Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I don't like these words at all. They're awful, and insufficient in number, but we're still trying to get to the end of the story so that's what we have. Bit too foggy to say much here right now. Don't like that; there are things I have to say in these posts which vanish whenever it comes time to write them down.

Here's what we have this time:

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

When I am anxious or bored I often like to sort and organise things. It tends to be both soothing and exciting (it can be both! calms other anxieties, engages interest in a different direction).

My two main sources for this these days are LibraryThing and MusicBrainz (both of which collections are currently very incomplete). Currently the latter is much more intense since so far as I know its data is built manually by volunteers rather than sourced from already catalogued resources elsewhere.

So far I have yet to find anything I tried to put on LibraryThing needing more than a little tweak to be well-matched, while many of my albums, particularly the older ones, don't seem to be present at all and need adding by me personally. This has caused a definite slowing of my progress (where the incompleteness of my LibraryThing is more to do with not previously being able to get a paid account). Right now I'm stuck about this album, which I added myself but which probably is not meeting the best current standards in how it is laid out. I will fix that later, when I can. Earlier I was using the Picard music tagger while writing to try and clear up some of the mess the CDDB made of my collection when ripping the albums and it seemed to think the tracks belonged in a different album with an identical (but better compiled than mine) tracklist. That album is newer, but put out by the same company and looking a whole lot like a reissue under a new name. Especially as those albums are both number four of a series. I'm not sure if I should trust my deductions and claim those as related titles, one being a reissue of the other, or if I should seek confirmation. Perhaps by writing to Decca since the copy I have seems not to be listed in their catalogue now. It would still be a problem since MusicBrainz does not seem currently, from my limited exploration, to support marking an album as a renamed reissue of another. Plenty of other relationships but not that one.

I may have to engage in community participation. Or more study. Either's good.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Long, long delay since last posting here and of this story. I had an idea to put within the story a smaller adventure that could work as its own story and I wanted to finish that bit of digression before putting up any more excerpts. It went longer and slower to write than I was hoping but now the third chapter of the story is drafted enough to post.

Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. From right after I started it has seemed like this work would come out more like a 20K novella than a 50K novel and it still looks to be that. I have a working week to finish on time, five thousand words to write if I want to meet my personal goal for the month, and probably a fair few more than that of story to go. So after this is posted, back to work and hopefully a thousand words for each of those days.

I don't like how this story has come out so far. That's normal for something I'm actively writing. It has felt more like a skeleton of a story, more hastily dashed outline than fleshed tale. I worry it has become more abbreviated as I continue. I worry I am losing or have lost what little character definition I had to start with. I hope that, in editing, this story can become something I am not ashamed to say I wrote. At worst presumably it becomes a learning experience.

It has long confused and bothered me that in the question of how to respond to climate change one of the major governmental concerns appears to be "How can we ensure that industries like coal remain profitable?" As concerns go it seems almost nonsensical, since in order to respond effectively to the problem the coal and other industries need to cease existing in their present form - an effective response cannot I think include 'energy producing industries continue to exist profitably as they are'. If they do want to keep existing as companies they probably should be investing in changing what they do and how.

Perhaps this is because 'growing less than fast is a sign of a bad economy' has never made sense to me as a goal either. It seems like a whole lot of people pretending the planet's resources are infinite and putting off any problems to be dealt with in some indefinite 'later'. Any economic focus other than a sustainable, non-destructive one has always struck me as misguided.

I was watching Lateline earlier tonight and the businessperson interviewed seemed much more charismatic than the politicians and political analysts. Maybe that explains this.

Filter: optimistic

Perhaps I should moderate myself more. I read things people say which inspire me to polemical writing and the result, being caught up in rhetorical acts, is often something I would not be willing to say in direct conversation. This suggests to me either I should be interpersonally bolder, more rhetorically muted, or make clearer the distance between the words which inspire mine and the more generalised directions I tend to mean them.

In other news, it bothers me when people describe conservative religious leaders or leaders who invoke religion as 'probably faking belief to manipulate the masses'. It makes me think the speakers hold religion so in contempt they do not think believers are capable of such popular or effective leadership. I wonder if these people, often atheists, realise what they are saying sounds a lot like "I think much of what is worst in society is due to atheists cynically manipulating religious belief to their personal benefit". But I see no reason why these leaders couldn't mean what they say. Their followers appear to, mostly.

Filter: thoughtful

Not the reason I expected to be a first or early prompt for writing a post linking to FWD/Forward but...

This post? It's wrong. Infuriatingly, enragingly wrong. I hope that's just for rhetorical purposes.

Not the bit saying it is hard to confront people on their use of language, and I wouldn't disagree about it being harder taking the extra step of opening oneself up to that defensive hostility which so often arises when people are called on the ways their unexamined habits perpetuate systems of abuse and oppression, but to say changing one's language use is easy in such a derisive mocking way?

Oh dear. No, no it isn't. For most people, particularly the abled, language is a deeply ingrained automatic part of themselves. These words they use, they don't think about them most of the time and attempting to make a shift in long established usage is a very difficult habit to change. Words that rise up unbidden as part of commonplace speech as natural as breathing, words that have a lifetime of casual use behind them, words which are used pervasively in the surrounding environment as if they are ordinary acceptable terms?

No, not easy. Simple maybe. As simple as 'just say no'. As simple as uninternalising the messages I have picked up and believing myself to be a person of worth. 'Just change your mind', 'I know they were wrong and hurtful, so I can stop believing what they said of me'. It is simple, but it is not easy, and mistaking conceptual simplicity for ease of action has tripped me up many times in trying to recover... so. It quite aggravates me to see someone saying that because the concept of checking and altering one's habits of thought and action is simple, the doing of it is correspondingly easy.

What it takes in my experience and observation is mindfulness and sustained effort. Not slipping up is difficult. Try removing religiously based language from your non-technical vocabulary because it isn't your belief system; I've been working to control my vocabulary since primary school and it is still difficult to remove compromise words like 'darn' and 'drat' and 'bloody'. I'm fortunate I suppose that I never picked up most (not all, definitely some slipped through) ablist and homophobic and sexist language and was committed from a young age to not doing so, but it doesn't actually get easier as life goes on. Those words are normalised as part of our social discourse, they still get embedded in our lives and presented as language for our brains to pick up on and parse and use.

Quitting isn't so easy, no, but I have no fondness for people saying it is too hard even to try. Not for something like this when the message is "Please try to be less hurtful and more respectful in what you say, please be more mindful of others". Not the easiest thing to do, fine, but I'd say it is less than the minimum required of trying to be an ally, and well worth doing in itself. Pfah.

Filter: aggravated

Today has been the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Likely not still that day here, by the time I finish writing this, but it will be elsewhere still. That day set aside for remembering all the people who over the past and previous years were murdered because of cissexist bigotry, for being trans.

The numbers for this year were a bit tricky to access, being in a Word document, but according to the website this year 101 163 people were killed for that particular who they are. If trend from past years hold true (and what I have read elsewhere indicates this is so), the majority of those murdered were trans women of colour. Not white trans women, and not trans men. A lot of the time trans people who are murdered are assumed and portrayed as having been sex workers, whether they were or not, and because of the widespread stigma applied to sex workers this provides cis authorities further disincentives to take these crimes seriously.

A lot of the time people guilty of these murders, if they are charged, use what is called the 'trans panic' defence. Rather than claiming innocence they instead claim the murder of trans people is justified because of how horrifying and disgusting they find it to be knowing a trans person. This gets accepted as valid in court far too readily, even though it is often untrue or very unlikely to be true that the murder was unaware of the person ey killed being trans prior to the act of killing. It tends, rather, to be that "I found out she was trans so I killed her[1]" is seen by many as a fair and logical train of thought. Even people who say the murder was wrong often say the murdered trans person was also wrong not to walk around wearing a sign saying "Trans", as if that would have made eir life so much easier to live, or would be a reasonable standard to require of someone so as not to be murdered.

[1] Actually they don't normally use gendered pronouns. Normally they describe the person they killed as 'it'.

I was thinking, for writing something for this day, about why these murders happen and why they are predominantly of women. The conclusion I came to was a combination of transphobia, homophobia and sexism.

The mere act of being visibly a woman, presenting as female, is seen by many men as a sexual act. An invitation. This is why a lot of men feel entitled to behave aggressively sexual toward women who are not welcoming of this behaviour - because being a woman is itself considered a sexual invitation or come-on.

It is because of transphobia that the genders of trans people are regarded as invalid where the genders of cis people are treated as real. Thus, trans women are considered 'really men' and trans men are considered 'really women'.

When we combine this with cultural homophobia and macho sexism that sees violence as a valid, even imperative means for men to enforce perceptions of their masculinity and 'defend' it from the threat supposedly posed by the existence of queer people and other ways of doing gender, well...

Because a woman in public is by default seen as engaging sexually with all the men around her, whether she wants to or not, and because a trans woman recognised as a trans woman is seen as being 'really a man', the mere existence of trans women is seen as a threat to the sexuality and identity of heterosexual cis men, one to which violence is often regarded as a justifiable or at least understandable response.

Of course this does not explain why white women are less likely to be murdered in this way than other women because my thought process did not include race until after the fact. I have seen however several other writers express that the lives of women of colour are regarded as less valuable than the lives of white women, just as the lives of trans women are regarded as less valuable than the lives of cis women which I can readily believe. It would make sense that the intersection of these two identities would combine to a far higher murder rate as people might believe either they could especially get away with the killing of a trans woman of colour, or that trans women of colour are especially unworthy of life.

Clearly, this needs to change.

Filter: disappointed

Accommodation and accessibility are among those mostly unnoticed things. When they are brought to our attention our response might be approving. It might be a scowling grumbling about expense, inconvenience and 'whining'. Might be something else, probably - humans are varied, though sometimes they seem distressingly monotonous.

Perhaps that is a poor preface. I have been thinking about accessibility and the difficulty that is had, the resistance to introducing new accessibility measures and having them implemented and maintained, especially widely. There is a bit of grim amusement in my consideration of that, lately, because really we worked so did so well on some accessibility so far, enough for maybe most of us, but there is so much resistance to going any further with it.

A lot of us with visual impairments have access to corrective lenses. Not all of us; I'd be shocked if easy quality glasses access weren't mainly the domain of middle class and up citizens of nations that call themselves 1st World. We make doors that most of us can reach and open easily. Reaching elevated locations we often put in stairs and expect them to be sized for our common feet and gait. Inside we add illumination, though not all of us need it.

Our signs are displayed in EM frequencies we can see; we use colours we can clearly differentiate as markers. We use auditory frequencies we can hear. We make our clothes out of materials which do not irritate our skin. We provide ourselves with foods which do not make ourselves sick or kill us. We refrain from filling our environments with pervasive, irritating sounds. We do not decorate with odours like onions or faecal matter because these produce adverse reactions in us. We don't use strobe lighting in work environments and consider it a problem to fix when we cannot accurately perceive our environment because of how it is structured. When we build structures we size them so that most of us can get around easily inside and outside, with enough room that we don't become stuck or unable to proceed.

It is a very long list. I doubt I have been anywhere near comprehensive and a lot of people could probably find glaring omissions in what I managed to come up with. The point being aimed at is that humans put a lot of effort into making their environment accessible to a subset of themselves. Comprehensively enough and long enough that most don't realise that a lot of why people with disabilities can have difficulty getting around and accessing things it is because they weren't included among those people initially built their world to suit and now when they point it out and say they want it changed, many see it as an extra imposition instead of a continuation of the work and attitudes that went into making navigating the world so easy for them.

Accessibility isn't something extra. It is the demand an incomplete work be continued.

Last night watching Eureka one of the guest characters was supposedly Australian, except his accent was awfully all over the place. Left us wondering why they didn't just cast an Australian for the role. That, and an earlier episode of Frasier reminding that the trend in casting for trans women is cis men for laughs, cis women for pity, gave renewed impetus to write this intended post.

There is a lot of under-representation in our fiction, and in AV fiction often when a member of a marginalised group is depicted the part will be played by a member of a dominant group. Women are usually no longer played by men, although roles are limited. People of colour are usually no longer played by white people (but still too often), although roles are limited and frequent opportunities are taken to white-wash works and replace characters of colour with white characters. Trans characters are nearly always played by cis actors - almost always a trans woman is depicted and if she is an object of humour or ridicule she is played by a cis man; if we are supposed to feel sympathy for her she is played by a cis woman. Disabled characters are played by abled actors faking a disability in most cases.

Consequently many people advocate for better representation, like the outcry against the Avatar movie being transformed from one inhabited by Asian characters into one where a small band of white heroes saves the world (the one being directed by M. Night Shyamalan, not the one by James Cameron, which looks to be Super Space Colonialism anyway), or that people with disabilities and trans people should be cast to play the roles which represent them. I've also seen some backlash against this from among the people in question. At least wert trans people playing trans roles, people have argued that if we have that happening the actors will get typecast as 'trans actors' and their careers will be stalled due to being restricted to trans roles in an industry where there nearly are no trans roles. I would be unsurprised if there were similar protests elsewhere.

I don't think that should be the case though. Would it actually happen? I suppose it might, although given the current situation where cis actors play cis roles and cis actors play trans roles, and so on, it still seems like an improvement over no representation.

What I would like to see, in addition to more representative casting for existing roles is more diverse casting for roles which are not specifically marked as 'minority parts'. I am not inclined to agree that, for example, the aspirational goal for trans actors should be to play cis roles. I don't see any problem with such casting, but nor do I see a reason roles shouldn't accommodate the actors cast for them. It happens a lot in response to protests against things like white-washing of characters of colour, so why not turn it around?

That is, they tend to say "This character doesn't need to be Asian (or disabled, or female, or whatever), the story has universal appeal, so why can't ey be played by a white man?". (and again, often when people are arguing for the universality of a character or story's appeal seems to be when they are reaching for a straight, white, etc. man to represent this universality) So why not the other way round? We don't call straight men typecast if they only play straight men. Nor white men, nor abled men, nor cis men... but most roles are written for them. Unless the story actually depends on the character being one of those things, what would be wrong with casting someone else and tweaking the role to fit? Explicitly not meant to be about turning characters into gimmicks, because being not a straight white abled cis man isn't actually a gimmick, it's being also a normal kind of person who happens to not be that kind, and there's plenty of variety everywhere. Very rarely does the character actually need to be that man, so it is suspicious ey usually is.

Since I don't believe any group of people other than 'talented and / or skilled actors' has a monopoly on better acting ability than others, this leaves the conclusion that there are other factors than 'ability to play roles' involved in why most people we see in films and television aren't women, a third of them don't have disabilities, less than one in ten is other than straight, or why most of all of these people are white. If we were casting strictly to acting ability and weren't so biased in our conceptualisations of what people ordinarily are, I think our working actor demographics would be very different.

And of course, we aren't yet in a position where changing things in the other direction would be fair. It is after all the problem at hand.

Inexplicably sleepy despite overheated, fanless bedroom. Ended up drowsing back to sleep for another hour despite having at least 8 of them unconscious already, and later in the day than I would have liked.

Also led to oddly unpleasant dream in which Earth's biota had been contaminated by alien life. Was given a gift of a creature resembling a small deer or a vicuña by my mother as a pet. Unfortunately this creature turned out to reproduce asexually and continuously, somewhat like a tribble (although tribbles were not referenced as a concept in the dream) and I was at a loss for what to do with it since I preferred not to starve or more directly kill it.

More disturbingly it turned out that due to the way this creature's neurology worked it would always viciously and emphatically attack anything which touched it only once. The tone of this information was that it meant death for any human who committed that error. I was amazed and relieved this had not happened to anyone in my family and that my own particular compulsive tendencies had led to my not triggering this behaviour yet either.

Not a pleasant dream that, about having to look after an unwanted and dangerous burden of an otherwise pleasant-looking creature.

Filter: sleepy

I have said this before, although not here yet:

I think when we experience a desire to share music [or something else which may be the subject of a similar desire] with others this is often a proxy for a less commonly known or appreciated desire. I think what we often truly wish to share is the experience of the moment, the emotions that are being inspired in us. "I want to share this ecstasy, this joy, this wonder, this passion, this moment of empathy or grief or oneness [...] and the only way I know to even approach doing so is by sharing with you what is the immediate inspiration of my feelings."

Filter: enthralled

Reading about this news earlier today I wanted to provide some recent context, if I were to say anything about it. I couldn't think how to express that, so put it down as a matter to gather dates and details for before posting. Then there was this post from Idiot/Savant at Larvatus Prodeo which I think sums the situation up well enough:

The ACT Legislative Assembly has just passed a civil union law, amending its existing civil partnerships legislation to permit public ceremonies. There’s some history here – in 2006 and 2007 civil union laws were repeatedly vetoed by the Howard Government on the basis that allowing public ceremonies (rather than filling out a form and making a declaration in a registry office) would “mimic marriage”. The message was clear: gay couples should stay in the legislative closet, and keep out of sight (and out of mind) of decent straight folk.

The new law gives the finger to that idea, reinstating public ceremonies and establishing a seperate system of civil partnership notaries. Oddly, however, the ceremonies are limited solely to same-sex couples – ensuring same- and opposite-sex couples use different laws apparently being a cornerstone of Australian bigot politics. Even this may not be enough to avoid a federal veto – the Australian Labour Party voted just three months ago to uphold Howard’s ban on gay marriage, and Kevin Rudd personally opposes equality. its unclear yet whether there will be a veto – but given the hostility of the ALP to gay rights, I would not be surprised.

Filter: tired

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Haven't posted updates for a couple of days because while I have been writing my output has not felt substantial enough to merit posting. Have not really got enough for that so far either, but I've been doing some thinking about what to do with this story to regain momentum and the next update, while likely not coming tomorrow, is probably going to be relatively lengthy. So here's a plate-clearing update of wretched writing:

A long time had passed and now in the wake of a great burst of energy she was weary. In her yellow dress she stood upon a gantry, rotating her view to find an understanding of why this swiftly flourishing work had stalled.

Her intention still held, but here, at this point had always been less firm. Its lack of definition now stood as a stark obstacle to her continued construction and it was too significant a piece to be filled in by a place-holder. Or so she thought of it.

On her island drifting through its eternal sea of blue sky she opened herself to inspiration, raising up her arms and summoning a wind so the moment felt right. Urgent inspiration did come, but it called back to an earlier stall and, though she found it compelling, did not resolve either that previous halt or this present one. Possibly it would be useful later; in lightning she etched its representation on a nearby stone, henceforth labelled precious.

She shook herself clear and- ahhh, there. If this part of the woven wire tower were expanded... take out that prospective bit which was silly anyway, move some reluctantly discarded pieces up higher and now perhaps it works. Story in story, not quite, not really.

She smiled and reached for more pieces. This might still be fun even if it fell over.

Filter: creative

Outside heat experienced like pressure. Front lawn carpeted in purple jacaranda blossoms. I want to make a single panel comic:
Adult figure, looking up at a tree. "I used to be taller than you."

Filter: numb

• There weren't ads insisting it were really possible and could happen


• The plot weren't an annoying apocalyptic myth going around for years already


• And if astronomers and others weren't having to reassure terrified people that the end of the world is not imminent, thanks partly to the film's advertising

Filter: annoyed

To describe treatment of a person as reprehensible, often we liken it to accepted ways of treating children. When we think a person's behaviour needs to be more controlled, we liken em to a child.

Because I think how we regard and behave toward children culturally is itself reprehensible I try not to compare others to children in order to dismiss or degrade them. I try not to use comparisons such as 'treated like a child' unless I am also making these points, because I think unexamined, uncomplicated use of those references reinforces attitudes that such treatment is appropriate for children and only wrong when applied to older people.

Only recently we got a television which can display closed captions. I don't normally need those to be able to understand what is on television but I often find them a great aid at times when my auditory processing is disrupted. Even otherwise they usually help me understand what is being said better.

Consequently now that I am able to access the state of closed captioning I am very disappointed in it. When I can understand what is being said the words on the screen are sometimes jumbled, overlapping, at the wrong times (such as showing after the preceding sentence(s)) or just wrong. Which is not the same as edits for ease of reading or clarity, and live captioned programs are not what I am talking about. Two of the newest television channels often seem not to have captions at all, which is especially infuriating, although I think my sisters appreciate it since they don't like when I have the captions on.

Maybe it is just this particular television acting up, or maybe I am seeing things wrong but if not, it is disappointing the state of captioning is not what it could be.

(I do tend to use subtitles where available in DVDs and games where available, and my impression of those is of being more accurate and comprehensible)

Obama lifts the ban on US aid money going to any organisation that provides abortions and the US House of Representatives goes and passes a similar ban on their own people.

It's absurd. Federal money banned from paying for a particular class of medical procedures. Why? It's not illegal, so why is a government being barring itself from funding legal medical procedures? Because a subset of the population has a religious prejudice against it, seems like mainly. Which isn't a very secular way to run a government. Unfair too; no government is making laws based on my religious beliefs, or even- well.

How come? we would ask. How come laws are made on the basis of the views of some sects of a religion but not the views of others? Especially the ones which outlaw personal choices, ones we would expect people who hold a belief in their immorality not to choose.

If this becomes law the lives of many people, particularly poor women and children, will be materially disadvantaged compared to if this does not become law. The gain, meanwhile, is that members of some Christian sects can feel pleased others are being forced to live by their morality, while members of other Christian sects will be frustrated that their morality has been prohibited.

Their are anti-choice non-religious atheists and members of other religions, but let's not pretend this was done to suit their desires.

[Link up top, very worth reading. Post content is different to what I wrote here]

Filter: disappointed

In the currently playing episode of Poirot he [Hercule Poirot] is complaining of a play he saw, that it is unfair because the resolution depended on information not available until the end.

Depending if he means 'was discovered at the end of the story' or 'was not revealed to the audience until the solution was expounded on to the audience', I think maybe he is being unfair. The latter case I would agree is cheating, but in the former, is it not how detective stories go that they are a process of uncovering the information which indicates the solution? And therefore that the story typically ends once we have all the facts in hand because those facts indicate the answer and thus our mystery is solved?

Filter: curious

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Surprisingly I actually managed more than the pace target last night. Probably won't happen again but it was nice to do that for once.

Was disappointed that a scene I had been building to ended up not happening. It turned out not to make sense given everything that had been written so far, so was averted instead.

The cast of this story are supposed to be of Arabic heritage, but I am fairly certain a lot of definitely wrong idioms and details have made it in so far. Am trying not to worry about that for this draft and wait until editing to fit those details to the story (including making significant changes if that proves necessary). Depending how well that works, will consider making such an approach in future too - sort the details and practicalities we don't know after writing the story's skeleton. There will be a lot of that to do, not only for culture.

Currently at 7841 words, should be at 16,667 to be on track. I compare the counts because doing so is easier than not doing it, but I don't really care by this point. I seem to need the occasional day or few off writing anyway, don't know if I will be up to writing more tonight. We shall see, but this is a late start and I'm having an early night.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Last night I committed a NaNoWriMo sin. After a couple of hours writing some scenes for Ferideh the story would be improved if these were Algol's scenes instead and rewrote. They ended up longer than before but I wrote much less in total than I'd intended to. Trying to be a bit more disciplined about it tonight.

I've been leaving out the formatting in the story so far, but forgot to call attention to this until now. It does mean some information is missing which will be present in the final version but I doubt that is anything pertinent to this particular story. And maybe I'm mistaken.

Word meter's been acting up, but the total currently is 5770 words. So here we go:

I always thought of Kill Bill as basically the Mirror Universe version of Charlie's Angels.

Edit: The part where she goes after O-Ren Ishii reminds me of the Hundred Man Battle from Berserk, with Gogo in the role of Adon's brother (same weapon and all, updated), although... hard to say who fared better. Guts seemed to manage the fighting easier, but The Bride can walk away under her own power at the end.

Edit2: I'll take that back. Accounting for the story styles those events are embedded in, I'd say they do about even.

Filter: busy

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Not much to say at this point. Will have to increase the writing pace significantly to make the official targets but I think that's more "It would be nice" than "I have to". I am managing a rate about half that of the NaNoWriMo goal and for me that is significant. If I can keep it up this will signify a large step in my ability to produce story drafts.

As I had been learning with my work on A Library Fox, having a clearer idea of what I am doing as a scene in advance helps to work faster, where before I had often been working more sentence by sentence and often not knowing what happened that far ahead. I'm not actually sure if this is a change, and maybe I have just improved.

One thing I am disappointed about is how much some of the cast have been non-entities so far, particularly Algol. She was originally conceived as the starring character with a supporting cast but so far mostly Ferideh and Nawar have been featured, with a touch of Altair. I suspect this is because I am enjoying them more and that I have a less clear idea of who the other characters are or ways they might choose to be active. Will be trying to fix this both as I proceed and in revision, although this excerpt and the next are I think mainly committed to Nawar and Ferideh.

So here we go:

When your post was guest-posted at Womanist Musings I was sickened enough to want to stop following that blog for airing your views, for your paternalistic pre-emptive dismissal of anyone who might disagree with you as 'fun-fems' or male-identified, for the condescending superiority dripping from your every word. Your argument was barely comprehensible, but as near as I could make it out, is roughly 'If you contracted for sex in advance and were unable to fairly renegotiate or back out that would be rape, therefore all porn is objectively rape at all times and anyone who disagrees is unworthy of engagement because they've been patriarchally brainwashed'.

Okay, so I disagree that pornography (by which you apparently mean human-acted visual pornography) is innately rape (which does not mean I think it is never rape, or don't have strong issues with lots of it), find your arguments lacking, be sickened by your presentation, and get that out of my system by ranting to friends and lovers. Fine.

And then, this. ( Cut for intense transphobia and rape apologism from a feminist )

Filter: determined

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Only 3236 words words so far, had a stall the past couple of days. That usually happens to me, few days writing, few days of very little.

Well, it seemed for a while this project might not be novel length after all, but be much shorter. Although it also seemed what I was writing was too abbreviated to be the full story, enough that I had thoughts of finishing early and then expanding on what was written.

Last night had one of those moments of understanding, and realised I had things happening in the wrong order. Was trying to push the characters to follow what was laid out in outline, which was not working well because it went contrary to how they'd been established. Then I realised letting them go the way they were inclined to would get us to the same point, later, without having inconsistent characterisation, with a clearer sense of why their enemy is their enemy (which I'd been worried was getting lost), and getting to showcase some stuff that I was being worried was being inappropriately left out. So that's a very handy detour that'll add quite a lot of word count too.

Sadly, by the time I realised this it was 0300 and I needed to sleep. But now there is today! and... errands. But we'll get there.

As much as I say I hate the story, that it is terrible and in no way worthy of being written, I have read enough by authors to know this is a common sentiment while writing, and enough personal experience to know I feel that way about just about every story I write. So I'm not going to throw it out just because I hate it at the moment. Maybe at some other point, maybe after it is finished, if I think my assessment of its quality is a bit more enduring.

The first part of this story turned out to be more prologue than quarter of the narrative, but here's the end of it. We continue with the writing of the next part, but give 'end of story-part' priority as posting cut-off point over 'how much we wrote today'. So here's that bit, and an image:

So you're participating in a thread where your main argument is that being a cis heterosexual man who is interested only in cis women and not ever in trans women, and that this is perfectly fine because it is your orientation...

... and then someone says, incidental to her actual argument, that given what you've expressed in that thread, probably most trans women wouldn't be interested in you anyway - you actually have the gall to call that an ad hominem? So you think it is just peachy to repeat at length that you only want cis women and trans women who don't disclose are being immoral and deceptive, but if anyone suggests that trans women might find that attitude offensively unattractive, you claim you're being subjected to an unfair personal attack?

Try getting a sense of proportion before the next time you have an urge to reiterate the beliefs that get trans people murdered.

And all these cis people, feminist and otherwise who have such a problem with the possibility that maybe you'll accidentally have sex with a trans person and feel violated, then perhaps what you should do is confess up-front to everyone you want to flirt with that you would be bothered by them being trans. There's a better chance you'll find kindred spirits than someone carrying icky trans cooties, bah.

[because don't click on links which outrage auntysarah]

Filter: pissed off

I have seen it happen often enough to regard it as a pattern.

People who characterise themselves as parents of autistic children, who appear to regard autism as a debilitating disease to be cured, or a form of poisoning to be cleansed of. They say autistic self-advocates, people who advocate for neurodiversity, they characterise those people as "high-functioning Asperger's" who get through life fine and don't need other than the usual assistance everyone gets, characterised as wanting to trumpet themselves splendid untroubled individuals equal or superior to the rest of humanity. They say that these advocates, in their drive to present themselves as just fine are stomping over the parents' children getting access to services, treatment and cures all as part of their selfish self-aggrandisement.

What do they say? They say wrong, for one. Many autistic advocates are not those who would be diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Many are not verbal, or not always. Many need carers or some similar arrangement. Many, as they have pointed out, are no different in diagnostic status and outward appearance from the children these parents say they are speaking for. So they're not right, when they say those things.

What do they say? They characterise people who do or could have a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome as people who are just fine. People who are utterly unconnected from 'real autism' and who do not experience any problems worth calling 'serious'.

So what they do, in order to protect their children from these people who are advocating that their children (as a subset of neurodiverse people) deserve consideration, access, recognition as valid people, support and all those nifty things, what they do is contribute to a discourse and public atmosphere which makes it harder for people to gain access to support or being taken seriously.

In trying to say "Stop telling me chelating (and other 'treatments') is useless, stop telling me my child is fine and does not need to be un-broken" they end up saying "Shut up. You don't even need or want access / services / accommodation, you have no right to an opinion or to be taken seriously about issues that affect you."

I've written and deleted a lot of concluding paragraphs for this post, mainly because I found all the constructions I attempted to be suggestive that one of those expressions is more or less of a problem than the other. Then I noticed my "In trying to say [...] they end up saying [...]" construction could be read also as implying a progression of reprehensibility. This paragraph is for explicitly disclaiming that meaning.

Filter: sad

Watching the season premiere of Heroes and being frustrated because -

The character Claire has just started at college. Her room-mate was of the obnoxious over-achiever stereotype. At some point she (the room-mate) is found dead, having apparently jumped from the dormitory window, with a suicide note found later.

And the reason I am annoyed? Because Claire and her one friend keep insisting that this woman could not have killed herself because she was so happily pleased with herself, having an abundance of self-esteem, openly planning her life out for the next several years. As if the only people who might kill themselves are those who are noticeably mopey and sad, that no one who had the appearance of a happy, forward-looking life could do such a thing.

I am sure this character was murdered, because that's the shape of the story, but I think the way the characters are coming to this conclusion and expressing it is perpetuating untrue ideas.

Filter: aggravated

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Still hating this story. At least I have decided the main problem is it is badly written. The plot has no merit but if it were written skilfully it at least might be fun to read.

Coming out more like a sketched, rushed outline than a full story. I have that problem with most things I write lately. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Have very nearly reached the end of the first part and it is looking more like a prologue than an equal part of the story. This whole thing is looking increasingly less than novel length, would probably need to stretch for it to be more than 20 thousand words, and I don't want to force something like that.

Tempted to quit and revise, get the story some proper outlining or work on something else, but I know whatever I work on I will hate it and be miserable anyway, so I'm going to continue and make this thing get to its end. I don't know what I will do about the later parts. There is no way I could write those quickly; they require a lot of invention of the sort I do slowly and poorly.

It could be better. I could be more patient, or write it out quickly and then go over it more carefully. I was going to outline this story, all proper-like, but then I ran out of time. Characterisation is going badly, of course. It is something I am especially bad at, at I have no idea how to show the qualities I put in their design, or even how to come up with decently peopled characterisations.

Anyway, it's all rubbish. But it's my rubbish, and I decided to produce it, and keep a log of it, so that's what is happening.

I have been trying to write in whole scenes, not leaving them incomplete at the end of the day, but the last one here is unfinished. I was tired and did not have a clear idea of how Nawar interacts with the world, or how to depict Shula in that scene.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday, the first day of our NaNoWriMo endeavour. Experimenting with daily excerpts instead of weekly, just for this attempt. The other approach I had in mind was to post each part of this four part story and post it then, but I am more assured of having done writing than being able to complete those sections in a timely way.

The words were far less than needed for keeping pace, making only 911, but my history suggests I was never going to make the total anyway. For me, that is a good output, so I am managing to be pleased. I am trying to focus on getting the story written instead (although still in the month if I can, however quick I can). Whatever story I am writing I tend to hate at the time, sure it is worthless and badly done, so I am going to try and keep going anyway.

A lot of short scenes here. I think on rewrite maybe I should start things a little earlier in time. Lots of dialogue, and I am bad dialogue. Bad at description and visualisation of spaces too. I couldn't say I have strengths to compensate for these, but ah well. We keep along, and let's see what today's effort brings.

Ugh. Such pointless filler and sub-standard, typical rubbish. Can barely stand to look upon it.

One good thing: it turns out I never did have a couple dozen needles embedded in my right hand.

Unfortunately also means that (unrecalled) conversation with infinitely_late never happened, but ah well. That class didn't appreciate my genius anyway.

Filter: awake

I have actually been up to a few things lately, many of which have had to go unreported a time for various reasons. So it is a relief to now be able to talk about at least one thing I was up to, now that we have news to report of a successful outcome.

Yesterday I received in the mail my membership card for ALIA, which I had waited rather a long while to apply for. I'm not sure why I didn't do that earlier, except that I had no income to pay for membership.

But we have that now, so I get to be officially a member the Australian Library and Information Association. Along with a whole lot of other people. But now I can put that on job applications and do other library type things too. Whee!

This also happens to be the only organisation I know of where I am currently listed as Ms, but that's their fault for making me choose.

I think I forgot to mention a couple of months ago I did get to officially graduate and even collect from a perfunctory office a spiffy certificate proving so to anyone who can find where I hid it. That was nice too.

Filter: pleased

Two sorts of things which have been bugging that I think are probably meant to be pro-women.

1) Sitcoms, where a male character expresses something sexist in the presence of women, either who gets mad at him or who the presentation of the show promises will 'get even' with him off-screen. A lot of the time it looks like not 'sexism is bad, don't be sexist' but instead 'everyone knows this but don't say it in front of women because they don't like it' with a side of 'sexism is okay so long as there is comeuppance'.

This dynamic tends to feed the idea that men are socially disadvantaged relative to men because women hold power over them primarily in the form of controlling access to sex (as if sexual assault and rape were not prevalent, and as if these shows do not commonly depict men harassing and pressuring women into unwanted sex and humorous in an 'it's funny because it's true' sense), but also depicting women as generally bossy, controlling and otherwise humorously abusive toward men - showing a social fiction where men are obliged not to express what they consider right and natural and true in the presence of women because women (in this imaginary world) dominate society via various channels of interpersonal coercion.

Despite sending the superficial message of 'don't express sexism', I don't think this is a very feminist depiction.

2) Webcomics, mostly fantasy webcomics in my experience, which seem to be attempting to establish feminist credibility by having characters encounter a bunch of men acting in a strongly misogynistic, derisive way and then having them shown up / beat up / whatever by the heroic leads, often women.

Really, if someone wants to make a feminist / pro-feminist fantasy webcomic I would rather see an example of a world in which sexism is not a problem than one in which our heroes keep beating up the occasional gang of louts who think they're hopeless. As much as it can be satisfying to see expressed sexism flung back in someone's face, I really want to see more examples of worlds where sexism isn't even a problem people have to deal with. Especially since a lot of the time these happenings feel to me, not insincere, but as if these are staged events to establish for us that either our leads are truly virtuous because they won't stand for sexism or, if women, to clarify that they are indeed Strong Female Characters.

It bugs me, and I am having difficulty expressing why. Maybe because when this happens with female characters the only reason they succeed at standing up to the Token Sexist Jerks is because they have some kind of elite ability, and the way the confrontation is framed any random woman would have been cowed or worse - 'confronting sexism is for heroic or elite women only' message. Maybe because I come away with the feeling authors who do this think all sexism is of the overt sort and the way to confront it is by having a bigger stick. Maybe because I get frustrated that so often it seems people can't imagine the idea of a society which lacks sexism, racism, ablism, queerphobia, etc. and thus the only way to have a remotely humanist sort of work apparently is with these staged, stark black hat - white hat confrontations.

Yes, this one gets crossposted to my journal and feminist_rage.

Filter: annoyed

Lately I have been noticing people arguing over what science fiction actually is. That is hardly unusual; such arguments are a major preoccupation of just about any interest-community of people.

It does seem however that a lot of people are talking about two different things when they say science fiction. Science fiction as setting, where the story takes place in a 'recognisably science fictional' setting (presumably space, something otherwise future, or alternate history in most cases [contemporary invention or oddity as term for others?]), versus stories which include a not-impossible, not-part-of-present-social-reality idea as a fundamental component.

I've seen a few people over the years frame it as "Can you reskin the story for a different setting or genre?" and if the story can be so reframed, it is not science fiction.

I was going to suggest a couple of things. 1) That by analogy with other genres this could be made to look absurd (frex, that a historical drama could be given a contemporary setting with an analogous set of conflicts, relationships and resolutions this would not mean the original piece never was a historical drama to begin with). 2) That there are likely very few, if any stories which absolutely cannot be made to work in an analogous story that is not science fiction.

After some thought about how to make those arguments I became less sure. What about mystery stories? If there is not a mystery to be solved, then we do not have a mystery story, even if the plot centres on, say, a crime and the people investigating it (although there are certainly mysteries which play with structure by making whodunnit not the central puzzle or sometimes not a puzzle at all - the mystery is elsewhere in those, yes?). And mysteries are very versatile in setting, can be combined with just about any genre and still work, so long as they still have that mystery, that puzzle to be solved. That's precedent. Maybe idea science fiction can work in that sense, requiring a core of genre that is largely untranslatable (with exception perhaps made for the sibling genre fantasy). As for point two, well, I just don't know if it is true or not, and don't care to try and establish either way definitively, although I suspect it is untrue depending how 'very few' is defined.

Now I am wondering if this might be the case for other genres too, that there are stories which are incidentally of that genre and stories which are necessarily of that genre, depending whether it can be successfully translated to other genres or not. I suspect we'd mostly end up with multi-genre blends if we tried that.

Mm. What obvious thing is next for rambling about?

Filter: blah

I'm wondering what they actually accomplish, and if they serve any sort benefit other than causing existing citizens to feel assured immigrants have effectively signed a sort of 'maintaining cultural homogeneity' contract.

The impression I have gotten is a lot of the questions are whether people believe, or at least can express awareness of the myths locals express about who they are. And to discreetly enforce English as standard language (after checking, the resource book is claimed to be will be available in 37 languages [which I recall complaints about - that there would be any concession to people who are not fluent in English], but have not found any information about whether the test is available in other languages).

Thinking I should go and perform some research before (or at least while) pontificating on the subject, I just went to Australia's citizenship test website and took a practice version, and failed. Not by as much as I expected, but a lot of my answers were guesses, and relatively few covered things which I had even been taught in school to forget.

What does it matter, in the context of citizenship, in which year Donald Bradman broke most existing cricket records? I am an Australian citizen by birth and cricket has never mattered to me as anything but a rare way to pass an afternoon in the street. How does it pertain to citizenship to know in which year Caroline Chisholm arrived in Australia?

When I went looking for information a couple of paragraphs previous, the first thing I found was a Wikipedia article which listed some sample questions and answers. A lot of those seemed like useful information about political and legal, official details, so I thought maybe I was being too hard on the test. Maybe it would actually be useful for someone seeking to become a citizen to know when ey might be required to serve jury duty, where government is located and how it is organised... then I went to the actual site, took a sample test and was given a series of questions that struck me as nearly entirely lacking in merit or relevance.

I've now gone and taken the practice test at the government's citizenship site and those seemed more in line with the sample questions that had previously placated me a bit... but the same questions each time I try it.

I am a bit suspicious by this point. Is the other site out of date? Unconnected with the official test? Connected, and drawing questions from the entire pool? I suppose I shall have to get a copy of the resource book to see.

Skimming through the resource book it looks a bit better than I feared, although that is mainly on the basis of flipping through and asking "Does this appear to say stuff about law and government in Australia presently?" So, not exactly the most comprehensive review.

So, still suspicious, and there are things I dislike definitely, but at least there is one potential purpose served that makes sense to me, by informing in a cursory, shallow and not especially useful way of a bit of how the country says it works.

Mm, got a bit lost, me.

Filter: grumpy

Music recommendations.

As mentioned a while back, I made the mistake of placing most of my music collection in a vulnerable storage medium and then tripping over it. Have since found a better solution and restored most of my current CD collection to an easily listenable state.

This also makes a convenient opportunity to do what I have been meaning to do for a long time and expand the range of music I listen to. There are probably lots of great artists I don't know about to listen to so... recommend me?

Have enjoyed music of a wide variety, including kinds people like to pretend are incompatible in taste, but the breadth of my experience and depth of knowledge are lacking. Hence to seek and cannibalise from the knowledge, taste and experience of others.

Here is an example of one of them:

So I pass. Most of the time, I pass. I’ve used the parking permit maybe four times, because I don’t want people looking at me, staring because I’m not in a wheelchair, conspicuously inspecting my car looking for a placard, heckling me and asking what my diagnosis is, just as that TV current affairs show encouraged them to do last year.

Edit: This was supposed to be posted to feminist_rage but I forgot to select posting location.

All I said was I don't like it, and I don't have to justify my taste in entertainment, but yes, I do have an especial problem with the sitcom Just Shoot Me. Mainly because it looks to me like a major part of the story is as follows:

Maya Gallo joins the staff of her father's magazine with strong feminist views and an agenda to push the magazine in a more feminist direction. Instead her views repeatedly fail and she herself is shown to be a hypocrite, using her appearance for advantage in ways she condemns, repeatedly choosing 'sexy, stupid' men over the intelligence and respect she claims to want. No one wants to be saved and the only example of feminism on the show is repeatedly shown to be a false failure.

I didn't bring Seinfeld up but since you say, no, they aren't actually exactly the same apart from both being sitcoms. No one on that show has any kind of anti-oppression agenda the falseness of which gets used as a running thread of humour for that character, and the cast of Seinfeld are not portrayed as people we'd expect or want to be regarded as virtuous.

I just don't enjoy seeing 'feminism is false, feminists are hypocrites' as a major punchline in a series I watch, okay?

It is hard to believe you are the same person who was nauseated by the sexism of an episode of The Jetsons earlier today, but you have expressed a dislike of feminists and feminism in the past so maybe that makes sense?

Baffled, and in need of peace and quiet and fewer sitcoms.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

In the past week I have been surprised by two pieces of news concerning Saturn and rings.

First, from the Planetary Society Blog: findings which might be evidence for a posited ring around Rhea. As described in that article, a series of equatorial spots on Rhea bright in ultaviolet light might be evidence of collisions from ring particles orbiting the moon. These particles, if they exist, would occupy a size and distribution which makes them particularly difficult to detect visually directly with the instruments we currently have available.

It seems the idea of rings around Rhea has been around longer than I have been aware of. Apparently they were originally proposed to explain a decreased electron flux in the vicinity of Rhea back in 2005, and I sure didn't realise there was this much evidence already. Would be very exciting indeed to get a direct and definite confirmation about this.

Sadly given how difficult these rings are proving to image, it is unlikely there will ever be beautiful views of the Rhean ringscape. We shall just have to comfort ourselves with the knowledge of something wonderful.

The other news is the discovery of a new ring around Saturn itself. This one, discovered by the Spitzer Space Telescope, is the largest and most diffuse planetary ring yet discovered. The details can be found in this press release. Basically it is very large and very faint, and only detected because of its cool infrared glow. I am concerned that the end of the release specifies this information was gathered before Spitzer ran out of coolant, and whether this means we won't be able to obtain further observations of the ring for a while. It might take us a long time to discover if this ring 'only' spans from six to twelve million kilometres from Saturn, or if that were merely its brightest, densest part.

Apart from the amazement of a whole new feature being discovered, this is particularly intriguing because Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within this ring and is thought to be the source of its material (via dust knocked off from impacts, most likely). If so, and depending on what else is found, this ring could be a key part of one of astronomy's longer-standing mysteries: the two faces of Iapetus. Although it has long been suspected that material from Phoebe deposited on Iapetus is the reason that moon has one bright hemisphere and one dark (more or less), I think this ring is the first actual detection of a possible mechanism for the transfer of this material.

If that bears out I think I will finally have an answer to a mystery I have been intrigued by since I was a young child; for a long time Iapetus has been one of the solar system bodies I was most fascinated by.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I said recently I would make a daily effort to post (not a guarantee of daily posts) yet none have been posted or even drafted since then, until this one. Unfortunately I have not really felt myself to have the time available to devote to writing those posts I want to write. In between fiction writing and composing applications for jobs I don't seem able to manage some degree of accomplishment at which I would feel appropriate to divert effort to other, non-deadlined activities.

Well, I do say over and over that writing for me at least is something I find frequently difficult, and requiring much time for little progress if I am attempting something I regard as to be given serious effort. But this is, is it not, a space for saying whatever it is that I desire to say? And apparently to talk of not having been talking is at least a way to get started.

This job-hunting thing is being frustratingly difficult. I've yet to meet anyone who said ey liked writing cover letters, and if job-hunting were being easy it would be because I don't have to play this game because I'm not finding any jobs I can try for. So either it is hard and frustrating, or hopeless and frustrating. I guess this is the better situation.

Mostly what I have been trying to for the past week (longer! @_@) is put together an application for a job explaining how I meet their selection criteria. It has been hard, yes. Exasperating. I do struggle to do such things. Well, the impression is just about everyone does. Consequently most of my relaxation, my voluntary activities for this time have been reading and watching television to (mostly) calm down. After all, if I am writing, shouldn't I be working on that instead of posts or stories? So despite having things to say, and wanting to say them, this has felt a very unproductive period of time. At least there is little to go, and today there is the intention of busyness.

At this point we sigh.

If I do not first wind myself up in anxiety to the point of being unable.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Recently the organisation Autism Speaks released another video. You can see it by following this link here. A transcription of the audio can be read here. This is the outcome of "[a] press release [from August that] encouraged families to submit videos of autistic individuals for a PSA that would "shine a bright spotlight" on autism."

Naturally I and a whole lot of other people take issue with this supposed public service announcement[1]. It wouldn't be fair, though, to attribute the views expressed in that video to all members of families of autistic people, nor even necessarily to all people who contributed footage to the final product. abfh|Whose Planet Is It Anyway? points out that people have felt deceived by this request and the results:

Would the contributors to the "I Am Autism" video have agreed to participate if Autism Speaks had admitted at the outset that it was planning to demonize autistic kids as embarrassing burdens who destroy their parents' marriages and dreams?

Well, at least one parent who posted a comment on the video's YouTube page, under the name BarrysDaughter, made it quite plain that she felt deceived by Autism Speaks' request for video contributions from parents. She wrote:

"I do have 2 autistic children and a husband on the spectrum. When they first suggested a video I was eager to send them one till they outlined what they wanted.

My children and husband don't want or need to be CURED what they do want is people to treat them the same as anyone else, stop the bullying and put more staff in schools to support them…"

My problems with the video. It is not addressed to autistic people. Indeed, the request for videos and the result of this request, despite being purpotedly for an autistic advocacy organisation, does not acknowledge the existence of autistic people. They don't talk to autistic people, they talk to the families of autistic people. They don't acknowledge that autistic people may have desires, or acknowledge anything as being a problem for autistic people which those people might want something done about. No, they address the desires of families of autistic people, they talk about what families of autistic people want for their own benefit, they talk about the suffering of people who associate with autistic people, they describe the autistic community as 'people who know autistic people'.

There is a tremendous failure of empathy on display in their selfish wish to eradicate autism from existence. Do not pretend they speak only of those to whom terms like 'low-functioning' or 'severe' are applied when they use words like

"I work faster than pediatric AIDS, cancer, and diabetes combined. And if you are happily married, I will make sure that your marriage fails. Your money will fall into my hands, and I will bankrupt you for my own self-gain. I don't sleep, so I make sure you don't either. I will make it virtually impossible for your family to easily attend a temple, a birthday party, a public park, without a struggle, without embarrassment, without pain. You have no cure for me."

Is there any moderation in that? Any room for them to say "Ah, but we do not mean you who are 'high-functioning'? (by which is meant "Your life is easy, you have no problems and no relevance to this subject, so be silent")" It is a plain statement of what Autism Speaks considers autism to be - a debilitating and horrific condition which must be eradicated. No acknowledgement of the voices of autistic people. Rather, those are described as stolen away, so that others can pretend to know what these voiceless unfortunates want and claim desires in their name.

What they are doing, is not helping. Help would be to reduce the stigma of autism. Help would be to not portray it as some malevolent force which steals otherwise 'normal' children and hides them behind a monstrous facade. Help would be not be not comparing autism to a fatal illness. Help would be acknowledging the existence of autistic adults. Help would be pushing for the ready availability of accommodations that will aid autistic people and others with disabilities. Help would be publicly speaking out against the vast number of sham 'cures' which do nothing, or worse, so that people do not go bankrupt on the false hope of rescuing their family from the hell you have convinced them autism dooms them to. Help would be supporting health care reform so people do not have to worry about going bankrupt for medical reasons. Help would be listening to autistic people instead of speaking over them.

Not all of those things are entirely absent from their website on inspection, but they have a long way to go if they ever want to be a resource and organisation for the benefit of autistic people. Right now they look more like an organisation focused on eugenics to eradicate a segment of the population. I'm sure they don't see it that way. I expect they believe the best outcome for autistic people would be to cease being autistic and eventually cease being born, instead of whatever each autistic person considers eir personal preferred outcome. Accommodation and support I think benefits everyone, while the current state of Autism Speaks' rhetoric does not.

Further responses to this video and the organisation behind it can be found here: http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2009/09/solidarity.html

[1] Also annoyed by people who leap on the statement that among faith, technology, prayer, herbs and genetic studies people will also fight autism with voodoo, as something outrageous. Though I would not be surprised to learn either that this was included as an example of desperation, still voodoo despite being a religion associated with black people rather than white is not any more or less silly a thing to call on than, say, Christianity.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Last week I ran into a post that made me pretty angry. It was this post, Race, Gender, and the Oppressive Public Gaze. No, not the bit about the appalling attitudes and actions of the IAAF, the media, and the public toward Caster Semenya and intersex people (which I have not previously written publicly on, but short form: outrageous that she'd be singled out for testing on the basis of winning a race and not looking 'sufficiently feminine' while doing so, plausibly racist that she was so singled out when black women are already made to suffer for not conforming to white standards of beauty, outrageous that the media would refer to her as a 'hermaphrodite' in defiance of their own style guides, painfully ignorant and outright damaging to many, especially Semenya herself who as the linked article states has been placed on suicide watch, that when news of her reputedly intersex biology was leaked to media outlets before she herself was informed, people considered this reason to degender her, call her 'he' and accuse her of cheating even though these days an abnormally well-suited biology seems almost a prerequisite to excellence in world sports, without raising such a storm of ignorance and horrid behaviour in cases that don't concern women and race). No, I had grown accustomed to be disgusted at the behaviour of people around this topic.

It was the middle section that outraged me anew, by referring to what from timing and other details I inferred was this posting in the community , the handling of which had already given me cause for much infuriated anger.

Let us get some things straight. No one has the right to know details of my body, or how it functions, or how I have sex, or what kind(s) of sex I enjoy, unless I choose to give them that information. This is a matter of privacy and personal autonomy. Generally (I am not sure if generally is true, but let's say it is for the sake of rhetoric) people will respect the expressed boundaries of others, and by default respect also the boundaries their social context leads them to believe are commonly in place, although there are some people who take pleasure in violating the boundaries of others as a 'joke' (or for other reasons).

Which leads to another thing. Generally marginalised people are Othered, are treated as something fascinating and alien and not quite regarded by those socially privileged over them as being as fully nuanced and human as those privileged over them regard their own class, in most cases without careful thought and work. Generally, the socially expected default boundaries are weakened or less regarded in the case of marginalised classes of people, as seen with men hollering out sexual remarks to women generally, or white people wanting to touch the hair of black women specifically. It might be because in the milieu they grew up they were trained to regard the boundaries of some sets of people as less than their own, or it might be that their privileged situation leads their curiosity to override restraints behaviour they might otherwise recognise as intrusive and likely unwelcome, because they have the luxury of not considering the situation. Or other reasons I might not have considered.

All this, and disproportion of effect. When you have some noticeable variance from those in power in the wider society you inhabit it makes sense they would be curious about it. Especially when you have been Othered by this society, information about you obscured or unavailable. Especially when you are a relative minority to them, and thus again a novelty to their eyes. Especially again when you are marginalised relative to them, and they are accustomed to seeing your boundaries weaker than theirs, to be overrun without care, or treated as less credible and serious entirely in your expressions of yourself. And because you are yourself, and they are many, what seems to them like a harmless single encounter may be to you an endless feeling grinding intrusion.

So, curiousity is natural, and many in privileged situations would be inclined to shrug it off, based on their own not unpleasant experiences of being its subject. But for someone who occupies a marginalised position in the society they inhabit, they are at particular risk of being subjected to unwanted intrusions and incessant questioning, and generally it is a sign of oppression that people would behave as though they are entitled to details of a person's existence, that they would invade eir individual or collective space to demand answers and be disinclined to respect refusals, or to take under consideration that those they question are likely often subject to this and likely do not want to be subject to it again.

If someone is a member of a marginalised group, it is more likely rude to ask em details of eir existence than it is to ask members of non-marginalised groups about theirs. Boundaries should be drawn wider, not weaker or smaller, and anyone who seeks information from and / or about them ought take much greater care to be respectful of boundaries, which generally means "do not approach them specifically unless you know for yourself the person in question is willing to entertain your request (and friendship is not a guarantee of this - to presume it is would often be a swift way of losing that friendship)", "do not approach them in their own communities or spaces unless those spaces have been established for the purpose of educating outsiders". Or, more simply: If you seek information from or concerning marginalised peoples, particularly about any aspect of their personal lives or bodies, do so only from sources which have been explicitly established as venues for seeking such information. Otherwise it is likely you will be treading on the boundaries of people whose boundaries are frequently trodden on, frequently betrayed, frequently ignored.

All that said, why then am I angry with karnythia concerning eir post linked at the beginning of this one? Because is a writers' information community. Its purpose is for writers who have not been able to find information for their stories elsewhere to seek advice and resources from other members of the community. It is not specifically a trans space, nor specifically a space for any marginalised class of people unless you count writers, which I certainly do not. The poster of the question in question did not so far as we know approach any specific trans person and demand information about or access to eir genitals. Ey did not do this with a trans community or safer space. Ey made a request, in a community purposed for the exchange of information, that if anyone were willing and able to help em produce an accurate and respectful portrayal of a trans man (specifically the one who was a character in eir story) in a sexual scene. No one was hounded or intruded upon by this, and no one was obligated to answer, but if anyone were able and willing to answer that question, to provide advice on an accurate and respectful portrayal, the option was there.

Instead we got a storm of outrage. People saying, effectively, no cis person should ever write about a trans character, they should never, ever request information on how to do so better, that there is no context (other than being, we assume, a trans person seeking information to aid in orienting eir life) in which seeking information about trans people can be anything other than offensive and wrong. People demanding to know why it is necessary for that character to be trans, when as far as I am concerned a big problem is that marginalised persons do not exist in stories unless somehow 'justified' in ways others are not, and that this is a problem which contributes to Othering, ignorance, prejudice and stereotyping which can be addressed in part by precisely the sort of behaviour the original poster has been engaged in. There was some problematic language in the original post (now crossed out and replaced) which was eventually pointed out and explained - those previously attempting to shut down the subject they had inserted themselves into then thanking the person who explained this for doing what they had apparently showed up in order to not do.

This then is continued in karnythia's post. What was a request for information and advice in an open forum intended for that purpose on how to construct a respectful portrayal, if indeed the connection I made between the two postings is a correct one, gets framed as a personal intrusion. The message we are given is it is not okay for a person in a privileged position to seek this information, ever, for any reason, and it is even less okay for them to ever pose that as an active question. We are told that is prurience and the message gleaned from this post and much of the community response is that this information should simply be unavailable concerning marginalised persons.

If this could be considered in aggregate 'the activist position' then I cannot in good conscience assent. I think it an anti-intellectual, simplistic and ultimately harmful position to take. As I said above, I think it is a problem, endemic in the society I am familiar with, that people especially fail to recognise or respect the personal boundaries of marginalised people. I think, because of this tendency, it is moral, polite and pragmatic to take extra care not to transgress those boundaries. As a rule, neither individuals nor communities should be solicited or imposed upon for information by outsiders - the appropriate venues would typically be intentionally informational resources, not people who are already likely frequently put upon by such unwelcome demands.

This does mean I consider the problem in question neither the existence of information about marginalised people, nor that others might have interest in that information. Rather, the problem lies in how this plays out under the various dynamics of privilege / marginalisation which leads typically to intrusive enquiries running roughshod over boundaries. Merely to ask the question or seek the information is not in itself an act of oppression. Behaving as if it is, I think, contributes to the problems of invisibility, ignorance and poor representation I oppose. So reading that I got angry.

Filter: annoyed

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Last week seems to have been a good week for news in astronomy. At the least of the sorts that capture my especial interest.

From Universe Today, Spot Discovered On Haumea Rich With Organics And Minerals.

Haumea, one of those planets called dwarfs, is notable for its extremely rapid rotation (a bit less than four hours) distorting its shape well out of spherical and its pair of moons (and the origin of those moons being a probable collision early in Haumea's history which stripped much of its mantle and originated the Haumea collision family). I was thrilled to see such a headline, although on further reading of the article it seems a touch premature:

Possible interpretations of the changes in the light curve are that the spot is richer in minerals and organic compounds, or that it contains a higher fraction of crystalline ice.

So although it appears there is a dark patch on Haumea's surface, we won't know its composition until next year at the earliest. Still, I'm excited to learn just about any new details about these worlds.

Via the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia (currently 374 planets and counting), a preprint of a paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal: The Formation Mechanics of Gas Giants on Wide Orbits.

Presently there are two major theories concerning the formation of giant planets. The core accretion model holds that if a planetesimal can accumulate at least ten Earth masses before the gas of the surrounding protostellar disk dissipates, it will be able to rapidly accumulate a massive envelope of gas. Meanwhile the disk instability model proposes giant planets form when part of the disk becomes unstable and collapses in on itself like a version in miniature of how stars form from giant molecular clouds.

For a while now the core accretion model appears to have prevailed, I think largely because the two models produce different sorts of planets with only a bit of overlap, and most of the planets we have been finding so far suit the core accretion model far better. That is, planets with up to a few times the mass of Jupiter, on orbits less than 10 - 20 AU (Astronomical Units) from their host star.

This paper reminds that there are now planets being found which the disk instability model explains far better than the alternatives - more massive planets approaching the realm of brown dwarves, on orbits too distant for core accretion to have produced them in situ, with orbital dynamics suggesting they were unlikely to have arrived there by scattering from interactions with other planets.

After reading it, I would not be surprised of Fomalhaut b did turn out to originate from core accretion and scattering, but I think they are probably right about the planets of HR 8799 and that there are many more such systems to be found. Would be very interested to learn if there are inner planets to these systems yet undiscovered, and what happens when both planetary formation modes are at work in the same system.

Another quick bit from Universe Today: Smallest Exoplanet Yet Has Rocky Surface. CoRoT-7 b may not turn out to be the smallest planet orbiting an actively fusing star yet discovered, but it is the one with the lowest mass we are currently sure of. The article is definitely worth reading, as some of the details about that planet are amazing.

A picture from Astronomy Picture of the Day, the Andromeda galaxy in UV. Was thrilled to note that in the mouseover comparison, the correlation of UV areas with bright blue starforming areas.

From The Planetary Society, "Richard Kowalski is the first person in history to possess a piece of an object that he discovered in space", an asteroid detected in space and tracked to its impact in Sudan last year. I don't know how I managed not to hear of this at the time it happened, but here is an account from shortly after it happened.

Filter: curious

All those people who feel it important to respond to accounts of trans people existing. To talk about how people should not or should not be allowed to alter their gendered or sexed presentation, to say it is a pointless superficiality, or the 'proper' solution is counselling and whatever else convinces to be happy with things as is, to say trans people are a temporary social aberration who will not exist in coming years, to say there is truly no way for a person to have an innate sense of gender or sex...

All these people I invite to, as the saying goes, 'put their money where their mouth is'. I implore them, please, if to transition is such an irrelevant, pointless, insignificant indulgment of those who don't deserve freedom or autonomy, then let us see them demonstrate how superficial transition is. Let us see them do the transition thing, clothing, hormones, surgery, and show us in statistically significant numbers how unimportant gendered presentation and sexed bodies are to people.

If it doesn't mean anything, if it doesn't change anything, if it doesn't matter, then why not join in? If you are right, it won't bother you a bit.

Filter: annoyed

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Lately I have been thinking again about education. There seem few who would look at education - the sort given to children as they age into adulthood - and say they are quite pleased with the situation and wish it not to change in any way.

Well. I am not presently prepared to argue the merits of mandated public education, so the following thoughts proceed on the assumption children are required to attend school in a similar way to existing situations in Anglo nations.

Mainly I think basic, primary education should be concerned with providing people with tools which will assist them in thought, aid them to flourish in the world. When I was studying to be a library technician I frequently thought that what we were learning would in many ways be the sort of thing people would benefit from learning at a young age. Information literacy, that is.

Facts in their raw form perhaps are less valuable than knowing how to acquire new facts as desired. Information literacy, knowing how to find information, to evaluate it once found... I think those skills would be of great benefit to people generally. Critical thinking, too.

Literacy, numeracy, information literacy, critical thinking. I suppose at the moment these are what I am considering foundational skills which primary schools would do well to teach. Before facts, teach how to understand and evaluate when presented to locate new information when sought and to recognise gaps in one's own understanding so that it might be recognised when more information is needed. To know fallacies and propaganda and understand not only if something is wrong but where and why.

Well. This is much of my present thinking on what would be beneficial as a basic and somewhat universal education. I am sure it is complete, and others have differing views.

One other thing I wonder about is reducing the stigma of failure. Not only or perhaps not even especially the idea that to fail a unit, assignment, whatever is shameful, but the related idea that issuing a failing grade must be avoided wherever possible.

A problem with this: my thoughts on that matter of failure are framed as a remedy to the complaint that increasingly students and their parents are being coddled in education, insulated from failure and standards continually lowered so everyone passes. The blame for this generally pinned on 'generational entitlement' 'special snowflake' syndrome or endemic problems in education systems where educators are pressured do things like meet quotas, 'teach to the test' or otherwise show results in order to keep going at all. I am much more inclined to heed the latter set of complaints than the former.

So, let's say these complaints have merit and describe a problem which do well to be addressed. It seems then simple to say failure should not be a problem, that it should be acceptable for a student to fail a course of study, a subject or unit, and then try again as often as wanted. Or not to. Something of 'proceeding at one's own pace'. If one does better in a particular area, but struggles in another, it makes sense to me that a student may proceed in the one area of study while still working on another - school progression not held in lockstep, nor straightjacketed in temporal extent.

And, I probably must stress that accommodations should be available. If a student would benefit from an accommodation, ey should have access to that accommodation.

That could be all for now.

For a couple of days now I have been back on my laptop, since it came back repaired. For almost the same time I have been back in Vista, because there were people who wanted to talk with me on Skype and the company has let its Linux version lag very far behind the current state of Skype-art.

Am likely to continue using Vista a while again because I am somewhat relying on the calendar app for the Google Sidebar to keep myself on track in my life. If I don't have something that pops up alerts without my input then I fairly completely lose track of time and lately especially I am feeling the need for being reminded to take some breaks, get some space and distance. Having that definitely does not completely fix things, and I often do not act on it, but merely having that there in my sidebar reminds of these things.

So I think I am better off for now using Vista than Ubuntu.

It should have read: "Astronomers Find Coldest, Driest, Calmest Place On Earth, Decide To Put Telescope There".

This site is an exciting prospect; am looking forward to what may be revealed, especially as we still cannot place telescopes in space as large as those we can build on Earth. Unless a project like the Terrestrial Planet Finder is approved. Still, despite being explicitly a very calm location I keep catching myself worrying how it will survive fierce Antarctic winds.

Almost forgot - a bit disappointing the site's latitude will keep any scopes there from seeing much of anything in the northern celestial sphere. There are plenty of worthy targets in the south, more than a lifetime's worth, but I do like comprehensive coverage.

Filter: optimistic

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I like writing stories. You like reading stories. Do you like my stories enough to keep reading them?

This is not intended as a personal question. The 'I' is generic, so is the you.

Automated story generation. It is an idea I first picked up from 1984, where stories were mass-produced by machines to keep the proles sedated. Since about then I've considered such story generation a plausible, likely sort of eventuality. Included it in some stories no one yet has read. I don't see why there couldn't such production of stories unless we turn out to be living in a dualist or otherwise supernatural sort of universe.

Typically I see it as a bit of a personally bleak prospect. Writers as a set of humans obsoleted by an equivalent or superior source of fiction. Today I wondered about parochialism, and maybe for some time people would prefer stories written by humans because of the sort of prejudices that lead them to say only humans can make stories worth reading, humans have creativity, humans have something ineffable that sets them apart. Maybe some would like reading the stories of those they knew or liked. I wonder in such a scenario how likely it is human authors would still develop a following.

*meaning here stories made by (nonhumans made by humans to some degree of antecedence)

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Appointment today, went well. It turned out I was mistaken about having to have my birth certificate available on account of having been registered for jobseeking assistance in the past. But it is still useful to have.

Meanwhile the jobhunting itself continues to not go well. Hopefully one I am qualified for will turn up soon.

Back using laptop, which fortuitously turned out to have a problem only in the AC adaptor cord and not the machine itself. That ended up being cheap to replace and hopefully this cord will be amenable to not twisting itself up and breaking. Still intending to get backup information storage soon and later (but much less urgently) a new machine entirely. Battery still not fixed, RAM still meagre relative to operating system, else not so cheap to be using again.

Other things elsewhere.