This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
For Caine? Clearly, mirrored Terminator shades. At least when she’s on patrol. :D
Also, thank you, Horde of all Hearts, and Portia, for being kind enough to make the appeal for me. I actually asked her if she thought it’d be ok two days ago, and it took me that long to get her the details to go ahead. The upbringing is strong with this one (cf. Stiff Upper Lip, Dunkirk Spirit, Other Lies My Grandfather Told Me).
If you’ve already written, please be patient until tomorrow morning, when in the light of a brand new day, I will get up and be a grownup and face my problems.
I may even open some mail. I don’t do that very often.
A propos de something else, I noticed today, while playing with my gorgeous Shep (I should figure out how to take a shot of her; i meant for her to be East Asian, but when I was messing with the sliders, she somehow ended up looking like a West African woman) who is, as noted, Black, that some of the conversations become almost completely unheard of when Shepard is a pansexual Black woman: conversations involving the heroes that involve no one categorized as white.
Viz., when Shep goes down to the Shuttle Bay, and chats with Lt Cortez about his feelings about the loss of his husband, while his friend Lt. Vega works out and kibitzes, we have a Black woman talking with two Latino men, one of whom is gay. Or when I (I’m terrible) seduce my communications tech, who is a brown-skinned English woman (by her accent), and you get a (weirdly creepy, but it’s like that with whoever’s in the image) moon-goes-behind-the-clouds type sex scene, with two women of colour.
That’s not to say there aren’t failures in ME3. There are some. But wow, does it ever feel awesome to have scenes like the above happening: more than one conversation between two queer people of colour.
Oh, it is named after someone with such a name? Hmm, that does somewhat change things. I had assumed “black wrapper = black people are black = [racist slur]” as the process.
Oh, and the night’s Rodent story, as related to Theophontes in the Angry Dome:
Caine Rat: Theo is always well behaved. Sometimes a Rain Piss™ is necessary. Theo, Chester, and Vasco had great fun last night, knocking my easel over. No one was hurt, but I haven’t seen those boys run that fast since they were two months old! Hee.
Theophontes: :-) Yay, rodents!
Caine Rat: Very much so. I imagine they were most proud, doing all that climbing, and scaling the very top of the easel. They are all large boys, and they surely didn’t anticipate tipping it. (It’s very old, and quite heavy.) It crashed into one of the studio doors with a tremendous noise, and off they scarpered like the Three Stooges.
So. Effing. Cute.
The illustrator in me is jumping to draw this but I don’t want to make it a concrete image :)
Would destroy the fun…
Gobi:
I don’t see how. Do as you wish. Drawing is fun.
hrm. I barely know myself.. how would you see me?
Also, I feel better when I go and do stuff with people… but I still moderately dislike dorm life. I’m attached to my parents (despite bigotry) and big houses.
ugh… I have to grow up now. and then, the mundane.
MM
I stand corrected.
CaitieCat
Depending on what’s left after supplies and the electric bill, we may be able to send something your way tomorrow.
Thunk
*hugs* Best wishes.
Thunk:
Oh, storm. Whipped colours, blues, grays, sunset palettes, orange, yellow, pink. Columns of clouds, layers of clouds, wind, strong and fresh, dancing on scents, then skipping off. Gathering power, chaotic movement, calm within, electric shine.
Caine, I see you as resembling my uncle’s partner (who is a woman, FWIW). Warm and nurturing covering a core of solid steel. No-nonsense, but with a mischievous streak.
…none of those are physical traits, so: tallish, dark hair. Solid build. Round face. Penchant for wearing long multicolored skirts paired with clogs.
Hello — I’m a longtime lurker here, speaking up because I have a creationism question. A Turkish creationist today presented me with a talking point that I can’t find on talk.origins. Our discussion was unfortunately abortive and futile because we had to talk through a translator who knew zero biology, so that whenever one of us would say something biological she wouldn’t know how to express it in the other language. About the only thing I caught was that the fact that a human and a fish have the same number of chromosomes is somehow a problem for evolution — have any of you heard this one before? The creationist apparently got it from the book Evrim Teorisi: Biyolojiden İdeolojiye (The Theory of Evolution: Ideological Biology) by one Adem Tatlı.
Esteleth:
I wouldn’t disagree with any of that. Mister would most likely embrace it fully. :D
Not as tall as I’d wish, 5’6″, rather be 5’9″, darkish hair, yes. Thin, but solid, yes. I’m one of those people who looks skinnier in clothes than I am in reality. Docs are always surprised I’m not fuckin’ skeletal. You’d think they’d learn. I don’t know what shape my face is. Definitely have the long skirts, favourite one is multi-coloured. I’m a barefoot hippie. Mister yells at me for going out to feed the birds in the snow, when it’s -10 and I’m barefoot.
Vasha @510:
That (some) fish have 23 chromosome pairs is not an issue, evolutionarily. It is not that uncommon.
FWIW, we are related to fish. We are both chordates.
Oh, and when I do wear shoes, it’s either high top Chucks (I haz an assortment, and I have a serious thing for unusual socks), knee high Doc Marten boots, or 4 to 5 inch high heels.
Yep, I can’t see how it’s a problem for evolution at all; I’m just hoping that someone has heard this argument (which I didn’t understand because of the language problem) before and can explain the so-called “reasoning” behind it.
I actually think that the two of you would, if you met, would either get along famously or hate each other on sight. KWIM? Sometimes people can mesh too well…
In any case, she’s a primary-school teacher. Originally special education, but lately (due to the demographics of her district) she’s been branching out to focus on children whose issues are not so much have cognitive and/or learning disability as are severely traumatized to to [background circumstance].
Hmm.
Maybe they’re referring to the fact that our closest primate relatives have 24 rather than 23 chromosome pairs? But that isn’t unexplained: one of our chromosomes is what happened when two chromosomes fused end-to-end. A sequence analysis of that chromosome finds end-of-chromosome sequences in the middle, in fact (in addition to being on each end).
But, of course, that 23 is common to fish and humans is coincidental. Not really proof of anything one way or the other.
It’s a bit like saying “Well, there are 23 houses on your street, and 24 houses on my street, therefore we’re neighbours!”
Esteleth:
Oh yes, I know.
I guess I’d need to know the traits of Mr Caine to make the final judgement.
He isn’t a very hippy bearded-and-long-haired vegetarian Tibetan Buddhist autistic theoretical physicist/piano tuner, is he?
Caine: Why thank you! I’m very fond of trees. I spent a lot of time in them as a kid–used to drag a sandwich, soda and fantasy novel up with me, and spent hours and hours reading in the variegated shadows of the leaves. I’ve taken naps wedged into the forks of a trunk.
I continue to be a little disappointed that there’s no land of anthropomorphic animals that I can escape to (I’ve been slow to like homo sapiens).
I just had to say that I’m picturing Caine Ratty as drawn by Beatrix Potter. Wire-rimmed specs with red enamel, lovely red brocade robe, and a paintbrush clutched in one little pink paw.
I’d probably be more content with myself had I something *interesting* to do on weekdays.
my limited set of websites still doesn’t cut it.
Anne D: Something very like that, plus a few paint splotches here and there on the robe. For some reason, I keep picturing one of the ears as being a little notched near the top. (My imagination, it’s very very detailed.)
Mouthyb, I love your description for Caine.
:)
Unfortunately, my mind didn’t get the chance to get creative on that front before I saw her pics.
–
Is anyone else getting ads with sound, cutting in without warning? I first noticed it at work—I was listening to a video, and it suddenly got all hashed up with Obnoxious Ad, to most uncharming effect—and thought that maybe it was something to do with that machine having a persistent sound problem; but now it’s followed me home.
Do. Not. Want.
Silent ads are much to be preferred. Even ones.
–
thunk, I “see” you as a sapling Ent. Something of a willow persuasion.
:)
–
Hi, Vasha, and welcome to Unlurkerdom.
I don’t do well (as measured by actual results (unless you’re talking about raised bloodpressures and tempers)) against creationists who speak my own language; I can’t even imagine trying it through a translator!
–
Esteleth:
Hahahaha. Mm, definite hippie, long hair, a bit on the scruffy side when it comes to facial hair, mustached, but not hairy enough for a beard, atheist, omnivore, engineer, craftsman, brewer, hop tender. Mister in his Fedora. Mister when he was younger and so gorgeous, I wanted to wear him all the time. I’ve had a long case of lust with him.
I had the realization just now that my family falls largely into two camps: those who are members of the John Birch Society, and people who think Bernie Sanders is conservative.
There are a few who are neither. And there’s at least one who is both.
Anne D and Mouthyb, I don’t paint in my robe. My dedicated paint jeans are a pair of bell bottom Joe boxers, hip huggers with faded, ragged edged jean flowers on them, with beads and sequins. For real. They are streaked with paint. Paint shirts, either a Converse All Star Hemp Tee, one size too large, also with generous paint streaks on the bottom hem area. or an Aeropostale white cotton tank, no paint streaks. Oh, and my ears are pierced, twice in each lobe. I also wear many silver rings. Always silver. Three are thin bands, with sayings stamped on them: 1) Nihil Privatus, 2) Non Temetis Messor, and 3) Shoot first.
Esteleth, my sympathies. I grew up with a John Bircher.
One of these days I’ll remember before I try it that startling the cat while she’s intent on hunting the laser pointer is a good way to earn a three inch gash across the back of my hand.
Can I bust in and whine? I’m so frustrated I can’t stand it – how do you argue with something you can’t even wrap your hands around?
One of the dearest people in the world to me is mad at me, and this is our nth fight about the same thing. This person is upset because they think that I’m cutting them out of particular information loops (we also work together). But I’m not. So the fight goes “You don’t tell me what’s going on.” “There’s nothing to tell.” “See, you’re keeping things from me.” “No, really, there’s nothing going on.” I don’t know how to prove a negative that there isn’t a secret trove of info that I’m not letting on about. I just don’t know what to do. Sure, maybe if I was better at my job I’d have things planned out months in advance with details on everything, but I don’t, and I don’t know how to convince this person that it doesn’t.
Thanks, Cicely. I was having lunch with a bunch of very sweet Turkish women, one of whom spoke English and acted as a translator. It was an exercise in utter cultural cross-purposes. They asked me if I was married, and on hearing the negative, became concerned, “Oh, surely someone as young and pretty as you can find a husband!” I just smiled and didn’t go into the reasons why I have no intention of marrying. Then one of them said that she loved science, and I said, “Me too!” It turned out that she’d been reading Adem Tatlı’s work of “biological scholarship” and was all eager to discuss it. Evolution led to asking my opinions on God and life after death, and when I answered honestly that I was an atheist, I could see their expressions, already worried, growing more and more big-eyed. Given some of the terrifying stories about atheists that get told in Turkey (you can find an example in Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow, for one) it’s no wonder that they were a little alarmed. One of the more uncomfortable lunch parties I have ever sat through — everyone was being so nice and hospitable, I really didn’t want to shock and alarm them, but they asked.
At the moment I am a teeny-tiny grey chameleon who is scrunching up his eyes, holding his breath, trying to force some colour to appear. Every now and then little bright blotches appear but then fade.
Hard to get colourful with an election tomorrow that will most likely bring in the most bigoted, sexist, racist, homophobic government I will have ever seen.
I guess I shouldn’t gripe about that. The person involved has an awful lot to be mad about in general, and I’m a safe person to lash out at. But shit, it gets tiring, and it’s hard to take it without getting defensive and mad.
carlie (#530)
Have you asked them to explain what, in their mind, genuinely having nothing to tell them should look like? Might give you something to work with if you know what they’d accept as proof for a negative (so to speak).
Anne D:
Eeeeeeee! Rats with specs and paintbrushes!
I see Caine with reds, too. Red Rock Canyon type reds, sandstone that has lines of darks and lights and a fine-grained texture that is solid to lean against but the surface grains softly shift and dust around in the breeze.
A. Noyd, ouch! Cat scratches hurt.
Carlie, that sounds exactly like what A (mother) did to me on more than one occasion, when I was around 11 and finally found a therapist I thought I might trust, and was placed in a group of older kids, due to my lack of immaturity. “What did you talk about?” “Nothing.” “You must have talked about something.” “No.” “Well, what did the other kids talk about?” “I don’t feel like it’s my place to say.”
The next day, I was pulled out of therapy, never went back, never saw another therapist in my life. I hadn’t actually said one word, and I did feel it would be wrong to talk about the others in the group. Sometimes, a person simply won’t take ‘nothing’ or ‘no’ for an answer.
I’d ask her if she was aware that the implication that you were holding back, keeping secrets or lying was hurtful to you, and what, exactly did she want as proof there is nothing more? Put the burden of proof for a negative on her. Sometimes, there’s no winning.
Carlie:
Oh, so pretty! Thank you.
For me, you are forest, every shade of green, dusky earth, yellows, splashes of blue water, brightness of wildflowers in a light filled glade, the astonishing softness of quiet, solitude, peace. Surrounding, protective, sheltering, so strong and yet ever flexible.
Nutmeg:
I will note that Rats adore paintbrushes. They will steal them at every and all opportunities. They are also very fond of paint. Any kind of paint, but they seem to favour gouache. They enthusiastically puncture tubes, chew and press on the tube with hands to get the paint to squeezle all over. One time, Magrat, Agnes, and Beatrice all had blue-green tails for some months. Quite dashing.
Gobi:
I can see that. Chameleons rock.
Caine: I may have you confused with me. When I paint, I’m absent minded enough to do it in whatever, and there tends to be paint everwhar.
Well… for the lounge, collectively, I see a slow gentle stream, cool but warm when it needs to be, comforting and gentle, floating you past wonderful scenes and interesting vistas, under low hung branches that let dappled sunlight through. Sometimes one can float near the banks, but when the banks get scary you are gently pushed to the middle away from harm.
Mouthyb:
Yep, we are each other. Same here. Even if I set out to be neat, not get paint everywhere, and not get it all over myself, well…I prolly look like a three year old.
When I was doing the Waiting Fire mandala, I was using Kohinoor ink, poured out and applying with a teensy brush. My intent was to keep my hands clean, because Kohinoor ink. My nails were stained for over a month.
How the chameleon gets a bad rap:
…and then has to suffer further ignominy:
– from the WikiPedia entry on Bantu mythology
Poor chameleon, misrepresented all the way.
Dare I ask?
Hello.
Hi Oggie! *pouncehugs*
Caine: Shit, when I paint it’s in my ears, my eyebrows, corner of the mouth, elbows, ponytail, up my nose and on the opposite wall. And I have no idea how. I’ve found paint on the nape of my neck before, and sometimes I’ll get an idea to do something and forget to change into paint clothes. One of my previous robes actually did get paint on it because I had an idea while I was wearing the robe for warmth. It’s not that I mean to get paint everywhere, it’s just that it seems to end up there.
On the subject of red, my office, interestingly enough, is scarlet. I find it to be a relaxing color. It inspires comfort and thought for me. Red is my “private” color (if that makes sense.) The rest of the house is blue grey, navy blue, and forest green.
THis place is a special community. You have helped me in many ways. Waking me up, helping me deal with the memories that showed up. And I am sorry.
I apologize for hitting all of you with splash damage. I have placed you in an untenable position — supporting someone who has done what I did. I appreciate the support of the horde, but your support for me is damaging the community you have worked so hard to build. I’m sorry that I have hurt the horde and hurt the community.
What.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/04/florida-man-cites-bush-doctrine-after-pre-emptive-killing-of-neighbors-at-labor-day-cookout/
Lawyers site Stand your Ground and Bush Doctrine to justify muder
Yeah that
What.
Ogvorbis
It is hardly untenable to point out that an adult is not responsible for actions taken at 12.
Yes, this community is special, in part because of your actions. Please don’t let others take that from you. You deserve it.
Ogvorbis
This is a special community, and you’re a part of it.
OGVORBIS!
You had many responses in the Stunned Silence thread, and more in the Angry Dome, all saying one thing:
I love you. Now listen, or I’m going to get mean – you are a real survivor.
You have as much right to a safe space as any other victim of rape.
No one space will be safe for everyone. I will not have this, Ogvorbis. I will not. I would give anything, do anything, to take the weight from you. I would gladly bear it myself. You have my heart, always. You have my support. Always. You have every single thing I could ever give. Always.
Mouthyb:
Oh gods, me too. I have found paint in some very peculiar locations, on and off me. I’ve ruined countless articles of clothing, I’ve gotten paint on furniture, the floor, and animals I unthinkingly petted. Yep.
Yes, it makes sense. My kitchen cupboards are red and black, the walls pale yellow, with Art Deco women painted on the walls, the dishwasher, and one fridge, before it died. Everything is a bloody canvas.
Azkyroth:
Steampunk. Sharp tang of metal, warm leather, oil, strength of oak. Crafter and crafted.
Ogvorbis: You count, too. You are also a victim.
I haven’t always been nice myself–I was raised by wolves, and I kept thinking that if I ‘toughened’ up my younger brother, he wouldn’t end up getting hurt as much as I did. I bullied the shit out of him, when I should have just been protecting him from my mother and father. We got into knife fights, hammer fights and I sent him to the ER with a concussion; he partially lopped off my left pointer finger.
None of this changes the fact that my parents were beating us. None of this changes some of the other things my parents did that left my brother a fucking wreck. He can barely hold a job, and he’s mortally afraid of everything and unable to connect with other people. I’m incredibly grateful that he started dating someone I know even though it meant that we are no longer friends; she is willing to take care of him in ways that I cannot.
For what it’s worth, I empathize. I spent a lot of time feeling like hammered dog shit. I will always feel obligated to him and guilty, and we will never, ever be close. He is the only person in my family other than my grandmother that I really want to be close to.
But none of this changes what was done to me, either. The ugly truth is, if you’ve been in that position, that sometimes there’s such a very fine, fine line between victimizing others and being a victim of others. Sometimes, if you have that sort of abuse in your background, its fucking HARD to figure out where the line is and how to stay on the right side of it. Shit, you may not have even known there was a line–took me awhile of trying as hard as I possibly could to find it because I thought hospitalizing people when you were really upset was normal family behavior and it was just too private to show on TV.
For what you’ve done as a child–you did it as a child. You can’t take it back, but that’s not really the important part. The important part is not to do it again. You haven’t and would never do so.
Monsters don’t feel remorse–or at least not enough to change their behavior. You are not a monster. You aren’t even a terrible person, for the same reason.
Listen! We’re trying to tell you something important.
I never post in the lounge but whenever I look I usually see something about food. Anyone here Acadian? I got 12 frozen rappie pies from someone today. They are from Evelina’s in Saulnierville, NS. I am from New Brunswick but have no Acadian background, so other than being familiar with the existence of rappie pie I am pretty ignorant of how they should taste. Are these things any good? I just threw one in the oven and I sort of picture something like a cottage pie but I have no idea. I also have no idea if this company makes a good one or not.
Interesting reading.
Caine
I’m curious, now…
Ogvorbis
No. You are loved and valued and welcome here.
You gave me someone to look up to in dealing with my own abuse, showed me that it can be done. Anything you did or may have done under coercion from your abuser is not your fault.
*headbonks*
@Ogvorbis:
Bullshit.
I’m in an entirely tenable situation. I’m nerved. I’m ruthful. Hell, I’m even half-gruntled.
I support you.
I support you.
I support you.
Listen up – not just Og, because this is about what I’ve been doing in TDome as well – I can support people without supporting every single choice or behavior engaged in by that person.
You’re engaging in the worst version of virtue ethics.
It’s supposed to be that to become a good person, you do good things. At first you have to consciously consider what might be right. You try it out. You get better, but you still have to think about it every time.
Newbie virtue ethicist 1: Am I supposed to murder you, NVE2? Or am I supposed to not murder you? I can never remember and I’m afraid of getting it wrong because I want to be a good person.
NVE 2: I’m pretty sure it’s no murder.
NVE1: Okay, if that’s the best assessment of the rule available to us, then I’m going to choose to not murder you. I actually kind of want to, and I’m afraid I’m missing out on doing something I want to do by holding myself to this ethical standard, but I’m committed to the project of becoming a good person, so I’m choosing to go with no murder.
Then you have no trouble following the rule when consciously thinking of it.
Virtue Ethics Initiate 1: You know, I totally murdered NVE1 & NVE2 last week when I completely forgot about the rules on murder. Major bummer. I would have liked to have followed the rules.
VEI2: But you don’t consciously murder people *while* knowing it’s wrong, do you?
VEI1: Nope. If I remember the rule, it doesn’t even occur to me to not follow it. I’m committed to being a good person, and following the ethical rules is what good people do.
Virtue Ethics Master 1: I have noticed that you never murder anymore, VEM 2, and that you don’t seem to suffer any distress from it.
Virtue Ethics Master 2: What? Murder people? It hadn’t even occurred to me that was possible in some time. What made you even think such a thing?
VEM1: I myself would also never have thought about it, but I came across the bodies of NVE1 & 2, and ended up having a conversation with VEI1 about it.
======
So we become good people by doing good things. When we do the right thing automatically, we are “good”.
The proper understanding of this is that no one is good to begin with. The understanding you’re taking, Og, is that if you’ve ***ever*** done anything wrong, you’re bad. And you will never be good.
but this isn’t true. Properly understood, in VE you HAVE TO make mistakes, b/c no one is known knowing all the right ethical answers or having developed all the right ethical habits. You become a good person only AFTER doing bad/evil things.
This does not make bad or evil choices suddenly defensible as necessary to moral development. What it does is it makes it possible to move from a less moral plane to a more moral plane – the existence of your bad acts doesn’t hold you back. Thus the ***person*** can still be good, even though the act in the past cannot be undone. Who knows anything about Jane Doe 143, but I know some things about you…and other Horde members know you even better. We can defend you without defending every single choice you’ve ever made.
Moreover, doing that is the right thing to do. If survivors deserve support only so long as they made no bad choices, then it would be right and just that we say that women who get raped should be quizzed for whether or not they’ve done drugs or dressed sluttily. It would be right and just to kick survivors out of support programs because they admit that when they were startled by a new (non-abusive) partner walking up behind them, they struck the innocent partner.
I will not let you tell me that I should not advocate for imperfect survivors.
I will not let you tell me that I should make my support for survivors should be conditional on their perfection.
I will not let you tell me that I should not support children who are deliberately taught the opposite of consent, who are deliberately taught that rape is okay **specifically so that their adult rapists can get away with rape** and who then act according to that training and only upon acting upon this training discover the actions repulse them.
I will not let you tell me that I should not support the adults those children become.
You can rage against yourself. You can call yourself horrible. I will remain in my chair, loving you.
You can tell me that it took years for you to unlearn even the beginnings of that rape training. I will condemn bad choices if you seem unable to do so on your own, yet I will remain in my chair, loving you.
You can tell me that you really, deeply believe that the thoughts that you have had are living proof that you are as evil as your premeditated rapist. You can even tell me the exact nature of those thoughts, trying to shock me with the horror of the evil that you deeply, deeply believe lives inside you. If you cannot bring yourself to confront those thoughts, I have the spoons to do so, and I will.
And throughout, I will remain in my chair, loving you.
Loving a person who deserves love: Ogvorbis.
Loving you, Ogvorbis.
Your rage, your tears, your grief, your tortured thoughts, your painful memories, your racked body: they seem powerful enough, I know, to make the world crumble to dust. And yet when the earth is gone, I will remain. In my chair. Loving you.
I should correct myself: people aren’t monsters.
Relative Ogvorbis ((brother billy)))
We want you here.
We need you here.
Did you read Crip Dyke’s #562?
You are Inspiration.
You are Revelation.
Ogvorbis
*piles of hugs*
I have zero interest in any community that only takes “perfect victims”. A community that would need to kick you out or that would be happy for you to stay away because of “damage to the community” is not a community worth having.
Remember how everybody was rightly upset about the judge who claimed that a 14 year old was as responsible in a sexual relationship as her adult teacher? People were rightfully upset, people were rightfully angry because children are not able to make responsible decisions about this. That’s why there are age of consent laws. This doesn’t magically change because the child in question hurt somebody.
You were that child, you were even 2 years younger, and that makes a hell lot of difference in children. And you had been hurt and your head had been badly messed with.
I love you.
You’re one of the most wonderful and caring people I ever met and I know because of the was you react to those things you did.
Russian legislators introduce bill to take children away from LGBT parents http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/05/russian-legislators-mulling-bill-to-take-children-away-from-lgbt-parents/
What. The. Fuck.
Ogvorbis – you stop that right now. Look at what we do with regard to 12 year olds. They aren’t allowed to drink alcohol. They aren’t allowed to smoke. They aren’t allowed to drive a car. They aren’t allowed to sign contracts. They aren’t allowed to cast a single ballot that will make effectively zero impact on an election. They aren’t allowed to buy or take aspirin on their own. Hell, they aren’t even allowed to enter a freaking sweepstakes contest to win a CD or whatever on their own, because we understand that 12 year olds have half-formed brains that aren’t capable of understanding cause and effect properly. And that’s 12 year old brains who have had all the advantages and good things for them in the world. That’s 12 year olds who have been raised in the best of conditions, with all of the psychological support and ethical training one could desire in the most ideal of situations. You are not the super special snowflake exception to that rule. You are not the single person who was so advanced and mature as a 12 year old that you did know better than every other 12 year old in the world. Trying to take on that blame is telling yourself that you were somehow the smartest kid on the planet and the only one who really knew what was what at that age. No. You were just as unformed as every other 12 year old who we as a society don’t even trust to hand over their email address to disney.com without a parent’s approval because they don’t know any better.
You know what kind of talk “I did a bad thing so I’m a bad person forever” is? That’s religious talk. That’s Ray Comfort’s “have you ever told a lie? Then you’re going to hell” shtick, right there. That’s bullshit, is what that is. Don’t do that, don’t you dare. Don’t you hurt my dear friend Ogvorbis like that.
Ogvorbis, *hugs*
Others have wiser words for you than I can cobble together, so listen to them. Take some *safe hugs* and sympathy from me.
@Caine:
I’ll admit my curiosity what you see when you read my posts *heh*
@Oggie:
*hugs*
All the *hugs* for Ogvorbis.
Ogvorbis, look up-screen. Listen to them. They are absolutely 100% bloody well right.
And I don’t care if you’ve already got all the hugs, I’m adding some more.
Ogvorbis, I haven’t been posting very long, but I’ve been lurking for a long time. I’ve watched you put the pieces of your memory together, little by little. Listen to your friends, they’re right and I agree 110%. You’re a good person, and a strong person. You are.
I’m offering hugs, too, if you want them.
Ogvorbis: I don’t know you yet, and you don’t know me much. But everything I’ve seen about you says you’re not more a monster than I am. I, as an adult, nearly killed a man. Yes, he’d earned a good chunk of what I did, but I did it. If that doesn’t make me a monster – that as a free-willed adult, I made a choice, a red-mist choice but a choice, to do that to someone – then I refuse to consider that you and those kids acting out their abuse on one another are either. You have my deepest sympathies for what you’ve been through, and for me at least, understanding for what you did while you were there.
You don’t frighten me.
Okay? You’re this guy I don’t know, who admitted some stuff that would ordinarily have me on high alert, because of all my own crap. And you don’t frighten me. I would happily take a road trip with you, or something. :)
You’ve got the trust of a whole bunch of people whom I’m coming to trust pretty highly myself, and as Jason said at the Lonely Canuck recently, the web of trust is a pretty strong thing.
I know very few people who’ve not done something big and bad in their past. We are human. We fuck up. We get broke, and we break things and each other. But we remain human.
*distant hugs offered, if wanted*
Ogvorbis, I am adding yet some more hugs.
— — — — — — — — — —
Istanbul riots September 6, 1955 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_riots
Today we know that the Turkic goverment kept files of the religion/ethnicity of all citizens, and the government assisted the anti-Christian thugs with lists of the adresses of all the Christian businessmen in Istanbul; the christians were not confined to any ghetto, so a spontaneous riot would not have resulted in the rioters finding more than a few of the Christian businesses.
Fuck the Turk government.
Also, briefly, as noted in Thunderdome, be aware that Joanna Russ had some…problematic views about trans women (particularly). She did moderate before she died, but there’s some of her writing that might deserve a bit of a warning for trans* people coming across it for the first time.
But you are still supporting someone who abused children without being forced to do so.
Which is how I am able to damage the community.
But as a rapist, I don’t.
Which is a line that I crossed.
But I was not coerced. I knew it was wrong and still did it.
I knew it was wrong and did it anyway though.
I frighten me.
Ogvorbis
I am supporting a victim of rape. Full stop.
Fuck that. Any victim deserves to have a space to heal. Any one who was hurt as bad as you deserves support to fix that damage.
On top of that, you were twelve. Ogvorbis, you were twelve. You don’t deserve to be held responsible for mistakes you made at twelve years old.
Jenny McCarthy:
I disagree that 12 matters to the essential point.
12 makes Og’s actions more understandable. 12 makes it easier to believe that he’s had the developing time to unlearn the brutal lessons he was taught. 12 makes his vulnerability to the non-consent training of his rapist much more apparent to us.
But I’m not creating a new line for deserving survivors.
Og’s actions at 12 were wrong. Og is overemphasizing the importance of the fact that he has done wrong to the assessment of his worth as a person. In response, we are trying to point out the ways in which what he did was not as bad.
People often use harmless intent as an excuse not to have to change. Our response is that intent isn’t magic. But here, Og has lost sight of the purpose of “intent is not magic”. He knows he intended to do something that harms other people. So we attempt to show how he couldn’t have formed the same kind of intent at 12 as he formed at 22. We lose credibility when we do this. I know, because I’m a flawed survivor. You wanna hear how I screwed up?
I was in a 2 year abusive relationship. After a time, rituals of abuse (not “ritual abuse”) became quite ingrained. My abuser hit me at certain times, in certain ways, repeatedly. I knew when it was coming. I am non-violent both by thoughtless habit and by thoughtful philosophy. Although I was terrified, I engaged in no form of self-defense. I was attacked with knives, choked to semi-consciousness, and burned. By 8 or 10 months in, rape had become a weekly rite.
But there were also times when my abuser flailed violently and unpredictably. About 2 months before the end of the relationship, that person was striking me with flurries of blows. I could tell that my abuser’s own past experience being victimized was dominating how my abuser felt. This kind of thing happened every once in a while, but that night the blows falling on me were particularly powerful. Fear of the current blows finally outweighed fear of what would happen in the future if I acted then. I bear-hugged my abuser, pinning arms to sides, against my abuser’s will.
It lasted all of about 2 minutes, maybe 3, out of not-quite-2 years. But of all the choices I made during that time, which one do you think I remember?
You can put in terms of the ethics of self-defense and yadda yadda yadda. You can tell me that what I did wasn’t wrong…to you…because reasons.
It won’t work.
I made a choice to override the will of another. That is so deeply against my ethical principles that I can’t express my shock at my own willingness to do it. And, just like Og, I tell myself that intent isn’t magic, that it doesn’t change the fact that I was willing to use physical force to override another’s will if I was intending self-defense or intending to help my abuser calm or intending to squeeze magic world-healing rainbows out of my abuser.
If you try to tell me this act was okay, I will never hear you.
But here’s the thing: even though I made this choice, this choice that deeply contravenes my ethical principles, principles it simply didn’t occur to me I would ever have trouble maintaining,
I still deserve a space to tell my stories. I still deserve support. I still deserve healing. I still deserve to be judged on the whole of who I am and not on one choice made 20 years ago.
So when I say to you, Ogvorbis, that I love you, I am not failing to rage with you against any contravention of another’s will.
The training of your rapist, however much the cause, doesn’t make acting on that training okay. You want to be right there in there. You wanna hear from someone who hates the shit you did?
I hate the shit you did. I hate it.
And I love you.
We can shake the heavens together with our rage at the evil in the world and our own parts in creating and maintaining that evil.
I will not shirk from looking into that evil. People – especially white people – like to say that evil is black. But no.
Evil is bright, bright white.
Evil makes possible things that we do and want – cell phones made using coltan – but when we turn to face it, the very act of looking causes us to flush with heat, and our eyes become strained the closer we come to looking directly at it. The more direct our gaze, the more painful it is to look. And when we stare, wide-eyed, at the center, it is blinding. Painfully blinding.
I know that this makes some people unable to look into that whiteness with you.
I will.
I will hold your hand.
We will stare into the white.
We will hate it. We will deplore it. We will condemn it. We will cry at our helplessness to dim it.
And I will hold your hand.
There is whiteness in your life. There is whiteness behind you, and turning to look at it is painful beyond any description that can be given by those confused into thinking that evil is black.
But I know. I overrode another’s will. And today I do good. Today, I choose differently.
Today, I choose to hold your hand.
Because today we look into the white together. Today, Ogvorbis, I love you.
Crip Dyke:
The difference between ‘I have done evil’ and ‘I am evil’?
Ogvorbis, you know about the Milgram experiments, right? If 60+% of adults under no particular apparent coercion are willing to administer electric shocks to a stranger until they die simply because an authority figure (who had no power to hurt them) told them to do so, how can you be held responsible for something you did at the command of an authority figure who could and HAD hurt you forced you to do when you were 12? I think you know this intellectually, but just have a hard time accepting it emotionally.
Studies of PTSD I’ve seen have suggested that while being the victim of an atrocity puts one at a high risk of PTSD, being a perpetrator, especially an unwilling one forced into it by an authority figure who was or felt irresistible, puts one at an even higher risk. You’ve been through horrible trauma. It will take time to heal but you’re clearly making the right moves. Please don’t be too hard on yourself, even if you do sometimes misstep (which I see no evidence that you have.)
This was at least one year, possibly two years, after I was out of scouts and was no longer being threatened, abused, or manipulated. That’s a big part of the reason remembering what happened came as so much of a shock and has scared me so much.
Ogvorbis
The former indicates past evil; the latter indicates future evil.
You yourself have said that you would never do that again. You yourself have said that you struggle to do good. That makes you good. No question.
You’re a good person, Ogvorbis. You’ve done a terrible thing all those years ago, but you are a good person.
@Ogvorbis, #580:
Absolutely.
I can see the painful light of evil in your past. The very fact that your eyes hurt looking at proves that you and the light are not the same.
That light’s existence doesn’t mean you are this furnace/sun.
That light’s existence doesn’t mean I am dropping your hand.
That light’s existence doesn’t mean you are unlovable.
That light’s existence doesn’t mean you are unloved.
You are Ogvorbis, and I love you.
Ogvorbis: I’m not sure people work like that. It takes substantial effort to resist an authority figure you’re used to obeying, even if you know what you’re doing is wrong. Heck, it’s not easy to resist a new or random authority figure. It was clear that the majority of the people who went to the end with the shocks in the Milgram experiment did not want to continue to shock the person on the other end. They gave the person hints so that they’d give the right answer and not have to be shocked. They pushed the button for the shortest time possible. But they did NOT refuse. I hope you’ve learned to refused now. I hope I’ve learned to refuse. I also hope we’ve both learned how to not give that order. I think you’re right to say that your act was wrong. But you are not a bad person. As you said, the difference between having done evil and being evil. You’re not evil.
No argument there.
However, scouts imploded and the rapist moved, with wife and kids, to another part of the state hundreds of miles away either one or two full years before this happened. I had no adult over my shoulder this time telling me what to do. I knew what to do, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway. Which was an evil act on my part.
Penny Arcade, Geek Culture, and Hegel’s “Beautiful Soul”
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God is Imaginary
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Ogvorbis!
*pouncehug*
I was starting to worry about you.
*moar hugs*
(Later)
I feel that you overstate.
Have you hurt some individuals within the community? Yes. Leaving aside the specific instance to which you refer (where I see the problem as being more one of placement), it’s just not possible for anyone to know, for a certainty, what may trigger someone. Mine, for instance, relates more to a…I guess “rhetorical style” is the best way to describe it…and one formerly-frequent commenter used to dance on that button All. The. Time.
Sucked for me, but there’s no way that commenter could have known, and you can’t slap a Trigger Warning on everything.
But I don’t feel that the community is damaged by it. Not as a whole. The community is stronger for your presence in it.
(Even Later)
Yeah. And what Crip Dyke says @562.
Additionally: As children, we pattern our behavior off of adults; it’s how we’re supposed to learn how to be adults. Works that way for animals that invest care and training in their offspring; otherwise, why be concerned whether a leopard you’ve raised from a cub, bottle feeding and later, hand feeding it, would be able to survive on its own, in the wild? That’s education. That’s what the Xians’ whole “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” is all about.
You had been explicitly told that the flawed pattern your abuser—an adult under whose authority you had been placed—was demonstrating for you was “how to be an adult”. This is what the Cycle of Abuse is about—except that you broke that cycle. Not perfectly, or all at once, but you broke it.
And that is a Good Thing That You Have Done.
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“Name calling” is an “imminent threat”? Even with a verbal, but vague, threat???
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Especially when you’ve been indoctrinated to believe that the act in question is a “rite of passage” to adulthood.
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Hi, Travis; Welcome in!
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WMDKitty, I “see” you as a small, silvery-gray kitten, all big eyes and curiousity.
:)
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ogvorbis
I second everything that was said to you above, with a few caveats regarding not having shared the experiences some people relate. I can share experiences which I did have, though, such as the fact that at 12, I still tried to kill my classmates on occasion, a habit which I had at that time been at pains to break already for some years, and which was previously far more common. I hadn’t any kind of past history to explain it either; I wasn’t beaten at home nor physically bullied at school, but if someone teased me verbally even, I’d fly into a rage and try to attack them with whatever was handy. Then and now, I am convinced that the only reason I never actually hurt anyone was because I was slow and out of shape enough that I couldn’t catch them. So, although I don’t have in on my conscience that I’ve seriously hurt anyone, that’s a matter of luck, not any virtue on my part. That said, I’ve grown and changed, and I’m not that person anymore, although I’m sure I still could be if I were to be pushed hard enough or in the wrong way. I don’t think I’m a monster, and a lot of people whose judgement I trust don’t either. You’re not a monster any more than the rest of us, Oggie.
Ogvorbis: if this were anyone else among us, anyone other than yourself, you would not be telling us that getting out of the immediate abusive situation means everything is immediately fine.
It often takes years to heal from abuse. Sometimes decades. Some survivors here have talked about still having PTSD reactions twenty or thirty years later. You are far too compassionate to blame victims for not “getting over it” in such a short time, even when the immediate threat has ceased. That’s what hypervigilance IS. It takes healing in a safe space, social support, re-learning how to trust others and form relationships and rebuild a sense of self and even go out in public without fear.
You may have seen someone (here, likely me) quoting Harriet from Fugitivus about blaming victims, specifically women, for not fighting back or resisting enough (whatever ‘enough’ supposedly means):
You didn’t gain the superpower to just brush off years of abuse and manipulation by a powerful authority figure, either. You behaved the way you were taught to behave to protect yourself. And this WAS a threatening situation, because you were taught that the punishment for refusing to do things to another child was to have those things done to you instead.
I’m rewriting an excerpt from Harriet’s post here to direct it to you and your situation: (Original here, written to address the victim-blamers)
That doesn’t make what you did right or harmless. But it’s victim-blaming to hold you responsible for not just immediately shaking off everything you were trained to do for your own survival.
paraphrasing again: You didn’t fight back because they told you not to. Ever. Ever. They told you that was okay, and necessary, and right.
Og – you knew it was wrong, but you didn’t know it then in the same way that you know it now. You are remembering it with all of the knowledge you’ve learned in the decades since. You simply can’t recreate how your mind worked so long ago, but I can guarantee you it was on a much more simplistic level and without understanding the full weight of what was wrong with it or what effects it could have.
Never said I was over anything. I still have the nightmares and panic attacks.
My point is, he was no longer physically there. He was still in my head, but that was it.
If it helps at all, I’ll mention something I’ve said here before several times: as a kid in school aged 12 to 14, I was a harassing creep, as well as a viciously bigoted homophobe. I didn’t assault anyone, but I certainly did bully other kids, and I certainly wilfully caused emotional harm.
Who you were as a pre-teen is not who you are now. Because of hormones and brain development and all manner of things.
Ogvorbis
If you were evil, why do you suffer so much right now?
*hugs*
Giliell:
My gut reaction to why do I suffer so much right now? Because I deserve it. And because it’s not actually a real person suffering.
Feeling a bit down right now. Sorry.
Ogvorbis,
I just want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your pain, and your suffering, and I’m angry at the man that hurt you.
I’m so sorry.
ogvorbis
*hugs*
Ogvorbis
No, stop that. You are the first to tell everybody that they don’t deserve to suffer. You don’t deserve to suffer. But you suffer because you understand the pain you caused.
And that makes it less real?
I myself am perfectly able to supply my mother’s abuse myself in my head and it causes the exact same reaction as if she were standing next to me. In our heads is the most dangerous place for an abuser to be.
QFSFT
Ogvorbis: Headed into territory that may or may not be helpful here, but I think it may help.
When I realized that there was a line and I was over it, I looked around at the ruins of my life. I did not see what I had built (the education, the family of my own, the roof over my head, the steady work, the sense of self). I saw what I had left behind me, and I went a little mad.
You see, I thought I was alone, or at least in very bad company. Who has to stay up half the night wrestling with another day of trying not to beat the kids or my partner? Who can’t sleep for nightmares that they finally break, and that they kill the people they love and that they like it? Who has to put the kids down and go stand, rigid and shaking with muscle tension, in another room, and wait for the urge to do what was done to them to pass?
Who has to learn what seems to come naturally to everyone else? I thought the answer was obvious: only something less than human has to learn to be human.*
The love of others haunted me. Why would they love me, when I was scum? Surely they must be mistaken. Who could choose to love me?
But they could see something I couldn’t, obviously. I don’t think it’s flattery to say that people routinely find me lovable, and if I believed in miracles I might think this was one. But here’s the thing about love. People love you for who you are now, and we change, Ogvorbis.
We become different as time goes by. Everything changes. And here’s the real rub of it: the people best qualified to judge who you have become are those closest to you right now. I know I have become someone different because I judge my reflection in the eyes of those persons who love me and see me every day. When they cannot look at me, I will have failed.
But they keep looking at me. My son keeps hugging me. My partner is not afraid to kiss me or come up behind me and hug me. My daughters love me. The decisions that I have made and continue to make keep passing that test.
People are trying to tell you that you have passed that test, you silly man.
______________________________________________________________________
* It didn’t help that I am autistic, and almost all of my behavior is analysis + monkey see, monkey do.
Yes. He was no where near me. He could not threaten me. He could not shame me into doing things. He could not make me drunk, or any of the other ways he used to gain my cooperation. He was a memory and rather than do what I knew was right, I listened to the memory. And I am ashamed that I was too weak to do what was right. What I knew, even then, was right.
And that dark spot in my mind thinks of the people who like me and says, “Fooled them.”
That’s imposter’s syndrome, and you don’t deserve that.
*hugs* if wanted.
Well, then, let me reason with that part of your mind and tell you its arrogant as hell to presume that you are able to fool people who see you day in and day out all the time. No one is that good.
Oggie, depression lies. It also makes it easy to forget that depression lies.
Ogvorbis
But every time he did, he made a path in your brain. And you went that path again, and again, and again, and again. Until it was a wide comfortable road. This is basic learning neurology. The longer you repeat, the easier you do it. Without thinking.
Remember your first driving lessons? You had to remember doing each task seperately and in the right order. You don’t do that after a year of driving anymore. You just do. There are no seperate parts of your brain for driving and other things. We’Re more like Pavlow’s dog than we are comfortable with.
Shit, I actually know a sociopath and I’ve met psychopaths. Even people who can lie easily, without twinges of regret, have to limit their interactions with others in order to maintain the illusion of normalcy. If you spend too much time with them, there is always, ALWAYS a tell or twelve.
I’m off to bed now.
Take care, Ogvorbis. I love you. You are a good person.
Breaking Brick Stereotypes: LEGO Unveils a Female Scientist
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Seeing a Woman: A conversation between a father and son
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That’s even scarier. Those paths are still there. Not good.
Ogvorbis,
I’m powerless in making you feel better, no matter how much I would like to help.
You are cared for and loved here, and you deserve both, even though you don’t think that right now.
Ogvorbis, I’m sad to hear of your pain and your self-recrimination. Please! Read and read again the posts above that have practically melted my heart for all the sincerity and tenderness and sweet compassion that flows toward you.
You have mine, too. You are beloved by many because of who you are and your easy going, free striding style that always makes me, the listener, feel like I’m right there with you. I have always looked forward to your posts because I like to grin and nod as a story unfolds and parts are familiar to my own experience.
Besides what the others have said, there is a real need for you here. See, nobody tells a train story or a fire story like you do and those stories are really important. To us, for the hearing; to you, for the telling.
My best to you, friend. My best and a round and a half more.
cicely: I am beyond excited about the series proposed by Alatriel. Female chemists, paleontologists, welders, astronomers….. I would have to go buy the shit out of those and give them as gifts.
But you are also, by being the good, decent, non-abusing man we know and love, here, carving out other paths.
Better paths.
–
Oooooooh!!!
Want!
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More *hugs* for Ogvorbis.
cicely: Did you see that the paleontologist has an articulated T-Rex skeleton and the astronomer has a telescope? The accessories alone would make it great, but the fact that they are female is like g33k cake with g33k frosting and little g33k sprinkles.
And of course the third one’s a chemist, because it’s not SCIENCE! unless there’s bubbling beakers and test-tubes with strange substances in them :D
Australians, beware. Awful politicians similar to the far right wing in the USA are likely to be elected.
Salon link.
More from Tony Abbott:
I’m not a chemist, but I’ve…actually never seen a lab full of bubbling chemicals that change colors when poured into one another.
Reminds me of this
Well, no, neither have I. It’s one of those tropes that was set in the mid-late 19th century, when those arcane constructions of bubbling glassware actually did something, but there are better ways of doing most of them now. It’s like the steam locomotives in cartoons; they were still being used in the early days of cartoons, and they just never left, even when the rest of the world moved on.
Well fuck. My cat seemed sick last night, and when we took him into the vet today he needs at least an overnight stay to deal with an infection he’s picked up. The bill is somewhere north of $800, and both the partner and I are unemployed. We just paid a $760 car repair bill last week. We have a little cushion, but those bills just ate a big fucking chunk of it.
So now my Friday night is made of applying desperately for even more jobs. On paper, I’m very employable (a little programming; professional editing for nonfiction, fiction, and poetry; professional writing; journalism (editing and writing); statistics; data analysis; small teams leadership; teaching; document layout and design; tutoring; curriculum design; and publication–both in the sense that I wrote it and in the sense that I’ve served on editorial boards). I’m also a quick study, especially when I need to pay the bills.
Let’s hope someone out there agrees and employs my ass. :(
Best of luck with the job hunt, mouthyb.
mouthyb
Ouch. *hugs* best of luck with the job hunt.
I hear you about unexpected expenses MouthyB. This morning the gold probe sounded like a motorcycle with non-existent muffler, (hole exhaust pipe I hope, and not the catalytic converter), and the black probe didn’t want to turn over due to a weak battery. *checks car repair account, deep dark red* AUGH!
Ooo! I just applied for a job for recruitment efforts for the entry of nontraditional students into STEM programs. It’s data analysis driven, but requires someone familiar with the challenges faced by non-traditional students.
I WANT that job. WANT IT.
Nerd: Man, it has just been shittastic so far this month because of expenses. All the stuffs need fixing–I’m going to be cancelling a dentist’s appointment for fillings for myself because the cat needs medicine.
I need fillings, but my dentist is not terribly worried about it–I got really good teeth in the genetics grab bag.
Don’t let it go too long. Root canals aren’t fun and they are much more expensive than fillings. A lot of dentists have some sort of payment plan. I know ours does.
Mouthyb, best wishes and good thoughts for a successful job hunt. *offers large butterfly net*
That last job you mentioned, at your 625 sounds awesome.
Hello, the Horde! Busy days here trying to catch up with classes and homework missed during my illness, plus trying to dry out my bedroom. Still trying to catch up, but a few comments I wanted to respond to:
yazikus @ 440
Congratulations and way to go on taking the placement exam and registering for classes!
I went back to school at age 40 and it has been the best experience (even with all my anxiety issues). Sometimes awkward in a room full of people the same ages as my children, but not often, and I’m learning as much from them as from my professors. And, most wonderfully, the positive validation of my abilities by professors and classmates has been great for my ego.
lumi @ 442
Congrats on the GRE score! I’m taking it in four weeks and…. *terror!* Not like there’s any pressure or anything…. “do well enough or the schools you want to apply to won’t even look at your application.” <– my inner voice, who is annoying.
Giliell
Belated hugs and commiseration on the cell phone.
Portia @ 479
Email sent wrt the Horde signal.
Ogvorbis
*all the hugs* *all the love* What everyone else said, and so much better than I could, particularly Crip Dyke @ 562. You are a wonderful, important, and good person. And nothing, absolutely nothing changes that in my mind.
You are not your actions as a 12yo who had been taught a twisted and sick idea of what “manhood” meant.
That’s what abusers do. They get into your head and they twist and re-write your mind until you will act on their will even when they aren’t present, even when you know they will never be present. They make you think you’re acting of your own free will, they convince you of it. But they are wrong.
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Back to read the rest of the thread….
morgan (#604)
Yes. Depression makes you believe ridiculous bullshit even when you can form an argument for why, normally, it’s ridiculous bullshit. One of depression’s lies is to tell you that you’re the exception, the one for whom the ridiculous bullshit is true.
*Shameless Plug*
I finally got photos from Dragon*Con posted on my blog if anyone is interested.
They are all mine, taken with permission using a Cannon Elph point-and-shoot, so no professional quality stuff, but good for memories.
Anne D: It’s an amazing job. It involves gathering data on support, inclusion and effectiveness of programs targeting nontraditional students in STEM disciplines, analyzing that data and providing suggestions for improvement and/or reporting to various on-campus offices on the success of those inclusion efforts.
I could make life better for a lot of people who want to be in STEM, and they pay tuition, so I’d get to go to classes as I liked. (win-win!)
Hello Horde.
My “maternal instincts for anything NOT human” kicked in again. I am now the proud mommy…. of a 3 hour old german shepherd puppy. The daddy of this little girl chewed one of her hind legs off. Hopefully she’ll live.
Her name…. is Holly Trinity.
rowanvt: Poor baby! I hope she lives as well.
Hi rowanvt
Poor puppy.
Good luck with her.
(once knew a cat named Tripod)
Okay, caught up now….
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Lynna
Ugh. Poor Australia. I can’t believe that’s the candidate considered likely to win. Then again, of course I do — look who we elect here in the US.
mouthyb
Best of luck with the job search! I really hope you get that job!
Rawneris
Cool photos! Mrs. Frizzle!!
rowanvt
Oh dear. Hope she recovers!
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In one of those good news/bad news things: found out today that my proposal for the Red River Women’s Studies conference was accepted, so I’ll be presenting my paper there next month. YAY! Which means speaking in front of people (mostly strangers) for 15 minutes plus short Q&A. Yikes!
Luckily, I have the PowerPoint I used in class which will work with a few modifications (class presentation had to be 20 min), so that’s helpful. I’m actually more scared of the Q&A part — what if someone is hostile? (I’m going to be talking about abortion discussions online and differences between the two sides.) It’s a WS conference, so probability says many, if not the majority, will be pro-choice, but still.
Also in positive yet slightly-terrifying news: I get to be the discussant leader for my Feminist Theory class’s discussion on humanism and feminism!
Sci-fi fans here? Mary Robinette Kowal is taking a survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/readingsf
Your past has evil in it. Cast iron has silicon in it; that doesn’t mean you can make computer chips out of it.
I ate exactly one quarter of an avocado with dinner. It did not feel like more than a serving.
I’m going to go eat the rest now.
http://imageshack.us/a/img690/3156/21t4.jpg
Trinity. Thanks for the well-wishes. She’s gonna be mostly on sugar-water tonight, as she is too owwie to want to eat but the vets don’t want to give her pain meds until we’re sure she’s past the shock. No one is really happy with this situation, but we’ll muddle through it.
mouthyb:
Yes. Oh, yes!!!
Sorry about your cat.
Hoping for the best on the job hunt.
*hugs*
–
*pouncehug* for rowanvt.
Poor Holly Trinity!
*carefullest of fingertip ear-rubbings*
–
Just got back from watching my first ever real life eye witness space launch!!! No TeeVee involved at all, oh boy!
NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE, male pronunciation) atop a Minotaur IV five stage booster en route the Moon. The first three solid fuel stages are re-purposed engines from the regrettably named “Peacekeeper” ICBM. Now, that’s beating swords to plowshares. =)
It lifted off from Wallop’s Island 11:27pm EDT. My vantage from a little over two hundred miles SW afforded me a better view than I had expected. Through the bi-nocs I got a great look at the fiery plume left by the second stage, saw it shut down and, after a short coasting phase during which I could make out a twisting trail of smoke, third stage ignition. Soon after, the rocket’s trajectory took it behind some distant trees and I did a little happy dance right there.
Every other launch I’ve ever “seen” has been telecast and I just decided that was an intolerable state of affairs. Next time there’s a launch from Wallop’s I think I’ll just haul off and drive up there so I can hear it as well.
________________
Rowanvt, give that little kitty a gentle pat for me. Here’s hoping you have just found a special friend.
For those Hordelings with job offers and other timely opportunities, Huzzah!! I’m happy for you. May good things follow for you.
For those who are having tough times (thunk, I’m thinking of you, among others), my empathy meter is pegged. May good things come to you.
Crudely Wrott
That rocket lauch sounds like a good time.
Nothing like the real thing.
Chigau, you’re darn tootin’ it was a good time. Hell, I watched Alan Shephard blast off (on bw set) in that little tin can for his ballistic ride to become America’s first person in space. In all the time since I never took the opportunity to attend a launch. Sheesh, I was in Florida when the last Apollo missions launched.
One thing that would have made tonight even more memorable would have been to have the grandcubs with me but both the little buggers crapped out on me. Too tired, they said. Hah! sez I. Can’t keep up with the old man, eh?
errata in my previous: the launch vehicle was a Minotaur V. Not IV.
Well, what’s the difference between ‘I have done good’ and ‘I am good’? Because you’ve done a great deal of good here and I know elsewhere, for years, but you’re irrationally resistant to thinking of that as defining your ‘character’. And really, the past can’t be changed: going forward, keep focusing on doing good.
Good morning
Ogvorbis
You’re really trying hard to see the worst possible outcome for you.
Yes, you learn paths. You can also unlearn them. Sounds like you went for the next 40 years without doing horrible things. You spent the next next 40 years being a loving, caring person, you spent the last years here fighting those evils tooth and claw.
Yes, the paths our abusers make are still there. And sometimes we need to very consciously and with lots of effort make the decision not to follow them. That’s horribly unfair because it means that after having been a victim of abuse we even get the extra lot of having to consciously be a good person. The time you were 12 you didn’t manage to do that. It doesn not make it less horrible. It does not undo the harm caused. But it makes a moral difference. People can cause lots of hurt and harm without being evil.
+++
Rowanvt
All the best luck with the puppy
+++
mouthyb
Fingers crossed for cat and job.
x_x She’s tired, and hungry, and owwie, but too owwie to latch onto the bottle to eat even with some pain meds on board and so Holly has the biggest and loudest cranky ever had by a puppy.
What is this ‘sleep’ thing?
Hey all, I’m back from a conference and am absolutely threadrupt (is that the technical term?). Nevertheless I’d like to barge in to share a story and hear your opinions.
Funny thing, this conference – I attended it two years ago and did not notice anything strange about the choice of plenary speakers (except for the fact that most of them were rather old).
This time, I found it rather glaringly obvious that something was wrong: None of the 12 or so plenary speakers was a woman. (O.k., mechanics is a male-dominated field, but still…). They were all old white or asian dudes, each of them invited for the umpteenths times. Not even a token attempt at increasing diversity, and at the same time, organisers were announcing that it was good that so many young people were attending the conference. (So how about giving one of these young people an opportunity to give a plenary talk?)
And then I caught myself at not noticing my own privilege: I was dressed a bit casually (the weather being warm and all) and at some point noticed that many of the people from India and Arabia were very formally dressed. And then I saw a female attendand change her shoes to more comfy ones directly after the final session. In both cases I caught myself at the thought “I never would take that much trouble with my clothing”. And only then did it dawn on me that this was my privilege: As a non-white person or as a woman, your chances of being judged negatively for transgressing some clothes norms are probably much larger than they are for me.
Really strange how reading FTB has changed my perception.
So when Holly went to the E.C. to get an injection of a pain medication, the male veterinarian who saw her treated me like I was an idiot, despite me being a licensed tech. “Now make sure you keep her warm, and stimulate her and oh yeah, I’ve heard plenty of people say they aren’t going to keep them and…” ARGH.
I’ve had this problem a lot with the male vets, specifically at the E.C.s. The women treat me like I have a functioning brain. The men who work as vets in day practices treat me like I have a functioning brain. I’m not entirely sure he believed me about her hurting when I brought her in the first time.
I just got back from going again, and it was a much different story. I walked in with Holly literally screaming. He got to see and hear it, and first tried to brush it off as her being hungry until I deadpanned at him “This is how she sounded when we cleaned and sutured her stump.” Plus when she screams she bends and turns her head towards her stump. Clear pain response. After that, he treated me like a tech. I have some SQ fluids to give her to help hydrate her since she isn’t drinking much and he gave her a higher dose of the buprenorphine. She has at this moment finally stopped screaming. I’m going to try feeding her soon.
Welp. That’s Australia stuffed for the next three years then.
So much for what little progressive policy we were working towards.
Gay marriage is pretty much out of the question now. Women will need to keep a close guard on their rights. In the day before the election, Abbott declared his intent to refund a couple of education institutions and cut funds to protection for the Murray river. Our shiny new national broadband network will be scrapped for something vastly inferior in the name of cutting costs, despite estimates of its long term costs actually being higher. Asylum seekers were pretty much screwed no matter who won, so… I guess they won’t notice too much?
I don’t have any illusions that Tony Abbott is the Great Satan, and the country will now be utterly destroyed… but a lot of positive things that might have happened probably won’t now, and instead we’ll get a bunch of stuff we could have done without.
It’s not like I was exactly looking forward to another Labor government, either; and yet, the next few years seem to have lost some shine for me.
Although it is true that the Rudd and Gillard governments were horribly abusive to asylum-seekers, I fear that things are going to get worse. Abbott pledged to stop funding legal aid for asylum-seekers in detention, and to scrap the Refugee Review Tribunal – depriving people in life-and-death asylum cases of the basic right to a fair hearing, and ensuring that more people will end up being deported to countries where they face violence. Which, aside from being a breach of Australia’s international legal obligations, is one of the most vicious and inhuman policies I’ve come across lately.
(I’m not Australian, but immigration and asylum is my professional field.)
Beatrice @ 610:
I’m prtty damned powerless too. Or, I feel that way. Right now.
Crudely Wrott @ 611:
I have. This morning. But I feel like they are talking to the image I accidentally created and not who I am.
Whic is why I think that I have placed you in a bad position and hurt the community. You are supporting a confessed child rapist.
Giliell @ 646:
That’s the way I go when I am depressed.
I see what you mean. I look at it as pretending to be a good person rather than making a conscious decision to be good.
I know. I wish there were some way to unhurt the ones I have wronged.
Oggie, *hugs* and another voice adding that, at least in my opinion, the regret over your past actions proves that you are not who you once were.
Ogvorbis- While you can’t undo the hurt you’ve caused… you can keep from compounding it. By not causing more pain, and by seeking to relieve pain whenever you can, you can prove to others, and to yourself, that you are at least *trying*. That you wish you could undo the harm you caused, that you can feel regret, is good. Hugs are offered if you want.
Holly is finally really figuring out how to work the bottle. So of course now that she’s actually drinking, she’s turned out to be one of those pups that loves to snort milk out their nose, which means she’s at increased risk of aspiration pneumonia.
Because the risk of horrible infections or even tetanus from the leg wound wasn’t enough. *eyetwitch*
Rowanvt
*fingers crossed*
Ogvorbis
What’s the difference?
There is no vengeful god who judges you for impure thoughts.
I know depression lies.
*hugs*
+++
Kids can be so cheerful.
#1 in the car: When I die mum will have been dead for a long time already.
GAAAAAA. I heard a bit of a scuffle in the basement.
The cat came upstairs.
After a minute or so of her walking around, I finally looked at her.
She was carrying a full-grown chipmunk in her mouth like it was a kitten.
She took it down to the landing and dropped it, whereupon it leapt about a foot in the air and started scurrying around.
I went down as slowly as possible, but spooked the chipmunk, which started to run up the stairs.
But it was a bit dazed, so I got the door open before it got too far up.
It figured out where to go and ran out.
Now the cat is upset and meowing at the door.
Rawnaeris @ 653:
But the actions are still there. I still did them. yes, I am depressed and blaming myself needlessly but that is where I am right now.
rowanvt @ 654:
And this is a big stumbling block. I know how much pain I am in because of what I did. What about the others? What about the other scouts? What about the ones I willingly abused? What about the ones I was forced to abuse? Are my actions still causing them pain?
Giliell @ 655:
Part of me says there is no difference. Part of me says that the evil I have done is still part of me no matter how good I act.
Og – treating yourself badly now isn’t going to change what happened. Treating yourself badly now can only make you give in to bad thoughts, as in “since I’m already evil, of course I’m going to be evil and think evil things”. That will make you treat other people worse in general, and create new problems. How does that help anyone who’s already been hurt? It can’t. The only thing you can do is move forward, and be sure that you won’t hurt anyone like that in the future. Becoming a good person is the penance, is the redemption. Even if you don’t always feel it, acting good and treating others well makes their lives better, and it makes you better.
Hi Ogvorbis. I know we haven’t really talked before, but since the Silence thread I’ve been wanting to ask you: Are there any circumstances in which you, knowing what you know, would take the same abusing actions *today* that you did back then?
Because I’m pretty sure the answer is “of course not” because you are actually a good person.
I can’t talk about your specific situation and the people involved in it, but I know that what I remember from my childhood, there’s a very clear dividing line between the kids who “abused” at behest/instignation/encouragement of adults and those adults who made kids abuse others.
Kids play out the things that happen to them. But between kids, there’s not such a huge power disparity the same way that there is between a kid and a grown up. This power differential is what makes the difference between “kids discovering sexuality” and “abuse”, IMO.
Many *safe hugs*.
NEW THREAD. A little early, but I’m about to get on an airplane and disappear for a while.