Apple Cider

I feel like attempts to lionize the work and lives of those killed pushes a narrative that only good victims don't deserve to die, versus a larger narrative that people shouldn't be killed in general, but that they might have not been good people and we need to talk about that still. Which I think is something Busby poked at a little.

Ah yes, spinning it, despite the fact that it's pretty clear that if you follow the video game industry at all, you know that a lot of companies will work in conjunction with marketing and test teams to produce low-risk fare - usually meaning a male protagonist. It sells well.

I absolutely think it's fair to say that. I don't think it's fair to be able to get away with racist caricatures as white men, in general, and call it satire. I've run across men who try to attempt satire of sexism, for instance. First of all, it's exceedingly hard to communicate that what you're saying is in jest (when satire should, in some ways, communicate that very clearly) and also, it's very hard to satirically criticize a system that you passively benefit from. Do you see what I mean? You can do it, I can't stop anyone from doing it, but I believe there's an imperative that satire works best when from the people being trampled. If you can't articulate effectively, from a communication standpoint, then yes, you failed on that level too.

I have to deal with these kinds of conversations a lot in the writing I do, and I always tend to fall back on two things: 1.) Satire, really good satire, is usually in the hands of the oppressed classes, whatever those might be. (People say "punch up, not down" but that's a bit aphorisitic in a way that doesn't elucidate that it's talking about power structures) 2.) Freedom of speech is literally a right in our country, from the government censoring speech. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with critical commentary or protestations from people, particularly those you might aggrieve with your work. A private entity can absolutely censor you from your words if you're trying to do them in their space, etc. I don't believe satire, if racist, is actually satire, because it's upholding the status quo. If you're doing that, then you're not being satirical. Your words have no teeth in a subversive way, but rather in a way that was granted to you by the oppressive systems of society.

I'm not really pushing for some hard and fast rule, there's literally no way I can enforce people NOT talking to these people (hence why I make full use of mute, unfollow) but from my personal opinion, as an esteem internetologist, feminist and long-time harassee, my folk wisdom is that these people in particular are specifically here to waste your time vs. trying to argue about anything in good faith.

It is useless. They don't want to be convinced, or helped, they literally want to waste your time. That's their aim - they want to use their latent feelings of hatred for you to steal your actual hours away from you. There is literally no good faith here. Their efforts are to derail, delay, disrupt. I don't have time for that.

If parents can't see that they hurt you or believe that they did, they are not worth your time. Trust me as someone who lives 1000s of miles away from her mom and stepdad.

I think the .@ nonsense works occasionally, sparingly if you are having a conversation thread that you want others to see. But yeah, endless engagement is clogging and it forces everyone to see shit they don't want to, especially using the tools they have available. I honestly think education efforts are moot, always have been, because I feel like GG's intent (back when they weren't GG but rather the forces outlined in #yourslipisshowing) has always been to sow discord, cointelpro feminists and generally be horrible. But people get caught up in this feeling that if they don't engage, that everything GGs say about them is true. Even if they specifically say it JUST to get a rise out of people. They walked into every fight thinking I'm less than human, I don't need to try and prove that I am, they won't ever believe it.

Wait how is it Year of the Fireflower and not year of the Princess Peach

I think Brianna's phrasing is a little off-putting but I would love it if people would kinda move on at this point - not even on the big stuff, because I think it's still good to keep up with that, but generally people who keep doing things like talking to them all the time, especially in a way that's public to everyone in their TLs? It's like, come on already. You don't have to ignore it, certainly, but I have gotten quite a few gaters in my mentions and I do nothing but block. There's literally no need to engage with them. At all. I don't know, it's been better for my sanity to have people talking about it less and actually focusing on things that interest them or generally just not having twitter being 24-7 discussion about shitheads.

I reserve pity for people who aren't actively making other's lives miserable, usually.

We should have a general thread for helping remember things we don't the names to. I have been spending all day searching for one particular children's book I read with fairly vintage looking illustrations of the water cycle, it had a very sassy raindrop.

The Twin Peaks entire blu-ray set is apparently 83 bucks today. http://www.amazon.com/Twin-Peaks-Entire-Mystery-Blu-ray/dp/B00KCTG4PO

RE: Josie

I might actually read that on the show because both of us didn't even know people were really into DA combat!

Oh, I absolutely feel the same. But it doesn't hurt to talk about it and ease the ideological burden in the meantime, put some things into action.

Germane to nothing but Ray Wise was in tonight's Agent Carter premiere. Season 2 plot spoiler reference:

I think sex criticality works best, for me at least, when it is a mixture of personal freedom but structural awareness and accountability. There's no way you can espouse sex posi stuff across the board without acknowledging that sex (whether work or just personal) is absolutely impacted by literally everything else women deal with - ableism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism, misogynoir, and especially rape culture. Even rape culture itself is incredibly whitewashed - much of the face of rape statistics is a white woman, when women of color, notably indigenous women/First Nation women experience a 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 rate of abuse and rape vs. the 1 in 6 statistic most often quoted. There's also the fact of the matter that dealing with the police is just not really an option for most women, but definitely not for women of colour, especially if you are queer or trans.

Netflix literally exhausted of their two copies of Crystal Skull, their movie metrics completely skewed, all because of Idle Thumbs. Number wizards at Netflix completely stumped, throwing papers all around, suddenly give go-ahead to order 17,000 more copies. Netflix goes under due to overbudgeting of Indiana Jones movies.

I'm coming late to the party but the internet has a really interesting method of preserving everything a person does if they stick to a single brand. TotalBiscuit was a jerkoff when I knew him in the WoW community in 2008 and he's only gotten worse over time now that he's gotten extremely popular. He says and does nothing that's fundamentally different from a white conservative man who believes himself to be the intellectual pinnacle and moderately sides with active harassers in video games now, so I find him devoid of value. It's not like he does anything new or innovative anyways but he's still incredibly popular regardless? Pass. Okay. He doesn't even really believe I'm fully believable as a woman.

A lot of what is tough about unraveling a personal opinion on sexual politics in feminism is just how incredibly personal and complicated relating TO sex is as an individual, especially as a feminist, especially as survivor and there's not NEARLY enough spaces where you can really talk about this at length.

No problem, that's basically where I learned most of this stuff too. Listening to real life women talk about the real stuff that affects their lives is a great source of perspective.

I support all of this, actually! The note about "no consent in patriarchal world" - while I think Dworkin's pronouncement on that was very broad, I think it's a really interesting starting place to think about consent and how it might not be as cut and dry as "NO" - especially when saying no can have really huge consequences or when you feel compelled to say yes for a variety of reasons. But it also largely ignored that sometimes you're not dealing with men sexually, etc. As far as a list, I cannot really furnish at the moment because I am at work and don't have my SFW bookmarks on hand but off the top of my head, I believe strongly in listening to sex workers, both who work in good and also terrible environments. It is their lives, so I follow their lead on how to look at modern mainstream pornography and other varieties of sex work. There's a great deal of larger contexts to what makes sex work what it is, and I feel like that's a good place to examine versus coming down on SWs for trying to navigate it to make a living.

I cannot really furnish this list at the moment because I am at work and don't have my bookmarks on hand but off the top of my head, I believe strongly in listening to sex workers, both who work in good and also terrible environments. It is their lives, so I follow their lead on how to look at modern mainstream pornography and other varities of sex work. There's a great deal of larger contexts to what makes sex work what it is, and I feel like that's a good place to examine versus coming down on SWs for trying to navigate it to make a living.