Why people suck…

I’m going to share two stories with you about two seemingly very different topics, but both sharing a common theme. First, imagine that there was a law enshrined in your land as one of the most important tenements of your government, and that someone was violating that rule. Now imagine that everyone except one person was okay with that violation, so they let it stand. If one person pointed out the violation and got the law enforced, what do you suppose the other people ignoring the law would do? Do you think they would stay rational? Like maybe they’d say, “Well huh, I guess we were breaking the law. Okay, fair enough, let’s try to be better.” You think that’s what really happened?

Then you’re either naive or in denial. Because what really happened is, people started sending threats to a teenage girl because she’s an Atheist and had a prayer taken down out of her school. Separation of church and state? Whatever, hippie chick, there are traditions to be respected! (Traditions made by organized religions after that pesky idea about separation of church and state, and traditions that romanticize conformity and oppression as actually being nurturing and educating.)

(EDIT: The more I think about this, the more this real life event SCREAMS for a YA author to spin it into a courageous tale of a non-believer standing strong against Christian persecution. A 16-year-old protagonist, clearly in the right, being brave in the face of tradition and righteous indignation. You don’t even need no romantic angle to make this into a solid book with a great heroine. Come on, writers. I know one of you is bold enough to cover this story and give Atheist teens a book to rave about. Please, make this happen.)

And you say, “Well but that’s a few religious fanatics.” Nuh-uh, this girl has to be escorted to class by cops because EVERYONE hates her. Forget a “few rotten apples,” because this whole place is full of rotten sentiments posing as religious devotion. I find it sad how many people demonstrate their love of God by making threats against other people. It’s even worse coming from people who supposedly believe in turning the other cheek. But being honest, the day I see morally incensed Christians actually practice what they preach about turning the other cheek, I’ll be flabbergasted and speechless.

But let’s move on to story two, where a blogger is attacked as “the worst person in the world.” Pretty freaking harsh, so what did they do? Did he advocate genocide or make a case for eating baby seals in front of their sobbing mothers? No, he didn’t provide links to the HELLO KITTY items he was blogging about, and the fans of the merchandise are flaming him with comments like: “I don’t know how your wife can put up with you. I think it’s utterly disgusting and you’re not fit to live on earth the way you treat us.” (emphasis mine)

REALLY? For not linking to a mass-produced item that you can fucking Google in 3.6 fucking seconds from the search window of your browser? And what the fuck is wrong with people that every day they take first world shit and turn it into a reason to be rancid inhumane shitheads? The first story shows how religious dogma can turn ugly even as people preach about wanting to earn God’s love. But the second story is more disturbing because the “religion” that this man ran afoul of is the Hello Kitty fandom. And they’re wishing death on him with just as much venom as the people threatening the teenage Atheist. Neither group has a valid excuse, but looking at the second story, how can any fan not cringe and say “Okay, that’s taking our fandom too far?” So how come this poor guy is getting comments like this regularly? In short, what the hell is wrong with you people? Why is it that you can turn your first world problems into the worst travesty that ever happened, ever, but you can’t recognize when real travesties have occurred?

I don’t normally do writing advice…

“Every woman artist has to kill her own grandmother. She perches on our shoulder whispering, ‘Don’t embarrass the family’.”
~Erica Jong

You regular readers know I hate writing advice and writing rules lists. I think of them as make work for writers who’ve run out of interesting things to say and are instead trying to find something to offer out to cover their awkward silences. So you wouldn’t expect me to come up with a list of guidelines for writerly success. But today, I have some advice for women writers: do not be ashamed of your voice, and do not be afraid to say things in public that would offend your mother.

This runs counter to the advice of about a billion social media gurus, most of whom only have one book, and that’s a writing advice self-help book. All of these people have a non-fiction book, and they advise fiction authors about how to succeed, as if the methods of marketing in the neurotic world of self-help will work exactly the same in the world of fiction writing. They won’t, and if you’re a fiction writer, most of their advice will hamper your efforts, not help. But of all their lousy advice, their comments to women may be the most damaging and useless.

Lots of women social gurus will tell you “Don’t say anything on social media that you wouldn’t want your mother to read.” But let me pose a question to you: if you’re a romance or erotica writer, and your writing persona is a milquetoast presentation that would make mother so proud, what kind of image are you sending to your readers? “I baked cookies with dear hubby and read to my two dear sweet children, Nathaniel and Thadeus. Please, buy my book Whipping Princes Leia’s Cooter!”

Now if you’re selling Christian fiction and want to be seen as the female equivalent of Ned Flanders by readers, then okily-didyum-dokily, you go on and be a mealy mouthed good girl and make your momma proud. But if you’re a horror author whose last book contained gruesome and gory acts that made your mother queasy, then why would you want your writing persona to be so out of phase with your writing voice?

Writing report

I think it’s time for a ramble about where I am creatively. I believe TV tropes would still have me listed in the disillusioned artist category, unhappy both with my previous performances and with the audience reaction. (Or, lack thereof depending on which book we’re talking about.) But, even if I totally stopped pushing titles, I’ve been making sales. I know, I’m as surprised as you, really. I even had a few souls brave enough to read Peter’s books who didn’t hate my guts forever after finishing it.

But I’m assessing my previous pace and goals, and I don’t want to go back to that. Hell, when I have the revved up days of blogging or typing, it hurts my wrists when I’m only going for 2-4 hours instead of my old 8-14 hour schedule.

I really don’t know what projects I’m going to work on after completing the current crop of titles, but just what I have on my plate makes contemplating the rest too hard. I can only mentally juggle so much and still have time for casual reading and gaming.

But it seems nothing can kill certain stories in me. Some characters aren’t willing to give up, even if I was. They want to tell their stories, and they pick at me worse than my nicotine addiction ever did. I have to write them, even if no one wants to read my crap. But….but, some people do want to read my crap. Some people even open their wallets and pay for that crap. I have no idea how to handle promotion to you folks, and so I still won’t. I know this is harder on readers waiting for random releases when there’s no hint from me that this or that book dropped. But this is still just my hobby, and with all due respect to my regular buyers, once my previous promotions stirred you to get a copy, everyone else still ignored me. And man, if you six or so regular buyers ever abandon me, I am so, so fucked.

Do I make you feel squirmy? Good.

Today is my first day off of Vicks Sinex Aloe in two years. I have an addiction to it because my deviated septum means my right nostril is always making mucus. When I lay down and roll on my side, that mucus travels to the other side and irritates it, resulting in a buildup in both sinuses. I have had this problem most of my life, and throughout childhood, it was my habit to suck the junk back through my nose and into my mouth and play Spit or Swallow?

If what I had in my mouth was small and mostly liquid, then it wasn’t so gross to swallow because it’s like having a mouthful of thick saltwater. Really not that bad. But some mornings I’d suck back a huge patch of leather booger PLUS a huge wad of viscous snot with an irony taste of blood and pus. This is going in a toilet, cause no fucking way is that crap going into me for digestion. I don’t care if it’s mostly protein, I still don’t want it. I feel confident that most people would agree with me if said nasty clot was in their mouths. Semen is actually nicer, and I spit that out too. (Sorry guys, I’m no swallower. That shit is nasty.)

So, back about two years ago, when cold season hit, I started taking Vicks. I’d done it before, leading to a one year addiction, and quitting wasn’t easy. That’s because without Vicks, breathing through my nose requires constant playing with my nose to clear it. So I can sit there and pick stuff out or snort water and let the water loosen stuff before I blow it out. Either way, I’m still sticking my fingers up my nose. So lady-like, right? But with Vicks, I spray, wait, and sploosh, one minty booger to play Spit or Swallow? with. And as an added bonus, for the next six hours, no boogers at all. How could I not want to be addicted to breathing free without picking my nose all the time?

People are talking, but are you listening?

Today I got up and read this article from Colorlines by Akiba Solomon, and her complaints hit on what I’ve been talking about over here for a while. The whole thing is a great read, but I want to quote part and riff off of it:

Black women have been defining ourselves since before Sojourner Truth made her infamous 1851 “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, black women tell, no scream, about our humanity, complexity, legacy, pride, sisterhood, spirituality, money problems, romantic desires, bone-deep sadness, moral conflicts, sexuality and joy. Some of us are dying for a “Sunday Kind of Love.” Some of us think we’re cute and “Cleva.” Some of us aren’t that damn deep. The problem isn’t that black women haven’t defined ourselves for ourselves. It’s that mainstream media DON’T LISTEN.

And that’s the problem for all minority groups. It isn’t that people aren’t talking about how oppression works. It’s that the people who still actively oppress others don’t listen to anyone. The real problem with black women isn’t a white male-dominated media marginalizing black women’s voices into a stereotyped view of a whole race. NO! The real problem is, black women just aren’t talking enough to define themselves.

This same type of dismissive technique is used on women in general, on blacks in general, and on any fringe group that the established white media doesn’t want to acknowledge. To give you an idea of how easy it is to marginalize someone in the media, even someone supposedly empowered, during the 2008 elective cycle, Yahoo put any and all references to Hilary Clinton in Queer News. It didn’t matter if she was talking to gays or talking about jobs to unions, Hilary was a de facto queer to Yahoo. Obama was more hit or miss, but half of his articles also got flagged as queer, this despite his stated religious intolerance of gay civil rights. Meanwhile, anything said by the GOP, no matter how trivial or petty, was put in Headline news. A white man says it? Damn, must be front page news! A woman said it? Back to the back page with the homos and blacks.

The excuse that minorities aren’t writing enough of their own stories doesn’t fly either. There’s lots of writing online about these issues, but the mainstream media still chooses to present a white-centric view of the world. Any article that attacks or merely questions the white male status quo is not published. And if it isn’t vetted by a “real news source” it’s even easier for other whites to marginalize the impact of their continued racism. How can there be a racism problem, if it’s never mentioned once on the evening news?

I can be angry without being hateful…

I struggle a lot to find the right words when writing about any topic, and given how often I’m misunderstood, I feel like a piss poor writer. It doesn’t help that often someone else will come along and sum up my ideas more succinctly than I ever could. I suppose that on the good side, this means I will never reach the point of thinking of myself as a great writer, because I always feel short of my intended goals.

One such example came last night on Twitter, a tweet made by @profsusurro (sic):

Oppression makes me rage & that rage is an engine but radical love has to be it’s fuel

And this, I think, sums up just about everything about me. I’m not just committed to freeing my people from oppression, but in freeing all people everywhere from this tired system of control. I get angry because we as a people are not making progress. In fact, looking at the current governments and their schemes to disassemble free speech using copyright laws, I think we’re losing ground to our rich oppressors.

But despite the amount of hate that goes into oppression, I don’t want to turn the tables or make anyone into my servants as revenge. I’m not motivated to act based on a need to return the favors done to me in the past. I’m motivated by the hope that a new generation of kids like me will grow up never knowing the hatred I suffered daily at the hands of “good people.”

It’s your fault I’m hateful, not mine…

I’m often amazed by the statements people make to justify their prejudices, but nothing is quite so stunning as people saying, “The real problem here is, YOU don’t care enough, bitch.” So the person trying to spread awareness, who has a history of verbal and financial support to these causes, is the person who doesn’t care enough, while the person unwilling to discuss the topic or get involved is really the “good guy.”

This isn’t true. There’s no logic twist of verbal Kung Fu that can make this statement logical, and it requires leverage coming from privilege to make this tortured dog hobble a few steps. Yet, I’ve seen folks in the comments use it multiple times for multiple topics. And I ought to know, because I’ve just spent the other night stripping the ability to comment out of both my blogs. Every time there’s been a round of personal attacks against me, it’s because I’ve highlighted some news article that didn’t sit well with others.

Most of the people who responded tried to shoot the messenger and tell me that the real problem in the world was me. Not the people who committed the crimes, or the people who do nothing and don’t talk about the problems. No, the real problem is me, for always trying to ruin your day with “bad news.” So I don’t care about you, or that you’re suffering from your first world problems too.

Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe after watching hour after hour of your Facebook stream, I got tired of trying to care about you. Maybe after the 23rd status update where you complained about the teenagers in Starbucks making goo-goo eyes, I stopped caring about your opinions of other people. Maybe after your complaints about how others look or dress has left me with a lower impression of you. Maybe after your most recent “high-larious” Twilight jab, I wandered away from your sparkling wit. Maybe after your passive-aggressive complaints about your co-workers, I’ve come to expect nothing from you but more complaints about little shit that doesn’t mean anything at the end of the day.

Someone just brought up Marina in comments…

Bitch, fuck you. I know who you are, but I will not out you from your fucking anonymous closet, nor will I post that bullshit you spewed. This is a journal, not a forum. You want to say that shit in public? Go to a trans support forum and repeat that. I’ll bet you’ll make lots of new friends.

So the record is straight, cunt, hubby and I have given Marina money whenever we could for as long as we could, and she REFUSED to take any more well over two years ago because it would put her disability benefits at risk. She felt so guilty about all the money we gave her that she sent me $800 to go to Amsterdam on. Since then, I’ve offered to send more, and she keeps turning me down.

I still write to Marina all the time, and she’s doing well despite still being in Texas. Could things be better for her? Yes, if Texas wasn’t such a fucked up and hateful place. Would I like to keep sending money to my sister? Yes, but she WON’T LET US. Furthermore, I can still want to help Marina, AND want to talk about racial disparity. You have revealed that you also believe in zero-sum sympathy, where if I’m talking about this one topic, obviously, I can’t also be thinking of Marina. Well fuck you, you self-centered cunt. I still think of Marina, and I still talk to her. I want to move Marina over here, but we can’t afford it. So now that I’ve explained myself, I’ll throw this in your face: what have YOU done for Marina lately? Or did you just bring her up in an attempt to be morally superior? Because if that was your game, it didn’t fly.

And finally, bitch, I have a set of holes in my frontal lobe, plaque scars which you were told about before. I have MRI slides showing the damage, but even before then, I was suffering from mild dyslexia. I have to read slow because the letters jumble, and despite this, I’m slowly picking up Italian bit by bit, along with Japanese and German. But how dare you decide to throw in my face that I have a learning disability, as if my inability to learn languages faster is indicative of my mental capacity. You are the cunt who said “Blacks are poor because they can’t control their emotions.” So you are a fucking racist, no matter how enlightened or smart you may think you are.

Fuck you two ways, cunt. Fuck you for being a racist, and fuck you, for trying to use Marina as an emotional weapon to foster your self-serving views.

I swear to God, this is why I want to turn off ALL comments, but WordPress can’t get that one simple fucking setting right.

A more standard rant…

Sometimes people come to me and say things like, “Zoe, I don’t understand why you’re always so unhappy. Why don’t you go outside and get to know people? That will make you happy.”

With no due respect, fuck you.

But really, you want an insight into why I’m crazy? Okay. From childhood through my early teens, I was physically abused by other kids. Yet all throughout this torture, I had therapists and shrinks tell me “children aren’t capable of evil.” I’ve been told to tell the truth by adults, only to be ridiculed for it, so pretty much every lie you tell to children, I knew was a lie right from the start. Because the pretty lies only apply to privileged children.

I grew up and finally broke free of other people by pushing everyone away. I was an asshole in doing it, but I cut every connection and found the strength to change myself. After a blazing fast two year transition and gender surgery, society told me “Congratulations! We’re ready to accept you now!” Why? Because I’m pretty, short, and speak with a whiny voice. So long as I smile and don’t act like an angry tranny, people want to pull me along, to show how tolerant and open minded they are. They’ll still criticize my uglier sisters for not passing, and they’ll still let their evil bully children rape and torture the next generation of queers. But so long as I smile and keep my mouth shut, I can ride with the cool kids.

Oy…more from the racist pigs

This is going to be my last post on this topic for a few days, cause I like to switch around the sources for my insane rants to avoid a rut. Anywho, shock of shocks, yesterday Poor and Happy continued to post racist spam supporting his views that there are more poor white people than blacks. Statistics, books titles, and even an attack that “I am not even honest.” But if he likes I can be completely honest and wear my disgust for his views openly and with pride. PH, you are a white supremacist coming to my blog, apparently forgetting that guys like you beat and tortured me throughout my formative years, and you’re trying to convert me to join your cult? Aren’t you aware that trannies like me only want to recruit straight men to the queer agenda? Don’t you see what a threat I am to your straightness? So why on Earth would you explain why you still have to be racist to me, your worst enemy? Do you really think I’ll change my mind about assholes like you?

What drive me nuts is his reason why he can’t be a racist, why he chooses to ignore black people being the victims of racism, because his own people need his attention so badly. Which suggest that caring is a zero sum game, and if I care about racism, I’ll have nothing left over for poor people who are also lacking melatonin. But I can quickly round up a few white people who I’ve used PayPal to send donations for bills, groceries, or surgery. It’s just, I can also round up people in other ethnic groups too. You guys who can only help whites are racists. And nonthing you say about being good people will make it so, because YOU place limits on your empathy, and the limits you use ARE racist.

But worse, someone else showed up to back that pony and ask, “Are you afraid to look at the evidence?” Are you guys both morons who want to argue about your racism like it’s really concern for your own tribe? YES! The fact is, even if the statistics that PH attempted to post were accurate, it would still not change reality to suit your views. You cannot come up with statistics to show that whites are stopped more often than blacks. You cannot find laws that make racial profiling of whites SOP. You cannot find numbers to show more whites in prison, and you cannot show that there are more rich black people than rich whites. You cannot deny that white privilege exist and is alive and well in our modern societies.

But what you HAVE shown with your attacks is that you are white supremacists who believe that the rest of the races must suffer until ALL WHITES have life good. Otherwise, you can’t be bothered to think of anyone else while millions of white people are impoverished. Like I said before, no matter what I say, you’ll have a white victims’ card to play in rebuttal. Typical of racists, which is why I’ll continue to erase stupid shit from Poor and Happy and anyone else who comes here making a defense of their whiteness on the grounds that white people are suffering too.

Further, I will not stop talking about race, among the dozen other social issues I discuss about people outside of my own “tribe.” I will continue to talk up all civil rights, while these guys will only talk about the problems facing their race. Which shows which of us is really being honest. I can open my eyes and see all the problems that people have. These racists can only see how white people suffer. And when anyone else points out their myopia, they declare, “You just can be honest about what’s going on.”

You’re absolutely right. If I was 100% honest about your comment, I shouldn’t have been so nice in answering you. I wouldn’t have posted you comment at all. I would have paraphrased it to make you sound even more moronic, and I would have said, “Fuck you, you racist scumbag! Get the fuck off my blog with your hateful bullshit!” But silly me, I tried tact, which doesn’t work on douchebags with IQs this low.

I expected to catch some flack for that post, but I’m stunned by the low intelligence of the men showing up to make defenses of their racism. But then I don’t suppose I should be. The left-leaning liberal racists know well enough not to respond to a charge like mine because that would expose them. Only the morons looked at my post and decided to defend themselves using the classic “I can’t give a fuck about other issues while ___ is still taking place.” And it’s very telling that they can’t think about blacks until all white people are above the median poverty line, since that’s an event that no race can ever achieve without first dominating and subjugating all other races.

So I’ll tell you what, guys. I’ll pretend you racist morons don’t exist until all blacks are treated with equal respect to whites. Until every black illegally jailed for the color of their skin is free, I don’t give a fuck about your cause. But, the moment people like you stop mistreating blacks just because you can, then I’ll starting chipping in a dollar here and there to The American Honky College Fund.