klutz.geek.nz

Apparently it’s PTSD awareness month in June. So.

Here’s to all the people who fight crippling pain to get a chance at living a normal life again.

Here’s to all the people who’ve learnt to wake up and pick up the pieces after dissociative episodes or convulsive episodes or god knows what, and keep going.

Here’s to the people who can’t remember what happened but live with the results every day.

I want to talk about this one for a bit.

I have huge holes in my memory. I can’t remember much of my childhood, apart from distinct feelings of isolation and being different. I have a few snapshot memories, ranging from a kindergarten birthday party through to getting the shit ‘disciplined’ out of me, but not many. And for my ninth year, when the most scarring by far of the trauma happened, I have a mixture of extremely vivid slow-motion memories and large blocks of none at all.

I can’t answer the one question that gets asked most frequently: “Were you actually raped?” I can’t. I really don’t know. The vivid flashbacks I get would indicate I was, repeatedly, and maybe once with a knife, but I have no memories to fact-check those against. I don’t know if they’re true flashbacks - I do have a vivid, and rather masochistic, imagination. And for years and years, that really bothered me.

But the thing is, it really doesn’t matter. I’m not gonna go on about how forgiving those who harm you is therapeutic or whatever bullshit, because that’s not it. The point is that, regardless what happened, I am here today and I am dealing with the consequences. Whether or not one particular act occurred does not legitimize or diminish my experience. I utterly hate it when people do think that rape is the metric by which to judge trauma. Some of the other stuff that I actually know happened is much more fucked up, and anyway each of us is affected differently by the same events. It’s not like someone suffering from flashbacks and hypervigilance because they nearly drowned is less of a person than someone suffering the same because they were assaulted. What actually happened does not negate the way it affects me now.

Moving on is about not letting my past define me, something I’ve really struggled with. I’m not “the victim.” I’m not “the one who was abused as a kid”. I’m a person. A person who just happens to have PTSD.
So I can’t define my past. So what? Because it’s been years now, and I don’t receive any actual benefits from being able to detail exactly what happened, I don’t really care.

And if I’m not looking back, I’ll be in a better place to move forward.

dcoetzee:

As reported by Wired, a 9-year-old Scottish girl named Martha (aka “Veg”) who is passionate about food started a blog called NeverSeconds to document the dismal nutrition and portions of her primary school lunches.

The ensuing media storm led to school lunch reforms, and garnered her an audience that she used to promote a charity (Mary’s Meals) that funds school food in Africa. The local council for her region, Argyll and Bute Council, has banned her from bringing in her camera or taking pictures of her food anymore. From her final post:

This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today. 

I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I’ll miss seeing the dinners you send me too. I don’t think I will be able to finish raising enough money for a kitchen for Mary’s Meals either.

I can’t imagine what inspired such a loathsome decision - perhaps shame that their low-quality lunches were being made an example in the international press - but this kind of suppression hurts Martha and everyone she was trying to help, and as a child she has essentially no legal recourse. If she were an adult member of the press, this could not have happened.

I strongly believe that children and teens will in the future become more active players in the economy and in activism, possessing real-world skills, producing valuable content, and inspiring change, and they need rights to protect them against adults like the Argyll and Bute Council who seek to silence them.

Her blog is adorable, guys. Check it out! And, yes, kids can make a difference etc if they’re taken seriously and not either made fun of or suppressed. People need to learn to stop going on about “the children are our future” and then dismissing them.

D spent a ridiculous amount of time reading and responding to youtube comments

dcoetzee:

Tropes vs. Women in video games is a proposed project by Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency which plans to analyze the way female characters are characterized in video games. Her Kickstarter, originally targeted at US$6000, has now raised $120K, 20 times the original target. Why? A big part of it is because of media attention driven by the viciously abusive response of some gamers on YouTube to her ideas, in the comments section of her proposal video. The Escapist, Kotaku, Jezebel, and GamePolitics report on this.

But I’m not here to talk about the people who threaten rape and murder, call her a kike, tell her she’s ugly, or tell her to kill herself. Although this behavior is unacceptable, the YouTube community also pretty consistently downvotes and rejects this type of extreme comment. This article is here to respond to critics who (to their credit!) disagree with her proposal more or less politely, and the most common arguments they make.

5. Sex sells. Games cater to male fantasies, that’s how they make money.

Every marketer knows that sex and nudity get people’s attention, but sex alone cannot carry a game to commercial success. BMX XXX, a 2002 action sports title, was designed around sexual humor and nudity, and was a colossal critical and commercial failure, selling less than 100,000 copies across all platforms. By comparison, the Portal franchise, games whose female protagonist was silent, fully clothed, and for the most part unseen, sold over 8 million copies. Contrary to popular belief, men look for more in a game than good boob physics.

BMX XXX (left) versus Chell, the protagonist from Portal (right).

There are some successful games out there that lean heavily on sexist representations of females, helpless eye candy who have no significant role in the plot other than to motivate men. Would less men buy these games if the females played a more active role? Princess Cassima in King’s Quest VI was a classic damsel in distress, but ultimately she plays a critical role in bringing down the antagonist. Small changes can make a big difference, making games less predictable and teaching women that they are not powerless.

4. Don’t just complain about it, do something about it. This money should be spent on creating a new game with good female characters.

This is about as silly as telling Siskel and Ebert to stop complaining and start their own movie studio. Modern games cost tens of millions of dollars to produce and operate, requiring a staff of dozens to hundreds of people. The money raised in this campaign, despite exceeding all expectations, would not pay the salaries of one good developer and one good artist.

Criticism serves a role in the marketplace and has real power. It influences consumers and other critics and what they look for in a good game. When enough consumers start to complain, when a needless sexist element in a game could mean a critical and media backlash, game designers in big studios sit up and take notice.

3. Women don’t play games because they don’t want to, not because they’re sexist.

First of all, women do play games. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 47% of gamers are women. And we’re not just talking casual games. Liquipedia lists 26 professional female Starcraft 2 players who have played in tournaments, including Ailuj who played on the main stage at MLG in 2011. These women are hardcore professionals and could wipe the floor with 95% of male players. Women play strategy games, play FPSs professionally, play MMORPGs, play every game that you think of as a serious game.

Professional Starcraft 2 player Ailuj and Mousesports CounterStrike squad

Second, the point of addressing sexism in games is not primarily to attract more women to gaming. Games instill attitudes and behaviors in players, beginning from a young age, and sexism in games (against either gender) can lead to mistreatment between male and female gamers later on. Like, say, the frequent threats of violence and offers of sex that female FPS players get. If female characters are treated with more respect, real-life females will be treated with more respect.

2. Who would want to play as an ugly woman? You’re trying to take all the fun out of games.

Counterpoint: who would want to play as an old, green, wrinkly alien dude? Apparently many players of Soul Calibur IV and Star Wars Episode III on PS2. Why? Because Yoda is awesome.

Besides that, a female character can be both sexy and still be a deep character who is a good role model for women. A good example from film is Katniss from The Hunger Games, whose beauty is only reinforced by her independence and intelligence. Feminist Frequency produced two videos focusing primarily on Katniss being a good female character. I would love to play a character like Katniss in a game.

1. Games are also sexist against men! Only addressing sexism against women is sexist in itself.

Probably the most common argument. Are games sexist against men? Well yes, like all media. TV Tropes has an extensive list of sexist tropes, many of which are sexist against men in particular. However, that does not mean that a project that addresses one issue and not another is sexist - Anita is not claiming that sexism against men does not exist. To the contrary, in her video “What Liquor Ads Teach Us About Guys” she says “men aren’t suppressed or exploited by sexism, but they do suffer as a result of it.” In her video  on “Toy Ads and Learning Gender”, she talks about how toy ads and the gender roles they reinforce discourage boys from learning valuable interpersonal skills.

More to the point, however, is that Anita’s interests and background lie in feminism, which has immediate relevance to her life. Far more blacks marched with Martin Luther King Jr. than ever marched with Cesar Chavez, and that’s only natural. The problem of sexism in games against men can be left to those who are more passionate about that problem, and I’ve considered working on such a project myself. Sadly, the concept of such an exciting project has been somewhat delegitimized by trolls launching their own Kickstarter and showing little respect towards the issue - but someone else could still do it right.

There is a downside to the practice of treating separately tropes that affect men and women: many tropes are sexist against both but in different ways, and it’s instructive to put them side-by-side. For example, many people don’t believe a man can be raped by a woman, for two reasons: because women are weak and couldn’t overpower a man, and because men are perverts and always want sex. However, again, there’s no reason that someone couldn’t create a series that integrates both of these together in a useful way. This would not be redundant, since Anita’s series would still focus on feminist aspects in more detail and give her unique point of view.

Keeping the high ground

In addition to the comments above, I encountered some people who were very supportive of Anita’s work, but themselves fell into discrimination in defending it. Accusing people of being misogynists for favoring a different approach in getting the message out, or for not donating to support, is wrong. Accusing people of being basement-dwelling virgins who have never had a girlfriend is both wrong and sexist in itself (there’s nothing wrong with single male virgins, or people who choose to live with their parents to save money). Many people were quick to blame YouTube attacks on visitors from 4chan or 9gag, although there was no clear evidence of this, and only a small minority of participants in these forums are abusive misogynists. In supporting equal rights for women, we have to keep the high ground and avoid stereotyping other groups in turn.

Comments welcome!

I haven’t done street photography in a while - four months since the last time I’ve attempted it. That time I was in the city, in a very crowded place where plenty of people were photographing the festivities. A single young female-presenting person taking pictures with a beat-up old compact was hardly worth remarking on.

This time, I decided - to capture the Auckland spirit on Auckland Photo Day - to shoot candids in my (somewhat lower socioeconomic) suburb. It’s full of that heady mix of camaraderie and wary aggression, something I felt was intrinsically Auckland, and sought to photograph.

No sooner did I have the lens cap off my (new) camera, simply walking into the central shopping district, that two six-foot-something guys started following me so closely one stood on my heel at one point. “Hey, look at this pretty little thing with a fancy little camera.” I gripped it closer to my chest, picking up the speed, instantly nervous. (Perhaps it’s the anonymous rape threats I’ve received of late that made me hypervigilant, but I certainly was afraid.) They kept following me for a while, making audible sexual comments, but disappeared when I moved into the busier area around the shops.

I did get into my element after that; I know the area and the people well, and got a few photographs and some conversation in. But it did throw me quite a bit. And, when I had an opportunity later that day to head out after sunset to get some more photographs, I passed it up.

Until now I’ve always regarded my looking like a young girl as a pretty glaring plus in the world of public photography. People just smile at the cute little person and walk on, or at worst look at me strangely. I don’t get accused of being a pedophile for carrying a camera near children (which at least a couple of my friends have, and one was seriously injured for cutting across a playground on the way elsewhere), I don’t get accused of being a terrorist, I’m generally not seen as a threat and that opens doors. It’s pretty good going being a girl in photography! You’re seen as an artist and not a stalker (I know, what more could I want, heh.)

Cameras, I think, just make people nervous. Their actions could be captured - and in this age, uploaded to god knows where. And if you look intimidating, which, for an adult male, is much more likely the case in society’s eye than it is for me, hostility is the reaction. On the other hand, if you look easily intimidated, you’re less of a threat - but perhaps also easier to threaten. I’m not sure how to balance the intrinsic audacity of street photography with keeping myself safe, both physically and in terms of away from triggers.

I skipped the opportunity to do another shoot after sunset.

tommorrisdotorg:

Tomorrow, the government’s public consultation on equal civil marriage closes.

You can fill it in here.

If you wanted to go do something nice today, spend half an hour going through the consultation and responding. I did so as early as I could, and every response counts.

You know how it is when someone buys you a gift: a nice card, maybe a book token or a box of chocolates. Yeah, it’s like that, except the gift you are giving is support for equal rights for gay people under the law.

Here’s why it will be appreciated if it actually happens (and I’m not going to count any chickens until it’s on the damn statute books).

The state currently endorses discrimination against gay people by not allowing gay people to get married. It’s that simple. State endorsement of discrimination permits discrimination by wider society: in the workplace, in public life, in schools and elsewhere. Lack of equality and basic rights is a cause for a variety of mental health problems.

How can we have programmes in schools and youth clubs saying to gay and lesbian teenagers that society loves and values them for who they are, when actually society doesn’t? Without full civil equality, society simply sees the stereotypes: the sex-crazed hedonists, the leather daddies, the butch lesbians, the fabulous Gay Best Friends, the sissy as comedy relief etc.

Opponents of gay equality say that allowing gay people to marry destroys “traditional marriage”. No, no, no. That died a long time ago, and it wasn’t done by gay people but by more enlightened views of female sexuality that stemmed from feminism, and from the availability of cheap, reliable contraception. Heterosexual couples could now turn childbearing into a choice rather than an accident. If traditional marriage is the shotgun marriage of a woman finding herself unexpectedly pregnant and having to be forcibly partnered off with a man who doesn’t necessarily love her in order to meet social and familial expectations, we’ve got good reasons to be glad it’s dead and buried.

Marriage is now a romantic institution: one of the few romantic institutions left in a world run by markets and money men, incidentally. It’s yet to be convincingly deconstructed by either postmodern theorists or merchant banks. If you think marriage has any value, it’s because love has value. Behind my cynical exterior is someone who believes in love. Love is the foundation of all that is good and noble in humans: family, charity, care for each other, the desire to create and to share, in the fight for justice when we are wronged. Love requires above all honesty and truth. Marriage is the public telling of that truth to all. And gay people have some truth that needs telling.

The choice here is between segregation and equality, between fear and love. Please choose wisely.

Go respond to the consultation today.

Reblogging for any UKers, but also simply because Tom’s wording here is utterly superb in general. We Kiwis may be leading our own push for marriage equality soon, and these words are relevant regardless of geographic location.

Once I was embarrassed about how freely I cried.
I said it was allergies, or dust in my eyes,
never that emotions bubbled to the surface
in damp beads.

Now I look back and wish I could remember,
bend double and retch up my rotting fear.
But it is only allergies, or dust in my eyes,
that can bring tears.

I’m coming out of a fairly awful episode. Triggered by a fucking anime I was watching. An animated penknife. This isn’t really a poem, but there we go.

I was hurrying down the street at dusk today, head down, quickly navigating around the milling people. When the small figure with the huge black mastiff walked by, all that was in my mind was to avoid the snarling dog.

“Hey! Kiran!” I turn, and he’s grinning lopsidedly at me. “S’me, remember?”

I do. Went to high school with him. Two non-conforming kids trapped in a super-conservative Christian school. He threw desks at teachers; I pandered to them. The girls were all terrified of him; his slight frame curled into a permanent slouch, that hostile snarl etched into his face, he terrorized them. I viewed him as a kindred spirit.

You’d think that he’d have hated little do-gooder me. He spat in disdain when the other girls fretted over their grades, but applauded when I went up for the eighth time in one ceremony to accept an award. Perhaps he saw that I, too, was longing for escape.

One time he stood, smirking, in my way. Grabbed me by the shoulder, something that always makes my skin crawl. Before I realized what I’d done, I’d thrown him against the wall and he crumpled onto the floor, gaping in astonishment.

From then on he accorded me a distant respect. I was the only person he let sit next to him, or make small talk; I caught glimpses of a nice guy, playing tough because to do otherwise was to let the establishment think they had won. He never really let that guard down. Made too many bad friends. But I think he was comfortable being the bad guy in a good school: there’s no pressure to be truly awful in order to gain a reputation. Once, after making a sweet young thing cry by mocking the death of a cherished six-year-old she’d ‘mothered’ at school, he paced the locker room for an hour before apologizing and handing her a crumpled ten-dollar note.

He’s shorter than I remember. I’m surprised he still knows me. I was masculine then, but more so now than ever: the waist-length ringlets are long since gone, and we are dressed nearly identically in oversized flannel shirts and worn-out jeans, his newly long hair hanging limply from under a beanie, stubble casting his chin into shadow; my own hair hacked down to within an inch of my head.

“Remember the time I told you I was gonna become a flaming inferno and those fuckers couldn’t stop me?” I smile. “Yep.” “I did, and now I’m prolly going to jail.” He laughs, as heartily as I’ve ever heard him laugh. “And now I’m looking after this girl.” Motions to the dog. I’m not sure how to interpret this. “How’d you get her?” The dog lunges at a nearby preschooler, and he yanks hard at her leash, shouting at her to stay down. She does. “Oh, a friend had puppies. Couldn’t keep ‘em all. And now Sheba’s my best mate, aren’t you girl?” Bends to pat the dog, with gruff but undisguised affection.

Some children come up cautiously to admire the beautiful animal, and he proudly answers their questions. “You should have seen her brother! He’s way bigger!” I watch quietly. He turns back for a second. “Hey, Kiran? Have a good one.” I meet his gaze, and raise my hand in that salutary acknowledgement of old. “You too.” And then, slipping over my tongue almost too easily, “Catch you later.”

The moment’s over. I turn to continue home, suddenly all too aware of the heft of the battered laptop in my backpack, the clatter of the shiny new shoes I’ve scrimped to afford against the crumbling concrete of the sidewalk. I’ve seen him only twice since we left high school - both times roaming the streets of our run-down suburb - and somehow I feel like I won’t catch him later, whatever that means.

Coming out as multiple (for the uninitiated, having multiple personalities) is hard. Not least because, while everyone’s pretty much agreed that gay people are people (well… I’m ignoring the utter crackpots here), a very small minority are equally immediate to acknowledge that individual members of a system in one body are also people. After all, there’s one physical body; surely that’s one person? Needless to say, our legal system does not in any way shape or form take multiples into account. (And that is perfectly reasonable, given the huge complications that arise if one does.)

That being said, I’ve just had a conversation with my super-duper conservative mother about my being a median (that is, I have bits which have their own personality of sorts, but aren’t full people able to function on their own), and of all the other things I need to come out as at some point, queer, polyamorous, and all the rest, I felt I was most able to explain this. So maybe how I did it will help someone else.

It kinda led in from an equally uncomfortable conversation about my hallucinations. (C-PTSD comes with lots of fun stuff, y’all.) Like most people, Mom clearly doesn’t see people with mental illnesses as different-but-equal; however, having recently had to learn about how to deal with Asperger syndrome, she’s perhaps been primed a bit better than most. I talked a bit about various forms of dissociation and how they’re often, though not always, linked to childhood trauma; how some people feel like they don’t belong in their body, or like they’re actually somewhere else, or that there are multiple realities for them; then I mentioned that some people have several separate personalities. Being a median, I then clarified that one of the ways in which I’ve dissociated is that “the bits of my head - you know, the subconscious and the bit that handles emotions and the long-term memory, bits like that - have their own will and sometimes don’t cooperate”. Which is fortunate for me, that I had little else to explain. I don’t feel like introducing her to Lyra or any of the others any time soon.

However, she did bring up one of the objections I’m sure many multiples meet - demon possession. I’m lucky enough to have a friend she thinks highly of who is also a multiple, and I talked about her for a bit. Talked about how another friend had faced psychiatrists who had wanted to “merge” the members of her system, and had always felt it was murder, killing off a real person. Talked about, although some of the language I used made me cringe inside, how “you know, people are broken in so many ways due to original sin. We have lots of people who have different illnesses and are otherwise born with issues, and while we can’t fix them, we shouldn’t judge them because of it - it’s not their fault - and we should just love and support them. Back in the day people like my brother (Asperger syndrome) or Kris (cerebral palsy) or even you, when you were severely depressed, would have been locked away or subject to exorcisms. We don’t do that any more, mom. We shouldn’t. They’re just people.” Finished with examples of anti-bigotry action in this city, people standing up for and supporting the blind and wheelchair-bound et al, and how they encouraged me; mentioning that these people would be locked away in the past, or even, some of them, in our homeland today, but we’re better than that.

She nodded, looked at me with some concern. “Just as long as you’re handling it all well, okay?” And that was that.

I’m a wee bit obsessive, and I wanted to keep the reblogging-random-pictures and all that away from the SRS BZNS, so, misc.klutz.geek.nz is the new tumblr for everything other than aforementioned seriousness :) Just means I can doodle and be all strange in one place and write monumental posts or whatever in another place.

If, of course, this is a bad idea, do let me know! And, follow follow follow.

annikafagface:

unfortunately being gay in real life is not as fun as it is on the internet

Likewise all those people who are all “oh you’re bisexual/pansexual/polyamorous/genderqueer? Just doing it cause it’s trendy.” Not very trendy irl.

(Just a note: I’m an aspie. I’m can’t say the particular phenomenon I’m describing is unique to those with AS, but I’ve observed it in the people in my family who also have AS.)

I’ve always been the classic introvert. You know the definition of introversion? Having energy sapped away from you by being around others, and needing to be by yourself to recharge. In explaining to my partner why I felt like a heartless bitch for not really wanting to “hang out” with anyone, I’ve only just realized how true this is for me.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been a bit of a loner. More significantly, I’ve only ever had one or two friends that I can actually name and remember at any given time. Some others I vaguely recall being acquaintances when given photos and old letters, but really, there is usually only ever one important person for me at any given time. Right now that’s the partner in question.

This seems a little dangerous or codependent, and it would be if I was an extrovert. But I’m not leaning on that person for support. There have been plenty of periods when I’ve been alone (libraries are always my friend!) and perfectly happy as people move in and out of my life. The persons who become my Important People generally seek me out (for some unknown reason) rather than the other way around. It’s less of “all my social needs are piled on one person” and more “my social processor only accommodates one person”.

As a result, while I’m easy to get along with and make an acquaintance of, being (like many people with similarly mild AS) very easygoing and tolerant by nature, it’s a totally different story when it comes to being someone I consider a real friend. Quite often, being too nice/weak/pushover/considerate to not also expend energy on interacting with everyone else, including those who see me as a friend or best friend or potential wife (this happens to me more often than it should), I burn out socially. I’m getting drained by having what to the other person is a perfectly nice conversation, and I find people weird or boring or just plain annoying after a while in general (or alternatively, I hold them in such high esteem that I have panic attacks just trying to talk to them). And so I space out. Don’t deal with social situations. Go back to drawing nudes in the margins of my lecture manual or sitting awkwardly or otherwise, just out of lack of available processing memory, ignoring the situation or approaches of the other person altogether. (Much easier to do online.)

If I know you well, especially over the internet, you are my friend. I care about you, and probably respect you to the point where it sometimes stresses me out talking to you because I don’t know what’s socially appropriate and I want to respond appropriately. (Never mind how I’d respond being myself; I honestly don’t know half the time. I’ve developed this general willingness to comply with anything over time to compensate for my lack of social skills.) You’re probably just not in what most people would call an inner circle but for me is an inner point or two. My outer circle of friends is very small; beyond that, people drift easily back into “acquaintance” once contact is broken or paths separate.

But you are probably not, and probably have not been, one of my Important People. While they fill that role, I’m inherently loyal, inherently supporting, inherently always-there-for-you: but that doesn’t mean I’m not that for everyone else as well. I care about everyone, but have to be very very selective about what energy I invest in people. If you and I have nothing in common, you make me uncomfortable, or I find that I’m ending up being your mother rather than a friend, I might one day find the guts to be honest and get back to functioning normally by no longer feeling obliged to talk to you. Don’t feel like you’re terrible; it’s generally genuinely not you, it’s me.

Whew, explanationpost-to-link-people-to done. Apologies for spamming your feed, those who follow me :)