Thorns

Let's see if I can remember what I wanted to say for any of them...

Jennifer Lawrence And The History Of Cool Girls. I had some further thoughts on tumblr (which I'd been pondering turning into a post here but tumblr got to me first) This ffa discussion of what people consider a feminist character touches on related points.

I've been thinking a lot about the moral obligations of adults towards the teenagers we encounter online, especially now I'm on tumblr which is FULL of teenagers. I deliberately seek out friends around my age and still have heaps of teen followers, some of them mutual because we genuinely have stuff in common.
How we were fooled into thinking sexual predators lurk everywhere argues that we need to look out and care for vulnerable teens more than worry about malicious adults (though that's important too) Here's a discussion on ffa of the issues around teens and adults and porn, something I don't have to worry about as much personally since everything I create tends to be at most PG rated anyway but still find disquieting, mostly when I encounter the porn my teen friends are into (I don't object to them being into it I JUST DON'T WANT TO KNOW). But that particular aspect aside I feel like...I have a responsibility to be a NON creepy adult rather than just avoiding younger people, or the only adults teenagers will meet are the creepy ones (and not just sexually creepy, they can take advantage emotionally or monetarily too)

Meditation Nation On the intense emotional upheaval meditiation can cause, and the difference between doing it for personal gain and religious insight.

Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible. Here’s Where We Start About constructing social networks that encourage good social norms.

The difference between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange

Inspiration Disinformation on the artists vs haters dichotomy.

Why Are Doctors Skeptical & Unhelpful about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

Why I no longer engage the “Are aces queer?” question The important thing is respect and inclusion in general, eg if people who didn't see aces as queer didn't THEN divide the world into "straight vs queer" instead of "straight, queer, or asexual" there'd be much less of a problem.

The People vs the Political Class The gap between politics and what the people (of Australia, and in general) actually want.

Paula Stiles on Why Multiculturalism Makes You a Better Writer

You’ll Probably Ignore Me Because I’m An Evil Straight White Dude, But…

10 rules for women blogging about their relationship woes

The E-Racing of The Hunger Games : Race & Cultures in Fiction There's more to writing non-white characters/POC than making them brown.

The Water Keeps Flowing The treatment of indigenous peoples is not "water under the bridge".

Field Guide: How to Recognize a Bad Boy Woobie I remember I had something to say about this, but not what it was.

So Cam was watching Supernatural and I had my headphones on listening to music instead. But he knocked on my shoulder "This is actually pretty good." he said. Yeah..guess how long that lasted.
( Cut for spoilers for 5.19 )

This keeps coming up in speculative fiction and it bugs me. I'm not a historian, and I know it's wrong (and the more history I learn, the more obviously wrong it becomes). If there's some actual historian debunking this narrative somewhere I can link to I would be very grateful!

EDIT: So apparently this was named and described in 1931: Whig history. And yet people still use it! (Well, that isn't exactly what I'm talking about. But it's certainly close)
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I like wishing people a merry Christmas. But I know that as a Christian-encultured atheist I'm a lot more comfortable with Christmas as a secular holiday than people from other cultural or religious backgrounds.

I'm not sure the American "Happy Holidays" is an improvement: it assumes that everyone has a holiday around this time, which is fine if you're jewish(*) or (most types of?) pagan but not so much if you're Buddhist or Muslim etc, as are a great many of the people I know who are members of a religion other than Christianity (eg it's reasonableness as a greeting assumes the sort of religious demographics you get in America but not here(**)). And saying it tommorrow feels like "I'm wishing you a merry Christmas but giving it a veneer of inclusiveness."

Worse along these lines is "Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/whatever", imo.

I like "A merry Christmas to those who celebrate it and a generally happy day to everyone else" and similar.

What are other people's thoughts?

(*)Though apparently Hanukkah isn't that big of a deal compared to some of the other holidays?
(**)Plus Americans have Thanksgiving. We all have New Years I guess, but I don't think people mean "Happy new year" when they say "Happy Holidays".

Unfortunately I didn't finish this book, not because it's bad but because I'd reached my quite low mental limit for nonfiction books(*) (Why yes, this did help make my Phd unbearable) "Luckily" I accidentally arrived at the library 45 minutes before it opened, so spent the time reading the last chapter (having read the first 2 or 3 already) and deciding on bits to quote.

So: this is a very good book, exploring the problems with the global food industry, how it's bad for everyone from farmers to consumers, and how everyone can fix it.

There's a website, which has one of the most important things to take away from it, what to do.

Here's a the full annotated list but in short:

• Transform our tastes.
  
• Eat locally and seasonally.
  
• Eat agroecologically.
  
• Support locally owned business.
  
• Insist that the workers who grow our food have the right to dignity.
  
• Advocate profound and comprehensive rural change.
  
• Demand living wages for all.
  
• Support a sustainable architecture of food.
  
• Snap the food system’s bottleneck.
  
• Own and provide restitution for the injustices of the past and present.
  

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(*)This being entirely sanguinity's fault.

Reading the article I mentioned in my last post I was reminded of stuff white people like, specifically this video of the creator talking about his experiences was interesting, the way he went from making a blog for fun to book deal in like a month is intense.

Something he said, which took me a while to realise when I first saw the blog, is that it's not about "white people", it's about upper middle class left wing types and the way they we see ourselves as free-thinking unique snowflakes¹. Really most of the digs are about class not race but since "White people" care more about being seen as non-racist than non-classist² and are very self conscious about white guilt etc that name is more effective. Kind of annoying for white people who aren't White People and don't get the joke, I imagine.

See for example #62 Knowing what’s best for poor people. I am often amazed at how openly "left wing" people despise the poor. They watch Today Tonight! And have badly dyed hair! And use bad grammar! (Unlike poor people from other countries who are adorably authentic and charming. Unless they chop down trees or eat McDonalds or something)

Also there was a link to this black guy who set up a stall so people could have their photo taken with him, I salute his bravery :)

I've often pondered talking more about class but am worried about (a)Coming up against the fairly unselfconscious classism a lot of people have³ and (b) Collapsing in self consciousness as I ponder my own class.

1)And I think a large part of the appeal of the blog for White People is feeling smug at how much more self aware they are compared to all those other White People.
2)Which is very different from being less racist
3)Cue my friends from the country saying "Bah! You have it easy!" :)

(A follow on from Speaking about bad ideas...atheism and race! since a lot of the same arguments came up in the comments)

Why I see cultural intolerance as racist: VERY few people in polite modern western society are explicitly racist in the "I hate everyone with dark skin" way. I tend to use "racist" to mean any tendency in society which consistently and unfairly discriminates against people of a particular ethnicity, even though most of these justify themselves using cultural rather than explicitly racist ideas. If you scratch the surface, a lot of the time these ideas are being applied arbitrarily or inconsistently and it really is about race after all.

I covered the basic ideas in Why you can't trust your values, so this is just a "few" *cough* extra things.

I mean you can't help but have values and judge other people by them, and since you don't grow up in a vacuum chances are you're going to end up seeing people from your own culture as being (on average) better since they follow your values more closely. But you have to be very careful about thinking about where those values come from, and if you're applying them fairly, and what consequences you bring from them.

Short version:
It's ok to say "I don't understand why more americans don't oppose the death penalty, though I guess I can see how it ties in with the emphasis their society tends to place on justice"
It's not ok to say "All christians are a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, just look at the bible and the way they all support the death penalty"
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