picked a handful of violets in my name

6 links

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:01:55 GMT

The Hathor Legacy: It’s just a show. Really?

The truth is, pop culture is not just fun and games, and that’s why “It’s not just a show” is bullshit. Culture – and current culture has always been pop culture, and always will be – is the medium through which the privileged people educate all the other sorts of people on how they are supposed to behave so as to inconvenience the privileged the least they can with their undesirable yet necessary presence. I really am supposed to not only like flowers, but to accept them in lieu of kept promises and fidelity – not because it’s on TV but because that would be ever so convenient for uncaring and cheating men. What the person who criticizes me for diverging from TV portrayals of my gender is really saying is: “Don’t you know this is your responsibility? Even if you don’t like flowers, you still need to like the damn flowers because men need their women to be plug ‘n’ play, easily replaced! Men have nations to conquer and important things to do. They can’t be bogged down with trying to remember what each new current girlfriend likes, which is why it’s so crucial you all like exactly the same shit! Jeez, you selfish bitch!”

16 Impacts of Sexual Assault

As a victim of sexual assault I have had my life turned upside down, my beliefs and hopes decimated and my sense of self devastated. In trying to make sense of what happened to me, I have struggled overwhelmingly with a sense of isolation, fragmentation and dislocation. Despite reporting the assault to the police, despite excellent counselling and support services and despite an extraordinarily patient and supportive family, I have often felt unable to articulate, or be heard on, the devastation and upheaval that sexual assault continues to create for me everyday.

Dopp Juice: A Genderplayful Marketplace – Do you want it?

I want to build an online marketplace for gender-variant clothing solutions.

Not a store where I sell to you, but a service like Etsy and Ebay where we sell to each other, in a focused, supportive community. And while we’re at it, we also trade all sorts of tips and inspirations on how best to look the way we want, gender-be-damned.

synecdochic: Tip for chronic-pain issues

If you have chronic pain of the muscle/stiffness sort, or suffer from muscle cramps in the middle of the night that wake you, start sleeping with an unwrapped bar of soap in bed with you.

laughingrat: (no subject)

One wonders where Marc Lepine got the idea, in 1989, that he was entitled to go to engineering school regardless of his lack of qualifications, but that women who were qualified to go were not similarly entitled. One wonders where he got his tremendous sense of privilege, his tremendous sense of outrage, and the idea that if he, a man, was sufficiently angry at women, the acceptable answer was to terrorize and murder them.

copperbadge: (no subject)

To sum up: when people ask you for money, be critical. Know who's getting your money, know what they believe, and if you can't get hard facts, be suspicious. Most charities are listed on charitynavigator.org and have a website; they will have mission statements and should have financial information.

comments

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 23:55:32 GMT

Follow Friday

Links

"genitals as signifiers": when birth is a "social emergency"
What I really wanted to share with you in this post, though, is several paragraphs from the first chapter of Part Two in which Karkazis describes the way myriad ways in which children born with no immediately apparent sex identity are experienced as a matter of "social urgency" by their parents and the medical community. I realize it's kinda academic and somewhat heavy on the specialized terminology. But I think she's packing some pretty important stuff into these paragraphs (pp. 95-97). Reading this narrative, I just felt an overwhelming sadness in my chest for these tiny persons whose very being is somehow construed as problematic -- who cannot be incorporated into the human community, it seems -- because they lack a clear "girl" or "boy" box in which to be situated.
staranise: Automated bingo cards, get 'em while they're hot
This is just the first draft. I want to add to it--and I would be thrilled if other people wanted to add to it. This program was a fannish endeavour, if fandom itself is a fandom; I wanted to create something that would help other fans do what they love.
yvi: Flattr
Basically, it's a micropayments system to everyone on the internet who participates - you determine a certain amount of money you want to spend every month, pre-load your account, click on however many Flattr buttons on the web you want to, and at the end of the month, that money is devided between the pages you clicked for.

So I went and signed up for it: (I'd love to see a Dreamwidth feature that accomplishes this with points. I do it manually sometimes, but it's hard to remember.)

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just the link backlog for now

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:17:52 GMT

I've had a headache for most of the weekend, spent waaaaaaay too long trying to sleep the headache off, and then it took Ellie and I all afternoon to get groceries (we hit Allandale Farms, Whole Foods, BJ's, and Stop-n-Shop. Plus Home Depot so she could price some set-building stuff).

All in a Name: New Software Benefits Transgender Students
The new software, created as an adjunct to the Banner student information system, allows students to fill out a form specifying their preferred name and pronoun. The information appears on all paperwork seen by faculty, so petitioning professors individually, a process that gave students no choice but to out themselves, is a thing of the past.
via naraht: The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes
My anecdotal evidence generally seems to support the idea that group sizes will usually plateau at a number lower than 150 participants. This comes from 20 years of doing facilitation both on and offline, running several software companies, and running various forums at America Online. In particular, many online communities provide good evidence for Dunbar's Number actually being an upper limit (either due to reduced efficiency or due to increased dispersion).
dw_news: Weekly Update: 30 Sept
* Development
* Code Push
* More DW Creativity
* RIP, Vox
* DW Advocacy
* Icon Renames
Dreamwidth Wiki: Advocacy

denise: DW artisans

via wordweaverlynn: Kink Aware Professionals

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yawns

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:09:02 GMT

Recently

I've been following the latest LJwtf and going to work, pretty much. Managed to wear a skirt today, and I think every single person I work with complimented it.

( Follow Friday )

Links

( 7 links )

Plans

Get rained on and blown about. Hope the power stays on long enough to to chat with C. for a good long while. Drive up to NH with Ellie and shadesong for the art retreat, and catch the bus back. Drag Ellie to see Scott Pilgrim, get groceries, and pick up the hair stuff I forgot last week. Make attempt number 4 at purple hair: bleach a thick streak and purple it, then update the rest to black.

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links

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:29:13 GMT

( linkspam, special Katrina anniversary edition )
( everything else )

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long post is long

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:25:47 GMT

Notes

I'll be out of town August 14-21. While I'll have internet access, I have no idea how much I'll be online. But rest assured I'll catch up even if I can't keep up.

Recently

Bosses and one reference desk person are away for the Society of American Archivists conference. Work is freakishly quiet.

Busy couple of days. Tuesday morning, I hauled a box of fun surprises to the post office (since the TSA probably frowns on taking rope in your carry-on), went to work, and then went to Diesel to meet up with shadesong and receive my BARCC auction winnings: a lovely flogger. After that, I ran into Andra and spent forever telling her about C. (she kept asking questions, and I am still flush with omgyay).

Yesterday I got some purple dye, and this morning before work, I put it in my hair to see what it would do. Not a lot, as it turns out: my hair is too dark. Now it's even darker, with something of a blue cast to it. While kinda disappointing, it's not actually surprising, and it's definitely not a bad result.

Leaving for Grand Forks at stupid o'clock Saturday morning. Clothes are basically picked out, and toiletries are selected and quart-size bagged.

Memes

Still open for questions.

I know so little about you, I'm afraid my question is quite pedestrian! What would your dream job be?

Pretty close to what I'm doing right now. I want to be an archivist full-time, as my real grownup job. But I'm not thrilled with the idea of meetings and managing other people, which my bosses at work have to do. I just want to work with the collections.

Placeholder

I want to write about "lazy femme," which is what I call my gender presentation. In short: I like things like skirts and makeup, but I don't generally bother with these more effortful bits of gendered plumage.

( 11 links )

Plans

More packing, go to bed, sleep, get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, finish packing, go to bed, get up, get on airplane, arrive in Grand Forks, get laid.

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Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:04:40 GMT

OH GOD FINALLY I AM CAUGHT UP. I only had to go to skip=620 to do it.

Apologies for my epic failure at updating; I don't like to post when I'm behind on my reading. And speaking of my dreamroll... I am having to cut down on my subscriptions because I am overwhelmed. Bleh full-time job. I love my work, but I also love my internets. It is a sad time for me.

Important things:

Every year, shadesong does Blogathon for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. Her fundraising includes a charity auction; I have three pieces in the mix this year: Chains and Crippling Shoes, We Met in February, and The Awful Feeling of Knowing You Don't Remember No. Plus lots of other really lovely things that you should go and bid on!
I am going to Grand Forks! I'll be staying with C. and will also take the opportunity to hang out with Ellen and Greg, since I missed them in New Orleans this year. I am not sure what that will do to my internet time: on the one hand, C. and I will probably be very occupied with each other, but on the other hand, I can easily see us just chilling together with our laptops for a little while every day. At any rate, I will be out of Boston from August 14th to August 21st.
Speaking of C., we are now officially in a relationship! We put it on Facebook and everything. Current relationship status is "open" although there's an unspoken expectation that we'll be functionally monogamous at least until we can talk about it in person. There will be a more *ahem* detailed update later - hooray for filters.

( links )

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Just one link today.

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:38:21 GMT

Miltonesque: The Boobs That Didn’t Belong to Anybody

An illuminating moment for me came at my post-op party. We called it a “boob party” and spent the night celebrating chests. Everyone brought magazine clippings or photos of chests and we pasted them on the wall in the stairwell. We kept a running list of all the euphemisms for chests we could think of on the whiteboard usually reserved for intra-apartment communications like We need milk and Has anyone seen my watch? and HEY GUYS I LET THE CATS PEE ON THE SOFA (just kidding it’s water).

At this party, every guest was invited to wear whatever made their chest feel good. Some went topless, some chose corsets—we even supplied glitter-encrusted adhesive craft foam for those who wanted to make pasties (the majority of our guests chose this option, which was just another sign that my life is nothing like what my guidance counselors envisioned).

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Not dead.

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:53:53 GMT

I promise I will update with actual things from my life! Some time later today (as it is now technically Monday).

But for now, the links: ( 10 links )

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liiiiiiiiiiiiinks

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:52:12 GMT

( 13 links )

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So I guess I am turning into one of those link-bloggers.

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:46:39 GMT

Today is a lovely lovely day of nothing! I slept until after two.

I made two icons using images from Hyperbole and a Half's This is Why I'll Never be an Adult, with the text changed:

and

( links for today )

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links links links

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:56:33 GMT

( links that are not about fandom )
( links that are about fandom )

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link catch-up

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:50:33 GMT

( 24 links )

comments

big long link roundup

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:46:34 GMT

( no, really. long )

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long-ass post is long

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 03:40:20 GMT

Took my final for Soviet Secret Police today. I think I did well - there was one "identify this document excerpt" that I swear I had never seen before, but it was a small part of the test.

I foresee using this icon a lot while I'm in New Orleans this summer, and I need to upload one of the "emphasizin ur POC" icons as well.

I have missed my one-year anniversary on Dreamwidth. But it was because I had papers to write, so I will just commemorate it now.

( links galore )

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Some day I will manage to post soemthing besides links. Today is not that day.

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:20:18 GMT

National Poetry Writing Month begins tomorrow! Join in at napowrimo!

Hello Kitty wine, making me wish I actually drank wine.

age_of_sail kink meme, open to any seafaring or related historical fandom.

The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center is bringing the Clothesline Project to South Station.

International Transgender Day of Visibility

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must have been the fairy dust

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 03:40:35 GMT

Hello, folks! Internet is fixed. I have no idea how. (Ellie's theory is that someone else in the neighborhood called in a problem early enough to get a Saturday tech, and that this problem is similar to the issue we had at Thanksgiving, where the tech had to do something atop a telephone pole. So a neighbor's fix might have also helped us.)

Last night, we went to a Shirtless Shindig to celebrate Jamie's top surgery. The guest of honor himself made me pasties out of adhesive-backed glittery craft foam, and requested that he be allowed to style my hair on unspecified future occasions (apparently, he does lovely updos). ♥ my burlesque-affiliated friends. They always create a comfy, accepting atmosphere in small group situations like the Shirtless Shindig.

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LJ fails again! This time, on gender issues.

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:03:23 GMT

As of their next code push (and LJ's code pushes tend to happen on Thursdays), LiveJournal will require all users to specify "male" or "female" for their account's gender. No third option.

The change is almost certainly to target advertising in a more gender-stereotyped way.

EDIT: 2009-12-15 10:30 EST
Probably thanks to the many people contacting LJ, the code has been pulled. It will not be going live in the next code push.

Unfortunately, I don't trust LJ not to attempt to sneak something like this through again.

synecdochic has a summary. She suggests going to the Edit Profile page and changing your gender to Unspecified, contacting Feedback, and emailing the GM of US operations at anjelika@livejournalinc.com.

( complete list of posts on my Dreamroll re: lj's genderfail )

Geek Feminism also has a post.

If anyone reading this would like a Dreamwidth account (Dreamwidth's diversity statement specifically includes and "welcome[s] people of any gender identity or expression"), I have some invite codes, and if they run out, I'm willing to buy accounts for people who need them.

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wtf, a meme that produces content?

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:02:21 GMT

Best of 2009

December 1st: best trip of 2009

Well, if I had needed to travel for it, this would have been muskratjamboree, because it was a good time and it gave me a solarcat.

But since MJ is in Boston and I didn't stay in the hotel or anything...

Unlike in years past (okay, mainly the year Ellie and I were living in that shitty apartment in East Boston), I didn't do that much traveling this year. No running down to New York or further abroad for concerts, which I did a lot of in 2008.

I did spend two weeks in New Orleans with my parents, which was awesome but not particularly interesting to the internet at large - I chilled, ate a lot of good food, and slept soundly every night on my very squishy mattress.

But what I'm actually going to use as my Answer For The Meme is TIC. Not the travel - I had a headache on the way to Vermont, and we got a late start. But the conference was good. I was social and willingly offline for all of Saturday and the travel time on either side. And as much as I joke about smacking down n00bs in my classes, I kept my own damn mouth shut for the conference, because I was there to learn and support my sister and her friends and the other attendees.

But really, 2009 was about burrowing in and making Jamaica Plain my home. Through Ellie, I've connected with local performing arts stuff: Big Moves, Boston's burlesque scene, queer performance art. We've tried a few new restaurants in the neighborhood, like an Indian place on Centre Street and the fried chicken joint a couple of blocks away.

My goal is to get fully unpacked before 2010. (I never managed to get 100% unpacked at our old place, and I still have several boxes in my room. The implied impermanence is probably badly for my soul or something.)

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Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:48:09 GMT

Take action to save the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program.

Ellie is apparently making duck gumbo for Thanksgiving because A) fuck turkey anyway and B) we will be feeding probably more people than a single roast duck would satisfy.

( meme )

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Note to Mom: this icon is a dreamsheep.

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:00:50 GMT

Note to other users: you can find lots of dreamsheep icons at dreamsheep.

denise would like to know how we use the update page.

This lolcat is relevant to knitters, particularly knitters with cats.

Odd thing I have been remembering off and on: last week, I had to call my credit card issuer because my card got demagnetized. While on the phone with Super Helpful Guy, I got an accidental 'sir.' ( cis privilege is never having to worry about other people messing up your pronouns and titles, getting to lol when they do, and not having to worry about what might have led to mis-gendering or what might happen next )

So, random fuckup. I keep wandering back to it, sometimes to lol and sometimes to poke at how unimaginably sucky it would have been for someone without the privilege of laughing it off.

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falls over

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:18:36 GMT

damned_colonial suggests implementing a Follow Friday meme on Dreamwidth. I think I will rec one journal, one comm, and one feed every week, unless someone has a better idea.

In my recent past:

Thursday, Ellie and I went shoe shopping. She didn't find anything and I really don't need any more shoes, so we just headed home again. I called solarcat from the train and she met me at Forest Hills, and we drove back to her apartment to watch Life on the Murder Scene. (You guys. Their faces, okay, their fucking faces. I do not know what it would take to pry me from this fandom.)

By the time I got home, it was midnight, and I still had to pack for my trip.

( weekend in Vermont )

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It begins.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:25:47 GMT

I'm probably going to be offline most of the weekend - between the driving and the conference and the socializing, I won't have much time, and I will be trying to use what spare time I do have to write.

I haven't had a chance to read anyone's posts, DW or LJ, since Thursday morning, though I did skim a bit. I have barely had time to check my email. Assume I will be unavailable until Sunday evening.

:D

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Overwhelmed.

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:14:46 GMT

*hands*

I was going to go to a dinner-and-a-lecture by a history professor I had my freshman year, but I procrastinated on getting a ticket, and now it's the day of the event and Ellie is sick (and required a thermometer today. Yesterday it was cough suppressant and cough drops) and I needed to meet 1001cranes downtown to hand over my ticket for The Used, since I can't go to the show because Ellie and I are leaving for Vermont Friday afternoon, and I'm hanging out with solarcat tomorrow evening (LOTMS whee!), and hopefully taking Ellie shoe shopping tomorrow afternoon, and I still haven't packed for the weekend in Vermont.

Speaking of Vermont! Ellie and I and two carloads of her friends are going to the Translating Identity Conference. I will probably be offline, but I am taking my laptop in order to maybe do some writing when I run out of cope.

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Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:11:48 GMT

( things I spotted on etsy, version I Can't Wear That To Work! )

hederahelix: Sizeism in fic and society

'Cis' is hostile? I remember being quite pleased the first time I became aware of 'cis' and related terms - it filled a lexical hole that I had not realized was there.

Weird passage of time at work today - doing really tedious stuff apparently makes the day fly by. Probably because I can devote a portion of my brain to pre-writing.

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picked a handful of violets in my name

6 links

Follow Friday

Links

just the link backlog for now

*yawns*

Recently

Links

Plans

links

long post is long

Notes

Recently

Memes

Placeholder

Plans

Important things:

Just one link today.

Not dead.

liiiiiiiiiiiiinks

So I guess I am turning into one of those link-bloggers.

links links links

link catch-up

big long link roundup

long-ass post is long

Some day I will manage to post soemthing besides links. Today is not that day.

must have been the fairy dust

LJ fails again! This time, on gender issues.

wtf, a meme that produces content?

Note to Mom: this icon is a dreamsheep.

*falls over*

It begins.

Overwhelmed.

yawns

falls over