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GearSlutz petitioned to change name


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I relate this only to report, not to express an opinion. But someone on change.org has started a petition for GearSlutz to change their name on the grounds that it"s misogynistic and less than inclusive. The thing is getting legs.

 

https://all.change.org/p/gearslutz-gearslutz-please-change-your-name

 

Nice to have a clear, descriptive, and totally uncontroversial name like 'Music Player,' innit? ð

 

SF

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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I checked the dictionary definitions and etymological sources and according to them, the term, in any era close enough to be of relevance, commonly refers to a woman. It's not a gender-neutral term in other words.

 

The Gearslutz name, the first time I saw it, did strike me as in bad taste. A bit of the old "hawhawhaw" wink wink nudge nudge sort of male idiocy. The kind of thing that, when challenged, always gets the defense of "we didn't mean nuthin zjust a joke, man!"

 

If the name goes to the Correctional Institute for Offensive Nomenclature for execution, the loss to the world will be something less than microscopic.

 

nat

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As mentioned above, unless better policy and policing are implemented I don't care what they call it.

An occasional random visit is all they get from me and I wouldn't have anything to say if they disappeared entirely.

I've never considered joining and changing the name alone will not entice me.

 

This site is much better managed, people are very nice here by comparison to some of the outbursts I've run across elsewhere.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I don't waste any time on the site. Has no particular value, IMO

 

Mostly I agree. Sometimes I'll do a global search on the internet for information on a specific product I want to know more about and I will find a Gearslutzs thread with useful posts by somebody who has the product and knows what they are talking about. Other times it will be virtual "Big Time Wrestling" for music nerds who just like to post in order to inform the rest of us as to their unfounded opinions/blatherspew.

 

A mixed bag beyond any doubt. If I'm lucky I'll find a Sound On Sound or Tape Op article first and not bother with GS.

 

I found MPN doing one of those searches, realized it was different than GS in positive and powerful ways and jumped on board. No regrets there.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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This site is much better managed, people are very nice here by comparison to some of the outbursts I've run across elsewhere.

 

We are the internet's best-kept secret, and perhaps that's a good thing. If we needed a tag line, I'd vote for "Safe, sane, and smart - where people trade knowledge instead of insults."

 

My favorite GearSux moment was when someone said I should be ashamed of myself because I don't know what I'm talking about, and I should refund the money of all the people who came to my seminars at places like GearFest and NAMM because I'm so wrong about everything. I enjoyed telling him that people don't pay to attend my seminars :) My offense was recommending that people not use processors in the master bus if they were going to give their mixes to a mastering engineer, and mentioned that people should pay attention to true peak values (which he said was just "technical bullsh*t").

 

The hell of it was I was just trying to do a helpful, totally non-controversial post to answer a question. But if someone wants to start a fight, they will.

 

"I like kittens, they're so cute."

"You ageist pig! So you hate them once they grow up!! You want old people to die!!!" Hey Soylent Green fan...you disgust me!" :)

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This site is much better managed, people are very nice here by comparison to some of the outbursts I've run across elsewhere.

 

We are the internet's best-kept secret, and perhaps that's a good thing. If we needed a tag line, I'd vote for "Safe, sane, and smart - where people trade knowledge instead of insults."

 

My favorite GearSux moment was when someone said I should be ashamed of myself because I don't know what I'm talking about, and I should refund the money of all the people who came to my seminars at places like GearFest and NAMM because I'm so wrong about everything. I enjoyed telling him that people don't pay to attend my seminars :) My offense was recommending that people not use processors in the master bus if they were going to give their mixes to a mastering engineer, and mentioned that people should pay attention to true peak values (which he said was just "technical bullsh*t").

 

The hell of it was I was just trying to do a helpful, totally non-controversial post to answer a question. But if someone wants to start a fight, they will.

 

"I like kittens, they're so cute."

"You ageist pig! So you hate them once they grow up!! You want old people to die!!!" Hey Soylent Green fan...you disgust me!" :)

 

Yep, I've seen similar many times. Hence my comment above (and below):

 

Other times it will be virtual "Big Time Wrestling" for music nerds who just like to post in order to inform the rest of us as to their unfounded opinions/blatherspew.

 

I've been incorrect on here and been corrected. I take that as helpful and useful, and responses have been polite and to the point. Pretty sure you've done such to me and will probably need to do it again at some point. No harm, no foul, I'm here to learn and meet interesting people, not to puff up a "Virtual Ego" that amounts to less than zero.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I'm here to learn and meet interesting people, not to puff up a "Virtual Ego" that amounts to less than zero.

 

When I don't know something, I first do a search. When I want an informed opinion, I ask here :)

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A female friend of mine sometimes refers to herself as a "house slut," meaning she likes to visit houses that are for sale to get architectural / home decorating ideas. I presume that "gear sluts" is a similarly self-deprecating statement of "we like gear, sometimes to a silly degree." I consider it tasteless, but harmless. I guess if I go much farther, I'll veer into politics or something, so I'll stop there.

 

Okay, one _tiny_ aside: Didn't the (new as of this writing) K2700 story break on GS before it got to any of our respectable sites? Is that any indication of its value?

-Tom Williams

{First Name} {at} AirNetworking {dot} com

PC4-7, PX-5S, AX-Edge, PC361

 

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I should mention that the, to me, dumb name of Gearslutz has not kept me from participating in that forum and finding a lot of very useful info.

 

My take on this sort of thing is - if some name or other bothers somebody, then let the person who cares about it have their way. Show respect for what people care about, even if I don't care, or if it just seems too minor to bother myself about it. If it's not a moral or ethical issue to me, but it is to someone else, then it is a moral or ethical issue, and I just abstain from voting as having no skin in the game.

 

nat

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I consider it tasteless, but harmless.

 

Same here. I really don't think GearSlutz's foundation is hatred of women. It's just hatred of anyone who doesn't agree with you. :)

 

When I was a kid I remember the old saying "sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me." But that doesn't mean I'm against all "correcting." I think changing technical terms like master/slave makes sense, not just because of the connotations, but because there are words that convey the actual functionality more clearly. One software company changed its term for plug-ins that shouldn't be loaded from "blacklisted" to "blocked." Regardless of whether anyone thinks it's a change that needed to be made, to me "blocked" is much clearer. It means the plug-in still exists, but it's not loaded.

 

Okay, one _tiny_ aside: Didn't the (new as of this writing) K2700 story break on GS before it got to any of our respectable sites? Is that any indication of its value?

 

Sure. I think the issue is whether visiting the site is more likely to yield a positive or negative experience. GS has deep roots in the internet, so it has great SEO and often, a search query will reveal a thread on a particular subject. More often than not, it deteriorates to the point where extracting an accurate answer becomes difficult.

 

We also need to consider that GS is known for combativeness. As a result, those who want to engage in combat can go there and have a good time. At one point during my tenure at Harmony Central, people were injecting political threads in the Sound, Studio, and Stage forum to the point where it became a distraction and a turnoff. So, I created "The SSS Political Party" forum, and all political discourse had to take place there. It became immensely popular and accumulated a huge number of posts, but most importantly, it kept the other forums free of sewage. It was kind of like Harmony Central's septic tank.

 

Certain forums have certain characters. I'm sure some people avoid Musicplayer.com because there's so little drama, so they find it boring.

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Imagine if you were a woman, and you had been called a "slut" by your father, by a boyfriend, or a schoolmate when you were a teenager. The person delivering the insult might have felt the insult was deserved based what clothing she was wearing, based on some sexual act real or imagined she was thought to have done, or really anything. As an insult or accusation, the word has a very different impact, and a very different intended impact, when it is directed at a woman as opposed to a man.
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Imagine if you were a woman, and you had been called a "slut" by your father, by a boyfriend, or a schoolmate when you were a teenager. The person delivering the insult might have felt the insult was deserved based what clothing she was wearing, based on some sexual act real or imagined she was thought to have done, or really anything. As an insult or accusation, the word has a very different impact, and a very different intended impact, when it is directed at a woman as opposed to a man.

 

:facepalm:

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I go by the sticks and stones policy.

 

My personal philosophy is that if it wasn't meant to offend, don't look for it to offend. If it was meant to offend, apply sticks and stones or ignore it.

 

On the other hand, I am aware of other people's sensitivities and I try to avoid terms that will push their buttons. It's a "do unto others" thing.

 

If in business, and you wish to make a profit, keep your opinions to yourself, and definitely be careful of the words and names you use. When I worked at Motown, and it was the time of the Detroit riots, you never knew how Berry Gordy stood on the issues, although I'm sure he had strong opinions about it.

 

My grandparents were all born in Italy. As a kid I liked being of Italian heritage and I considered the terms Wop, Dago and others to be something to be proud of.

 

"Be kind to others" and "turn the other cheek" both seem like good advice to me.

 

Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton

Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com

Style and Fake disks for Band-in-a-Box

The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com >^. .^< >^. .^<

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I think changing technical terms like master/slave makes sense, not just because of the connotations, but because there are words that convey the actual functionality more clearly. One software company changed its term for plug-ins that shouldn't be loaded from "blacklisted" to "blocked." Regardless of whether anyone thinks it's a change that needed to be made, to me "blocked" is much clearer. It means the plug-in still exists, but it's not loaded.

 

I'm all for clarity. If it means what I think it means in this context - that a program won't support certain plug-ins so they won't be loaded if they're called - then I think "blocked" is clearer than "blacklisted." I suspect that a lot of today's users are young enough not to know what a blacklist is.

 

On the other hand, Master/Slave makes a lot of sense and it's been a standard term since the earliest days of synchronization. Anyone who wants to change those terms just wants to get rid of the suggestion of the time of the plantation era.

 

And then there are just dumb word usage that's been popularized by the news media and now creeps in everywhere. My favorite word to hate is "pivot" and I've encountered it three times in articles in the issue of Pro Sound News currently on my dining room table, and I'm just a couple of articles into it. And another of my words that make me scream is "social distance." Within our field here, I've encountered that often in articles about live events and recording sessions.

 

DAZliEA.jpg

 

 

 

[Refraining here from commenting on all the schools, highways, and buildings named for Confederate heroes being re-named to erase that part of Virginia's rich history]

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My Dad was a WWII vet. The Army needed a lot of meteorologists in a hurry to help with air war - both offense and defense. He already had a geology degree, but signed up for a crash meteorology course at the Univ. of Chicago that got him into the service as a Lieutenant with a specialty. They sent him over right after the Normandy invasion. He had a small company and a big truck very much like a UPS truck, except it weighed who knows how much as trucks did in those days, and was crammed full of weather equipment. He had to take his small crew behind enemy lines to gather weather data at the local level and radio it back for use by the pilots and planners.

 

It was a dangerous job to say the least. I have a couple of ammo boxes he brought back, full of god-awful-looking shrapnel, part of what was left of one of his trucks that got hit. He lost a lot of men, saw Patton, was in on the occupation of Germany. I'm quite proud of him for all this.

 

On the other hand, he came back from the war with a long list of derogatory names for just about anyone who wasn't an American - and Americans who weren't the right type of American (pollacks, wops, etc.) got the slurs, too. He was right wing, dallied with the John Birch Society, and it just drove him nuts that Cassius Clay changed his name to Mohammed Ali, just couldn't leave it alone. Many dinner-time speeches on that one and many other similar rants, some directly targeting myself. Three martinis got him all loosened up and righteous.

 

So I opted for the suburban hippie thing, and set myself in quiet but firm opposition to all this bigotry of my Dad's. He knew it and gave me a lot of grief. He was basically a good father, a good neighbor, and a regular guy who was much of a muchness with all the other guys of his generation.

 

So what do I do with this heritage? I love and honor my Dad, and at the same time I fully recognize his flaws and failings. I don't feel superior to him, but my entire adult life has been shaped by my determination to avoid the bigotry and narrow-mindedness that he sometimes represented.

 

Where are we going to find perfect heroes? Do we burn everything from the past that doesn't meet the criteria of the contemporary cause de jour? Are we so perfect that we are offended and rejecting of anything and anybody that isn't perfect??

 

Believe me, future generations will look at us and wonder about our mix of awful and wonderful, and feel conflicted whether to hang their heads in shame or defend their heritage. I say yes and yes.

 

nat

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Where are we going to find perfect heroes? Do we burn everything from the past that doesn't meet the criteria of the contemporary cause de jour? Are we so perfect that we are offended and rejecting of anything and anybody that isn't perfect??

 

Believe me, future generations will look at us and wonder about our mix of awful and wonderful, and feel conflicted whether to hang their heads in shame or defend their heritage. I say yes and yes.

Penny Lane was supposedly named after 18th-century Liverpool slave trader James Penny. In the fall of 2019, my wife and I traveled to Northern England including Liverpool, and did the "Magical Mystery Tour." The guide acknowledged the links to the past, but said there was resistance to changing the name because "if you erase the past you can't learn from it." Plus, there was a song about it or something like that...

 

btw- Liverpool was a blast, even though a bit heavy on the Beatles references. The British Music Experience is there (kind of a mini-Rock and Roll HOF, but actually better), and it was interesting to see that George and Ringo grew up in Council Housing, Paul in a nice middle-class home, and John was actually a rich kid in comparison; so much for Working Class Hero.

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Like others I don't want to dive too deep into this end of the pool, but to me, history is history. What happened, happened. We can't erase it, but we can learn from it. I can think of no better rationale for the human condition than to identify errors, acknowledge them, learn from them, and not make them in the future.
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Like others I don't want to dive too deep into this end of the pool, but to me, history is history. What happened, happened. We can't erase it, but we can learn from it. I can think of no better rationale for the human condition than to identify errors, acknowledge them, learn from them, and not make them in the future.

 

In Fresno, I met a woman who was in Cambodia when it was bombed and then came Pol Pot. She was too small (5) to work so they let her stay with a woman who was too old to work.

One night around 3 am she woke me up and told me everything she remembered from that time - Dad breaking out of one camp, breaking Mom and brother out of other camps, finding the last brother out in the jungle where he lived by eating frogs and anything he could find. Dad led a group of villagers including his family through the jungles at night to a refugee camp in Thailand.

 

From there they were sponsored to go to the Phillipines, then North Carolina and somehow she ended up in a photo class in Fresno where I was a lab assistant.

 

It is a horrendous history but I don't want it "erased", ever. Humans are already pretty terrible at forgetting their mistakes and repeating them, that was something that should never happen again.

Somehow, she is cheerful and hopeful, I spoke with her on the phone 3 days ago.

 

Hopefully I didn't get too political just now, felt like sharing that.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Thank you. What you said has nothing to do with politics, it's about the human spirit.

 

I want to mention one other thing. The world is analog, not digital. A good example is the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. He did horrific acts, not the least of which was a massacre of 300 Union troops, mostly black, after they had surrendered. He was also the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and post-civil war, suppressed voting rights of blacks in the South through violence and intimidation. Not a nice person, to say the least. He bought the whole Confederacy/slavery thing hook, line, and sinker.

 

Bad guy, right? Take his bust out of state houses, right? A truly horrible person who did horrible deeds.

 

But...as noted (accurately) in Wikipedia, he later realized he was on the wrong side of history, as well as morality.

 

After the lynch mob murder of four blacks who had been arrested for defending themselves in a brawl at a barbecue, Forrest wrote to Tennessee Governor John C. Brown in August 1874 and "volunteered to help 'exterminate' those men responsible for the continued violence against the blacks," offering "to exterminate the white marauders who disgrace their race by this cowardly murder of Negroes."

 

On July 5, 1875, Forrest gave a speech before the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association, a post-war organization of black Southerners advocating to improve the economic condition of blacks and to gain equal rights for all citizens. At this, his last public appearance, he made what The New York Times described as a "friendly speech" during which, when offered a bouquet of flowers by a young black woman, he accepted them, thanked her, and kissed her on the cheek. Forrest spoke in encouragement of black advancement and of endeavoring to be a proponent for espousing peace and harmony between black and white Americans.

 

In response to the Pole-Bearers speech, the Cavalry Survivors Association of Augusta, the first Confederate organization formed after the war, called a meeting in which Captain F. Edgeworth Eve gave a speech expressing strong disapproval of Forrest's remarks promoting inter-ethnic harmony, ridiculing his faculties and judgment, and berating the woman who gave Forrest flowers as "a mulatto wench". The association voted unanimously to amend its constitution to expressly forbid publicly advocating for or hinting at any association of white women and girls as being in the same classes as "females of the negro race". The Macon Weekly Telegraph newspaper also condemned Forrest for his speech, describing the event as "the recent disgusting exhibition of himself at the negro jamboree."

 

To me, Forrest is someone who shouldn't be condemned without an asterisk. He should be held up as an example of doing the right thing - not because of his horrific acts, but because he learned, of his need to repudiate them later in life, and pay the consequences of repudiating those acts. He identified his errors, acknowledged them, learned from them, and not only didn't make them in the future, but dealt with the condemnation he attracted because he felt compelled to do the right thing.

 

Or take Malcolm X, a firebrand who excoriated "white devils," and preached racism and to some degree violence, while simultaneously encouraging blacks to be self-reliant and to separate themselves from whites. Later in life, though, he had an epiphany, and came to the conclusion that all men are brothers. As he said to Alex Haley after a journey to Africa:

 

"Listening to leaders like Nasser, Ben Bella, and Nkrumah awakened me to the dangers of racism. I realized racism isn't just a black and white problem. It's brought bloodbaths to about every nation on earth at one time or another.

 

Brother, remember the time that white college girls came into the restaurantâââthe one who wanted to help the [black] Muslims and the whites get togetherâââand I told her there wasn't a ghost of a chance and she went away crying? Well, I've lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent, I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a [black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie thenâââlike all [black] MuslimsâââI was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of himself if he's ready to pay the cost. It cost me 12 years.

 

That was a bad scene, brother. The sickness and madness of those daysâââI'm glad to be free of them."

 

I have tremendous admiration and respect for both Nathan Bedford Forrest and Malcolm X (in fact if he was alive today, I'd bet he would be an honored Senator). They learned, they grew, and they did what they could to overcome their programming and break free of it. They thought for themselves, and came to conclusions which I think represent the shining side of the human condition.

 

This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with being human beings who live, grow, and learn. We all make mistakes. But we also have the power to correct them. Whether we choose to do so or not is up to us.

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This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with being human beings who live, grow, and learn. We all make mistakes. But we also have the power to correct them. Whether we choose to do so or not is up to us.

 

And thank you in turn, an excellent post. I could go on for hours but I've said what I needed to and you took that idea and added hugely to it.

I like how it stays centered and moderate on MPN and don't want to challenge that status quo as I've often found that with freedom comes an insurmountable situation and eventually a sense of alienation.

 

I don't deny that every body has an opinion and the right to state it but there seems to be an overall agreement here that we are family because music. That is deep enough, powerful enough to heal us all.

I love having a safe spot. I hav grown and changed a great deal, there is still progress to be made.

Cheers, Kuru

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I always found the name odd, and mostly didn't like it showing up in browser history lol. I think that's why they had the GearSZ variant URL, that even has a different logo. It still shows in history as "Gearslutz" though.

Yamaha: Motif XF8, MODX7, YS200, CVP-305, CLP-130, YPG-235, PSR-295, PSS-470 | Roland: Fantom 7, JV-1000

Kurzweil: PC3-76, PC4 (88) | Hammond: SK Pro 73 | Korg: Triton LE 76, N1R, X5DR | Emu: Proteus/1 | Casio: CT-370 | Novation: Launchkey 37 MK3 | Technics: WSA1R

Former: Emu Proformance Plus & Mo'Phatt, Korg Krome 61, Roland Fantom XR & JV-1010, Yamaha MX61, Behringer CAT

Assorted electric & acoustic guitars and electric basses | Roland TD-17 KVX | Alesis SamplePad Pro | Assorted organs, accordions, other instruments

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