Thorns

I got into an argument on tumblr with someone about aromanticism and I don't feel like engaging with them any more but they are SO INFURIATING I feel the need to rant.

Note: I am not aromantic myself, I apologise if I misstep. You guys have enough crap to deal with.
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Barred CHOGM protestor 'not a threat' The Queen is visiting, better lock up the environmentalists! On the plus side even commercial FM radio news was talking about it.

Rio Tinto accused over Bougainville 'genocide'

Housos: a tv show making fun of disabled people living in public housing. As a disabled person who grew up in public housing around a lot of disabled people my response was nostalgia coated in a heavy layer of "Fuck you"(*). Here's the first episode of Housos, I only got three minutes in, maybe it suddenly becomes SUPER AMAZING after that but somehow I doubt it.

(*)Given that my childhood involved a lot of people swearing and resentment towards middle class(**) wankers who thought they were better than us I guess it's appropriate.
(**)I tried to look up about the guy who made this, but once I hit "He won the Tropfest award…although he had submitted the film under the pseudonym Laura Feinstein in order to appeal to the sensitivities of the judges" I decided I'd hit my loathing limit for the day.

Does anyone have a link to a nice clear straightforward post which goes through point-by-point why what she said was bad? I'm having a discussion on twitter and most of what I can find is either more broad or just people bolding the relevant sections (which was enough for me, but hey) EDIT: An open Letter to Elizabeth Moon is pretty good, as are the comments in the various screncaps of the original post. EDIT: Elf has also very nobly written exactly the sort of post I was looking for.

For more see elf's linkspam.

And of course since she got disinvited from being GOH (which does not mean she's been banned from the con) people are trotting out all sorts of racist and Islamophobic crap. There's this huge assumption that "muslim" is somehow a distinct category from American and feminist and nerd. That because in their minds Islam is a sexist/violent religion overall (and I don't think it is anyway(*)) any muslim who might be interested in going to a feminist science fiction con is going to be sexist and violent too. Bah.

And now people who would never go to Wiscon and don't care about feminism are getting involved and causing more drama. If you think all feminism is overly sensitive and PC then obviously the standards expected at a feminist con are going to seem overly sensitive and PC to you. If the basic premise of the con has no value in your eyes, what is she losing by being no longer honoured by it? Bah!

(*)I suppose it's possible that if you took all the members of all the religious belief systems in the world and took a measure of their average violence/sexism then Islam would win. Or maybe atheists would win, or Chistians or Buddhists or Jains (ok, probably not Jains) Who knows! Who cares! There's nothing in Islam that forces any individual muslim to be sexist or violent, as should be obvious to anyone who's actually met any muslims.

Disadvantaged kids dream big but fail

CHILDREN living in disadvantage are unaware of the harsh realities awaiting them, with a new poll indicating all students share the same ambitions and dreams.

Those silly children! Wanting to be doctors when they should realistically be aiming no higher than McDonald's manager! Clearly this is terrible, we should educate them on how they are doomed to lives of drudgery and despair, that way they'll be saved the disappointment later.

WHAT.

I grew up in a working class area. It's arguable that I was never entirely disadvantaged since my parents may have been poor but I got a lot more educational opportunities and general middle class...stuff than most kids in my class. But I was still ensconced in the culture. And let me tell you: those children's souls were already plenty crushed, their dreams sufficiently small, their hopes and aspirations sufficiently modest. We all "knew" we were going nowhere. God how we knew. Just sometimes we had hopes and dreams. How horribly ignorant of us.

Annoying: Induced Mutation Psychosis: Born a freak—a freak whose freakishness only made him a more desirable foodstuff—he never had anything to look forward to except his own death. Now that his destruction is imminent, he can finally experience a modicum of pleasure. In his place, would any of us behave differently?

(I have a similar reaction to a lot of the "Lol, they look like they have some sort of congenital defect" stuff at Photoshop disasters)

Not annoying: I just watched the Kim Possible episode "Mind Games", where Kim swaps bodies with her sidekick/friend Ron, and the fact that he's a boy and she's a girl was not considered the primary point of of difference, at most Ron talked about the pros and cons of wearing skirts. Instead it was all about the specific difference between them, eg popularity, number of commitments etc.

Plus all the comments about "a guy in Draken's body" amused me because deep down I am a twelve year old boy :)

So, the universe (via it's earthly representative linkspam) has kindly decided to give me a real world example of the hypothetical derailing conversation I came up with.

(And yes, I know, it doesn't fit the pattern EXACTLY. It's still pretty close to have happened within less than two weeks)

First: I just read this Bones fic "Someone loses an eye" description of Amanda Palmer's new album and it's really ableist.
And then inevitably All these posts about disability are making me feel silenced. Don't they realise how that hurts my feelings as a woman female artist? Our voices NEVER get to be heard, and now these oversensitive disabled people are telling ME what I can and cannot write! Helen Keller would be ashamed.(*)
which of course leads to
I think it's really important that we focus on the way women's voices artists are silenced.

Something I did not have an equivalent of in my post but which is an important part of the dynamic: a slightly separate but equally valid discussion of the issues to do with the project involving sexual abuse. EDIT: In my opinion a perfect example of how sometimes two different discussions around a topic can exist simultaneously without either of them being a derail.

*waits for someone to accuse me of being pro censorship*

(*)That's just in one section, the overall post goes in multiple contrary directions at once.

I went into Avatar expecting the movie to have a creepy appropriative racist subtext. I was not expecting it from the ads. (Warning, it's pretty obnoxious)

Wicked Energy drink ad

Rough description of relevant parts:
A white man drinks some Wicked energy drink, and a drop falls on a geisha tattoo.
She rips off her kimono to reveal leopard print underwear. Her dragon tattoo turns into a real dragon which she rides. She rides a surfboard with a samurai who is eaten by a koi. She dances exuberantly in contrast to some less scantily dressed 50's style sailor girls. A japanese demon kills a lotus flower with a fart. She pole dances and then makes out with a western style skull. The drink bottle comes up and an asian style dragon comes out before the slogan "bring out your wicked side".

This is all in one minute. How..efficient.

SPOILERS, obviously. WARNING: brief references to creepy sexual stuff.

In short: Racism, angst, homophobia, angst, racism, angst, sex, ANGST, they lived happily ever after, the end.

But other than that it was pretty good.

( SPOILERS! TRIGGERS! ANGGSSSSTTTT )

I keep hearing about these terrifying irrational anti-government American conspiracy theorists, yet all the Americans I meet online seem pretty in touch with reality (even the Republicans are VERY ASHAMED of the tactics being used) But then today I encountered this post on claymaker, a community for discussing making stuff out of clay. Text below since I imagine it will be deleted (it's ever so slightly off topic).

I think the thing that offends me most is the anti-vaccination rhetoric. That sort of attitude kills babies >:/ EDIT: Wait, no, it all offends me
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