Brute Reason is Going Comment-Free

I am closing comments on this blog until further notice.

I’m not writing this because I think that needs justification. I’m writing this for the sake of my own clarity, to help me decide if/when I want reopen comments, and to empower other bloggers who are considering a similar decision.

Otherwise, I don’t have to justify my decision because I don’t owe you a comments section any more than I owe you access to my living room. I don’t owe you anything other than I owe anyone else: basic kindness and respect.

I’m sure you’re wondering what awful harassment and rape and death threats I’ve gotten recently that made me come to this decision, but the reality is a lot less dramatic. I rarely get harassment and threats these days. When I did, it was horrifyingly unpleasant and scary, but it ultimately did less long-term damage than the actual reason: boring everyday online negativity and nitpicking.

Continue reading “Brute Reason is Going Comment-Free”

Brute Reason is Going Comment-Free
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Welcome to Brute Reason at The Orbit!

As I wrote over at my old address, Brute Reason is now part of The Orbit, a collective of progressive secular bloggers (many of whom you may recognize from their old homes at FtB, Skepchick, Patheos Atheist, and independent blogs).

So, hi!

Miri holding a sign reading "Welcome to The Orbit!"

If you want to learn more about The Orbit, I suggest checking out our About Us page or our Kickstarter (please support it, by the way!). And if you’re here primarily because you follow my writing, do check out our front page and meet some of the other writers here, because they’re awesome.

And if you’re not here because you follow my writing, well, hopefully you do now! To introduce myself: I’m Miri, a writer and therapist based in Ohio and originally from Russia/Israel. (Plot twist: I’ve never been to Russia. My parents left it shortly before I was born. So I was raised Russian/Jewish/Israeli/American.) I write about social justice, psychology, sexuality, and sometimes other stuff too. My particular interests within that are mental health, queer stuff, polyamory, interpersonal skills (i.e. setting and respecting boundaries), and related topics. Here are some of my favorite pieces that I’ve written within the past year:

Besides progressive/secular issues, I’ve got a ton of passions and hobbies that don’t make it onto the blog much, but I’m hoping that this new home will help me feel a bit more free to explore those in writing. I recently moved back to Ohio from New York City in what turned out to be the most surprisingly amazing that that’s ever happened to me (if you read my writing back when I was obsessed with New York, you’re probably like whaaaaat), and that’s allowed me to recenter a bunch of hobbies I’d let slide and get into some new ones too. Currently I spend large chunks of time on performing burlesque, biking, otherwise working out, playing in a community band, cooking (especially making my own ice cream), participating in local meetups and other events, reading (I try to find a balance between reading SF/F novels/comics and non-fiction about topics I’m interested in), and watching Star Wars over and over as many times as I can. It’s a busy life.

Since my day job is not particularly lucrative, I rely on my income from writing to help pay the bills. To that end, please consider supporting me on Patreon. You can give as little as $1 per post, and it makes a huge difference to me.

How to follow this blog

Besides Patreon, there are a few ways you can keep up with me and my writing. You can follow me on FacebookTwitter, and Tumblr. You can follow this blog’s RSS feed, and you can also subscribe to it via email by clicking on the sidebar button at the top left and scrolling down till you see the email subscription box.

How to comment on this blog

Well, you just type your comment and hit submit, right?

Not quite. I have a comment policy:

Comments that do not contribute to what I view as a productive, interesting conversation will be deleted. Commenters who are abusive or who consistently make nonproductive, non-interesting comments will be banned. This space belongs to me, and I don’t owe anyone a platform.

I’ve given this a lot of thought over the years and ended up realizing that I don’t owe anyone anything except kindness. Kind isn’t the same as nice, and if you are unkind to me, I don’t have to sit and listen to it. Especially not in my own space.

Be kind, listen to others, and take responsibility for yourself, and you’ll probably have a pretty good time not only on this blog but in life generally.

I hope you stick around and check out some of our other blogs! I’m so excited to see where this goes.

Welcome to Brute Reason at The Orbit!

Goodbye, Ed

Yesterday, Ed Brayton, one of our cofounders, announced that he is leaving FreethoughtBlogs and moving to Patheos:

So why am I leaving? Also omnipresent since the start of FTB, as I’m sure you well know, has been controversy. The bloggers here have often gone on crusades and launched battles, most of them necessary and justified. But along with that has come a great deal of drama and stress. I’ve endured several threats of lawsuits against me as the owner of the network over the words and actions of others. I’ve had continual demands that I do something about this or that blogger, that I throw them off the network or censor them. I’ve been caught in the crossfire of a great many fights, continually taking shrapnel in battles that I wasn’t even involved in.

I believe it has to some degree impeded my ability to engage in important activist projects by making some people reluctant to work with me because of all that controversy. That frequent stress has also begun to affect my health. I have two autoimmune disorders that are triggered by stress and I have come to the conclusion that it would be better for my health, both physical and mental, to get out of the crucible and be responsible only for myself and my own words and actions.

We (especially Greta and I) talk a lot about self-care here, and we always emphasize that it should be okay to step back or quit when you need to for your own health. (Mental health is, obviously, included in health.) Of course, Ed isn’t really quitting, just moving his blog elsewhere, but he’s stepping back from the responsibility of leading a network like this one and being deluged with all the crap he got deluged with because of it.

Something I often say is that we should thank and encourage people when they practice good self-care, because that helps (if only a little) assuage the guilt that many people feel when they need to step back and also show others that self-care is okay (and not selfish, and definitely preferable to not-self-care). So, props to Ed for doing what he needs to do regardless of what others think he should do. I hope that his actions help more people feel empowered to care for themselves and trust that the projects they started will either continue in their absence, or maybe be reborn as something different, perhaps even better.

I also want to thank Ed for creating this amazing space. Despite some of the challenges, I think I’ve really grown as a thinker and writer as a result of being here. Ed has personally encouraged me many times and I appreciate that also. Often it’s fellow writers who best understand how easy it is to get discouraged and how quickly the self-doubt sets in.

I want to address some disturbing things I’ve been seeing in response to Ed’s departure:

Continue reading “Goodbye, Ed”

Goodbye, Ed

See Me at CONvergence & SSACon!

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This is rather belated since CONvergence starts today, BUT I’m here and will be on some panels that you should go see if you’re coming to the con. Check it out:

‘Modern’ Mental Illnesses
Friday, July 3 • 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Where do “new” mental disorders come from? How are they discovered, and are they caused by modern society or just reconceptualizations of conditions that have existed for ages? Topics include eating disorders, sex addiction, video game addiction, and ASD.

Writing While Female
Saturday, July 4 • 11:00am – 12:00pm
An exploration of the specific challenges that women face in today’s writing environment.

User’s Guide to Therapy
Sunday, July 5 • 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Finding a good therapist who practices effective therapy can be a struggle. We’ll give you the overview of which therapies are empirically validated, how to find a therapist, and how to work with your therapist to build a strong relationship.

The rest of the CONvergence schedule is here.

I’m also doing a salon (basically, an informal interactive discussion) about consent & sexual communication in the FtB party room, Room 228, on Friday at 2 PM!

Otherwise, the FtB party room will be open in the evenings starting at 6 PM and you should definitely come hang out with us there.

SSACon

The following weekend, July 10-12, is the Secular Student Alliance Annual Conference in Columbus. This will be my 4th SSACon, which is kind of ridiculous and cool. I’ll be on a panel called “LGBT Activism Beyond Same-Sex Marriage,” on Sunday, July 12 at 11 AM. The rest of the schedule is here.

Another cool thing that’s happening at SSACon is that Greta Christina and Marsha Botzer are both being awarded by the SSA–Greta for her service as an “ambassador” of the SSA, and Marsha for being an awesome activist who serves as an inspiration to secular students.

If you’re going to be at either of these conferences, feel free to come say hi!

See Me at CONvergence & SSACon!

Big Life Changes + A Cool Way to Support My Writing

Screenshot of my Patreon page.

So, a lot has happened in the past few weeks. I finished my internship, graduated with my masters in social work, and (hopefully temporarily) moved back to Ohio to be with my family while I decide what to do next and look for jobs.

[Please note that although I am about to discuss job hunting, I am not looking for advice at this time.]

To be honest, I’m not optimistic. It’s not really in my nature to be optimistic about things that seem to have more to do with random chance than with actual skills or effort, and almost everyone I know is struggling to find a job, keep a job, or survive financially with the job they do have. Although I’m privileged in many ways, my family immigrated relatively recently and we just don’t have the massive network of connections that many non-immigrants have. So, we’ll see. Meanwhile, I miss my city terribly and I’m not happy about being in a state where you can’t go five miles down the interstate without a huge billboard telling you you’re going to hell for your sins.

There are a few roses amid these thorns, however. One is that I’m getting to see my family a lot and that’s great. Another is that I know lots of cool people in Columbus and I can go there often to have a social life. (I went to a Columbus Rationality meeting last night and was super impressed. It’s a subset of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, if you’re interested in finding out more about that.) Another is that I finally get to relax, sit by the pool, and read a few of those books I’ve been desperate to read.

And another is that I can focus on writing more than I did before, and while inspiration may be difficult to come by when I’m so hopeless and sad a lot of the time, all this time to read and think will hopefully prove useful.

So! A number of people suggested that I start a Patreon for my writing because there are people who’d be willing to support me. I decided to give it a shot, because it seemed fun and potentially helpful.

I’m not going to try to talk anyone into supporting my writing if they’re not already interested in doing so, because honestly that feels weird and icky to me. Spend your money however you think you should spend it. But, even a dollar per post would help me out a lot (and could make the difference in coming back to New York sooner rather than later), and you get perks!

Screenshot of some of the rewards from my Patreon page.
Just a few of the perks.

As much as I want to keep writing, it’s sort of difficult to justify the time I spend on it given that I feel like every spare minute should go towards the project of Getting A Job ASAP So That I’m Not Broke Forever. That’s why your support would actually make a huge difference right now, even if it’s not a lot.

The really fun thing about starting a Patreon has been the opportunity to clarify what it is I’m trying to accomplish with my writing, and what my principles are. Here’s what I wrote:

My blog, Brute Reason, covers social justice, psychology, mental health, sexuality, and other stuff I care about. Most of my writing touches on issues like consent and autonomy, direct communication, community building, and rational thinking. Although my writing often persuades people, I’m more interested in giving people tools to live more happily, think more clearly, and act more ethically. I aspire to be compassionate, charitable, reasonable, nuanced, and honest in my writing. Integrity and accountability are very important to me. My writing is often personal, because I want to remind others who struggle with the things I do that they’re not alone.

It should be obvious that just because I aspire to something doesn’t necessarily mean I always succeed, but it does mean that I always have a way to evaluate whether or not I’m doing what I want to be doing.

Anyway, I hope that if you follow this blog and it’s important to you, you’ll contribute what you can, or share it with others. I’m really excited to see where this goes.

 

Big Life Changes + A Cool Way to Support My Writing

#FtBCon Preview!

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FtBCon 3 is almost upon us! Now’s the time to stock up on enough cheez-its and Diet Coke to get you through the weekend. Or maybe that’s just me.

Here’s a preview of the stuff I’ll be hosting or participating in this weekend. All times are Central.

Friday, 1/23, 5:30 PM: I’ll be co-facilitating a panel called “Treating the Brain: Skeptics Talk Therapy and Therapists.” It’s exactly what it sounds like. We’ll be talking about the experience of therapy from a skeptical, secular perspective. Don’t miss it!

Friday, 1/23, 8 PM: I’ll be hosting a delightful panel called “Kumbay-Ahh-Ahh-Ahhh!!!: Building a Community Around Shared Sexual Interests,” facilitated by Neil Wehneman. Learn how to make a sexuality-based community successful, safe, and fun.

Saturday, 1/24, 10 AM: I’ll be a participant on a panel about the psychology of trolls. I finally get to talk about that study on trolls and personality traits that came out this past year.

Saturday, 1/24, 11 AM: I’ll be hosting a special episode of Kelley Freeman and Gordon Maples’ video series, “Secular Start Up.” This is part of the Secular Student Alliance‘s FtBCon track, and Kelley and Gordon will be discussing how to successfully connect secular campus groups with local community groups.

Saturday, 1/24, 1 PM: Continuing the SSA track, I’ll host Pete Zupan’s Secular Safe Zone training. I’ve completed this training before at an SSA conference and found it full of really useful, practical advice about supporting young secular people that you may interact with through work or school.

Saturday, 1/24, 4 PM: FtB regular Sastra will present her talk, “The Little People Argument: The Difference between Respect and Forbearance, and Why It Matters,” in which she makes the case against the “live and let live” approach to non-extremist religion.

Saturday, 1/24, 8 PM: Scott Lohman will speak on the humanism of Star Trek, and how science fiction as a genre is able to explore more taboo ideas than other genres.

Sunday, 1/25, 12 PM: I’ll be on a panel with some really cool people (Wesley Fenza, Chana Messinger, and Franklin Veaux) called “Reasonable Relationships: How Does Our Skepticism Influence our Romantic or Non-Romantic Relationships?” We get to apply cognitive biases to our love lives!

Finally, Sunday 1/25, 3 PM: I’ll be on a panel called “Did You Remember Your (Love) Life Vest? Polyamory in the Deep End,” which is a sequel to the previous FtBCon polyamory panel. This time, we’re making it 200-level.

And at 7 we’ll all get in a hangout together and shoot the shit like we always do.

There’s a lot of awesome stuff at FtBCon besides the sessions I’m involved in, though. Check out the full Lanyrd schedule here.

I hope you join us!

#FtBCon Preview!

MASSIVE Occasional Link Roundup

I have been so bad at link roundups. That’s why this one is MASSIVE.

First of all, thank you to Secular Woman for choosing me for their Blog of the Year award. It’s quite an honor! Check out all their other 2014 award recipients here. They’re all great people doing great work.

Second, I’ll be presenting my consent workshop at the American Atheists National Convention in Memphis, Tennessee on April 2-5. I’ve presented it twice already (at the previous two Skepticons) and am really excited to make it even better this year.

Finally, here is a reminder that FtBCon 3 is in just a few weeks, January 23-25.

Here’s the MASSIVE list of awesome articles spanning basically the entire second half of 2014.

1. s.e. smith explains that having depression doesn’t necessarily mean being sad all the time:

I feel like I need to engage in a sort of relentless performative sadness to be taken seriously, for people to understand that I really am depressed and that each day — each moment of each day — is a struggle for me, that even when I am happy, I am still fighting the monster. I feel like I need to darken everything around me, to stop communicating with the world, to stop publishing anything, to just stop. Because that way I will appear suitably, certifiably sad, and thus, depressed — and then maybe people will recognise that I’m depressed and perhaps they’ll even offer support and assistance. The jokes die in my throat, the smile never reaches my lips, I don’t share that moment of happiness on the beach by turning to my friend and expressing joy.

2. Libby Anne writes about atheists who take up women’s rights only when it’s convenient:

Frankly, I feel used. These atheist activists are the sort of people who want to use my story as proof that religion is horrible to women but aren’t willing to listen to what I have to say about sexism in our culture at large. They are the sort of people who are eager to use the shooting of young education activist Malala Yousafzai by the Taliban to prove how horrible religion is for women but somehow fail to mention that Malala is a Muslim who speaks of drawing her inspiration to fight for gender equality from the Koran. This is not standing up for women. This is exploiting women as merely a tool in a fight against religion.

3. Olivia Cole on the complicity of white women in anti-Black racism and slavery:

It’s true, white women lacked the agency of their husbands, fathers and brothers, so their hand in slavery did not extend to the buying and selling of human chattel, the laws being made that called black people only a fraction of a human being. But white women whipped black bodies. They burned them. They posed next to the murdered bodies of black people who were lynched. They called people niggers. They scratched faces. They separated families. While wearing their pretty dresses, they ruined lives.

4. Crommunist writes about the friend zone:

As someone who absolutely used to believe in and complain about the Friend Zone, it took a lot of listening and self-examination to accept that it was entirely possible that not only was there nothing wrong with me, but that there was nothing wrong with her either (whoever ‘she’ happened to be at the time). People do things for reasons. Sometimes those reasons are malicious and exploitative and cruel. But at least as often (and I’d say far more often), they’re entirely reasonable and defensible. Part of this problem, to be sure, is that we have adopted a completely bizarre model of relationships that denies both men and women full agency – men as mindless sexual automatons, women as miserly guardians of sexual activity. A more mature understanding of relationships as two people who find ways to enhance each other’s lives allows for the possibility that people could have meaningful interaction that may or may not include sexual intimacy.

5. Brit Bennett writes about racism and good intentions:

Darren Wilson has been unrepentant about taking Mike Brown’s life. He insists he could not have done anything differently. Daniel Pantaleo has offered condolences to the Garner family, admitting that he “feels very bad” about Garner’s death.

“It is never my intention to harm anyone,” he said.

I don’t know which is worse, the unrepentant killer or the man who insists to the end that he meant well.

6. Julian Sanchez writes about harassment and “harmless torturers”:

One reason public discourse about racism and sexism tends to be so acrimonious—though certainly not the only one—may be that we don’t explicitly enough distinguish “harmless torturers” cases from the “bad old days” variety.  Sophisticated critics, of course, routinely stress that misogyny and racism are fundamentally structural problems that can be perpetuated by actions that don’tnecessarily require the individuals perpetuating them to harbor any malicious intentions or vulgar attitudes.  But that’s still what we most automatically associate with the claim that something is “racist” or “sexist”—leading people to take umbrage (often in bad faith, but presumably at least sometimes sincerely) when a particular utterance or action is called out.

7. Eric Meyer writes about Facebook’s “Your Year in Review” feature:

To show me Rebecca’s face and say “Here’s what your year looked like!” is jarring.  It feels wrong, and coming from an actual person, it would be wrong.  Coming from code, it’s just unfortunate.  These are hard, hard problems.  It isn’t easy to programmatically figure out if a picture has a ton of Likes because it’s hilarious, astounding, or heartbreaking.

Algorithms are essentially thoughtless.  They model certain decision flows, but once you run them, no more thought occurs.  To call a person “thoughtless” is usually considered a slight, or an outright insult; and yet, we unleash so many literally thoughtless processes on our users, on our lives, on ourselves.

8. Dana Bolger writes about the harmful discourse surrounding “victims” versus “survivors”:

In elevating those who “move forward,” the victim/survivor dichotomy implicitly condemns those who do not, reaffirming myths about what constitutes a good versus bad survivor, and legitimizing certain forms of survivorship over others. To be a (strong) survivor is to carry that weight — figuratively, and literally. To be a (weak) victim is to crumble, “stay” silent, engage in self-harm.

9. Britni writes about men (hi Richard Dawkins) who try to “rank” forms of sexual assault:

The only reason forcible kissing would not be “life-changing” for me would be because I experience so many forms of sexual violence on a constant basis that my life is alreadychanged. My life looks inherently different than a man’s does. It also looks inherently different than it would if I were not subjected to sexual violence in the form of catcalling, groping, online harassment, and rape threats on the reg, or if I’d never experienced other forms of sexual assault and rape. My life is a reflection of the fact that I’m constantly on guard or on edge, constantly on the defense when I’m around men that I do not know and wary of men that I do know. My entire LIFE is a “life-changing” event, and most women that I know would tell you the same thing. It’s exhausting to have to worry about being assaulted every damn day, but we do it. And yeah, we have to look at the world through the lens of Schrodinger’s rapist because our experience tells us that we must. That is a result of cumulative, constant, pervasive incidents of sexual assault and violence over a lifetime.

10. Dean Roth wrote a beautiful piece about loving someone who is depressed:

Sometimes, your depressed friend wants to hang out with you so they can scream about how awful they feel. It’s not because we need attention, but because we know you value our wellbeing and want to help us affirm our struggles. But I am a depression vampire; to talk about myself, I need to be invited in. If you simply ask how I’ve been doing, I’ll just say “oh you know, fine.” Please be so explicitly clear that you want us to open up.Logically, those suffering from depression probably know that our loved ones won’t mind if we just start talking about our problems. Nonetheless, depression loves to tell us that our friends are not actually our friends. If you reassure us that we have a place in your life, we can begin to rebuild our trust in the world and our own self-esteem.

11. This article by Shea Emma Fett is about abuse in polyamorous relationships, but a lot of it is applicable to monogamous relationships as well:

If you are being abused, there is a very high chance that you will be accused of being abusive or of otherwise causing the abuse. That’s because this accusation is devastatingly effective at shutting you down and obtaining control in a dispute. However, I also believe this accusation is often sincere. People often engage in abusive behaviors because they feel deeply powerless and that powerlessness hurts. But not everything that hurts in a relationship is abuse, and not everything that hurts your partner is your responsibility. It’s important to be able to distinguish abuse from other things that may happen in relationships that are hurtful, or may even be toxic or unhealthy, but are not fundamentally about entitlement and control.

12. Paul Fidalgo writes about the brutalization of women in video games:

In modern civilization there is simply no excuse for manufacturing entertainment that holds up the brutalization of women as virtuous and worthy of reward. None. It’s not necessary even if the aim is to create the most suspensful, pulse-quickening adventure game. The only reason to do it is to titillate a certain demographic, and make them feel more powerful than the automata women placed in the games.

13. Lis Coburn has a fantastic take on the idea that children receive “too much” praise:

Validating someone means recognizing that a person’s own perceptions are worth listening to. It is recognizing them as real human things that real humans think. When they say, “I hate myself,” or “I’m worthless,” or “I wish my mother would die,” validation is saying, “Yeah. I can see you really do. You feel this way really strongly.”

Most of what was cast in the 80s and 90s as failure to praise children was actually failure to validate them. When a child comes to an adult, dripping with defeat, and says, “I failed,” praise is, “No you didn’t! You did really well!” and validation is, “You’re really disappointed with how you did, hunh? That sucks.” And over time, if adults do nothing but praise, what children hear is: Your self-doubt and weaknesses are not wanted here. Failure is not acceptable, not even thinkable. I cannot accept you unless you do well.

14. Laurie Penny on why we’re winning the culture war:

Their rage is the rage of bewilderment.

They can’t understand why the new reaction to nude selfie leaks isn’t ‘you asked for it, you whore’, but ‘everyone does it, stop slut shaming.’ They can’t understand the logic of a world where ‘Social Justice Warrior’ just doesn’t work as an insult, because a great many people care quite a lot about social justice and are proud to fight for it.

They can’t understand why they look ridiculous.

15. Greta Christina explains why it’s nonsensical to use the word “radical” as an insult:

Insulting an idea (or a person) simply because they’re radical is an empty insult, devoid of any actual critical content. It’s like calling someone a poopyhead. (Unless, of course, the person’s head is actually made of poop.) And rejecting an idea (or a person) simply because you see them as radical is a sign of lazy thinking. In fact, it’s a sign of no thinking. It shows that you haven’t actually given the idea any consideration. It shows that the only consideration you gave the idea was to think, “I haven’t heard that before, it’s unfamiliar and it seems extreme, therefore it’s wrong.”

16. Ashe Dryden has some really good advice for coping with online harassment.

17. Kate Harding on misplaced concern for “free speech” online:

I’ll go to the mat for the First Amendment, but as far as comments on private websites are concerned, I say squelch ‘em all. The right to speak your mind does not include the right to parasitically attach yourself to a high-traffic website in order to reach an audience you could never earn on your own.

18. Heina discusses the “happy” Down syndrome stereotype:

“Positive” stereotypes are anything but. Those who more or less fit into them are pigeonholed, those who fit some but not all of the characteristics are identity-policed, and those who don’t fit them at all are thrown under the bus. Avoiding such splash damage is as simple as remembering that people with disabilities should not have to achieve heights of perceived “goodness” in order to be allowed to exist, heights that would never be asked of those without disabilities.

19. Katherine Lampe writes about shaming people for attempting/committing suicide (TW):

When you shame a person for mental illness, for attempting or completing suicide, what you’re doing is trying to make yourself comfortable at their expense. When you say, “Think of the people you will hurt,” you’re saying, “THINK OF MY COMFORT!” But most of the people I’ve known who’ve struggled with mental illness have already done that, and it didn’t work. We’ve already thought of you. We’ve already done the volunteer work. We’ve already found new hobbies. We’ve looked at the greeting cars we’ve saved from family and the letters from lovers. It’s not that we don’t know. It’s that none of it helps. And you think… You think, “Who’s the more selfish? Me, for wanting not to have to live in this pain? Or you, for insisting I do to spare you?”

20. Culturally Disoriented on what happens when disabled people try to “self-advocate.

21. Mia McKenzie discusses the ways in which (white) people get distracted from the issue at hand in the wake of a police shooting of a person of color:

But let’s get something straight: a community pushing back against a murderous police force that is terrorizing them is not a “riot”. It’s an uprising. It’s a rebellion. It’s a community saying We can’t take this anymore. We won’t take it. It’s people who have been dehumanized to the point of rightful rage. And it happens all over the world. Uprisings and rebellions are necessary and inevitable, locally and globally. This is not to say that actual riots don’t happen. White folks riot at sporting events, for example. Riots happen. But people rising up in righteous anger and rage in the face of oppression should not be dismissed as simply a “riot”.

Don’t be distracted by terms like “rioting”. Whether you’re for or against uprising and rebellion (side-eye if you’re against it, though), it’s a tool, not the issue itself. The issue is yet another Black teenager murdered by police. His name was Mike Brown.

22. Sarah Jones writes about the silencing of rape/abuse survivors:

Imagine telling a veteran that they’re too emotionally connected to the subject of war to discuss it properly. Anyone making that argument in public would be dismissed as a crank—and they should be, because it’s an absurd argument. We otherwise readily acknowledge that a person’s direct experience with a subject makes them more qualified to discuss it. It doesn’t grant them infallibility, of course. Nobody can lay claim to that. We’re talking about some level of expertise that the average person doesn’t necessarily possess.

But we hold women to a different standard when the subject is abuse. And then we dismiss them as conspiracy theorists when they start to talk about the existence of a rape culture.

23. Misha explains how people unintentionally enable bullies:

How do you effectively bully as an adult? The same way you effectively bully as a kid: you either figure out the places you can do it where no one else will see you, or you figure out the ways you can do it that people will either not notice or disregard.

24. s.e. smith suggests things to do instead of giving unsolicited advice:

Instead of unsolicited advice in response to a statement where someone is simply speaking to something that’s going on in her life, try just saying: ‘I hear you.’ If you have experience in that area, ‘I’ve been there.’ If you don’t, ‘I’m listening.’ ‘So sorry you’re struggling with this.’ ‘Thinking of you.’ Just stop there. You don’t need to say anything else. The original comment was simply a statement, an expression of frustration or anger or grief or fear or pain, and sometimes, people just need to know that people are paying attention, that people are thinking of them.

25. Leigh Alexander offers some tips for responding to online sexism and discussions thereof:

DON’T: Make stupid jokes. You might be one of tons of people Tweeting at her, tone is hard to read online, and you shouldn’t be putting anyone, especially someone who does not actually know you, in charge of figuring out your sense of humor when they are under stress. You might just be trying to lighten things up or cheer the situation, but let people be angry, let them have heated discussions if they want and need to. Imagine this: Your dog dies, and a stranger walking past thinks you should cheer up, or take it less seriously, and decides to joke about your dead dog. What would you think of them?

26. Jenn M. Jackson on the historic white fear of Black people:

The fear that black people would become too wealthy or accomplished was what caused early twentieth century southern whites to strategically lynch some of the most accomplished black families, the ones who owned a horse and buggy or a nice suit jacket. The fear that black women would steal white ‘massas’ from their whites wives resulted in the intentional objectification of black women’s bodies and hair, demoralizing them, beastializing them, making them into sexual beings rather than human beings. The fear that blacks were thinking too highly of themselves and threatening white business ownership was what caused them to burn it down on June 21st, 1921. White fear has systematically and by design demolished and suppressed black wealth, mobility, and familial progress for over three centuries. What we are witnessing today is no accident.

27. Some excellent advice from Captain Awkward about antidepressants and abusive families.

What have you read or written lately?

MASSIVE Occasional Link Roundup

Open Thread: What Do You Like About Yourself?

Right now is a difficult time for many people for many reasons. It’s hard (for me, maybe also for you) to know that there isn’t really anything you can do that will make it better right away.

Sometimes that means feeling useless, worthless, and incompetent, especially if you, like me, also struggle with mental illness.

Something I occasionally find useful in these moments is to remind myself that there are good things about me that I like, and that they are true even if I mess up and even if the world sucks and even if I feel like I’m not doing “enough.”

Speaking positively about yourself can be hard, especially for women (who are often socialized to not “brag” and to be “humble”) and especially for people with mental illnesses (who can have difficulty earnestly believing that they have any positive qualities at all). I am both of these things, so this is an exercise I especially appreciate.

Here are some things I like about myself:

  • writing skills
  • ability to set boundaries clearly with people
  • resourcefulness
  • physical strength
  • ability to see the good in things/people I otherwise dislike and to acknowledge the bad in things/people I otherwise like
  • ability to care about issues even in the absence of a strong emotional response to them
  • comfort with apologizing
  • comfort with just sitting and listening to people without judging, offering advice, getting overwhelmed, or turning the conversation back to myself
  • willingness to deal with the negative emotions that being polyamorous sometimes brings up, as well as ability to experience compersion for my partners
  • style. See below for evidence. 🙂

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What do you like about yourself?

Open Thread: What Do You Like About Yourself?

Housekeeping & Open Thread

Hello! I’ve been too busy to do very much writing that isn’t for pay (that is, the Daily Dot). I haven’t even had a chance to do any proper link roundups, so I haven’t shared these two things with you:

1. I had the opportunity to be a guest on a lovely podcast called Sex For Smart People. In this episode, we discussed catcalling, female orgasms, Jian Ghomeshi, Gamergate, that Northwestern University professor who was accused of sexual assault and responded by suing the accuser, and affirmative consent laws. And more. Check it out here.

2. Skepticon is tomorrow! I’m repeating my workshop from last year, Getting It On at the Con: How to Get Lucky Consensually. It’ll be at 3 PM tomorrow in the delightfully named Maui Ballroom. Same deal as last time. In addition, I am taking my DSLR to Skepticon, so if you are there and want nice shots of your outfits, find me and let me know! I will not think you are vain. I love photographing people.

Immediately following Skepticon, I’ll be spending a lovely week at home in Ohio, where I will cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner for many people. Hopefully some actual writing will get done during that time, too.

Since I’ve been so absent lately, let’s do an open thread! What have you been reading or writing lately? What’s going on in your life? How are you coping with these bullshit temperatures? Why is your city the absolute best city in the world? (You’ve already heard my answer to that question, so I’m opening it up to you.) How do you feel about [current event I have not written about]? Here is your chance to talk about all the stuff you can’t normally talk about in my threads because it would be off-topic!

Housekeeping & Open Thread

Open Thread: In What Ways Do You Fail At Adulthood?

This may seem like a weirdly negative open thread topic, but there’s a point to it, trust me.

Something I’ve been struggling with a lot since I was 19 or 20 or so is the idea of Being An Adult and what that means. More specifically, there are a lot of things, small things and big things, that I feel I “ought” to be able to do if I am to Be An Adult, but I can’t do them, or don’t feel like doing them. Do I still get to consider myself an adult? How do I resolve the cognitive dissonance of being unable to do something that’s part of my mental schema of what adulthood means?

In some ways, I fit the “adult” stereotype. I don’t receive financial assistance from my parents. I can throw a legitimate dinner party. I have houseplants and keep them alive for the most part. I pay off my credit card in full every month. I basically take care of myself and my own needs, do the things that need to be done without reminders or cajoling from anyone, and set my own goals without needing anyone else’s approval.

But in other ways, there are still a lot of “adult things” that I can’t seem to get right. For instance:

  • I do not bring my lunch to work. I hate food that’s been sitting in tupperware for hours. I hate cooking in the morning or the night before. I hate soggy sandwiches. I hate salads. I hate cold lunch. I hate carrying around even more stuff. I hate washing tupperware that’s been sitting around all day. I hate forgetting to wash tupperware that’s been sitting around all day. I hate feeling hungry no matter what I brought because I can never bring as much as I can get at a local take-out place. I hate eating 10 granola bars for lunch. I hate that 10 granola bars cost more than lunch from a local take-out place and feel much less satisfying. I hate a lot of things. So I buy my fucking lunch.
  • I cannot arrive anywhere without being sweaty and disheveled. Even if I’m not in a rush! The city means lots of walking and lots of standing wedged in a mass of people on the subway. Unless I give myself an extra half hour so I can wait for the nicest emptiest train and then crawl down the street to my destination at a leisurely pace, I’m going to show up hot and exhausted and with my hair going all over the place.
  • I am bad at alcohol. I hate beer. I hate whiskey and scotch and all that other stuff. I don’t really like wine except the very sweet wine, and I know nothing about picking out nice wine. I don’t know how to mix drinks. When I go out to a bar I order a diet rum & coke, a vodka cranberry, or one of the special cocktails. I absolutely don’t give a fuck which wines go with which foods. The only reason I ever pay a lot of money for alcohol is because otherwise you can’t drink in New York.
  • I do not make my bed. Because IDGAF.
  • I also don’t dust anything. I hate dusting. I have no idea where to put the things that were on the surface while I’m dusting that surface. I can’t notice dust for some reason, so I have no idea what I need to dust. Also, it’s so much more boring than almost any other cleaning task.
  • I have not had a serious romantic relationship with anyone who actually lives in my city for over five years and counting. A psychoanalyst would have a field day with me. Maybe I have a pathological fear of letting anyone get too close to me. Or maybe I just don’t have time to see the same person several times a week. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.
  • I don’t frame any of the things I put up on my walls. I don’t care if it’s “college-y.” Money’s tight, framing is expensive, and the last thing I want is for that shit to fall on the floor and break.
  • I do not wear pumps, pantsuits, necklaces, bracelets, button-downs, sweater sets (is that even still a thing), or any of that kind of Career Woman stuff. And I thank a nonexistent deity every day that I work in a field where this stuff is unnecessary.
  • I live with roommates. I adore my roommates and it’s not like I have any other option, but it’s hard to feel like a grown-up when I can’t have my own place to live.
  • I only go to the doctor when I’m sick. Time, money.
  • I miss my family to an unreasonable and depressing extent. 
  • I have no idea what I’ll end up doing as a career. I only know what I want to do, but that’s not the same as having a plan that I’m confident I can carry out.

Of course, the more I think about it, the more I realize that this isn’t really about failing at adulthood. It’s about not living up to a societal image of what a mature person ought to look like and be able to do. A lot of this is out of our control, some of it isn’t, but ultimately none of it is a reasonable way to judge someone’s value and capabilities as a human being.

But sometimes it helps to share it with other people and see that you’re not at all alone in feeling inadequate and a little like a child sometimes. Even the people we compare ourselves to when we’re feeling negative probably have these same thoughts.

So: in what ways do you fail at adulthood? What did you expect to be doing, or able to do, by now that you still can’t get right? 

As a friendly reminder, please do not give advice (to me or to any other commenter) unless they’ve specifically asked for it. And if you want advice, feel free to ask for it directly.

Open Thread: In What Ways Do You Fail At Adulthood?