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A navy blue sofa cushion embroidered in red and white thread in a Scandinavian style pattern of the computer game Space Invaders

Weekly Open Thread with Scandinavian Space Invaders

tigtog

This embroidered cushion in a Space Invaders Scandinavian pattern in this week’s threadalicious host. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything you like* over this weekend and throughout the week.

A navy blue sofa cushion embroidered in red and white thread in a Scandinavian style pattern of the computer game Space Invaders
Scandinavian Space Invaders Embroidered Cushion

e.g. What have you been up to? What would you rather be up to? What’s been awesome/awful?
Reading? Watching? Making? Meeting?
What has [insert awesome inspiration/fave fansquee/guilty pleasure/dastardly ne’er-do-well/threat to all civilised life on the planet du jour] been up to?

* Netiquette footnote: if a recent thread is still active on a topic, continue the discussion there; let the Weekend Open Thread be a refuge from that discussion. If you’ve got a tangent from a recent thread that’s potentially stoushy, take it to #spillover, please.

85 thoughts on Weekly Open Thread with Scandinavian Space Invaders

  1. well this week was nice, i got called a disgusting freak by Cathy Breannan . Radfem2013 is causing pain, and general nastiness among my feminist friends, and it isnt even here yet!

    However I do have a question, i am trying to educate myself on Gender theory, the use of ze and hir and the idea that gender is a social construct. Does anyone have any good (non transphobic) reading suggestions?

      1. Thanks they do, the childrearing stuff is pretty much how we have tried to bring up the boys, not having read any theory, its just what made sense to us.

    2. I’m having a similar problem: I believe that men and women are fundamentally the same, with only differences in bodies. I have to reconcile that with a very specific type of transexuals: those that do not wish to have a sex-change operation.
      Those who do fit perfectly with my worldview: they are in the wrong body, and do what is necessary to change that. Those who don’t, however, are of a different gender from what their body claims, and yet feel no need to reconcile the two.
      Why? Is it because they do not wish to go through the surgery and hormone injections? Or do they feel that they have the right body, though it’s not the one that their gender is usually associated with? If the second option is the right one, then how do I fit this with my worldview?

      By the way, I am aware that I completely disregarded all those who do not fit in a binary view of gender, but I’m having enough trouble wrapping my brain around these questions that I’m going to leave that part of the equation alone, for now.

      1. I think the biological differences are pretty irrelevant, and slightly insulting. I have female friends with cocks and male friends with vaginas. To reduce it to such biological constraints seems very limiting to me.

        The area that confuses me is the idea that the very ideas of male and female are just social constructs, I know I am a woman, it is not, for me about the genitals I have, I am confused at the idea that my gender is something that is imposed by society.

        1. [Comment content deleted: there has already been a moderator direction to take further discussion of Manon’s question to #spillover. However, you specifically have been asked to go and do some 101 reading before continuing your contributions there. So perhaps you just need to take the weekend off from commenting on gender identities/roles/stereotypes, and do that reading ~tt]

      2. Manon, this strikes me as the sort of question that could easily end up with a very long and involved discussion that will dominate the open thread, so I’d rather it took place on #spillover.

  2. My plans for the weekend, to hang out with friends and fan-stalk one of my favorite indie bands, The Schomberg Fair, in Toronto may be thwarted by weather, a sudden jump in Gas prices and a feeling of general malaise which may or may not be the on-set of a nasty cold.

    Also researching diet management options for colitis because for the first time in about 6 years my intestinal tract is making its presence known in a not-so-friendly way and I want to get things under control before it becomes a big problem

    Also going for a hearing test next week. If it turns out I have significant loss they’ll start discussing options for hearing aids. Little nervous.

  3. Not in a good mood, since after my 36-hour stretch at the office ending past midnight last night, I’m back at it now, with hours to go.

    More importantly, I’m really both very upset and very angry on behalf of my son, who was sexually and otherwise harassed by someone last night at the Port Authority bus terminal while he was standing on line waiting to buy a ticket, minding his own business. I know this kind of thing happens to women all the time, and I’ve had a few experiences myself, and my son (who’s 22) has been called the “f” word by strangers on occasion since he was in his mid-teens, but I’ll never get used to it. Basically, some guy came up to my son and started loudly and repeatedly calling him a “Jew bastard” and “Jewish bastard,” while simultaneously leaning over and making sexual overtures in his ear. (“I’m a top, how about you?”) My son tried to ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there (all the while continuing to wait on line because he didn’t want to miss his bus), but eventually told the guy that if he didn’t stop he’d get a cop, and eventually the guy went away, with a few parting curses and comments like “You must be one of those German or Polish Jews; the only real Jews are the Ethiopians!” And nobody else who was there did anything to help. All of which annoys me greatly.

    I don’t even know why he singled my son out in the first place, since he doesn’t wear a yarmulke or anything, and I’ve never thought he “looks” particularly Jewish. (Other than wearing glasses and having brown curly hair and being only 5′ 2″, the same height I am!)

    What a jerk.

    2. Fucking hell. I hope your son feels better today. And you, too.

      I…will never understand why harassers feel the need to simultaneously be racist/hit on someone. It’s consistent, I’ve heard of variations on it from almost all the frequent-traveler people/racial minorities I know, I’ve experienced it when Indian men have mistaken me for a foreigner (apparently, I look more “Spanish” than Indian. I have no fucking idea why anyone thinks this, since I look more or less exactly like the rest of my family and none of them ever have this happen in India, but that’s a rant for another day). But it’s always a simultaneous attack. It’s disgusting and it’s always left me feeling really vulnerable and furious.

      tl;dr I feel his pain and so sorry.

    3. He did find and speak to a cop in the bus terminal after he finally bought his ticket; but the officer was only willing to take a report if my son accompanied him back to where it happened to see if the guy was still there, but my son didn’t want to miss his bus and half to hang around for another hour, so he told the cop to forget it.

    5. I’ve never understood that shit.

      Oh, you think I’m a [insert horrible racist/sexist/etc shit here]? Well then, let me just drop to my knees and blow you right here and now you sexy beast!

      said no one ever.

    6. I’m really sorry to hear about this. That is terrifying. I hope that creep gets what’s coming to him.

      Something similar happened to a Russian friend of mine in Brooklyn a few years ago. He’s got that stereotypical Slavic Russian dude look, with very blue eyes, and in broad daylight this guy in a coffee shop who turned out to be wasted at lunch time, just would not leave him alone, and alternated between horrible ethnic stereotypes and hitting on him in a sleazy way while singing praises to his eyes. My friend is very mild-mannered, but he finally stood up to his full height, and was like, “yo,” and the guy quickly trotted out the door.

      A few weeks later, my friend heard that the guy ended up being banned from that establishment after harassing someone else. This stuff is probably fairly common – it’s just that a lot of dudes won’t talk about it, for the obvious set of reasons.

    7. Thank you all. The whole thing is disgusting. I can’t even imagine what could motivate a person to simultaneously harass someone with racist/anti-Semitic comments, and sexually proposition them. Maybe it’s some kind of “negging,” taken to its furthest extent. Not that I really care.

      It still bothers me that nobody spoke up to tell this person to leave my son alone. Maybe people think guys can take care of themselves? Or people thought it was “funny” to see a gay man being harassed like that, given that my son is rather visibly gay? Who knows.

      In any event, he’s pretty much OK at this point. In a way, I may be more upset about it than he is right now, In any event, he’s basically OK about it; I may be more upset than he is right now about the “Jew bastard” comments. It just really bothers me that someone was saying to him almost exactly the kind of thing that my mother used to hear on practically a daily basis as a child and young teenager in Berlin from 1933 through 1938 (calling a Jewish girl or woman a “Judensau” was a particularly popular epithet, I believe); I never thought my own son would have to deal with anything similar.

      1. Maybe people think guys can take care of themselves? Or people thought it was “funny” to see a gay man being harassed like that, given that my son is rather visibly gay? Who knows.

        Maybe, but I’d more likely put it down to cowardice (rationalized as “none of my business”). When someone is blatantly violating basic norms of decent behavior, it’s scary. It’s hard to know what kind of norms they won’t violate when they’re openly screaming racial slurs in a public place, e.g., whether they’ll become physically violent if someone challenges them or tries to intervene.

      2. It still bothers me that nobody spoke up to tell this person to leave my son alone. Maybe people think guys can take care of themselves? Or people thought it was “funny” to see a gay man being harassed like that, given that my son is rather visibly gay? Who knows.

        I have to admit I wouldn’t have spoken up but it’s precisely because the situation is so horrific that I wouldn’t expect speaking up to have any effect other than possibly getting your son physically abused in addition to the verbal. I would probably have stealthily attempted to slither out of line and bring it to the attention of the first policeman or Port Authority worker that I saw.

        I’m sorry but there is nothing in my experience of 44 years of using public transport in New York City that gives me ANY evidence that a stranger ‘speaking up’ when someone is irrationally abusing someone else does anything but exacerbate the situation.

        1. I would agree with you in regards to speaking up by addressing the harasser, but I don’t think that is the only way to handle the situation. If I had been there I would have spoken to the person being harassed, or maybe just offered support by standing next to them in opposition to the harasser. Similar things have happened near me on the subway, and I am always appalled by the public’s inaction.

          Yes, there is someone acting non-normatively in a dangerous seeming way, but that is not an excuse to allow them to isolate one specific member of society and abuse them without any social opposition. An escalation of inter-personal violence is not necessary to show that you are watching what they are doing and standing or sitting in solidarity with the person they are abusing.

      3. That’s awful. It hurts when someone you love is treated as “less than” and when society stands back and does nothing. That is really painful and I’m sorry you and your son had to go through that. Makes me sick to think about — its such a terrible, helpless feeling.

    8. Holy shit, that’s terrifying and enraging. I’m so glad that he is safe, but you must just be shaking with fear and anger. I send you all my sympathy and support.

    9. My son tells me that the guy also called him a c**ksucker, among a number of other things. Nice. My son did respond to that, though: he said something like “so I like sucking c**k; what’s wrong with that?”

  5. So, a couple of weeks ago I mentioned working on an 18 foot scarf, and I finally finished! I think it ended up being a tad longer, I forgot I was planning to add a fringe to it. But it makes me so happy! I’m wearing it everywhere and it’s wonderfully warm, which is useful for a Canadian. Of course, my dad is worried that I’ll get it caught somewhere and I’ll end up like Isadora Duncan, and I do have to carry both ends when crossing the street, or passing construction or small children so they don’t get blown into awkward places, but WORTH IT!!!

  6. My son passed his Japanese Language Proficiency test! I’m very proud of him, because he is self-taught. He learned the basics and then got online and talked to native speakers to get the rest. (He says he helped one of the guys he chats with get a better grade on his English proficiencey test)

    This weekend, i work on Sunday, so it’s laundry tomorrow.
    And I am trying to type up 4000 words to finish my were-horse story and 7000 to finish my UF romance.

    And I hope to finish the second sock.

      1. Librarygoose

        First of all, I´m sorry for picking on you but this is one of my pet peeves – the whole I am no good at learning languages idea that many have in their heads. In many cases due to poor language teaching experiences during high school.

        I live in South American and work as a translator between Spanish and English.

        It IS much easier to learn in a country where the language is spoken, but there are so many resources available for free on line. I’m trying to recover my high school German and I have got into listening to German rock music on youtube, not to mention reading newspapers, social networking sites (I really need to try out italki properly!). I know people who do skype language exchanges and try out conversation clubs on couchsurfing.

        One of the big things (and I’ve also taught English where I live) is to get over a fear of making mistakes and just speak.

        (In my case, I’m a naturally talkative person, so I’m not really that worried about sounding silly – I feel that I can sound pretty silly in English so I might get more slack in another language.)

        Please forgive the unasked for advice – and, please, give it a go!

  7. Fuck you, MRAs, for pushing forth the “trans* women are really just self-hating men” narrative. Fuck you.

    I feel anxious and sick simply because it’s stuck in my head. I’m trying to calm myself down, but so far I still feel miserable. It’s almost triggering for me.

    1. I’m so sorry, mxe. May I ask where you saw this? I’d like to know so I can stay away from wherever it is.

      1. Unfortunately, I have no source at hand. This is just an intrusive thought that invades my mind when I remind myself of my arguments with some MRAs. Somewhere along the line I mention that I’m trans*, and then they either contemptuously say something like “Hahaha now I understand why you’re so [insert misogynistic slur]” or accuse me of being trans* as a result of hating maleness and/or masculinity. I’m not arguing with any such person at this time, but remembering all of their shaming and cissexism is very painful for me – even when I’m not dealing with it directly at this time.

  9. I opened this/commented strictly because it mentioned Scandinavia. More stories about that awesome corner of the world please. 😀

  10. I did poorly on a paper. I was almost embarassed to turn it in, and I feel pretty burnt out between work, school, commute, life, and poverty.

    On the up side, I recently transferred to a position closer to home at a slower location, and it’s SO AMAZING to get to my house in five minutes instead of an hour.

  11. So yesterday, I got a whole bunch of automated emails thanking me for applying for the jobs I applied for oh, at least a year and a half ago. Most of which, when I looked at the website, are positions that are now filled, except for one that has still been open since 2011. (And in fact, one of the times I had checked earlier, the site had claimed I was up for an interview for one and a second review for another, yet I heard nothing from anyone.) Oh, job hunting at universities/large medical facilities. Does anything suck so hard?

  12. Feeling pretty sick; cold/fever etc. Have apparently had the loopy-brain for a couple of days now (I get seriously weird in the head when physically in) and just didn’t notice because apparently I hit the event horizon of having the loop so bad I didn’t know I was loopy. I’m still reading, I’ll get back to other threads where I was being engaged eventually, but I don’t think I can talk srs bsns for a bit.

    In other news, Valoniel and I just signed up for a few courses at Coursera. We’re both in the Hollywood: Sound and Colour course, and it’s highly recommended. The prof’s really engaging and clear, and kind of looks like a Snood. Adorable.

    Anyone else doing courses? what courses? How do you like it?

    2. I’m doing Calculus. Just to see if I still got it. I am impressed at how well designed the course is… less impressed at the glitchy user interface.

      1. You have my admiration. I can’t math to save my life. (Well, I can math to the extent of not being a fiscal nitwit, and I’m not incompetent with stats, but.)

        And yeah, the user interface. I r unimpressed.

  13. I need to buckle down and finally change the element on my hot water heater.. You know, doing the “independent woman” thing and doing my own repairs (also known as the broke independent woman thing otherwise i’d call a service tech) But man.. It’s intimidating. My biggest fear is that I won’t properly shut the hydro off to the tank and end up electrocuting myself.

    But I miss hot baths so much (right now I only get enough hot water for a ten minute shower)

    Also my iPad no longer auto fills my info on this site. Aggravating.

    1. Also my iPad no longer auto fills my info on this site. Aggravating.

      It isn’t just your iPad; my desktop stopped filling it in automatically a while ago. So I have to type in my user name and email address every single time I comment. I keep forgetting and getting error messages and having to go back and do it. Aggravating indeed. But at least it’s been a couple of days since I’ve gotten that weirdly unpleasant black and white plain format.

      1. I got through it without flooding, burning down, or exploding the house or electrocuting myself, with minimal help from the boy (I did have to enlist some assistance when, after 45 minutes of struggling, unscrewing the the one element proved to be too much for one person alone.. that was a two-person job there) and had my first decent hot bath in weeks! Bliss!

    1. Congrats! I just got a handle on the basics (variables, functions, classes and inheritance) and everything else can be looked up on MSDN, lol.

  15. I saw a good article on women and technology

    Radical feminist progress has long been premised on technological development — women depend on birth control, for instance, but also on washing machines and dishwashers to save them from overwhelming burdens. In a world of four-hour work weeks, the care work of raising a family would presumably get the time it deserves. But the technological evolution of social media as a form has broken down the concept of work life balance — simply commodifying a more intimate realm—creating a case study in the uses to which technology will be put under capitalism.

    http://jacobinmag.com/2012/12/she-cant-sleep-no-more/

  16. ’tis a grey and rainy Sunday morning here in Sydney so I’m spending it inside on the laptop with reruns of the Simpsons on the telly. Presumably lots of you Northern Hemispherians are either out and about for Saturday evening already or settling into a comfy night at home? What’s your indulgence/entertainment of choice for a quiet night in?

    1. Whatever red wine Trader Joe’s had for $4 this week and the book by Guy Gavriel Kay I just got out of the library. (Obviously I’m on a budget) I think I heard about him from another thread on feministe, I’m only one chapter in the book but so far so good!

        1. The Lions of Al-Rassan. Mainly because it was the first one I saw and I only had a 10min parking spot, but I’m very happy with my choice thus far.
          Thank-you for the recommendation/promotion, I’ve been needing new things to read : )

        2. Lions is bloody brilliant. And will tear your heart out and feed it to you in tiny chunks and you will like it. It’s actually one of my least reread of his because FEELINGS. and TEARS. and OH GOD OH GOD.

    1. Thanks for posting this. I read Lakota Woman and loved it. I didn’t know there was another memoir. Sad to lose her.

  18. A very depressing (and personally scary) pair of articles:

    http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/22/pf/transgender-unemployment/index.html (a general article)

    http://money.cnn.com/gallery/pf/2013/02/21/transgender-debt/index.html (profiling six trans people and their employment struggles)

    I have a deep inner conviction that if I ever lose my job, I will never be employed again. Certainly not as a lawyer; it’s unimaginable to me that any other law firm would ever hire me, and I am not the kind of person who could ever build my own practice. Not at my age as I am now; not when I was 23 and graduated from law school, more than two decades before my transition. I worry all the time about losing my job and not being able to find another one and not being able to pay rent, and what would happen.

    2. Hugs if you want them. I, too, worry about my career prospects as a trans* woman. I want to go into nursing, and I’m worried about not being able to get a job as a registered nurse (even with a BSN/MSN) because I’m trans*.

  19. And for my next trick, I have contracted the cold that has been afflicting my best friend and my godson. Inevitable, I suppose, but no fun.

    Also this week, I had a student write to me that he would “probably phone in” his paper and I would probably give him an A anyway. I disabused him of this notion in no uncertain terms, but I’m still pissed. I really doubt he would have written such things, and submitted an assignment in such informal language, written more like an email to a friend than an assignment, to a male professor. And he’s a graduate student too, if you can believe it.

    1. What. The. Eff. If I had to hand in a paper late I was obsequious to the point of annoyance. Hell, even if I planned to half-ass the thing I was thankful. How crude, what inefficient studenting.

      Also, totally feeling you on the cold. I caught one from my niece.

    2. WTF. I hope you handed him his ass at high velocity. I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. I mean, I’ve phoned in a couple of assignments so far (one because I was sick as a dog, one because I really really hated the book I was reviewing), but I certainly wasn’t all cocky about it. And the book review, I actually apologised while handing it in to the prof because I hadn’t put in enough work. (Luckily, it turned out that everybody else hated the book MORE, so he was actually kindly disposed towards mine for not having swearwords and scorch marks – I am not even kidding – on it.)

      Good fucking Christ.

        1. David Armitage, “The Ideological Origins of the British Empire”. Dry, deliberately convoluted and trying way too hard to impress. It’s not even that it’s a badly thought out work – somewhere in the rotted bulk of that trade paperback is a genuinely innovative argument struggling to transcend its medium – it’s just hopelessly badly written. Like…untranslated old French without notes, cannot have a sentence without at least four clauses, “lookit me I use biiiiiiiig words eleventy” badly written. I wish I could travel back in time and take a red pen to it before he published; I’d probably have loved the result.

    3. I got the cold too! 🙁 Keep shoving lots of Vitamin C down your throat!! Suggestion: C-Boost by Bolthouse Farms. It’s available at the grocery store and one serving had about 1270% of your daily Vitamin C. Yes, you read that right. Good luck with the rest of your week 🙂

    4. Gah.

      Only slightly on topic, but I had this amazing female chemistry professor who held her students to really high standards of excellence. She was very assertive when students would argue about their grades with her, and always stood her ground. (I sat in the front and was constantly eavesdropping on these conversations.)

      She gets SO many reviews on that professor-rating website that accuse her of being “rude” and other such terms, and I am pretty convinced that if she were male, students would just see that as standard professorial behavior. But because she’s female, they expect her to be more “accommodating” or “nurturing” or whatever.

    5. I woke up today feeling miserable myself, with the worst cold I’ve had in a long time. Unfortunately, I always tend to get sick when I do things like stay at the office for 36 hours straight! And I have to go to work tomorrow no matter how I feel, with another horribly stressful week of long hours coming up. Oy.

  20. I am fucking sick of this “fedoras are misogynistic” meme and the tumblr bullshit that’s sprung up about it. Can we stop fucking associating clothing with misogyny/being an MRA/being whatever bugbear you want to fucking snot about already? I don’t fucking like it. And I will judge the shit out of anyone who promotes it, frankly, because I truly don’t see the difference between calling someone a misogynist for wearing a fedora and calling someone a slut for wearing a miniskirt.

    Oh and thanks for insulting several thousand drag queens and butch women in the bargain. We’re all fucking thrilled by it I’m sure.

    1. It seems to have sprung up just because some prominent PUAs wear fedoras, and I totally agree it’s lazy stereotyping and a cheap shot.

    2. I wear a fedora. It is a burgundy fedora with a shiny feather dyed with two wide green stripes and a stripe of black with white polka dots between them, and it is fucking amazing and I am never, ever, ever giving up, because I am Philip Marlowe and Nick Charles and Lauren Bacall and Myrna Loy rolled into one when I wear it. Fedoras are awesome and sexy. This is an objective fact and that is all I have to say.

  22. So I gave up porn and my vibrator for lent because I wanted to go back to a simpler time in my life when I didn’t need fancy gadgets to get off. It’s been going well so far, except I keep stumbling onto interesting articles about feminist queer porn and I want to check them out but then remember my fast. Funnily enough I didn’t watch porn or use my vibrator that often, so I figured they’d be easy to give up, but now that I can’t use them I really want them.
    Luckily my fast doesn’t include written erotica or else I’d be much more high-strung than I am now.

  23. Ok, I know it’s not the weekend any more, but I have to share this, I’m so angry. In my graduate ethics class, some guy just said that “Organizations don’t talk about main ethical issues, just sideline things like sexual harassment and gender and racial discrimination.” Sideline? SIDELINE?! those things are only ‘sideline’ to you because you’re a rich old white male in the United States. ARGH.

    1. Please please continue to use these Open Threads throughout the week. Maybe I need to stop calling them Weekend Open Threads if this is confusing people.

      Back on-topic, I share your rage.

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