WFH Window

The day is impossibly beautiful and breezy. Dazzling.

Nekkid baby has returned to my strip of the sidewalk, on a tiny bicycle. Riding it like a scooter. One foot on a pedal, one accelerating heedlessly.

An hour ago, with his mommy, he had walked by wearing nothing but a pull-up diaper, holding a sippy cup, absorbed utterly by anything under his nekkid little feet. Leading with his lil' boy belly. Dappled in sunshine.

But now, on his bike, daddy along for the ride literally, he is dressed and helmeted and speeding. I hear no wailing; he must be good at not falling.

He fades down the road.

The passel o' boys across the street from me are outside playing some game, squealing with joy between yelling like angry badgers, all modulated by occasional, calm dad-voice.

It. Is. OSUM.

Oh man - another bloodcurdling scream! Kids at play so often sound so terrifying!!! It sounds exactly like my own neighborhood, circa 1978.

Between this, tweeting birds, and inviting breezes, I am hard put to finish part 2 of the month's reporting. Gah.

There is this very specific inflection to kids playing - an elastic up-and-down wave, nothing like so tidy as a sine - in which the sound of injustice resonates with purity. BUT WHYYYYY ... can't I go over here ... does he get to run to the next base ... am I not wiii-ii-iiiiiii-in-in-innniiiinnng?

The breeze in the maple outside the window, playing with the grass, scintillating in the treetops across the way. The beagle a couple houses away, Expressing Opinions.

It is ... beautiful.


***


Just a few miles away, filthy Confederate monuments I want to see for myself, updated for our age by people angry, and sad, and bereft for the several-millionth time in 400 years. The police chief here has been on the side of citizens. Just south of us, another chief stood with his people. It is not loaves and fishes The Beatitudes, and it IS optics and choices and amplification calculated - but it is good to see choices for those these polices forces are here to protect and serve.

One of my dearest friends, my best neighbor at work, a woman I love so much - I have heard the sirens, but she heard those and the sound of "no justice/no peace" and "I can't breathe" all this weekend. She is a living blessing.

The Daughters of the Confederacy could have done as others have - served history instead of themselves, as an institution. Why anyone would care to be institutionalized with a group of worshippers of the Lost Cause - people lionizing rebels, who broke away from and tried to destroy the United States - is beyond comprehension. Their existence is shameful, and their mission indefensible. They should relinquish their revolting relics to actual historians, donate their facilities, repent and make reparations. They are shameful. They burned - for a little while - this weekend. This is not looting, it is reprimand, and long past due.

Lee's tired horse, on an exalted platform of ridiculous loftiness - tail down and tired, while the old General still rides, ramrod straight and UNASHAMED, bronze and burnished, but shat on daily by local pigeons with more rectitude - is bedaubed with graffiti. Stuart's plinth, a little shorter, surrounded by a wrought iron bridge it could *not* have been easy to bring down - but brought down it has been, by living bodies who matter more than these rebels do.

Leave them desecrated, the echo of the desecration these insurgents brought to the United States, in dividing them. Remember them for the failures they were. Let the bronze and granite decay, the rot take them over. Leave them to rot, or take them away altogether.

Leave Kehinde Wiley's living horseman in their place - no traitor, but an AMERICAN man - pristine and strong and proud and standing for something. Let him tower over the others as they fall down.


***


It would take only minutes to see what has been done, and what has been undone, in my city. I will probably drive out - before the newly enacted curfew - to see what I need to know. To be a part of it.

To see the dazzling sun, perhaps, set ... on these newly-faced (hardly DEfaced - how do you "ruin" idolatrous monuments to traitors?) images.

To breathe the good air, and commit to using my privilege ... so that little nekkid kiddo can stay untouched a while longer.

Collection

You don't need to know what Tisah B'Av is, if you just know that America is suffering. Find an event this weekend; I have found mine. And I plan to wear mourning, go, be quiet ... and, most likely, weep. Where is your event - or would you like to plan one?


... and, should you need an antidote to American atrocity ...
 

High comedy? Or low - as in that personal space we so often call "down there"? Medieval satire, or: when a lady breaks up with her down-there amid arguments with her. Some satire is evergreen. Or ever-rosy! Never accuse The History Blog of being dry and boring ...

This week in Trek tech - that sun ship I first heard of on DS9, and found bewildering, turns out (like so much Trek tech!) to be a thing. Sailing on a sunbeam. COOL.


But, seriously. Recognize where we are. If that means joining communities of faith this weekend. If that means choosing to give to those who are suffering. If that means prayer, or just reflection. Understand the world, and that it is filled with humanity. And, if you can, if there is an event near you: go. And do.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Plenty of folks are willing to treat fetuses as precious citizens, but seem to regard the bodies that nurture them as embarrassing slums.

If you don’t understand how female bodies work, you might end up believing some really harmful things about women.

Bewildered, Bewildering

I was five when the impeachment hearings against Richard M. Nixon commenced. By the time I was fifteen, he had gained a foothold in discourse, seemingly revivified, and I did not understand it. We had spent what felt to me like endless years "watching Watergate". I thought it was an unbelievably bad TV show, and longed for Hogan's Heroes or *anything* to take its place, but understood that in fact it was taking everything else's place because it was a really big deal, bigger than Walter Cronkite's half hour, bigger than syndication or prime time or even Masterpiece Theater. Being bigger than Alistair Cooke - that's big stuff, in the Major household of 1973.

So the fact that he was wandering the Earth aeons later, when I was fifteen, was bewildering. He got a library, and I thought "but he had to resign - wasn't that 'in disgrace'?" and began to resist the rehabilitation of public crooks.

I resist it still, in the belief that Ms. Nielsen does not deserve the sinecure some outlet or think tank or company may well give her. This is the monster who presided over the jailing of children.

Which, itself, seems to have mellowed, like Nixon, in the public imagination already. It's been less than a year, but GOP outrage faded instantly, and the rest of us are pissing in the wind, fewer and fewer reminding the world that this was appalling for a week or so last May. From that Fetid Sepulchre in the White House, to McConnell, to her, and all across the board, this atrocity has been papered over with Trump's inevitable distraction stories, and the revulsion felt round the world, ignored, is left curdling in fewer stomachs every night. This is repulsive.

There are days it feels like nothing can dent this administration, never mind derail it.

There are days it seems hopeless, knowing the conversation will always be Tweet-dominated, directed away and away and away from the countless crimes and sins and infractions and moral repugnancies of this administration.

It is possible to take the narrative out of the short-fingered hands, though. It is long past necessary. But here we all still sit, in the thrall of a compromised so-called leader, whose government is ever-less staffed by those actually vetted and confirmed by due process, who leaves the government under-staffed for years at a time now, whose use of threats and tyranny, and reckless, dangerous cries of treason (contravening his Oath of Office, never mind the Constitution itself) really don't even teeter anymore on a "brink" of authoritarianism. We are, THERE, folks. It's already happened. The DoJ, headed by a crony who enthused for 19 pages for impunity for Trump, has been hobbled.

Imagine a world in which Ken Starr's investigation ended with a 4-page memo from Janet Reno, explaining how she was not going to hand over his report.

Imagine, ever, Michelle Obama living in a golden tower in NYC, away from Washington, totting up millions in security costs for American taxpayers, and expecting to get away with it. Or President Obama taking golf trips costing us in excess of $96 MILLION DOLLARS, and expecting to get away with it ... never mind the time such travel takes away from the business and work of government.

Given that "But her emails" survives as a complaint against Hillary Clinton  over two YEARS after her electoral defeat - imagine if she had taken office, but refused to use secured devices. Trump has never acquiesced to using a properly encrypted, protected device. Outrageous. But only for a woman. Only for a dem.

The Trumps, all of them, make security questions surrounding the Clintons look unbelievably puny.

Still he is in office. Using his almost-certainly-compromised-iPhone to control discourse.


I would be willing to die, resisting authoritarianism.

Every day of my life, it comes up at some point: I do not believe that could never come to pass.

Collection

Another chapter in the "wait, but slavery ended, isn't racism over?"/"No. No, it is not." American saga...

In her research, she traces the decline of the supermarket in communities of color—specifically black communities—to the late-1960s, when unrest broke out in several major cities following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. As white flight to the suburbs accelerated, urban supermarkets closed, citing security and financial reasons.

It is an evergreen astonishment that their partisans take the GOP seriously (I typed partistans there, and perhaps could have just left that as is) - even as they absolutely refuse to take the implications of the GOP's policies seriously at all. "Gingrich confessed he’d forced the closing of the federal government partly because Bill Clinton had relegated him to a rear cabin" ... "Gingrich acknowledged that his pique at the seeming slight had prompted him to send Clinton a tougher spending bill. 'It’s petty,' he said, 'but I think it’s human.'"

... and that, little children, is how the Republicans piqued ALL of America's way to Hell. Thanks again, Ron - and thanks so much now, Don.

"The War of Two Peters"
Y'all. My decorum is tested.
Plus: I LOVE ANCIENT SWORDS.

I have eaten the plums

The sun is back out. America's midterm elections are over. My friend V ... well. Losing her is awful, it's cruel. But she is not hurting now. Doctors can't use her body to experiment now. And those who love her - I am humbled they embrace me. Her husband, her family, her beloved friends: beautiful, beautiful, wonderful people.

This time has been hard. Like so many families, the remains of our nuclear unit - just me, mom, and my brother now - endure terrible political strain in these times. But, just for this morning, it's virtual hugs and three courses of "I love you." Because these strains have everyday, real consequences - this has, in some ways, been even harder than watching my lifelong friend die. Or, perhaps, it only got in the way of comprehending and mourning. I only know this has been the hardest thing to bear, over this past week.

We are all enduring a confluence. My brother is traveling to the memorial of a friend of his, and beautiful V's will be remembered on Saturday. As her kids do this, my mom is now watching her own oldest friend in town "giving back", as some say in the South. It may be we all suffer the loss of our dear Deebo, my stepfather - and each of our dear friends.

The light of inspiration peeked out not too long ago - unsurprisingly, after The Conference, but also very much under the influence of other friendships. Leila, especially, uniquely lights my creative way. She and I have so much in common, but we write such different works, and about the time I did a recent beta-read for her, I also happened to find the ENDING for a short work we began an embarrassing number of years ago in our writing group. It's been drafted two different ways, I let it settle in a certain direction, and for now it is sitting quietly, resting, rising, awaiting both her feedback and my final attentions.

Writing. Feels. So. Good.

There truly is nothing else like writing.

And so, with voting done and the sun out and my family whole ... I open up the WIP, the big dog, the "real" work. The novel. Just open it. I shall scroll about in it, find something to alight upon, and read a little bit.

Research feels like a good way to go. I fear it may have to be, at long last, the pogrom. (Yes, now, of all moments.)

Sometimes, the way writing feels "good" is different from other times. It's not always pleasure.

Sometimes, it's memorial.

Collection

The Woman in the Iron Coffin - a title worthy of Poe, perhaps. Happy Hallowe'en season ... this should make a good start:

 

It is conservatively estimated that the public holds more than 500 million carats of gem diamonds ... more than fifty times the number of gem diamonds produced by the diamond cartel in any given year.

Even long before I ever met Erick, I said that diamond engagement rings really don't interest me anymore. For that matter, pointlessly expensive weddings (well, *or* engagements - ugh) seem such a senseless, consumerist waste. I imagine all the things it'd be possible to do or have,with overinflated diamond money, and it starts to bewilder me how many people have been suckered by De Beers.

Kip Thorne, Stargate: Atlantis, the wonder of space, and the Hollywood-scientific feedback loops (figure eights, if you like your figures Hidden). So cool - there is even more to the creative-scholarly dynamic than I knew. (And, I mean: I knew - I'm a Trek nerd.)

Port Arthur will receive only about twice as much funding as cities with less than 1% of its population. Beaumont will receive less than twice the funding of cities that are 0.5% of its size.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. When white life, property, and loss are literally, actually *valued* so much higher than black life, property, and loss that even the phrase "pennies on the dollar" fails the disparity: this is what we call institutionalized racism. For those at the back of the class: next time you want to say "slavery ended 150 years ago," please refer to current facts and stow your get-over-its in the overhead compartment. Some shifting may occur in transit to reality.

Government *by* few people, *for* few people, unanswerable *to* The People. It's exhausting.

In closing, cats.

Hatched. (AGAIN.)

Why didn't she say anything?

Because the assault was violent and harrowing, and because speaking about it led to death threats and her entire family being forced into hiding. She is being violently attacked (AGAIN) and having hands put over her mouth (AGAIN).

And she spoke not entirely voluntarily - her initial communication was anonymous, but she was outed, doxxed, and now harassed.

Attempts to assassinate her character, even before the character in question revealed her identity. Attempts to dismiss her, falsely, as “a major Democratic donor with a long history of left-wing activism.” To question her motivation under the (also entirely false) premise that Kavanaugh’s mother had once ruled against Ford’s parents in a home-foreclosure case. To brush aside the specific allegations she has made about what happened to her as a 15-year-old girl—being trapped in a room; being pinned down, her mouth covered so as to muffle her screams; being groped at so violently that she thought she might die—as the delusions of an unreliable narrator. It’s not her fault, Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, concluded this week, magnanimously: The matter is simply that Christine Blasey Ford, in her recollections, must simply be “mixed up.”

During these hideous moments, during this crime that was perpetrated against her without any repercussions ever having come for Judge or Kavanaugh: she thought she might INADVERTENTLY DIE at these boys' hands. This is a fear an awful lot of women and girls have to live with. This fear is commonplace. It is all our lives, all of us "boys" and "men" prey upon constantly.

This fear has repercussions for us. If we "fail" to act, "why did she not say anything?" is the desserts for a girl, or the woman she becomes who gains courage to speak. If we act ... it can be worse. From the vulnerability that is routine, new risks arise. I've known of a young woman JUST THIS YEAR who did not prosecute a stalker. And I understand why she felt she could not.



Senator Hatch, I remember you from Anita Hill's testimony. I have never forgotten you, and never been able to so much as hear your name, in the GENERATION since then, without anger and horror.

Senator Hatch, you were loathsome then, and you are possibly even worse now.

Senator Hatch, you are a serial molester of women's agency and humanity.



He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

And ALL that he stands to lose is a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. That is the entire peril faced by Kavanaugh.

She is in hiding, and her entire family under threat of not at all inadvertent death.

Collection

There is NO reading like in-depth, contextualized journalism! The more I read of it, the more I want of it, because: fella babies? I am a history nerd. And well-researched, well-rounded journalism is HISTORY, kids. Here we have a stellar piece from The Guardian about sugar, fat, and nutritional fashion/factions. The history here goes through decades of science, reportage, politics, and real-world effects. It is brilliant, and genuinely gripping reading. Please read it, please? Pretty please with ... sugar on it?

Here is a point where we have to engage in critical thinking. Have you heard the stories about those missing 1500 unaccompanied immigrant children? I will disclaim: I have not researched what is said in this thread, but I haven't researched the screamy headlines in-depth either, and I find this counterpoint worth a pause, if not facile endorsement. Is this analysis dangerous? Or is it dangerous when we call these unaccompanied kids "missing", indulge screamy headlines about it, and fail to understand (or try to) what is really happening with them. The dangers of clicktivism, y'all.

(E)ventually something horrible will happen, something dynamic and powerful. It’s going to have to be cataclysmic for people to wake up and say: ‘OK, is anyone gonna do this?’

Now yet another History Blog link, because although I depend upon the HB perhaps too much in these Collection posts, it's because they're so resource-rich. Oh, and the content is pretty spiff. Here is a rare piece on a Hawai'ian artifact repatriated - and I am a sucker for repatriation. I'm also a sucker for Hawai'ian archaeology, but that is another link.


Oh, here is a sigh of a piece, a 2014 interview with Bill Murray, including a quote from Harvey Weinstein which might turn your spine to chalk. Still eminently worth the click. (Also, next time I march I STILL won't wear one of Those Pink Hats, but I might just indulge a Murray Mask ...)

Talking of icons of the 80s, have you read the Molly Ringwald piece in New Yorker? Pretty fascinating reading, for many reasons, and her penchant for research adds to the layers here. She's also an excellent writer; thoughtful, open, interested and interesting.

Hey, and this is a writer's blog (of sorts), so how about a literary link - that is also timely?

We need to reflect on the way the literature we celebrate supports the idea that women who are sexually frustrated create problems for themselves, while men in the same situation create problems for the world.

We have always treated the alienation of men as if it deserved thousands of pages of analysis, perhaps because we feared it had the power to endanger us all.

Yep.

Collection

I have long felt this way about the (w)racking of the nerves. Oddly enough, though, I don't mind seeing either spelling. Free rein, however, reigns for me.


Okay, THIS THIS THIS THIS SO VERY THIS, when it comes to complaining that Al Franken is out but the GOP tolerates worse abusive and demeaning behavior than his. "There is a difference between the actions of Harvey Weinstein (accused of rape) and Franken (accused of forced kissing and groping women). But that doesn’t mean women should have to choose between the two. The ideal is none of the above." (Emphasis added.)

And here we are with one of those sites I always depend upon ("Too much?") for Collections posts, with a great pairing:

You may have heard of the partially mummified baby, but The History Blog, as they always do, has excellent background of its own along with their usual collection - ahem - of links. Make with the clicky for the clicks beyond on this story! Also: yay, science!

THB link #2 *may* not be for the squeamish - note, the words "gnaw" and "bones" occur togehter in an analysis of burial practices. But, for my gravedigging money (there's no research like grave goods!), funerary finds are the richest finds of all. So make with the clicky here, if you can stand the phrase "four pelvises on a stick" in service of a REALLY interesting look at Celtic warfare and military burial.

Collection

Just two links today, unless you count the recursive looks back upon my own musings.

For them/by them - a remarkable collection of perspectives not just on the period of sexual harassment history that began in Autumn of 2017 (and more), but on the dominant narratives and who is STILL left out of those narratives. The graphics are exceptional, and the writing ... well. Exemplary.

The very fact that such a model exists offers tacit permission for him to treat his wants as valid. ... I wish that he, as the adult in the room, had looked past his emotions to consider what would have been best for me ...

Also: "I’m disappointed that the story has remained focused so squarely on the villainous doings of the metropolitan elites." Yep. It's not just the "powerful" (rich) men, and it's not just white women in subjective but nonetheless injurious situations.

There is a constructive breadth, at that first link, of ages and understandings of (cis and binary) gender dynamics, and some of what is said I question. But it is best to understand than to refuse to know that others think things we do not.

“I remember when you told me I made this one girl feel uncomfortable because she had to say no twice, and I never forgot that.”

Some of what is said, in the last quarter or so of this anthology of perspectives - those things said by men, and about their looks - are ... well. Striking.



Where is the second link, you ask? Right here - and here is why:

While women aren’t confusing egregious incidents with less obviously offensive ones, the small ones matter, too. And not talking about them is the easiest way to ensure they go on and on, ad infinitum. 

Reckoning.

(T)heir guy isn’t well known enough, that the stories are now so plentiful that offenders must meet a certain bar of notoriety, or power, or villainy, before they’re considered newsworthy.

I told you it's not just powerful, rich men. Here's a reporter to tell us that those're the only guys who'll get any ink.

Here is the thing about this lengthy piece, about what we "all" have to reckon for: I've reckoned before. When I worked at The Federal Reserve, and a contractor who knew I worked till 5:30 p.m.  himself stayed late one dark evening, and held out to me on a napkin a cherry stem, tied in a little knot, and said only "No hands" ... I was revolted. The next morning, first thing, I spoke with a manager - not mine, and a woman at that. And she essentially dismissed me as a hysteric. I chose to put the issue to bed, moving forward, concerning myself only with my future and my feelings.

Much later, when I saw from a strong physical reaction to him, by a woman with less power than I, it was clear to me that I was not the only person he had "made uncomfortable" (see also: repulsively harassed). I thought about the issue again, and discussed it with one or two trusted people.

Later still, when The Stem decided to apply for a permanent position, I instantly - I mean, within five minutes - went into my boss's office and phoned him while he was travelling. HE took me deadly seriously, and HR had an executive meeting with me almost immediately.

I thought about this guy's kid. Yep. But I also thought of that woman I had seen squirm. The Stem took his risks, knowing he had a kid. He behaved execrably, knowing he had a kid. Oblivious as he was socially (this is a man who discussed with me on scant acquaintance the extreme gruesomeness of his ex-wife's labor in bearing said son; he was ALL kinds of awkward, this guy). If, in his book, the "no hands" approach seemed even POSSIBLY valid - never mind potentially impressive - he needs a new book, and I'm not responsible for reading the text he was working from. Nor am I responsible for his son.

I was, in my knowledge, responsible for that woman I had done nothing to help. I was, too, responsible for the reputational risk to my own employer, who would have been exposed to legal risk by allowing a serial harasser on board. My employer: who kept me in mortgage payments, and that woman's family as well.


The woman manager, who dismissed my concerns? She didn't dismiss me because she was covering for a valued or powerful colleague, she shut me down for thinking what he'd done was an issue at all. His power, in the moment he flummoxed my pungent personality to the extent of an awkward joke and sheer befuddlement, was transient. And, in the end, mine was greater: my report had more power than his resume.

I have often thought about the background and experience that leads to attitudes like that manager's, though. These days, I imagine she's scoffing a great deal about all the precious little daisies enduring Weinstein's casting couch, so-called "consenting" to Louis C. K.'s displays, and on and on and on. Blaming them for being so sensitive. And maybe she has dismissed other women, too. Very possible.

I pity that woman more than myself. But, for her initial reaction to me and my opting for silence, I am GUILTY: about the other woman who worked there, who transferred away from our location I suspect to get away from The Stem. Whose price to pay I do not know, and is among the debts on my own soul. I pity the manager, whom I did not name but did talk about in that meeting with HR. But the other woman lives with me in a much more direct way.

I will leave this post with the following excerpt from the link ...

I struggled a lot internally about whether to name the Harasser at my former job. I decided not to, largely because I understand something about how things have turned out. In a rare outcome, I — along with some of the women he pestered — now have more power than he does. He is, as far as I know, short on work, not in charge of any young women. And so I decided, in consultation with former colleagues, not to identify him.

But here’s a crucial reason he behaved so brazenly and badly for so long: He did not consider that the women he was torturing, much less the young woman who was mutely and nervously watching his performance (that would be me), might one day have greater power than he did. He didn’t consider this because in a basic way, he did not think of us as his equals.

Many men will absorb the lessons of late 2017 to be not about the threat they’ve posed to women but about the threat that women pose to them.

This is not a gotcha. This is: manning up.

Preying Animals

Again.

And again. And again. And again. And again.



The Weinstein (etc. etc. etc.) scandal in Hollywood might seem to beg comment from a blogger such as myself, but the simple fact is my main reaction to the whole thing was, for a good while, mere exhaustion. The fact that MEN are surprised and offended ... I don't know. Maybe it's nice. But there isn't a woman I know who's taken aback at the information unearthed so far. No, not even the scope.

Remember, kids: we just watched a proudly bragging sexual predator take the White House. Oh yeah, and the supposed fall of Bill Cosby, though that story seems to have been forgotten ("Thanks again, Trump's distracting Tweets!") You think we are shocked about a movie mogul?

Watching the astonishment of *men*, who rather loudly insist upon swearing they had NO IDEA about all this, might be almost be amusing for some, but - again - merely a bit tiring for me. Talk about bad acting: "gents", you are either criminally incompetent, intellectually compromised, or lying your asses off. (Same goes for women.)


So, why am I bringing it up at all?



The drumbeat right now is all about men in power taking advantage of women who cannot reasonably consent, given that consent requires autonomy, and so few have it in the situations encountered.

That is an important dynamic to consider, it's important to fight.

But I know this: SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS NOT METED OUT ONLY BY THE ECONOMICALLY POWERFUL.

For men power comes in other forms, and other magnitudes, than Trump or Weinstein or congressmen or kings.

Sexual harassment comes from the contractor at work, whose only power lies in the fact of his maleness and his speaking up after-hours in a deserted office. Sexual harassment comes from an awful lot of guys at work, in fact - just everyday guys in cube farms - the guy leaving anonymous notes which are TERRIFYING evidence of being covertly *watched* by unknown eyes, the guy cornering a woman in the break room. It comes on the street. It lives in every possible environment.

It could by ANY guy. That's what's got me mad: that in sanctioning this "Hollywood is the dangerous place" "Powerful men are the ones to watch out for" groundswell, we are safely defining boundaries around predators, pointing to the most unusual varieties as if they encompassed all the perniciousness women face every day. And thereby nullifying the fact that indeed it IS every day. Everywhere. Not just these rich monsters. NOT just desperate actresses.

It's every woman. And it is, potentially, every man we meet.



It is pissing me off that the sudden vogue for pearl-clutching focuses so narrowly, so significantly, on plutocrats alone.


Not all power comes in the form of famous men using women who think they need these men in order to advance in an industry - or politics. These situations are not limited to the casting couch, or to some town or business the majority of people aren't in.

And not all blame belongs to these wealthy ... "exceptional" ... men.

#NotAllMen? Sure. Certainly not anyone I'd even call a "man".

But more than just a few, kids. And not just the one percent. Not by a long damned shot.

Collection

Because I need MORE painfully addicting things to read online (don't we all - not): random history; how about the history of hookless fasteners? Because - neato! What's nice about this site is that the research is solid. Not perfect (the history of wigs calls Elizabeth I Mary Queen of Scots' "predecessor", which is an imprecise use of a term with specific implications - and in another article it discusses flour used as wig powder, which we all know was Not a Thing, thanks to American Duchess, right?), but above average for online history, and sources are included, which is great for research AND history dorks!

Image: Wikipedia, of course
(Original? No, but I hate to be a thief!)

One of the great pieces of received wisdom in the United States is that fat people in poverty are chubbier because they eat so darn much fast food. Challenging one angle of the theory that poor people eat more poorly - it is in fact the middle class who eat the most fast food. That said, differences across the board, demographically-speaking, are not wide in the U.S. The findings seems functionally obvious to me; those of us who spend the most time in cube farms live lives all but tailored to eat McFud the most. I keep this to a minimum, but there ARE times it's just easy. (But no: I have not had fast food during the past three weeks ...) The click beyond: on the possible ineffectiveness of fast-food bans in lower income areas. Because, really? Fast food is NOT actually cheap. Hmm.

American independence and personal responsibility for being poor. This is quite a good read, one that de-fuses emotion and contextualizes things in a way Americans don't always stop to do. Poverty is not a static, unchanging state; we move in and out of it (I have myself). And its victims do not have the control we as a nation like to ascribe to each of our individualist individuals.

Many may have read about Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, who was arrested in Michigan for performing FGM/C (a good interview, and explanation of the nomenclature here). A quote at the first link - "The practice has no place in modern society" - and this insightful essay both point to the way white America distances itself from ritual or behavior we either do not understand or wish to disavow. But these stories brought me to mind of the embrace Jeff Sypeck and Amy Kaufman see in our current culture, of "medieval" stereotypes, and the consequences. The fact is, we perform some damned indefensible procedures on ourselves, and no I do not mean body-obsessive plastic surgery - I mean "the husband's stitch" (see the second link), most "routine" circumcision, even some dental practices which may not truly be necessary for our health. Highly worth remembering: FGM/C in the modern world is NOT a Muslim tradition - one more reason to "other" this faith or mark them out as archaic, backward. It is performed across religions and cultures. And includes Christians. Clitoridectomy was covered by Blue Cross until 1977.

Collection

Haha! Here's the thing about the medicine beat in journalism. By nature, it goes for the shiny and the positive. "NEW BREAKTHROUGH" is a headline. "FURTHER TESTING QUASHES HOPES" is not. I recently included an NPR headline in a Collection post, even saying then that I tend toward skepticism. Here we have NPR explaining how headlines like that can be misleading. Which: exactly.

Because shiny. And sigh.

Teach your children well, fella babies. Critical consumption is, well, critical.

Image: Google image search, Labeled for Reuse
The Blue Diamond Gallery

Here is a piece on what it's like for perfectly legal people of Mexican heritage to live in the United States these days. If you don't want to read the whole piece - if you can't take the politics of it all - scroll down to "On whether her life has changed after the election of President Donald Trump" and take in the STORY, because it's a terrible and a great one. Here is how the disadvantaged are forced to work around the bigoted. I don't care how much you think this doesn't apply to you: please click.

It's a good thing sometimes to view the news from outlets outside of the United States. Hindustani Times has a look at a video from Ohio and a website lamenting the "Indian IT Mafia." But for those described, it's wrong to feel creeped out or threatened, of course.  Because throwing the words mafia, notorious, and outrageous at a group is totally friendly!

So, has anybody else heard of the "farewell address" from the leader of the so-called Islamic State? Yeah, me neither, until I pulled up news outlets outside the U.S. Do a Google News search on his name, and I don't even see any American outlets appearing in the search results - none current, and note covering this story. Shouldn't a retreat like this from the "supreme leader" of the so-called Islamic State be kind of big news? I could not find this on NPR, CNN, Newsweek, or the New York Times online.

Now Who's the One Percent?

He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.
--Gotthold Lessing

So now we're looking at the defunding of the NEA, and killing off Big Bird. Again. I began my recurring donations to PBS about two minutes post-election-results, y'all.

Sales of George Orwell's 1984 shot up TEN THOUSAND PERCENT this week, thanks to Kellyanne Conway.


Ya know. Because facts are relative .... to your position of power.


I suspect that "getting people to read more" has not been any part of the GOP's radical agenda.



What the current Powers What Be's seem to have forgotten is that they have no mandate. When ONE PERCENT* of the entire population of the United States comes out on Day One to remind them of our power, it is the people who carry the mandate, and the power.

We do still have power, you know.

Let's exercise it thoughtfully and consistently - before we are forced to exercise it with cudgels.





*"(T)he low estimate for turnout on Jan. 21 was 3.2 million, according to researchers at the University of Connecticut and University of Denver--leaving aside the demonstrations on every other continent, including, thanks to an expedition tour, Antarctica." Current US population: 3.23 million.

Grabbed

The Peach-Hued Puckered Mouth Hole Himself
Image: Wikipedia

I'm not sure there's any woman I've ever known who has not been sexually assaulted in the way described by the current Republican nominee to the presidency of the United States.

“To say that locker room culture is somehow this defense for what Trump is saying is really denigrating all professional athletes,”
--Former Minnesota Viking Chris Kluwe

I smile that the quote above comes from a Viking, because the man I married is a Vikings fan. The purple sweater I was wearing when we first met, he liked, because it was just the right Vikings color.

Beloved Ex is a MAN. He is a man in the sense of the word I came to understand under the tutelage of my mother and father, a man in the sense I expect of any man I have ever dated or been friends with, a man in his own skin and in his own mind, a man of integrity such that he need never impinge upon the dignity of another human being. Ever.

Around the time he and I became engaged, I was living in an apartment on campus, and he came to see me once, bewildered and upset. He'd been out to a bar the night before, and while sitting outside on a freezing Ohio night waiting for his van to warm up, his long, looping golden hair had caused two guys to mistake him for a woman alone. Not his first experience being mistaken for a girl, from behind, though he was 6'1" and had shoulders even more prodigious than my own. But this was the first time he ever got TREATED like a girl alone.

"HEY, BABY, WANT SOME COCK IN YA!?"

As I recall his retelling of the incident, this was about the extent of their enticements before they realized he was a guy and (thankfully) failed to gay bash him for their error(s). (In all the years I have known him, BEx has not felt the need use his fists; but my suspicion has never been that he would be unable to - and brutally - if he perceived the need.)

He came to me with this experience, with this story, to retell it: to hope that I would tell him it was strange, that this doesn't really happen, that his experience was special and awful.

"Do guys SAY things like that to women?"

I can still feel, in memory, the tired smile I gave him. Hell, I heard fifty comments like that in a weekend, back then. On gigs with HIM, while I was watching him play and when our friend Joe (even bigger than BEx) wasn't by my side. He even once watched while a bunch of guys came up behind me and pulled my skirt up, exposing me. (No. He didn't use his fists even then; it was FAR too easy to just stop the show to call them out - management ousted the idiots, toute de suite.)

BEx is many things - boyish, even now. Perhaps even still, in some ways, dazzlingly innocent. He's not ignorant (magna cum laude,  in fact). But his purity is beautiful, and his virility is as pure as all his sweetness. He's ALL man - his skin is warm, his hands are big, he's got an enviable square jaw, he looks like a man, a big, Nordic man.

He has no need to grab a woman or a girl, and no desire to lessen anyone else in the world.

This is the kind of man I knew was worthy of attention, from the earliest age. I've never blessed an ass with my regard, never loved anyone who wasn't a real MAN - a man of such wholeness in himself he could no more fracture another person than murder them.

Real men are bewildered by Donald Trump's idea of "locker room" talk.



Mr. X is the same way. Perhaps less a wide-eyed Midwestern boy than BEx is, Mr. X still cannot fathom the objectification of women. He knows about it; he's not shocked by it. But appalled? He is appalled by it.

He's a man, too. Tall, dark, and handsome, at that. And he's a man who also happens to have a daughter.

The thing is, he does not find sexism wrong because he had a child with matched chromosomes.

He finds it wrong because it IS wrong. It was wrong before he ever had children. It's literally inhuman: dehumanizing.



I've known a lot of men, boys, and guys in my life. At a certain stage in my youth and development, I had no use for girls. So I hung out with boys - school mates and mall rats. I heard a LOT of the kind of discussion Trump wants to pretend his comments released this past weekend were - indeed, wants to pretend his entire view of womanhood is. I heard boys looking at other girls passing by, I heard them talking about things that happened with other girls the night before. I heard them assess me, right to my face, and I was okay with that.

There are issues there. Deep, and layered.

But the fact is, even RIGHT NOW, I know this: not one of those guys, even the ones telling me right to my face I was cute, or my chest was small but my ass was great, ever would have encroached upon me physically. They never DID. For one, they were afraid I would kick *their* asses. My reputation did not include the likelihood I was ever going to put up with being grabbed, or kissed, without clear consent - or, more accurately, encouragement. My reputation also included the salient fact that I was a virgin, and not looking to change that. My virginity both soured and sweeteened the grapes; they knew I wasn't a going concern, and they were a little tender about it, protective of me.

Paternalistic? Yep. Threatening and dehumanizing? No. I didn't hang out with the Trumps of this world. That was the preppy guys at school and, later, certain entitled, rich frat guys at college. Those called me a whore for not being available to them. Logic!

My friends were not a bunch of boys with clean noses. They got into drinking and drugs, many of them did indeed knock up one girl or another ("She trapped me" was a wearyingly familiar refrain). Scrapes with the law. I even remember one I didn't know so well, who showed us a trunk full of guns he had to sell. Not choir boys. But not rapists, either.

None of these guys (well, save First Love, of course) ever quite measured up to my standards and expectations. So none of them ever really got my attention. None of them was, by my archetypal, by my conscious or unconscious or ineffable standards: a man. Save First Love, of course.

Some of them, all these years on, I imagine may be voting for Trump. Those who are alive, who even bother with voting.

Caging the animal is a start.
But don't self-confessed criminals belong behind bars?
Image: Wikipedia

My point is, my experience of men's "talk" about women is not limited to the pretty compliments given me by adoring wooers. Or even the wary kindnesses emitted by those familiar with my big brother. Eep, he scared off some boys, he did. (Reasons I dated younger guys in high school: they had missed out on Diane Major's big brother.)

Even after my mall rat years - spending as much time in bars with BEx gigging as I did, alone by appearances, while he was between sets or onstage - I had plenty of ears full of men's talk about women. Sometimes, about my person, sometimes not. Heck, even if you just sit quiet and still in some bars, they forget you are sentient, and speak pretty damned candidly - either for you to hear, or not realizing you do. Some say execrable things, even concerning things.

MEN: never speak like Donald Trump.

Not even most boys, not ones raised by anybody who cared. I started to say "in a barn" there, but Trump is beneath the barnyard, frankly.

A barnyard is a place where horse shit is wholesome, and perfectly congruent.

When somebody tells you who they are:
believe them.

Richard Nixon's Phlebitis

Dena Pawling has a great blog not only reviewing a lot of books, but throwing around some of the legal facts of life, often to amusing effect. We have her to thank for this link.

Well worth a click should you need a laugh at the expense of a super-rich sexual harasser in his undies. Right now, I can tell you, this was a much needed distraction for ME.

Fair warning, though: there IS a photo of the plaintiff in said (black ...) underpants. Pure comedy black gold. But worse to behold even than a man in black socks and mandals.

Faces of Death

We've got to start off with the following phrase: the denial of human creatureliness. My stars, what a great twist of words, as cruel as any knife.

(B)eing an animal is threatening because it reminds people of their vulnerability to death...
--multiple authors, see link above

A few days ago, doing those things we do that we don't share with most others - showering and getting a look at my body's age and particulars - I was thinking, as I have before, of how I wish it were a different sight. Thinking about how age has changed things, how annoying bodies can be, not trapped in amber and constantly energetic and healthy got me to thinking (a) of all those things we are told we can do about that and, inevitably, (b) the people who do the most to give some plausible lie to the necessity of age and our animal nature.

Image: Wikipedia
Obvious choice? Heck yes.

If I'm honest, Dita von Teese actually occurs to me most often when I think about these things. She actually is lovely, but the image she's crafted - I sometimes wonder how well it will age. Perhaps it is her vintage spin that makes me look to the ways some of the Hollywood glamour goddesses who inspired her ended up; and at forty-four, you wonder how much mileage is left in her career of being alluring. The Kardashians are an industry, and nobody expects humanity of them, so contemplating how they age just means looking at Momma K and shrugging a bit.

But the fundamental point is, artifice is the denial of the animal.

There are times I revel in artifice. But the thing with me is, there are also times I revel in being an animal - in the biological status of my existence, as much as the spiritual or intellectual (or silly). In some ways, the best PART of getting dolled up (and note the word choice there, hah) is the way we start off - sweaty, sparse-eyebrowed, with imperfect skin and no ornament. For me, "gooping up" as my friend TEO and I used to call it, is an emphasis of artificiality, not of myself. When I go out in any sort of drag, it's not a presentation of myself, but of the things I like or find funny or a neat idea I had with hair or makeup, something archly and specifically NOT myself.

Anyone who believes I have purple hair - or those eyelashes - is not my responsibility to counsel.

Anyone who believes I am significantly younger than I am - well, I have two lovely parents certainly to thank. Assuming we take the cultural worship of youth as read.



For those less than eager to take on the entirety of the paper whose abstract is linked above, consider this. An interesting look at death, indeed, and possibly informative of more than America's own current state of politics.

Study subjects who were prompted to talk about their own death later rated their support for Trump 1.66 points higher on a five-point scale than those who were prompted to talk about pain generally.
--Max Ehrenfreund, Washington Post

The old "May you live in interesting times" joke comes to mind. Not only because ALL times for humans have been interesting, harrowing, joyous, and terrifying all at once, but because the first and foremost draw of Trumpery has been how interesting he is. He's entertainment, as well as a valve for the release of all those unseen things we hold inside; hatred and anger and fear. He's a really big show.

Image: Wikipedia
I chose this because it's about as dignified a shot of The Donald as I can find in fair use rules,
and the juxtaposition with someone notorious for his flamboyant looks was irresistible.
And he's really smiling.

***

It is common received wisdom that art and comedy are born out of our knowledge of death. Fashion and cosmetics are too, which is interesting given their connection to human sexuality, itself the only means toward immortality in providing for procreation.

Politics is death. And sometimes suicide is the way humans meet death.

***

I both revel in my creatureliness and play with those toys of denial. Most of us do the same in one way or another, saving contemplation of death for special occasions, but not actively denying it. Life just doesn't leave time for it, mostly. We get caught up in the day-to-day, and that works both in our favor and against us - it is all to easy to forget to deal with those parts of life that have to do with its cessation.

It is perhaps precisely because all times are interesting that we simultaneously gorge on it, and then need to retreat from it, and on a humankind scale this leads us to bewildering socio-political behavior. American media would have it that the Brexit vote came largely because people voted for exit thinking "this will never happen" and now they all wish they could take it back. How far this gibes with reality is debatable, but not a debate I wish to be party to. It's an interesting sort of finger-shaking version of "journalism" (a word that's been in scare-quotes for years now), but a curious look at the fear of death in itself. A few weeks go, Brexit looked like Roman decimation in broadcast media; right now, we're forgetting about it and "la-la-la-I-cant'-hear-you"-ing all the way to Sodom, most of the day-after pearl-clutching forgotten, at least amongst us unwashed masses. There isn't time to think about it.

Three days ago, I'd never heard of this dang Pokemon walking game, and now it is EVERYWHERE, both in hilarity and more finger-wagging ("don't play Pokemon games in the Holocaust museum" was an actual thing this morning).

Fantasy is our way of denying death - if we focus on what we find most beautiful, desirable ... death loses its hold in our minds, because those things are as strong for us as the unknowable inevitabilities of our bodies.

By writing, I revel in the creatureliness of my characters, and my own - and because I write fiction, I can deny it ALL. Nothing is real, and if I write about those things that frighten me most, that is not real either.

This is the essential appeal of horror.

The ultimate fantasy is control.

We seem to be exerting the fantasy of control by going out of control an awful lot lately.

Why *wouldn't* people rather contemplate the curiously human and artificial face of a Jenner or Kardashian ... ?

Collection

Le Cinema Dreams has a guest contributor with a look at, of all things, Rocky. I understand the need for intimacy she describes.

Gawker has a hilariously straight-faced in depth report on the provenance of Donald Trump's ... let us call it "hair" ... I'm especially taken with the conspiracy-theory tinged feel of the investigation into the possible Man Behind the "Hair", right down to the detail about his name being Anglicized from Mohammed, which adds a particular whispered-schadenfreude fun to proceedings relating to the short-fingered vulgarian's racist spewings.

Who needs a little more history nerding for their TBR pile? Well, here you go - Paris, 1200. Do I need this? Why yes. Yes, I do. Worth another click: the link to a bit more about Ingeborg of Denmark. Ohhh, pre-modern European kings. When will you ever learn about this whole repudiating your wife thing?

And in local news? Redneck shit-hats take a page out of ISIS's book and loot the crap out of a national battlefield park just in time for Memorial Day. Because what could be klASSier than that?