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Open Thread with Snow Geese On The Wing

tigtog

Snow geese on the wing in Pacific Northwest Washington feature for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

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So, 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 footnotes:
* There is no off-topic on the Weekly Open Thread, but consider whether your comment would be on-topic on any recent thread and thus better belongs there.
* If your comment touches on topics known to generally result in thread-jacking, you will be expected to take the discussion to #spillover instead of overshadowing the social/circuit-breaking aspects of this thread.

193 thoughts on Open Thread with Snow Geese On The Wing

  1. Finally (!) was able to navigate my way to a new CPAP mask after months of working towards it. You’d think I was drug seeking or something, rather than trying desperately to get the least sexy bedroom accessory ever.

  2. I read this week that Sylvester Stallone wants to do an all-woman Expendables movie. I say keep your cheesy macho mitts off my fantasy all-woman action movie cast, Rambo!

    Of course I want a movie where as many as possible of Sigourney Weaver/Helen Mirren/Nichelle Nichols/Linda Hamilton/Judi Dench/Michelle Yeoh/Pam Grier/Lynda Carter/Geena Davis quip and/or scheme while Uma Thurman/Angela Bassett/Lucy Lawless/Jodie Foster/Kate Beckinsale/Carrie Ann Moss/Vivica A. Fox/Mila Jovovich/ Zhang Ziyi/Halle Berry/Aishwarya Rai/Penelope Cruz/Angelina Jolie/Queen Latifah roll their eyes at the excessive energy expended by Zoe Saldana/Scarlett Johansson/Rosario Dawson/Chloe Moretz/Rutina Wesley/Chiaki Kuriyama/Jennifer Lawrence/Keira Knightley/Michelle Rodriguez/Sarah Michelle Geller/Kareena Kapoor/Amandla Stenberg doing the gratuitously gymnastic arsekicking. Just don’t make it a cheesy Expendables movie.

    I favour Joe Manganiello for token male, although Daniel Glover would be just fine if one wants a wisecracker as well as eye-candy.

    1. Rutina Wesley doing ass kicking! I loved her in True Blood last season and hate whatever the fuck they’re doing with Wesley this season.

      1. I haven’t caught up with the current season yet (plan to bingewatch it once the DVD set comes out), but it doesn’t surprise that she’s being wasted somehow. The writers only seem to be able to give Tara good scenes in bursts, not consistently

    2. I forgot to include Linda Hunt amongst the emeritae possibilities! and Meryl Streep (still adore The River Wild)! and Angela Lansbury/Julie Andrews/Diana Rigg as crones of great wisdom and ruthlessness! *flogs self with wet lettuce*

    3. Of course I want a movie where as many as possible of Sigourney Weaver/Helen Mirren/Nichelle Nichols/Linda Hamilton/Judi Dench/Michelle Yeoh/Pam Grier/Lynda Carter/Geena Davis quip and/or scheme while Uma Thurman/Angela Bassett/Lucy Lawless/Jodie Foster/Kate Beckinsale/Carrie Ann Moss/Vivica A. Fox/Mila Jovovich/ Zhang Ziyi/Halle Berry/Aishwarya Rai/Penelope Cruz/Angelina Jolie/Queen Latifah roll their eyes at the excessive energy expended by Zoe Saldana/Scarlett Johansson/Rosario Dawson/Chloe Moretz/Rutina Wesley/Chiaki Kuriyama/Jennifer Lawrence/Keira Knightley/Michelle Rodriguez/Sarah Michelle Geller/Kareena Kapoor/Amandla Stenberg doing the gratuitously gymnastic arsekicking. Just don’t make it a cheesy Expendables movie.

      Somehow I feel that if this movie WAS made, it still wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test because the women wouldn’t have any conversations.
      Though my favorite female directed movie, Maya Deren’s Meshes of The Afternoon doesn’t pass the Bechdel test as it lacks dialogue.

      1. Fat Steve, what do you mean no conversations? They would definitely need to discuss exactly how they were going to blow crap up and just how that would foil the adversaries. There would probably be some misleading of minions and/or officious officials to be discussed as well. There may well have to be some childcare/eldercare sorted out for all the strategems to happen according to schedule. Heaps to talk about.

        [eta: after all, in the original comic strip, Ripley and Vasquez briefly discussing how to kill the Alien was enough to pass – it is a very low bar with regard to length/depth/breadth of conversation (and still way too many movies don’t even pass that very low bar (do Black Widow and Agent Hill talk to each other at all in The Avengers, for example?))]

        1. The original comic strip was about Alien, not Aliens! The conversations are between Ripley and Lambert.

  3. Today I wore my B&W keffiyeh on my head like a bandana, and my dad told me “You look like a Jewish woman” and then when I took it off, proceeded to berate me about how he’s ashamed to be around me because of my hair. My hatred grows for him by the day.

    1. Today I wore my B&W keffiyeh on my head like a bandana, and my dad told me “You look like a Jewish woman

      Scarlet Johansson is a Jewish woman, wear it as a badge of honor. 😉

    4. Hi Ally,

      It’s D from mancheeze. I am Jewish too and have the most afro curly hair ever. I don’t know what kind of hair you have but during my youth my mother was on me constantly about my hair being unruly. I finally went to an African Salon in my 20’s to get my hair relaxed. It’s very expensive.

      Point is, I’m 44 going on 45 and I’ve finally accepted my naturally frizzy hair. Some of my friends call it a jewfro. LOL

      2. @Mancheeze

        I don’t get it. Why is this hee hee, jewfro, funny? It sounds like you’re disparaging proximity to blackness.

      3. Basically, he thought I looked like a Jewish woman because he thought the way I was wearing it resembled the way some Jewish women wear headscarves. He was totally off the mark, though.

        Also, I would like to note that I’m not Jewish. Sorry for not making that clearer in my comment. I was insulted with an anti-Semitic remark, but I don’t want people to assume that I’m Jewish because I never have and never will be a victim of anti-Semitism.

  4. I was reading this article detailing how all humans are descended from around 1000 individuals from East Africa 56,000 years ago.

    OK, I know this may be an incredibly stupid and fascile point, so feel free to rip this to shreds. I offer it up as something to argue against. But…

    It occurred to me that sort of make the whole point of different ‘cultures’ based on ancestry pretty much pointless, as we all have the same ancestry.

    So tell me why I’m wrong…I know I probably am.

    1. Yeah, no. You can’t negate the reality of the existence of cultures and their history because of an interesting fact relating to something occurring 56 000 years ago. A lot of history can happen in 56 000 years.

    2. I’m with whistlewren on this. All it has ever taken to establish a distinctive ancestral culture is for a bunch of adventurers/brigands/visionaries/malcontents to wander away to the other side of the river/mountains/sea from their birth communities and spend a few generations only interbreeding with each other before running into other peoples again. If they wandered far enough and stayed isolated long enough they get to have distinctive genotypes too – google “founder effect”. This has happened too many times to count over those 56,000 years, and when one combines it with how many sagas/chronicles show dynastic splits as the alleged original source of competing ancestor-honouring cultures (was it Isaac or Ishmael who was offered up as a sacrifice to the Lord by Abraham? or was it both?) then it’s fairly obvious that it’s about honouring *a* particular ancestor, not all ancestors.

      Tangentially it’s worth noting (per PTerry?) how cultures that take ancestral traditions and hierarchies very seriously indeed as markers of ethnic purity tend to obscure the fact that most ancestral hierarchies were founded by the biggest, nastiest, and most ruthless thugs around who gained the lands and titles and empires that their descendants now crow about by having the foresight/skullduggery/luck to do terrible things to the opposition before the opposition had the chance to do terrible things to them. As the Bene Gesserit note in Dune, we are all descended from survivors, the corollary being that we thus all have some ancestors who did terrible things to survive and thrive. This observation comforts and amuses me when watching the more bloodless examples of ancient aristocratic families being precious about their traditions.

      1. This observation comforts and amuses me when watching the more bloodless examples of ancient aristocratic families being precious about their traditions.

        Puts me in mind of the Normans, tigtog. Those were tough nasty characters descended from tough nasty Vikings – Rolf the Ganger and his crew.

        Then again on the fictional side, there’s Oz in Auf Weidersehen, Pet boasting his family traces all the way back to World War II. 😛

  5. Donna L,

    I hope that contacting you here is all right. I just wanted to tell you that you have my respect. I tried to stand up and speak out tonight, but I showed up too late. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there sooner, and I’m sorry that you’ve been treated so badly where you should have found allies. I’m so angry and frustrated.

    -guest at SKA

    1. Thank you. I was a little surprised at being banned there, based on one series of comments, after participating there without incident for months. I haven’t looked there since it happened — it’s too embarrassing, and I didn’t want to read anything unpleasant that anyone might have said — so I’m happy to learn that one person there, at least, understood why I was so upset. Trying to explain over and over again, without success, why it was so upsetting to see that Amanda Marcotte article linked to, was extraordinarily frustrating; it was especially frustrating to see SKA continually shifting goalposts every time I pointed out some obvious error in what she was saying. (Like SKA’s absurd claim, in an attempt to demonstrate that the word “transgenderism” isn’t offensive, that Michelle Goldberg’s underlying New Yorker piece must have gotten the word from the OED — even though the New Yorker piece itself cited Sheila Jeffreys’s loathsome new book, which uses that word in its title , and relied on Jeffreys as one of its primary sources!)

      But none of this kind of defensiveness by cis people, and refusal to acknowledge any possibility that a mistake was made, is very unusual when you’re trans, unfortunately. Even at a place that’s theoretically trans friendly.

      I also think it was grossly unfair to accuse me of going after SKA with “guns blazing.” Saying that I was “upset and disappointed” to see that article linked to was a rather mild complaint, in my view, compared to some adjectives I could have chosen. Nor do I think it was fair, as I tried to explain several times, to accuse me of “hypocrisy” by linking to an article in B*tch, when I wasn’t aware that B*tch is supposedly so awful that any article there, no matter how good it may be, is ipso facto tainted. My explaining that hypocrisy requires knowledge fell on closed ears.

      I did think SKA’s statement that no doubt I would complain at Feministe was a low blow — I wasn’t planning to say anything at all about it here, until your comment.

      I did withdraw and apologize for my comment that SKA was being as bad as Melissa, but the extraordinary defensiveness and unwillingness to listen to criticism was rather unpleasant in and of itself without needing any comparisons.

      I suppose, though, that I should be proud that I’ve now succeeded in being banned from both Shakesville and DtSKA!

      And perhaps I can now do something more productive with my time, like my laundry.

      1. If you or someone else here is willing to take the risk, please feel free to quote my response over there, since I wasn’t given any opportunity to defend myself.

        1. OK, I held my breath and looked. I was not surprised to see that the commenter named Hazel was the one named person to upvote the banning. She was consistently nasty to me from the time I began commenting there, called me a “bully” for defending Melissa about something, and even used the telltale phrase “just because you’re a trans woman . . . .”

          And thank you again for speaking up for me; SKA was about as dismissive of your comments as I would have expected.

          At this point, my conclusion is: a plague on both their houses. They’re both assholes.

      2. I just saw that whole blowup at SKA a few minutes ago. Holy shit. I don’t think I can participate in that community in good conscience anymore, because SKA was slinging some serious bullshit in that thread.

        I know we haven’t always gotten along, but I think you were treated really unfairly, and I hope it’s okay for me to say that I’m on your side about this.

        1. Thanks, igglanova. If we’ve had our differences, I think they were mostly when I first started commenting here three years ago, and I barely remember them. I’m not the grudge-holding type in general, mostly because I don’t have a good memory for things like that.

        2. I don’t think I can participate in that community in good conscience anymore

          Pretty much this. Just one more place trans people aren’t welcome.

          It’s kind of irritating honestly considering SKA is pretty much the only active place for ex-shakers to talk about their experiences (that I know of).

          Donna L, you were fantastic in that thread. I really admire you for speaking up.

        3. “Just one more place trans people aren’t welcome.”

          If you take a look at the thread (the one that starts”i’m appalled by your behaviour”) though, you’ll see several trans people, including myself, commenting. I have mixed feelings about what went down, and I think the SKA mod could have handled it better and differently, but I also appreciate her willingness to talk about it, and I’ve thought about it long and hard and really, really don’t see this as evidence that the blog is unwelcoming to trans people. In fact, it’s the only non-LGBT specific feminist blog that I feel comfortable at, and where I see a wide range of trans voices.

      3. I did think SKA’s statement that no doubt I would complain at Feministe was a low blow

        She accused you of going to another space to talk about something shitty that happened to you in an online community? All things considered, I would have imagined her to be in favour of that kind of thing.

        I’ve commented here a handful of times over the years, I used to frequent Shakesville under a different name and I’ve read SKA without commenting for a while. I read the thread where you were banned today and, for what it’s worth, I think the mod’s behaviour towards you was completely abysmal. Linking to Marcotte in the first place was dubious enough, but doubling down after being criticised for it and then abruptly banning you for being upset was just nasty. There are some good people and a lot of valid criticism over at SKA, but this wasn’t the first time the mod acted like an unfettered asshole.

        1. Unfortunately, I think the whole business fits into an all-too-common pattern of likely events when a trans person (especially a trans woman) has an Internet disagreement with a cis person, especially when the trans person is the only trans person (or one of the very few trans people) at the particular place. Even when the cis person, here a cis woman, considers herself to be trans-friendly.

          So, cis woman, without malicious intent, says, or links to, something she doesn’t realize might be offensive or upsetting to trans women. Trans woman is indeed upset and offended, says so, and tries to explain why.

          Cis woman gets defensive, acts like she’s being personally attacked, denies offensiveness, denies possibility that she made mistake, makes accusations (here, “hypocrisy”) against trans woman, doubles down, etc., etc., and gets increasingly angry every time trans woman explains why her arguments don’t hold water.

          Cis woman says she refuses to discuss underlying so-called “dispute” between “transgenderism” and branch of radical feminism, because it’s a “minefield.” (Because you know how trans women are always ready to jump down cis women’s throats for not getting everything right! And besides, as the Amanda Marcotte article she linked to said, it’s all just an obscure, “academic” dispute anyway; how could anyone possibly be expected to take a side, right?)

          Cis woman ends up excusing any defensiveness by characterizing trans woman’s conduct in violent and/or grotesque terms implying unfettered anger and irrationality (claiming trans woman went after her with “guns blazing” — because trans woman said she was “upset and disappointed” by link; such a terrible thing to say! — and accusing trans woman of “shitting” all over thread, because of trans woman’s repeated attempts to explain why she was upset).

          Cis woman rejects trans woman’s apology for saying cis woman was acting like Melissa McEwan. Cis woman bans trans woman, says she’s “over” it; accepts pats on back from her only supporter so far (namely the member named Hazel — notorious for her love of amateur Internet psychoanalysis of people she doesn’t like — who has always been hostile to trans woman from time trans woman joined site, and accuses trans woman of “bullying” for refusing to back down). Cis woman rests easy, knowing she did the right thing. And still gets to consider herself “trans-friendly”!

          A win-win situation for all concerned, other than the actual trans woman.

        2. I forgot to make my overall point: that regardless of details, the overall pattern is consistent. The more upset a trans woman is — both at whatever upset her in the first place, and at the inability of cis people to understand or accept that she was justified in being upset — and the more she struggles to explain herself, the worse things get, and the more susceptible she is to accusations of irrational anger, of missing the point, of “bullying.” The ending is almost always the same.

        3. If anything, saying you were “upset and disappointed” was pretty gentle criticism, and the aggressively defensive, evasive and accusatory response you got from SKA was completely unwarranted. I’m just really sorry it played out like that in yet another ostensibly trans-friendly space.

        4. Thanks again. By the way, I’m certainly not going to make a habit of responding to all the people over there congratulating themselves and each other about their “spidey senses” with respect to me, or their negative reactions to my “energy” (dog whistle time!), or explaining that of course “this is not a cis woman vs trans woman thing” — after all, the last thing anyone needs is a “Drink the ‘Shaker Koolaid’ Koolaid” site! — but I will respond to one specific statement.

          Hazel’s claim that I supposedly claimed at one point that I “couldn’t be a bully because The Holocaust” is a f*king baldfaced, malicious lie, not to mention clearly libellous. Not that I’m surprised, coming her. My point, after she (repeatedly) accused me of bullying months ago, was that bullying (even on the Internet) requires, at a minimum, some kind of power differential. When two people are having an argument, and one of them — me! — refuses to back down (especially when the other person was calling me Melissa’s “toady” for daring to defend her about something), that doesn’t make them a bully by any definition. I never said anything remotely like what she’s asserting, and for her to claim that I did is truly and unforgivably repulsive. The thread in question is at http://shakesvillekoolaid.tumblr.com/post/80619714899/do-you-or-anyone-else-have-any-insight-as-to-what if anyone wants to judge for themselves.

          So, Hazel, you can just f*k right off. And Carltontherobot, I wouldn’t believe what people are trying to tell you, if I were you.

        6. Imdon’t think ska is anti-trans. I think DonnaL and the owner got into a heated argument. I think it’s unfair to say the blog is not friendly to trans folk because of one argument. I think the owner could have stepped back and apologized for discussing positively an article that had a term that is hostile to trans folk.

          I think both people were very angry. DonnaL, I think it was a little unfair of you to expect SKA to know about the nuances of the article in the New Yorker while claiming the same defense for yourself about “Bi***.”

          I am sorry things ended as they did.

        7. The point is, though, Hattie, that I never for a moment expected SKA to know about the New Yorker article. I was upset about the Marcotte piece, and explained why in detail in my very first comment, and gave links to a number of articles explaining my objections in detail. I got angry (although I’d love to hear how I “personally attacked” SKA) only after SKA immediately became incredibly defensive and rejected everything I was saying.

          The reason I initially said I was “upset and disappointed” by the link to the Marcotte piece — something I hardly think constitutes going after SKA with “guns blazing” — is that I thought the piece was offensive in and of itself. For everyone to focus solely on my objection to the word “transgenderism” is misleading. (And I only got upset when SKA was so dismissive of my saying it was offensive, and gave increasingly absurd explanations of where The New Yorker got the word — despite my pointing out that the New Yorker article itself made clear that the word came from Sheila Jeffreys.) My primary objection was that the Marcotte piece was so dismissive about the whole underlying TERF issue, calling it an obscure academic dispute, etc. Again, though, SKA immediately rejected what I had to say about that, and claimed — wrongly — that Marcotte, and The New Yorker itself, were only talking about the specific conference discussed at the beginning of the article. It’s hard for me to believe that everyone over there seems to be so unwilling to concede that I had every right to be more than “upset and disappointed,” and had every right to get angry, once I got so much pushback following my explanations. And no, I didn’t “personally attack” SKA except by saying at one point — purely out of frustration — that she was being like MM in her unwillingness to listen to what I was trying to say. I apologized for that. If SKA considered my apology “grudging,” as she said, that’s her choice. It was intended sincerely.

          I also never said SKA is “anti-trans.” Of course she isn’t. I said that the entire thread fit into a pattern of discourse that’s all too common when a trans person complains about something and gets immediate pushback. Ciscentric does not equal transphobic. and I don’t think SKA is transphobic.

        8. Also, regarding the link to an article in B*tch, I still think there’s a huge difference between linking to an article that’s itself offensive (like Marcotte’s), and linking to an article that’s itself perfectly OK , but is at a place that’s bad. The other difference is that after SKA accused me of being hypocritical for doing the latter (and I still say that hypocrisy requires knowledge; that was my objection to the accusation), I immediately deleted the link to the B*tch piece, leaving four other links. That’s a far cry from SKA’s reaction to my objection — refusing to listen no matter how many times I tried to explain things.

          As far as all the other crap that’s being said over there to supposedly justify my being banned after the fact, I’m not even going to try to respond to it. It’s getting ridiculous. Obviously, even if I were unbanned, which SKA has made clear I won’t be, I would have no interest in returning to a place where so many people are so eager to attack someone after they’re not there anymore.

        9. SKA is full of assholes who are hell bent on teaching Melissa a lesson, and they don’t care who they shit on in the process. Melissa is an asshole too and doesn’t care who she hurts. And they’re becoming what they hate. I don’t give a rats ass about either site. Worthless is worthless.

        10. She accused you of going to another space to talk about something shitty that happened to you in an online community?

          SKA didn’t “accuse” her of it; she really just noted in passing that Donna might comment about it over here, and then again in passing, that she had. Pretty neutral and innocuous, not an “accusation.”

        11. SKA didn’t “accuse” her of it; she really just noted in passing that Donna might comment about it over here, and then again in passing, that she had. Pretty neutral and innocuous, not an “accusation.”

          This is SKA’s comment verbatim:

          You’re banned. I’m sure you’ll complain at the Feministe spillover thread.

          Maybe you see that as neutral and innocuous, but I don’t. She predicted snidely that DonnaL would “complain” about her ban here. I see that as (possibly unintentionally) discouraging her from coming here to talk about what happened, because doing so would prove the prediction was accurate. It’s pretty subtle, but it’s the kind of thing that’s constantly picked apart over there when MM does it at Shakesville, so I don’t know why SKA should get a pass for it.

      4. I suppose, though, that I should be proud that I’ve now succeeded in being banned from both Shakesville and DtSKA!

        It is kind of hilarious. The infamous Donna L!

        1. Oh, she’s in good company. I’ve been banned from Shakesville, Corrente, and Riverdaughter! It’s a bit of a badge of honor.

      5. Donna L,

        You were right about the pattern unfolding in that discussion in a dishearteningly predictable way.

        I do appreciate the SKA community overall, but that thread, your banning, and much of the subsequent conversation have been a disappointment. I’m sorry for the way you were treated.

        I hope the community learns from this situation, but that learning shouldn’t have to take place at the cost of harming you. Please know you do have supporters.

      6. Hey Donna,

        FWIW, I just got back into town and plugged in for the first time since Friday afternoon, and can I just say fuuuuuuuuuuck all that. You know what, ill even say the word: cissplainin’ was all over those threads, and it was gross. I mean, I learned something new from your comments there, which is that OF COURSE it’s offensive to frame the debate as “academic.” How hard would it have been to just say, “you know, I was wrong, my bad?” Between that and all the nice ladies showing up to say how meeeeeeeean everyone is who calls them TERFs when they say some ignorant shit? (Someone even pulled the “thoughtcrime” bit!) Ugh. I’ve enjoyed my time in that space but that’s just too much. I support you too, and I’ll even join you in complaining on Feministe!

        1. Thanks, gratuitous violet. And, dear moderator, when you see my comment now in moderation, please leave it there — I’ll break it up into smaller pieces.

      7. Oooookay. I finally read through what the actual “debate” was, and now I’m just even more pissed off. So disappointing. I was annoyed enough that she even linked to Amanda Marcotte in the first place, but the amount of predictable ‘splaining and defensiveness just blew me away. As the moderator of a blog, you do not get to poke open wounds then say “I’m done discussing this with you” when someone wants to tell you why you’re being shitty.

        I think my favorite part was them calling you, Donna, a “hypocrite” because you were pissed that SKA didn’t know that much about the trans issues under discussion, but that’s JUST AS BAD as YOU not knowing that Bitch magazine is terrible. Because not knowing parts of a central debate in feminist history is just as bad as not caring to distinguish one liberal privatized publication from another. (I’m a big ‘ol commie, so magazines that don’t have “Red” or “Socialist” in the title all tend to fall under the Capitalist Apologist umbrella for me, so I thought that was an exceptionally bizarre line of attack for her to take.) The debate about gender has been going on in Feminism since forever. Fuck, I just turned 27 today and I knew about it. Why are so many feminists unaware of our own history? Oh, wait, I think I know. Same thing that makes some Feminists look all wide-eyed in surprise when you tell them the movement has had a racism problem since day one.

        2. Gratuitous Violet, thanks again for your two comments. I had a long response that’s in moderation, but I’ll try to break it up into smaller pieces:

          1. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the position of knowing that there’s a 465-comment thread somewhere largely devoted to stomping on you — without your being able to defend yourself directly — but it isn’t fun. It’s also embarrassing.

          I don’t know why most people seem to think my only complaint about Marcotte’s piece was her use of the word “transgenderism.” I made it very clear, by multiple quotations, several times, that I was at least as upset by Marcotte’s dismissive reference to the underlying issue as being obscure, academic, etc., etc.

          I still don’t get why I’m being vilifed for “attacking” SKA with “guns blazing” from the outset, by saying I was “upset and disappointed” by the link, and then trying to explain in detail, in my very first comment, exactly why I was upset and disappointed — whereas not one single person that I know of has has pointed out that SKA’s very first response to me immediately escalated things dramatically, by calling me a hypocrite (without addressing one single thing I had said) because one of my 5 links was to an article in B*tch magazine — even though she didn’t ever say there was anything wrong with the article itself. In fact, she never gave any indication of having looked at it, or at any of the other links I posted.

          I’m glad that at least one person there has tried to point out the difference between criticizing an article for what the article itself says, and criticizing an article because the place where it’s published — even when it’s a self-identified feminist publication that at least claims to be trans friendly, not the Daily KKK, or something like Gendertrender! — irrevocably taints anything published there. In this case, supposedly on the grounds that the place is transphobic. Even though the particular article in B*tch to which I linked was — as I thought was obvious from the very fact that I linked to it — very strongly pro-trans! (Kind of ironic, isn’t it, for SKA to accuse me of being a hypocrite for linking to a pro-trans article, simply because the place that published it is supposed to be transphobic? Not a very well-thought out accusation, if you ask me!)

          And then SKA continued to escalate things by repeatedly denying both that there was anything offensive about “transgenderism” (relying on the OED, for God’s sake, even though I explained that the New Yorker article itself made clear that the word came from Sheila Jeffreys), and repeatedly claiming that the New Yorker article was only about one conference, and, therefore, it was OK for Marcotte to call the “dispute” merely “academic.” All of which is not only untrue, but ludicrous.

        3. Also, Happy Birthday!

          2. By the way, tinfoil hattie, I’m astonished that you’re saying that I claimed there was some kind of “moderation conspiracy” when my comments suddenly stopped appearing early on (as it turned out, simply because I forgot — just like SKA herself — to put an asterisk in B*tch). A conspiracy requires at least two people, for God’s sake! I never said anything of the kind. I’m not that stupid. (This isn’t the first time people have misrepresented things I’ve said.) Yes, I thought SKA had put me on moderation — and why shouldn’t I have thought so for the short time until she explained that wasn’t the case, given the fact that she was already refusing to listen to, let alone accept, anything I was saying?

          But once SKA explained what was going on, I dropped it. Just as I deleted the link to B*tch as soon as SKA said she had a problem with it. Did I argue with her about B*tch? No; I said I hadn’t known about the objection she raised to the place. But after she mentioned those objections, I never once tried to argue with her about her objections (despite the fact that her critiquing me for linking to a pro-trans article because it appeared in a supposedly transphobic publication made no sense whatsoever.) I only disputed her assertion that I was somehow a “hypocrite,” which she kept repeating even after I tried to explain the difference multiple times.

          SKA, on the other hand, never dropped a single one of her claims about where The New Yorker got the word “transgenderism,” or why it supposedly wasn’t offensive for Marcotte or The New Yorker to use that word, even after I pointed out that it came straight from Sheila Jeffreys. Whom I specifically pointed out is probably the most notoriously transphobic feminist writer active today. Because of course SKA and everyone else knew better than I did, I guess Nor did SKA ever drop her position that there was no basis for my saying that it was offensive for Marcotte to call the subject of the New Yorker article obscure and academic — no matter how many times I tried to explain why there was nothing obscure or academic about it.

          So to anyone who wants to play “gotcha” by saying that my not knowing about B*tch is somehow the same as SKA’s and others’ not knowing about the word “transgenderism” (never mind the “obscure and academic” business): just look at what happened after explanations were given.

        4. 3. Only a handful of people there seem to realize just why I got upset, and to be willing to acknowledge how dismissive SKA was being. (I’ve never been a proponent of “shut up and listen” as the only proper response when a member of a marginalized group is trying to explain why they’re upset about something that affects that group, but this was one case where it might have been appropriate. At least long enough to listen to and consider what I was saying, instead of immediately attacking me without addressing the substance of what I had to say.)

          Yes, I was so upset at one point that I said SKA was being as bad as MM, and as much of a jerk as MM. That’s the sum and substance of my “personal attacks” on her. For which I apologized. Not “grudgingly,” either. Did SKA ever apologize for attacking me? For being so defensive? For repeatedly denying that my opinion that certain things being said about trans-related issues were offensive might be true? I know that SKA has since issued a general apology (not to me, of course) saying that that she apologizes “if” she said anything transphobic. That’s fine.

          But that’s not really the point. I’d prefer if she had simply conceded that the way she acted in that thread — specifically, her refusal to acknowledge that maybe I knew what I was talking about, and that my feelings might possibly be valid — contributed to escalating the situation. I never said, and never thought, SKA was being transphobic. I do think her behavior (particularly her failure to stop and listen to anything I was saying) exhibited a certain amount of ciscentrism. And, in so doing, conformed to an all-too-common pattern in that kind of discussion, in the ways I explained earlier in this thread. Yes, there’s a big difference, in my opinion, between ciscentrism and transphobia.

        5. 4. But I’m the asshole and the “bully.” Just as I’m the asshole for continuing to try to explain my position when SKA suddenly decided that she was “done” with it all, and didn’t want to discuss the underlying so-called “dispute” between trans people and TERFs, because it was such a “minefield.” (As I think Trees said above, there’s something incredibly condescending about characterizing it that way, never mind the implication that — just as Marcotte said — it’s just two equal opponents having an obscure academic argument, and how can you expect anyone to pick a side? ) Don’t people realize how dismissive she was being? Yes, SKA said she was at work. But nobody was forcing her to respond then and there. All she had to say was that she was busy now and we could pick up the conversation at another time. But she never, ever said that she would ever be willing to discuss the subject again.

          Instead, she was final about it: it was “done.” Because it was a “minefield,” and she was so over it. Ending the discussion without a single word of acknowledgment that one single word I said could possibly have any validity. In other words, telling me that I was wrong to complain about any of it. But I had no right to be upset? I should have immediately accepted hers as the final word on the subject? Not just then, but permanently? At a place where people are supposed to be able to discuss things that hurt them?

          Had it been MM linking to that Marcotte article, and I had raised the same exact complaint about the link, and said I was “upset and disappointed” by the link, do you think SKA would have called me a hypocrite and refused to accept a word I said? I doubt it.

        6. A belated no. 5.

          I said above: “[SKA] never gave any indication of having looked at [the B*tch piece] or at any of the other links I posted” in my very first comment about the Marcotte article and the underlying New Yorker article.

          In the current O.T. news thread, SKA posts a link to a very good piece in the New Statesman, by Juliet Jacques, about the New Yorker article. The comments so far are thanking SKA profusely for posting it.

          Of course, SKA doesn’t mention that one of the links I originally posted was to that very same New Statesman piece. (And of course, I got no thanks for that or anything else in that thread!)

          So either SKA never did get around to reading any of the links I posted and has no idea that I already did so, or she did read them, and has now re-posted a link ot one of them without mentioning how she found it. Neither alternative is very flattering to her, but I prefer to believe the former. She may not be willing to admit any fault in that thread, but I find it hard to believe that she would have done the latter; I don’t think she’s that petty.

      8. DonnaL, don’t forget, you, me, and macavitykitsune were all called a troupe of Feministe bullies when we objected to the “Fat Lass Shrugged” joke a few months ago. Maybe we should make t-shirts or something.

    2. Shit! DonnaL, I don’t think you did anything wrong, and I’m bummed out that you’re banned. 🙁

    3. I’d like to second this. DonnaL, I’m so sorry you were subjected to that. SVKA – always just on the borderline of “that’s a bit far” – has completely lost my respect after the appalling way you were treated, both by the moderator and by other commenters.

    4. Anonforthis, I wanted to thank you for trying to speak up over there with your submission (I’m assuming that “anon” there is you). I’m sorry that the general reception you got was so negative, although I’m not surprised. I was a bit surprised, although perhaps I shouldn’t have been, that a number of people there seemed to think that you are actually me under a different name; I guess they can’t comprehend that anyone else could possibly see it my way!

      There are 340+ comments over there about this now. Who knew that there could ever be so much to say about me behind my back! I suppose I should be flattered, in a peculiar sort of way. (It’s interesting how very many “likes” I received while I was there from people claiming, now that I’m gone, that they knew all along what an asshole and bully I am, not only there but apparently here as well!) No specifics about anything awful I did here, of course; I’m sure they’ll be supplied about as soon as MM releases her evidence that people from DtSKA have been harassing her! And as far as DtSKA is concerned, what people are now saying I did in the Rosanne Barr thread months ago is just as untrue as Hazel’s repugnant claim that I said I can’t be a bully “because the Holocaust.” I never, ever, said, not once, that people who don’t know about Barr’s transphobia are themselves transphobic. I may have been surprised that so few did know about it before I mentioned it, but that’s hardly the same as accusing people of transphobia. If anyone actually knows me, I’m hardly inclined to throw that word around unless there’s very good reason, and have specifically defended people there against that accusation. But people have now convinced themselves that all these things are true, and there’s nothing much I can do about it other than let them talk themselves out until the next time MM says something they can turn to as their new target.

      What I most regret is that some people there — I don’t mean you, TH — have taken the opportunity to crawl out of the woodwork and say openly transphobic things. Like:

      1. I particularly like this one, accusing me of destroying DtSKA:

        Daisy Clover • 26 minutes ago

        Since this blog has now been burned to ashes in the trans wars I will not be returning either. I have no desire to beat this dead horse again and again. I witnessed this happen at Pam’s House Blend years ago. And Bilerico. And so, so many others blogs. And it always goes the same way.

        I’m sure MM and Deeky and Ana Mardoll are laughing to the point of peeing on themselves at this point.

        Way to go DonnaL! You’ve destroyed yet another fantastic feminist blog!

        This is why we can’t have nice things.

        I wish you all well as your swirl around this never-ending whirlpool.

        Or this one:

        safer midwifery utah
        I am sick and tired of the “SHES A TERF! THOUGHTCRIME! DELETE DELETE!” shit that goes down in sj spaces. An argument or article stands on its own merit, and for fucks sake no one in the history of the universe is 100% unproblematic. I’m not even going to get into the bullshit ways that women are branded terfs.

        I am sick and tired of the “SHES A TERF! THOUGHTCRIME! DELETE DELETE!” shit that goes down in sj spaces. An argument or article stands on its own merit, and for fucks sake no one in the history of the universe is 100% unproblematic. I’m not even going to get into the bullshit ways that women are branded terfs.

        As if I called SKA or anyone else a TERF. I didn’t. Not her, not Amanda Marcotte, not Michelle Goldberg. Sheila Jeffreys? Of course. If anyone has a problem with that, too bad.

        Or this one:

        Gayle • 8 hours ago

        Michelle Goldberg is a highly respected journalist who was making an effort to fairly represent both sides of an issue without resorting to name calling.

        The only reason why MM and others refuse to link the article is because any representation of radical feminism that isn’t vilified or followed by rounds of hater hater! are automatically banned in what’s left of the so-called feminist blogesphere. “Transgenerism”[sic] is a slur? I’m sure that’s news to many well meaning feminists. If you don’t like the word explain why without calling people names and demanding censorship. I hate this “I’m not going to link this article” crap. We’re not infants.

        Have any of these three comments been removed, or the users chastised? Not yet.

        Finally, TH, if you’re going to call me an asshole too, I’d respect your opinion a lot more if you did it here, instead of behind my back.

        1. Entirely, separately, TH, regarding a question you asked over there: like Friesjones, I have no problem with the word “transsexual” myself, for those people under the trans umbrella who identify as such, as I do — as long as they don’t act all high and mighty, like they’re the only “real” trans people, and all the others are just disgusting perverts. I prefer the use of the word as an adjective rather than a noun; to say “She is a transsexual” sounds a lot more reductive and weird and exoticizing to me than saying “She is a transsexual woman” or a “woman of transsexual history.” Of course, most of the time I just say I’m trans or transgender. Simply because “transsexual” has “sex” in it, there was — for example — no way that when I told my bosses that I was trans and planning to transition, I was going to use that word. Or when I came out to my father or son or cousins. “Trans” and “transgender” sound a lot safer to me to use with non-trans people, and I know I’m not the only one who thinks that way.

        3. burned to ashes in the trans war

          That is such an ugly crock of shit.

          And “minefield”. Le what?! Sounds like code for “issue for which I don’t really want to bother gaining a better understanding and/or take a position since someone will always be mad at me”.

        4. Wow. That Hazel sounds like a real piece of work.

          I honestly don’t know if I should even weigh in here. Mostly because Donna is going on about how repulsive and evil I am over on Feministe right now which seems to me to be kind of not what this was about. To the point where I wonder if I should be worried, you know?

          She wonders if she should be worried. What a crock of sympathy attention grabbing shit. Replace repulsive and evil with shitty and boring.

        5. Erm… and people called that crap out? Similar to when someone posted that deeky’s face was “slappable” and then several people called it out? There’s actually a good conversation about transphobia going on over there and I find the claim that the blog is transphobic (with the implication that the commenters are transphobic) fairly ridiculous and offensive tbh. I’m sorry that you were banned, Donna. I really am, and I wish it would have gone down differently, but you have defended Melissa when she screwed up on the Mary Daly thread and subsequent thread that centered her feelings about being called out on being clueless about trans issues, and you’ve defended feministe even though they’ve posted outright transphobic things in the past and it took a long time to change that. Even though in both of those cases other trans people have been banned and/or decided to stop posting because they didn’t feel welcome in those spaces. And you said it was unfair to label those blogs/writers as irredeemably transphobic, if I remember correctly. Well, there are lots of trans commenters over at SKA, and it seems like you’re trying to make this out to be a case of you being the one lone trans commenter who was unfairly banned for simply speaking your mind when that’s simply not the case.

        6. I think. i have a comment in mod, here.

          The “She’s a TERF!” comment you quoted above was not in response to anything you said or did, DonnaL. And in the thread in question, I HAVE been accused of being a TERF (but not by any other trans man or trans woman commenting there). So there is lots of ugliness going on. I did correct my comment that you personally called someone else a TERF.

          Furthermore, I do think you acted like an ass**** around the “moderations conspiracy” go-around.

          1. I think. i have a comment in mod, here.

            I can’t see one, and I didn’t get a notification email. Once in a while WordPress will just eat a comment or a post. Happens to me about once a year?

        8. I’ll warrant she doesn’t think Donna has anything to be worried about even though Hazel hasn’t exactly kept quiet about her. So Hazel can mention Donna and talk shit more than once, but if Donna talks shit about Hazel then poor Hazel gets to be all concerned? No. That’s an attempt to fish for sympathy. A shitty, transparent attempt. She’s free to feel how she wants, and I’m free to call a drama spade a drama spade. At least hazel can haul her cookies over here and respond. Donna can’t because she’s been banned.
          Should she be worried…for fucks sake. That’s some grade A bullshit right there. That she said it on a website started for the sole purpose of complaining about people on another website makes it ridiculous on top of shitty.

        9. Tinfoil Hattie, Hazel has the right to “feel” however she wants. But what I don’t think she had the right to do was lie about me in a way calculated to make me look like an incredible asshole who trivializes and exploits the Holocaust to make myself look good. Which is exactly what she was doing when she accused me of saying that I “cant be a bully because the Holocaust,” which, as I explained above, I never said. Not even remotely; she can’t even justify what she said as hyperbole.

          But she’s the “victim” here trying to get sympathy because I brought up that specific lie (I never would have bothered bringing her name up in the first place if she hadn’t said that specific thing. It distinguished her, not in a good way, from everyone else on that thread.) So she gets to trash and psychoanalyze everybody else, but she “wonders if she should be worried” because I pointed out that she’s a liar?

        10. Carltontherobot, I always respect what you have to say. I don’t think the three comments I posted above mean that DtKSA is transphobic. (I must have said 5 times in this thread that I don’t believe that.) I do think that those three people were encouraged to say what they did because they thought — wrongly — that after all those comments saying what an asshole and bully I am, anything goes now, and they can just pile on. (Just like in the more recent “bathroom” thread, which really isn’t supposed to have anything to do with “trans vs. cis” — it’s about gender-neutral bathrooms in general — one or two people are bringing up trans-related stuff, and someone is “explaining” why trans women aren’t helping themselves by failing to sympathize with non-trans women’s fears, and so on, forcing others to engage in Trans 101-type explanations which nobody should have to provide at a place like DtSKA.)

          I’m glad nobody seems to be buying what those three people tried to sell. But — and maybe I’m just being oversensitive, because of what I was specifically accused of in the first comment — I do wish someone had directly told that person to “f*k off” before Cyberwulf finally did so today, instead of just responding with sarcasm.

          Because (speaking of “should I be worried”!), the accusation that I personally “destroyed another fantastic blog,” as preposterous at it is, really does set off alarm bells with me. Why? Because two years ago, I was specifically accused, by name, by none other than the notorious Gallus Mag — the awful transphobe who runs gendertrender — of doing basically the same thing. See http://thecottonceiling.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/adrienne-rich/, complaining about the thread here following the death of Adrienne Rich:

          It’s incredible how much damage a guy like Donna L can do to a female community, online or off.

          So I think I’m a bit more justified in feeling “worried” than Hazel is.

        11. That comment was calculated to make you sound threatening. People who pull that crap are just worthless imo.

        12. Finally, speaking of destroying feminist blogs and spaces, this comment is to OldPolarBear if you’re listening:

          I have always greatly respected you, but I did think it was completely unnecessary, and a low blow, for you to bring up, in response to that comment by “Daisy Clover” about my “destroying yet another fantastic feminist blog,” that I was once accused here — by someone I won’t mention — of helping to wreck this place. (I think I was accused of being one of the “worst offenders,” if I recall correctly, probably along with macavity, EG, etc. Because the place was so wonderful before we showed up!) Do you remember the part where I asked that person, over and over again, to provide one single example of anything I had said that justified the accusation, and zie was entirely unable to do so? Not one? And that all zie succeeded in doing was driving macavity away from here, and that she hasn’t posted here since? (Although she does sometimes comment at DtSKA.) Maybe you could have mentioned that part, instead of conveying the impression that maybe there was some validity to Daisy Clover’s accusation.

        13. Just a couple of things.

          First, if you look at some of the replies to the Daisy Clover comment, people really weren’t sure what was meant. It seemed kind of like sarcasm, but if it was, it was really hard to figure out which “side” it was directed toward, i.e., which “side” Daisy Clover was on.

          As for Hazel’s comment about whether she should be worried, I read that as being facetious, a snarky reference to how SKA posters have been accused of literally attacking Melissa, her family, friends, etc. for doing things like linking and criticizing her site or looking up somebody’s LinkedIn profile. I don’t think Hazel was actually trying to say she feared you would do something to her.

        14. OldPolarBear’s comment was not called for. And I still very much miss macavity’s insights and opinions.

          Sorry that you’ve had to deal with this Donna L, but hopefully you know that a lot of people here support and value your contributions.

        15. Tim, if you really think it was hard to tell what Daisy Clover meant, I’m flabbergasted. There was nothing ambiguous about it.

          I think I’ve made my opinion of Hazel clear enough already.

        16. Donna, I’m with Tim. That comment from Daisy was completely nonsensical. It never (and still hasn’t) crossed my mind that whoever left it was anything but a shit-stirring troll fucked up on drugs. Though I will say that I think there was once a commenter here (i.e. Feministe) whose sn started with “Daisy” that I believe posted transphobic things as well, so it occurred to me that it was a transphobic shit-stirring troll fucked up on drugs, but I googled to see if I could find her to see if she changed her name, and had no luck making googling connections. FWIW, I think OldPolarBear was trying to explain the comment a good chunk of us considered meaningless.

          I understand why it bothers you so much – especially given what you highlighted about gendertrender above – but Tim’s right – that comment was incredibly confusing. Flabbergast away.

        17. Pretty Amiable, I may not be flabbergasted now that I understand what you and Tim mean, but I’m still skeptical. When people say transphobic things, I tend to assume that they’re being transphobic, not that they’re just trying to stir up trouble. After all, it isn’t exactly uncommon for people to say transphobic things, and make accusations against trans people — all perfectly seriously — that sound every bit as ridiculous as what Daisy Clover said, and more so. (Like the astonishingly unpleasant assertion, which I first saw years ago and is apparently included in Sheila Jeffreys’s new book, that trans women’s vaginas have a distinctive odor of rotten meat, feces, etc. — it depends on the story you read.) So it wouldn’t even have occurred to me that Daisy intended anything other than what she actually said.

          I have always liked OldPolarBear, and perhaps they were only trying to clarify what Daisy was referring to, but it was still unnecessary and misleading — as well as very hurtful — for them to bring up that incident without explaining what actually happened. (Apologies if I’m getting OldPolarBear’s pronoun wrong.)

        18. Oh to be clear – IMO, the comment was transphobic whether it was a troll or not. “Trans wars”? That’s the kind of shit prejudiced people claim is tearing down feminism. (An iota of self-awareness might show that TERF bigotry, or rampant racism, or anything else that fails to acknowledge diversity in women’s experiences is tearing down feminism, but there you go).

          But whether it was a transphobic feminist who was serious about zir writing or a transphobic troll? I haven’t the slightest clue. It was difficult to parse meaning or intention from the post. To me, it felt like shit-stirring, with a transphobic lens.

          (My apologies if you thought I was doubting that aspect of your interpretation – I think we completely agree on that).

      2. DonnaL, I think that was actually me (if that’s the ask with ‘Asker’ in the comments). I thought about it and I felt I had to say something, though I never expected a good result. I ended up having to bow out because the conversation was edging me into a panic attack, and I haven’t been back to check the reception of it.

        If multiple people think I am you and SVKA hasn’t corrected them loudly and clearly on this matter, since she knows that isn’t the case what with her ability to see email addresses and IP addresses and all, I think that speaks to a lack of integrity on her part.

        I think once again I bit off more than I could chew – this is an issue close to my heart, so I felt I couldn’t stay silent, but that also means now that I cannot keep speaking, either.

        1. Thanks again. She did say that “at first” she thought you were me, so apparently she realized at some point that you’re not. Hopefully everyone else understands that as well.

    5. I took a look at SVKA, and I can’t figure out what is there that would be of interest to anyone who isn’t feuding with Shakesville (or, apparently, with other SVKA posters & commenters.) The fact that, right at the top of the front page, there’s a link entitled “Let me know if she says something dumb” just reinforces that impression.

      The main reason I stopped trying to participate at Shakesville was that it was too much about who/what you’re supposed to love and who/what you’re supposed to hate. SVKA seems to be a more concentrated version of the same. There are other social justice sites that aren’t as focussed on personalities and stoushes, so why would one go there (or SV, for that matter)?

      1. Neither the Mod nor the commenters at SKA ever tells the others who or what they are supposed to love or hate.

        3. Ha! That was going to have so many more possible answers before you narrowed it down, some of them, perhaps, not well suited for the whole world via the internet.

          I had eggs, hashbrown, and toast, along with a fresh, ripe, organic tomato. Nommies.

          I am currently eating my third meal of the day! Chicken breast, kale, and a little bit of mashed potato. Little Annie in the back of my head is pissed, but she can stuff it where the sun don’t shine.

          I actually looked in the mirror this morning, and for a minute, I saw a fit, healthy, dare I say thin, person standing there. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it feels great.

          A second later, a voice in the back of my head said “if only we could get rid of these things hanging off our chest.”

          Ah well, it ain’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be, so whatevs.

  7. So I’m in one of the Carolinas on vacation with my extended family and my teenaged daughter when I hear that the plan for tomorrow is to go tour a plantation. Which was news to me, as I certainly would never have suggested, nor, if I were asked, would have said “Yes, I want to go tour a slaveholder’s manor.” And yet still, when I expressed my displeasure at this plan, I’m belittled and dismissed, and they are going to try and guilt me again to come along because “family”. Which really, is something that I should be used to given my position as the “baby” of the family, except I’m FORTY FOUR FUCKING YEARS OLD. And I’m overreacting.

    But seriously, my heart hurts. I sat on a beach in the sun for hours today, and I hate the beach. My daughter and I barely get to eat on these vacations because these last two times not very vegetarian friendly places have been chosen. I’m going to tour a fucking warship because my ten year old nephew thinks they’re cool, and I’m okay with indulging a child. But for fuck’s sake, because I don’t want to be on a tour of a plantation because it is a very visible reminder of how awful we are as human beings, (but fabulous for weddings!) I’m a crappy family member who is getting all dramatic about shit that happened in the past, and “everything has problems.” And I was apparently supposed to look for stuff to do here, which I did, and guess what? We are already going to do the ONE THING I wanted to do. So I guess I suck at planning vacations too, and it wasn’t that they didn’t pick a place that I would never go to if they didn’t want to go vacationing here in the first place.

    I would almost rather be at work.

    1. You could always go and ask the tour guide uncomfortable questions about the horrific conditions of slavery. Might give your family a little lesson on the subject.

      1. I like the way you think Pheeno!
        Shfree how about checking out the towns library? Also is there any way you could make small meals for yourself from the grocery store?

        I’m sorry you’re having a lousy time too. 🙁

    2. I like pheeno’s suggestion. Honestly, I don’t understand how they don’t seem to care much that you and your daughter aren’t eating.

      1. Oh, they do try to make allowances, and they do go grocery shopping, as we can’t afford to eat in restaurants every night, as my parents are largely footing the bill. It’s just hard to find restaurants that offer things beyond the one veggie burger or the one dish of fettucini alfredo when you are in, say, Montana.

        1. I have family that lives in the middle of nowhere in Iowa and Missouri, and when I was veg and would visit, I would frequently get to partake of the dinner of sides. Side of baked potato, side of whatever vegetable they had, and a side salad.

          I understand how you feel. One can only eat so many gardenburgers.

    3. So I’m in one of the Carolinas on vacation with my extended family and my teenaged daughter when I hear that the plan for tomorrow is to go tour a plantation. Which was news to me, as I certainly would never have suggested, nor, if I were asked, would have said “Yes, I want to go tour a slaveholder’s manor.” And yet still, when I expressed my displeasure at this plan, I’m belittled and dismissed, and they are going to try and guilt me again to come along because “family”. Which really, is something that I should be used to given my position as the “baby” of the family, except I’m FORTY FOUR FUCKING YEARS OLD. And I’m overreacting.

      shfree,

      I too am in the Carolinas (I won’t mention which one, but I’ll just say it’s the northern one,) visiting my parents. I was dreading it all week, mostly due to an unnamed irrational fear. We arrived yesterday, and so far, we’ve seen my parents new house, gone to a seafood buffet, gone to the gym with my mom and we’re going to see a touring production of Spam-A-lot tomorrow. Meanwhile, I was as bummed out as you seem to be, so your post made me realize how good I have it. I’m going to have a much more positive mental attitude today after reading your post, so while I have no advice to offer you (despite being a man, lol,) I wanted to thank you a lot for helping me put my situation in perspective and wish you luck that your trip improves or goes as quickly as possible.

    4. My therapist always says that if it involves your family, it’s not a vacation. I know this doesn’t help for your current situation, but maybe next time just say that you can’t get that much time off from work, and then maybe only see them for a single weekend. Take the rest of your vacation time to do something fun and veg friendly with your daughter. Just because they’re blood, doesn’t mean you have to tolerate their bullshit. And wanting to go tour a plantation is some ridiculous bullshit if it’s supposed to be a relaxing trip.

    5. Well, fortunately I held firm and my daughter and I didn’t go. My mother did give an aside about “Well, unless you don’t like old fancy houses you probably would have liked this tour” and we got some pointed questions about what else we did instead (hung out in the hotel room and idled on our computers, basically) but nothing else was said, so I think the Matter Is Closed. And really, we can suck up living on breakfast foods and potatoes for a bit, I just really, really didn’t like the sudden inclusion of a plantation tour when the possibility of one hadn’t ever been on the radar before. I probably could have dealt with it without getting as upset.

      But thanks for the support everyone, I got hugs from my daughter last night, and the commiseration here today is great too.

  8. I am currently sitting on the side of a Midwestern highway at 1:40am with my tire blown all to shit.

    So, that’s happening. Hopefully rescue is on the way…

    4. Update: a friend came to rescue me. The rim on my tire was so twisted we couldn’t get the spare on, but I’ve dealt with that since then.

      The most disappointing thing is that I was traveling to meet up with some friends I haven’t seen in a while. I’m part of an online fashion community and we were having our yearly get-together, so it’s something I was looking forward to for several months, requested time off, etc, etc.

      I hope this ends up being a good story eventually, for now it all feels very thwarting and disappointing.

      1. Glad you’re safe, and I hear you about being disappointed over something you were looking forward to doing. I don’t have any good words of comfort, so I’ll let it go, but big hugs, if you want them.

  9. [CN: drugs, abuse]

    In better news, I not only got a refill of my hormone meds – all covered under my insurance – but I also got a raise in my dosage! It’s a 50% increase.

    Hormones have been so helpful for my PTSD and anxiety that it helps me cope without the use of any drugs. I stopped being a heavy pot-smoker within the first week of starting my HRT. My mental disabilities aren’t going away anytime soon (and honestly, I doubt they ever will), but lately they have been a lot easier to cope with. In particular, my more positive moods have been helping me transform some of my self-hatred into anger at my abusers. It doesn’t really make sense when I explain it out loud, but w/e.

    1. Makes perfect sense to me, Ally. Having more positives in your life gives you some counterweight to the negatives and some emotional wherewithal to avoid those down-spirals. I’m glad the meds are helping.

    2. In better news, I not only got a refill of my hormone meds – all covered under my insurance – but I also got a raise in my dosage! It’s a 50% increase.

      Hormones have been so helpful for my PTSD and anxiety that it helps me cope without the use of any drugs. I stopped being a heavy pot-smoker within the first week of starting my HRT. My mental disabilities aren’t going away anytime soon (and honestly, I doubt they ever will), but lately they have been a lot easier to cope with. In particular, my more positive moods have been helping me transform some of my self-hatred into anger at my abusers. It doesn’t really make sense when I explain it out loud, but w/e.

      Ally, I think it’s great that your self-hatred is going away. It’s certainly not just a little thing. I can also see how doing something that you feel is wrong, such as smoking pot, to deal with self-hatred would lead you into a vicious cycle (circle? I never know which one is right…) Anyway, I’m not claiming the moral high ground, I have been a regular marijuana smoker for 30 years now, and I guess because of my hippy parents, I wasn’t even necessarily brought up to believe the idea that it’s the same as doing ‘drugs’ like cocaine, heroin, ecstasy or something cooked up in a lab. But since I still feel guilty about the few years I wasted doing those type of drugs, I can see why it all feeds into the circle/cycle.

  10. The topic of Quakerism, from the previous open thread (& spillover), got me thinking.

    A long time ago, I got married. We had a romantic, mostly traditional Quaker wedding ceremony. 16 years later, at the end of a 10-hour day of negotiations in the courthouse, we were legally separated, and a year after that, the final decree came in the mail.

    So I’ve been thinking*: every religion I know of has a wedding ceremony, usually hallowed by centuries of tradition. Does any religion have a divorce ceremony?

    Granted, a divorce is not generally a happy occasion (though I felt enormous sense of relief), but not all (religious) ceremonies are for happy events (e.g., funerals.) It seems like divorce is still one of those things (religious) people would prefer to pretend doesn’t exist and thus don’t formally recognize.

    * Bad idea, I know.

    1. The topic of Quakerism, from the previous open thread (& spillover), got me thinking.

      A long time ago, I got married. We had a romantic, mostly traditional Quaker wedding ceremony. 16 years later, at the end of a 10-hour day of negotiations in the courthouse, we were legally separated, and a year after that, the final decree came in the mail.

      So I’ve been thinking*: every religion I know of has a wedding ceremony, usually hallowed by centuries of tradition. Does any religion have a divorce ceremony?

      Granted, a divorce is not generally a happy occasion (though I felt enormous sense of relief), but not all (religious) ceremonies are for happy events (e.g., funerals.) It seems like divorce is still one of those things (religious) people would prefer to pretend doesn’t exist and thus don’t formally recognize.

      * Bad idea, I know.

      I know there’s a thing in Orthodox Judaism called a ‘get.’ It’s a thing that the man has to agree to. I’ll back out here and leave it to someone like Donna who knows far more than I do (which is just about nothing,) about the religion of our ancestors.

    2. AMM, here’s a link describing the “get” ceremony in detail:

      http://www.ritualwell.org/ritual/jewish-divorce-ritual-our-time

      Rabbi:
      We have gathered here to solemnize the end of one time in ____s and ____s lives and the beginning of another. W are so made that we cannot live in isolation from other people, but neither can we live too closely joined with them. We are social beings, but also individual selves, arid it is the rhythm of union and separation that enables us to live our lives in relation and solitude.

      _____years ago, the time was right for_____ and_____ to be joined in marriage. Then they needed. or their growth, the bond of marriage. Now the time has come when that bond is hampering both their growth as individuals and their common life. Therefore, they have decided to sever the ties of their marriage, and have asked us to witness that affirmation of their new lives, and to uphold them in their new undertakings.

      (The rabbi first addresses the husband with the following questions. Then he addresses the wife with the same questions:)

      _____, do you now relinquish your status as husband/wife of _____, freeing her/him from all claims upon and responsibilities to you, except those that you willingly give to all other human beings?

      Husband/Wife:
      I do.

      Rabbi:
      Do you forgive her/him any wrongs s/he has committed against you, and do you accept her/his forgiveness, thus freeing her/him from the burdens of guilt and sterile remorse?

      Husband/Wife:
      I do.

      Rabbi:
      Do you release him/her with your love and blessing, in gratitude for the part s/he played in your life, in knowledge that his/her part in you will never be forgotten of despised, and in faith that in separation as in union, you are both creations of God.

      Husband/Wife:
      I do.

      And so on.

      It’s fine when both parties are in agreement; problems can arise when a husband refuses to give a “get,” in an attempt to prevent his wife from remarrying in a religious ceremony. A “beit din” (Jewish court) can order the husband to give the get, but of course has no secular power to enforce such an order.

      1. Interesting. In my neck of the woods, we’ve heard of “get”s, mostly in connection with Orthodox (or ultra-Orthodox) men who refuse to give their wives a get, thus preventing their wives from remarrying (at least within the Orthodox community.) The next county over has a near-majority of ultra-Orthodox Jews, which is why this sort of thing ends up in the news.

        I’d never heard there was a ceremony for it. I notice that the page you reference (Reconstructionist Judaism) mentions that there was a traditional ceremony, but doesn’t go into any more detail. The Wikipedia page for “Get (divorce document)” doesn’t mention any ceremony.

        1. The traditional ceremony:

          http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/557906/jewish/Divorce-Basics.htm

          The entire get procedure is performed in front of a beth din (rabbinical court consisting of three rabbis). Though technically only the presence of the husband, wife, and two witnesses is required to effect the divorce, practically, the get process is so complex that it cannot be done correctly unless done in the presence of experts in the field. In fact, rabbinic law automatically invalidates any get which was not written and transmitted in front of experts.

          After the document is written by the scribe, the husband hands it to his wife in the presence of two kosher witnesses. At this point the marriage has been dissolved and the beth din will give both parties a certificate confirming their new marital status. . . .

          A key requirement in the get process is the complete acquiescence of both parties to the proceedings. “And it happens that she does not find favor in his eyes” teaches us that the document is only valid if it stems from the husband’s desire to divorce his wife.1

          Originally the wife’s consent wasn’t required in order for her husband to divorce her. This changed approximately 1000 years ago when the noted German scholar, Rabbi Gershom “the Light of the Diaspora,” prohibited a man from divorcing his wife without her approval.

        2. @DonnaL

          Sounds more like a court proceeding than a religious ceremony. I think I like the Reconstructionist one better. Maybe we goyim should adopt something like that?

          This changed approximately 1000 years ago when the noted German scholar, Rabbi Gershom “the Light of the Diaspora,” prohibited a man from divorcing his wife without her approval.

          I’d have been in real trouble then.

          My wife was dead set against us divorcing (and still is.) At that time, in our state, if you couldn’t get mutual agreement, you could only divorce if you could prove fault, so my lawyers had to put together a case for mental cruelty. If that didn’t work, I was going to move to a neighboring state where you didn’t need mutual agreement. Fortunately, on the day it was going to go to trial, she finally accepted (with ill grace) that she couldn’t prevent it, as I was going to get divorced one way or another.

          From what I’ve heard, under Orthodox Jewish law, a court (Beth Din?) cannot divorce a couple if they don’t both agree to it, no matter how awful or abusive one (or both?) of them is. Fortunately, in my (US) State, they can. (And now, finally, they have no-fault divorce.)

  11. So a man started a Boycott Murettia, California, Facebook page to protest against how the refugee children from South and Central America were treated.

    He then took in a Guatemalan family fleeing violence, and when he mentioned he ran a restaurant, people wanted to know where so they could support him. He refused to tell, because “that’s not why I’m doing this”

    Well someone from the anti immigrant side doxxed him, including putting pictures up of his little kids (!) and wife, and started a Boycott Poppas Fish Shop (his restaurant)

    It backfired, big time! His business has doubled. Of course he’s receiving death threats (!!) and nasty phone calls, but the residents, and the police are stepping up to watch out for him and his family

    The Guatemalan family is doing well. They found their 18 year old son, they visited the San Diego Zoo, and the mother had a manicure and pedicure done for the first time. 🙂

    Oh and the founder of Border Angels visited him too!!

    TW on the link for death threats
    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/07/calif-man-gets-death-threats-for-hosting-refugee-kids-theyre-going-to-kill-my-family/

    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-Murrieta-California-Boycott-Hate/280106442195269?ref=hl

  12. Anyone here from New Zealand? I’m going to be down there this December. I have some surfing plans on the north island, but I was hoping of finding a not so expensive tramping outfit that I can do a short 3-4 walk on the south island. Everything I’ve found so far seems really expensive, and luxury accommodation. I want to go hiking, not hotel hopping.

    I suppose it’s worth noting that I’ll be traveling alone.

          1. I was just about to point out that Australia is across the ditch to the west of Kiwiland, Donna! Thank you.

            Peggy-Lu, there must be a bunch of less expensive walking tours to cater for all the young backpackers who are on ‘working holidays’ everywhere in NZ and Aus. I just don’t know which ones they are.

        3. Australia would be the western bit, yes?

          Oh god, how embarrassing. Even more so because I was actually visualizing Australia and NZ correctly!
          I am just so terrible with left/right and east/west. I’m a nightmare giving directions! I’d think I had some kind of dyslexia, but I was reading from the age of 2 and was one of those spelling bee kids.

        5. I can’t speak to Fat Steve’s issue, and I don’t have trouble telling left/right or east/west when looking at a map, I unquestionably have what’s described in that link. I have no innate sense of direction, and am completely lost without a map, especially if the route varies in any way from one I’ve taken previously. (Smartphones definitely help!) I remember having the same problem as a child, when I would come out of the library at mid-block and be completely baffled as to which direction I should turn in, and take a few steps in each direction, over and over again, before I guessed. Every time. I was in the same office at work for 18 years until recently, and couldn’t tell you whether the window faced north, south, east, or west, without going through all the steps in my mind from street to elevator to office, with all the turnings down corridors — and still would probably get confused! A friend with whom I was walking once led me in a large circle in downtown Manhattan; we were on our third go-round before I noticed that we were passing the same buildings again. And so on. My son teases all the time for this — especially when we go on day trips and park the car somewhere before we walk around at our destination, and then I have no idea where the car is parked — but I can’t help it. One of my many “issues,” and I had no idea that it had a name!

    2. Try searching with local keywords instead of American ones if you want less expensive options? Backpacking or bushwalking or rambling or trekking, not tramping or hiking. The YHA (Youth Hostels Association) is also a very affordable and well-organised option in NZ – they have single rooms as well as the dorms – sometimes even with ensuites rather than shared bathrooms. I presume you’re wanting to do some of the Milford Track or at least around Fiordland?

        1. Staying at YHA Te Anau and doing day walks and cruises seems a pretty good way to see Fiordland – I know a few people who’ve done that. The Milford Track itself is a longer than 4-5 days walk and hard to do as a solo traveller without joining one of those expensive guided tours – I know of bushwalking club members who’ve done it as a group on the cheap without a guide, but you need to know people who know people in the clubs to get in on one of those trips, and bushwalking was mum and dad’s thing – I haven’t kept it up.

          Sorry I don’t know more!

          1. Enquiry for something you hope to arrange in the future. Inquiry for investigating not entirely satisfactory happenings in the past.

            That does look like a pretty good deal. Nice.

        4. Enquiry for something you hope to arrange in the future. Inquiry for investigating not entirely satisfactory happenings in the past.

          Interesting. If USA-an English has that distinction, I’m not aware of it. My Oxford Concise Dictionary lists “enquire” as a non-US variant of “inquire.” Is this particular to Australia? (Or AU & NZ?)

        5. You don’t see it in the US, but a quarter of my family is from England, so I’m used to some of those variations. Like, I think it’s more common in England to say that you dreamt than you dreamed. Dreamed always sounded wrong to me, because I learned dreamt from my mother and grandmother growing up.

    3. Check out couchsurfing.

      http://www.couchsurfing.org

      It’s not just for getting or offering a couch – there are meet-ups, language exchanges, etc. As most people are trying to travel and, at least, meet people from the area it can be a good forum to get information.

      You have to create a profile, but you can check out where people are from and see what groups are available.

      1. tripadvisor.com might also have some information.

        lonelyplanet.com is more about selling their guide books, but sometimes they have interesting information.

        Have a great trip – I’m jealous (but in a good way!) 🙂

  13. I’m an old reader of this blog but have only started commenting recently. I’m a very busy person and I sometimes feel I spend too much time behind a computer screen.

    I’ve turned a big corner in my life and confided in a person about a huge issue that I’ve never talked about. Now I’m just recovering from saying it out loud.

    It sure is tiring speaking about traumatizing events.

    1. RIP to my first ever celeb spotting. When I was a teenager I saw him walking by The Sheep Meadow (actually he was technically the second celeb spotted by young me, if you count Ralph Carter who played Michael on ‘Good Times,’ but his cousin went to my elementary school and he’s certainly no Robin Williams- though I was glad to see when I checked wikipedia that Ralph is still alive.)

    3. I can remember seeing him in Dead Poets Society when I was about sixteen. It had a profound and lasting impression on me. I learned the importance of celebrating your individuality in the face of pressure to conform. In retrospect, I can also see how it influenced my commitment to social justice that developed in later years up until now.

      Think for yourself. Question everything. Dare to be different and think outside the box. – Carpe Diem!

      He will be missed.

  15. I’m not sure how to reply to that earlier thread about this, so I’m just gonna leave my comment here. Donna l, I want to let you know that I think what went down was not okay and I’m gonna miss having you around at ska. I’ve only recently started commenting there but some of threads- on that recent ask about you and that gender neutral bathrooms ask have been wayyy out of line. I’m not feeling great about the kind of discussions going on there so I’ll probably be stepping out soon, just wanted to let you know that I thought this was pretty messed up.

    1. Rebecca, I’m honestly curious — what was so bad about the gender-neutral bathrooms question and thread? I read quite a bit of it, not every word of every comment, but I just went through it again and everybody seemed pretty respectful of everyone else. There were some comments that other people felt were showing some transphobia and some people would agree and some disagree, but I didn’t see any flaming, nasty transphobic trolls.

      1. I mean, I’m not an expert here, so I can’t definitively say ‘this is transphobia, this is racism and no one gets to disagree with me’. My opinion comes wayyyyy second to the opinion of people actually affected by this stuff.

        That said, yeah, a lot of stuff did read as transphobic, or to be accurate, transmisogynist. And at least one thread got pretty racist. I do think the discussion about it was pretty calm, but that’s kind of neither here nor there for me. I was uncomferble with what was said, not how it was said, you know?

      1. Yeah, I checked out that bathrooms thread and there’s white ladies being supported in their defense of their right to make racist comments ’cause Woman.

        2. Yeah, I was not okay with that thread. Or the way (tw) fear of rape was being used to shield criticism sometimes?

          I don’t know if I’m explaining this right and I want to be careful because I do think it’s legitimate to fear sexual assault even in less ‘likely’ situations but…. It’s not a pass to be racist or transmisogynist?

          Like, I have PTSD and I’m as much afraid as anyone of that happening again, but it’s perfectly possible to feel and discuss that fear without bringing along a bunch of gross racist/transmisogynist baggage. And if that’s how someone seriously feels then they need to remove themselves from the discussion, and work on fixing that in their own time. Not justifying it or arguing for public policy’s based on it.

          (Please let me know if I’m being out of line here, I’ve read this over and I think it expresses what I mean okay, but this is a sensitive topic and I don’t normally comment here.)

        3. Hi Rebecca.

          Thanks for sharing your take on things and I hope you continue to comment here. I too have PTSD so yeah I understand what it’s like to have unreasonable fears, but that was about racist projections.

      2. Yeah, the white lady who felt the need to specify that she “felt a bit threatened” when she encountered “a couple of Indian guys in the bathroom” in Delhi. I guess white guys would have been OK?

        Yes, a lot of people came down on her hard. But she did have her defenders, unfortunately.

        Speaking of macavity, she posted a couple of great comments in that thread a while ago.

    3. Thanks, Rebecca — believe me, it makes me feel better that some people do understand why I was upset in that thread, and why I kept trying to explain what I meant.

      It’s such a bizarre feeling to know that there’s been that thread going on over there, essentially all about whether I’m an asshole and a bully, with more than 450 comments, none of which I’m allowed to respond to directly. It’s not exactly behind my back, because I can read what’s being said and they all know I can read it, but still. I’ve never been in that situation before. And I may talk a good game, and be able because of my legal experience to craft what I happen to think is a cogent “defense” to all the accusations and misrepresentations, as set forth above — and I’m very glad tigtog has allowed me to do so here, because I really felt that I needed to at least try to explain myself — it has nonetheless been quite upsetting, and highly embarrassing and humiliating, to be in that position. Yes, it’s trivial compared to other things I’ve been dealing with lately, like what happened with my father and my job, but it’s had enough of an impact that today was the first day I felt able to leave my apartment, even though it was only for a few minutes, in the last three days.

      1. Geez, Donna L I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with all this. I was never a “shaker” and don’t participate at the koolaid blog. I assume I just don’t get the context because some of those posts and all of the comments calling you an asshole and a bully just seem bizarre to me. I just don’t get it.

        Nice White Lady in India’s comments got a bunch of likes, and I got the impression that experiencing gender oppression was a get-out-of-racism free card.

        1. It appears they have the attitude that they can shit on oppressed people and expect the person they just shit on to gently and sweetly explain the problem. And if they don’t gently and sweetly explain why getting shit on sucks, then they get to say ” I don’t want to talk about this” and avoid being called out. If the oppressed person doesn’t just suck it up and deal, but instead defends themselves, then that makes them bullies and banning happens.
          In other words, the same bullshit all assy privileged people pull when they say something stupid and oppressive. Typical racists, typical transphobics.

        2. Oh and no, I don’t believe she just couldn’t have the discussion because she was at work. She should have opened her mouth and said so beforehand, not conveniently after. Anyone can make up any reason after the fact in order to make themselves look good.

        3. It appears they have the attitude that they can shit on oppressed people and expect the person they just shit on to gently and sweetly explain the problem. And if they don’t gently and sweetly explain why getting shit on sucks, then they get to say ” I don’t want to talk about this” and avoid being called out. If the oppressed person doesn’t just suck it up and deal, but instead defends themselves, then that makes them bullies and banning happens.
          In other words, the same bullshit all assy privileged people pull when they say something stupid and oppressive. Typical racists, typical transphobics.

          Yes, this was my impression exactly.

      2. oh cool! I wasn’t sure if you would actually see my comment, so I’m glad you did.

        Yeah, I imagine it would be upsetting/frustrating to have all this discussion going on without you being able to respond or counter there, and I’m sorry this is piling on to other upsetting stuff in your life. I don’t know how much of the comments you’ve read, but if it helps I’m certainly not the only person who isn’t happy about the mod’s response. There are some other comments there, and a lot of time comments taking issue with things get a lot of up votes. I’m guessing some people aren’t up to discussing stuff, but still aren’t happy.

  16. Here’s a cool thing I got off Wikipedia’s current events: On August 12, 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman as well as the first Iranian to be awarded the Fields Medal, which she was awarded for “her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.” The Fields medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union, and is often viewed as the greatest honor a mathematician can receive.

    Here’s a link to a more reliable source: http://www.mathunion.org/general/prizes/2014/prize-citations/

    And another: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/374552/scitech/science/iranian-is-first-woman-to-win-prestigious-math-prize

  17. @ DonnaL

    Yes, I am “listening,” in the sense that I mostly lurk here. Just saw this, so I thought I would respond.

    My comment was unnecessary? OK, fair enough, beyond the fact that most comments on blog threads are not actually necessary, that was probably pretty gratuitous. A low blow? It was not meant to be and I’m sorry if it came off that way. I would point out the context, in the sense that I was honestly attempting to engage in a discussion at SKA about what happened.

    Several people thought Daisy Clover’s comment was sort of odd in the sense that nobody really knew what she was getting at. It can be read as angry sarcasm directed at SKA and supportive of you, or as possibly not sarcastic, and negative toward you. I was not replying to DC’s comment directly, but rather to a question posed in reply to DC’s comment wondering what other blogs DonnaL had been accused of destroying. It seemed like a genuine question, although maybe it was pure snark and I should have left it alone. Anyway, I remembered it and I mentioned it — that was a nasty stoushthread and it made an impression on me.

    More context: I had another long comment in that thread where I pointed out that feministe has a particular kind of moderating policy, commenting atmosphere, banning practices, etc., and that people are allowed to get away with quite a lot and that I thought it was perfectly OK, but that SKA was different and has different versions of those things.

    All of this was some of my part in a discussion where commenters expressed a wide range of opinions, from being angry at SKAMod for the ban and supportive of you, to thinking you completely deserved the ban and supporting SKAMod, to many permutations and nuances in between. The nearly 500 comments are not by any stretch all focused on attacking you — not that you said they were, but just in case anybody has that impression. Not all the comments were about this at all; people veered off into little subthreads on completely different topics — that sometimes happens on SKA.

    FWIW, I felt really bad about the banning and said so. I could understand both your anger and SKAMod’s frustration. I, too, respect you and your passion for trans issues, your day-to-day struggle with all this in your life, and your willingness to share and educate others. I’ve also been uneasy or uncomfortable about some of the same things you have noted on SKA, and sometimes I have said so. That’s the kind of space it is; people are allowed to do that. I’m really sorry that thread where you were banned went down that way. I could go into all the arguments on both sides, but I don’t think anyone is interested in that (or perhaps any of this comment). Would I have handled it differently if I were the mod there? Maybe, maybe not; it would be meaningless because I could say anything.

    I will go back to lurking unless anyone wants to engage or ask questions. I am saying everything here in this comment in good faith.

    Peace out,

    OPB

      1. Also: see my comment above (http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2014/08/08/open-thread-with-snow-geese-on-the-wing/#comment-845148) regarding how I interpreted Daisy Clover’s comment. I don’t doubt for one second that she was being sincerely transphobic. Because people who say transphobic things generally are. Something that I didn’t mention above that clinched her seriousness in my mind was her references to Bilerico and Pam’s House Blend, because I remember that there were quite a few accusations in both places a couple of years ago that angry trans people had ruined both of them. (In case anyone’s wondering, I had nothing to do with it, Your Honor! Seriously, I lurked at both places, but hardly ever commented, and wasn’t at all involved in what went on there.)

        In fact, Daisy Clover didn’t actually even say that I was personally responsible for destroying any other fantastic feminist blogs besides DtSKA: “thanking” me for destroying “yet another” such blog doesn’t necessarily imply that I had personally destroyed the others; just that they had been destroyed because of “trans wars,” and that I, another trans person, had now destroyed this one. Which perhaps makes her comment make a little more “sense” — on its own terms, not that transphobia ever makes sense — than what seems to be the more common interpretation.

  18. And now Lauren Bacall has died. I always liked her a lot — I’ll admit that when I was young and learned that she was Jewish, it meant something to me.

    1. Really, she was one of the last survivor’s of Hollywood in the ’40s, probably because she became famous at such a young age — she was only 19 when To Have and Have Not came out. Who else is left? Olivia de Havilland?

    3. There’s a great interview with her, from 2011, at:

      http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2011/03/lauren-bacall-201103

      To elaborate on why it made me happy when I was young to find out that she was Jewish (Betty Perske from the Bronx!), part of it was the idea that someone Jewish could be seen as being so beautiful. It’s hard not to internalize the messages one gets from popular culture growing up that Jewish people are ugly. An excerpt from that article, talking about the period after she signed with a studio at the age of 18:

      Studio makeup artists attempted to alter Bacall, putting her in terror as they moved in to pluck her eyebrows, shave her hairline, and straighten her teeth. She thwarted their efforts: “Howard had chosen me for my thick eyebrows and crooked teeth, and that’s the way they would stay.” She insisted on doing her own hair, in the style that would become her trademark: “The wave … on the right side—starting to curve at the corner of my eyebrow and ending, sloping downward, at my cheekbone.”

      Hawks had been thinking hard about a new name for his discovery. “At lunch in the green room one day,” Bacall wrote, “Howard told me he had thought of a name: Lauren. He wanted me to tell everyone when the interviews began that it was an old family name—had been my great-grandmother’s.” Previously he had asked her what her real grandmother’s name was. “Sophie,” Bacall answered. That, clearly, would not do. Hawks, determined to make her into a sex symbol for every warm-blooded American man, was, she feared, an anti-Semite. “He once made some remark about a Jew and I turned cold,” she noted. “I’m sure I paled visibly I was panic-stricken.” She prayed he would never ask her about her religion. It’s a small irony that she has never been comfortable being called Lauren Bacall. Her friends call her Betty. Bogart and his compatriots called her Baby.

      1. “Perske” was her absent father’s name, though, and she never went by it. Her last name, which she shared with her mother, was always “Bacal.” All the studio did was double the “l.”

        I loved her too, and the knowledge that a tall, skinny Jewish girl from NYC with thick eyebrows was beautiful meant a lot to me, as well.

  19. I think I am depressed. I say I think because I’ve never struggled with depression before, not in any real way. I’ve been sad before sure, but this feels different. I just don’t know. I don’t think I’m a terrible person or burden on people or anything of that nature. I just don’t seem to care about much of anything. I’ve got no idea where we’re going at the end of the month and I just can’t muster any feelings on that. I’ve holed up in my house, don’t want to go anywhere or deal with other people, I get irritated and anxiety sets in when anyone talks to me. My mother drones on about dinner and I just want to scream SHUT UP. My husband asks me about my day or tells me about his and I have to force myself to be cordial and not sound exasperated. Usually when I’m stressed I can deal with it. Life without stress isn’t my normal so I generally soldier on without any serious emotional or physical issues. But I’ve got so much going on, my daughter is pregnant AGAIN because they were just too lazy to go renew her birth control, they’re still living with us, I don’t know if we have a home at the end of august, my brother was sentenced to 7 years which is a good thing IMO, but now my mom is depressed over it and disengages with everyone while she mopes over him because he’s a shit head who guilts her…holidays are going to suck like they have every other time he’s been in jail…and it sounds silly but this thing with robin Williams has sent me into crying fits. I’m not a crier, so crying over someone I didn’t even know has me weirded out. Anyway, I was just wondering if this is Depression or something else.

    1. This sounds like depression to me, pheenobarbidoll. I’m so sorry. I’ve been wondering how you’ve been doing. But yeah, the inability to feel anything, to engage with the people around you, to muster up any interest in anything–that’s depression.

      1. The same exact kind of thing has happened with me periodically for a good part of my life, pheeno. It took many years for me to identify it as depression. (Which, in my limited knowledge, can be situational as well as chronic. It’s still depression, either way.)

        I’m very sorry.

    2. pheeno, having had depressive episodes in the past, it does sound like depression to me (although an internet diagnosis is always just an internet diagnosis). The crying fits over Robin Williams make sense in that context – sounds like you’ve been trying to stop breaking down over all the other challenges you’re facing and then Williams’ death was something you weren’t prepared for and it tapped into all those other emotions you’ve been keeping a lid on.

    3. Thanks. It’s not anything I’ve ever encountered before. I even feel meh over having my suspicions agreed with in regards to it most likely being depression.

      2. I’ve taken medication for clinical depression for over a decade now. Unfortunately, for most of that time my alcoholism negated the effects of my meds and i spent my late twenties in and out of depressive episodes and eventually severe suicidal ideation. I relate this only to say that I know firsthand how much depression sucks. I’m not e-diagnosing you and am not qualified to do so in any event, but i would urge you to follow-up with a psychiatrist and tell them your concerns. The nature of depression is to make me not want to seek help or treatment. It tells me that I’m weak, or just want attention, or that i “just need to get over it.” These are lies. Depression is a disease, it should be treated as such, and i’m not a bad or weak person because i have it. Take care of yourself.

    4. Sounds familiar, sounds like depression. An antidepressant might take the edge off, so if you have access to affordable medical care in the form of an internist or nurse practitioner, you might want to consider getting a prescription.

    5. I’m so sorry, Pheeno. A lot of people on the outside don’t seem to understand that for a lot of us, depression isn’t sadness, it’s complete indifference and disengagement. Which, for me at least, was so much scarier than being sad or stressed out, because I’m just not used to not caring about things, and the inability to feel anything, positive or negative, is much more frightening than being sad over something (and then the whole cycle doubles over on itself, as I can’t even be arsed to care about not caring, and round and round). Take care of yourself, whatever that means for you. A lot of us are thinking of you and wish you well.

      1. That’s where I’m at right now. I don’t care…and I don’t care that I don’t care.

  20. At dawn on August 14, 1720, a huge force of Indian warriors, (Pawnee and Otoe Nations) possibly accompanied by French traders, attacked a camp of Conquistadors on the plains of Nebraska. Most of the Spanish were still asleep and the tall grass made it easy for the Pawnee to slip in close. There is speculation that Sistaca had informed his people (the Pawnee) of the best time to attack. General Villasur was killed in the first attack. The Conquistadors were defeated. A couple of years later, the Comanche rid themselves of Conquistadors on the Red River.

    1. Thanks for that. I didn’t even realize that there were ever Spanish soldiers that far north in the middle of the continent.

      1. Other Nations would encourage monks to settle near Apache territory….And then the apache would come across the settlement and eradicate them. Not many got past the Apache to get farther North. And when they did, it generally didn’t work out too well for them then, either. Had the Spanish not brought disease with them, colonizers who didn’t co exist would not have survived. There were more NDNS here than the entire European population.

  21. Oh and if no one hears from me after Thursday, it’s because the local news just posted our 7 day weather forecast and evidently Thursday is going to be breezy…. and 987 degrees. But it’s a dry heat so I suppose that’s ok.

      1. Pretty Amiable lol read the temp again. 987 degrees. Someone typod the temp and didn’t double check when it was on tv. The forecast read – 100, 99,98,99,98, 987.

      2. Hahahhahaa I thought you meant it would be 98 or 97 and had just fat-fingered the extra digit. Hahahaha. Well. I’m glad your skin isn’t burning off 🙂

        1. 98 is cool for this time of year. We’ve had a mild summer. I guess Thursday intends to rectify that all in one day. Breezy, here at least, means 20-30 mph winds. So 987 and breezy means Hell with High Winds lol

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