Sophianotloren

There’s a very interesting piece in Nature today about how science is making it more clear than ever that the binary nature of the sexes isn’t actually binary at all — that there are a lot of gradiations in biological sexual development, brought on not only via chromosomal differentation (the old “XX” and “XY” thing) but a host of other processes. This is how people with XY chromosomes can (rarely) get pregnant and give birth, and how a man who fathered four children can be discovered to have a womb. Biology: It’s wacky.

I don’t imagine this report will make essentialists (“There’s men and there’s women and that’s it!”) particularly happy, but then it’s not actually the job of science to reinforce people’s comfort zones — or bigotries, to be less polite about it. But I look forward to the mental two-step some of these folks will take to try to cram this information into their understanding of the world, rather than to expand their understanding of the world based on this information. That should be interesting, and a little bit sad.

A 30-year-old memory of a metal figure riddled with bullet holes, standing in the furrows of a German field, finally persuaded photographer Herlinde Koelbl to investigate what military training targets look like around the world. The six-year project started in 2008 took her to over 20 countries, with a series of more than 200 photographs now published in Targets by Prestel.

“I was interested in the targets at which soldiers were trained to shoot,” she explains in her introduction to the book. “Who is the bad man? What does he look like — the enemy that they are later expected to kill? Is he an abstract figure? Does it have a gender and if so, which? Are there cultural differences? Has the image of the enemy changed?”

What she found was surprisingly diverse, from mannequins on remote-controlled cars in the United Arab Emirates and green blobs that look slightly like melted toy army men at an American base, to simple outlines of bodies balanced on spare tires filled with rocks in Lebanon.

“In Afghanistan, it was just a foam mattress with a piece of paper pinned onto it as a target,” she writes. “In Ethiopia, there were wooden targets reduced to outlines; it was similar in Russia, except that they were painted in bright colors there. Sometimes I saw the same paper targets in different countries, as they had all been ordered from the same catalogue. In Germany, on the other hand, I came upon cut-out soldiers reminiscent of naive painting and life-size chipboard cows on a meadow.”

As a viewer, we see just what Koelbl shows us without details on when the targets were created, if they’re regular for the country’s military or something homemade for the particular training ground. Is the vaguely human-shaped target at a United States base with what looks like a Soviet star on its helmet a relic of the past, or do bullets still ricochet off its form?

The monograph includes wider photographs of replica training towns and sporadic close-ups on soldiers’ faces with quotes, such as: “It sounds horrifying but you have to learn to kill automatically in order to function.” However, they’re often redundant to the narrative of what object is the first “enemy” and what this might imply about a military’s mentality. The Munich-based Koelbl has spent over three decades as a documentary and political photographer, and she gives each target a powerful portrait, whether it’s a piece of looming metal in Mongolia with bullets still embedded in its rust, simple tin cans in the Western Sahara, or a full-figure articulated mannequin scarred with a volley of shots on an American base in Germany. No matter the target or the conditions of training, around the world, as she frames it, everyone is ready for a fight.

Targets by Herlinde Koelbl is available from Prestel. 

(Adapted from tweets I made)

On the 50th day of Moviemas my true love gave to me:

50 Shades of Grey

Ladder 49

Another 48 hrs.

47 Ronin

Code 46

.45

Catch .44

Movie 43

42 (the movie)

41 (the movie)

(This is getting boring)

No, This is 40

Case THIRTY NINNNNE

Dakota 38

37: A Final Promise

36th Precinct

35 and Ticking

(Boy, are we ever)

MIRACCLLLE ON THIRTY FOURTH STREEETTT

The 33

West 32nd

(Thank god for Korean movies)

Oslo 31. august

30 Minutes or Less

29 Palms

28 Days

27 Dresses

Special 26

25th Hour

Twenty-Four Eyes

(Screw you Jack Bauer)

The NUMMBERRR TWENTY THREEEE

22 Jump Street

(White-washed) 21

Twenty colon 20

K-19: The Widowmaker

Apollo 18

Stalag 17

Sixteen Candles

15 Minutes

(thank god humans love numbering things)

Fourteen Hours

FRIDDAAYYY THE THIRTEENNTTHH

12 Monkeys twisting

11:14 clocking

10 Things a-hatin’ (about you)

9 Plans from Outer Space

8 Super um… 8s

Se7en (that was scary)

6 Undiscovered Countries

FIIIVVEEE ARMIES BATTLING

4 Fantastic Heroes

3 Days to Kill

2 Fast 2 Furious

AND A PREQUEL THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN MAAADDDEEEE

*collapses*

100 years ago today, D.W. Griffith showed his racist epic film “Birth of a Nation” at a private White House screening for President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson called it “history written with lightning,” and said lightning strike sparked the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, which in its late teens and early twenties form became a gigantic nationwide organization of conservative white men marching and organizing against not only African-Americans but all sorts of perceived threats ranging from women with short hair and the theory of evolution to Jews and socialism. When it declined in the late 20s, it wasn’t because of federal oppression or a rejection of the KKK’s ideas. Rather, it was because of widespread corruption in the organization’s leadership, including the the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan’s trial for the brutal rape and murder of a teacher named Madge Oberholtzer on a train.

I was first exposed to Birth of a Nation as a college student. While I did watch it for a class my senior year, it was my sophomore year that I actually first saw it. I worked for the AV department in college and this was long enough ago that films in class were being shown reel to reel (the switch to VHS capability in classrooms was taking place while I was in college). One quarter I had the job of running the previews of the 100-level intro to film course for the professor. Saw a bunch of weird stuff–Un Chien Andalou, The Gold Rush, and Notorious are three I distinctly remember. But none shocked me like Birth of a Nation, as I had never heard of the thing. I never forgot the shock of what I was seeing.

And if you haven’t seen Birth of a Nation, it really is must viewing, both in spite of and because of its racism. As a film, it’s great. As social commentary, it’s repulsive.

This past November, the US Army discreetly announced that it is looking to develop “a holding cell for one detainee during combat operations.” The shippable detention unit would consist of a “box-like structure with a door” enclosing a minimum floor area of 40 square feet. In addition to having a bunker-like capacity to withstand hostile climate conditions, the “shelter” would be easily manufactured, transported (“using common military delivery systems”), assembled (“by no more than three people”), collapsed, and, of course, tamper-proof from within. Each unit would remain functional for a life cycle of five years. The request for information even stipulated the exact color of the cell interior — FS 37769, a pallid shade of federal standard beige.

The listing on fbo.gov — the seemingly innocuous, go-to site for “federal business opportunities” — recently caught the attention of BuzzFeed, and rightly so. On the one hand, as BuzzFeed reports, the request reflects an increasing demand for temporary incarceration in war zones where the US Army is engaged and troops have had to devise ad hoc schemes to hold individuals detained during combat. In theory, a standardized solution would streamline this procedure, better ensuring the safety of US troops while obviating ethical quandaries that pit the security and welfare of one party against that of another. But one glance at the renderings for these solitary cells should be enough to rouse serious concern. The two grainy images haunting the back page of the document invoke the complicated history of prefabricated architecture, a concept that has represented progressive social ideals as well as nightmarish conservative realities. With prefab design resurfacing in both civilian and military architectural discussions, a contemplation of the history and ethics behind prefabrication seems especially urgent.

Not surprisingly, the notion of off-site, industrially produced architecture gained considerable momentum in another period characterized by war. World War II shifted American manufacturing forces into high gear, and among the products being churned out by US assembly lines were prefab structures, such as the multi-purpose, corrugated steel Quonset Hut, which is still in production today. Though certainly not the first instances of prefab construction — an idea that can be traced back to 19th century designs utilizing machine-milled timber, concrete, and cast-iron parts — these simple, utilitarian artifacts fed into contemporaneous currents of modernist thought. The idea that systems of pre-made elements could provide the masses with not just functional shelters but innovative housing solutions flourished in the postwar era, inspiring a small boom of avant-garde, prefab dwellings. In one notable example, émigré architects Konrad Wachsmann and Walter Gropius responded to the postwar housing demand with designs for a modular, wood-frame-and-panel construction system. Their “Packaged House” failed to attract sufficient investment, but the legacy of these kit-of-parts experiments endured, preserved in a canon of bespoke prototypes, including Charles and Ray Eames’s Case Study House No. 8, a ludic and colorful live-work space fashioned out of surplus wartime construction parts.

Prefab architecture, its progressive connotations guaranteed by its noble history, is seeing a remarkable revival today. A sort of Holy Grail of modern architecture, prefabricated or modular design has been hailed as a means of harnessing the power and speed of modern technology to satisfy pressing social needs. The concept places faith in a sort of rational calculus, a well-conceived formula that marshals finite resources to benefit the greatest number of individuals. But with such altruistic intentions comes an inherent risk: the risk of defining — and perpetuating — a restrictive idea of what societies want or need. Lest we forget, on the other side of modernism’s prefab pipe dreams we find nightmares of cookie-cutter urbanism like the Eastern Bloc’s mass-produced and panelized high-rises, or plattenbau. These unimaginative, neglected, machine-churned blocks still haunt the skylines of Eastern Europe and the popular conception of prefab today — and find alarming resonance in the Army’s modular holding cells.

Earlier this month, the Center for Architecture in New York City hosted a panel conversation on “The Future of Modular,” where practitioners debated the role of prefab design in addressing the city’s housing shortage. The discussion rides on a burgeoning interest in modular micro-apartments and other unconventional visions for contemporary urban living. But as we learn to admire the resourcefulness implied in these micro-designs, does not another part of us recoil at the basic assumption that 300 square feet are enough for the average city dweller to live on?

Of course, to completely reject the idea of modular building would be to miss the point. There are productive histories of prefabrication to be redeemed, histories that include a range of artifacts from anonymous balloon-frame constructions to Le Corbusier’s theoretically prolific Maison Dom-ino. Without doubt, these histories have enabled us to envision heterogeneous new ways of dwelling. But as we cautiously revisit the modular, we must also question the social circumstances that can get streamlined in the process of prefabrication. For instance, we should pause and ask ourselves: when is living efficiently no longer living, but merely — perhaps inhumanely — subsisting? An even more critical approach should be demanded of the US Army as it experiments with prefabrication. To realize this “modular detainee shelter system” would be to accept a very specific premise: that certain exigencies of our reality permit us to enclose humans inside 40-square-foot cells, for the indeterminate amount of time that qualifies as “temporary,” and with the unthinking immediacy implied in the word “modular.”

Mary Norris has a gift for your favorite grammarian in this week’s New Yorker: a detailed account of comma policy from a veteran copyeditor. The magazine is notorious for its meticulous house style (where else do you still see a diaeresis over the word coördinate?), which it owes to Mensa-level punctuator Eleanor Gould and her acolytes. The piece offers a fantastic glimpse into the magazine’s culture, and gets to the philosophical roots of the punctuation debates. As Norris sees it:

The New Yorker isn’t asking you to pause and gasp for breath at every comma. That’s not what close punctuation is about. The commas are marking a thoughtful subordination of information.

Related Posts:

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• The Decline of Punctuation?!…
• New Murakami Short Story
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The Rude Pundit is going to play his professor card, something that he reserves for special occasions, to talk about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a man who looks like what you get when a prairie vole fucks a water shrew. The probable 2016 Republican presidential candidate never finished college at Marquette University, and right-wingers have rushed to defend him, despite the fact that he's had a government job since 1993, when he was elected to his first office. Walker has been living off Wisconsin's tax dollars for over 20 years.

From saggy-titted Rush Limbaugh to purposeless Breitbart to whoever the fuck is pretending to be a writer at the National Review, conservatives want you to know that, holy cow, you don't need a college degree to be president. And they're right. You don't. Like him or not, Walker has a shit-ton of experience in politics since it's the only thing he's really done in his adult life. That kind of thing used to drive conservatives bonkers but obviously not anymore.

But where all of these assaults on the academy go wrong is in assuming that there is only one type of college experience. The most egregious of these comes from an actual professor, Glenn Reynolds, he of Instapundit bloggery and a law prof at the University of Tennessee (which is where the Rude Pundit got his big ol' doctorate). Writing in USA Today, Reynolds, hyping his own book, mostly, tells us that leftist elitists from the Ivy League have fucked us over. See, all of us with degrees are just snobs: "Over the past few years in America, a college degree has become something valued more as a class signifier than as a source of useful knowledge." Then Reynolds goes totally dickish, adding, "When Democratic spokesman Howard Dean (who himself was born into wealth) suggested that Walker's lack of a degree made him unsuitable for the White House, what he really meant was that Walker is 'not our kind, dear' — lacking the credential that many elite Americans today regard as essential to respectable status."

See, to conservatives, "college" is itself a signifier of "indoctrinated into leftist beliefs." And, of course, "college" only means the Ivy League. Says Reynolds, after listing the Harvard, Yale, et al credentials of President Obama and the Supreme Court, "All this credentialism means that we should have the best, most efficiently and intelligently run government ever, right? Well, just look around. Anyone who has ever attended a faculty meeting should recognize that more education doesn't produce better decision makers, and our educated mandarinate doesn't seem to have done much for the country." Serious question: Is Reynolds a total cock at his own faculty meetings? And the Rude Pundit has long believed that Ivy League incest has harmed the nation. But the solution is not to say, "Well, obviously, college makes people dumb." It's to say, "Hey, how about some leaders who came from state schools?"

Reynolds so devalues the college experience that, after informing us that most people don't have degrees, he scoffs, "But where 50 years or 100 years ago they might not have cared, many now feel inferior to those who possess a degree. But without much reason, as many college degrees don't signify much besides a limited ability to show up on time most of the time, and avoid getting so falling-down-drunk that you flunk out."

And this is where the Rude Pundit would like to address Reynolds directly, professor to professor:

"Motherfucker, I teach at a school where many of the students are the first in their family to go to college. Their parents want their kids to get a degree so they can have more comfortable lives. The students come to classes ready to learn, open-minded, and, far more often than not, conscientious and prepared. The hardest part is having to compensate for the shitty education system created by politicians and business people that has dicked over students for knowing anything beyond what was on a goddamned test. You know what's elitist? Pretending that college doesn't matter. Pretending that all schools are like Harvard or even fuckin' UTK, where, yeah, the drunk thing is a factor. But that's not the vast majority of colleges and universities. It ain't the vast majority of students. Mine work full time, take classes full time, and sometimes have kids to take care of. Many of them know what the world is like for people without degrees. You know what the diploma indicates, asshole? That you stuck with something and succeeded. That you spent time with people who are different than you. That you learned some things that you perhaps wouldn't have learned.  And, despite the bullshit you cite, study after study proves that you earn more with a college education than without. I've been wanting to say this to your worthless ass for years: Fuck you, man. Grow the fuck up."

Damn, that felt good. One other note here: As the Rude Pundit has said before, if you believe that colleges are merely bastions of bolshevik liberalism, spend some time with professors in the business majors or, really, the STEM profs. Oh, wait. They believe in science, so maybe not.

As for Scott Walker, let's dismiss his inability to answer a question about evolution as craven political expedience. What does matter is, as governor, he has bought into the right-wing attack on higher education and he wants to fuck the universities of his state with huge budget cuts, just like Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. That shit looks sketchy, especially when you don't have a degree.

If you can be successful at something without a diploma, good on you, future  Bill Gates or Louis CK or Oprah. Obviously, people can be just like you. Except for the almost everyone who can't.

Vindicating psychiatry.

The science of learning to read.

Philip K. Dick warned you, but you didn’t listen.

This robot can date for you.

Love all over the world via Twitter.

Studying social engagements and the marriage ones too.

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I often feel that my day to day experiences border between the routine and the ordinary. I’ve come to think of my attention to these rhythms as my training as a poet. By looking closely at daily passages I have learned something, I believe, about alertness and, I hope, about empathy and compassion and the metaphors the heart fashions from life.

For example, a couple of weeks back Wendy and I drove across the Willamette River here in Portland to take in the opera’s opening performance of Carmen. In addition to the flaming pink stockings sported by the bullfighter Escamillo in the closing act and the stunning sincerity of soprano Jennifer Forni’s Micaela’s Act III aria, “Je dis que rien ne m’epouvante,” the biggest pleasure for me came from Sandra Piques Eddy’s saucy “Habanera” done with a mezzo meets Pretty Woman sexiness:

What I take from the cheerful, lean fire in Sandra Piques Eddy’s signing is that she wants her Carmen to perform life, to exist without being overwhelmed by sadness, to maintain her empowerment if not her peace of mind, and to relate to the thrills of human nature, especially desire. Those traits—performance, empowerment, and thrill as factors of a good heart—are also, to my mind, signal aspects of the poet’s voice.

I’d already been thinking this way since last month when Wendy and I, while traveling to New York, saw La Traviata at the Met. There we lucked into the cataclysmically breathtaking triumph of Sonya Yoncheva’s Violetta. Coming out of the hall into the city that night we just couldn’t stop praising her shining voice, especially in the closing aria of Act II, “Amami Alfredo,” when Violetta abandons her lover Alfredo with her fatal, sacrificial act of love. Well I’ve been humming the aria ever since and, meanwhile, too, I read that James Jorden of the Observer calls Sonya Yoncheva’s Violetta “nothing short of magnificent” and Zachary Woolfe of the Times croons her arias were a “creation full of searching details.” More on all this in a moment.

Some of my friends have told that me that while poetry is good and all, it is not really very relevant. They say it doesn’t have much in the way of power or influence in the world. They claim that anger, greed, hatred, war, and all that and worse are too much a part of human nature, and that poetry barely comes out from under the domination of those other things.

I disagree. We human beings have existed with poetry for over a hundred thousand years. Despite all the wars, we find that human beings define themselves not by their aggressions and hatreds, though of course some do, but by their compassion and love. Violence so dominates the nightly news because it’s an aberration of the norm. We do not expect our police to kill suspects in custody, our soldiers to torture captured combatants, terrorists to bomb crowded cafes, adults to sexually abuse children, and so we are honestly shocked, and that becomes our village’s news. Acts of compassion intent on freeing others from suffering, including the communion promised in the gift of an individual poem presented to an individual reader, are taken for granted and basically ignored.

But poetry reminds us that human nature prefers the utterance of a single voice when it reveals our individual condition and our social bonds, and also when it expresses the general idea that human loneliness is not bearable. A poet’s scream of consciousness cries out for a human ear to listen closely—screams, cries out, and also whispers, protests and also interrogates, rebuts, apologizes, exclaims, proclaims, or vows, and more. What I mean is, a poet depends on others.

This shared alertness between poet and listener becomes evident if we consider our own existences. I mean, we are dependent on others for companionship, friendship, love, food and shelter. If I were to depart from the course of my daily living and remove myself to some remote existence, say, in the forest, no matter how capable I was, no matter how well I might survive for a time, I would still long for human connection. I might connect with the birds, the animals, the plants, the trees, and ferns, and sky, but this would not be the same as another human being and the sharing of our human stories with our voices, including our literary voices.

Poetry is an art spoken, as if sung, in relation to other human beings.

Which brings me back to Violetta. At the end of Act II she gets caught in the illusion that she can be separate from her lover Alfredo and still exist in love even though she seems to know in her heart, all the while, that her sacrifice will kill her. Her broken cry “Amami Alfredo” is sung after Alfredo has found her writing a letter of farewell to him. I know she’s writing a letter. But I sometimes like to think of her letter as a kind of poem, just in the form of a letter, and the aria that follows as the essence of that poem. Anyway she’s writing to Alfredo to say she is leaving him after Alfredo’s father implores her to do so. In “Amami Alfredo” Violetta tries to release her psyche of the love she cherishes and tries also to abandon the fulfillment of her aspirations. “Amami Alfredo” defines her and Alfredo and the world in that moment just as the utterance of a poem defines poet, speaker, and listener inside the passages of existence. The aria contains her being, and, like a poem, it unfurls the voice of her consciousness:

Di lagrime aveva d’uopo -
or son tranquilla -
lo vedi? Ti sorrido – lo vedi?
Sarò là tra quei fior presso a te sempre.
Amami, Alfredo, quant’io t’amo.
Addio!

I needed tears -
now I feel better -
See? I am smiling at you – see?
I shall always be here, near you, among the flowers.
Love me, Alfredo, love me as much as I love you.
Goodbye!

In these lines I see Violetta’s capacity to release her psyche—just as a poet does through a poem. And her utterance is dependent upon Alfredo’s presence.

Of course the lyrics from a libretto are a wee bit nude without hearing them sung with the orchestration of the music, and I know an aria and a poem are different and meant to be so. Yoncheva’s scream of consciousness is…well, her voice soars on the first note with overflowing tenderness and then cascades into a feral imperative—“Amami” / “Love me”—and then she cradles and clings to his name—“Alfredo…” Then Violetta’s voice takes flight a second time, now as a lament for her sacrifice for love and also as an alarm to lovers everywhere—“Amami, quant’io t’amo” / “love me as much as I love you.” This is followed by a hard intake of breath like a gasp, and finally she repeats it all over again in one extended ululation as a fierce, empowered, heartsore twenty-second-long sob. Listen—

This all-consuming utterance of Violetta’s is the sort of, if you will, poem I am most attracted to, where you can sense that all events in life are interconnected, when the intertwined fate of others is acknowledged so that an individual person on her own can’t conceive of herself or be conceived of separate from the existence of other human beings. If there were no one to relate your experiences to, you’d simply be echoing your own mind.

I see this connection and communion of consciousness as fundamental to poetry. When Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks to his feelings of utter self and utter awareness of self, he asserts a yearning for connection:

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

When Marina Tsvetaeva addresses the night, she does so as a member of a tribe and a nation:

In the dark
midnight, under the ancient trees’ shroud
We gave you sons as perfect as night, sons
As poor as the night
And the nightingale chirred
Your might…

We never stopped you, companions for marvelous hours
Poverty’s passions, the impoverished meals we shared
The fierce bonfire’s glow
And there, on the carpet below,
Fell stars…

When Tomas Tranströmer considers his individuality, he understands his passages of daily life lead him to the existence of others:

We walk in the sun in hundreds.
Each man is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.
The endless ground under us.
The water is shining among the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth.

When C.D. Wright considers the mysteries of time, she accepts the human connections that exist here and the capaciousness of our shared, everyday emotions:

Mystery, mystery and a curse.
The watery grave. Take the boneman’s hand.
Is that your can slashing through the grass.
Deepstep come shining.
If I shell those beans for you, will you cook a mess for me.
There goes Hannah behind that cloudlet.
They hung in there when I was broke and sorry.
They hung in there when I was mean and nasty.
They hung in there when I was drunk and strung out.
They hung on in.

When Lucille Clifton imagines the beginning of names, she includes the future:

the names
of the things
bloom in my mouth
my body opens
into brothers

When Yves Bonnefoy considers the natural world, he sees it as a correspondence with the lives that are missing but always present to him:

Snow
A letter that we find and unfold
And the ink on it has faded and in the marks
The clumsiness of the wit is visible
Which can only muddle up its sharp shadows.

And we try to read, we don’t understand
Who is interested in us in memory,
Except that it’s summer again; and we see
Under the flakes the leaves, and the heat
Rise from the missing sun like a mist.

When Vénus Khoury-Ghata wonders what words are, she knows the meanings of words come from their usages:

they grip each other with a cry
expand into lamentations
become mist on the windows of dead houses
crystallize into chips of grief on dead lips
attach themselves to a fallen star
dig their hole in nothingness
breathe out strayed souls

Words are rocky tears
the keys to the first doors
they grumble in caverns
lend their ruckus to storms
their silence to bread that’s ovened alive

I could go on. Here are examples of clear, enriching poetry as consciousnesses in extremis, utterances to the world in full ecstasy of the imprint of their minds to be heard by someone predisposed to listen and intent on sharing the rhythms of existence. Without this fostering of interdependence, a poet’s voice risks its own dissolution. But it’s through the compassionate scream of consciousness—”Amami Alfredo”—that poems unite us.

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This wacky Saudi cleric has a novel proof that the earth does not rotate. You see, if the earth rotates, then all you’d have to do to fly west^* is get in an airplane, hop into the air, and stay stationary and wait for your destination to roll up under you. And you wouldn’t be able to fly east because your destination would keep rolling away from you. Therefore, the earth must be stationary.

Apparently, he also believes that the sun orbits the earth, and that astronauts have not been to the moon, but I haven’t been able to find any record of his innovative arguments for those claims, which I’m sure would be eminently entertaining.

^*He’s also a little unclear about which direction the earth rotates, but go with it, he’s on a roll.

First, go read this. This is only one dude, to be clear, but his defensive, angry and utterly terrified lament is part and parcel with a chunk of science fiction and fantasy fandom and authors who want to position themselves as a last redoubt against… well, something, anyway. It essentially boils down to “The wrong people are in control of things! We must take it back! Attaaaaaaaack!” It’s almost endearing in its foot-stompy-ness; I’d love to give this fellow a hug and tell him everything will be all right, but I’m sure that would be an affront to his concept of What Is Allowed, so I won’t.

Instead let me make a few comments about the argument, such as it is. Much of this stuff I addressed last year when a similar kvetch appeared, but let me add some more notes to the pile.

1. The fellow above asserts that fans of his particular ilk must “take back” conventions and awards from all the awful, nasty people who currently infest them, as if this requires some great, heroic effort. In fact “taking back” a convention goes a little something like this:

Scene: CONVENTION REGISTRATION. ANGRY DUDE goes up to CON STAFFER at the registration desk.

Angry Dude: I AM HERE TO TAKE BACK THIS CONVENTION AND THE CULTURE THAT SO DESPERATELY CRIES OUT FOR MY INTERVENTION

Con Staffer: Okay, that’ll be $50 for the convention membership.

(Angry Dude pays his money)

Con Staffer: Great, here’s your program and badge. Have a great con!

Angry Dude: …

I mean, everyone gets this, right? That conventions, generally speaking, are open to anyone who pays to attend? That the convention will be delighted to take your money? And that so long as one does not go out of one’s way to be a complete assbag to other convention goers, the convention staff or the hotel employees, one will be completely welcome as part of the convention membership? That being the case, it’s difficult to see why conventions need to be “taken back” — they were never actually taken away.

But the conventions are run by awful, nasty people! Well, no, the small local conventions (and some of the midsized ones, like Worldcon) are run by volunteers, i.e., people willing to show up on a regular basis and do the work of running a convention, in participation with others. These volunteers, at least in my experience, which at this point is considerable, are not awful, nasty people — they’re regular folks who enjoy putting on a convention. The thing is, it’s work; people who are into conrunning to make, say, a political statement, won’t last long, because their political points are swamped by practical considerations like, oh, arguing with a hotel about room blocks and whether or not any other groups will be taking up meeting rooms.

(Larger cons, like Comic-cons, are increasingly run by professional organizations, which are another kettle of fish — but even at that level there are volunteers, and they are also not awful, nasty people. They’re people who like participating.)

But the participants are awful, nasty people with agendas! That “problem” is solved by going to the convention programming people and both volunteering to be on panels and offering suggestions for programming topics. Hard as it may be to believe, programming staffers actually do want a range of topics that will appeal to a diverse audience, so that everyone who attends has something they’d be interested in. Try it!

Speaking as someone who once was in charge of a small convention open to the public, i.e., the Nebula Awards Weekend (I would note I was only nominally in charge — in fact the convention was run and staffed by super-competent volunteers), my position to anyone who wanted to come and experience our convention was: Awesome! See you there. Because why wouldn’t it be?

Again, science fiction and fantasy conventions can’t be “taken back” — they were, and are, open to everyone. I understand the “take back” rhetoric appeals to the “Aaaaugh! Our way of life is under attack” crowd, but the separation between the rhetoric and reality of things is pretty wide. Anyone who really believes conventions will be shocked and dismayed to get more paying members and attendees fundamentally does not grasp how conventions, you know, actually work.

2. Likewise, the “taking back” of awards, which in this case is understood to mean the Hugo Awards almost exclusively — I don’t often hear of anyone complaining that, say, the Prometheus Award has been hijacked by awful, nasty people, despite the fact that this most libertarian of all science fiction and fantasy awards is regularly won by people who are not even remotely libertarian; shit, Cory Doctorow’s won it three times and he’s as pinko as they come.

But yet again, you can’t “take back” the Hugos because they were never taken away. If you pay your membership fee to the Worldcon, you can nominate for the award and vote for which works and people you want to see recognized. All it takes is money and an interest; if you follow the rules for nominating and voting, then everything is fine and dandy. Thus voting for the Hugo is neither complicated, nor a revolutionary act.

Bear in mind that the Hugo voting set-up is fairly robust; the preferential ballot means it’s difficult for something that’s been nominated for reasons other than actual admiration of the work (including to stick a thumb into the eyes of people you don’t like) to then walk away with an award. People have tested this principle over the years; they tended to come away from the process with their work listed below “no award.” Which is as it should be. This also makes the Hugos hard to “take back.” It doesn’t matter how well a work (or its author) conforms to one’s political inclinations; if the work itself simply isn’t that good, the award will go to a different nominee that is better, at least in the minds of the majority of those who are voting.

The fellow above says if his little partisan group can’t “take back” the awards, then they should destroy them. Well, certainly there is a way to do that, and indeed here’s the only way to do that: by nominating, and then somehow forcing a win by, works that are manifestly sub-par, simply to make a political (or whatever) point. This is the suicide bomber approach: You’re willing to go up in flames as long as you get to do a bit of collateral damage as you go. The problem with this approach is that, one, it shows that you’re actually just an asshole, and two, it doesn’t actively improve the position of your little partisan group, vis a vis recognition other than the very limited “oh, those are the childish foot-stompers who had a temper tantrum over the Hugos.” Which is a dubious distinction.

With that said: Providing reading lists of excellent works with a particular social or political slant? Sure, why not? Speaking as someone who has been both a nominee and a winner of various genre awards, I am utterly unafraid of the competition for eyeballs and votes — which is why, moons ago, I created the modern version of the Hugo Voter’s Packet, so that there would be a better chance of voters making an informed choice. Speaking as someone who nominates and votes for awards, I’m happy to be pointed in the direction of works I might not otherwise have known about. So this is all good, in my view. And should a worthy work by someone whose personal politics are not mine win a Hugo? Groovy by me. It’s happened before. It’s likely to happen again. I may have even nominated or voted for the work.

But to repeat: None of this contitutes “taking back” anything — it merely means you are participating in a process that was always open to you. And, I don’t know. Do you want a participation medal or something? A pat on the head? It seems to me that most of the people nominating and voting for the Hugos are doing it with a minimum of fuss. If it makes you feel important by making a big deal out of doing a thing you’ve always been able to do — and that anyone with an interest and $50 has been able to do — then shine on, you crazy diamonds. But don’t be surprised if no one else is really that impressed. Seriously: join the club, we’ve been doing this for a while now.

3. Also a bit of paranoid fantasy: The idea that because the wrong people are somehow in charge of publishing and the avenues of distribution, this is keeping authors (and fans, I suppose) of a certain political inclination down. This has always been a bit of a confusing point to me — how this little partisan group can both claim to be victimized by the publishing machine and yet still crow incessantly about the bestsellers in their midst. Pick a narrative, dudes, internal consistency is a thing.

Better yet, clue into reality, which is: The marketplace is diverse and can (and does!) support all sorts of flavors of science fiction and fantasy. In this (actually real) narrative, authors of all political and social stripes are bestsellers, because they are addressing slightly different (and possibly overlapping) audience sets. Likewise, there are authors of all politicial and social stripes who sell less well, or not at all. Because in the real world, the politics and social positions of an author don’t correlate to units sold.

With the exception of publishing houses that specifically have a political/cultural slant baked into their mission statements, publishing houses are pretty damn agnostic about the politics of their authors. The same publishing house that publishes me publishes John C. Wright; the same publishing house that publishes John Ringo publishes Eric Flint. What do publishing houses like? Authors who sell. Because selling is the name of the game.

Here’s a true fact for you: When I turn in The End of All Things, I will be out of contract with Tor Books; I owe them no more books at this point. What do you think would happen if I walked over to Baen Books and said, hey, I wanna work with you? Here’s what would happen: The sound of a flurry of contract pages being shipped overnight to my agent. And do you know what would happen if John Ringo went out of contract with Baen and decided to take a walk to Tor? The same damn noise. And in both cases, who would argue, financially, with the publishers’ actions? John Ringo would make a nice chunk of change for Tor; I’m pretty sure I could do the same for Baen. Don’t kid yourself; this is not an ideologically pure business we’re in.

(And yes, in fact, I would entertain an offer from Baen, if it came. It would need many zeros in it, mind you. But that would be the case with any publisher at this point.)

Likewise, I don’t care how supposedly ideologically in sync you are with your publisher; if you’re not selling, sooner or later, out you go. These are businesses, not charities.

But let’s say, just for shits and giggles, that one ideologically pure faction somehow seized control of all the traditional means of publishing science fiction and fantasy, freezing out everyone they deemed impure. What then? One, some other traditional publisher, not previously into science fiction, would see all the money left on the table and start up a science fiction line to address the unsated audience. Two, you would see the emergence of at least a couple of smaller publishing houses to fill the market. Three, some of the more successful writers who were frozen out, the ones with established fan bases, could very easily set up shop on their own and self-publish, either permanently or until the traditional publishing situation got itself sorted out.

All of which is to say: Yeah, the paranoid fantasy of awful, nasty people controlling the genre is just that: Paranoid fantasy. Now, I understand that if you’re an author of a certain politicial stripe who is not selling well, or a fan who doesn’t like the types of science fiction and fantasy that other people who are not you seem to like, this paranoid fantasy has its appeal, especially if you’re feeling beset politically/socially in other areas of your life as well. And that’s too bad for you, and maybe you’d like a hearty fist-bump and an assurance that all will be well. But it doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, no matter who you are, there will always be the sort of science fiction and fantasy you like available to you. Because — no offense — you are not unique. What you like is probably liked by other people, too. There are enough of you to make a market. That market will be addressed.

Again, I am genuinely flummoxed why so many people who are ostensibly so in love with the concept of free markets appear to have a genuinely difficult time with this. It’s not all illuminati, people. It never was.

4. And this is why, fundamentally, the whole “take back the genre” bit is just complete nonsense. It can never be “taken back,” it will never be “taken back,” and it’s doubtful there was ever a “back” to go to. The genre product market is resistant to ideological culling, and the social fabric of science fiction fandom is designed at its root to accomodate rather than exclude. No one can exclude anyone else from science fiction and fantasy fandom when the entrance requirement is, literally, an interest in the genre, or some particular aspect of it. You can’t exclude people from conventions that require only a membership fee to attend. Even SFWA has opened up to self-publishing professional authors now, because it recognized that the professional market has changed. To suggest that the genre contract to fit the demands of any one segment of it doesn’t make sense, commercially or socially. It won’t be done. It would be foolish to do so.

The most this little partisan group (or those who identify with it) can do is assert that they are the true fans of the genre, not anyone else. To which the best and most correct response is: Whatever, dude. Shout it all you like. But you’re wrong, and at the end of the day, you’re not even a side of the genre, you’re just a part. And either you’re participating with everyone else in what the genre is today, or you’re off to the side wailing like a toddler who has been told he can’t have a lollipop. If you want to participate, come on in. If you think you’re going to swamp the conversation, you’re likely in for a surprise. But if you want to be part of it, then be a part of it. The secret is, you already are, and always have been.

If you don’t want to participate, well. Wail for your lolly all you like, then, if it makes you happy. The rest of us can get along without you just fine.

American kids attempt to eat traditional breakfasts from Korea, Brazil, Finland, Vietnam, Poland, and Netherlands. (more…)

I only wish I was better at it.

Whether a picture book or a novel, most printed stories are divided into manageable pages and chapters that help us better grapple with their narratives. Real life, on the other hand, is messier — more like watching a never-ending, unedited filmstrip.

Migrant, a bilingual children’s book by José Manuel Mateo and Javier Martínez Pedro, captures that reality. Published by Abrams, it appropriates the vertical, accordion-bound form of a pre-Colombian codex to tell of a Central American family’s freight train journey to the United States. “We rode in a truck to the train tracks and waited there,” the young narrator explains. “When the train appeared, it scared us; it huffed and puffed like an animal.” The language is simple but rhythmic, a guiding companion to Martínez Pedro’s sprawling black-and-white illustration, which stretches from the boy’s rural village through Mexico to the wild, concrete jungle of Los Angeles, where he ends up.

The illustrator writes in the afterward that Migrant’s theme is “very dear” to him; he himself once illegally immigrated to the US. He now lives in Xalitla, one of the few Mexican villages where they still make amate, the paper on which he drew the book’s illustration. Before the colonial era, Mesoamericans milled it from fig tree bark to create their codices, until the Spanish burned and banned them (acts that Bishop Diego de Landa noted “caused [the Maya] much affliction”). Today, folk artists in the state of Guerrero (home to Xalitla) spend the dry season, when they can’t work the land, nurturing the old craft. The amate paper becomes a historically meaningful backdrop for their intricate pen-and-ink scenes of community life.

Migrant‘s beauty rests in the fact that it uses this centuries-old art form to promote empathy. Learning about another culture can be a way to break through misunderstanding and see our common humanity; in the case of child migrants, the book indirectly links the current crisis to colonial-era subjugation, which destroyed Mesoamerican society and enslaved its inhabitants, opening an economic rift that still exists today. While Migrant can easily be appreciated by adults, it’s also a thoughtful vehicle through which young readers can grapple with the news they may hear on television, over the radio, or at the dinner table. Most of all, it’s a creative work of activism.

“We wish to tell and to question this collective story that makes children defenseless and almost nonexistent to their own country and to the new one where they hope to find work,” write Mateo and Martínez Pedro of the 50,000 children who make the journey alone to the US every year. “When they migrate, the children cannot themselves prove their name, nor can they request documents to do so; many times they cannot even manage to find out what their real age is. For this reason we have created this book: to demand these children’s right to exist.”

José Manuel Mateo and Javier Martínez Pedro’s Migrant is published by Abrams and available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

James Patterson’s latest book, Private Vegas, is more than a book: it’s also a marketing ploy. One thousand readers had 24 hours to read advanced copies of the thriller, which was released to the rest of the world last month. The lucky thousand downloaded “self-destructing” e-books, which deleted themselves from electronic reading devices 24 hours later. Readers had to frantically complete the novel as Patterson fans tracked their progress online, simulating the high-pressure scenarios that make TV shows like 24 so suspenseful and compelling. (Wired reports that one wealthy thrill-seeker can pay nearly $300,000 to receive a physical copy of the book that will actually explode with the help of a professional bomb squad.)

With the advent of a host of new reading technologies — many of us read more off of computer/phone/tablet screens than we do off of actual pages — Patterson’s Private Vegas scheme may represent a new norm. Increasingly, the simple act of reading may not be flashy enough to compete with televised competitors. In an age of pervasive distraction, it often takes more than the charms of bare text to engross us. The self-destructing book experiment is one way of artificially manufacturing time-pressure — and thereby immersion. And as reading technologies develop further, we may have more of the same to look forward to as texts threaten to become just one small part of a larger interactive apparatus.

I don’t fault Patterson (or, really, the Mother New York advertising agency) for coming up with a commercial gimmick designed to entice Patterson’s fans, but I do fault readers for needing additional incentive to pick up a book. To engage with an author is to opt into the most in-depth and compelling dialogue imaginable. If that’s not interesting enough, the fault lies with lazy readers.

We Need Syriza in Illinois

When a millionaire governor decrees austerity, it’s time for the left to step up.

Jane McAlevey February 16, 2015

The new governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, is a hedge fund manager whose salary last year was $60 million. He spent $65.9 million—including $27.6 million of his own money—buying his last election, and he’s about to introduce an austerity program that will make most folks in Illinois think they are living in austerity-wracked Greece, with less idyllic weather. While he’s generating national headlines by trash talking unions, he is quietly taking a scalpel to every important social program in the state, starting with an Illinois program that subsidizes high-quality childcare for 160,000 low-income kids. Instead of extending a small tax increase that passed the Illinois legislature in 2011, staving off a crisis, he’s letting the increases expire. Rauner is methodically manufacturing an economic crisis for his state, one that will let him do what he has long been set on doing: shrink the government and squeeze the 99 percent.

...

Rauner hopes to smash labor in Illinois so that he can take a baseball bat to it nationally.

...

...

More than a few statehouse types have been wondering aloud for weeks what Gov. Bruce Rauner is up to with his almost daily attacks on organized labor.

Just what, they ask, is the end game here?

His people say that the governor feels “liberated” since the election to speak his mind about a topic that stirs great personal passion in him. He played up the issue during the Republican primary, then all but ran away from it in the general election, including just a few weeks before Election Day when he flatly denied that “right to work” or anything like that would be among his top priorities.

Yet, there he is, day after day, pounding away at unions, demanding right-to-work laws, vilifying public employee unions as corrupt to the point of issuing an executive order barring the distribution of state-deducted employee “fair share” dues to public worker unions such as AFSCME. The dues are paid by people who don’t want to pay full union dues.

Some top Democrats believe that Rauner may be setting them up for a grand bargain this spring. Democratic lawmakers most certainly are going to freak out when Rauner presents his draconian budget. Rank-and-file members undoubtedly will demand some sort of tax hike to prevent draconian cuts to their cherished programs. Rauner eventually could say he’d agree to additional revenues in exchange for passage of his economic package.

...

...

In the November [1982] election, the Illinois AFL-CIO endorsed [Adlai] Stevenson [III] against [Jim] Thompson. But the incumbent received crucial backing from several individual unions after Stevenson suggested things like replacing unionized highway workers with prison inmates.

Thompson defeated Stevenson by just 5,000 votes. His speech and a sharply divided labor movement were crucial to his success—even though Ryan, whom the unions despised, had become his running mate.

After the election, Thompson signed a bill to legalize collective bargaining for state employee unions. He interceded in contract negotiations to break an impasse, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees endorsed his 1986 re-election bid, followed quickly by an AFL-CIO endorsement.

Every governor since then has learned the Thompson lesson: Keep state workers happy.

Well, every governor except the current one...

Bernard Schoenburg: Rauner administration hires three from Illinois Policy Institute

Posted Feb. 11, 2015 at 10:00 PM

KRISTINA RASMUSSEN, executive vice president of the Illinois Policy Institute and its associated organization, Illinois Policy Action, recently issued a statement of congratulations to three people hired away from the organization by the administration of Gov. BRUCE RAUNER.

BRIAN COSTIN of Buffalo Grove, who was Illinois Policy's director of government reform, has been named policy director for Lt. Gov. EVELYN SANGUINETTI. He also worked in government relations for the Heartland Institute in Chicago. He's being paid $80,000 annually.

JANE McENANEY of Chicago, who was government affairs manager for Illinois Policy, is now director of legislative affairs for the Illinois Department of Revenue. She spent five months working in the campaign headquarters of the MITT ROMNEY presidential bid in 2012 and earlier was a staff assistant to U.S. Rep. PAUL RYAN, R-Wis., in Washington. She's being paid $75,000 annually.

DONOVAN GRIFFITH, who was Illinois Policy's manager of government affairs, is legislative liaison to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. He was earlier government relations program manager for the Evanston-based American Massage Therapy Association and was a legislative analyst for Illinois House Republicans. He was campaign manager for a winning House race in 2010 of now-state Sen. SUE REZIN, R-Morris. He's being paid $75,000 annually.

"Each of us advances the cause of liberty in our own special way," Rasmussen said in her announcement. "For some of our amazing team members at the Illinois Policy Institute and Illinois Policy Action, that means taking on a new challenge to improve government from the inside out."

"We are honored that the new administration is looking to our team for talent," she added.

...

The liberty-based Illinois Policy group clearly shares some views with Rauner, whose family foundation has donated at least $625,000 to it since 2009.

...

More spite week! Today I’m talking about a particularly awesome trilogy by Kameron Hurley called either the God’s War Trilogy or the Bel Dame Apocrypha.

To quote the description of the first book from Amazon.com:

Nyx had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference…

On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there’s one thing everybody agrees on–

There’s not a chance in hell of ending it.

Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx’s ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want her to bring home could end the war–but at what price?

The world is about to find out.

And to quote the author:

It really is true that when you have nothing to lose, it’s easier to give yourself permission to do anything. So that’s what I did. Bug magic? Sure. Bisexual heroine? Why not? Matriarchy? Of course! Non-white protagonists? YES! Old-school biblical violence? You betcha! Also… aliens and spaceships and sword fights and organ dealers and boxing, oh my! BECAUSE I’M DYING AND LIFE IS SHIT, PEOPLE, SO WHO THE HELL CARES?

That level of “fuck it, I’m going to write whatever the fuck I want” just does it for me. It’s also pretty fucking awesome that the books are about mostly women, and mostly non-white people at that, who aren’t Christian and who live on another planet in a not remotely North American or Western European climate.

Holy fuck, it’s like it’s possible to write a worthwhile story about a person who isn’t a man! It’s even possible to write a war story that isn’t about men! And about bounty hunters who aren’t men! And magicians who aren’t men!

Kameron also writes essays like as We Have Always Fought, which should make it entirely clear why I think she’s awesome. To quote a small snippet of her essay:

When I sat down with one of my senior professors in Durban, South Africa to talk about my Master’s thesis, he asked me why I wanted to write about women resistance fighters.

“Because women made up twenty percent of the ANC’s militant wing!” I gushed. “Twenty percent! When I found that out I couldn’t believe it. And you know – women have never been part of fighting forces –”

He interrupted me. “Women have always fought,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Women have always fought,” he said. “Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people.”

Show me someone who says that’s not awesome and important and I’ll show you a lying, woman hating, sack of shit. We have always fought, we have always been worthwhile, we have always been a part of history. Fuck yeah to Kameron Hurley for pointing that out.

Well I've got a little somethin'
Guaranteed to ease your mind
It's called Snake Oil y'all
It's been around for a long, long time - Snake Oil, Copperhead Road Steve Earle (1988)

Illinois Governor Pharaoh Bruce Rauner was handed an Executive set-back last Friday the 13th when his hand-picked Comptroller Leslie Munger, based on advice from Attorney General Lisa Madigan's Office, ruled Pharaoh Rauner's Imperial Order on Union Dues was not legal.

"I said 10 days ago, I don’t think you can cut your way out of the problem. I think you need some additional revenue, and that’ll be my position tomorrow."

sandandglass:

TDS, February 11, 2015

Jordan Klepper looks at the issue of sex education in schools

Justice Ginsburg could not be more right here:

GINSBURG: Inaccessible to poor women. It’s not true that it’s inaccessible to women of means. And that’s the crying shame. We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country. There are states – take the worst case. Suppose Roe v. Wade is overruled. There will still be a number of states that will not go back to old ways.

[…]

CARMON: Well, now there’s lots of legislative activity, right? And it’s mostly in the direction of shutting down clinics, creating new barriers –

GINSBURG: Yes. But –

CARMON: – in front of women.

GINSBURG: – who does that- – who does that hurt? It hurts women who lack the means to go someplace else. It’s almost like – remember the – oh, you wouldn’t remember, because you’re too young. But when most states allowed divorce on one grounds, adultery, nothing else. But there were people who went off to Nevada and stayed there for six weeks. And they got a divorce. That was available to people who had the means, first to get themselves to Nevada, second to stay there for some weeks.

Finally, the country caught on and said, “This isn’t the way it should be. If divorce is to be available for incompatibility, it should be that way for every state.” But the situation with abortion right now, by all the restrictions, they operate against the woman who doesn’t have freedom to move, to go where she is able to get safely what she wants.

The ability that affluent women inevitably have to obtain safe abortions should be extended to all women. The end.

thestuntkid:

bring your kids to work day

cherryperson:

I’ve been putting off writing about this for some time because I’ve been so sick, and I’ve been telling myself that my mental acuity will come back any day now, and bloody hell if I don’t want to be Witty, damn it. As the days creep on and my medical problems continue to cascade into a tangled heap that a naughty kitten would be proud of, there comes a time when you just have to suck it up and do your best.

Hospital Glam: many months ago a wonderful friend in my very close-knit support group started putting a name to something that I had naturally developed a habit of myself. That friend is karolynprg and you can see her very own hospitalglam blog.

As a retired professional photographer (and an on again/off again self portraiteur), it was natural for me to turn to a camera as I found myself spending more and more time in hospitals and doctors offices. Without knowing it I was taking back some of the autonomy that you lose very quickly as a patient.

It became a habit, something that I couldn’t resist… Finding a mirror or some other way to snap a quick selfie. This developed into dressing well; trying to have fashion sense again. As someone who has had many periods of debilitating illness, and varying degrees of disability throughout my life, plus a weight that has fluctuated 50lbs or more because of said illness, the clothes I wore often became last priority during these times. At other times, when I was feeling less sick or in pain*, I would pride myself on having a very particular aesthetic; I would find joy in trying to find a balance in all of my interests and reflecting that in my clothing. (*with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome you are never pain or symptom free, our normal is just less-so).

I don’t remember when the actual turning point was. Maybe it was after my 50th physiotherapy session and I was sick of being stuck at home the rest of the time and only ever leaving the house in workout clothing, that I started experimenting with said clothing to see if I could make it more ME (I am NOT an athletic gear type of person). No offence to those of you who love your yoga pants or your jogging bottoms, but it just doesn’t really fit into my self image of a dystopian, but feminine android, displaced from the future!

The change in myself and how I handled my medical appointments was apparent: I had so much more confidence and I no longer felt like it was fair or right for doctors or other medical professionals to treat me like a child; like a subordinate. It was around this time that I started to think more actively about healthcare. I no longer wanted to wallow in the fact that the modern healthcare system is cack-handedly retrofitted into a much older system where patients weren’t allowed any voice whatsoever; I wanted to do something about it.

The prospect of changing an enormous bureaucratic system from the point of view of the individual is impossible. But the whole point of self-advocacy is that despite this impossibility it is up to us to do it anyway. And the one thing that no one tells you is: you can only be an active participant in your own healthcare, and more importantly, an advocate for yourself, if you have enormous reserves of self confidence.

This is what Hospital Glam does for me. Historically I’ve had tremendously low self esteem. Yes, even for a dystopian android from the future this is possible! There’s nothing that depletes those already low reserves faster than when your body is ravaged by disease and you are forced to face a medical system that is wrought with even more prejudice than general society.

Karolyn has done some interviews recently and says many of her own very eloquent things about why she does Hospital Glam. Do a Google search and I’m sure the many articles will pop up! For me, at least, since Karolyn gave us the name, my own ritual has had even more purpose. It’s now an essential part of my hospital visits, medical tests and other healthcare appointments. I now try to err on the side of deliberate thought, framing and act of self portraiture rather than the quick selfie. In doing so, I consider my entire surroundings and how I fit within them. In this act I find my sense of space and ownership and autonomy. I gain the confidence to force my doctors to see me as more of an equal; as an intelligent adult that deserves their respect and compassion, even if I cry during our appointment. And despite my protests, I am in fact a human being after all… my self portraiture serves as a reminder to myself, as well as the world I choose to share it with afterwards.

This post has two aims: to tell show you a couple of my latest pieces and to let you know that I’m not a hypocrite–I stand by what I say, even when doing so makes me uncomfortable.

In my last post I asked if any of you liked problematic art/entertainment. Most of you said “yes.” One poster even mentioned my art and said s/he (I don’t like to assume gender based on names) found it problematic. Do I find my art problematic? No, not particularly, but you know what? Thinking my art is problematic is PERFECTLY VALID. It is not insane. It is not silly. It is perfectly reasonable. You know what else is valid and reasonable? Finding my art banal or bad or ugly or weird or creepy. (I mean for my art to be weird and creepy, not so much banal and bad.) It is also perfectly reasonable to scream “I HATE BSPENCER’S ART!” and to not buy my art because you find it crappy or problematic. (If you hate my art, please don’t tell me to my face. It’ll hurt my feelings and I’m already filled with self-loathing, so you’ll just be beating a dead horse and everyone knows that’s Erik’s beat.)

ANYWAY, IN SUMMATION: I HAVE NOT BEEN CENSORED. Please, everyone…I’m begging you: learn what “censorship” means.

"You know what I hate the most? I’m 13. I know exactly what’s happening with catcalling, and it’s happened before to me once or twice. I hate the most that my friends have no idea what catcalling even is, and I’ve had to explain it to them, and they still don’t get it. And, the first time men try and treat them like an object, I’m afraid they might actually be flattered because they don’t understand it."

Anonymous submission 

"But What Was She Wearing?" is a project documenting what street harassment really looks like. Submit your own to stopthecatcall@gmail.com or via tumblr.