Cheesecake And A Fork

Magritte, a photo by The Physiognomist on Flickr.

There's this actor named Jon Hamm.  Every so often it's pointed out that he's got a rather large dick. Being a slow news week, the latest acknowledgement of his package led to a media frenzy. Knowledgeable sources were quoted talking about on set reaction to the The Full Hamm. Quotes popped up in the usual places from friends of friends who know this guy who walks this dog that once passed by Jon Hamm and wow did that dog react! Reporters asked Hamm to discuss his endowment. Understandably, the actor was not amused by this sexual harassment.

Thus more ink was spilled. Should Hamm expect pants privacy? What does it mean that the age of junk measurement is upon us? Some excellent satire was written using the language usually applied to women's bodies. Discussions are underway about how we objectify women (That new hairstyle is not doing John Kerry any favors. Staffers hide his styling products but he just buys more!) while allowing men bodily autonomy. Except, you know, not really. There was something missing from the last few weeks for me. I did not feel any piece had a real sense of regret for Jon Hamm, the man. While I understand the impulse to come from a place of "How do you like it now, male members of society!" the man has been violated. He has been victimized and I will be happy to cry him the appropriate river.

As a society, we should absolutely not be so obsessed with policing each other's bodies. That includes the bodies of men. The recent focus on Hamm brings to mind an internet conversation I once had with Mark Consuelos. At the time, he was better known than his wife (Kelly Ripa) and was holding a chat for whatever project he was promoting. I asked him about his stint as a romance novel cover model. Consuelos was uncomfortable with it. It's been far too many years for me to recall his exact words but it was obvious that this was a career choice he was not happy to have made, one that he would prefer to forget. We talked briefly about the Cult of Fabio that was in it's heyday and the odd objectification of these cover models by book fans. I hope, and believe, that he understood I was speaking from a place of curiosity (which turned to empathy) and not from fandom.

I am uncomfortable with the way we depersonalize humans once their image has been captured. It might be Man Titty Monday, it might be Turkish Oil Wrestling, but women who would rail against soft core galleries of female celebrities are completely at ease objectifying their male counterparts. The answer of objectification is not more objectification, and yet as Jon Hamm has discovered - that's how we roll. If your coworker came home, cracked open the laptop and began composing explicit sex scenes about you and the boss it would freak you out. It would cross boundaries. It would be very not ok. Yet this is an accepted practice in fan fiction - to write about sexual relationships between actual people. Actors and actresses are told that they have to expect these objectifications as part of their employment. By going to work, they have invited this.

I can't agree. I have never agreed. There is a privacy we should each be afforded as humans, a line that is crossed so often we forget it exists in their lives, as it does in our own. Finding an individual attractive, admiring their publicity shots or collecting a gallery of ridiculously photogenic people is normal. Viewing other humans as something consumable, something to be examined and used in whatever way the viewer feels appropriate is simply wrong. When we encounter it, our reaction should always be the same. Regret. Sorrow. An understanding that something undesirable has taken place.

I wrote this piece earlier today. I was thinking in terms of celebrity and online culture. A man I've known casually for almost two decades told me something I'd never known about him. For 16 years he moonlighted as a male stripper. It was, he said, degrading dehumanizing physically painful work he would never wish on anyone. Men were generally respectful, possibly as a result of the homophobia of the time. Women, especially once drunk, became frighteningly aggressive. It was routine for them to yank on his dick, to tug his concealed sexual organs into the open without warning or permission. Stripping was a life that once he started, he had trouble leaving. If he knew now how he would feel about it, it's not a life he would have chosen. But at the time, it seemed an ideal second job. The days turn to weeks to months to years to decades to bad memories that you don't shake. Those women saw their fantasy, not the man in front of them. Fantasies don't require consideration. By showing up for work, their consent is presumed. To all of them, whoever they are, my support.

Fair Rarely Means Balanced

This is about specifics and about generalities and about all points in between. Really, it's about the life cycle of an open mind. I've lived on the internet for enough years to know better but I always hope. I hope that whatever community I wind my way into, on whatever topic, will resist the quiet whispers of the Civility Police. You would think, as a person that moderated boards for AOL before that was a badge of shame, that I'd know better.

Here's how it goes.

Someone (or a group) decides the problem with their current habitat is an excess of moderating. They decide to form a new group where open conversations are the rule, not the exception. Big girl (and boy) pants are handed out. The community grows because people enjoy open conversation. Fervent disagreement educates as much as it link baits. Eventually, the community faces a crossroads. Are they chicken, or are they fish?

Always, the question comes couched as the question of civility. It's the tone argument. The strong voices, the ones that build the community, attract conversation, and distinguish it from the bland, are undervalued. There are important people not being heard. Fearful people. Quiet people. People who send emails and whisper in ears and quake in the self satisfied boots of the pious. It doesn't have to be a book community. I've seen it play out in places as absurd as travel communities. On the face of it, it seems so reasonable. Rather than institute an ignore feature or tell people to man up, the choice is made to change. To become more like the place they fondly remember as great, before the moderation drove away the strong voices and the self policers.

The thing is, I've never been interested in people who hold civility up as a goal. The poison they drip is far more vile to me than the frontal assault of a true believer. When asked "You don't want to make people uncomfortable, do you?" I say yes. Yes I do. I want the gays to marry, the people of color to party at the beach, the country club to celebrate Purim, the headscarf to be worn at the school play. Yes. I want people to be uncomfortable. I do. When you are uncomfortable you are forced to examine if you are right.

Then the argument is made that passionate debate is still welcome. Just not with that voice, not in that tone, why are you taking it personally? Yes, these people may be directing their words at you but... and but.. and but. Wait your turn. Raise your hand. Think about the other person but don't expect them to think about you because you, you're loud. You make people uncomfortable. You want them to defend their words instead of bask in them. Often those who are most vehement in their tone arguments are the most hateful, the least inclusive, the quickest to uphold the status quo and wave away the dissent. Class issues? Race issues? Pish and tosh. Pish and tosh, we say! How you speak becomes more important than the content of your speech. More important than the content of your character.

Civility goes hand in hand with solidarity. Trust in us! Support this feminism and that feminism will follow! Believe in the past instead of the present! Every book is a good book for someone! Toxic messages are in the eye of the beholder! If that fails, then it is generally pointed out that the ball is owned by the rule maker, and the rule maker makes the game. Which is why I run a series of blogs instead of communities. I believe that communities belong to those who populate them, not those who begin them. A lack of civility is not abuse. People no longer sharing your taste is not disdain.

Some of you have been in communities with me for ten, twenty, maybe even thirty years. You know that nothing I say here is inconsistent with any position I previously held. Some of you don't know me at all, and that's fine. Choosing to honor the whispering horsemen of the nicepocalypse isn't a crime. Having the right to take an action is not the same as being right in your actions. Communities rise and fall, they struggle on or enjoy rebirth. Somewhere there is someone thinking about building a new one. It may be six weeks, it may be six months, but one thing I know about the internet is a new home is always under construction. My choice forever is to go with the loud girls, the proud girls, the girls we say we want but almost never support.

Social Media - "Dear God You're Doing It Wrong"

Look at how I mess people's feeds up.  Land sakes.

"Ok, cool. Thank you for the Magpul background, I had none of the Colorado information.
So, I'll try to keep my response thoughts orderly but I will be long winded and I apologize...

Weaponry:   I gotta go back to flashbangs.  Or for hyperbole myself - I am not taking a ride in Air Force One any time soon, but in a literal sense you and I both own it.  Sure, I could drop insane money and buy my own fancy plane, crew, and bodyguards, but not unrestricted secure communication, prioritized air space clearance, military fighter pilot escort, unrestricted landing clearance... the president is The President, but he's a citizen too.  I'm not put off by any of that.  His function and role is different than mine.
So to scale it back down to police - I am not doing what they are doing.  I am not kicking in crack-house doors, or serving warrants to child prostitution ringleaders, or detaining a bank robber in LA wearing body armor.  I don't have that beef.  The only time I would legitimately need the muscle (because let's face it, MS13 don't give a crap about me and if enough of them did that I would need a full AR15 mag to balance the issue I would already have bigger problems than a rifle would be solving) is if my beef were with the police/feds.  Besides "I enjoy having them" which is a fine consideration in a free society, I don't honestly see another driving reason for mass sale beyond the argument that is often brought up about keeping fascism back. 

History: we have 200 years of that type of fascism pretty much not being how things are done here.  I mean we brutalized the African and Island population we brought over, we cheated and murdered the Native Americans,  Mexico?  I mean hello.  We wage financial and cultural fascism all over the place, but actual dictatorship?  The Civil War was initiated by the states - not really citizen soldiers, but actual government against itself - essentially Sequestration with cannon fire by the people who liked living off free labor.   I have said before but will again that if that type of dictatorship/fascism which proponents claim amassing guns would solve were to start, no number of private citizens would do anything here but get themselves killed in tank/jet/howitzer/drone blasts.  Our culture is not the fragile banana republic type of culture in which the results of armed conflict would ever be in doubt.  If there were division in the military, well, they'd already all have guns and I promise there would be an unequal access to firepower there too. 

Now, I am passingly familiar with what a d-bag Castro, Raul, Ernesto  and their buddies were/are.  My real historical base is the internet trope of the Nazis, because I've studied it and have family members who lost staggering numbers of ancestors in camps.
I would never say it can't happen here.
In fact, it's very easy to happen (or something functionally identical as far as political control goes) here if there were any kind of gain by doing it, but it would be with the frog slowly brought to boil by changes in legal process, like extraordinary rendition, harsh legal penalties for whistle-blowers and cognitive dissidents, obfuscation and marginalization of political protest free speech, removal of habeas corpus, military strikes on US citizens, censorship and anonymous monitoring of communication...
Note that ALL of this has already happened and continues to at this moment.  For me, lefty idealistic rationalist that I am, it's about corporate control.  The occupy movement illustrated what many born of a certain color already knew from experience - that the police are not here to protect us in terms of life or liberty (court cases have ruled that explicitly, actually) - they are here to protect the societal norms and to protect industry and property. 
So yes, Virginia, we're a nation that's owned, but the fascism comes in terms of capitalistic trade-off.  Eli Lilly keeps my diabetic butt alive at the retail cost of $300 a month just in insulin, and that's criminal, but mostly because of how our political system is paid for by people working for Eli Lilly. 
From my position the NRA is very similar, in that it's their paycheck to sell guns and to make gun sales more common.  The only difference for me between the two is that Pharma pays dollars to keep their costs high because they're not able to increase market by convincing people to become diabetic (ambien/adderall different story), which causes people to die from financial hardship and lack of medication or care.  The gun lobby pays dollars to keep their volume of transactions high and as unfettered as possible because hey - government might take you in the night, buy more guns.

 I might think that the astoundingly high gun death rate the US enjoys compared to other industrialized nations is reason enough to do something (new law or just changes in existing practice) to curb that pattern.  You should check out that slate.com crowd-sourced running tabulation of gun deaths in the US since sandyhook.  The numbers are fantastic and the data is hard to compile by design. 

To bottom line my position - if the reason for arguing equality in all gun type access is sport and a general argument for Constitution, I would not dismiss that out of hand, but I would strongly weigh the totality of gun violence which no other sport enjoys against specific subsections of the hobby if any strides could be made in curbing the death toll. 
If the reason is tactical from a law and order position, I think the position is worse, perhaps more damaging than redundant..  I strongly believe that just as knowledge of language structurally changes our brains and modifies the way we literally think, there is a demonstrable effect of culture on a society's expression and even our understanding of possibilities.  If we earnestly look at gun ownerships and accept increasing militarization as our option for political voice, then guns will ultimately become the only option we can imagine... and I think that if that were to happen, we'd have nothing left to fight for but real estate and empty slogan, because our sense of political, and cultural identity would already be forfeit. "

Good Intentions Gone Wrong

My third grader was assigned a black history month project. Kids were instructed to write six letters as though they were friends with a major historical figure, who did not have to be black but had to be of some general cultural importance. Whitesplaining and bootstrapping follows. It is hardly Z's fault that at eight years of age she still has cultural baggage to unpack. It's a big culture and she's a little girl. Let's check this thing out without her.


Dearest Zee,

Life on the plantation has been very unusually hard this time, but I'm hoping it will stop. All the fuzz and lint in the air is making me cough. I can't concentrate, so I keep getting whipped. Tomorrow I hope I get to work with Mrs. Cook's husband and not her.

Sincerely, Harriet.


Here I give Z a few points. It's not Harriet's fault she's being whipped, it's a result of external forces. Harriet is not defined as lazy. Z can't be expected to realize a young female slave might avoid the master.


Dearest Harriet,

I am so sorry that you have to deal with that. I hope that you get to work with her husband instead also. Please have some good news next time!!!!

Sincerely, Zee


Here things start to go, um, South. While Z is appropriately sorry she doesn't really get what whipping is. Harriet is encouraged to be less of a downer. After all, mail should be happier.


Dearest Zee,

Well I can tell you that I have some good news. I got to go back to my family, but I have to work in the field. I just helped a runaway slave but got hit in the head with a weight. It left a scar, but I'm ok now.

Sincerely, Harriet


Whew, at least Harriet isn't always going on about her problems. Because Z is not here for that. I give her points for bringing in family separation and the risk involved in helping a fugitive.


Dearest Harriet,

I hope you don't have an aching head too much. I hope you get treated with respect by not just other slaves, but by slave owners too. I would also like to find a way to help you keep your hope that you will find a way to be a free person.

Sincerely, Zee


At the beginning of this letter I thought we were headed up. Z shows compassion for Harriet and a desire to improve her life. Unfortunately, while acknowledging her own helplessness she accepts the reality of slave owners. Z stops short of wishing slavery would end, because that's radical. Z wishes for her friend's freedom, but not an end to slavery. This is an interesting bit because it falls into Having A Black Friend. Z has inadvertently shown the typical response of a white friend to injustice suffered by a person of color; a desire for the specific person to be well treated rather than an end to the system that mistreats.


Dearest Zee,

You are the best friend ever! And thanks to you, I am finally free! There was a man who worked on the same plantation as I did named John. He was a free slave so he wanted to stay but I didn't want to keep being a slave. I used the skills my father taught me and got help from a Quaker woman. Now I am free! I have money! Thanks!

Sincerely, Harriet


Where do we start? Z has given a few encouraging words and some empty wishes to Harriet and in return Harriet has ceded all the credit for her escape. Without that lightbulb moment, our fictional version of Harriet might have stayed under the whip. Instead she bootstrapped her way over to the Quakers and increased her economic standing. This is where I realized how deeply ingrained cultural fictions are in historical lessons at the grade school level. Because dude. Z wrote this. With sincere intent.


Dearest Harriet,

That's great! I hope you can get your family and friends to freedom too. I'll try to meet up with you sometime soon! Hey, you know, you should help other slaves too!

Sincerely, Zee


This is just so brilliantly dominant culture that it could be satire. Z blithely accepts the credit then offers to party. As an afterthought, she creates the Underground Railroad. The fictional version of Z doesn't offer to help the fictional version of Harriet Tubman because anti-racism work is hard and it's something that should be done by people of color. I'm not sure how Z sees the fictional version of herself or what she considers her obligations to be in this relationship. I'm going to ask her when she's ten.

High Finance

Pictures and Words (XKCD is out sick today)

Bank: I stole a slice of pie.
USGVT: We could arrest you but we won't, give us a bite instead.
Bank: I just stole another.
USGVT: GDit! You owe us another bite.
Bank: No, dude seriously... I just stole a third piece and legit I think I'm going to be sick.
USGVT: It's OK, Bra. We've got a third fork.
Bank: I got a fourth slice, but I pulled it from that baby murderer's pie you said I wasn't allowed to give pies to. I gave him the rest.
USGVT: You are seriously too big to jail. Like, I don't think we have a prison wide enough. Fat ass. Come here and give us another bite.

Then they tousle each other's hair and have sex.
The End.

Bad Guys And Their Guns

I haven't blogged about Newtown because what do you say?

No, this shouldn't have happened. This should never happen. It feels wrong to minimize what this community has gone through by discussing the communities that go through this every day. A 7 year old child sitting in their classroom on a bright winter morning should not be murdered. Neither should a chid peacefully sleeping in her home. Or sitting in a car. Or walking down the street. Or playing on the swings. Thousands of our children have been senselessly murdered in the name of our second amendment rights. These rights are themselves a fictional construct of powerful special interest groups on both sides of the idealogical aisle.

Every year, every moment, we place a fairytale above a child's life. I want to believe Newtown is a tipping point. I don't want to be disrespectful by asking why it would be. Is it because the children are mostly white? Is it because they are mostly wealthy? Is it because they were killed together? The last time I thought a child's death was going to be a tipping point was when 7 year old Aiyana Jones was murdered for sleeping on her sofa. I don't know why I thought Aiyana would change us. She wasn't different from all the other children needlessly killed by the culture of violence we celebrate. In fact, she wasn't killed by a random criminal at all, Aiyana was shot to death in her Disney Princess sheets by a police officer. A few months before that I thought it was going to be the death of 6 year old Makayla Sitton. She was murdered in her bed by a cousin brought to her home for a holiday. By 2011 when Christina Taylor-Green was assassinated for attending a speech by someone she admired I'd given up on America and mass violence.

These are three children out of hundreds and thousands. Children have been killed since Sandy Hook. Newtown was not an aberration in any fashion unless you consider being forced to face the deaths of our children is an aberration. It doesn't hit home. What does hitting home even mean? We want to see the faces of the children, we want to hear their stories. By this we mean pictures of them happy and healthy and whole. Stories of the love their family shared and the shock they leave behind. We want to whistle past the graveyard they lie in. Long after we've moved on, long after we've turned to the next mass shooting and ignored the bodies piling up in single or double or triple numbers around us, the first responders will still see the faces of those children when they close their eyes. Their images won't be happy or healthy and they certainly won't be whole. The damage done by the weapons used at Sandy Hook is the sort that stays with you for a lifetime. These men and women will be dealing with this for the rest of their lives, just as the families of the children will.

America, I think we will deal with this for about five minutes. Then we will turn away, as we always do. There is a fairy tale in our country that video games kill people. Movies kill people. Films kill people. Mental illness kills people. Anything but guns. It's never guns. It's never our easy access to weapons of war, weapons designed to kill each other as quickly as possible. This morning in a good neighborhood where this sort of thing doesn't happen (and what does that mean, really, except that lives are not equally important) a woman went for a bike ride. A man she knew stopped her. They had an exchange of words. He shot her to death and escaped. What if he'd punched her? Knifed her? What if he'd not had the power of the gun in his pocket, the secret knowledge that her life belonged to him just on the basis of his own whim. Would she be alive? Would Jordan Davis? Would Trayvon Martin?

I don't know whose cold dead hands will finally make America drop their weapons. For my kids, for your kids, for all the kids, let's go ahead and drop them now. We can't stop evil but we can disarm it. That's what fairytales are supposed to teach us. To want more. To expect better. To turn away from evil and embrace good. Let's open a different book. Please.

Yes, Virginia, this is about guns.

   Some person somewhere, who is claimed by many of our species to be a member of our species, genuinely argued today that we should train children to tackle gunmen, and that that would solve everything.  

Also, as in the wake of just about any mass shooting I care to recall, there has been a knee-jerk freak-out from gun enthusiasts explaining that the answer is more guns.  Talking points have been hit, as they are want to do.  Switzerland, and their world leader percentile of households containing guns (which are there due to their being issued for mandatory military service by citizens as Switzerland has no standing army...) and low gun crime was brought up.  Just don't mention that all  bullets are strictly controlled by the state and only available for purchase and  use at approved shooting ranges, or that bullets issued to service personnel (in case of invasion while traveling to military installations) are given in sealed packets which are checked to ensure no unauthorized use, or that a national inventory is taken to confirm the whereabouts of each bullet... Shockingly the NRA fell silent until today - lord knows how they'll tackle this one.

  But look, squirrel, moar guns in schools comes the tweety-bloggy cry - because if someone had been there with an ankle piece in a sock or a fanny pack holding their Saturday night special, then somehow none of this would have happened.
   It's that school yard fuzzy logic in motion for the particular Death Wish Gun Enthusiast - in which a gunman comes into a school and shoots no one - because someone reading his mind shoots him instead though they never go to jail for it because it was proactive self-defense.  Everyone gets puppies, and free ice-cream, and if you really want to know the truth of it they're holding out for a quick handy from a grateful teacher or two.  Oh and also they're taller than in real life.  Maybe an inch or two.  Except the gunman's mother is still back home dead, but just push that under a rug.  Good.  Now.  Everyone neat and pretty?

When I was younger and the space shuttle Challenger exploded in the air, I had an acquaintance my age who was very upset by it. Christie McAuliffe, (a teacher we might note) quite publicly died in the explosion with the rest of the crew. This kid was traumatized by her death in particular, I think because he didn't know any astronauts, but he saw teachers every day at school.  Perhaps it may have been a little Everyman at play as well.  I'm sure from his test scores he held no illusions about his space camp potential, but hey if the woman who grades vocab drills could make it - maybe he had a shot too.  He watched all the news whenever he could leading up to the launch, and made McAuliffe his own.  Then.  Well.  Shock, denial, most of the stages completely out of order.

  For hours and hours he'd argue with me about basic physics (which were still too advanced for our age set), demanding that if only she had waited and then jumped up in the capsule right before impact she would have survived!
  I said no - she was probably already dead before impact, but even so, even if she somehow amazingly was alive, awake, unhurt, and able to time a jump with superhuman precision, she'd still be going really, really fast because of kinetic energy and she'd be just as dead when she "landed," because that's how the world works.
  My brother-in-law did engineering work in jet propulsion, and was often engaged in or somehow otherwise consulted on NASA projects.  A Floridian, he had made a habit of watching every space shuttle launch possible on live broadcast (if he couldn't be in the state I suppose).  I'm not even sure he'd missed a launch before that one. 
  As I understand it from the time, he'd refused to watch that particular launch on the grounds there would be a high probability of catastrophic failure.  There had been problems with sealant rings, with earlier launches postponed, but it was evidently clear to him that the conditions causing the malfunctions would not have been adequately fixed by the steps that they had taken.  Other engineers would have undoubtedly had similar concerns, and no doubt warnings were given, but this is a highly specialized field - and it's possible the greater majority of people on the team were not even aware how one subset of problems might affect things.  Unfortunately it was also a period in NASA's history in which the actual scientists had been pushed out of any higher management or decision making roles in favor of project leaders with significantly lower technical understanding but a good sense of organization skill.  Part of the mission management may even have been political appointees.  Why am I reminded of all this?
  First because telling me that the answer is more guns in school shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works on par with a third grade understanding of physics.  Second because this situation may be completely avoidable if the right steps are taken - namely sensible gun law based on practicality (instead of trauma or NRA lobby dollars) and as or even more importantly, reliable mental health care.
  We all know there is a problem with the system.  The people who have been trained in this field tell us there is a problem with the system.  We continue hitting the launch button anyway.
 
  Fill schools with guns. Go ahead. What then? Grenades when someone throws a grenade in a school?  Improvised Explosive Devices in the lunchroom?  Dirty bombs in every class?  What about buses?  Grocery stores?  The movie theater?  Restaurants?  Build-A-Bear?  Gymboree?  Is Chuck E. Cheese packing?  Is Ronald?  Guns everywhere?  Every waking moment?   In every hand?

  The heart of the matter:
  26 people were murdered in under three minutes, many of them - let's be frank - with multiple shots to the head.  There's no sensible reason that ammunition clips of that capacity should be sold to the public. Anyone with a gun would likely not have even gotten it out in time before it was all over. There's no sensible reason it should be easier to purchase a gun than to identify and help treat a mental disorder that would cause someone to want to use a gun in this way. Setting aside that the person sitting around daydreaming about the opportunity to "take out" a would be shooter is, I daresay, one bad afternoon's distance from being the person sitting around daydreaming about being would-be shooter. 
  The solution to a horrible misuse of guns (if we are to presume the position that they have necessary uses) is not to inundate and drown our culture with more, more, and more guns. 
  What are you teaching the children in this school? In every school? That the answer to someone being mentally unstable is not to have bothered to restrict a gun purchase, not to have bothered to find the reason for their instability before selling them a sidearm, nor have bothered putting in place a system to address it... To have just not frankly bothered.  Instead teaching every child in our country that the fix is learning to kill faster, kill quicker than anyone else can, world without end. 
  I cannot imagine a more dehumanizing, wholesale race to the bottom of human endeavor.