Saturday, October 27, 2012

Updated This Week In The Slacktiverse, October 27th 2012


In case anyone is wondering why some things read "Last week" instead of "This week" it's because it's not always possible to get everything in on time and anything added after the post goes live might be missed.

The Blogaround 

Francis wrote two posts:
Both sparked by the October 20 protest march in London.  One on the march itself and one on marching and music.
Do you hear the people sing?  - the march itself.
Singing the songs of angry men? - current protest music.

Ana Mardoll wrote:
Health: White, Thin, Hairless, Naked
(Content Note: Body Modification, Fat Phobia, Hair Removal, Beauty Expectations)

I am white, but not thin. I am far from hairless. Clearly, I do not conform to conventional USAian standards of attractiveness. Just as clearly, however, I do not conform to conventional USAian standards of visible health.

Narnia: Narnian Girls, Telmarine Boys 

(Content Note: Genocide, Appropriation, Violence Against Children, Unwilling Body Transformation)
So I guess it makes sense that we'd go the next logical leap and just call Telmarine girls "Narnian" girls because, meh, born in Narnia and whatnot. After three hundred years of genocide and imperialism and conquest who still cares about labels, am I right?

Coleslaw wrote: I haven't written much this week, as I have been slowly getting some decluttering done, and did some errand running on behalf of our flea-bitten cats. I did post something Unkind about Ann Coulter (content note: ablism, othering), and wrote a review of the movie Argo.

chris the cynic writes: In the past week much of my time was spent taking what has become known as the Universal Lord's Prayer but was originally posted under the title, "It is as generic and universal a prayer as can be crafted," in response to someone saying just that of the actual Lord's Prayer, into Latin.  Thus I now have, "Tam ea communis et universa precatio est quam creare posse" available on my blog.  Complete with some translation notes for anyone who wants to know how I got things like "GPS" "whachamacallit" and "jazz" into Latin.

I pointed to They Live as a movie everyone should see.

I wrote "
Put The Candle Back! (A post about policy toward transgender students in a town I'd never heard of)" in response to hearing the good news about a certain school district and then hearing that they made a complete reversal in less than a week when bigots kicked up a fuss about treating transgender students with dignity and respect (content note: Transphobia).  This would be after I made the late addition to the "Things you can do section" which is in this post as well because it was a late addition.

My sister wrote a post on facebook trying to use people's hatred of gay people to get them to vote for marriage equality in our state in the coming election.  I wrote a post in response to that explaining that, while her facts are accurate, I don't agree with her approach or her methods (content note: Homophobia).

Finally, I want to find every newspaper in circulation in the US, or at least every English language one, that accepts electronic submissions.  Every single one.  There should be thousands and if there's a way to locate them better than Wikipedia's list of newspapers I haven't found it yet.  So if you know of a better way, please tell me
.

Froborr writes: I've had two posts in My Little Po-Mo this week:
The first post was called "I never thought it would happen. My friends have turned into complete JERKS! (The Ticket Master)": I introduce the notion of problematic-yet-good art and discuss this episode as problematic from a feminist perspective and a getting-Rarity's-character-right perspective.


Good gravy, girl! What's wrong with you? (Applebuck Season): I discuss the technique of character collapse, in which we learn who a character is and what is important to them by watching mounting catastrophe strip away their every strength and trait one by one until nothing remains. But with ponies!


Last week Ana Mardoll wrote:
Deconstruction: Lies, Damn Lies, and Mansplaining
(Content Note: Rape Culture, Swearing)
We each have to set our own personal threat level because we are the ones whose lives that threat level most closely impacts. We are the ones who lose out X when we choose not to do Y, and we are the ones who have to decide whether Z is worth the risks that we, personally, perceive that it carries. You don't get to make those choices for anyone but you.

Deconstruction: Oscar and Weather Girl

(Content Note: Body Policing, Fat Phobia)
This is your regularly scheduled reminder that women should be skinny and sexy at all times in order to be considered normal and non-aberrant. Women should also make sure they always are standing on their toes, and should additionally not expect to have names.

Buffy: A Picture of Abuse

(Content Note: Emotional Abuse, Misogynistic Language, Violence)
So let's talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And when I say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, specifically I mean Season 3, Episode 2, "Dead Man's Party", aka the most enraging episode of anything I have ever seen ever since I quit watching Everyone Loves Raymond.

In case you missed this/thing you can do

Literata has been officially recognized as a member of the clergy. (Via)

From last week:I recently read about a schoolboard that had put in place a policy to support and defend their transgender students, a group that -even in LGB safe places- often finds itself marginalized and unsafe.  This morning (Sunday the 21st) I read that they completely reversed course and rescinded that policy.  It seems like there must be something that can be done, it was outside pressure that made them go from taking a stand against bigotry to backing down, outside pressure might make them reassert their original position.  I don't know.  I went looking for petitions, the standard means of applying outside pressure.  I found two, but both are from before the policy was rescinded urging not to rescind.  Until such time as there is one saying, "Put The Candle Back," those seem like the best bet they are here:
Stop District 131 from reversing their new transgender policy!

Uphold the transgender protection policy you UNANIMOUSLY voted to adopt!!
[The second petition is now closed.]

I have signed both.  If someone knows of another, especially one more current, tell me and I'll put it here.  Until then I recommend getting the word out.  The schoolboard stood up for the right thing, they have since backed down and transgender kids will continue to be hurt as a result.  Someone needs to tell them to stand back up.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

6 comments:

  1. Shoot, I totally forgot to submit anything for this.

    I've had two posts in My Little Po-Mo this week:

    Good gravy, girl! What's wrong with you? (Applebuck Season): I discuss the technique of character collapse, in which we learn who a character is and what is important to them by watching mounting catastrophe strip away their every strength and trait one by one until nothing remains. But with ponies!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I apparently fail at HTML.

      The first post (which vanished outright from my comment) was called "I never thought it would happen. My friends have turned into complete JERKS! (The Ticket Master)" (http://mlpomo.blogspot.com/2012/10/i-never-thought-it-would-happen-my.html): I introduce the notion of problematic-yet-good art and discuss this episode as problematic from a feminist perspective and a getting-Rarity's-character-right perspective.

      The URL for the second post (the link that doesn't work) is http://mlpomo.blogspot.com/2012/10/good-gravy-girl-whats-wrong-with-you.html

      Delete
    2. I'll got about adding them now. Next Week they'll show up as "Last Week" submissions in case anyone looked when it first went up and then didn't come back.

      When I saw "HTML" and "fail" I was worried you were talking about me, fortunately I then processed the whole sentence. The Preview function seems work most of the time, but it has never failed to fail me for a "This Week" post so what I end up doing is getting things so that they look right in preview, publishing, seeing what went wrong, editing the HTML directly, updating, looking at the published post to see if that helped, and keeping on going back and forth between bare HTML editing and the published post until I finally have it looking right in the real world (though in preview it looks like crap.)

      -

      Also, I have no idea what I'm doing that makes the "Previous Posts" widget look so weird just about every time I post.

      Delete
    3. I mean "I'll go about adding them now." My kingdom for an edit button.

      What's that you say? I don't have a kingdom? Maybe that's why I'm so willing to part with it then.

      Delete
  2. I totally forgot to submit too, partly because I didn't write my post until Saturday afternoon. I wrote about organizing my church's participation in Food Day: http://willbikeforchange.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/growing-community-for-food-day/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Argh, I forgot it doesn't allow you the chance to edit if you're already signed in to Google. The name of the post is "Growing Community with Food Day." So the full description should read:

      "Storiteller wrote about organizing her church's participation in Food Day / World Food Day, a celebration of sustainable food and an awareness-raising event about world hunger in Growing Community for Food Day" (http://willbikeforchange.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/growing-community-for-food-day/).

      Delete

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