Tuesday Has No Phones

I'm wearing purple today. Mind you I own so much purple that it's statistically difficult to find a day when I'm not wearing it. But even so, I made sure to put purple on today, along with a fabulous pair of green ballet flats.

I have to admit on things like this I can't help but wonder what if those who died didn't particularly like purple? Like I get there's a theme and all, but if I died of, say, breast cancer and people wore pink in my honor I would so come back and haunt you all (probably by following you around and going "REALLY? Seriously? Do you know me AT ALL??" and then maybe doing the "I'm not touching you" game just to make sure you were as annoyed as I was about the whole thing.)

But, barring evidence to the contrary, who does it hurt? So I have my purple on. It does make you wonder if the other people you see wearing purple today are there with you, so there's that if nothing else.

I was never bullied to tears in school, though certainly I took my share of teasing and tormenting like any kid did (esp chubby, nerdy kids). Supposedly some kids called me and another girl lesbians in elementary school, but I didn't hear it if it happened. Which isn't to say it might not be true. Certainly I've had people try to use "lesiban" and the like as insults.

Typically, though, I was the one standing up for the bullied kids. I am nothing if not my mother's daughter, so seeing others getting picked on was always a great way to get me right into the fold. (My weapon of choice? Sarcasm.)

(Amusing side story: there was only once in my life when a school bully gave me the "I'll see you after school!" let's-get-ready-to-rumble speech. Her location of choice was, with no irony on her part, between the church and our Catholic school. Sure enough when school was over she was there, lying in wait. I walked right past her, feeling no need to dignify this nonsense with my attention. "You can't do that!" she said when she saw me. "Watch me," I replied and walked right on home.)

None of this is to say that I had awesome anti-bully skills, or that bullying can be survived with a skilled combination of boredom and a rapier wit. Not all bullies are alike, and there's no one-size-fits-all answer for how the victims can or should deal with it.

What it is to say is that bullying happens, at worst it's deadly and at best it's really fucking stupid. As Winston Churchill said, "It's the kind of horseshit up with which I will not put."

I haven't said much about the current "putting the 'con' back in 'non-consentual'" situation since 1) busy and 2) anyone who thinks I'm into victim blaming clearly doesn't know me very well and I assume that those of you still reading me these days at least have a passing familiarity with what my opinion is in these situations.

That being said, every so often someone is so wrong on the internet that I have to say something.

As for example.

First of all, I'd love to know when she got elected to speak for all pagans. 'cause yanno there's only one single kind and all pagans agree on everything ever and no pagans in the history of all of paganism have ever once debated basic religious tenants like "What are our core philosophies?" or "Shall we have one god, or two?" or "What toppings shall we put on our pizza, so mote it be?".

You know it's going to be a good one when it starts with how personal responsibility is important to pagans because as we all know every other religion out there is all about shoving responsibility onto other people. I mean if I had a nickel for every time the Dalai Lama lost his temper because somebody made his tea too hot, or all the times Saint Therese said "Fuck it, why don't you take the damn garbage out?" I know I would be a very rich woman. Though perhaps Rabbi Hillel put it best when he said "If I am not for myself, who will be for me to put the blame on, especially when things get fercockt?"

Sure it's possible for us to say no to eating an entire cheesecake. But that's because rarely does cheesecake take the form of a human being who is in some way trying to block/harass/intimidate/attack/in some way do harm to us. Because if cheesecake is this problematic for you, I daresay understanding the ins and outs of paganism may not be your biggest problem.

Mind you, we are talking about a post where people are apparently eating mud for the vitamins, so possibly cheesecake is a large and looming problem. It is not for me to say.

Regardless, while the idea of personal responsibility, (c) PaganCo Enterprises, LLC, is a good one as a broad concept anyone with personal responsibility should be able to ask themselves "Is telling someone that they are at fault for not removing themselves from a potentially dangerous situation a thoughtful and compassionate post for my LJ? Am I showing personal responsibility of my own by claiming this point of view is related to paganism, as though pagans everywhere don't have enough to deal with with their far too common reputation of being either Satanists or twee Hot Topic fans who think being pagan means naming themselves Sylvyr Blacke Rayvyns Rosee and talking about how they're Team Jacob because he's of the earth? Could I perhaps be spending my time more productively with a slice of cheesecake and a marathon of the Golden Girls?" and then answering those questions in a way that will not make a ton of folks out there on the interwebs look at your post and say "...dude."

I'm all for personal responsibility. But there's huge differences between recognizing and making amends for when you've fucked up verses being in an uncomfortable to dangerous situation and not being able to teleport yourself out of it because you're nothing but a slacker. And yes, the latter involves victim blaming. Because you are blaming the victims. It's not a hugely complicated set of words. If so, perhaps tackle that in your dictionary before trying to teach concepts like personal responsibility to others.

And now I'm going to be personally responsible for taking myself to bed.

...not dirty.

By now you've probably heard about the political cartoon about the chimp and the stimulus. If not, read the link. I posted this in a discussion over on Journal Fen but it's long enough that I figured I may as well post it here.

In response to how the cartoon makes no sense:

Yeah. I mean if we were totally ignoring the racism aspect - for argument's sake let's sake it was a wild coyote, or panther, or insert any other animal here that was shot in reality and used in the cartoon - the cartoon doesn't mean anything. If you're trying to riff a joke from "wild animal attack" to "stimulus" then your comment would be more along the lines of using the animal to represent people who opposed the stimulus, or shooting down insane suggestions about how to fix the economy. Basically anything that covers the concept of "going wild/stopped by being shot." One could even argue for something that riffs off of the idea of a supposedly tame thing going beserk, which is arguably a better metaphor for wall street these days.

But if that's not the joke you're going for then frankly all that's left is the racism. Because the joke hinges on the audience automatically associating a chimp with the guy who came up with the stimulus package, with an undertone of violence against blacks being the 'correct' way to deal with them.

Compare the cartoon to any other joke that hinges on an "ism" and violence and you immediately see how it's trying to speak that language, albeit poorly. Without it there is no other way for the so-called joke to work*, which is why at best people read this and scratch their heads.

(* I realize there could be an argument of the whole monkeys/typewriters/Shakespeare thing but that again hinges on the audience instinctively thinking of the creator of the stimulus as some kind of gibbering idiot. Which, color aside, you could possibly get with an inarticulate moron like Dubya but not so much with Obama. Which is why even then it hinges on the audience making that connection solely based on the use of a chimp. It's a mental path of chimp->black guy->being stupid instead of chimp->stupidity->stupid thing you're referring to.)

Which all goes to say why I think any attempts at saying that the cartoonist didn't mean the racist part is utter bull because without the racist part the cartoon doesn't work.

Don't fuck with me and the proper construction of humor, man. I will cut you.

Do you ever ask yourself "What could possibly be more sexist, stupid, disgusting, and kinderwhoring than Bratz dolls?"

Well, now you know.

ladybug218 pointed out that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. IRONY!!!

In more positive news, vito_excalibur brings us the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program.

I mentioned this yesterday but it bears repeating: The Gift of Fear should be required reading for everyone. It's about understanding the psychology of violence and learning how to listen to your instincts. It completely ties in to the idea of the Back Each Other Up program because one of the things that keeps us from interfering when we see a situation where someone might be hurt is that we're scared of being wrong, of making a scene, of being considered rude or bitchy. Likewise it helps to show why something like the Open Source Boob Project is violating and frightening even though it wasn't about full-on violence or rape.

As a note, you should head on over to liviapenn's collection of links on this topic as she's done a far better job than I ever could of recapping the current controversy.

For those under a rock not in the know, the short version is that the folks at daily_deviant put up a prompt of "miscegenation." If you're unaware of this word you can pat yourselves on the back and be glad this particular bit of disgusting human history managed to pass you by. However the idea behind it is that whites should not marry outside of their race because non-whites are subhuman. It's not a compliment in other words. A synonym for this word would not be "snugglepalooza."

Again hit the links in liviapenn's LJ for far better rundowns than I could give the offensiveness of this term justice to. The point that I'm focusing on leaps ahead to this post by the DD mods, which has disallowed comments. So instead of replying over there, I reply over here.

Specifically I reply to:

Second, your interpretation of the word 'miscegenation' as "implicitly calling people of color niggers" is simply not the prevalent interpretation around the world. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation. (applying the term, among other ways, to denote a mixing of classes, and setting out the various historical contexts in which the word has been used)
http://www.answers.com/topic/miscegenation. (applying the term generally, to connote mixing of races)
http://miscegenation.com/ (an interracial dating site)

Because ARE YOU KIDDING ME? As a friendly tip: read the links you're using as your fact-checking sources before posting them as documentation. In order, Wikipedia's entry takes all of two sentences before stating "Today, the term 'miscegenation' in English-speaking countries is often a loaded word and is by many considered offensive." of which the second sentence is the one I just quoted.

Answers.com doesn't hit it out of the gate as quickly but in the second paragraph we get to "The enactment of antimiscegenation laws can be attributed to a variety of factors, including economic considerations and a desire on the part of some for the maintenance of so-called 'racial purity.'" and then a more detailed history on how the concept and the laws therein were created to, amongst other things, "to force indentured white female servants to marry black male slaves to produce more slaves by birth from a slave father" Well that sure sounds like 100% fun with no room for possible unhappy interpretations! And I'm sure a Harry Potter community would have no reason to think that the concept of "racial purity" would be espoused by anybody but the good guys!

Finally, Miscengenation.com, the "interracial dating site." Because lord knows a title bar wouldn't lie. Click the link. It's a portal. A portal used to point to other dating sites (though really it's mostly to other portals but at some point one assumes a dating site of some kind will pop up). Of which "interracial" is only one category, and it's the one suggested as the more relevant link by the site in question. It's not as though there's anybody in Harlem right now saying "I'd like to explore my dating options in terms of the human color spectrum. Let me hie straightaway to miscegenation.com, for verily this is the site which I and all my brothers and sisters of color shall truly find our needs catered to." It's a domain name that got cybersquatted by somebody for whatever fuck unknown reason but it ain't match.com for the next generation of Mr. and Mrs. Willis.

Look, I'm not saying the DD mods are racist. I'm sure they, like many folks, did not know how bad miscegenation is. However it is eyerollingly laughable to try to say "Even assuming your narrow interpretation of the word 'miscegenation' was shared by everyone – which it certainly is not" when their own frakkin' links to defend themselves prove Zvi's point and not theirs.

Christ. Skim and hit your scrollbar once in a while. It won't kill you.

ETA: Just for shits and giggles I googled "micegenation." Here are the links I got:

Our pals at Wiki (and again)
The Miscegenation Hoax, which describes how the idea of mixing races was used to scare people.
The American Heritage Dictionary, which admittedly does not reference the offensiveness of the term
The American Melting Pot? which covers a good chunk of this fun and fluffy history.

And then dictionary, history, history, history, and an LJ post about the offspring of a horse and a zebra. insert your own "His wife?" joke here

Those are all the links on the first Google page that I got. I'm now vaguely curious as to what search terms the DD mods used to get their links, as apparently you've got to work for them and, as I mention above, it's not like the links worked out too well.

Six Apart comments to news, not so much to paying customers.

The key quote?

"Our decision here was not based on pure legal issues. It was based on what community we want to build and what we think is appropriate within that community and what's not." -Barak Berkowitz, chairman and CEO, Six Apart

Also:

Berkowitz said the company would "obviously apologize" to anyone whose journal was deleted in error but added: "That's going to be a very small minority of the sites. I would be shocked if it's more than a dozen."

KISS MY ASS YOU FUCKING FUCK.

ETA: More info about the Warriors for Kissing My Ass Woman. Read it to find out whose opinion LJ likes more than ours.

Also I'm thebratqueen at Greatestjournal. Ditto Journalfen. I'm not leaving yet, but I want my options.

Why oh why do I torture myself by reading letters to the editor in my local paper? Either it's idiots who I just want to hit ("The next time George W. Bush wants to PROTECT OUR COUNTRY I guess we can all wait for him to GET A WARRENT like you LIBERAL COMMIE PINKOS keep insisting on BECAUSE YOU HATE FREEDOM AND WANT OSAMA TO KILL OUR BABIES and possibly KICK OUR PUPPIES TOO!") or, as it has been for months, it's people on every side of the fence sending ye olde standard "Thank you for supporting candidate _________! You can show your support for the candidate by sending a letter very similar to this one to your local paper!" which, really, is so similar no matter who the letter submitter is supporting I honestly don't know why the paper doesn't put a stop on posting any of them until somebody busts out an original word. And/or solve the problem by posting one single letter to cover it all:

"I was absolutely FASCINATED when [opposition candidate] said [accusation about beloved candidate's position on the Iraq war] given that his/her voting record CLEARLY shows [the exact same viewpoint on the war/an inability to have any opinion on the war without Bush or Clinton approving it first/an inabiliy to find the halls of Congress if given a compass, map, and a Sherpa guide and thus has no voting record at all to speak of]. In this post 9/11 world how on earth can we stand by and [allow Democrats to give the country over to Bin Laden with a red bow and "please sodomize us here" sign/allow Republicans to skip the middle man on that "give the country over to Bin Laden" bit and go right for the "please sodomize us" part]. Come November, I'm voting for [candidate name here] and I shake my head with sad disappointment over any one else who does otherwise."

Stitch n Bitch actually went off yesterday. Color me shocked, SHOCKED I tell you.

It was a weetiny group, but the girls were nice. We're going to try to do something every Tuesday. I got some more work done on my hat, which I shall eventually blog about over in the craft journal.

(Get me using blog as a verb, oooooooooo)

Also voted yesterday. You're welcome. BTW, can somebody tell Joe to stop calling the attack on his website "Roveian tactics"? Because Roveian tactics would be taking down the website yourself and accusing your opponant of being the one to do it, NOT THAT I MADE ANY ASSUMPTIONS AS SOON AS I SAW THE NEWS STORY, JOE, OH NO.

BTW, y'all should head on over to Stoney's LJ to find out about the homophobic gardening company. Because everybody knows only straight people buy flowers.

Thanks to soundingsea for the heads-up. From the Washington Post, we find out "New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon."

Urge to kill... rising....

( Article here, for when it comes down )

I could form a rebuttal but Salon already did for me.