you may not know this, fabric of reality, but....

[seperis]

Dear Universe,

Dystopias are not meant to reflect the actual future.

Fiction: 1984. Not Fiction: School Administrators, Webcams, and Students at Home: Do I Need to Draw a Picture of How FUBAR This Is?

Fiction: The Handmaid's Tale. Not Fiction: Miscarriages Are Always a Criminal Offense By Women: Come on, Convince Me to Join the Republican Party Now, I Fucking Dare You

Not Fiction: Coward Who Kills People With Plane Heroic: So It's Okay to be a White Terrorist, Really? That's the Lesson? - also, note from an Austinite. Fuck yourself, apologists.

Not Fiction: Anti-Semitism Alive and Well in Fandom: Summarizing This Will Require Projective Vomiting, Read at Your Own Risk

Dystopias are not meant to reflect the present, either. Just a note in case this can still be fixed. Thanks.

Love,
Seperis

Comments

[cookie57.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Sometimes it feels safer to stay tucked away in fandom.

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

fandom perpetuates plenty of these problems. sigh. i know what you mean, but don't kid yourself fandom is ideal space. it's safer for some groups; certainly not all.

[cookie57.livejournal.com]

Point taken. Some days I just want a corner for myself and only let in people who make me happy. Real life (and all the isms in my part of the world)can wear me out.

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

All of this makes me hate the world so hard. D: D: D:

[trobadora]

Reality makes me sick.

[archaeologist-d.livejournal.com]

Didn't know about the first one but how they could even think it was appropriate is beyond me. Knew about the second. Some people are just plain insane. Same with the third.
I didn't get the 4th one. Didn't know which one you were referring to.

However, it does seem society is going crazy these days or maybe it always was and it's just easier to find out now.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

It was the comment thread on the last one - I did nt know which Secret it referred to, either, but the comment thread was a charming display of anti-Semitism (from someone who, though anon, did not to my mind show evidence of having the reasoning skills to preserve a distinction between that and anti-Zionism, so I'm charging her with both). I am choosing to be encouraged by the number of people who called her on it. (I didn't expand any of the sub-threads; I do have limits to how upset I'm prepared to make myself on purpose.)

[archaeologist-d.livejournal.com]

Ah, I didn't scroll all the way down. Does make me sick, though. Wow. Takes all kinds I guess.

[gwendolynflight.livejournal.com]

I did expand all the subthreads and no one agreed with the troll. And every comment was either in support of the secret-giver or blasting the racist anon. Parts were touching.

[tienriu.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I've taken to not reading the newspaper or reddit/r/atheism during working hours because the amount of anger and face-smacking was becoming noticeable.

[yellowvalley.livejournal.com]

Wow. You warned me, and I know I shouldn't have read even though I knew about all but the 2nd and 4th ones, but now I'm crying all over my keyboard from being so heartsick. I honestly don't understand how people can think these things are OK.

It makes me want to work harder for the other side, that's for damn sure. Give me a few days to get my rage on, though. I need to cry in the corner some more before I'm ready.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I agree totally, but I think it's too late--ever since I heard about the Bush and Cheney administration thinking that 24 was some sort of instruction manual for how to deal with "terrorism" (by brown skinned people by their definition), it's been too late.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

It's still better than it was seventy-five years ago, or fifty years ago in terms of human rights and overall (not specific, many countries were left behind and held back deliberately) standard of living has risen. It just doesn't feel like enough when we take all these steps backward from where we should be by now.

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

The fourth one really makes me angryface, because it is perfectly possible (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Mike/RantMode/MiddleEast.html) to object to the state policies and goals of the nation of Israel without hating on unwilling conscripts. People and nations are separate things, but apparently the poster there doesn't have enough 'monkeyspace' in his brain to consider anyone in the IDF as a separate individual. So I'm not mad at his Israel hate, I'm angered that he doesn't have a more nuanced and complex opinion to articulate.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

unless I missed something, the anti-IDF anon there never identified its gender. I'm interested in how you (and some others in that thread) came to the conclusion that the anon was male. did I accidentally skim over its identification?

and purely academically, arguing that a soldier has no choice is basically arguing the Nuremberg Defense, which in international law is countered by the Fourth Nuremberg Principle -- that following orders of superior officers or other government actors is not a valid defense for participation in war crimes or crimes against humanity, and there is quite a sizable case against the IDF for having perpetrated crimes against humanity. the law provides that individuals may and must be charged under those circumstances.

I don't, however, disagree that the anon was taking its stance to an unreasonable and anti-Semitic point. the anon was far, far over the line of rational political discourse and obviously had an axe to grind.

RE: Anon gender.

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

Partly playing the odds, partly the attitude of the Anon, which may be described as cocksure and taking an agressive stance that gives the impression of masculinity. Since the english gender-neutral pronoun fell out of favor centuries ago, my hand was kinda forced so I defaulted based on the above to male.

Re: Anon gender.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

I'd be very surprised to find out the anon was male. the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of any commenter in a given fannish situation being female -- and anonymity fosters that kind of aggression regardless of gender. it jumped out at me because I saw people in the thread itself saying "he" as well.

hrm hrm.

[nefreed.livejournal.com]

The IDF has been shown to be responsible for some pretty horrific things even pointed out by the UN human rights commission. Perhaps the poster has been personally affected by it. Who knows. But I hate it when people call critisisms against Israel anti-semitic. A lot of people criticise Israeli policies because of what they are, not because they are jews. No other country in the world gets to do this. As Americans we know the hate and controversy we get abroad because of our wars. Does anyone say its anti-christian? Does protesting Indian policies in Kashmir make us anti-hindu? Does protesting Iranian policies make us anti-islam? Then why does protesting anything Israeli make us anti-semitic? This confuses me...

[traveller.livejournal.com]

You're right that there is a huge amount of conflation between being anti-Israeli policy (which, for the record, I am - and strongly so) and being anti-Semitic. in my reading I felt, however, that the anon in that thread was attacking everything about Israel, including the racial & religious makeup of its citizens, which is why I stated that I felt s/he/it had gone over the line from rational criticism to out and out anti-Semitism. if one feels that Israel's actions and policies with regard to its "settlement" areas and the Palestinian people are abhorrent that can be easily expressed without wishing death (as that anon did) on Israel's people.

part of the trouble is because Israel functions on a theocratic basis as well as a democratic one - the establishment of Israel and its annexation of neighboring lands cannot be viewed solely through a political lens. Zionism is a religiously motivated philosophy - Zionists do not believe the land is theirs because of treaties and accords, but because God promised it to Moses. that's what the word means. this fact creates a very gray area for people who dispute the settlement policies, and we must examine our motivations in ourselves.

[nefreed.livejournal.com]

I went back and read through it and you are right, the anon did go over the line and was being anti-semitic. I stopped after reading a couple of comments because I thought it was the typical Israel is great commentary. I am a bit sensitive on the topic because I have been labelled anti-semitic when I criticised Israeli policy and I know a friend who lost his job because he criticised Israel. So when people just fling around the word anti-semitic it bugs me a big deal :)

[boji.livejournal.com]

Your link to the webcam insanity is the stuff of rabid nightmares. *Shudders*

On macbooks the webcam light comes on when the webcam is active, so I wonder how people didn't know it was on. The comments on JF refer to Undercover (http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/21/undercover-software-helps-recover-your-stolen-macbook/) but that piece of sofware apparently locks the user out of the machine one a photo of the thief is taken (this is you've installed the software and registered your macbook) so either that's been circumnavigated somehow - in this horrible case - or there's more spyware out there.

[ariadne83]

I read somewhere that they were told the webcam light was just a 'glitch' and that the camera wasn't really on.

[moojja.livejournal.com]

The second one pisses me off. Especially since all the female senators voted for it. We are not incubators!

[welfycat.livejournal.com]

This seriously broke my brain/made me absolutely livid.

And I live in Utah! (the state where the miscarriage law was passed), which, while I have no intention of being pregnant, scares the hell out of me. Sometimes, being a woman in this state is not a comforting thing to be.

We're studying Kafka, and the beginning of WWII and all around that time period in several of my classes right now, and sometimes the legislation and things that happen now are way too eerily reminiscent of the things we're reading and talking about.

TL;DR: the world is a scary place to be.

[amireal.livejournal.com]

Guess which one I had not seen today? Wow. So much wrong there.

[eponymousanon.livejournal.com]

That Utah law seriously makes me sick.

[azdaja-dafema.livejournal.com]

Oh...

*starts collecting tea in a bunker*

[iteari.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm going to go off to a corner and be all kinds of depressed now.

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

...well, that didn't shut my dystopia bunny up at all. *glares*

[ariadne83]

I'd already seen most of these, so I thought I was braced against the rage.

Not so much.

[lurkerlynne.livejournal.com]

Icon states the polite version of my thoughts on these topics.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

That second one makes me SO ANGRY I can't even be articulate about it.

[fyrdrakken]

Found the Utah miscarriage law link on Facebook and passed it along there -- really should include it in today's LJ post, too, but I got distracted by this one on a related women-as-incubators note: Nicaraguan Groups Call on International Community for Help in Case of Pregnant Woman Denied Cancer Treatment.

I am paranoid of course

[porntestpilot.livejournal.com]

Fiction: The Handmaid's Tale. Not Fiction: Miscarriages Are Always a Criminal Offense By Women: Come on, Convince Me to Join the Republican Party Now, I Fucking Dare You

I had not seen this before but interesting this is a route of circular pattern attacking. Birth control is more difficult to get, Plan B hard to find, people with belief patterns opposed to it can opt out forcing women into larger and larger searches for it, or out-right failure to procure it, insurance companies making it harder to get, blah blah.

It's getting more difficult in several places for women to get their tubes tied or get sterilized [because of legal reasons - fear of being sued, actually this is not part of my worry pattern in the same way but related still.]

In the news media, more and more, women are being shown waving their children around as some kind of CHOOSE LIFE gimmick of show. I've been noticing it in magazines at check-out aisles, a lot of it seems to be related to Sarah Palin, but there's other stuff as well. They keep attacking outright in flashy ways but they're doing all the careful levering work as well, and I don't think people are noticing. Why do we keep getting these pointless shows about people with multiple children?

Also: Worry less about the Republicans and keep an eye on the groups they're going to splinter into. They're the ones that go into local government and meddle.