About Adria Richards…

Last night, the Twitter stream went nuts over a story, and I did too. I know I just said I needed to show more gratitude to people, but even some of the guys in my followers have shown…let’s say confusion, over this story.

First, let me direct you to a link where Adria Richards herself can explain how she chose to stand up to sexual harassment at Pycon. Next, I want to show you another story detailing how she’s been harassed and attacked by bullies, threatened with rape and murder, had her private information exposed, and got fired by her cowardly employers. That second story has a graphic and brutal image at the bottom, so when I say trigger warning, I ain’t kidding.

Now, guys online are honestly saying, “Well, hey women, HE lost HIS job too. Why can’t you defend HIM too?” Sit down guys, and I’m going to explain to you why you’re confused. You see, we have a federal law about sexual harassment in work places. Pycon is a professional conference for programmers. It is not a convention, and this year in particular, Pycon was feeling a bit sensitive to their need to be welcoming to women. They added some new codes of conduct expressly forbidding the behavior that these men displayed. Adria Richard did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong by calling out these men. What’s more, “HIS” employers did nothing wrong for firing him, because he was guilty of sexual harassment. If you feel women should defend someone guilty of breaking the law, you’re officially inducted into the club of misogyny, and as Bill Engvall would say, “Here’s your sign.”

“But Zoe, don’t you think she made a mistake too? She could have handled it privately,” you say. “Surely they all were adults, and—” Whoa, back up, Tiger. You made a couple of logical fallacies there. First of all, most of the time it does a woman no good whatsoever to call men on their behavior by herself. NONE. Men in the tech sector are openly hostile to women, and this kind of sex joking is very common. So is bullying under the guise of “ribbing” and “snark.” (And yes, I know all about the tech sector. Maybe you forget, but I spent a good eight years working as a PC tech and a help desk operator.)

Secondly, the tones of these jokes proves the men involved may not be minors, but they sure as hell can’t be called adults either. Men who suggest that “they could have sorted it out like adults” are both ignoring the behavior of the men and projecting an ideal onto the situation that does not exist. You want to believe in the inherent goodness of the men and act like this was just a little slip up, and not a regular part of their behavior in professional work spaces. Your belief is misguided at best. At worst, you’re actively in denial about how men react to criticism, and that’s sad because we’re discussing men’s VIOLENT online reactions to criticism right now.

Social responsibility and online peer pressure…

Last night, the campaign for my editor reached its goal of $500. I never mentioned it until late this afternoon, because one of my followers dropped a photo of a murdered Rohingya child in my timeline. I did the only thing I could in such a situation, dropping all my evening marketing plans and beginning to push for awareness of this tragedy. I tweeted to some people I knew with bigger audiences, asking for their help in reposting this site. I wrote up something on my blogs and cross-posted it to my Tumblr. I sent some pleading tweets to some big-name celebrities who I follow and who have in the past retweeted for human rights causes. I got an invitation to do a guest post on the topic, and I quickly typed up a slightly longer post with more information on the situation in Burma. By 3 AM, I was exhausted, but still wired, and still wondering if there was more I could do. But I’d done as much as my body would allow, and I had to let that be the end of my night.

A few of my followers picked up my tweets and retweeted the news, but most did not. The big-name celebrities I approached turned out to all be on the road, and most likely will miss my tweets when they finally get a chance to check their mentions. But it was the little guys who follow me that bugged me, even if I understand they could have missed my four straight hours of campaigning. Still it does bug me because most of the writers I follow (and who follow me back) never slowed down talking about their books. At a certain point, my timeline was 90% “buy my book.” No social interaction, no conversation, and no sign that they even bothered reading what other people had to say.

Before the Rohingya story, I’d had to postpone my own marketing efforts for a few days because my editor had brought to my attention an Indiegogo campaign to make survival kits for the homeless, and with 19 days left, it had zero dollars. That sat so heavily on my conscience that it wasn’t good enough to donate money. I had to drop my own sales plans and work for a complete stranger on what I considered a good cause. My self-published books will never be taken down for a publishers contract expiring, so to my mind, there’s no need to rush to make more sales. Plus, it feels good to go to that campaign’s page and see they’re up to $385 as of this writing. It feel even better than seeing one or two news sales in my Kindle reports.

For as much as we talk about the positive power of social justice, there’s a lot of people on the social networks who are only there to hawk their wares and polish their personal brand. They don’t talk to anyone who isn’t praising their product. They don’t engage anyone in a longer conversation because they don’t like “rambling tweets.” And in this way, they tune out the other people and defeat the whole point of a social network, which is to socialize.

A desperate plea to help the Rohingya in Burma

One of the people I follow typically posts pitcures of animal cruetly, or slain dolphins. I RT what I can, and I keep up on her stuff. But tonight, the image she posted was of a murdered Rohingya child in Burma, someone who couldn’t have been more than 3. They’d been hacked with a machete. And within a few minutes, I began getting reports that this is about to happen to thousands of people in Burma.

There are US sanctions against the country for two prior Rohingya massacres, and a third is planned. But despite sanctions, companies like Google are still going over to do business with the Burmese government. Genocide just isn’t as bad for PR in our time as it was after the facts of the holocaust came out. Or it won’t be, if people don’t raise more awareness.

Please, watch this YouTube video, and then go to savetherohingya.blogspot.com or read this press release and share it online. Then if you have a blog, a Facebook profile, a Twtter account…whatever. Get the word out. These people have only a few days or weeks at most, and if the world decides not to sit up and take notice, it will be a genocide that will slip quietly into the night without so much as a mention on the news.

If you are on twitter, follow Aung Aung, a Rohingya who is tweeting live on the ground in Burma as these events go down. Please, if you have children, look at them, and really think how you would feel if a government murdered them like lowly animals. You must listen to your conscience and know that this is not right. Raise awareness, and let Burma know the world is watching them. Let Goggle know that the world is watching them too. Don’t let them treat genocide as business as usual. Please.

If a woman be right, she is still wrong unless men agree with her…

I seem to be hitting on a kick of complaints lately, but whether it’s exhaustion, or just me getting sick of seeing the same comments over and over online and finally deciding to bitch, I dunno. This time around, I started thinking how someone complained that their biggest problem with Twilight was with the overzealous fans who defend it. It’s okay to bash the same series for a decade, and the fandom should just shut up and take it?

That’s my standard rebuttal, but lately, as I watch Doctor Who fans on Facebook, I’ve started to ask, “No, wait, y’all male-dominated fandoms can insert your shit everywhere, and praise your beloved show all the time, and that’s okay. Star Wars fans can dress as Storm Troopers at every con, and that’s okay. But if a chick goes for a moon tan and body glitter, she’s “taking her fantasies too far”?

Women and girls really can’t win on this. Their favorite music is accused of being empty and meaningless. As if “Wop bop a loo bop, a womp bam boom” was some deeply meaningful observation on the human condition. As if Ozzy Osbourne’s many songs about drugs were so philosophical. No, pop music is empty, and heavy metal and hard rock are the pillars of moral posturing. Why just look at Ted Nugent and his love of little girls. That’s such deep and insightful music, man.

Women can’t catch a break. Men run the porn industry, and they degrade women in porn as a checklist of holes to violate. But they also use the term porn to strip legitimacy from anything women consume. What do they call a romantic book series with no sex? Abstinence porn. And what do they call a romantic book with visual sex? Mommy porn. What do they call erotica? Porn for women. Men’s porn can feature women shaving their pubes and portray young girls who get molested by uncles, and that’s not attacked with the vigor of romance books. No man talks up the problematic nature of the porn industry, but the characters of romance book are psychoanalyzed like they’re real people. They’re all found lacking, derided as useless fantasies and empty emotions, and the fact that they’re the most popular fiction market on the planet is just a sign of how bad the “problem” is. But even the most degrading porn slips right under the public radar. You try applying the same psychoanalysis to horror writing and call it torture porn, and watch the explosions about who’s being “persecuted.” The lesson is clear. It’s okay to persecute women, but don’t you dare question a man over what he writes.

Why I’m okay with Card working for DC

I’ve already done a long ranty ramble about this on Twitter, but some of you may not follow me there. Probably due to the high volume of tweets I produce. A totally valid fear, I assure you. But it seems DC is hiring Orson Scott Card, and it’s got some people pushing a petition to have Card fired without producing any work. You’d think with me not liking Card’s views on gays that I’d be down for this petition, but I’m not.

Here’s my dealio, yo. A boycott of Card’s comics as they come out is one thing. It’s voting with your dollars. But a petition to have him fired for his views outside of his work opens up the possibility that a religious group of equal size and vitriol can have a gay writer removed from any staff position as well. What’s more, it’s kind of douchey to hunt a guy down at every job and deny that he be employed just because you don’t like his views on a given topic.

Let’s say that I one day decided to organize a petition to have Card’s books pulled from Amazon based not on their content, but on Card’s anti-gay views. Word would get around, and a group of religious folks might get together and demand that Saving Gabriel be pulled from the bookstore, because my premise that Christianity is as much fiction as the next myth offends them. That’s not even the most offensive thing I’ve ever written. Soon, I’d have titles being pulled left and right because Amazon had no choice but to heed the collective will of those offended.

Free speech is a two-way street. It means that I can talk about racism and sexism and other social problems even if it offends other people for feeling like I’m calling them out. But it also means that people like Card can hate my guts and wish laws were passed against people like me. If I want to find some way to shut him down, I open up the way for the other side to shut me down too.

Guest post on Levi Pine…

I was invited to send in a guest post to Planetransgender about the discrimination case of Levi Pine against his gym. If you’d like to get my take on the issue, head on over and give it a read.

Um…this is a short post, innit? Yeas.

On gun control…

I’m a bit more calm today, so I want to talk about guns. Note, I didn’t say rant, and I will try very hard to avoid my usual favorite words to make my point. On this topic, I’m willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and watch my tone. (Yes, this is bordering on a miracle, so I do hope you appreciate my restraint.)

Yesterday, gun fans online made ubiquitous comments like “it’s too soon to talk about gun control.” I’m sorry, but how many mall and school shootings do we need before it’s not too soon? Over 10,000 people died in the US from guns last year, and most other civilized nations didn’t break triple digits. Why is this not the right time to talk about gun control?

Gun people, the first thing you need to understand is, no one is suggesting that you lose your second amendment rights. But there does need to be some talk about assault rifles.

Let’s use an example, Joe N.(ormal) Hunter. Joe has a handgun in a kid-proof gun safe for home defense, and he stores his hunting rifles in a larger gun safe in the closet. Joe is responsible with his guns and has taught his kids to never trust that a gun isn’t loaded. Joe has a shotgun for pheasant hunting, a rifle for deer, and another for boar or bear, or some other large game.

Everything: the rant to end all rants…

Yesterday morning I saw on twitter that Megan Stammers had been found in France, and said on Twitter that I didn’t think it would take long for the victim blaming to begin. I was right. She’d not even been put on a plane back to Britain before people were going into their standard bullshit spewing. So when I said that just before going to the couch for the night Becka sent me this article asking why nobody cared when men in Rochdale were in essence gang-raping a fifteen-year-old, and even though she reported it to the cops, they didn’t care. The cops called her a hooker, and they walked away from her. That’s the cops, the people who are supposedly paid to give a fuck, and they still don’t.

Earlier in the night someone else had gone off on a Twitter rant about Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has let child molesters and rapists get off without an investigation, but because he doesn’t like Mexican immigrants, the racist whites of Maricopa just keep voting for him. Sure, he’s not really protecting his people, but so what? He keeps extra brown people out, and that’s good enough.

Earlier before that, I read the story of how a school teacher heard noises outside his home and went out with his gun, shooting without asking questions when he saw a masked teen. So he’d shot his own son because of his policy of shoot first and ask questions later. I don’t feel sympathy for him. I want to shake him hard and ask him why he couldn’t just ask who was out there before firing his gun. I want to slap him and scream that his love of his gun murdered his own child.

As I lay on the couch, my little inner ranter bounced around about how little people care, how very uneducated and willfully ignorant they’ve become, even the teachers. I thought about how, despite having cell phones and the Internet, they’ve become willfully ignorant. I thought about how people are so hateful, lacking in empathy, while at the same time claiming to be a Christian nation. I thought how it’s a conflict of interests to be Christian, but dedicated to the pursuit of wealth in a rat race with our neighbors.

The ever so problematic issue of sexualization of children

These days you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a feminist who talks up the sexualization of children, or more specifically of girls. The logic goes that because the bad old media outlets are always selling sex on TV, it’s grooming girls to want to dress slutty. Dressing slutty in turn leads to slutty behavior, or to men taking notice of girls too early.

And, all of this is bullshit. You blame TV in the same way you blame the Internet, without recognizing that the actual issues existed before we had TV or Internet. Before TV, men were noticing little girls and taking advantage of them. Alice In Wonderland is one pedophile’s method of grooming a girl to be photographed nude. And he had no TV to help him out, so he just made up a story that pleased his little victim.

You can’t claim TV is to blame for little girls dressing older. Even if you carefully monitor their TV viewing, you don’t control their eyes or their brains. So they look at how people dress, and they want to emulate the styles that capture their interest. Mommas all over the world have known the joy of walking into their room to find a “dolled up” 3-year-old covered in makeup and dressed in their bra and high-heel shoes. Even boys get caught doing this. It’s not a sign that they’re going trans. It’s their desire to imitate their role models. So if momma likes to dress in curve hugging clothes, that’s a gender cue that the kids are going to pick up.

No, I’m not blaming moms for wanting to dress however they like. I’m saying, you can’t blame TV when every walk through the outside world is teaching children by way of observation. They see the clothing styles that are popular, and that’s how they want to dress. They do not think on it in adult sexual terms, like “If I wear those jeans, I’m picking up a guy for sure.” They think, “Hey, that looks neat. I want to look like that.”

Time to face facts…

Let me start off quoting this Tumblr post:

A survey of 11-to-14 year-olds found:
· 51% of the boys and 41% of the girls said forced sex was acceptable if the boy, “spent a lot of money” on the girl;
· 31% of the boys and 32% of the girls said it was acceptable for a man to rape a woman with past sexual experience;
· 87% of boys and 79% of girls said sexual assault was acceptable if the man and the woman were married;
· 65% of the boys and 47% of the girls said it was acceptable for a boy to rape a girl if they had been dating for more than six months.

Despite surveys like this, it seems the vast majority of adults are still in favor of not talking to children about sex and leaving it up to the media to shape our children’s sexuality. The above is what we get from people who sell sex for a living, selling a false image of women to children.

That mainstream media image problem is why Kristen Stewart is vilified for “being unfaithful” while her older lover walks off scott-free. Shades of The Scarlet Letter, in 2012.

That mainstream media image problem is why Lana Del Rey appears nude on the cover of GQ while all the men are dressed in tuxedos.

This pervasive attitude about women as objects is why an Arizona judge told a woman groped by a cop in a bar, “This wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t there.”