Inside the Little Plastic Castle

I’m seeing more progress pride flags flying in my neighborhood. In the poll, I’m using “queer” in the broadest possible sense: any (sexual or gender) (orientation or preference). The poll is anonymous—even I can’t see who voted how.

( Progress Pride Flag )

cosmolinguist explores the gender pitfalls of defining a space as welcoming to "women and non-binary" people. Relevant to my interests because my wonderful comics club membership policy is "cis men have staffed the gates into comics for too long, so they're not welcome in clubMX." We've tried to express that in positive terms — here are the folks who are welcome — but given our rejection from traditional comics circles, essentially (hah!), the quoted negative definition above is what unites us.

people are doing an unreasonable thing in order to achieve a reasonable goal. I'm sure any of us could think about times in our lives that cis men were horrible to us, all the way from #EverydaySexism to actual trauma. And especially when it comes to groups for people who are queer/kinky/polyamorous/anything about sexualities and relationships, safety becomes even more important. But keeping all the cis men out isn't the way to do that. I'm not even saying "not all men," I'm saying "not only cis men." Not all predatory, boundary-crossing, consent-lacking behavior comes from them. Keeping them out is not necessary or sufficient for a space to be safe or welcoming.

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hellofriendsiminthedark precisely captures why disabling metaphor is harmful

In a world where blindness is inherently understood as a debilitating and limiting condition, "you're blind to the red flags" does mean "you're ignorant of the red flags."

In a world where sight is inherently understood to be one of many modes for gathering information, but is also understood to be neutral in value and not in and of itself individually essential in the grand scheme of gathering information and perceiving a legitimate model of the physical world, "you're blind to the red flags" would mean "you may not be able to see the red flags, but you can still intuit their existence. You can still obtain information about their presence using your other senses and other information around you, for example the ways in which the red flags interact tangibly with things you can perceive. You can still understand what a red flag would signify without having to be able to identify that specific denotation of a red flag. You may sense the effects of the red flag using the senses that actually matter in your experience of the world and thus posit their presence just the same as a metaphorically sighted person would by perceiving them through sight."

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Great reading today from three places.

On DW:

seperis makes me laugh really hard about living with bunnies

Bunnies can eat through anything. Even zip ties. Even dozens of zip ties. Even all the zip ties. That is how I ended up with baby bunnies in the first place. They can also jump under duress three feet at a run and two feet just because they're assholes. (One of my tiny psychopaths can do three and a half feet, catch himself halfway over the top of the play area, and shimmy over.) Rabbits also like access to small, comforting, dark spaces to hide and cuddle (each other, not me).

https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1041231.html
further background on bunny ownership: https://web.archive.org/http://seperis.tumblr.com/post/166559117285/the-bunny-files

On Granta:

Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist, prosthetic-wearing ass-kicker. She delivers the Donna Haraway smackdown I've been waiting 20 years for:

When I tell people I am a cyborg, they often ask if I have read Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. Of course I have read it. And I disagree with it. ( 286 wise words )

https://granta.com/common-cyborg/

I first encountered Jillian in her Tipsy Tullivan persona, as she excoriated AWP for their hostility to disabled writers:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/ucwfcyz-fipjq0u6v-fevomq/featured

To my delight, she was on one AWP 2016 panel, celebrating the 40th anniversary of her publisher BOA, reading several poems and a call to action/drinks. ( uncaptioned video )

On Captain Awkward
I subscribe to the DW captainawkward_feed

Cap addresses “Tips for staying positive when your body hates you.” from a PhD student dealing with sudden liver cancer. Cap wisely turns to the wisdom of disabled people, and offers lots of excellent suggestions.

What if I told you that you don’t have to feel positive or stay positive or be positive. Stay alive. Positive can wait.

[... snip ...]

Fight the idea that being sick is something you’re inflicting on others. You say: “I feel like I’m a drain on everyone around me and I can’t even contribute academically anymore.” This ableist framing is hurting you and other people.

Your worth is not based on how much money you earn, it is not based on how much research or scholarship you do.

http://captainawkward.com/?p=46182

After reading Ursula K. Le Guin's essay on the election, I was, for a few moments, able to breathe deep and focus on the long view. I recommend it to all, especially the anxious & paranoid:

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My song for many years was We Shall Overcome. I will always love that song, what it says and the people who have sung it, with whom I marched singing. But I can’t march now, and I can’t sing it any longer.

My song is Ain’t Gonna Study War No More.

Though we’ve had some great scholars of peace, such as Martin Luther King, studying it is something Americans have done very little of.

The way of the warrior admits no positive alternatives to fighting, only negatives — inertia, passivity, surrender. Talk of “waging peace” is mere glibness, you can’t be aggressively peaceful. Reducing positive action to fighting against or fighting for, we have not looked at the possibility of other forms of action.

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Thanks to sonia for the link.