Thorns

These have been building up for a while (since May? Really??), in some cases I'm just taking a rough guess as to why I thought a link was worth saving.

( Lotsa links! )

Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the Wall The anti-social libertarian intellectual emptiness underlying a lot of TED-esque ideas.

On political and value neutral Everything with any message at all has a political subtext.

Why I don't like the dragon argument Points out that "if you can have dragons why can't you have POC" has some unfortunate implications that work against it.

words against communication and Also you get things like... The way worrying about appropriation/stepping on disabled people's toes can stop some people from realising they are disabled themselves. (Not that able bodied people shouldn't worry, just that it's complicated!)

Refusing to have the “What You Did” conversation "1 The ‘what you did’ conversation implies the ‘what you are’ conversation. 2 The ’what you are’ conversation is uncivil and silencing. 3 Therefore, it’s uncivil and silencing to discuss ‘what you did.’"

Frustrations of being a black gamer playing BIOSHOCK INFINITE

Sweatshops still make your clothes

Meet the 28-Year-Old Grad Student Who Just Shook the Global Austerity Movement

Vilification and 'just having a laugh' About the racist jokes in my old Uni's satirical newspaper

Righteous Wroth Rarely Is OMG a criticism of excessive social justice where the group making the criticisms (in this case, women) are the victims of the oppression ostensibly being attacked with too much zeal (eg sexism) I have Thoughts about the very complicated way mental illness (which often creates an inability to behave in the way society demands) interacts with the somewhat narrow sets of behaviours expected of a Good Ally/Activist but am not quite up to articulating them.

$300 for Julia Gillard's NDIS scheme? Please, my wheelchair costs $22,000 Apparently some Australians are ok paying taxes and levies for roads and schools but draw the line at helping disabled people.

And from the hahaha what department...
( Worse than global warming??? #followateen )

PC World I had something to say about this but I don't remember what...

Me pondering conflict anxiety and accessibility in online arguments

Fragments of Evolving Manhood: Notes Towards a Discussion of Male Self-Hatred Points out the ugly underbelly of the idea of "protective" dads/big brothers "guarding" girls from their boyfriends. I hate the way fandom gleefully embraces this trope and applies it to male characters who've shown no signs of it (Tenzin from Avatar: The Legend of Korra for example) My dad has always treated my boyfriends like any of my friends and been friendly and welcoming (in his quiet way) and I think this is much more endearing.

Peril Asian Australian online magazine

Pick your battle: a practical guide to social activism I thought this was pretty good for what it was, but I was a bit annoyed by the way it glossed over the possibility of fixing problems with anything other than formal activism (plus there seem to be accessibility issues)

Sure, you can join an organisation for volunteering to visit old people, but why not just visit the ones you already know? There's a division of the world into Activists, Victims, and Ignorant Masses To Be Educated, and while she gives a lot of very good advice about being inclusive it still feels like she's missing something crucial. Perhaps the fact that we all wear all three different hats at different times. There's a danger of people going "I'm an Activist, so by definition I can't be in need of education/complicit with any oppression" etc, or of seeing Activists as better qualified to know how to fix things than the Victims.

Formal activism is the right tool for changing government legislation and other Big Issues, and it's something I want to get more involved in. But I also see a lot of value (and for me, accessibility, an issue she glossed over as well) in smaller more organic connections within one's own community, helping those who need helping and educating/lobbying those who need to change, while also being open to change ourselves.

Another thing that's been making me think about these divisions is some surveys I did about attitudes towards charity, and this charity related quote.

1. Invade country. Murder/enslave/displace etc. local inhabitants.
2. Wring hands about how sad it is that this proud savage race is doomed to die out in the face of civilisation. Bar locals from actually joining "civilisation"/earning money etc.
3. Wring hands about lack of education/food etc for the children. Steal them and attempt to raise them to be a submissive underclass.
4. Wring hands about how social problems and disconnection from their Authentic Culture makes them a Doomed People. Refuse to give basic government support to those who continue in the traditional lifestyle.
5. Wring hands about poor outcomes in remote communities and lack of approved engagement with government programs. Send in army, dismantle local solutions, cut/restrict welfare.
6. Wring hands about widespread starvation and unsustainability of remote communities. Cut welfare altogether, force people to live in the cities.
7. Profit!

nb I don't mean to do that thing of acting like any Indigenous person who lives in the city is Totally Inauthentic and doesn't count. But they shouldn't be forced to live there, and I think some of the power of this form of cultural genocide is the combination of not counting anyone who's too "inauthentic" and refusing to support remote communities. Also I know this is just some guy with no real power, but it was such a perfect example of this historical pattern I felt like highlighting it.

I've often linked to stuff where people in fandoms I'm in have made me really annoyed by being thoughtlessly racist/sexist/ablist etc. Thus I feel it's only fair to acknowledge having the opposite experience: I've been reading a lot of meta about the character Fenris from Dragon Age 2 and other fans have been consistently better at noticing and articulating problematic stuff in the text etc than I have. (I mean, not all the other fans. But often at least one or two per conversation)

No spoilers in this post, and I've tried to explain the context.
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The History of Racism - Episode 1 (part 1/6) by the BBC.

I found this very accessible, I have trouble concentrating on documentaries with brainfog (and today am having trouble concentrating on everything) but this gets right to the point, and there's a lot of punch even in this first ten minute chunk (which is all I've gotten around to so far). They start with a white male academic doing a voiceover then as I recall all the remaining academics were non-white/POC, which is... interesting.

Word to the Wise: Unpacking the White Privilege of Tim Wise

The problem with that is that Wise only debates individuals with views more conservative than his own. This way he can continue to promote himself as the most radical anti-racist voice on the scene when he is not – not even among whites.

Tim Wise isn't a big deal in Australia, but I found this particular criticism interesting to think about.

this is not a post about yoga!: a link roundup and analysis of recent discussions of illegal copying of e-books and how it ties into broader issues of who gets to control and profit from intellectual property.

The Roma of Rome: Heirs to the Ghetto System

I...just...ack.


Via politics, which is a pretty good low traffic comm with a lot of international news.

So I was reading ‘Too Asian’? which says The upshot is that race is defining Canadian university campuses in a way it did not 25 years ago. Here's a post about it by angry asian man.

I have encountered anti-Asian attitudes a lot as a maths major and tutor, I think the dynamic here is moderately similar to Canada.

It would be nice if instead of handwringing that Asian kids are getting BETTER GRADES THAN WHITE PEOPLE OMG anyone cared about the fact that rich white kids remain and have always been SIGNIFICANTLY overrepresented at universities in Canada/Australia etc.

I hope I'm not being derailing bringing class into it, but I think it's worth bringing up as part of the same overall imbalance.

I imagined how it would look if it was about rich kids in Australia, since that inequality struck me going to a private school and then uni as a white working class kid. Obviously you could do the same thing with race, but I didn't trust myself to do so myself without going to a weird place. Also rich people are a minority who do not fit in with the values Australia was founded on (as a penal colony)
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I already posted an almost identical locked version of this, but I've decided it would be useful to link to for context in broader conversation.

The archetypical "fandom activist", as far as I can tell from the assumptions I see around the place, is white, female, cisgendered, from the US, able-bodied, may or may not be lgbt, and middle class. She never really thought about social justice before joining fandom, but now pursues it with an almost religious fervour, with rigid ideas about acceptable behaviour, and attacks anyone who has been declared a Bad Person with angry comments on their journal and "signal boosting" posts. She also has no interest in activism outside this.

This does not describe me or the people I know who are involved in discussing social justice in fandom, at least not entirely. I used to think that maybe I wasn't the sort of person people were talking about when they made these posts, but my name has come up a few times so I guess I am.

So I've decided it would be helpful to get my experiences all laid out so that I can poke at them and maybe compare notes with other people.
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