Sophianotloren

It’s almost 4 in the morning.

Last night, after 72 hours with barely any food (a bowl of ramen noodles and a bowl of soup spaced almost a day apart) and still not on speaking terms with The Rabbit, fighting via email… I realized that I was probably not far from a trip to the emergency room. I just hadn’t had enough food and liquid intake, and I was detachedly watching myself drifting further away. So I got her to drive me down to get fast food about 9pm…

Almost dozed off once, despite the movie blasting below me (The Lion King… “caaaaaan you sing this song toniiiiiight… It’s stuck in your heaaaaaaad!”) but as soon as I was beginning to doze, they both came clomping up the stairs and spent a good 10 minutes arguing just outside my door about whether the window in the next room had really, truly, actually been open when they went downstairs. (The answer is yes, it was, but these two can manage that long of a fight about something so stupidly simple. I don’t know how they manage it.) That was followed by them heading to the other end of the house, their room, and The Rabbit reading out loud as she’s done the last week or so, with enough volume that I found myself sarcastically wondering “so how far exactly is the stage from the audience?”

And then the diarrhea hit me. Dealing with that while trying not to scream at the sound of her voice wasn’t the most entertaining thing I’ve done this week, trust me.

Got back to my room and apparently I slept — considering I’d been awake for more than a full day, it’s not shocking. I woke up and posted a status update on Facebook, and found myself wishing, as I so often do, for rain and for the ocean…

And I remembered Rita Coolidge’s cover of the Boz Scaggs song “We’re All Alone” which I grew up listening to on a cassette dubbed from an LP my dad and uncle had chipped in their shared allowance to buy when they were younger.

Outside, the rain begins —
And it may never end,
So cry no more
On the shore
A dream will take us out to sea
Forevermore…
Forevermore.

By the time she sang the word “cry” the tears were rolling down my face, sobs catching in my throat. (And goddamn, she’s gorgeous — I didn’t know, back then, what she looked like…)

But just when I thought I had finally crested this wave of anguish that I’ve been struggling against for the last week… and I might finally cry myself to sleep, which I so very much need…

Police sirens and low-flying helicopters circling over the neighborhood. 45 minutes now and still going. Because, yeah — that’s exactly what I need to deal with in order to avoid another panic attack, right?!

I don’t know how I’ll ever get out of here, and I’m feeling so alone. Not even “we” — just myself and my pain.

Filed under: General

Our society’s ideas concerning paedophilia and the paedophile are wrong in almost every respect. What follows addresses some of these misconceptions. The author wishes to make it clear that whilst he supports reform of the law, he neither recommends, or wishes to incite, violations of any existing laws.

Introductory remarks
1. Paedophiles are not like normal people.
2. Someone who rapes a child or manipulates one into having sex is a paedophile.
3. Paedophiles are unable to control their urges, and shouldn’t be allowed to work, or have contact, with children.
4. Paedophiles wish to impose ‘adult sexuality’ on the children.
5. Paedophiles seek to have power over children.
6. Paedophiles don’t love children but just want them for sex.
7. Being a paedophile is a matter of choice.
8. Paedophiles can’t manage it with women & choose children as an easy option.
9. Paedophiles ‘groom’ children.
10. Children don’t like paedophiles.
11. A sexual relationship with an adult is invariably harmful to the child.
12. An intimate relationship with an adult must bring ‘the worst’ out of a child.
13. Paedophiles have below average IQ and are uneducated.
14. Paedophiles will end the relationship once adolescence is reached.
15. Paedophilia is wrong because a child cannot consent to sex.
16. Paedophilia is wrong because a child cannot give informed consent|informed consent to sex.
17. Children cannot be interested in sex or intimacy with an adult.
18. Paedophiles are ‘immoral’.

First let’s consider how the popular discourse has come to be so far adrift from reality on an issue that so preoccupies it.

It is not unusual for a community to be grossly mistaken about an issue with which it is intensely preoccupied. Examples are the Nazi’s understanding of Jews, McCarthyite America’s ideas about communists, the ‘Satanic Ritual Abuse’ scandals of the 1980s, and Puritan New England’s ideas about ‘witches’.

Common to all of these examples is that the threat of stigma, ostracism, violence and death, and the collateral suffering of their family and friends, renders the groups that are the focus of fear invisible, and unable to speak out when something inaccurate is said about them. Also any non-member of these groups who dares defend them or advocate more humane attitudes towards them also runs similar risks.

Once there are no longer any voices that can correct mistaken ideas, the public imagination becomes over-heated : assumption trumps knowledge; rumour, conjecture and fantasy (generally drawing on the worst that can be imagined) become ‘facts’; the worst actions of individual members of the persecuted group become seen as ‘typical’ behaviour for the whole group; the language used around the issue no longer fits what it purports to describe, becomes dishonest, hysterical, and twisted out of shape (see n° 2 on the use of the word ‘rape’). A positive feed-back loop is established : as the public’s ideas concerning the hated group becoming more and more monstrous, it becomes less and less possible for anyone to say anything that could correct or moderate those ideas.

This is the situation in which the average paedophile finds himself today. He he doesn’t recognise the libidinous, violent, manipulative monster that society tells him he is. But he is unable speak out and correct this disparity between what is said about him and what he knows to be true. And so the myths remain unchallenged.

Surprisingly little scientific research has been done on the subject of paedophiles. Nearly all studies are based on people found guilty of some crime against children, usually prisoners. Such studies don’t discriminate between ‘paedophiles’ and ‘non-paedophiles who’ve offended against children’ (see n° 2). Such research can tell us nothing about ‘paedophiles’. The experiences and viewpoints of non-convicted paedophiles rarely reach popular discourse and debate. It is also impossible, given the climate of fear, to access a large enough random sample of non-convicted paedophiles for any research to be reliable. It is also very hard for academics to find funding for research which doesn’t have an a priori condemnatory agenda, or which explicitly (or even ‘implicitly’) questions the common assumptions surrounding paedophilia.

It is with this in mind that I have compiled this short list addressing some of the more common misconceptions concerning paedophiles and paedophilia. Where does this information come from? Some comes from research (I’ve tried to acknowledge the sources), much from my own experience, and much from conversations and exchanges on various help and support networks found on the web.

N.B. the word ‘paedophilia’ is often confounded with ‘hebephilia’ (attraction to early adolescents) and ‘ephebophilia’ (attraction to mid-to-late adolescents). The following comments concerned ‘paedophilia’ in its strictest sense (i.e. an attraction to prepubescents), though many comments also apply to hebephilia and ephebophilia.

1. Paedophiles are not like normal people

Paedophiles are people who one day find themselves to be sexually attracted to children. This is the only thing that sets paedophiles apart from ‘normal’ people. Otherwise they are essentially no different from any cross-section of the citizenship: they enjoy friendships with their peers, have interests that have nothing to do with their sexuality, love their families, do normal jobs, have normal ambitions, pursue their education, listen to music, watch films, do sport… Nor is this ‘normality’ a ‘front’ they use to ‘blend into society in order to perpetrate their crimes’.

For most people the idea of the “paedophile” automatically evokes words such as ‘sick’, ‘predator’, ‘child abuse’ and ‘manipulation’. Undoubtedly there are paedophiles who abuse and manipulate children sexually, who prey on them. They are as small a minority amongst the general paedophile population as are rapists amongst heterosexual teleiophiles (someone sexually attracted to adults).

What follows is an argumentum ab optimo i.e. an argument based on a best-case scenario. I am unapologetic about this because the popular discourse has exclusively been conducted as an argumentum a pessimo i.e. an argument based on the worst aspects and instances that can be found and imagined. If one were to imagine a scale between the ‘worst’ and the ‘best’ vision of paedophilia the evidence seems to be that the typical paedophile hopes for, aspires to and represents something approaching ‘the best’ rather than ‘the worst’. Moreover to remind you of the worst would be to merely reproduce the misconceptions and distortions which are the only narrative available in popular discourse.

2. Someone who rapes a child or manipulates one into having sex is a paedophile.

Most rapes on children are committed by i/ non-paedophiles who find themselves depressed, intoxicated, tired or otherwise disoriented, and are ‘surprised’ by an unfamiliar desire which they have not previously had to learn to control (see n° 3), or ii/ ‘opportunistic’ offenders who direct their adult sexuality at whatever target is available. The exercise of power that is the essence of rape goes against the mindset of the typical paedophile, whose interest is in a relationship in which the child enjoys the intimacy and has equal agency and power (see n° 5).

This explains why it has been estimated that only 2 – 10% of child sexual abuse perpetrators meet the regular criteria for paedophilia (Kinsey-Report, Lautmann, Brongersma, Groth). To the normal paedophile the idea of causing a child distress, pain or to be afraid is absolute anathema.

The water is further muddied by an increasing tendency of the law, the popular imagination and the media to label any sexual, or even just ‘sensual’, interaction between a child and an adult as ‘rape’ or ‘statutory rape’, even if the interaction only consists of light, consensual touching. This is one of many examples of how the language used around this issue has broken down, no longer fitting what it purports to describe (see introductory comments).

3. Paedophiles are unable to control their urges, and shouldn’t be allowed to work, or have contact, with children.

Most paedophiles are celibate, satisfying their love through non-contact means. The punishments and repercussions that the slightest loss of self-control could entrain are so great that, to survive in contemporary western society, the paedophile must control his desires to a much greater degree than do teleiophiles.

Many paedophiles who enjoy a close friendship with a child will choose not to allow that relationship to become sexual, out of an awareness of the trauma and stigma the child would experience if the sexual activities were discovered. And out of an awareness that the child, once adult, because of the strong condemnation and stigma society directs at child/adult intimacy, may re-interpret such activities, though happily and consensually engaged in at the time, as having been ‘abuse’ (see n° 11, and n°s 15 and 16 regarding ‘consent’).

Consequently the great majority of paedophiles pose no actual threat to children they work with. Moreover paedophiles often make the best youth workers, teachers, coaches etc. because their sexuality offers them a deeper interest in, understanding of and sympathy with children than is generally found amongst non-paedophiles.

4. Paedophiles wish to impose ‘adult sexuality’ on the children.

One of the fallacious uses of language common in the popular discourse round this issue is to talk about paedophiles wanting, or having, ‘Sex’ with children. To most non-paedophiles ‘sex’ means ‘intercourse’ and so by a leap of logic the public thinks of paedophiles as wanting to have intercourse with children. This is wrong. What the typical paedophiles think of as ‘sex’ differs from what adult teleiophiles consider as ‘sex’.

The most important difference is that any form of penetration cannot have the same place it has in adult-adult relationships : the typical paedophile would not wish to do anything that the child would not enjoy, be hurt by or that would betray the trust and friendship shared by the adult and child. Essentially what most turns on a paedophile is a happy, relaxed child who is herself turned-on.

Rather than the adult imposing his desires on the child it is very much about allowing the child to determine what takes place and responding to the child’s interest, – much as an adult playing football with a 7-year old adapts his mode of play to ensure that the experience is enjoyable and constructive for the child so does a caring paedophile.

‘Sexual’ activities range from ‘sensuality’ (tickling, kissing and stroking…) to acts that would be classed as ‘foreplay’ in the context of adult-adult sex.

5. Paedophiles seek to have power over children.

The child/paedophile relationship is one of the very few in which the adult and the child are equals. Unlike a child’s relationship with her parents, teachers, policemen, social workers etc. the child can end the relationship. She can even reveal it to her parents or other authorities, if she is not happy. The paedophile will care deeply about the child’s opinion of him and about the child’s needs, feelings and opinions. Generally paedophiles find a deep satisfaction and happiness in the equality of their relationship.

6. Paedophiles don’t love children but just want them for sex.

Paedophiles can fall as deeply in love with a child as adults do with other adults. Even non-paedophiles will acknowledge that a child can be beautiful, sweet, charming, and delightful, and will have memories of being in love with a child from when they themselves were children. Is it really so ridiculous to find oneself, as an adult, thoroughly enchanted by a child?

The fact that society finds it so hard to imagine that an adult could experience an intense, non-parental love for a child indicates the low esteem and value that society places on children as humans with distinct self-hoods. Children are as much ‘people’ as adults,and as such it shouldn’t be thought ridiculous that someone could appreciate and love them for their individual qualities and character.

7. Being a paedophile is a matter of choice.

Given the all-pervasive misunderstanding and misrepresentation in the media and public discourse, given the stigma, the hatred, the risk of violence, prison and even death, why would anyone actually choose to be a paedophile? Generally being a paedophile either entails a life of fear at having one’s love detected if one is in a relationship, or a life of celibacy, restraint and frustration. Many paedophiles, because of this, try to become ‘normal : most succeed in leading a ‘normal’ life, but few, if any, manage to change the nature of their desires.

8. Paedophiles can’t manage it with women & choose children as an easy option.

Most paedophiles are not exclusive in their sexuality, being also attracted to women and/or men. Many marry and have families.

Nor is a relationship with a child an ‘easy option’ – over and above all the pressures and dangers imposed by society and the law (see n° 7), any parent or teacher will tell you that children can be very demanding, tiring and challenging.

For what it’s worth, and speaking purely for myself, the secondary sexual characteristics of an adult woman (breasts, full hips, pubic hair…) provoke a stronger sexual response in me than does a naked little girl. The feelings that a little girl arouse in me are rather ones of tenderness, nurturing, delight, love and affection. There is little of any, strictly speaking, sexual element in these feelings.

The reader may then ask what distinguishes me from any ‘normal’ male with strong nurturing feelings towards children? The answer is that I believe and feel that there can be some sensual, or even sexual, element in the expression of those nurturing feelings, and that there is no intrinsic harm in this, provided that the child wishes it and the interaction is consensual (see n° 4 and n°s 15 and 16 regarding ‘consent’).

9. Paedophiles ‘groom’ children.

“Grooming is a word in search of a meaning, an essentially empty propaganda concept. It is just a way of talking about a pleasant thing – spending time with a child you like and finding they enjoy your company too, with a growing bond of mutual affection and trust – and making it sound nasty, reducing it to a cynically exploitative exercise.” Tom O’Carroll – (https://tomocarroll.wordpress.com)

Granted that a small minority of paedophiles may treat children nicely with the intent of seducing them. But the great majority act this way for the same reason as most non-paedophiles do : simply because they like or love the child. Moreover much of what is described as ‘grooming’ in the popular press amounts not to ‘spoiling’ and ‘indulging’ the child – but to respecting and taking the child seriously. This fact leads on to the following point:

10. Children don’t like paedophiles.

Even ‘child protection’ literature repeats that it’s often the person who is good with children, whom children love, who is the ‘threat’, whom parents should ‘watch out for’. Children, like all other humans, like and are attracted to people whom they feel loved, liked and appreciated by.

11. A sexual relationship with an adult is invariably harmful to the child.

Outside the context of our particular society and its hang-ups, trans-generational intimacy, sensuality and sex is not of itself harmful, and is probably beneficial.

In the context of our society it is however often harmful : if the relationship isn’t discovered there’s the secrecy and possible guilt; if it is discovered then there are the distraught parents acting treating the child as if she has been ‘damaged’, the anxious relatives, the vilification of the girl’s lover, the police interrogations, the doctors’ physical examinations, the court case, the psychologists etc.; then the gradual learning over the years that ‘society’ now considers her as a ‘victim’, as having had her innocence and ‘soul’ stolen, that she is now some kind of freak.

This reaction happens whether the child was brutally rapaed, or whether some favourite uncle had just once gave her a little tickle between her legs when she was sat on his lap. (see “The Trauma Myth” by Susan A. Clancy Ph.D. – Perseus books).

However, many good and caring relationships are not discovered (and it’s generally the consensual and equal relationships, which both partners have a lot of interest in maintaining, that manage this) and flourish, despite the adverse context.

12. An intimate relationship with an adult must bring ‘the worst’ out of a child.

As n° 8 mentions above : children can sometimes be demanding, tiring and challenging. However, as any teacher or psychologist will confirm, children treated with respect, who feel liked and appreciated, behave better and more maturely than those who feel disliked and are treated with disrespect. The friendship is a true partnership of equals (see n° 5 above). paedophiles love and admire their little friends, and treat them with a respect that children are unaccustomed to receive from adults. Children engaged in a friendship with a paedophile will often flourish, regardless of whether the relationship has a sexual element or not.

13. Paedophiles have below average IQ and are uneducated.

Some studies seem to indicate this (see Cantor). But as these are based on prisoners, who on average have lower IQs than the general population, these statistics are meaningless (see introductory comments).

Moreover these studies don’t control for the effects of being subjected to long term stigma and ostracism – both of which can lead to depression and other mental difficulties.

Some well-known paedophiles include : Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander the Great, Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Jackson, Mohammed, Gandhi, John Ruskin, J.M Barrie, Benjamin Britten, Arthur C. Clarke, Mark Twain, Richard Hughes, Francis Kilvert, Eric Gill, L.S. Lowry, T.H. White, William van Gloeden, Ernest Dowson, John Cowper Powys, T.E. Lawrence, Wilfred Owen.

14. Paedophiles will end the relationship once adolescence is reached.

Most paedophiles are non-exclusive in their sexual preferences (see n° 8) and will not lose interest in their partner at the onset of adolescence. What can happen is that the child in the relationship loses interest in the adult and, as so often happens at puberty, becomes focused on people of her own age. In these cases any sexual element in the relationship usually stops, though the friendship and closeness often remains.

15. Paedophilia is wrong because a child cannot consent to sex.

‘Consent’ in sex is not a one-off preliminary agreement but a process: something that is renewed or withheld at every stage of the interaction : adults don’t break off from kissing to ask “do you consent to progress to light foreplay?” – no, the consent is signaled through enjoyment of the activity and an eagerness to progress. A show of unwillingness or lack of enjoyment signals withdrawal of consent,and the activity stops.

Children are very good at knowing what they want and don’t want, like and don’t like. If you’ve ever tried to persuade a reluctant child to eat its sprouts, or offered a child an ice-lolly on a hot summer’s day you will see how capable children are of consenting. Likewise with intimacy and sensuality : a child can make it perfectly clear, either verbally or with body-language, whether or not she is enjoying and feeling comfortable with what she is doing. An ethical paedophile, like any good lover, will be alert to such signals and respond appropriately.

Ironically it seems that the paedophile-child relationship is maybe the only adult-child relationship where consent is crucial and central to the success and continuation of the relationship. Think of the relationships between children and parents, teachers, social workers, police etc. : in none of these relationships is the child’s ‘consent’ required or taken seriously. This is one of several factors in the paedophile-child relationship that leads to an equality of power that is not found in other adult-child relationships. (see n° 5)

16. Paedophilia is wrong because a child cannot give informed consent|informed consent to sex.

A child may not know much about sex and intimacy but if they engage willingly and enthusiastically in an intimate relationship with an adult they are certainly showing an eagerness to become ‘informed’. Moreover some children are quite well informed about sex, either from being brought up in a context open about sex or from having previous experiences either with other children and/or adults.

Society normally encourages this progression from ‘ignorance’ to ‘knowledge’, this ‘eagerness to become informed’, calling it ‘learning’ and ‘education’.

However when it comes to ‘sex and sensuality’ society does all it can to maintain children in a condition of ignorance, of being ‘uninformed’. It then raises the idea that they are ‘uninformed’ as an objection to them satisfying their natural curiosity and desires.

17. Children cannot be interested in sex or intimacy with an adult.

More than 100 years after Freud published “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”;, and after a wealth of anthropological studies conducted amongst Trobriand Islanders, Inuit, Namibian Bushmen, after explorers’ reports from the Marquesas and Tahiti – all of which describe societies in which displays of child sexuality and intergenerational sexual relations were common and accepted – western society is still desperately trying to persuade itself that children are not sexual beings.

But why is that we have to go to far away societies from another time to find admissible evidence of child sexuality? Where is the evidence that children can be attracted to adults in contemporary western societies? The evidence exists, but its expression and communication has been ‘silenced’.

Who in our society has knowledge and experience of child sexuality? Parents (who too often teach their children ‘shame’ so that by the age of 5 or 6 most children are fully aware that ‘sex’ is a taboo subject about which their parents are not willing to be open)? Teachers, police, doctors, psychologists, social workers? Which of these could a child be sufficiently at ease with to express their sexuality towards? The answer is, of course, ‘none of these’.

The fact is that in our society it’s only the ‘paedophile’ who accepts child sexuality; who, when a child displays sexual behaviour, doesn’t react negatively, doesn’t shame the child, doesn’t make her feel that her sexuality is ‘bad’. Even celibate paedophiles often have the experience of being the object of a child’s sensual or sexual interest.

Society and the Law, by criminalising the means by which such knowledge could be gathered, have, a priori, defined any evidence which disagrees with the orthodoxy as ‘inadmissible’ – thus depriving society, sociology, psychology and the law of the possibility of insights into the important subject of child sexuality, and hereby maintaining the belief that children are not sexual or interested in sex.

18. Paedophiles are ‘immoral’.

Can one only be truly ‘moral’ if one has never had to think about, struggle with and reflect deeply about one’s own capacity to do right or wrong? Someone who has never found them self at odds with the moral currents of society is someone who has never had to think deeply about what constitutes ethical living.

Most paedophiles go through a great deal of agonizing and soul-searching – and the evidence for this can be clearly seen by listening-in to the ethical conversations, debates and arguments that are a principal feature of clearnet paedophile support forums.

GirlChat – http://annabelleigh.net/
boy chat – http://www.boychat.org/
Le jardin d’Alice – http://jardin.glgarden.org/

Who are they?

Joseph Marr (some artworks nsfw) is an Australian multi-media artist based in Berlin known for his anatomically perfect sugar constructions of the human body that explore issues of desire and mortality. Last year for an organ donor charity called Live Life Give Life, a special art exhibition was organized by the Skull Appreciate Society titled Celebrabis Vitae where artist were invited to create skull-themed artworks. Marr’s contribution to the macabrely tongue-in-cheek event was this life-size translucent skull made from edible raspberry-flavored sugar.

Marr explains on his website that sugar only melts at a dangerously hot temperature of 366.8°F (186°C), and then cools rapidly once the heat source is removed, giving him only the slightest window to work with the maleable goo. “It’s a sensory overload, the smell, the colour, the heat and the honey like movement… it’s sharp like glass and smooth like marble and at the same time rough like concrete. Unpredictable.”

This year’s campaign organized by the Skull Appreciation Society is called the Day of the Living.

mujhseshaadikarogi:

R | Photography

The whole interview is great, as you would expect. The answer to the assertion that the Civil War was about “states’ rights” is perfect (i.e. the state’s “right” to establish slavery, which by the way required substantial federal intervention with dubious constitutional authorization every so-called advocate of “states’ rights” supported.) A couple more arbitrarily selected highlights. First, on the question of whether Reconstruction was a “bourgeois revolution”:

I tend not to use terminology like that, which I feel is an insider terminology. I try to write as clearly and accessibly as possible. So I understand what it means to call it a bourgeois revolution, and there are a lot of ways one could say it is. But I don’t think you would find that phrase in my writings.

But I do call it a revolution. I call the Civil War the Second American Revolution, as historian Charles Beard did, and as abolitionist Wendell Phillips did. But the Revolution is the destruction of slavery, that’s the revolutionary quality. That’s Du Bois’s point.

I call it a capitalist revolution. I don’t know if that’s the same thing as a bourgeois revolution. It destroys a system that is both capitalist and non-capitalist in ways that are quite difficult to explain, but the consequence of the Civil War is capitalist hegemony throughout the entire United States.

But that’s not the cause of the Civil War, because the capitalists were perfectly happy with the slave South. They made a lot of money off the slave South and there was no reason for them to go to war. But the consequence of the war was certainly the hegemony of Northern industry and finance throughout the entire country.

I also loved this, on the process by which conservatives try to pretend that they retroactively support things they opposed:

We shouldn’t allow them to take possession of these struggles. By the way, Obama absorbs all of this into his narrative of American history, obviously, and what’s objectionable about all this — from Obama’s vision of American history to Karl Rove’s — is that they see all these things as struggles within a stable system, so to speak.

Instead of denying, like the Right used to, that we’ve ever had inequality in this country, the Right says, “Well of course slavery was horrible, but we abolished it. We abolished slavery.” We! We! Who’s this “we,” you know?

And then they say, “Jim Crow, it was terrible.” No one’s defending Jim Crow anymore. We had a great civil rights struggle, Martin Luther King is a hero to everybody left, right and center, but it’s a defanged Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King is the guy who gets up at the Lincoln Memorial and, you know, says one sentence — I want my children to be judged by the content of their character — and that’s Martin Luther King. You don’t get the King who spoke out against the Vietnam War, or the Poor People’s Campaign King.

King was a radical guy. King said that the Civil Rights Movement was a fundamental challenge to American values. The people who absorb it into a feel-good thing now say it was an expression of basic American values. In other words, there is a stable thing called Americanism which all these struggles are just improving all the time.

But the whole thing is very much worth reading.

Hovertext: There's a lot of networking to be done on the Dark Side.

New comic!
Today's News:

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times has a lengthy exposé on the working conditions within Jeff Bezos's Amazon. "Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable." Over 100 current and former employees were interviewed for the article, and they painted a picture of a demanding and punishing workplace that people tolerate in exchange for the ability to create. "In contrast to companies where declarations about their philosophy amount to vague platitudes, Amazon has rules that are part of its daily language and rituals, used in hiring, cited at meetings and quoted in food-truck lines at lunchtime. Some Amazonians say they teach them to their children." Of course, this attitude causes problems for people whose lives don't allow them extreme levels of effort: "The mother of the stillborn child soon left Amazon. 'I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life,' the woman recalled via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored 'to make sure my focus stayed on my job.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LOS ANGELES — Visitors to Scorched Earth, Mark Bradford’s exhibition at the Hammer Museum, are greeted in the lobby by a map that shows the US population infected with AIDS by state. The map, titled “Finding Barry” (all works 2015), is carved into the wall, exposing marbled layers of paint from previous lobby projects. This technique mirrors the sandblasting that Bradford uses to create his multidimensional paintings and connects the new work to a rich institutional tradition (the title refers to an earlier Hammer lobby project by Barry McGee). The map’s statistics are from 2009; during an August 2 Hammer Conversation with law professor Anita Hill, Bradford said he “wanted to show a map that wasn’t [set in the] present. So from 2009 to now, I wanted [the viewer] to have a leap in imagination.”

The numbers are sobering and so large as to be numbing, but when “Finding Barry” is seen as part of the entire show, the map functions as a bird’s-eye view of Scorched Earth‘s thematic terrain. On view through September 27, the small but compelling exhibition consists of the lobby piece, a video work, and 12 paintings. Surprisingly, it is Bradford’s first solo museum show in his native Los Angeles. While Scorched Earth takes on enormous topics such as the AIDS crisis, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the charged political atmosphere of the early 1990s, Bradford maintains focus by examining the spectrum between the macro (the nation at large) and the micro (the individual body).

“Spiderman,” a video work inspired by 1980s stand-up comedy, is presented in a stand-alone gallery adjacent to the rest of the exhibition. The video has no images, only subtitles that accompany Bradford’s recorded performance as the titular fictional comedian, a transgender man who delivers his routine to a responsive but invisible audience. During the August 2 talk, the artist described the impetus for the work: “I sometimes find some stand-up comedians harsh towards women and otherness. They have a harsh gaze. I remember seeing the Eddie Murphy [film] Delirious […] and I remember sitting in the audience and thinking, ‘Oh, gay-bashing has entered into the public domain as being acceptable.’ […] Those things fascinate me because there’s no protection for those bodies once they’re accepted in the public as being OK for abuse.”

Inside the main galleries, the painting portion of the exhibition opens with a large mixed media painting with collage elements. “Rebuild South Central Without Liquor Stores!!” it implores, with the same message below in Spanish. The painting’s hopeful tone is compounded by the upbeat chartreuse, coral, and fuchsia colors of the blocky lettering. During his talk, Bradford explained that the painting was inspired by a photograph of a handmade sign, created by a local church group, which appeared in the neighborhood after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. While the work’s use of text is a departure from the other pieces in the show, “Rebuild South Central” imparts a sense of specific place and time to the paintings that follow.

The other works on view are electrifying compositions inspired by cells infected with the HIV virus. What appear to be wholly abstract works are, in fact, representational views of objects that are organic in form, morphing, and wounded. The paintings are unified by a biological color palette — bright pinks and whites, bruised gray-blues, congealed-blood reds, and thick browns and blacks. The three works near the entrance, titled “Sample 1,” “Sample 2,” and “Sample 3,” are layered ominously, with sharp cuts exposing hidden pink layers and brown spots pinwheeling across their surfaces. “Dead Hummingbird” has a similarly layered and spotted background, with a mottled, bird-shaped void in its center.

Some compositions — including three untitled black and pink paintings — appear to show the body in slightly less extreme closeup, as a series of whirling blood flows. These large paintings were made on black paper through the use of a technique similar to transfer lithography, producing delicately branching pink and white negative spaces. Other works, such as “Lights and Tunnels” and “The Next Hot Line,” recall the map imagery in Bradford’s previous work.

In a recent New Yorker profile by Calvin Tomkins, Bradford described the inspiration for the exhibition: “I don’t want to say the show is about AIDS, but it’s about the body, and about my relationship to the 1980s, when all that stuff hit. It’s my using a particular moment and abstracting it.” The title of the show harks back to a previous piece — “Scorched Earth” is a 2006 map-like painting inspired by the war in Iraq and the 1921 Tulsa riots, when white mobs torched the city’s prosperous African-American neighborhood. While Bradford’s earlier, cartographic paintings show trauma from an aerial perspective, the standout new paintings here produce a similar effect by showing trauma up close, zeroing in until the imagery becomes abstract in form.

Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth continues at the Hammer Museum (10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles) through September 27.

spidersforrenfield:

if anyone has not seen it yet this is my fav youtube channel and their videos are just them acting as werner herzog, david lynch, and crispin glover and i really do not know why this amuses me as much as it does

“When minor characters who are also ethnic minorities start talking among themselves in their native tongues, they sometimes take advantage of their invisibility to say things. Sometimes they break the Fourth Wall and start ranting about the movie director. Sometimes, they spout random obscenities or natter about their lousy lunch. It’s all in not-English, so whatever they say doesn’t matter! And the actual translations of their lines can be a secret source of hilarity in films where actors are instructed to use a Gratuitous Foreign Language (GFL) in order to make a scene sound more authentic. When some Native Americans cast in Westerns were told to speak their own language to add some authenticity, these actors took the opportunity to crudely editorialize about their director, which allegedly resulted in Native American audiences (in)explicably cracking up laughing during scenes that were meant to be dramatic.”

-

Minorities can be marginalized in film, but not silenced.

(via salon)

in the original Star Wars one of the “alien languages” that the rebels used was actually Swahili. My dad watched Return of the Jedi in Nairobi in a packed theater and during a space battle shot some nameless extra shouts “this is not my watermelon!” in swahili and the entire theater exploded into a mixture of laughing and cheering

(via yiffmaster)

(To everyday Whatever readers: This is a post I’m putting up for Twitter folks; I’ll be pinning a link to this on the top of my Twitter page.)

Dear New (and Potential!) Twitter Followers:

Hi there, I’m John Scalzi, and if you’re reading this, you may have just decided to follow me on Twitter, or may be thinking about doing so. If this does in fact describe you, here is what you should know before clicking the “follow” button.

1. If you have no idea who I am besides some guy on Twitter, here’s a brief bio.

2. I post on Twitter a lot. 40 to 60 times a day is not unusual, and some days I can put up more than a hundred tweets. Many of those are replies to people, so you might not see all of them. Nevertheless, I am a high volume tweeter. If you’re not prepared for me stuffing your tweetfeed full of my silliness, it’s okay to bail out. I don’t mind!

3. I’ve written a bit about how I use Twitter, and how I interact with followers, and why I happily mute and/or block people who want to start fights with me on Twitter. That piece is here. It’s worth the read. Short version: I often use Twitter as a performance space; I respond to tweets from followers but not all of them because of time and other factors; I’ll mute and/or block you if I think you’re obnoxious.

4. I am often asked for retweets, enough so that I have an official policy on retweets. Here it is. Also, if you’re an official Twitter account of a business, or someone trying to sell/promote things on Twitter, you should look at this.

5. I don’t automatically follow everyone who follows me, so if that’s your hope or expectation you will probably be disappointed. Please don’t ask me to follow you (and please don’t do it multiple times). Also, don’t ask me to follow you in order to send me a Direct Message. If I don’t follow you and there’s something you want to ask me privately, you can send me an email.

6. I very often tweet about politics and social issues. In the US, I am considered a liberal, and everywhere else in the English speaking world I suspect I am middle-of-the-road and maybe leaning ever-so-slightly to the right. If you get annoyed with these sorts of politics, my Twitter feed may also annoy you. Fair warning.

7. Because I tweet about politics and social issues, from time to time groups of people who don’t like my positions like to try to gang up on me on Twitter. So from time to time you may see me tweeting about the fact that stupid people are trying to annoy me and/or see the tweets I put out where I belittle and condescend to them. When that happens, don’t worry, it’s usually over fairly quickly (because I mute and/block them immediately thereafter).

8. Other common tweet subjects include: Writing and publishing, food, pets, travel, family and various things I think are funny. I retweet a lot of cool stuff my friends are doing so you can find out about it too. I will very often have conversations with these friends, on matters both snarky and serious. Feel free to follow along.

9. If you see me tweeting in ALL CAPS, it is very likely that the portion of the tweet in all caps is meant to be sarcastic and/or sardonic and/or silly. I tweet in all caps a lot. Do not be alarmed. I am not having a stroke.

10. If eventually you find me an exhausting and/or annoying part of your tweetstream, please unfollow me! I will not be in the least offended. I want my presence in your Twitterverse to be a fun and enjoyable one, and if it isn’t, then I’m okay with you taking your leave of me. There will be no hard feelings.

And now you know what you need to know! I hope you enjoy my presence on your Twitter feed, and thanks for following me.

What if you must be heard, but no one listens to your polite voice?

---

In the mostly white professional-class suburbs where most of my friends live, I have frequently seen this bumpersticker:

It tends to show up on Volvos, Priuses, and other cars popular among middle-aged women with advanced degrees, though now and then it appears (in the company of many other stickers) on a less expensive car that is as much billboard as transportation.

The point (which is well understood by the kind of people who have spent their lives testing whether a glass ceiling will break if you hit your head against it hard enough) is that playing by the rules may keep you out of trouble, but it probably won’t get you where you want to go.

In the 70s and 80s when this sticker was becoming popular, the rules in just about every bureaucracy and corporate ladder in the world were made and adjudicated by men. So if a woman played by them, kept to the agenda, didn’t interrupt, waited her turn, and colored inside the lines, she would likely wind up in whatever place men had left on the org chart for a well-behaved woman, a place safely isolated from the levers of power. So the turn she was waiting for would never come. The evidence and arguments she had assembled in her carefully-written memo would likely never be read, or, if read, would never be taken seriously.

In some parts of the economy and government we’ve gotten past that by now, to the point that many young women don’t grasp why confrontational feminism was ever necessary. But even today, when women reach for the top rungs of the ladder, the standards are different. A Hillary Clinton or Carly Fiorina has to walk a narrow path that Donald Trump (or any male candidate) isn’t constrained by: She must be forceful without sounding angry or shrill, authoritative without talking down, dressed to perfection but not obsessed with appearance. Those rules — still mostly made and adjudicated by men — will tie a woman in knots if she lets them.

Even today, a well-behaved woman has trouble making history.

Now let’s think about well-behaved black women. How much history are they going to make?

That’s the question to start with if you want to understand disruptive protests like the one that kept Bernie Sanders from talking about Social Security in Seattle.

The Seattle protest makes no sense if you come at it from the point of view of an aging, white, progressive, Sanders supporter who came out wanting to hear about Social Security: Neither you nor Sanders had any ill intent. The meeting wasn’t a plot to maintain white supremacy. There was an announced topic, a topic that needs the public’s attention. Sanders wanted to talk about it and you wanted to hear him.

And then those damn women got in the way.

Their tactics are easy to criticize: By targeting Sanders, they’re pissing off the whites most likely to be on their side. On TV, they looked really rude and obnoxious, making white viewers less sympathetic with their cause. It would have been a lot braver if they’d disrupted a Republican rally, where they might have wound up in jail or worse.

“Why are you picking on us?” the progressives wonder. “We’re the good guys. If you’d just asked nicely, we might have paid attention to your issue.”

Why can’t you behave? Wait your turn. We’ll get to your concerns at a more appropriate time.

On her Facebook page, Dominique Hazzard answers:

People are always wanting to know- why are black people rioting? Why are twoc of interrupting the president? Why are those black women disrupting the Netroots panel? Why are they shutting down Bernie’s campaign stop? Why are the coloreds doing things that *i* consider to be unstrategic?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because nobody listens to black people until we fuck their shit up. That’s what works. And we are trying to survive, so that’s what we do.

In later post, she addresses the “Why Bernie?” question:

IF YOU WANT TO BE STRATEGIC, you target the people with power who are in your sphere of influence, and who can actually be persuaded to give you what you want. A lot of the time (not all of the time, but often), those people are your allies- allies who are close to getting it right but not quite there.
(Bernie Bern is not ‘there’ yet. Last time he got interrupted, it was disruptors wanting to talk about the criminalization of black women. He centered his answer on unemployment… mere days after Sandra Bland died *on her way to a new job*)

Disrupting a Huckabee rally would be a worse idea, because not only would he not listen, but

your action might backfire, causing Mike Huckabee to double down and racists to respect him even more, rewarding him with more votes.

But however it looked to white suburbanites watching on TV, the Sanders protest got results. A new racial justice page appeared on the Sanders web site, with detailed proposals that met with substantial approval.* The bar has been raised for Clinton and the other Democrats.

Even more than that, though, is the mirror this event places in front of white liberals. (Protests are always part street theater, and the response a protest evokes is part of the production.)

Racism in America today is largely underground, and among liberals it’s completely underground: Nobody ever comes up to me throwing the N-word around and asking how we’re going to keep “them” in their place. But underground is not the same as gone, and a lot of us don’t see our own racism until we’re confronted. That’s why it was instructive to watch how angry the crowd got in Seattle, and how quickly all the paternalistic let-me-tell-you-how-to-protest-better responses popped up.

Very few white liberals’ first reaction — not even mine, I have to admit — was to ask: “Why do you feel like you have to do this?” And even those who asked that question seldom waited for an answer or listened to that answer.

Bernie, to his credit, seems to have listened: not immediately, not in the moment, but within a few days. Maybe the rest of us can follow his lead.

---

* A legitimate question is: What was wrong with the Sanders platform before this racial justice page was added?

From a BLM point of view, the problem was that Sanders’ message had been class-based and largely color-blind, as if the problems faced by black people in America were just artifacts that stem from being unemployed or underpaid or living in dangerous neighborhoods or having bad public schools. Just create more good entry-level jobs, and solve the crime and education problems in general, and black people will benefit.

And that’s true as far as it goes: If blacks are disproportionately poor and the poor are disproportionately black, helping the poor will help the black community. But what BLM is trying to get across is that race is not a side-issue; the obstacles blacks face do not arise merely from unfortunate circumstances or historical accident. Racism is a very real problem here and now. White people may not like to talk about race, but you can’t solve racial problems in a color-blind way.

By default, Windows listens to you, gathers your keystrokes, watches your browser history and purchases and sends them to Microsoft and its partners -- but even if you turn off all the tickboxes in the hellishly complex privacy dashboard it still gathers and sprays your data. Read the rest

After witnessing the destruction brought on by hurricanes in Thailand, the Southern U.S. and around the world, Italian sculptor Lorenzo Quinn began creating a series of sculptures titled ‘Force of Nature’. Made from bronze, stainless steel and aluminum, the sculptures, full of life and energy, depict mother nature hurtling planet earth around in circles. The powerful and furious image is meant remind us of the power of nature and what Quinn describes as our “false sense of security” towards it.

“After having seen the ravaged coast of Thailand and the Hurricane that affected the Southern States I decided to create a sculpture dedicated to Mother Nature,” explains Quinn. At any moment in time, nature’s wrath could be awakened, bringing with it sudden destruction. The sculptures, which have been installed all around the world, remind us of this fact. And for Quinn they also harken back to something more ancient and primitive: “This would be reminiscent of the early statues made as peace offerings to the Gods in the hope of quenching their anger.” (via Bored Panda)

I can’t.

I fucking can’t.

I am so goddamned fucking tired… tired of the endless sensory overload, tired of never having a fucking second of privacy, not a single fucking moment to myself, so fucking exhausted of dealing with oblivious fucking idiots — so much that when I actually run into someone who’s not completely fucking incompetent I feel like endlessly praising them for being even remotely normal.

I am so fucking weary. Weary of dealing with life, worn out from trying to keep coping with all of this endless shit and I am just fed the fuck up with everything. Everything.

Everything.

I need out.

I need out.

I need out.

I NEED OUT.

GET

ME

OUT.

Filed under: General

scienceyeah:

unexplained-events:

Fresno Nightcrawlers

There have been multiple sightings of these strange creatures called the nightcrawlers or the Fresno Aliens. The creatures are extremely thin, white humanoids with no discernable arms.

Videos of these strange creatures were featured on the second episode of Syfy’s Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files in which they failed to debunk them.

To add to the mystery of all of this, the following pictures surfaced on the internet.

It is believed that they were taken near a DMV located somewhere in California but that is not confirmed. People have stated that the statues are a part of Native American legend but the Fresno Nightcrawlers remain a strange mystery.

oneterabyteofkilobyteage:

original url http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Disco/4188/

last modified 1999-11-21 05:40:58

jeffgerstmann:

LIKE

FOLLOW

SUBSCRIBE

ENGAGE

ENGAGE

ENGAGE

ENGAGE

ENGAGE

Over at the Ploughshares blog, Cathe Shubert discusses the historic nature of sexism in the publishing industry, and urges her readers to keep searching for an early canon of women writers:

Despite the many gains we have made in including women in our understanding of the history of literature, many students graduate with the false understanding that women did not really write until the nineteenth century–that they just couldn’t. Even Virginia Woolf, in her iconic and popular text A Room Of One’s Own, writes of the impossibility of women writing at the time of Shakespeare, whose plays and sonnets make him famous in the minds of students of literature the world over. Woolf imagines Shakespeare had an equally talented but dismissed sister, Judith, who killed herself having never written a word, since she was never sanctioned by society to explore her gifts. Woolf’s account is heartrending—especially considering the untimely end the author met at her own hands. And yet I fear a majority of scholars and teachers of literature—and indeed even writers—have taken accounts like Woolf’s at face value and simply stopped looking for a canon of women writers beyond the token few that pepper anthologies. There is clearly still much work to be done in terms of revising our historical understanding of what it has meant to be a woman writer—and what it means to write as a woman today.

Related Posts:

• Making Room on the Shelf
• Writers’ Influences Skew Male
• The Rumpus Interview with Daniel José Older
• A Year of Women Writers
• NYRB Joins LRB in Hole, Helps Keep Digging

"Socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it, is never the answer." - Hank Steinbrenner, who received $1,200,000,000 Billion Dollars from the taxpayers of the City and State of New York to pay for the building of his baseball stadium.

Here's how Capitalism works in America. When a "private" business wants huge wads of taxpayer "relief" to finance some project, the discussion becomes a lofty, Grandiose debate on Utilitarian Principles and the greatest good for the greatest number; Highlighting the vast network of ancillary benefits to businesses, the community, the neighborhood, and the government. 

Therefore, it's only good and proper the Rich receive help. Also this is not Socialism. But, under Vulture Capitalism when were are talking about helping poor people with food assistance? Well, then the howls of lazy moochers and the mean-spirited tired cliche of 'feeding wild animals makes them too dependent' are trotted out. Also this is Socialism.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced his plan to enact Socialism in Wisconsin. It's just that like all Republicans, Scott Walker believes in taking money from the Working Class and giving it to the Plutocracy. Socialism for the Rich and Corporations and Cut-Throat Capitalism for the Poor is the motto of the Modern Republican Party.

After slashing $250 million from the Wisconsin budget for Education, Scott Walker brazenly turned around, and in a massive Pay-to-Play Scam, gave Millionaires (who contributed vast amounts of money to his two election campaigns, recall fight, and Presidential Super PAC) hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to pay for their new Milwaukee Bucks Basketball Stadium.

Scott Walker's entire governorship has been the forcible theft of Public Lands, Resources, and Monies for redistribution upwards to the Rich. That he feels free to do this so brazenly during the run-up to the 2016 Republican Nomination shows, that Walker would steal Billions from the American people writ large and transfer those monies up to the Plutocracy using the Awesome Power of the Federal Government.

This is a very slightly modified version of a post I wrote quite some time ago, something I frequently reference because it’s simpler than endlessly repeating myself in response to people trying (and failing) to be helpful and supportive.

A work-in-progress list of do’s and don’ts for those who wish to offer support — here’s how to best go about doing so. This will likely expand over time as I think of other bits to add, but here’s at least the basics.

DO: Ask whether I’m looking for advice before offering it — or whether I’m seeking sympathy. Most of the time, I have a very clear idea of what my options are in a given situation, and I’m not telling you about it so that you can (attempt to) fix it; more often than not, I just want to know that I am heard, that I’m not alone. I’m also usually pretty good at explicitly asking for help when I need it, and asking for specifically what I need.

DO: If it’s on Facebook, click that “Like” button! Same goes for anywhere else there’s an equivalent function. Yeah, I know you probably don’t actually like the situation I’ve posted about; if it’s something where you’d offer support it’s probably not a great thing. But since there’s generally no button for “I know these feels” or “that really sucks” or “I don’t like this at all and I’m sorry you’re dealing with that situation” then “Liking” my post at least lets me know you’ve seen it, lets me know that I am heard (see above.) If you don’t quite have the words, this is at least a good start.

DO: Comment if you can — I know it’s often hard to find the right words, or to know what to say. If the situation sucks… try “that really sucks!” If you can relate, and you know the feeling… maybe “I can totally relate” or “I know the feeling” would work? Yeah, it seems pretty obvious when it’s spelled out like that, but I recognize it isn’t always obvious when your fingers are hovering over your keyboard, trying to find a way to reply to a post.

And a few things you should really avoid, if your goal is to be supportive…

DON’T: Offer advice if I haven’t specifically asked for it. If I’m posting about my frustration with the noise when I’m trying to sleep, don’t chime in to tell me I should try using earplugs! If I mention that I think I’m getting a cold, don’t ask whether I’m making sure to get plenty of rest and lots of Vitamin C. If you see me ranting about the seeming impossibility of finding housing in the Bay Area, please, for the love of fuck, do not let me hear the words “Section 8” from you! I can guarantee you — as mentioned above — that I usually have a very clear idea of what my options are in a given situation… and almost certainly a better idea than you do.

DON’T: Spout platitudes and greeting-card copy at me. Telling me that “it gets better” or that “everything happens for a reason.” pointing out that “it’s always darkest before the dawn” and “tomorrow is another day,” or telling me to “take things one step at a time” and “just breathe deeply” are all good ways to get on my shitlist… and quickly. It’s also incredibly dismissive; when I’m hurting, that pain is real. It’s okay for that pain to be real, to be acknowledged. When your response to my pain is to point out that some other time I might not hurt… that’s like me telling you to not be concerned with any hunger you feel, because some other time you might not be as hungry. Not helpful at all.

DON’T: Keep pressing your point if I’ve already turned it down. If I’ve directed you to any of my “user manual” posts, it’s probably because you’ve said or done something that wasn’t very helpful, something that I’ve addressed too many times before — and I don’t have the energy to go over it again at that point just for you. Same goes for me simply telling you simply that you’re not helping; that’s all you need to know, and again, I’m not going to try to spell it all out for you. I realize you may not have intended to offend, and I’m essentially pointing you to the FAQ… which is not at all the same as pointing you to the exit with an order to GTFO. So that’s the point where trying to convince me that you really do have a valid point, that you really didn’t mean to offend, but you really can offer me something helpful… is going to push me further away, and I’ll be less likely to trust you to be supportive in the future.

Filed under: General