[Content Note: Police brutality; racism.]
"Something about the way Mike Brown was killed started a fire in me that I can't ignore. [People who say they're tired of the demonstrations] can turn this off and on with a TV screen. But this is my reality. This is my life."—Dhorbua Shakur, one of the organizers of the demonstration happening in Clayton, Missouri, where a grand jury is deliberating whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown.
The grand jury's decision is expected this week.
Today, Democratic Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and "authorized the state's National Guard to support police in case of violence" after the announcement of the grand jury's decision.
Quote of the Day
The Walking Thread
[Content Note: Descriptions of violence. Spoilers are lurching around undeadly herein.]
If last week's episode of The Walking Dead was the worst ever episode (it definitely was), this week's episode was maybe the best. And it was still terrible! Because this fucking show.
But let's start with what was great about it: It was full of Carol and Daryl and basically nobody else! Just a screen full of mutually respectful badasses with the most stylish dystopian grey garb and THE BEST HAIR. Pow!
Also, I genuinely dug the first five minutes of this episode, which were a flashback to when Grimes (of course his stupid head had to squeeze itself into the episode somewhere!) had banished Carol from Grimes Gang for making better decisions than he makes.
Down the road, Carol pulls over to have herself a good cry, and of course some wretched zombie has to come slam his gurgling corpse against the passenger window. She screams at him to go away and leave her the fuck alone, in the way that you might unleash on some dipshit who tells you to "smile" when you're sitting at a bus stop crying after being fired, and I love this moment, because it shows just how goddamned annoying the constant onslaught of zombies is, and how emotionally exhausting to never have a moment of peace just to have a private, interrupted moment in which to sob.
Note to Self: Write a post about how The Walking Dead might be an unintentionally brilliant metaphor for street harassment.
Anyway. Back in the recent past, Carol and Daryl fly down darkened roads in a darkened car after the car with the white cross like the one which abducted Beth. (Remember that? If not, it doesn't matter. Because this show is stupid and who cares.) They follow the car all the way to Atlanta, where their car runs out of gas at a super inopportune moment, forcing them to abandon their vehicle and lose track of the white cross bandits.
Luckily, Carol knows a place nearby where they can hunker down for the night. It's temporary housing in the back of a social services building (nope), where Carol once stayed with her daughter Sophia (RIP Sophia) once before the zombiepocalypse. In case you forgot, once upon a time, at the beginning of the show, Carol was married to an abusive fuckhead, who died fully one million episodes ago.
In the corridors of the social services building, Carol and Daryl see on the other side of a frosted glass door the silhouettes of a zombified mother and daughter. Carol looks pained. Daryl tells her she doesn't have to kill them. The next morning, Carol wakes up to find him burning their corpses. She thanks him, and we are treated to a flashback of Carol and Tyreese burying Lizzie and Mika, in case you forgot why she was bothered by the thought of killing a zombie child.
Because you know how you need a special reason to be upset by having to kill a child whose brain has a virus that has turned it into a literal monster.
Carol and Daryl decide they need to get a better vantage point to look around the city for where Beth might be, so they make for a tall building.
As we follow them on their adventure, we see so much scattered cardboard everywhere. (Whut.) In humankind's nightmare future, the currency will be cardboard and flannel, so stock up! You heard it here first.
Carol and Daryl make their way into a building, where a bunch of zombies are trapped in sleeping bags and tents. They kill the ones in the sleeping bags and leave the ones trapped in the tents. I'm sure this won't come back to bite them in their collective ass!
Spying out a window, they spot a van trapped on the precipice of an overpass. It has a white cross on it, which Daryl says is a clue. So they head back out to make for the van.
But they're stopped by Noah, the kid Beth helped escape, who relieves them of their weapons and then slashes open the tents to let loose the zombies.
OH NOES! IF ONLY THERE WERE TENSION HERE BUT THERE IS NOT BECAUSE WE HAVE SEEN SCENES OF THE FUTURE IN WHICH BOTH OF THEM ARE ALIVE!
Fight fight fight. Kill kill kill. They reach the van, and climb inside it to look for clues, as it teeters precariously over the edge of the overpass. They figure out what hospital it's from, like a real pair of Holmes & Watsons, then are just about to leave when—you guessed it!—zombies descend and send them plummeting over the side of the overpass.
OH NOES! IF ONLY THERE WERE TENSION HERE BUT THERE IS NOT BECAUSE WE HAVE SEEN SCENES OF THE FUTURE IN WHICH BOTH OF THEM ARE ALIVE!
The van lands right side up, with a colossal thud, and they're both okay, except Carol's shoulder is fucked up. Run run run. Then they take a quick rest, during which Carol tells Daryl about staying in the battered women's shelter with Sophia, but then returning to her stupid husband. This entire conversation is the woooooorst, with elements of victim-blaming women who don't/can't leave, as well as elements of the Surviving Gendered Violence Turns Women Into Superheroes Trope.
In case we didn't get the message, a book that Carol took from the social services office about surviving abuse falls out of her pack. Oy.
When they continue on to the hospital, they discover a zombie pinned to a wall with one of Daryl's arrows, so they know the kid who stole his crossbow must be close by. They find him, Noah, struggling to barricade a door with a huge bookshelf, and Daryl fights with Noah, who then gets pinned under the shelf.
They have a small angsty moment of whether to kill Noah or let him live, and they decide to let him live. Then with the cunningly deployed question, "Have you seen a blonde girl?" they find out Noah knows where Beth is.
Noah leads them to the hospital, where Carol suddenly gets run down by a car driven by the evil hospital cops. Holy shit! They strap her onto a gurney and drive off.
Daryl wants to immediately rescue her, but Noah tells him to let them take her, because they can fix her up. Good point, since she's now been in two serious automobile accidents in the last hour or so.
"We can get them back," Noah tells Daryl, who asks him what it's going to take to do that. Noah tells him it will take "a lot," because they've got guns and people.
"So do we," replies Daryl, and that is, presumably, when they take off back toward Grimes Gang, and it will be Noah with whom Daryl appears emerging from the woods back at the church. If you remember that whole thing from three weeks ago.
Next week: Carl the Hat continues to wear that stinking hat.
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by wind.
Recommended Reading:
Luam and Hakima: [Content Note: Police brutality; racism] Hands Up, Don't Shoot: Black Self-Defense in the Wake of Ferguson
Don: Jane Byrne, Chicago's First Female Mayor, Dies at 80
BYP: [CN: Sexual assault] Bill Cosby Refuses to Answer Questions about Rape Allegations During NPR Interview
Prison Culture: [CN: Carcerality; racism; misogyny; police violence] Interesting Things This Week
Trudy: I Am Looking Forward to Seeing Selma
Kyler: Norwegian Whale Watchers Get the Surprise of Their Lives When Pod of Humpbacks Surface Near Boat
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
"Let's go run in the leaves!"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Transmisogyny; rape; violence; anti-immigrationism] Cristina Costantini, Jorge Rivas, and Kristofer Ríos have published a report on a six-month Fusion investigation on abuses against trans* immigrants and asylum seekers, which "found that conditions for transgender women locked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are often humiliating, dangerous, and even deadly. On any given night, some 75 transgender prisoners are detained by ICE. ...One fifth of all confirmed sexual assault cases in ICE facilities involved transgender victims, according to a recent investigation by the Government Accountability Office. ....For some, solitary is so bad they asked to be deported." This is a really important piece of work.
[CN: Class warfare; racism; child neglect] According to a report released today by the National Center on Family Homelessness, 1 in 30 children in the US is now homeless. "Factors that cause the high rates of child homelessness included high rates of family poverty, particularly in houses headed by single women who are black or Hispanic; a dearth of affordable housing for low-income families; fallout from the recession economy, such as foreclosures and debt; long-lasting effects of trauma; and institutional racism resulting in economic segregation." Meanwhile, our politicians talk about the great "recovery" we're having, without regard for the profound cultural neglect of poor children, because their suffering is less visible than Wall Street celebrating its profits.
[CN: Antifeminism] Time has apologized for its suggestion that the word "feminist" should be banned: "Editor's Note: TIME apologizes for the execution of this poll; the word 'feminist' should not have been included in a list of words to ban. While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.–Nancy Gibbs." WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED? Fuck off, Time.
This is amazing: "NFL star Jason Brown has quit playing football professionally, and now spends his days as a farmer, who harvests free food for the hungry. ...Last weekend, Brown gave away 46,000 pounds of sweet potatoes, in addition to the 10,000 pounds of cucumbers that he has already given away. 'You look over a sweet potato field and you don't see a crop, the vines are kind of wilting. There is nothing there to pick. You've got to have faith. I went out to plow up the potatoes last week and looked behind the tractor. I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite as beautiful as those big brown potatoes lying everywhere.'"
[CN: Misogyny; harassment; fat hatred] This selection of examples of screenshots from "Bye Felipe," which documents women being abused by men on various dating sites, will almost certainly not come as a surprise to any women. I did want to share it, however, because I was interested, ahem, by how many of the entitled men enraged by women not responding in the way they wanted immediately turned to calling those women "fat" as a terrible insult.
[CN: Homophobia] For fuck's sake the legal clusterfucktastrophe in Michigan regarding same-sex marriage. This is why we need a federal law legalizing same-sex marriage IMMEDIATELY. Screwing around with people's lives like this is vile.
Looks like SOME PEOPLE learned nothing from Jurassic Park: "The most amazing things about this mammoth [found last year in Siberia's permafrost by Russian and South Korean scientists] were that its meat was unusually well-preserved, and that a reddish bloodlike liquid oozed from the exposed carcass when it was poked. That raised hopes that researchers could find an intact cell nucleus that contained the full set of DNA instructions for making a mammoth. If that could be done, the nucleus could be inserted into an elephant egg, sparked into cell division, and then implanted into a surrogate mother elephant. The result? A clone that should be virtually identical to the long-dead mammoth."
Tommy Lee Jones still cannot sanction your buffoonery, and also he has made a feminist Western. Welp!
And finally! "27 Pets Who Just Can't Be Bothered to Get Out of Bed." Aww lol.
Sartorial Misogyny, Feminist Concern Trolling, and the "Little Things" in Science and Everywhere
[Content Note: Misogyny; sexual violence; disablist language.]
So, last week, during the Philae landing, European Space Agency scientist Dr. Matt Taylor wore a shirt covered in half-naked, provocatively-posed women, seen all over the world during his interview on the live broadcast.
This was before I tuned in; by the time I saw him talking about the landing in terms of a date, and saying that Philae was moving in for a kiss, he had already changed into an ESA shirt.
There was a lot of criticism of Taylor, made by people who give a fuck that misogynist clothing was donned in a professional environment by someone who has an enormous amount of privilege in a field where there continues to be pervasive discrimination against women.
STEM Women has a terrific post, "Astronomical Sexism: Rosetta #ShirtStorm and Everyday Sexism in STEM," which I highly recommend you read as background on the entire thing, and why the criticism of Taylor matters.
Naturally, there was an outpouring of hostility toward women (and men) who took issue with Taylor's sartorial choice.
Some of it was at least honest enough to just be the usual gross misogynist silencing, shouting at feminists with the brazen venom that proves the point.
Others took a more embarrassing tack, trying to approximate some sort of principled defense of Taylor. London Mayor Boris Johnson, for example, accused Taylor's critics of being "abusive" and "humiliating" him "at the moment of his supreme professional triumph." Taylor, naturally, bears no accountability for humiliating himself by being a rank sexist on an international broadcast.
And then, of course, there were the feminist concern trolls, who came out in droves in order to declare feminism irrelevant or dead, because to criticize a sexist shirt is proof of our small-minded prudish pettiness.
Naturally, King of the Feminist Concern Trolls, Richard Dawkins, who loves nothing more than to pretend he gives a fuck about feminist issues in order to shit all over feminists, weighed in thus:
"True feminism." Of course. As defined by men who believe women should let men get away with wearing misogynist clothes in a professional environment, because there are "bigger things" about which we should be worrying.
Things other men are doing. Somewhere else.
Always, that should be the focus of "true feminism." To focus exclusively on other men who are doing worse things.
Which is not only a neat little deflection of personal accountability, and preemptive shaming for any woman who considers scrutinizing them, but is also advice fundamentally incompatible with the basic work of feminist activism, because it is the pervasive, ubiquitous, inescapable little things that create the foundation of a sexist culture on which the big stuff is dependent for its survival. It's the little things, the constant drumbeat of inequality and objectification, that inure us to increasingly horrible acts and attitudes toward women.
Feminists who focus on the "little stuff" do it because that's It—that's the stuff, that's the fertile soil in which everything else takes root and from whence everything else springs, that's the way that the fundamental idea that women are not equal to men is conveyed over and over and over again.
When feminist concern trolls like Dawkins whine about the misuse of feminism, talking about feminism like it's meant to be kept under glass, broken only in case of a "real" and "serious" emergency, they're deliberately ignoring how culture works. The "little things" don't happen in a vacuum, but are part of a spectrum of expressed misogyny that forms a systemic oppression of women.
The "little things" and the "big things" are interwoven strands of the same rope, which Dawkins et. al. constantly want to unravel, in order to claim that only some of the strands (the ones belonging to other sorts of men, in other sorts of places) are really deserving of feminists' attentions.
They want to play a feminist ranking game, in which there is a hierarchy of concerns with which "true feminists" will busy themselves. But as soon as one begins to judge the worthiness of feminists' attention on a sliding scale, even generally-regarded "big things" like equal pay are dwarfed by global concerns like government-sanctioned use of rape as a weapon of war. And, for women in those war zones, on any given day clean water may be the even more pressing need. The fact is, it doesn't have to be one or the other—feminists can multi-task.
Because feminism by design functions to address all manner of issues, big and small. That women can (and do) utilize the tenets of feminism in every aspect of their lives does not undermine the history of the feminist movement, but instead does it a great honor. Feminism was never meant to be restricted to suffrage and genital cutting, held in reserve like a finite quantity in danger of depletion if it's used for "the little things." Feminism is a renewable resource.
All of which is to say nothing of the fact that it's not really such a "little thing," that shirt. A shirt that sexually objectifies women, worn in a professional space, for an international broadcast, by one of the most privileged members of a profession in which many women struggle to achieve the same levels of opportunity and recognition. A shirt that clearly none of the other men around Dr. Taylor suggested would be inappropriate.
It's not just the shirt. It's what the shirt communicates to women, not just about one man, but about his field, and women's place in it.
That's not a little thing. But maybe it takes a "true feminist" to understand that.
Good Morning! Or Whatever!
Let us all take a moment to enjoy this video of three bull terriers taking a nap together. Piled on top of one another in the same chair, lol.
Video Description: Two white bull terriers nap in a chair, one sleeping on top of the other. A third, black and white bull terrier climbs up into the chair, sits its butt down on top of the pile, then flops backwards, so zie's upside down on top of the other two. NAPPING COMMENCES.
Open Thread
Hosted by Petula Clark's "You're the One."
This week's Open Threads have been brought to you by the number 1.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Quote of the Day
"A lot of these people around Wall Street are more pragmatic conservatives. And the 'sit down and shut up' stuff does not seem presidential to them. It seems disqualifying."—An anonymous political donor "who often serves as a liaison between GOP politicians and Wall Street donors," quoted in a Politico piece about Republican New Jersey Governor and possible presidential candidate Chris Christie's, ahh, mercurial temperament.
The bankrollers of Republican politics are starting to notice that Christie is an explosive bully. Of course, they don't have principled personal objections to his being a nightmare; they only care insomuch as voters might have a problem with a presidential candidate who screams at people on camera and shuts down bridges out of sheer petty revenge.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by green paper.
Recommended Reading:
BYP: [Content Note: Police brutiality; racism] Grand Jury Testimony in Michael Brown Slaying Closed to Finished
Bryce: [CN: Class warfare; worker exploitation] Walmart Workers Promise Biggest Black Friday Strike Ever
Fallon: [CN: Transphobia; transphobic slurs; self-harm] Joe Rogan Owes Me an Apology
stavvers: [CN: Rape culture] Sheffield United Need to Listen Up: Rape Is Not Acceptable
Kameelah Janan Rasheed with Eric A. Stanley: [CN: Carcerality; queerphobia] The Carceral State
Blue: [CN: Misogynoir; images may be NSFW] Kim Kardashian Is the Butt of an Old Racial Joke
Ragen: [CN: Fat hatred; eliminationism] Fat Crash Test Dummies: Fat Hatred Kills
Mannion: A Wave Is a Wave Is a Wave
Alanna: On Anne Thériault & Company's Amazing Feminist Princess Bride Meme
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
Last night, I took this sweet picture of Sophie sitting on a pillow in my office looking thoughtful:
And naturally I had to immediately do this to it, because you know the cats of Shakes Manor are always Thinking About Tony:
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Small But Vocal Minority
[Content Note: Misogyny; homophobia; victim-blaming; harassment.]
Hey, it's me, Butch Pornstache, coming at ya live from the seat of my toilet—or, as I like to call it, My Thinking Place.
You know I've learned a lot from you femifarts over the years, and I hope you've learned some stuff from me, too, like the fact that Jean Claude van Damme is not just a man but A WAY OF LIFE. Anyways, we can talk more about that later.
I've been thinking a lot about this whole "small but vocal minority" thing lately, mostly because I keep saying it and my ex-wife/fiancée Tammy keeps hollering at me about it.
For a lot of years, the sound of Tammy yelling feminism at me was my cue to put on earphones and turn up the volume on my Discman, so the dulcet tones of Kenny Loggins on the Top Gun soundtrack could soothe my injured ears.
But I have learned totally on my own after Tammy and my stepmom Cheryl repeatedly pointed it out to me that the women in my life don't start screaming at me for no reason. And, when I really thought about it, that's true. It's almost always because I left a squirt of mayonnaise plopped on the counter like elves were gonna clean it up or because I am being a real skidmark about lady issues.
So, Berlin will have to "take my breath away" later.
I started thinking about all the different party groups I've been a part of over the years, and, to be honest, most of them are a bunch of dudes who are just like me. Straight and white and stuff.
It's not like we deliberately keep women or gays or whatever out of the BMX Fanciers Society, for example, but we don't exactly reach out to anyone else, either. And, even if we did, I don't know if they'd enjoy themselves very much, what with all the jokes about how women or gays or whatever are stupid and gross.
They really are just jokes, but, as I realized after Cheryl said it, some of the guys who make those jokes also treat women or gays or whatever like shit in real life. I know that's a good point, but I'm not sure why.
Anyways. I don't make any of those jokes myself, because they kind of make me uncomfortable these days, thanks to you assholes, but I don't tell my friends to knock it off, either. None of the other guys do. Because it doesn't really matter, I guess? There's no one there to get personally offended.
And, hey, who wants to get called a pussy for criticizing a joke about people who aren't even there? I got enough problems getting razzed just because I call Tammy when I'm gonna be late.
It isn't just my BMX group that's like that, either. It's my ping-pong club, my weed aficionados gang, my stand-up comedy with puppets class, my Tim Allen fans meet-ups. Pretty much every group is a mega sausage fest—either because they started that way or because all the women eventually left.
And when I think about the women who left, some of them just never came back after awhile, and some of them tried to complain about the jokes and stuff, but the joke-tellers were real adamant about being able to tell them damn jokes. They said the women were oversensitive and crazy and inventing stuff to get mad about.
I don't know if you've ever seen men do that to women, but, trust me, it happens!
It's like, why even get so MAD if it's just a joke, you know? OH WAIT. Now I get Cheryl's point about how some of those guys are shitbuckets in real life, too!
I guess sometimes a joke isn't just a joke.
Anyways. It's weird, but it seems to me that it's not the harassers who have been the small but vocal minority. It's really the women who stood up for themselves who are the small but vocal minority.
DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?! Damn right I did.
Cuz I'm right. There's not a lot of women there in the first place, and even fewer who will yell feminism at dudes being rude to them. But there's no shortage of dudes who who be rude, defend other rude guys, or not even say anything, even if we think the yelling feminist has a point.
Math ain't my strong suit, but I'm pretty sure that makes the yelling feminist the minority in these situations.
That sucks.
You know what else sucks? I gotta go tell Tammy she was right again.
In conclusion: I will stop using "small but vocal minority" unless I'm referring to one of you femifarts standing up for yourselves. And I will no longer allow the thought of being called a wuss stop me from speaking up, even if no one is there to hear it. Because being called a wuss is pretty bad, but knowing you actually are one is even worse.
Now, if you will excusez-moi, I have some butt stuff to attend to before I accompany m'lady to a revival screening of Timecop.
God, that picture makes me think of how much I love America.
Pornstache: OUT.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There is a strobe effect in this video.]
Deee-Lite: "Groove Is in the Heart"
This week's TMNS brought to you by songs with "heart" in the title.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: War; terrorism] Welp: "U.S.-led airstrikes have failed to slow the number of IS attacks and its defiant militants are now racking up a higher body count than ever before, according to data provided exclusively to NBC News. ...Data [from IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center's (JTIC) database] showed that IS massively stepped up attacks after conquering the Iraqi city of Mosul on June 10—and has stepped them up further since airstrikes were launched in August. Deaths caused by IS also climbed since the key city was overrun and have continued to rise since the U.S.-led coalition started bombing the militants. 'The airstrikes certainly aren't impairing their ability to intensify their attacks or carry out their campaign,' said Matthew Henman, head of the JTIC. 'They're not cowed by them; they're not afraid.'" Super.
[CN: Homophobia] Here we go: "As expected, the ACLU and Lambda Legal have filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the Sixth Circuit's anti-equality ruling that upheld gay marriage bans in Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, and Kentucky." *bites nails*
President Obama plans to make a move on immigration (and naturally the Republicans are already saying they'll fight it): "The Obama administration is considering a plan that would shield possibly around 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally from deportation as part of a broad set of executive actions that President Barack Obama could announce as early as next week, people familiar with the discussions say. ...The 5 million estimate includes extending deportation protections to parents and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been in the country for some years. The president is also likely to expand his 2-year-old program that protects young immigrants from deportation. Such a step would represent an expansive use of Obama's executive authority. The step would fall shy of what many immigrant advocates have been demanding, but is sure to enrage Republicans who are already trying to devise ways to thwart his actions."
You know, with Republicans preparing to, in the words of Speaker John Boehner, "fight the president tooth and nail if he continues down this path," Obama might as well take the opportunity to do something truly radical on immigration.
President Obama is also pledging funds to assist poorer countries with climate change efforts: "America plans to pledge at least $2.5bn and as much as $3bn over the next four years to help poor countries invest in clean energy and cope with rising seas and extreme weather, according to those briefed by administration officials. The financial commitment will be unveiled as world leaders gather for the G20 summit in Brisbane, sending a powerful signal of Obama's determination to act on climate change despite the Republican takeover of Congress in mid-term elections."
[CN: Maternal death; illness] While the number of Ebola patients in the US is now zero, and the midterms are over so there's no use for Ebola alarmism in the States, Ebola patients in West Africa still desperately need our attention—and here is just one of many reasons: "One in seven women could die during childbirth in the West African countries most impacted by the Ebola crisis, according to members of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of aid organizations in the UK. Though on the decline before the outbreak, maternal mortality rates in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea were still some of the highest in the world. Now, these rates are expected to soar. The state of many local hospitals and clinics, strained by the influx of patients fighting the disease, has discouraged pregnant women from seeking antenatal care due to fear of interaction with bodily fluids. Korto Williams, the head of ActionAid in Liberia, said online videos have emerged of women giving birth in the streets with no help, because bystanders feared they had the disease." If you can afford to help, you can donate to Doctors Without Borders here.
Oh, Philae! "Scientists have begun activating a drill and hammer on board the robotic comet probe Philae in an attempt to move it into sunlight so that its solar panels can be charged. Time is running out for the European Space Agency's lander. Since its bumpy triple touchdown on Wednesday, the spacecraft has been resting on its side, lodged in the shadows of a cliff or large boulder. Philae has been receiving just 1.5 hours of sunlight instead of the expected 6-7 hours. This is not enough to charge the secondary batteries. With an initial battery life of about 60 hours, Philae's mission could be over in less than 20 hours."
Oooooooooh! "The Rosetta spacecraft and its Philae lander have a lot to teach scientists about what Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko looks like, is composed of, and even what it smells like, but what does the comet sound like? The day before Philae made history by landing on the surface of the comet, ESA released an audio clip of 67P/C-G singing. Unfortunately, its song is creepy as hell and sounds a lot like Predator, the alien that tried to kill Arnold Schwarzenegger." LOL! I don't think that's "unfortunate," unless "unfortunate" means "awesome" now.
Solar cloth! "A British start-up has developed a way for parking lots and structures with roofs that can't take much weight to harness the power of the sun. The Cambridge, England-based Solar Cloth Company is beginning to run trials of its solar cloth, which uses lightweight photovoltaic fabric that can be stretched across parking lots or on buildings that can't hold heavy loads, such as sports stadiums with lightweight, retractable roofs." Neat!
Hey, fellow Izzard-heads! "Penguin Random House imprint Blue Rider Press has acquired a memoir by English standup comedian and actor, Eddie Izzard. The book, not yet titled, is slated for publication in the winter of 2015 or 2016." Will this book arrive covered in bees?
And finally! These videos of Betty the French Bulldog and Gary the Cat playing together are hilariously adorbz!
Welp
[Content Note: Coercion; hostility to consent.]
You know how I keep saying like I'm a 6-second Vine running on a loop to infinity that it's really gross the way Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren are being talked to and about regarding possible presidential runs?
Proving the point:
Elizabeth Warren insists she has no interest in running for president in 2016, but the rich liberals to whom she spoke Thursday afternoon seemed unwilling to take 'no' for an answer.That is the opening paragraph to an article at Politico, a mainstream political magazine.
I understand that potential presidential contenders need to know if there is support for a candidacy. I get how politics works. And I still find it deeply objectionable that I have read no fewer than three dozen stories in the last year or so about one of two female candidates being told that "no" is not an acceptable answer.
Wil Wheaton Gets It Wrong on Harassment & Anonymity in Gaming
[Content Note: Misogynist terrorism; rape culture; harassment.]
Like Joss Whedon, Wil Wheaton is a straight, white, cis male celebrity and hero among geekdom who has a reputation for being a feminist ally, despite the fact he has written things like "Hillary Clinton: The Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of the Democratic Party," to critics of which he responded by saying, "Here, let me try this one more time for the humorless and professional victims out there, who seem to have shown up in a flood today: Gender, race, sexual orientation, things that make us different that we don't choose...they just don't matter to me. At all. People are people and identity politics is stupid."
I will also disclose, in the interest of honesty, that I had a personal interaction with Wheaton a long time ago which went much the same way. After reaching out to him in good faith and politely asking he not use a particular misogynist term in his writing, he responded with almost exactly the same misogynist tropes: I was humorless, oversensitive, hysterical, and a "bitch."
Whether you interpret that as evidence that I have a personal axe to grind, or as an example of a woman's lived experience with a man who is purported to be a great ally, is not something I can control. Interpret it as you will. But I will note that there is very little incentive for me to share something, especially under my real name, about a famous man with lots of fans who tend to intensely defend him, except that it matters how men who are positioned to speak on women's issues treat actual women.
Now, no one should be defined exclusively by their worst moment. Or two moments. That was a few years ago, and maybe he's changed. But maybe he's also nonetheless not exactly the perfect person to write something for the Washington Post on the subject of harassment in gaming.
His premise is that the anonymity of the internet empowers harassment, and begins by asserting: "More venom than ever before is flowing from behind the cloak of anonymity, where people remain entirely unaccountable for their words and deeds."
He then exclusively uses six women as examples of this phenomenon. And while certainly lots of the people harassing Zoë Quinn, Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian et. al. do so from behind the cloak of anonymity, there are also a lot of people who aren't.
I wonder how many women whose professional lives are mostly or entirely online Wheaton has spoken to, because I'm guessing any one of us would tell him that we get plenty of harassment, threats, abuse from men who are utterly brazen—sending this stuff right under their real names, alongside their pictures, from work emails.
I once received a death threat from a man under his real name, from his work email, at a state government office.
As I've previously observed, the internet is not separate from culture, but a reflection of culture. The pretense that the anonymity of the internet creates the urges that underlie bullying is a way of distancing oneself from the real-life harm many marginalized people face, ignores that many people engaging in trolling come at us under their real names and even work emails, and elides that whatever anonymity and/or impunity the internet provides merely empowers bullies to be uglier, meaner, bolder than some of them would be face-to-face. It doesn't make them engage in behaviors that don't exist in the offline world.
I've said many times before: It's not like no random dude ever called me a fat cunt before I started a blog.
The point is that it isn't anonymity, at least not alone, that drives misogynist terrorism. It's a natural outgrowth of a patriarchal system in which women are treated as less than, in every conceivable way, our humanity diminished, our lived experiences questioned, our bodies treated as property of men and the state.
But if you're someone who doesn't give a fuck about "identity politics," then you're probably not interested in discussing that oppression is the real issue, and anonymity only one of many tools of the oppressors.
Wheaton goes on to make his case, however, citing his own experience:
When I started playing video games, we were in arcades, and we had to win and lose with grace, or we'd get our butts beaten (literally) by other players. Or, worse, we'd be kicked out! When we played games next to each other on the couch, we could trash talk and razz each other, but we were still in the same room together, and our behavior out of game was even more important than the way we behaved in the game. Playing games with real, live humans prevented any of the poisonous behavior proliferating online today.This is his experience as white, straight, cis man. But of course there are women, myself among them, who can tell stories of being harassed during tabletop gaming. In arcades. While playing video games on a couch next to a man who we believed wouldn't harm us.
That, ultimately, is the cure for what ails us. It's nearly impossible to enforce actual consequences in video games at the moment, but at a table, sitting face-to-face across a tabletop game, or even playing at a LAN party, sportsmanship matters. We can challenge ourselves and our opponents in nearly every world in nearly every type of game, and because we're literally inches from each other, the way we react to victory and defeat actually matters.
I've seen players fight for every point in tournaments, then graciously congratulate each other, regardless of who won. I've sat down with complete strangers — just like the random person I'd likely encounter online — and had an absolutely wonderful time being obliterated by them, because not only were they more skilled than I was, they were also nice and decent human beings. My TV show "Tabletop," which debuts its third season this week, is full of warm interactions like those.
Misogyny, homophobia, racism, transphobia, disablism, sexual harassment and assault—these things happen to marginalized people in real life all the time while gaming. In person.
Virtually every woman and gay man I know who has been involved in local, face-to-face RPG groups has had to leave at least one group because of harassment or assault. I've gotten dozens of emails over the years soliciting advice for how to deal with a man in a gaming group who is harassing, or has assaulted, one or more of the players, and the other men in the group won't believe it. Or simply defend him.
The idea that lack of anonymity ensures safety for women is absurd, if you've really listened to women about their experiences with gaming, instead of just assuming that everyone has the same experiences as your own.
Wheaton probably hasn't considered that there exist men who would create a fun and safe gaming environment for him, but would be totally different with women.
Resistance to that idea—that lots of straight, white, cis men who are "cool" with other straight, white, cis men behave differently around women, genderqueer folks, and/or marginalized men—is what leads to the "small but vocal minority" argument. And that is, naturally, right where Wheaton goes:
The loudest, most obnoxious, most toxic voices are able to drown out the rest of us—a spectacle that has nearly pushed me to quit the video-game world entirely in recent months."The rest of us." #NotAllMen.
Wheaton concludes by acknowledging there are places where anonymity online in important, because of government and corporate info mining, and to support whistleblowers and investigative journalists.
In the age of total-information awareness, citizens need certain protections.Those protections aren't necessary, he argues, thinking only of male harassers who are making gaming look bad for guys like him. But there is, of course, another side to anonymity—which is that it protects women and others from the harassers who want to harm us.
But in the gaming community, those protections aren't necessary, and they aren't helping.
Arguing for the end to anonymity in gaming is necessarily arguing for taking away a crucial tool from the very people who are most vulnerable to harassment.
That's the problem with calls for lack of anonymity rooted in the erroneous belief that harassment is facilitated exclusively or primarily by anonymity. It won't stop harassment. It will only more fully expose targets of harassment.
The result is that it won't drive the abusers out of gaming; it will drive the abused out of gaming.
And maybe that's the point. Not hearing anyone complain because we're all gone would probably look a lot like success to people who aren't really listening, anyway.
[H/T to Aphra_Behn.]
