links for 2009-03-06
March 6, 2009-
It's worth noting, also, that invariably stories that mention the prospect of foreclosure talk about the hit that this causes to a borrowers' credit rating. Obviously, there is a hit. However, journalists are mistaken when they imagine that a credit score is a judgment on the character of borrowers. It's not. It's a judgment about the likelihood of someone repaying a loan. Bad marks like a foreclosure affect this. But being overextended on credit affects this even more. You might imagine that if you have the magic word "foreclosure" on your record you are automatically a worse risk than someone who doesn't. That's just not true. Lenders don't like to lend money to people who have not paid their debts in the past. But what they like even less is lending money to people who have a mortgage they can't afford and are likely to stop paying their debts in the future.
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One of the ways of starkly illustrating an aspect of the gender divide is DeBecker’s quote: “At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”
I think there’s a class and mothering parallel here: Middle-class women are afraid of being mummy-tracked; working-class women are afraid of being fired. -
I am no longer interested in hearing how lovely a particular person is in real life when they are a bully and a bigot and a troll online. I’ll go further than that it no longer matters to me if I have met said nasty online person in real life and have found them perfectly charming. Behaving well in only one or two sphere of your life does not make you a good person. Treating people with contempt speaks volumes. Always.
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But what about that short-lived but rather sharp rise in the mid 90’s? How do we account for that? Well, one way to try to account for it would to take the right’s favourite ‘welfarism’ canard to heart and suggest that the sharp increase in the teenage pregnancy rate in the mid 90s was caused by changes in the welfare system which created much more favourable financial conditions for teenage mums and, therefore, encouraged more teenage pregnancies.
There are two problems with that argument.
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Even if other opinion pieces were less extreme in their characterisations, like much of the news reportage on Darfur, there still emerged the sense that many perceive the conflict in Darfur as being primarily motivated by anti-African racism, on the part of “Arabs”. But who are these so-called Arabs? Are they not also Africans? Ironically, this false dichotomy, which implicitly relies on the old trope of a geographically-cum-racially divided North and Sub-Saharan Africa, is being used to describe a conflict in the African country that perhaps best defies, indeed obliterates, the idea of two distinct Africas.
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This is why WS and KC's attempts to reframe the argument in their own terms is so harmful. They are attempting to force a conversation which started in LJ and make it follow their own rules…The important thing is not that they are reframing the conversation around pseudonymity and outing, it is that they are reframing the conversation so that it once again leaves that of race and racism in SF fandom. This reframing of the argument is not dangerous simply because of this one incidence of race fail; it is dangerous because it is representative of what happens when a group with more power and a group with less power argue.
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There were early indications that corporate media coverage of Barack Obama’s candidacy would be squirm-inducing, putting on display the elite (mainly white) press corps’ murky ideas about race much more than any straightforward reckoning of black Americans’ situation or what an Obama presidency might mean for their concerns.
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This view reduces any blogger of color whose work has won recognition,a following and a place at the table on mainstream feminist blogs, merely a "sharecropper" on a blogging plantation, foolish to think she might be equal someday. Are Samhita and Shark Fu at Feministing, or Renee and Latoya while guest posting at Feministe, unwittting tokens or writers who do great work and contribute to diversifying the voice of feminism? I am usually pleased when my little blog gets some link love from a bigger feminist site, or when I get called up to the big leagues to guest post, but to hear Van Deven and Shoot tell it, I am merely being taken advantage of.
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You cannot evaluate the value of privacy and disclosure unless you account for the relative power levels of the discloser and the disclosee.
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Under no possible interpretation of the law does this have any bearing on the roles of actual fathers. It affects only people seeking IVF who are not married or in civil partnerships. If you are married, or an actual biological father, this law is entirely irrelevant to you in real terms. How on earth is the role of father 'downgraded'? It reminds me of the similar whines we heard about civil partnerships, as if letting those weird benders commit to each other in some way sullied PROPER marriage. It's an extension of rights, rather than an assault on the rights of the complainers, surely? The whole thing is just being used as an excuse to dredge up old complaints about unmarried and non-hetero folks conceiving, something that's been legal for ages and has nothing to do with this actual law, which if anything will ensure kids have more people looking out for them than before.
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So many alternate histories spin off "battles that went the other way?" Or, important kingpins that get killed? Why is that? Why don't more people use non- military turning points? We'll discuss more obscure—and possibly more interesting—branch points that might make for cool alternate history stories. What if Ann Boleyn's son had grown up? If Jesus were a woman? If the Greeks had phonograph records? If Titanic hit a warm spell? If Shakespeare wrote novels? If chocolate stayed inedible?
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The greatest writers don't stand on the shoulders of modernizations. Fairies are usually pink and glittery and helpful in modern things, but traditionally they use humanity for their own ends rather than helping. You should know that before you write a fairy story, and if you know it and decide that you still want them to be pink, that's your choice, but you should be aware of what you are doing.
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I've been thinking about safe spaces lately, both in offline and online life. I've been thinking about the degree to which some people don't understand what a safe space is, and what it means — a self-determined space, a space I declare safe, a space under my control. When the above asshole tries to march with me, he's saying: I know what is safe for you. I know that I'm okay and I declare that you are not allowed to be uncomfortable around me, because I'm an ALLY, so therefore you're just being mean. He is saying: your emotional reactions are just ridiculous. He is saying: I will call myself an ally, but never respect your ability to speak, to define yourself and your spaces. He doesn't understand that sometimes a safe space means he's not invited.
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A Tourist can become a Guest, if the locals like what they see and ask her to return. But before taking on the Tourist role, a writer or reader will have no contact with said locals. When first learning about and incorporating aspects of another's culture, then, we ought to act like the best of all possible Tourists: to stay alert and to be observant, watch for the ways our own background influences how we interpret our surroundings. We ought to remember that we have baggage. We ought to be prepared to pay for what we receive (but more about that below). We ought to be honest about the fact that we're outsiders. And since we're in an unfamiliar setting, we shouldn't be ashamed of occasionally feeling lost. We ought to swallow our pride at such times and ask for help, ask for directions.
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Think on that, for a second. King — the Great Peacemaker — calls out White Progressives, his supposed allies, for actions that are not ally-like. Why would he do such a thing, and more than once?…
When a PoC writes a critique, sometimes, yes, we're off. And sometimes, yes, we are foolish and human. But often? We've read the works, dove into the maelstrom that you can glide over, struggled with these feelings and the actions that define racism for years and years. Our word is not law…but when your word has been disrespected and shunned for so long, yes, you're going to be angry about further disrespect because we "hurt someone's feelings."
So you might want to take your feelings out, and stop displacing your Privilege issues onto those critiquing and criticizing your words and actions. you might want to stop hiding behind that shrinking shield of "gosh, I didn't know," and actually start talking TO us. -
One for the "laugh that we don't cry" clips…
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Maybe you genuinely don't know about sites like Redwatch and people like Kathy Sierra. Perhaps you are genuinely unaware that not so long ago, people would flick through the phone book, find someone with an obviously non-English name, ring them up and shout racist abuse at them. Would you like me to copy and paste the vile, racist comments we got on skincoloured?
