that first person perspective again,

we talked a little bit about first person, second person

perspective. There's also a third person that we'll talk about

later. But do you notice how this is focused on

first person?

And so when you have first person, you naturally are

going to kind of tend to have more attitude or

tone again.

Think about her tone and attitude and think about her

perspective and how they relate to each other, and that

will tell you a lot about what she's up to,

what he purposes.

Okay, What I'd like to look at now is something

I need to tell you that I tell all my

classes at the beginning, and it's very important.

You might have heard it already, but but it's very,

very important.

And again, at your stage of your learning, it's very,

very important that you recognize what's involved when you're trying

to recognize attitude as it says here.

Okay, so again when you read the article, if you

go back and look at the article again, pay attention.

As I said to the tone of the writer, notice

not just the way I spoke, but notice the adjectives

and adverbs and also what we call figurative language.

Figurative language means language, words that create a picture.

They are kind of indirect ways of saying something, something

right. So you might say, Oh, Thomas has no hair

on his head That would not be figurative.

That's just telling you exactly what it is.

Figurative would be a kind of indirect way of kind

of talking about it without actually saying it, you know,

adding a bit more to the explanation so you might

say his head is like an egg.

Or you might say the light shone off his shiny

head again.

Those would be indirect ways, figurative ways to say I

have no hair or maybe and with extra information, like

the light shines off of it or it looks like

an egg.

So figurative language tells you the basic fact, but gives

you a little bit more to create a kind of

imagery are kind of more kind of understanding, a subjective

understanding of what it what it's like.

Okay, So figurative language really helps you and adjectives and

adverbs to know the mood or the feeling of the

author. Okay, so that helps you to get the tone

by looking at the language and what we're going to

look at in the next part has to do with

that. Okay, so I'll just wait a second so I

don't get cut off.

S21CEC6- Part 1

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