I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. I write fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and nonfiction. For more than 20 years I edited and published an anthropomorphic sci-fi/space opera literary fanzine. I attend and work on the staff for several anthropormorphics, anime, and science fiction conventions. I live near Seattle with my wonderful husband, still completely amazed that he puts up with me at all.
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The original Pride flag designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978 has 8-stripes. Colors were removed and changed originally due to fabric availability.I don’t remember when I first learned that the Rainbow flag was a symbol for LGBTQ pride. I do remember in high school finding out that a particular representation of a labrys (double-headed symmetric ax associated with several goddesses from Greek mythology) had been adopted by some lesbians. However, since the information came first from the same sorts of church people who saw Satanic symbols everywhere, I wasn’t completely certain it was true.
The next symbol I learned about was the pink triangle. Since it was an emblem used by the Nazis to mark prisoners sent to the concentration camps with the excuse that they were sexual deviants, and since the Allies had then re-imprisoned all of the gay men who managed to survive the camps, the emblem was more of an assertion of “never again!” than a pure statement of pride.
When I set my goals for this year, I pledged to continue the things I thought worked last year (which includes posting regular updates) and added some new things. It’s a new month, so here’s the next report!
We had some of my husband’s relatives in town over Memorial Day weekend, and as we were driving somewhere on Memorial Day itself, I mentioned how my Grandmother had insisted on calling it “Decoration Day” her entire life. That she had, in fact, died literally in the middle of putting silk flowers on the grave of my Great-aunt Maud on the Friday before Memorial Day, because to her the holiday had always been about putting flowers on the graves of all of your family members who had passed away, and having a family gathering to celebrate the lives of our loved ones no longer with us. To which my sister-in-law said, “That’s how I grew up celebrating it, too! Sometimes with a picnic at the cemetery.”
It was later that I saw a cartoon that talked about how every even vaguely-patriot holiday seems to be inexorably transformed into Veteran’s Day: so Memorial Day is now Veteran’s Day May, Independence Day is now Veteran’s Day July, Labor Day is sometimes Veteran’s Day September, and the actual Veteran’s Day is now merely Veteran’s Day November.
If Flag Day joins that list I’m going to start slapping people.
This lunacy must stop. I know that my own wish to keep the original (and it does predate the declaration of the first memorial day for troops issued by General Logan in 1868 by decades) meaning of the May holiday as a day to commemorate the lives of all of our loved ones who have died is probably a lost battle. But this re-defining of patriotism as supporting the troops (which has itself already very unpatriotically been re-defined as supporting the notion of sending troops to die to further political aims rather than to actually defend the nation), and therefore coopting all other commemorations of our nation’s history and principles into yet another chance to thank the troops, isn’t just annoying, it’s dangerous.
We’re currently in the middle of a war on “terror” which is being used by government officials of both parties to trample all over our civil rights and the Constitution itself. The vast transfer of completely inappropriate military hardware to police departments is a direct result of this ill-conceived and poorly-defined war. A war which is not being waged against an actual threat, but merely the idea of possible threats. And the escalating violence by police against the citizens they are supposed to protect is enabled and excused because of a myth we’ve been sold that these are people risking their lives to protect us, therefore we must support the cops, because not doing so would be the same as not supporting the troops, and we already know that all patriots always support the troops.
And let’s not forget the actual men and women in uniform who were sent to Iraq because of lies (which Bush administration officials are finally admitting they were intentional lies), far too many of whom have come home wounded, maimed, and otherwise in need of care which our congresscritters seem unwilling to pay for. I’m still one of those weirdos who thinks that the first step in supporting the troops is not to vote for politicians who authorized military action when it isn’t needed, and not to vote for those who don’t adequately fund veterans’ hospitals, et cetera.
We don’t have the funds to pay returning veterans a living wage or get them proper medical care, but we do have money to pay for things like this: US Defense Department paid 14 NFL teams $5.4M to honor soldiers. The NFL didn’t give free tickets to those soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines. Each of those tickets was paid for by your tax dollars! And the tickets are a fraction of the amount paid to the league. But the money is well spent, according to the folks who approved the contracts, because it’s a great recruiting tool.
So we are paying a very successful business millions of tax dollars to pretend to be patriotic in order to distract us from asking questions about why those troops are being sent into harm’s way and to lure more people into volunteering to be sent into harm’s way. You can’t get more capitalist or cynical than that!
Let’s stop blurring the lines between the holidays. Let’s stop blurring the lines between supporting the troops and supporting the politicians and industries that profit from exploiting the troops. Let’s stop blurring patriotism into cynicism—while we still can!
http://www.inquistr.com (click to embiggen)I wrote (and linked to others who wrote) about why we shouldn’t give in to the schadenfreude urge in relation to the child sex abuse scandal swamping the cultish Duggar family of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting fame, and Brooke Arnold makes a powerful argument coinciding with that: I could’ve been a Duggar wife: I grew up in the same church, and the abuse scandal doesn’t shock me. The children of the cultish perversion of Christianity the Duggars practice, particularly the girl children, are raised in an environment guaranteed to create these tragedies. And should we be surprised that the man credited with founding this movement is guilty of both a sexual harassment and sexual assault?
And now there’s the indictment of former Republican speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert for paying out millions of dollars in hush money to a man who Hastert had some sort of sexual relationship (sexual misconduct) with back when Hastert was a high school wrestling coach? As I asked earlier, and the author of that story asks now, “When do we get to acknowledge that sexual hypocrisy is in fact a constant theme of conservative politics — that every single time a Republican or ‘family values’ representative speaks to the bigoted mythology of homophobia or transphobia, they are closeting skeletons like a Duggar?” (In case we’ve forgotten how often this happens, Queerty has rounded up a subset of 16 Antigay Leaders Exposed as Gay or Bi.)
Bisexual FlagOn the other hand, June is almost here, and the President has issued a proclamation for Pride Month. People are reacting as if it isn’t a big deal, but as Gabe Ortiz (an immigration rights and gay rights activist) pointed out: George W. Bush refused to issue any such proclamations for 8 years even though they had been issued annually almost pro forma for many years before.
Polyamory SymbolA few points stick out for me: “For countless young people, it is not enough to simply say it gets better; we must take action too.” and “All people deserve to live with dignity and respect, free from fear and violence, and protected against discrimination, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation. During Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, we celebrate the proud legacy LGBT individuals have woven into the fabric of our Nation, we honor those who have fought to perfect our Union, and we continue our work to build a society where every child grows up knowing that their country supports them, is proud of them, and has a place for them exactly as they are.” Obama reflects on progress in Pride proclamation
Genderqueer flagAlthough some people think the acronym is already long, I wish the President had used the LGBTQ version, because I like to think that the Q (for queer) includes our polyamorous, agender, genderfluid, asexual, genderqueer, pansexual, genderqueer, and allied siblings. Because we’re all part of that crazy, happy, wonderfully fabulous tribe!
Ludovic Bertron from New York City, USA (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)The world would have a lot fewer tragedies like Hastert’s inappropriate touching problem, Foley’s congressional page scandal, and the Duggar child molestation disaster if society as a whole accepted and affirmed all queer people.
by Mike Luckovich (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, click to embiggen)It’s Friday! The fifth Friday in May. Despite a number of misadventures including some really odd car issues, we have made it to our hotel room at Everfree NW and are having a lot of pony-related fun. Depending on how healed my ankle is from this week’s misadventure. I may do nothing more than hobble from our room to the bar.
Anyway, here is a collection of some of the things that I ran across over the course of the week which struck me as worthy of being shared. Sorted into categories with headings so you can skip more easily:
Science Fiction’s White Male Problem. What I like most about this one is the Samuel R. Delaney anecdote. “A genre that includes the socialist H.G. Wells, the libertarian Heinlein, the Catholic conservative Gene Wolfe, the anarchist Le Guin, the feminist Margaret Atwood and the Marxist China Mieville can hardly be thought of as essentially nonpolitical entertainment.”
Cover of Daybreak 2250 A.D. (original title: Star Man’s Son) by Andre Norton. (Click to embiggen)I don’t remember which Andre Norton book was the first that I read. I do know that sometimes when we moved to a new town where the library didn’t have a clearly labeled science fiction/fantasy section, I would head to the card catalog and look up Norton to find out where to start. I do remember one of her books that I read over and over: Daybreak 2250 A.D..
I believe that I first read it in fourth grade. It was a hardback copy from the school library with the original title: Star Man’s Son. I found the copy with the blue and white cover and the alternate title in a used bookstore sometime in middle school. The novel is set in the mid-23rd Century, two hundred years after a nuclear disaster has destroyed civilization. The protagonist, Fors, is the son of a Star Man, who have been scouring the earth for old technological treasures, books, and the like that they are preserving as part of a plan to eventually rebuild a civilization. Fors is a mutant with silver hair and mild psychic powers who is ostracized by the other Star Men after his father dies. He has a series of adventures with his unnaturally intelligent cat, Lyra, eventually proving himself worth of carrying the distinctive star badge of his father’s people.
Th novel was originally written in 1952, and was intended for the young adult market, so the plot and setting don’t seem terribly original now. But she described Fors’s and Lyra’s world vividly enough to seize my imagination. Having a hero be a young person who is rejected by his own people for being a freak is something that most kids could related to, let alone a closeted gay nerd who loved science growing up with creationist fundamentalists. And what kid wouldn’t want to go on fantastic adventures with a kickass telepathic cat as a companion?
Despite the fact that I read it so many times, the specifics of the plot never stay with me. I remember the setting, the hero, and the cat. There were various encounters with less civilized tribal cultures, but I don’t remember any specifics. I don’t even remember what discovery he made at the end to earn his place with the Star Men.
But I loved that book!
Double-book of The Beast Master and Star Hunter (Click to embiggen)Then there were the pair of Norton books that were released as a double-book. These were an interesting idea: publish two different books back-to-back (one was literally upside-down compared to the other) and sell for the usual paperback price. This was one of the few I ever found where both books were by the same author. Others usually had one author I had heard of on one side, and a complete unknown on the other. This is not a scan of my copy. When I found mine for sale extra cheap at a used book store, it was missing the Beast Master cover completely, and had maybe half of the other one still intact. Someone had attempted a repair with book tape and some cardstock. I had never known what the original Beast Master cover looked like until the age of the internet.
It is important to note that this book pre-dated the movie of similar name by many years. And the movie bears almost no connection to the plot of the book. I understand that Ms. Norton received a licensing fee for the movie, but I don’t know whether it was meant to be an adaptation. Anyway, Norton’s novel is about a man of Navajo descent named Hosteen Storm who has a telepathic link to certain animals. Storm and his companions end up on a colony world after leaving the military. Star Hunter, on the hand, is about a young guy who discovers he has another person’s memories and a bunch of people are out to get him.
Just skimming the titles in the very long bibliography of Norton’s work on Wikipedia brings a fond smile to my face. Whether she was writing science fiction or fantasy (or the occasional historical novel), she created scores of imaginary worlds that I wanted to run away to, and gave me characters I wanted to be like. A recurring theme was the outsider who finds or makes their own niche in the world. Her stories made me believe that it didn’t matter if people called me a freak, or said I was irrelevant or unsuitable because of some arbitrary standard—what mattered was what I did with the hand fate dealt me.
That was an inclusive message I desperately needed to hear growing up. Fortunately, Andre Norton was there to show me the way.
A Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy supporter posted an op-ed on the men’s rights site Return of the Kings (he links to and heavily paraphrases one of the Sad Puppy podcasts), “How Female-Dominated Publishing Houses Are Censoring Male Authors” that is a great example of several of the issues that I believe underpin the Sad Puppy position. Never mind that the statistics show that men make up more than 65% of the annual publishing lists of most of the publishing houses, and male-authored books comprise more the 80% of books reviewed in the major publications, this guy is here to tell us that men are being censored!
His proof is an anecdote told to him by a veteran who had written a book about his experiences while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who claimed to have gotten his book through several phases of the publishing process, only to be rejected at the last step because a senior editor who happened to be a woman was offended by one line in the book and said, “he’s an asshole, we don’t want to work with him.” I have a hard time swallowing the story as stated. But even if we take it at face value, the story boils down to an editor deciding that someone who is difficult to work with wasn’t worth the time, effort, and stress required to work with them.
He’s a first-time author, never been published before, has no name recognition, no proven track record. I don’t believe for a moment that it was a single line in the book that set anything off. I suspect that the author had behaved abominably to several people in the process up to that point and the book itself was of only middling quality. An important part of an editor’s job is to recognize which stories their readers will enjoy reading. Another important job is to weigh the costs and benefits of working with a specific story and author. If a particular book does not look like a blockbuster that will sell zillions of copies, it isn’t worth the time and effort to put up with a lot of assholery through the process of re-writes, galley proofs, et cetera.
That isn’t anti-male prejudice, that’s good business practice.
The fact that this anecdote is swallowed without examination—without considering the possibility that one could try to figure out what behaviors led to the characterization of asshole and try changing those behaviors—shows just how big the privilege blinders are on these guys. Imagine! If you’re nice to people they’re willing to help you. If you aren’t, they have no motivation to stick their necks out for you. And deciding to expend your employer’s money and the time of yourself and other employees on turning a manuscript into a published book and then distributing it is sticking your neck out.
This is one of the fundamental blind spots of the various puppies: they are convinced that the only reason their stories aren’t bestsellers and award winners and the only reason that they aren’t met at every convention by crowds of screaming fans must be the result of a conspiracy. It isn’t possible that their writing is mediocre. It isn’t possible that their subject matter isn’t of interest to anyone but angry misogynist racist homophobic men such as themselves. It isn’t possible that their predilection for making outrageous statements comparing gay people to termites in need of extermination might make anyone who knows or loves a gay person less than thrilled to hear more of what they have to say. It isn’t possible that characterizing some woman’s clothing as an all-day slut walk might be off-putting to anyone who is or loves a woman. It isn’t possible that characterizing people of color as half-savages might make people of any ethnicity less than enthusiastic about cheering everything you say.
Instead of exercising our own judgement about what works to read and who to be fans of, apparently we should all feel grateful that they would deign to allow us to bask in the glow of their wit and wisdom.
Flowers for Grandma’s grave. Grandma always called it by the older name, Decoration Day. As I’ve written before, the original holiday was celebrated in many states as a day to gather at the grave sites of your parents, grandparents, et cetera, to honor the memory of their lives. It was often a time of picnics and family reunions. At least as much a celebration of their lives as a time of mourning. The connection to military deaths didn’t happen until 1866, and particularly in the south, was often seen as a pro-Union, pro-war, anti-southern celebration.
I didn’t understand most of those nuances when I was a kid. The modern version of the holiday, celebrated on the last Monday in May, didn’t even exist until I was a fifth-grader, when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act went into effect.
Grandma observed it faithfully. Every year, as May rolled around, she would…
These tweets by Gabe Ortiz express my sentiments nicely.Yes, I posted at least two links yesterday to stories about Josh Duggar, one of the sons of the ultra-rightwing family that are the “stars” of TLC’s 19 and Counting and his admission to the charges of molesting younger children when he was a teenager. Please note that most of my ire is at his parents, who covered it up for at least a year. And I say at least because they eventually asked a friend who was a state trooper to talk to Josh about his problem, and said friend didn’t do anything official with the news. The fact that the same trooper is now currently serving prison time for child molesting himself is a weird twist I may come back to.
The closest they came to not covering it up is three years later, when Josh was still a teen, and allegations from the victim that wasn’t one of his sisters came to light. By then, the statute of limitations had run out, and while authorities looked into the matter, there was nothing they could do. At that time, the family claimed that they had earlier sent Josh off to some kind of rehab. More recently, they have admitted that all they did was send him to live with a family friend for three months. There was no counseling or therapy involved. So, the parents and at least one state patrol officer knew about the problem, but didn’t report it. When other people learned about the problem, the parents lied about what steps they had taken to handle it.
Then there is the fact that grown-up Josh has been working for the Family Research Council where his official duties boiled down to saying awful, untrue things about gay and trans people, campaigning to take away our civil rights, and raising money to continue to keep us as second class citizens. So some people are experiencing a little bit of schadenfreude: Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged, Josh Duggar!
What I am doing is saying “I told you so.” Not that I predicted that Josh was a serial child molester, but I have said many times that the kind of counter-factual, sex-negative fanaticism practiced at least a little bit by most conservative “christians” (and is practiced in spades by the Duggar Cult) makes this sort of thing inevitable. The human sex drive is not an insignificant force, and you can’t dismiss it. If you refuse to teach children how to handle it when their hormones start flowing, foster an atmosphere where they are afraid to ask questions about it when they start feeling it, and otherwise teach them falsehoods about how it all works you wind up creating situations like that of Josh and his victims.
In other words, it isn’t ironic that this has happened, it is inevitable.
And then there is the disturbing lack of any mention about the harm to the victims. Josh was sent off to live with a family friend (did I mention that this family friend, like the state trooper, is also now in prison for molesting minors?), was covered up for, and prayed for. But were his victims offered counseling? Or were they told to praise the lord that it wasn’t worse? The Problem With the Duggar Sexual Assault Cover-Up Nobody’s Talking About.
Quadruplet clouded leopard cubs were born at Point Defiance zoo and aquarium in Tacoma, Washington (Photograph: Point Defiance Zoo/Facebook)It’s Friday! The fourth Friday in May. We have family flying in from out of town, and they want to do a whirlwind tourist-y tour of Seattle, so I’m going probably going to be off the grid until sometime next week.
Anyway, here is a collection of some of the things that I ran across over the course of the week which struck me as worthy of being shared. Sorted into categories with headings so you can skip more easily:
The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous. “Its faith-based 12-step program dominates treatment in the United States. But researchers have debunked central tenets of AA doctrine and found dozens of other treatments more effective.” (Thanks to geojlc for the link!)
Font Folly 