Dreamer Easy

Why Aren't Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person. Having experienced the workplace from both perspectives, they hold the key to its biases.

Announcement: Readers who feel threatened by equality no longer welcome: "The problem here is that these squealing man-children, so desperate to keep women out of their precious games, want it both ways. They want gaming to be taken seriously as a culture and art form, while at the same time throwing an unbelievable tantrum when subjected to serious criticism."

Why men rape: "The reasons why men rape in South Africa are the same reasons they rape here [in Australia] and the most common statements really amount to notions of sexual entitlement."

On which subject: "One day, in third period, after being rejected several times, he said; 'I have a gun in my locker. If you don't say yes, I am going to shoot you in seventh.'"

And again: Laurie Penny on misogynist extremism: Let's call the Isla Vista killings what they were: "The ideology behind these attacks - and there is ideology - is simple. Women owe men. Women, as a class, as a sex, owe men sex, love, attention, 'adoration', in Rodger's words. We owe them respect and obedience, and our refusal to give it to them is to blame for their anger, their violence - stupid sluts get what they deserve. Most of all, there is an overpowering sense of rage and entitlement: the conviction that men have been denied a birthright of easy power. "

Domestic violence: the 'silent epidemic' claiming the life of one woman every eight days

Financial abuse poorly understood but rife

"The Australian Human Rights Commission report found that one in two women and one in four men have experienced discrimination relating to their family obligations... The survey found 22 per cent of women who had suffered discrimination opted out of the workplace entirely." Similarly: Half of all mothers experience workplace discrimination, report finds

Autism experts say current testing failing to detect condition in females, call for changes to testing (I'm currently reading Aspergirls by Rudy Simone - while I'm clearly not on the spectrum, I have a lot in common with women with Aspergers, and I wonder how much of this stems from being gender non-conforming.)

ETA: Norrie has won a victory for all people neither male nor female

Bodies That Matter: The African History of Naked Protest, FEMEN Aside

Monster, by Robin Morgan

A Deadly Epidemic of Violence Against Women

I shall pay for this later. But for now:

ETA 4. I forgot to mention! I understood the first line of a Kpop song just by listening to it! Admittedly all it said was 제발 하지마라 "For goodness' sake, don't do it!" but nonetheless I am proud. :D

1. I picked that the composer for Ouran High School Host Club also did some of the music for Death Note: Yoshihisa Hirano. In fact, I'm not sure that the music accompanying serious scenes (often to bathetic effect) in Ouran aren't in fact from the Death Note soundtrack. (If you're not familiar with these anime, one is an intricate dark fantasy psychological thriller, and one, erm, isn't.)

2. Vampire Knight. These two are totally doing it:



3. A fellow Tumblrer just suggested that we can learn sensitivity from Tumblr: "... every time somebody gets slapped down, you think, hm, better not do/say/think that." I must dispute this. The Onion invented the phrase "seriously uninformed discussion", which describes most "social justice" blogging and comments perfectly. In fact, let's say that 99% of people posting about racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, et al, are seriously uninformed*.

Now if that's accurate, as I believe it is, when someone performs a smackdown, the odds are that they are almost exactly as ignorant as the person they are smacking down. All they've learned, and all they can teach, are the correct opinions and buzzwords.

Two case studies. A few years ago I discussed the fact that I was gender non-conforming** as an adolescent and as an adult fan. This attracted a few comments deriding me for trying to impress boys and for offending transgender people. That was partly my fault for expressing myself clumsily; at the time I didn't know the term, or the concept, "gender non-conforming". But neither did the angry commenters.

In South Korea and China, apparently for historical reasons, lighter skin is seen as prettier than darker skin, leading Kpop idols to sometimes tease their darker-skinned friends. Naturally this is very painful to darker-skinned Western Kpop fans, particularly African-American fans, who bear the brunt of a long, damaging history of colourism, the legacy of slavery. When an idol makes one of these hurtful comments, part of fandom will call them racist while the other half will defend them on the grounds that it's a different culture's beauty standards, causing the former half to label them racists*** as well. Neither side will discuss whether or not darker-skinned Koreans face discrimination, as darker-skinned African-Americans do, nor the impact of colonialism and globalism on Asian beauty standards, nor even the indirect harm caused by beauty fascism, because they haven't got the first clue about any of these fucking things. And neither, to my great irritation, have I.


* Having now read a little in these areas, I would say I am about 95% uninformed. (For example, I get a few more of the references in We Didn't Start The Fire.) ETA: Here's one explanation for why people think they know what they're on about when they don't - the illusion of explanatory depth.

** My gender non-conformity has oft attracted fangirl ire, alas. Apparently there is a wrong way to be a girl. Or there could be another explanation: when I did a bit of feminist analysis of gendered activity in fandom, one irritated person remarked, "I don't see gender." ETA: Part of the problem may be the inability to imagine fandom not numerically dominated by women.

*** They are racists, of course. So are the people calling them racists. So am I. We apologise for the inconvenience. My point is that there is little point in dividing people up into racists who have been caught with their feet in their mouths and nice people who haven't. Racism runs a lot deeper than the occasional unacceptable remark, and we should treat it that way.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has stopped the practice of weekly briefings about asylum seekers, during which journalists can ask questions, and replaced it with a regular written statement. This is (a) hilarious, (b) outrageous, (c) a further sign he can't handle the pressure of his job, IMHO, and (d) alarming - when will we lose the written statements? Is this stumbling retreat from public scrutiny, or was it planned from the start?

According to this week's written statement, no asylum seekers have arrived in the past week.

On arrival at Christmas Island, an intellectually impaired and mentally ill Iranian asylum seeker was deprived of her medication. Her advocate states: "Within 10 days she became deeply disturbed, screaming, rolling in the dirt, exposing herself, and was subsequently brought to Perth with her father for medical treatment." Despite the sick woman's pleas, her mother remained on Christmas Island; mother and father were told they would be sent to Nauru while their daughter remained in Perth. Thank gods, this nightmare has a happy ending, with the government promising to reunite the entire family in community detention so they can care for the sick woman.

How many others?

Having failed to reintroduce Temporary Protection Visas and to place a cap on protection visas, the Minister has resorted to introducing a code of conduct for asylum seekers in the community under which they can be returned to detention, not for breaking the law, but for "antisocial" behaviour. However, it looks like, once again, the courts will overturn this proposal.

According to budget projections, offshore processing will cost taxpayers up to $500,000 per asylum seeker. It would be cheaper and simpler to fly them here first class and put them up in five-star hotels while their paperwork is done. (Bringing them here safely by boat or plane and then releasing them into the community on modest pensions would of course be even cheaper.) The guvmint expects to spend $9.5 billion over the next four years, but predicts - on what basis it won't say, of course - that arrivals will drop off over that time. Paradoxically, if I've understood correctly, it would be exactly that slowdown that would push the cost up to half a mil, since the offshore detention centres have to be kept open regardless of how many people are imprisoned there.

A report has found that lives could be saved if Australia's various maritime agencies communicate better over search and rescue operations involving asylum seeker boats.

Surprise depression attack. (Well, maybe not surprise. But sudden as heck. I'd forgotten what it even felt like.)

Agitation, irritability, increase in goal-directed activity, racing thoughts... why, anyone might think this was an episode of hypomania. Probably brought on by several nights' dodgy sleep in a row. I think I will go and listen to prog rock and buy expensive things.

ETA: Or perhaps just play online Galaga, although I don't think that can be described as goal-directed activity. They really need to invent a version of this game in which I don't continually explode.

In the middle of changing my meds. Hypomania! While watching Mrs Columbo. Funniest show I have ever seen on television. Wonderful and marvellous until you actually have to try and think straight about something, like IP addresses.

Spoke to the shrink last night, who says I'm on such a low dose of Edronax I can probably safely stop right away. Turns out I have an appointment with him on Monday (about which I had entirely forgotten), so we can further sort me out then. I'm so relieved.

(Holy cow, as I was typing this, a pair of kookaburras went off like an atomic bomb! Made me jump!)

A small but noticeable improvement to my life: I've taken to wearing an eyemask while sleeping (one of those freebies you get on planes, kindly passed along by the MIL - that's you, Phyllis :). Because Jon's a night owl, and our house is minuscule, there's no way he can avoid disturbing my sleep a little - but the mask is really cutting down on that. (Mind you, with all that stuff strapped to my noggin, I must look like a Doctor Who monster.)

I've just started a new, additional antidepressant, Edronax. The shrink warned me that it could cause agitation, so I should watch out for that and increase the dose slowly. I took half a tab this am, but I also fired up my brand-new coffee percolator. Now I don't know if electricity is arcing out of my ears because of the meds or the unexpected level of caffeine I seem to have consumed. Or both. Don't try this at home, kids.

An asylum seeker has been charged with indecent assault. The opposition has taken the opportunity to call for special checks and "behaviour protocols" to be applied to all asylum seekers living in the community while their claims are processed. Unfortunately for this proposal, of the 12,100 asylum seekers released since November 2011, no more than 5 have been charged with a crime, making those on bridging visas 45 times less likely to be charged than everyone else living here. The reporting requirements the Coalition demand have long been in place. "We have behaviour protocols," remarked Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. "It's called the law."

An insightful and disturbing opinion piece on the scapegoating of asylum seekers via the Pacific Solution.

An exasperated psychologist rants about journalists telling us our brains are defective, when the explanation for why we know what ain't so is not neurological, but social. Our "social networks", he writes, are reliable at steering us towards the scientific information we need, but when the facts "become entangled in antagonistic cultural meanings" then "positions on these issues will come to be understood as markers of loyalty to opposing groups". And that's why you can't come in our treehouse.

Meet the youngest person in Afghanistan to have a gender reassignment surgery. (I think the sixteen year old was intersex - it's difficult to tell from the original report in the Lahore Times.)

A petition to the White House to Recognize non-binary genders in legal documents etc.

Finally, via New Scientist's giggle-inducing Feedback column, two splendid quotes from the papers about prime numbers. First, the Daily FMail described primes as "of little significance". Even better, the Independent remarked: "Even the most powerful computers struggle to work out the factors of a large prime number."

Obama announces widest gun control measures in 18 years. Oh yes, it's on for young and old. The plan includes fixing the holes in the background checks system and reinstating the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines - and also, incredibly, permitting research on gun violence by agencies like the Centers for Disease Control. I am a little wary of the mental health component of the plan, since sane people are also spree killers; but if it really does provide sorely lacking mental health services, what the hell.

Religious organisations, which include some of Australia's largest employers will be able to continue discriminating against gays, transgender and intersex people, and other sinners. (This guy, however, is just fine. ETA: He has subsequently been removed.) Although these organisations rely on government funding, the discriminatees will still have to pay the same tax as everyone else. Here's a cracking response from Joumanah El Matrah, who points out that the "right" to discriminate just shores up the power of an increasingly irrelevant conservative minority and their obsessions, ultimate reducing religion to "a collection of petty bigotries". "I believe in Australia's commitment to diversity and human dignity," she writes, "and I do not want any tear in that fabric in my name as a person of faith." (Both the Uniting Church and the charity Anglicare reject religious discrimination.)

Mum punches student, threatens staff over 'bullied' daughter. I'm keen to know whether the daughter was in fact the target of racist bullying - and why the school suspended her after she complained about it. Alas, none of these details are present in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal judgment.

The slashed single parent payment has some Australian mothers turning to sex work.

Cats in the news: Orlando beats professional wealth managers with his stock picks. | Brazilian prison inmates trained a stray cat to smuggle in escape tools. The cat, which was caught with small saws, drills, a cell phone, etc, taped to its body, was placed into the care of vets. Authorities wittily remarked that they didn't know which prisoners were responsible as the cat wasn't talking.* | In a not entirely dissimilar story, a Japanese hacker taunted police with clues attached to a cat's collar. (I found footage: the collar was removed, and the feral cat, unimpressed with the entire business, ran away.)

Science! Fisher-Price Synesthesia: as well as the magic brain wiring which makes us colour-grapheme synaesthetes superior to you mere humans, there's evidence for a learned component. (My own colours don't match the Fisher-Price letters, nor the Gattengo chart which was present in my primary school.)

* No, I can't read Portuguese! But Google Translate will give you the gist. "The cat, considered by management of the prison as the most innocent of history, was referred to the Center for Zoonoses the city, where it will be held, not in prison, but to receive the veterinary care."