twice_immigrant

1. Don't Be An Asshat.

More added as needed.

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.

I strongly encourage you to read this article over at pandagon.net (unless you are a POC yourself, in which case it's unlikely to tell you anything you haven't heard before):

Post-racial My Black Ass!

It's not just on the topic of the arrest of Professor Gates in Cambridge MA last week, but also a heartbreaking series of other examples of the daily demeaning bullshit faced by people of colour in our so-called "post-racial" world. It's well-written, copiously annotated, and highly educational, for those of us fortunate enough not to have to put up with this crap.

someday i'd like not to be broken;
to be able to go to a show
sit in the very front row
not fearing what words will be spoken.

someday i would like not to hurt so;
to face down all my fears
dismiss them with jeers
that isn't how it seems to work, though.

someday i would like to feel no fear;
bravely go out to any play
not to fear what they'll say
nor worry my ghosts will appear.

someday i would like to be okay;
that no scene will betoken
that intimate choking
which drove me inside and away.

pulse pounding racing
old demons facing
fear all-embracing
in my core retracing

unspoken
despite her no
sparking on old fears
all on a long-ago day.

(c) 2009, twice_immigrant

Last night, some very good friends came by to tell me that my dog (one of the friends is my ex, with whom he'd been living) had been struck by a car, and that he had died as a result.

Toby was (we think) a little over eight years old. We'd gotten him when our kids were teenagers, from a shelter out the other side of Toronto. He was a beautiful beagle cross, a mutt, with a serious trauma history (we assume). When we met him, he was a submissive urinator. Meet his eyes? He peed. Call his name? Peed. Basically, interact with him in any way, and he's peeing. Get him on linoleum, and he would just shake, poor wee thing.

Over the next four years, he slowly came to be more confident. He got over the chronic urination within a year or two, and by yesterday, he almost never did it anymore (from fear, anyway). My partner and I broke up, and since she had the house (I got an apartment), he stayed with her. I missed him, a bunch, but since she and I remained good friends throughout and since, I saw him regularly. He would even come stay with me sometimes, particularly after my current girlfriend (who lives in another country) would go home after a visit, he'd come and stay with me to keep me company for a couple of days.

We couldn't play with Toby much. He wouldn't fetch: his submissiveness interfered. If you threw a ball over there, he'd look at it, then look up at you as if to say, "Yep, you're right, it's MUCH better over there!" If you tried to play tugs with him, he'd just let go as soon as he realised you weren't going to.

He was a gentle, quiet type, except in two circumstances (the quiet, I mean - gentle was pretty much always): when his people came home, he'd greet us with a butt-wiggling, tail-smacking happy dance, complete with whines and yelps of pure joy. And (the reason I couldn't have him in my apartment), when he was left alone somewhere, he'd howl and cry for hours.

My youngest had a child a little over a year ago (yes, T_I is a grandmother), and Skyler loved Toby: he'd crawl over to him, bite his ears, put his fingers in Toby's mouth, pull on his tail, and the whole time, Toby would just lie there quietly, usually looking at whomever was the nearest adult as if to say, "Yah, I'll let him do it, but I wouldn't hate it if you could make him stop." Like I said, gentle.

I'm going to miss him awfully, as will my ex, and the rest of our family and friends.

Thanks, Toby. Best dog ever, little guy. Rest well.

My own contribution to the album of Palin-filks:

Mrs. Brightside

I'm coming out of the north
And I’ve been doing just fine
Gotta be the VP,
Cause I'm a hockey mom

It started out with a wink
But now they want me to think
It was only a wink
It was only a wink

Now we're falling behind
And he's losing his mind
Now he's starting to choke
Says I'm becoming a drag
And we're going to lose
And our platform is sick
The economy's dead

But I'm starting to wink now
Kissing my flag pin now
Watch me go

I can't believe they won't vote for us
We're keeping control

Stupidity
Bridge to nowhere planned by me
Shooting bears from in the skies
Russia's there before my eyes

But it’s just so nice today
Washington is calling me
Open up my folksy eyes
‘Cause I’m Mrs Brightside

I'm coming out of the north
And I’ve been doing just fine
Gotta be the VP,
Cause I'm a hockey mom

It started out with a wink
But now they want me to think
It was only a wink
It was only a wink

Now they're pulling ahead
Even Fox says we're dead
And he's started to fume
'Bout Obama and doom
How we're going to lose
And the polls are so bad
But it won't make me sad

Cause I'm starting to wink now
Kissing my flag pin now
Watch me go

I can't believe they won't vote for us
We're keeping control

Stupidity
Bridge to nowhere planned by me
Shooting bears from in the skies
Russia's just behind that rise

But it’s just so nice today
Washington is calling me
Open up my folksy eyes
‘Cause I’m Mrs Brightside

On a tip from Shakesville resident Blank, who lives in Venezuela, I found this tragic story: it would appear that the Honduran army has killed at least two of their own citizens, during protests aimed at opening the airport to let President Zelaya back into the country. The police and army, under orders from the coup leaders, occupied the airport and insisted they wouldn't let Zelaya's plane touch down, no matter who was on it (several officials from international organizations such as OAS were on the aircraft as well). The plane diverted to Nicaragua, where other regional leaders are gathering to support Zelaya.

International organizations such as the EU, the OAS and so on have been condemning the coup, and insisting that the coup leaders allow the President back into the country to serve out his term.

Remember that all this was started because Zelaya was asking to have an unofficial referendum on whether or not to address the Presidential term limit during the next election. He wouldn't benefit from this; his term would finish the day that the referendum would happen, if a referendum was wanted by the people.

The generals insist that Zelaya's intent was to extend his own term, which would be illegal in any case, since even if the referendum were staged, and if it did come down on the side of changing the Constitution, it wouldn't be changed instantly - it would just create a mandate for the government to effect the change.

And now they're killing their own to keep it from happening.

Please consider writing e-mail or letters to your nearest Honduran embassy or consulate. Remember: be firm but polite when you are writing to diplomatic missions. When addressing an ambassador, it is appropriate to address your missive with "Excellency" or "Dear Mr./Madam Ambassador"; Consuls may be addressed as "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Mr./Ms. $NAME". While it might be satisfying to ignore these protocols, I can tell you from a number of years' experience writing letters with Amnesty International, you go rude, you go in the circular file.

The aim of writing letters is to let the coup leaders know that the world is watching, and that we do give a damn, and that it's not okay to kill your people in the name of protecting them. It may be only a teaspoon's worth...but someone taught me that can be a damn good start.

Alright, I'm asking for your help here. All comments will be screened; I'm asking for you to give me the names of any songs you can think of that have been on the radio/TV music channels/other big media push (use your judgement - if it's one of the eight songs that never get played on the album, it's probably not been on the radio much), and have "sex noises" in them. Anything that might reasonably be defined as sexual sounds counts. I'd rather have too many, with some debatable ones, than miss a bunch. Think, say, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, if you will.

Point is not so much "what songs exist", but more "what songs exist which have had some degree of popularity?" No restrictions on genre, era, language, or anything else. You got an opera song with heavy breathing, bring it on.

I don't need links to the songs or their videos or anything; I'd just like to get the song names, artists, the year if you've got it, maybe nationality of the band/singer, and whether the sex noises involve:

1) one woman
2) one man
3) one woman, one man
4) several women, no men
5) several women, one man
6) one woman, several men
7) no women, several men
8) unknown/androgynous/too many to tell/whatever else

Of all the data, the latter is the most important: who made the noises, and how many. The other stuff is more so I can give examples when I write about it.

I have some theories, but I'll be interested to see if they prove out. Not advancing them so as not to bias selection.

Please feel free to pass links to this post anywhere you like; all comments are screened, til I've had a chance to look over the data.

Edit: Can I point out, the most important piece of data is the last one, about what the grouping of people is? I don't have access to most of these songs, so it'd save me an enormous amount of work if you could give as good a guess at it as you can. :)

A brief twice-immigrant pointer to Witch-words, a linguist's blog, specifically to a post about her displeasure in having encountered a rather vile website. This is how you can be an ally to trans folk. Because we (and I mean both trans men and trans women here: men get their identity ripped away in the process, too) get hit with the same silencing tactics as any woman (which is not to suggest my trans brothers are women!), and because making any direct link to such a site would be simply expecting to end up harrassed by the people therein: speaking up about this kind of thing in a place where it can be unsafe for trans folk to do it (and I mean all gender-variant folk here) is a good action for a cis ally.

I think that last sentence, all six lines of it, has exceeded the maximum number of parenthetical thoughts permitted in a sentence, under the Dark and Stormy Night Act of 2007.

Jadelyn says this in description of herself:

Linguist*Witch*Feminist*Pacifist*Progressive*Activist*Writer
Queer*Gamer*Musician*Exile*Lover*Superhero
This is my space. And I am All In.