Being a woman in geek culture

[Recidiva]

GFI brightened the picture http://s186.photobucket.com/user/hu...People/Avatar_Short_Hair_zps495d4314.jpg.html

I'm not so great at digital manipulation so thank you!

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

http://feminspire.com/will-agents-of-s-h-i-e-l-d-be-the-super-show-women-deserve/

"But for a genre known to sexualize women and stick with white actors, or whitewash characters entirely, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. might be a kick in the pants for the comic and superhero franchise to FINALLY understand that women are a predominate part of your audience, and including women, and especially women of color, who are valued for their unique talents instead of their looks is the least we deserve after so much disappointment."

I had fun with it and it was great to see a smart hacker girl and Ming-Na Wen kick ass.

Keep in mind these ladies are not ugly. They were all pretty people, just talented pretty people.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

GFI brightened the picture http://s186.photobucket.com/user/hu...People/Avatar_Short_Hair_zps495d4314.jpg.html

I'm not so great at digital manipulation so thank you!

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

http://feminspire.com/will-agents-of-s-h-i-e-l-d-be-the-super-show-women-deserve/

"But for a genre known to sexualize women and stick with white actors, or whitewash characters entirely, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. might be a kick in the pants for the comic and superhero franchise to FINALLY understand that women are a predominate part of your audience, and including women, and especially women of color, who are valued for their unique talents instead of their looks is the least we deserve after so much disappointment."

Sadly, at least for me on Firefox, the link to GFI's version of your AV comes up with an error message. It's okay, though. I "got the picture" from you previous update.

And to see the bolded word in that quote, after recent discussions of the differences between dominate and dominant... those rules apply to PREdominate and PREdominant, too, lmao! (And yes, Satin, I know *you* didn't write that. )

 

[Keroin]

I love your new look, Satin. Gorgeous! And a BIG step for you, since I know you once had locks to make Rapunzel jealous.

On the topic of inclusion and acceptance, I want to link a post from Jay Lake's blog. If you're not familiar, Lake is a SF author who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He has been chronicling his experience with an openness and generosity that blows my mind.

I think that it is easy to get very caught up in the minutiae of our lives and convince ourselves that whatever it is that we're worked up about is important enough to treat others less-than-respectfully.

In the name of being right and proving a point, we ignore the fact that sometimes it's better to be kind. Now, this is not to say, (especially as it relates to this thread) that we shouldn't fight for the important things. The fight for equality is not about being nice, nor should it be. But when it comes to making people feel welcome in our little corners of the world, kindness can't hurt.

http://www.jlake.com/2013/08/23/cancer-special-dying-person-wisdom/

For myself, there are people who inspire no kindness in me. Some have posted in this thread. Usually, this is because I sense no (or little) good intentions or empathy within a person, and that makes me wary. In those cases, my kindness means that I simply choose to ignore and not interact with that person. Sometimes, that's the kindest thing I can do.

ETA: Stella and Recidiva, I want to add that I have seen you both display kindness to folks on here when everyone else (myself included) has been hostile or dismissive. I think that's amazing and I love you both for it.

 

[Recidiva]

I love your new look, Satin. Gorgeous! And a BIG step for you, since I know you once had locks to make Rapunzel jealous.

On the topic of inclusion and acceptance, I want to link a post from Jay Lake's blog. If you're not familiar, Lake is a SF author who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He has been chronicling his experience with an openness and generosity that blows my mind.

I think that it is easy to get very caught up in the minutiae of our lives and convince ourselves that whatever it is that we're worked up about is important enough to treat others less-than-respectfully.

In the name of being right and proving a point, we ignore the fact that sometimes it's better to be kind. Now, this is not to say, (especially as it relates to this thread) that we shouldn't fight for the important things. The fight for equality is not about being nice, nor should it be. But when it comes to making people feel welcome in our little corners of the world, kindness can't hurt.

http://www.jlake.com/2013/08/23/cancer-special-dying-person-wisdom/

For myself, there are people who inspire no kindness in me. Some have posted in this thread. Usually, this is because I sense no (or little) good intentions or empathy within a person, and that makes me wary. In those cases, my kindness means that I simply choose to ignore and not interact with that person. Sometimes, that's the kindest thing I can do.

ETA: Stella and Recidiva, I want to add that I have seen you both display kindness to folks on here when everyone else (myself included) has been hostile or dismissive. I think that's amazing and I love you both for it.

Excellent article and excellent sentiment and thank you for the compliment.

Although I can debate and argue and that's mostly drama and theater, there is no ill will.

I don't have cancer but I do have migraines, and I have spent so much time in actual pain that I can't waste the moments that I have when I'm conscious and not in pain. I want to breathe the air, I want to feel grass between my toes. I don't want to be weighed down by everybody else's guck, unless I care for that person and I am a consensual guck-bearer for them, then it's a gift. I don't consider confidences to be a burden.

Debate is fun because word play is fun. But I will back down if I feel actual harm...genuine harm is being done. I'm really only after fun and learning.

Stella is generous of spirit and she is fierce, she is fierce protectively. She can go mama bear on my ass and I have to realize who is her baby in the room (idea or person). I respect her process. If I triangulate properly she can take her eye off me for half a second and have some fun if she's sure I'm not going to lunge while she's doing so. What she does, she does for good reasons and she's willing to take the hits and show the scars while I just know I wasn't hit at all. She feels it where I don't. And she will keep coming and if I'm actually hurting her, I'd rather drop my hands than do so. Actually drop them to the ground, you know, severed.

For me I do think that if you are going to be kind, then you have to extend that to people that may not deserve it. I am not necessarily doing it for them, though they might learn something. I'm doing it for me. I think living is hard and life is rough and I can't know someone's path, but I can grant that it's been tough.

If my estimation of someone goes down, it will tend to be because I think they have a lower social IQ and they just can't cope or think through things, and they get my sympathy.

I judge intelligence differently. I don't think that if you know the table of elements by heart or have an eidetic memory and a biting tongue, that that means you can find your way out of a social paper bag.

"What is a bad man but a good man's job?" - Tao Te Ching

 

[Stella_Omega]

Funny to read my personality dissected like that.

Other then that-- I get a kick out of people being prudish and entitled on a BDSM subforum hosted at a pron site.

 

[Recidiva]

Funny to read my personality dissected like that.

Other then that-- I get a kick out of people being prudish and entitled on a BDSM subforum hosted at a pron site.

Working theory. Open to pointers and feedback.

 

[satindesire]

I love your new look, Satin. Gorgeous! And a BIG step for you, since I know you once had locks to make Rapunzel jealous.

On the topic of inclusion and acceptance, I want to link a post from Jay Lake's blog. If you're not familiar, Lake is a SF author who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He has been chronicling his experience with an openness and generosity that blows my mind.

I think that it is easy to get very caught up in the minutiae of our lives and convince ourselves that whatever it is that we're worked up about is important enough to treat others less-than-respectfully.

In the name of being right and proving a point, we ignore the fact that sometimes it's better to be kind. Now, this is not to say, (especially as it relates to this thread) that we shouldn't fight for the important things. The fight for equality is not about being nice, nor should it be. But when it comes to making people feel welcome in our little corners of the world, kindness can't hurt.

http://www.jlake.com/2013/08/23/cancer-special-dying-person-wisdom/

For myself, there are people who inspire no kindness in me. Some have posted in this thread. Usually, this is because I sense no (or little) good intentions or empathy within a person, and that makes me wary. In those cases, my kindness means that I simply choose to ignore and not interact with that person. Sometimes, that's the kindest thing I can do.

ETA: Stella and Recidiva, I want to add that I have seen you both display kindness to folks on here when everyone else (myself included) has been hostile or dismissive. I think that's amazing and I love you both for it.

Yeah, when I shaved my head, my hair was mid-butt length. Talk about "the big chop". To go from one moment to have ass length hair and then the next moment have less hair than my husband...well, that was pretty shocking.

You also become intensely aware very quickly how heavy that length of hair is. Holy Cow! I was carrying at least a pound or two of just HAIR. I'm growing it out now, because I really am much more comfortable with long hair, but it's always nice learning things and having new experiences.

Back on topic--

Yes, I agree, I think it's important to show a little kindness. I think it's really telling how people act, especially online. If they're willing to say horrible things -just to hurt another person-, for no other reason than just to be cruel, how vulnerable and weak are they in meat life? It's like a bully at school. They're only a bully at school because they're being bullied at home. It takes strength to be kind.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Working theory. Open to pointers and feedback.

How do I know, probably you're right?

It took me years and years to understand that yes, I do feel the hits and yes, it's okay. I figure it's worth saying ouch and also worth it to keep on going.

Hmm.

 

[Recidiva]

How do I know, probably you're right?

It took me years and years to understand that yes, I do feel the hits and yes, it's okay. I figure it's worth saying ouch and also worth it to keep on going.

Hmm.

If you weren't you, the world would be less Stella-ey and that would be a loss. If you're occasionally going to try to tear my virtual skin off in strips...well, it's still worth talking to you through it if you'll let me. I'm not a masochist, I just don't necessarily take or give words in the same context that you do. Words have persuasive power for good or ill, but I'm a strictly sticks and stones person. Names will never hurt me, though they might make me think and adjust my conversational style and tactics of conversation. When I take the good and leave the bad, words and thoughts transform my life. But when I drop the bad or ignore the bad, or counsel ignoring the bad, you tend to want to know why I'm letting it just sit there and why I'm not doing anything about it. A bad thought or bad idea I may just ignore, but I definitely see it, I just won't let it take up space in my head.

I don't actually do housework or live my life this way, a real bad thing I will address. Actual sticks and stones get my attention fast and keep it in the way that you treat virtual sticks and stones, so you have my admiration in the sense that I get what you're doing by extending that ethic to virtual space, though in execution it gets tricky.

I don't actually speak Stella fluently, but I've picked up a few words here and there and I can probably say hello and order the wrong thing in a restaurant.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Words are sticks and stones, or they rationalise sticks, stones, and societal mistreatment.

I once heard the word 'faggot' and saw the man who happened to be walking nearby me go down covered in blood-- some truck-driving human being had thrown a beer can and gotten him in the head. Seconds later I felt one hit my cheek.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been deprived of civil rights by way of virtual sticks and stones, women have been denied justice after being raped, by way of the words "slut" and "whore."

My entire life has been a battle against the word "girl."

That's the way I see it, anyway.

 

[Recidiva]

Words are sticks and stones, or they rationalise sticks, stones, and societal mistreatment.

I once heard the word 'faggot' and saw the man who happened to be walking nearby me go down covered in blood-- some truck-driving human being had thrown a beer can and gotten him in the head. Seconds later I felt one hit my cheek.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been deprived of civil rights by way of virtual sticks and stones, women have been denied justice after being raped, by way of the words "slut" and "whore."

My entire life has been a battle against the word "girl."

That's the way I see it, anyway.

Oh yeah, I agree. In reality and even here I ask people to not use certain words in my presence but I can't enforce that here. In reality I don't let it happen without some form of reckoning or standing up, the words or the violence.

My husband says that in reality most people don't try around me because I give off a schoolmarm vibe and people just know...not to. Good. In reality people have to deal with a wall of cordial manners and a polite smile, and hardly anybody gets past that unless they're just cool enough to have manners and a sense of humor.

In reality a male gay friend and I were once denied decent service at a diner we went to all the time, because it was 3 am and we were punked out and sweaty. They refused to acknowledge our presence and when he wasn't brought an ashtray or we weren't given menus by our snotty waitress after 20 minutes, he put his cigarette out on the floor and we were escorted off the premises by the cops.

However, he and I are not necessarily honest people and we have a nasty sense of humor, so we spent the next day plotting. With my Better Business Bureau membership and our best power suits (his borrowed, mine a nice brocade pink) we showed up with a "petition" that was completely bogus and had names like "Tom Servo" and "Crow T. Robot" on it and said that we were representative of a large social group that patronizes the diner (we were, but not that many and none of them fictional) and that we had collected signatures and we would boycott the diner unless we got an apology and much better service. Oh boy, did we get an apology and much, much better service. We enjoyed going there just to irritate certain people who would get mean looks from the owner if our glasses weren't topped off after we took a sip.

I'm not necessarily honest. You are. I think people that behave badly do not deserve my honesty and if I can screw them over, I will. The fact that they didn't even read the damned petition when if they were even partially conscious, they would have escorted us out twice, was just icing.

 

[Stella_Omega]

See... it's an awesome anecdote, but I don't know what it has to do with the things I've talked about?

In the 1968, my family was refused admission to Disneyland because my father's hair was too long.

In 1978, my family was approached by security guards at Disneyland because my stepdaughters were punked out.

In 1984, Disney security escorted three young jarheads off the premises for threatening the punk/new wave group we had taken to the park.

A couple of people (who were complete strangers to each other) got hit with beer cans one Friday afternoon because "Faggot."

It's not a matter of asking people not to use the words.

 

[Recidiva]

See... it's an awesome anecdote, but I don't know what it has to do with the things I've talked about?

In the 1968, my family was refused admission to Disneyland because my father's hair was too long.

In 1978, my family was approached by security guards at Disneyland because my stepdaughters were punked out.

In 1984, Disney security escorted three young jarheads off the premises for threatening the punk/new wave group we had taken to the park.

A couple of people (who were complete strangers to each other) got hit with beer cans one Friday afternoon because "Faggot."

It's not a matter of asking people not to use the words.

I've probably tried to type an answer this about fourteen times and I keep backspacing.

I don't think you're being fair and I'll leave it at that. The only way I can express that is to reiterate stuff I've said to you many times and you choose to ignore and dismiss. I can't actually defend myself from something I didn't say but you think I think. I am also not going to tear my hair and make myself out to be a bigger victim to get your sympathy.

I'm going to drop it and still think Stella is fairly awesome.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I guess I just can't figure out what you're trying to say.

 

[Recidiva]

I guess I just can't figure out what you're trying to say.

That's cool. Really just trying to say I like you and I'm interested in your stories.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I only used personal examples because you do so often.

Disneyland service issues are trivial, and all of them were based on personal style preferences, yanno? Which are things that could be changed. You guys weren't refused service because your friend was gay, AFAICT, but because of the spiked hair and runny mascara?

 

[Stella_Omega]

I'm sorry, Recidiva.

 

[Recidiva]

I'm sorry, Recidiva.

Oh! No, not at all, not in that way, please. It isn't a "blaming you" thing. Thank you for the kindness! Your impulse to protect me is why I feel you are generous of spirit.

Do I think I deserve sympathy? Oh hell yeah, no question. Does my online persona rise to the level of walking wounded that you tend to protect? No. Ironically because I want those who are sick or underprivileged to heal up as fast as they can and get on with enjoying what possible fraction of life is otherwise available to them in the cracks makes you feel that I'm being insensitive instead of merely practical.

You think that I should sympathize with your struggles at Disney and my most selfish aspect is thinking "A day at Disney sounds nice, even with a tormentor provided. Having friends and family and being able to go out and enjoy themselves. I bet if they didn't go in they still had each other and support from each other. I bet sunlight doesn't make their brain try to kill them." And that is how I look at things, from the other direction. Not as a healthy straight person sympathizing with another healthy gay person. Not as a straight person sympathizing with a gay person. As a sick person who would be overjoyed to have a crack at that sort of life even with the social injustice and the hospital visits, because a bottle to the face that gains sympathy and leaves a cool scar and a story is still degrees of magnitude better than half a life spent in mindless pain and half a life spent trying to avoid it. Is that a fair assessment? No, not really. That is my most selfish thought. Is it fair to assume that men and straight people are all blithely experiencing their privilege without drawbacks? No. To draw them unfairly are also selfish thoughts.

I'm appreciating the fact that you can schedule things and repeat them over time. I'm kinda jealous. I can be in fact intensely jealous and angry at healthy people and their opportunities. Migraines keep me from having those opportunities. If I say "count your blessings for having those opportunities" in a wistful way while you are trying to show social injustice, it's because you are HEALTHY and you have FIGHT and I admire that. However, in the manner of the underprivileged, I think I could make better use of that privilege and time than you seem to be. Fair or unfair, it is a very common argument you make yourself but don't see in yourself. If I had your advantages I'd be enjoying my life, not picking useless and unnecessary fights. But maybe I wouldn't, because I'd be missing critical perspective.

This is what goes through my mind when I choose to argue or not argue about certain things. My pain or trials or things that I think go unfairly to 11 in my life are in fact things that draw social fire down on me further, and I get the "victim twice" thing. I get to be horrifically sick and then I get a society that thinks I'm faking, being punished by God or karma or drug seeking. This drives me to conceal my illness out of self protection. I also have very little in common with healthy people, who take my attitude as being strange and inaccessible. I can find them unappreciative of simple basics like drawing a pain-free breath and getting to go out and play at all. You find that straight people take their social freedoms for granted. Yes, some of them do. I'm not missing that, I'm wondering how you can miss the parallel between social injustice and medical injustice. Healthy people take their freedoms for granted. You, in fact, take certain things for granted as a healthy person that your arguments about social justice could apply to perfectly. You are immersed in healthy culture, healthy attitudes, healthy privilege. You can't see that when it's pointed out to you. You dismiss it as irrelevant to the argument. For some reason you think that because I'm straight that I can't have suffered and you have suffered more. I see you as healthy first and gay probably seventeenth. I do however support gay causes and you seem to dismiss my cause.

So that's what comes up with you over and over, deserved or fair or right or wrong or jealous or friendly. I read what you write from the opposite direction that you think I am reading it, and I feel you're facing the wrong way and taking all the wrong things from what I'm saying. If it could pass through your mind that maybe Recidiva has a migraine NOW then you'd be right about 50% of the time. I'm ironically arguing with a nurturing person about how I don't nurture enough but she won't take a moment to nurture me, she's much rather take offense and argue. And the fact that I don't actually want to argue with you and try to avoid it and say so over and over has no impact on you. I think you're a nurturing person, but single minded and unwilling to be called off the kill if you've got blood in your eye and you're protecting someone else or some idea from me. I'm not even attacking your idea, just providing alternatives for those with fewer resources and limited coping skills. I think you're being purposefully blind to other forms of injustice. When you tell me that I should be more mindful of the fact that other people have trials and suffer I am overwhelmed by the irony.

Do I actually think that anybody will be nicer to me after this? Odds are realistically...no. The same way that people wish to remain blind to someone else's issues persists throughout society. Having compassion costs you all your anger and all your righteousness and you're left with a lot of despair and the knowledge that the right thing is harder than you thought and doesn't come with the ringing buzz of adrenaline. I'm doing what I hate doing to make a point. I have to focus on constant healing for survival's sake, not for some "ideal." I can't afford certain ideals and I never will. Sometimes people don't share your ideals or world view for very good reasons, and you can't just insist that people see things your way all the time or you hurt people unnecessarily.

 

[BiBunny]

Jesus Christ, Reci, we really are the same person.

 

[Recidiva]

Jesus Christ, Reci, we really are the same person.

Good morning! Thank you. My condolences.

That's a little too much vulnerability for me and I feel the need for kittens and laughter and medication.

On the geek angle, that's why video games are so awesome. I can accomplish actual things and unless there's a server crash, it'll all be there tomorrow and won't be taken away.

Plus, I just watched Iron Man 3 last night and it was fifteen times more depressing than Sophie's Choice. Why? Why would anybody do that to good actors and waste all that money on a pseudo-Peter Pan myth about an obnoxious douche who thinks he's smart? Why can't I punch Gwyneth Paltrow myself? Why can my husband ignore all the stupid and just think the suits are pretty? Bless him for listening to me rant for half an hour after, though I kept quiet during the actual film except to say that when the cat sat between me and the screen, the movie got suddenly better. I have been well and truly traumatized.

 

[KoPilot]

Recidiva, that's kyriarchy. Or as I like to call it, "the breaks". Life is hard for a lot of folks. Why do some of them get to use it as an excuse to be assholes and I don't, then? Why is it permissible for abuse to beget abuse? Because the abuser "had it rough" too? No. It doesn't get to work like that.

I know what it's like to be in pain, I know what it's like to live with a chronic illness that prevents you from doing things that everyone else gets to enjoy. I'm not going to lower my standard of living because of it just like how I'm not going to lower my expectations of others because I suddenly know how difficult life can be.

And from someone with a disability (wow, it's so weird to "say" that aloud) to another, you should know better than to tell someone else how they should be living. If everyone has it bad, why should you be jealous of anyone else anyhow? I'm not. I don't resent my situation, and I don't resent other people for "wasting" their energy on things I may deem trivial, like meaningless axioms about getting out there and living well. It's their energy, their spoons; and it's my selfish desire to see more people marvel at all the ways that the energy gets spent (and doesn't hurt others). In the end, what they really have and we don't is the freedom to truly spend it on whatever they want. And I don't begrudge them that either.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Oh! No, not at all, not in that way, please. It isn't a "blaming you" thing. Thank you for the kindness! Your impulse to protect me is why I feel you are generous of spirit.

Do I think I deserve sympathy? Oh hell yeah, no question. Does my online persona rise to the level of walking wounded that you tend to protect? No. Ironically because I want those who are sick or underprivileged to heal up as fast as they can and get on with enjoying what possible fraction of life is otherwise available to them in the cracks makes you feel that I'm being insensitive instead of merely practical.

Yes, I do-- because not only do you hide your own issues to the point where I don't know they exist, you provide zero information about the experience of those issues to other people. You act as if there are no issues. Not the ones you experience, not anyone else's. Sympathy and affirmation don't heal a person, but at least-- the very least-- an acknowledgement that they are there, as you are saying right here-- is something. If you need to withhold, go ahead. Everyone processes things the way they do, but you can't make your process invisible and then accuse me of blindness.

You think that I should sympathize with your struggles at Disney

Well, no. I might have misread your point about being treated rudely at a diner in the middle of the night. You were talking about how you solved the problem. I was thinking you were comparing being sweaty and punked-out-looking to the states of being that cause people to be discriminated against. And I wish I had thought to form my objection as I just now did instead of the way I did...

and my most selfish aspect is thinking "A day at Disney sounds nice, even with a tormentor provided. Having friends and family and being able to go out and enjoy themselves. I bet if they didn't go in they still had each other and support from each other. I bet sunlight doesn't make their brain try to kill them." And that is how I look at things, from the other direction. Not as a healthy straight person sympathizing with another healthy gay person. Not as a straight person sympathizing with a gay person. As a sick person who would be overjoyed to have a crack at that sort of life even with the social injustice and the hospital visits, because a bottle to the face that gains sympathy and leaves a cool scar and a story is still degrees of magnitude better than half a life spent in mindless pain and half a life spent trying to avoid it. Is that a fair assessment? No, not really. That is my most selfish thought. Is it fair to assume that men and straight people are all blithely experiencing their privilege without drawbacks? No. To draw them unfairly are also selfish thoughts.

I'm appreciating the fact that you can schedule things and repeat them over time. I'm kinda jealous. I can be in fact intensely jealous and angry at healthy people and their opportunities. Migraines keep me from having those opportunities. If I say "count your blessings for having those opportunities" in a wistful way while you are trying to show social injustice, it's because you are HEALTHY and you have FIGHT and I admire that. However, in the manner of the underprivileged, I think I could make better use of that privilege and time than you seem to be. Fair or unfair, it is a very common argument you make yourself but don't see in yourself. If I had your advantages I'd be enjoying my life, not picking useless and unnecessary fights. But maybe I wouldn't, because I'd be missing critical perspective.

Haha yeah, it does seem that way, doesn't it? Welcome to the concept of intersectionality, which I am possibly misusing here, but anyway here's the thing-- all of the things that I have dealt with in my life? Have left me, to a certain extent, incapable of doing much more than "picking useless and unecessary fights" as you put it, and I would like to see people younger than me not have to live like that.

And yeah, I kind of hate healthy young queer people for having the opportunities that didn't exist when I was their age. I know right where you are on that one.

This is what goes through my mind when I choose to argue or not argue about certain things. My pain or trials or things that I think go unfairly to 11 in my life are in fact things that draw social fire down on me further, and I get the "victim twice" thing. I get to be horrifically sick and then I get a society that thinks I'm faking, being punished by God or karma or drug seeking. This drives me to conceal my illness out of self protection. I also have very little in common with healthy people, who take my attitude as being strange and inaccessible. I can find them unappreciative of simple basics like drawing a pain-free breath and getting to go out and play at all. You find that straight people take their social freedoms for granted. Yes, some of them do. I'm not missing that, I'm wondering how you can miss the parallel between social injustice and medical injustice. Healthy people take their freedoms for granted. You, in fact, take certain things for granted as a healthy person that your arguments about social justice could apply to perfectly. You are immersed in healthy culture, healthy attitudes, healthy privilege. You can't see that when it's pointed out to you. You dismiss it as irrelevant to the argument. For some reason you think that because I'm straight that I can't have suffered and you have suffered more. I see you as healthy first and gay probably seventeenth. I do however support gay causes and you seem to dismiss my cause.

1) I am not healthy. I'm healthier than you are, but I have some sort of chronic fatigue that isn't diagnosed as chronic fatigue. "Why don't you just work two jobs?" Babe, I'm lucky I can work half a job.

2) we haven't talked about disability and the injustices that healthy people impose without thinking, but we can. If you want. If you bring it up. I think that health/unhealth is actually a huge factor for "women in geek culture" because (I think) a certain amount of neuro deviance happens along with certain types of intelligence. Maybe.

So that's what comes up with you over and over, deserved or fair or right or wrong or jealous or friendly. I read what you write from the opposite direction that you think I am reading it, and I feel you're facing the wrong way and taking all the wrong things from what I'm saying. If it could pass through your mind that maybe Recidiva has a migraine NOW then you'd be right about 50% of the time.

I will remember that from now on.

I'm ironically arguing with a nurturing person about how I don't nurture enough but she won't take a moment to nurture me, she's much rather take offense and argue. And the fact that I don't actually want to argue with you and try to avoid it and say so over and over has no impact on you. I think you're a nurturing person, but single minded and unwilling to be called off the kill if you've got blood in your eye and you're protecting someone else or some idea from me. I'm not even attacking your idea, just providing alternatives for those with fewer resources and limited coping skills. I think you're being purposefully blind to other forms of injustice. When you tell me that I should be more mindful of the fact that other people have trials and suffer I am overwhelmed by the irony.

I guess I just never read it that way. I always read it as you saying "well, I don't experience that, so it can't be that bad." "My friends are nice to me, so I don't know why women claim they've gotten hundreds of death threats." This discussion actually isn't so personal. I've gotten one or two threats. Not much, nothing serious-- honestly. But cumulatively? Thousands of women who get one or two, some women who have spoken up and then gotten hundreds? My couple plus your couple plus ... becomes a statistic that needs to be addressed. When Primalux brings up the one woman in his office that isn't so smart-- one woman alone in his mind negates everything we've talked about? No....

Do I actually think that anybody will be nicer to me after this? Odds are realistically...no. The same way that people wish to remain blind to someone else's issues persists throughout society. Having compassion costs you all your anger and all your righteousness and you're left with a lot of despair and the knowledge that the right thing is harder than you thought and doesn't come with the ringing buzz of adrenaline. I'm doing what I hate doing to make a point. I have to focus on constant healing for survival's sake, not for some "ideal." I can't afford certain ideals and I never will. Sometimes people don't share your ideals or world view for very good reasons, and you can't just insist that people see things your way all the time or you hurt people unnecessarily.

I don't need you to "see things my way" personally. I do need you to not deny or denigrate the things that I see in the world. Because, as you so truly point out, having compassion sucks balls and engenders dispair and fatigue, which I already battle.

I hate doing what I do. Honestly. This is not fun, it's easy to mock, it makes me vulnerable, there is never any solid win to make me feel like it's worthwhile. It's about turning the tide, not covering oneself with glory. I'd love me some glory. Or just... someone not undermining things.
That's how i see it, anyway.

 

[Recidiva]

Stella, thanks for responding, I did read. Tired and sick today and I'm dragging and gonna take a nap, but I appreciate the time and the response. It was something knocking around in my head and I just got it out there, for good or ill.

I intellectually know that nobody owes me anything, but I still emotionally might want that thing and I'll fess up if there's a conflict between heart and head. In the end though, if heart's left hanging, head wins. I have my own method and madness and if I can't articulate it then it's on me for being obtuse and obscure. My heart's handled in reality, so I'm not suffering on that count.

You don't owe me anything and you've given a lot and I think that's how "no good deed goes unpunished" works. You are good people and I just can't hang sometimes and that's how that shakes out.

I'm gonna do the let it slide off my back thing after letting it take up sufficient unto the day my attention. It did help me articulate something I thought I'd said but I really hadn't. So thanks for the opportunity to care and analyze and be honest, which is what I get from all of this. I truly mean no harm and if I end up doing it, I'll watch my steps more carefully and look for that and be mindful.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Oops. Wrong room. I had no idea there was a pity party going on in here.

 

[Recidiva]

Oops. Wrong room. I had no idea there was a pity party going on in here.

Stand there. If I squint, I can just make out where to punch you. Stop moving.