twice_immigrant

1. Don't Be An Asshat.

More added as needed.

Seriously. It makes me sick to my stomach, to read this. How can people so blithely mix misanthropy and philanthropy? Why don't their puny hearts bust open from the trial of holding on to two mutually incompatible worldviews at the same time?

Talk about punishing the children for the sins of their fathers! Maybe that's how it works: they just figure it's biblically approved, and stop thinking about it. In fact, I'd bet on it.

Sigh. Where's my flying car, and where's my damn reset button?

Well, my friends, I appear before you with a request for job leads/opportunities in the Hartford, CT area. rikibeth has been unexpectedly laid off, and is looking for work.

She is a professional cook with excellent organizational and time management skills, and can also serve as a useful beta-reader for those with fiction-writing needs.

I'll ask her to add anything she wants to in the comments, other skills, any restrictions, and so on. If you've got a tip, or know someone who might, do please let us know. Besides being an awesome person, she's also a great mom (for reasons I will not disclose, but take the word of a parent for it), a hard worker, and is further possessed of a fierce intellect. I won't hesitate to recommend her to anyone you can name.

I went to a meetup recently of an online progressive site, whose name I'm deliberately not mentioning here (for good, if hidden, reasons), and while there a picture was taken of me and the proprietor of that site.

And I like the pic very much, so I'm sharing it. :)



I've been a bit quiet lately here, and my apologies for that; I've been dealing with fairly bad pain issues related to my disability, and haven't been able to do nearly as much online as I am wont to do.

Well, after a sincerely fantabulous weekend here in Real Life Shakesville, with gorgeous weather, good fun times, and of course companionable time spent with the inimitable Ms. McEwan (and her drily witty man, and several amusing cats), we'll probably be stopping off on our way home somewhere around Ann Arbor or so, before taking the rest of the trip in the morning.

The meetup was fabulous, really great. It went on for something like 10 or 11 hours, and we had probably 20 to 25 Shakers out, all told. As it ever is, it was delightful to put faces and smiles to the names I've seen scrolling by so often, and even more so to run into the people who lurk, rather than posting.

I've said this in my other blog many, many times: I am one kick-ass lucky woman. I have awesome partners (*waves to Tha Spryte!*), brilliant friends, and even a couple of people who think the word "celebrity" is reasonably applicable to me (zuh?).

I think I love being me.

One hundred and forty-two of my siblings were stolen from their lives this year. This is triple the reported number in previous years, though it's unclear whether that's more frequent reporting, or more frequent occurrence, or a mix of both.

Je me souviens, mes enfants; requiescat in pacem.

...of why Caitie is careful about revealing who she is professionally, here's another solid reason. :/

(Trigger warning: contains description by victim of her sexual assault)

This would be why Caitie is very, very careful to be real legal-like when she's in the US of A, as she has little choice in doing occasionally what with a partner based there.

The same people administer the border and the police, top-down, as they do immigration.

Why is Caitie careful? This is why.

Is bipartisanship really bipartisan if it's unilateral and unreciprocated?

Discuss.

I've alluded to this a couple of times in comments and posts at Shakesville lately, so I thought I should say something more substantive.

Where I've been is in hermitage, largely due to depression. I'm fighting it best I can (I get bad side effects - as in, psychotic breaks - when I take anti-depressants), being loved by those who love me, inviting friends over, trying to get out when I can. I work at home by far the majority of the time (I work as a translator, if you didn't know from elsewhere), and my primary partner lives in another country, so I'm alone a good deal of the time. Now in itself, this isn't an issue. I'm a big introvert, always have been, and I get a certain amount of recharge from being alone.

But when you combine major depressive episodes with constant aloneness, bad things can happen. I sometimes forget to eat, until late in the day, when I've got a raging headache and I'm so hungry I'm sick with it. It's like a switch goes on, and *ting*, I'm aware of my appetite again. My sleep schedule is way, WAY out of whack. I've got long-term projects sitting on the counter in line to get on the back burner, there're so many of them.

So anyway. I'm alright, making my way through the world, trying to swing a mighty teaspoon when I can. Still doing what I know how, to keep myself in a going-ahead sort of way.

Thanks very much to those who've written me privately to ask if I'm alright; I am, for some value of "alright". I still have a roof and heat, food to eat, meds to control my pain, and I'm loved by way more people than one person could possibly deserve. More than that is just gravy on the prime rib of life: nice to have, but if the life is well-cooked, the gravy isn't needed.

An interesting review on a re-read of Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time, for those on my list who read HPL, taking head-on the serious loathsomeness of the self-named "Great Race" and their repeated wilful genocidal acts.

It's interesting timing, because I've been thinking of doing something recently myself, in the nature of a re-read of all of Lovecraft, this time taking notes on his clear support for major elements of the kyriarchy. Would make an interesting survey article for a progressive lit-mag, wouldn't it?

Alright, I'm busy with work today (and anticipating a chance to play Arkham Horror tonight myself, I want the work DONE before evening!), but I had an interesting e-mail this morning from Shakesville:

I'm a new Shakesville addict, and in reading some of your comments, I've noticed you're a gamer.  I'd like to be one, but I haven't a clue.  Do I need to buy equipment, e.g., xBOX, or PlayStation, etc., or will a PC do?  Are there games you can play alone?  How do I figure out which games are not too sexist, but still fun; there's millions of shit out there.

So - got any suggestions for solitaire-friendly games that won't annoy the hell out of a progressivist?

I'll start off with Arkham Horror, a board game that, yes, my curious new friend, is suitable for solitaire play, though much more fun with several people.

Give your recs in comments - tabletop, video, LARP, tell us what you love (and maybe what you don't) from the POV of a person looking to get into gaming, but who hasn't necessarily got a group to play with (making, say, tabletop RPGs problematic).

Shaker Glia asked in a comment thread at Shakesville whether someone might be able to recommend a starting point for a person wanting to investigate the writings of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, so rather than derail the thread over there, I offer this open thread for discussion of HPL and his works.

I want to point out up front that much of his work is problematic - and I am using my English understatement powers there - in terms of racism. Frankly put, HPL was more racist than the mean even for his time, certainly among published authors, and some of his lines just make me want to go stabbity-stabbity. He was a textbook example of the concept of the white man as default human: anything not in that rubric was "degenerate", "half-breeds", and so on. It's pretty ugly stuff. And I want to say explicitly that it's okay with me if this thread goes into some examination of HPL's bigotry.

Recommendations for good starting points, anyone?

My personal favourite story is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, about identity theft in a visceral sense, ancient evil, mysterious spells and so on. The Colour Out of Space is another, walking the strange hills of Lovecraft's New England; and the classic Call of Cthulhu is, well, a classic of the genre.

Anyone else?

Well, actually, not really so much.

See, the TSA is instituting new rules today, another in the increasing list of silly rituals intended to make people feel as though the War on Terror is being "won" (see also, taking shoes off, dismantling all hand luggage, body-cavity-imaging machines, et c., et c.).

These rules will apply to any flight originating in the US.

Can't see what the problem is? Might be an example of cisprivilege there. Imagine, if you will, you're a trans person who has just transitioned. Per the local laws, you've not been able to change your name legally yet, nor your gender marker. So now, in the name of a spurious increase in security, trans people are to be outed to total strangers, or are not permitted to fly.

Because, as we all know, lots of terrorists like to fly around pretending to be trans people. It's such a respected, non-vilified identity, you can certainly understand how someone wanting not to be noticed would choose it. What could be more incognito than suddenly adopting a gender presentation you don't actually have, since it's so easy to pass right off the bat, right? That's what all the movies say.

Gee, that doesn't sound lethally dangerous. It's not as though trans people get killed much in this kind of situation - and I'm sure the highly-paid, exquisitely-trained operatives at the security counters will be very careful to maintain trans people's confidentiality.

But hey, no one discriminates against trans people, so why should we need rights protection, right?

Tip of the CaitieCap to Shakesville's Karatemonkey, who sent this link in to Shakespeare's Sister herself, Melissa McEwan.

Crossposted from Shakesville.

Yet another update on that Canadian citizen languishing in a Kenyan jail. You may recall I've written on this topic a couple of times before.

As of yesterday, though a government-paid DNA test has confirmed that Ms. Suaad Hagi Mohamud is, in fact, the Canadian citizen she claims to be, and as should have been obvious to anyone after she offered to have a DNA test to prove she's the mother of her son, who's still at home in Toronto with his father.

Now she's proven her citizenship (which, again, big problems here - or do any of you really think this whole thing is unrelated to her ethnicity and/or her names?), she's coming home right away, right?

Not quite. Canada hasn't even asked the Kenyan government to drop the charges that it asked her to be prosecuted on - the Canadian government voided her passport after it was challenged, and claimed she wasn't the Canadian citizen she said she was - so she's still in Kenya, waiting for her government to get its damned thumb out of its collective Harper and BRING HER HOME!

I flatly do not believe that a white Canadian would be facing this kind of appalling treatment. Much as Canada wants to pride itself on being multicultural and post-racial and shit, it's an odd sort of coincidence that it's only Canadians with notably non-English names who end up being deported, jailed, and tortured.

If we want to live up to the reputation we claim we want, we need to do better at this.

Bring our fellow Canadian home, Mr. Harper*. Pick up the damn phone and get someone to feel some urgency about this. Do something to help me feel less ashamed of my country.

* The current Prime Minister of Canada is the (to me) loathsome Stephen Harper. I use "Harper" here as a euphemism for a human body part known for emitting faeces. It seems an apt analogy.

Crossposted from Shakesville; previous posts linked in that Shakesville post.

A most excellent political cartoon, on press reaction to the killing of several women at a fitness club last week - link is work-safe.

For the visually impaired among my readers, a brief description:

The cartoon features a man walking while reading a newspaper. His thought is "How could something like this happen?" The newspaper's headline reads "LA Fitness Shooter Targeted Women". In the background are three shops: "Magazines That Objectify Women", "DVDs That Glorify Sexism, Rape and Violence", and "Misogynistic Video Games and Music".

Thanks to young feminist for the heads-up, and to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for printing a cartoon giving such a clear indictment of rape culture and misogyny.

-=-=-

Also, from Quaker Agitator , a brilliant satirical look at the "liberal bias" of the MSM.

I cannot say it better than the comments reproduced at Alas, A Blog, in this post. Please be aware that many of these comments could be extremely triggering. Also note that the blogger is clear about having cherry-picked the worst comments, but also clear that there wasn't much opposition to them either.

This is one of the reasons why I'm willing to use the F-word: I'm a feminist. Three women are dead, more are in critical condition, and these people are making excuses for the killer. None of them had ever met their killer: they were shot for being women. The killer also had some appallingly racist views, but I'm not linking to his blog, nor naming him, to prove it; you can find excerpts without much effort - I'm not aware of the racial makeup of the group of women he attacked, so I don't know how much his racism played into this particular act, but it shouldn't be ignored, either. His misogyny and his racism are a classic case of intersectionality.

The ocean is deep, but my body will wear out before my teaspoon will.

This made me cry, and it should. I cannot stand that our world, our culture, does this to people. This is why I say it's my duty to speak up in those places where POC aren't, to say "there will be no safe space for racism around me". To challenge the assumption that I'll share their bigotry, enjoy demeaning some other human for existing.

Anger isn't good for people. I don't want Karnythia (the author) to not be angry: I want for her to not need to be angry. I think it isn't hard to see her need now. I want to be part of making that need go away.

Not by erasing race: "I don't see race" is a very privileged thing to say - one can only say it easily if one is part of the favoured racial group (as I am); the rest have it shoved in their faces constantly.

Not by tolerance (which always sounds so grudging).

By acceptance that different is as good as same; by investigation of privilege; by reduction of power structures built to maintain privilege, by refusing to be complicit in bigotry. By standing up when someone is being ill-treated because of some irrelevant¹ trait, and saying "You can't do that to one of my fellow human beings."

It isn't easy. Sometimes it isn't fun, being the one who says, "Well, no, I didn't think the joke/movie/sketch/fax-forward/e-mail was funny, and here's why." It isn't fun to look into yourself and find the artifacts of the socialization we are drenched in, the deep-seated beliefs about people who are Asian, Christian, asexual, using wheelchairs, or whatever trait.

But if the goal is to make a world where POC (and other groups) don't need to be angry in our culture, it's stuff that needs to happen. We walk and live in a constant smog of discrimination of all sorts, something we've come to just accept and lose sight of, something which has become just "what we breathe". If we want our species to be civilized, how can we keep putting such a small sample of it on a pedestal, and not mourn for all the rest whose exceptionalities go unnoticed?

¹ To the discussion at hand - skin colour while getting a mortgage, say, or sexuality while asking for a marriage licence, or any of a million other ways in which people discriminate. Not meant to suggest that such traits are irrelevant in themselves.

In hopes of gathering material to take a run at the Shakesville Blogaround this coming week, I'm soliciting linky goodness to interesting progressivist posts or blogs.

Lay 'em on me in comments, folks! Thanks!

FilthyGrandeur has put together a beautiful post on white people's responsibility to speak up when racist acts happen in front of them (us, in my case, being white myself).

Go read it. I'll wait.

Okay?

Now remember: every time we let people slide on that stuff, we become complicit in it. If we really want it to end, we (and I am speaking to my fellow white people here, specifically) have to do the heavy lifting. POC can't be expected, by definition, to deal with this kind of "just-between-us-white-folk" racism: we are the only ones who can do it.

This is an important part of unpacking the knapsack - and no one is going to do it for us.