An Australian game reviewer got sick and tired of young boys trolling her and threatening to rape her, so she did what any self-respecting adult would do — she told their parents. [via]
The interim Ferguson Police Chief straight up LIED in an interview for the L.A. Times when he said Mike Browns body was left outside for over 4 hours because “it was too dangerous” from all the “hostile gun fire.”
Seriously this film is so great and the world building is wonderful. There’s a lot of really great, tiny touches - like the Corbin’s cigarette that is almost entirely filter - which show you the ways in which someone was thinking about the future.
I’m
honestly really uncomfortable with all the pressure put on service
industry workers by people in queer circles to use gender neutral
language when interfacing with customers. Like, using gendered terms of
respect (sir, ma'am, etc.) is a part of our job; we’re expected to use
language that indicates our class position, and gendered terms of
respect (including their plurals, ladies, gentleman, etc.) is part of
how it is expected that we do that. If we don’t do that, we come across
as rude, we don’t receive as many tips, we risk losing a customer
interaction, in which the customer has all the power over us
economically, not only by not tipping, but by bringing complaints to our
managers and undermining our job security. This is the shit people
don’t get about working in service. I can’t just walk into your desk job
(provided it’s not a service desk job such as customer service, etc.)
and start complaining to your boss about your performance and get you
fired. And you’re not expected to treat every asshat who walks in with
absolute servility and deference.
Yes, getting misgendered
sucks, but the reason this is even an issue, the reason that service
industry workers are such a visible target of anti-misgendering
activism, is because people feel entitled to demand anything from us no
matter what, because that’s how the customer-server dynamic works. I’m
not saying that you EVER don’t have the right to demand to be gendered
properly. I’m not talking about individual efforts to get your gender
respected. I’m talking about these campaigns of card handouts explaining
gender theory to baristas, I’m talking about these posts going around
on the internet loudly telling services workers they need to educate
themselves, and lamenting the fact that everyone at McDonalds and
Starbucks hasn’t gone through college level safe space training
programs…
Like, I’m one of those college-educated safe space
training program coordinators. I’m also a trans woman. And I myself have
been witness to the coercive nature of gender dynamics in the workplace
in all sorts of ways. YES there are workarounds, yes they are
substitutes, but they’re often awkward, hard to get used to, hard to
implement, and often are received poorly by our customers. It’s a lot of
fucking work to do all that, to be constantly thinking about that ON
TOP OF all the other shit we have to think about when interacting with
customers (do you know just how difficult it is to memorize an entire
menu? Especially for someone with multiple learning disabilities such as
myself)?
I once got lectured in my store by an English
professor from a very prestigious DC university because I called them
“sir”. They told me they’re trying to be a professor outside the
classroom (where they teach queer lit theory) as well, and teach service
workers the proper way to address strangers when they don’t know their
pronouns. They told me, “it’s important to ask people their pronouns and
not assume! For example, I go by ‘they’, and you go buy…” I
responded, I go by ‘she’. He smiled in the most condescending way (this
whole lecture was condescending as fuck) and told me, “See?” Like, wow,
not only are you condescending and telling me shit that I’ve literally
been trained to educate people about, you’re also actively distancing me
from my womanhood now by basically saying “See? No one could have ever
guessed that you go by she! You don’t look anything like a she!” Fuck
off.
As a trans woman in the service industry, I PROMISE you I
get misgendered by my customers a THOUSAND times more than I ever
misgender them. Being misgendered by a trans person isn’t any less
shitty, but it IS less shitty than being misgendered all. fucking. day.
Like, believe me, I do my absolute and 100% best to avoid misgendering
my customers. I really do. But here’s the bottom line: The reason people
feel so entitled to these campaigns criticizing service workers, the
reasons you feel entitled to demand this respect from us (which is
respect that is yours to demand, in any situation, of course) more
readily than you are of say, your doctor, or your neighbors, is because
of the nature of service work. It’s because you see yourself as our
boss-by-proxy.
I see more posts going around about the need to
educate service workers than I do about the need to educate doctors
about trans issues. And that’s fucked up, weird, and it says something
about people’s expectations from others based on class position and
profession.
Hi ho, agender cashier here!
I go by they, and mistdam/Mx. is great, but have you ever called a random person mistdam or Mx? Most people don’t know what the fuck you’re saying. I’ve been called rude and been told I have a bad attitude, and been called stupid when I try to explain. So yeah, normalizing gender neutral terms is fabulous. But I’m too desperate for my $8 an hour to risk it.
Yeah exactly. It’s part of this liberal attitude where they think simply saying things or saying things a certain way actually changes them (see item: “makeup is gender neutral!”).
That’s not how this works. Gender is still real and coercive and it’s coercive effects on those of us working in service are very felt.
If a service worker misgenders you, all you need to say is, ‘yeah,
I’d like a latte, and also the “miss” isn’t necessary’. I promise they
will be falling all over themselves to apologize and move the fuck on,
because they’re trying to save the interaction now that you’ve voiced
your discomfort. You don’t have that power in other situations with
non-service workers and I actually encourage you to use it, but
recognize where that power comes from. We don’t mind being corrected,
it’s part of our job. But going home and ranting on facebook about the
ignorance of service workers isn’t the solution, I promise.
And people have asked me about educating service workers when it’s situationally appropriate. And like, I want to say that if we’re not busy we’ll listen to your schtick and a lot of us will probably learn something. But I think my friend put this really well:
Imo
i don’t think any constructive conversation abt important shit can ever
really happen when one of the participants is essentially being coerced
into it and required to show subservience/“respect”
[and] even
if a productive conversation could happen, that conversation is p much
meaningless unless you are changing the structural and material
conditions behind the whole mess. The conversation itself does fuckall.
At its best this is liberal faux-activism and at its worst rly
condescending to trans proles [proletariat workers] who are being coerced into listening to
you
So yeah, assuming our need for education is also a condescending attitude, and not recognizing the dynamics at play is really a problem. Just correct us when we misgender you and move on, and fight for actual structural changes that help service workers and trans folx have autonomy and self determination.
Dr. Caroline Heldman is a professor of politics specializing in issues of media, gender, and race in the US. Her talk, “The sexy lie” takes on issues of gender-based expectations and sexual objectification. Watch the entire talk below:
i was wondering why it is that i feel comfortable in rural settings and urban settings but not in suburban settings, because i’ve considered rural and urban to be two extremes on a sliding scale with suburbs in the middle
but that’s not really the case
the suburbs are extremely different and in a category of their own because their existence is predicated on the wealthier part of the working class trying to put as much physical distance between them and the centers of industry where they actually do their work as possible, creating as much of a division between work/life and public/private space as possible (and bridging the gap increasingly using cars rather than public transportation, to further isolate people)
not to mention the fact that white people wanted to get away from black people and immigrants as they were increasingly migrating in northern cities and white people could use their greater material wealth and racist housing subsidies in their favor to escape city life while maintaining employment
suburbs are a monstrosity that should never have happened and continue to do harm
This.
There’s no need for the graduation really. You could actually have dense urban areas that just sort of stop, and from there on it’s countryside, because the city is as big as it needs to be and internally houses and provides for it’s whole living and working population. The desire for shoulder to shoulder yet unwalkable suburban sprawl is a desire of capital, as a way to commidify and capitalize on the land surrounding a city without regard for efficiency or sustainability of land use.
That’s a really pleasant idea now that I think about it. Big city that graduates outward into small town and then into countryside, without the haphazard sprawl that keeps going on and on and on for miles and miles.
Also, I was talking to my friend who’s an urban studies major about this earlier today. She told me that in the suburbs “the lack of public spaces and public transportation means suburbs don’t have as many opportunities for interactions between diverse groups of people, for public protest, or for the cross-pollination of ideas”
I remember I saw a post on here once about how making the primary mode of transportation cars was really insidiously capitalist and helped maintain an individualist ethos by making transportation an individual investment and responsibility, and also by isolating people for the time that they’re commuting. I think that can be expanded to explain the suburbs in general.
it’s worth considering that beyond the way that suburbs and cars accommodate capital by turning people’s basic human needs (transportation and shelter) into marketable private goods, they also serve a purpose of spreading people out and impeding collective action both on the psychological scale (because people have no sense that their own welfare is tied up with the public good) and on the physical scale– where are people supposed to organize? are they supposed to drive to mass demonstrations? will there be parking?
so I strongly and urgently believe that we need to abolish the suburbs
I used to work for a call center and I was doing a political survey and I called this number that was randomly generated for me and the way our system worked was voice-activated so when the other person said hello you’d get connected to them, so I just launch right into my “Harvard University and NPR blah blah blah” thing and then there’s this long pause and I think the person’s hung up even though I didn’t hear a click
And then I hear “you shouldn’t be able to call this number.”
So I apologize and go into the preset spiel about because we aren’t selling anything, etc. etc. and the answer I get is
“No, I know that. What I mean is that it should be impossible for you to call this number, and I need to know how you got it.”
I explain that it’s randomly generated and I’m very sorry for bothering him, and go to hang up. And before I can click terminate, I hear:
“Ma’am, this is a matter of national security.”
I accidentally called the director of the FBI.
My job got investigated because a computer randomly spit out a number to the Pentagon.
This is my new favourite story.
When I was in college I got a job working for a company that manages major air-travel data. It was a temp gig working their out of date system while they moved over to a new one, since my knowing MS Dos apparently made me qualified.
There was no MS Dos involved. Instead, there was a proprietary type-based OS and an actually-uses-transistors refrigerator-sized computer with switches I had to trip at certain times during the night as I watched the data flow from six pm to six AM on Fridays and weekends. If things got stuck, I reset the server.
The company handled everything from low-end data (hotel and car reservations) to flight plans and tower information. I was weighed every time I came in to make sure it was me. Areas of the building had retina scanners on doors.
During training. they took us through all the procedures. Including the procedures for the red phone. There was, literally, a red phone on the shelf above my desk. “This is a holdover from the cold war.” They said. “It isn’t going to come up, but here’s the deal. In case of nuclear war or other nation-wide disaster, the phone will ring. Pick up the phone, state your name and station, and await instructions. Do whatever you are told.”
So my third night there, it’s around 2am and there’s a ringing sound.
I look up, slowly. The Red phone is ringing.
So I reach out, I pick up the phone. I give my name and station number. And I hear every station head in the building do the exact same. One after another, voices giving names and numbers. Then silence for the space of two breaths. Silence broken by…
“Uh… Is Shantavia there?”
It turns out that every toll free, 1-900 or priority number has a corresponding local number that it routs to at its actual destination. Some poor teenage girl was trying to dial a friend of hers, mixed up the numbers, and got the atomic attack alert line for a major air-travel corporation’s command center in the mid-west United States.
There’s another pause, and the guys over in the main data room are cracking up. The overnight site head is saying “I think you have the wrong number, ma’am.” and I’m standing there having faced the specter of nuclear annihilation before I was old enough to legally drink.
The red phone never rang again while I was there, so the people doing my training were only slightly wrong in their estimation of how often the doomsday phone would ring.
“Many people believe geekdom is defined by a love of a thing, but I think — and my experience of geekdom bears on this thinking — that the true sign of a geek is a delight in sharing a thing. It’s the major difference between a geek and a hipster, you know: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.””
That is why the older generation is trying to suppress your vote. They know that you can change the world they destroyed.
The first step we should take is getting Bernie Sanders elected President of the United States. We should show the world that we refuse to stand aside while an older and smaller generation insists on the destruction of our Democracy.
This is just the beginning, This is the first year we have as the largest voting generation in US History.
Let’s make the most of it.
Those of us almost-old folks who are NOT fucking assholes and who are getting fucked by the system are relying on you to fix what we could not because we were too few.
And we believe in you completely because you already show every sign of being extraordinary.
i already loved catherynne valente, but then she went on a twitter rant about the social construction behind poison being seen as a coward’s weapon and now i love her EVEN MORE
Colorado Lunch Lady Fired for Giving Kids Free Meals Says She’d Do It Again http://ift.tt/1JoLWZu
from the article:
…“I would have kids start crying when I told them they didn’t have money in their account because they were terrified of getting the cheese sandwich.”
The district’s policy is to give a student a hot meal and charge the parent’s account the first three times they forget lunch money, communications director Tustin Amole told ABC News today. The fourth time, the student is given a cheese sandwich – a single slice of cheese on a hamburger bun – and a milk.
…Curry felt she could not stand by and keep letting it happen.
“It’s not nutrition. It’s not healthy,” she said. “It’s wrong on so many levels, and I hated to see food go to waste. I hated to see food thrown away that could’ve been given to these children that are hungry.”
Curry was supposed to take the students’ food, throw it away and replace it with the cheese sandwich and milk if a student had exceeded the $7.60 debt limit, she said. Instead, she would cancel the transaction and remind the student to bring their lunch money.
Curry acknowledged that her actions went against the district’s policy and when asked why she did it, Curry said, “Because it was the right thing to do and sometimes doing what is right is not what is easy.”
once again, under capitalism, noncompliance with immoral rules means the employee loses her livelihood. and less children have food.
This woman is a hero.
I wanna know what heartless ass snitched on her so I can glare at them for the rest of their days.
For fuck’s sake, America. Maybe put your fucking gun down for a second and turn off Fox News and listen to me: if we, as a nation, think it’s okay to let fucking CHILDREN GO HUNGRY because they are poor, we are a completely fucking failure of life.
