April Shopfessions

Clothing
Up in the Sky tank - $19.60
Vitruvian Weeping Angel - $19.60
Torrid tank - $40
Torrid top - $45
Hot Topic shipping - $4.99
Hot Topic sales tax - $4.63

Books
Comics - $50
Comics - $34

Makeup
Shiro Lip Color - $8.00
Lingered in Twilight mini jar - $3.50
Team Rocket mini jar - $3.50
Genius Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist full jar - $6.00
Shipping - $2.75

MISC
Chain maille supplies - $16.20
Amish Market treats - $10
Rita's treat - $6.27
Kramer's Splurge - $59.11


The tank tops I can kind of justify in that I either all I had was either spaghetti strap tanks or work friendly tanks. I'd refrained from getting the Up tank previously and regretted it a few times. I picked it up on sale with a few other options.

I returned two out of four because the Supernatural one was damaged. After I sent it back to be returned, I got a stock email saying it was no longer available and I wouldn't be charged for it. Considering I already paid for it, I sure as hell hope so. I wound up going to a store I knew would have it and buying it there.

I still can't get anyone to talk to me but I know my credit card hasn't been reimbursed. I'm dealing with Hot Topic through the store. It helps to have an actual person hear your complaints rather than shouting into cyberspace. I'm leaving that expense off until it gets resolved.

In Torrid I bought two challis tops. I'm addicted to that fabric and cannot be left around temptation. Both would work for a job (when I finally get another one) or the weekend.

I supported my local comic shop with Lumberjanes Vol. 1, Deadpool's Wedding, Chester 5000 XYV, Part-Time Princesses, Wayward Vol 1, Strong Female Protagonist, and The Monster Hunter's Survival Guide. I finally found something from Zenoscope that wasn't soft core porn.

I had a sample of Genius... eye shadow and it's become my default shade of copper. I added a couple of new colors in there since I don't have much variety at the moment. The lip color is for a cosplay.

While I could have found other maille projects to work on, I wanted to be able to get a few easier ones done. It gave me a sense of accomplishment while working on getting a new job. Not much of an excuse but I stuck to the plan of working with what I had for the rest of it.

Some of the things that were left off were necessary like Microsoft Office for Mac, Mother's Day gift, and birthday presents. I think my biggest problem is avoiding temptation.

I'm only good until I get around temptation which isn't very good at all. I need to work on avoiding temptation and getting better at being around it without going nuts. My grand total for the month is $333.15. I think part of the problem is that I get bored and shopping is a viable option. I need to make it less viable.

A Graphic Year Week 17

For my graphic novel this week, I read Hazed by Mark Sable and Robbi Rodriguez. The back says, “Hazed is to comics what Heathers are to film.” I could not think of a better description.

Both Hazed and Heathers are black comedies that make light of serious subjects like bulimia, alcohol poisoning, surgery, suicide, hazing, and consequences of unsafe sex. I left both thinking, “That was mildly entertaining but what was the point of it?”

It came close to touching on real issues like date rape and women taking control of their sexuality but quickly flipped them to satire rather than make a real point. If you don’t know what’s being joked about going in, you’ll miss it entirely. I like black humor but this was not my style.

I really wish I had more to say but it all boils down to if you liked Heathers, you’ll love this. Otherwise, it was OK.

Opening GamerGate: Just the Facts

Opening GamerGate: Just the Facts

The argument I made is that facts don’t exist in a vacuum. We have to consider the society that goes into them. The tone of this piece screams Men’s Rights Activists. I’m already going in with minds fairly set against mine but these lack complete context.

Lifespan

A popular theory about why men have shorter lifespans is the forced stoicism forced on American men. Men aren't supposed to cry or be depressed. They get angry, chill, or happy. God forbid a man ever sheds a tear. The stress of a lifetime of internalizing emotion can cause a lot wear and tear on a body. Keeping a lid on your emotions doesn't help the individual or our society's problematic definition of what it means to 'be a man.'

Another factor that could contribute to shorter lifespans is how we socialize our kids. Boys are permitted to be adventurous while girls are trained to be more demure. "Boys will be boys" vs. "That's not ladylike." This may be why I've never heard a woman tell a story involving shenanigans and fireworks.

Politics

Electing someone into power does not make anyone have a servant/master relationship. The language here is inherently flawed.

Secondly, there are not enough women running for political office on a variety of levels. Social change happens when the underrepresented group is given a voice in a situation where change can happen. Latinos are expected to outnumber white Americans in the near future but they are still an underrepresented group where it truly matters. Sheer numbers do not equal power.

Education

Women do not ‘control’ education. Teaching has long been considered a pink-collar profession and therefore is underpaid and undervalued. Some men don’t go into teaching because it doesn’t pay well or is considered ‘women’s work.’

The ‘power’ here is not in the numbers alone. How many women are on the school board? How many are principals? What about the Secretary of Education? Are women making the funding and hiring decisions? What about university presidents and deans? Teachers are fairly low on the power structure of how education decisions get made.

Reproduction

That number is completely false. I would like to know where whoever wrote this got that number.

Having a uterus doesn’t not inherently give us control. Many states are trying to ban abortion or stopping just short. Other states want to or have installed a 24 waiting period. Anyone who is making the decision to terminate a pregnancy is not doing this willy-nilly. It’s a way to stick it to poor women who have limited resources, time, and money to get to the locations that provide the service.

Many other states allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill prescriptions for Plan-B or birth control based on their religious beliefs. Some politicians lobbying against women and reproductive rights have actually put little thought into why women want them. That is terrifying.

The personhood amendments that have been bouncing around the south the last few years would give more power to the fetus growing inside the woman than the woman carrying it around. They would deny the right of the human woman in favor of a fetus.

Again facts don’t exist in a vacuum. Many women receiving abortions are mothers. Should a woman stop having sex with her husband because the pharmacist denied her the right to make decisions about her family?

Genital Integrity

Female genital mutilation is illegal in America. It is still a routine practice in many undeveloped countries.

‘Male genital mutilation’ or circumcision is a decision made by parents for infant sons. It is considered necessary by the standard of some major religions. Other parents do it so father and son will match. I suspect it historically became popular for regions surrounding ideas about hygiene but I’m not an expert. It has retained popularity in western cultures but many are choosing not to circumcise.

This procedure almost always occurs when the male is still an infant and retains no memory of the event or pain. Some men retroactively take issue with this decision being made for them. If I have a son, I plan to leave that choice to the father.

Female genital mutilation is almost always done when the girl is old enough to remember the pain and trauma. Since it’s done in less developed nations, the healthcare surrounding it is not nearly as good as an infant’s circumcision.

Judiciary

Two words: Prove. It.

If it is happening systematically, where are the numbers? What is the evidence? Don’t just give me personal rants and casual observation. If it’s systematic, there is a paper trail and documentation to support your argument. Find it.

Based on casual observation alone, mothers are generally favored because women are the nurturers in this culture. It’s how society sets the dynamic for men to be the breadwinners and women to be the caregivers. This has been the system for hundreds of years and that doesn’t change overnight.

I have heard plenty of stories of reasonable joint custody arrangements or fathers getting custody. If the men in this case are spouting hateful vitriol toward women, especially the child’s mother, the court will favor the more neutral party.

As for prison, are the men doing all this hard time white? The oppressed men in prison statistics are almost always racial minorities. MRAs are almost always white men. Facts don’t exist in a vacuum. This presentation ignores the racial and socioeconomic context that goes into prison sentencing.

Social

This is a casual, observational statistic with no sociological evidence to back it up. If it exists, I would love to see it.

This argument also lacks all context of what is meant by behavior and clothing. Is it the standard of girl’s shorts getting a 1-inch inseam to a boy’s 6-inch inseam. Mothers and young girls didn’t decide that and are fighting against the limited options.

What is the behavior meant here? Is it having to respect a woman in a bar when she turns you down? Is it not catcalling?

This is too vague an argument for me to counter act. I could make the exact same argument about men with this lack of detail.

Employment

Men are more likely to die in more work related accidents because the jobs that involve dangerous machinery are male dominated. Here's a list of some of the most dangerous jobs in North America

How many female loggers, construction workers, roofers, fishers, and machinists do you know?

For a long time women weren't allowed to do those jobs. Even now that women are getting jobs in these industries, many men in that field don't want them there. The easiest solution is to make the workplace as hostile as possible. North Country focuses on that type of harassment and the first class action lawsuit against it. My explanation is oversimplified but that's a big part of this statistic.

Suicide

I think the suicide statistic ties back into men repressing their emotions. Men aren’t supposed to be sad or depressed, remember? Society gives them few outlets for their feelings while still “being a man.”

I have struggled with depression and if you’re conditioned to never ask for help or talk about it, of course suicide will look like a valid option. It’s the toxic masculinity of our culture.

Sexuality

This is patently false.

Female sexuality can be seen as liberating but women risk being sucked into the virgin/whore dichotomy. We’re supposed to be sexually appealing and sexually available but not so available that we’re giving it away for free. Once we do that, we’re just sluts.

When was the last time a man was called a slut for no reason other than what he was wearing? If a man has a one-night stand, he’s a player. He’s praised. Men further this dynamic by ragging on each other if they don’t get laid and elevating ones who do.

The reason female sexuality may seem liberating is that some women are trying to reclaim the entire idea of it. We’re taking it back and defining it on our own terms. This is not demonizing men or their sexuality.

This whole thing goes sooooo much deeper than I can say in one blog. I'd recommend doing your own homework.

Homelessness

Part of the homeless statistic is veterans. For a long time, women were kept in very limited military roles. Several homeless men are veterans who have trouble readjusting to society coming back from war. It’s a job not often open to women so this is a contributing factor.

I don’t know much about homelessness beyond this issue so I won’t try to speak to it.

Violence

Men are victims of various kinds of violence for several reasons.  Our culture encourages fighting and aggression in men because it’s what it means to “be a man.”

Rape is thought to be the most underreported crime in North America. Women are more likely to come forward than men because a man being sexually assaulted, by either gender, is seen as shameful. He’ll lose respectability as a man. It’s another part of the toxic masculinity in our culture.

Women are statistically more likely to be a victim of partner abuse. I’ve heard everything from 1 in 3 or 4 to 1 in 6. The point being that if you get 12 women in a room, the numbers say that at least 2 have been abused by their partners. I doubt the numbers for men are that extreme.

I won’t change everyone’s minds but almost everything I’ve said here can be backed up in a simply Google search with reliable sources. Can MRAs say the same?

Opening GamerGate

Yesterday was very interesting for me on Twitter.

Anne Wheaton said something on her blog that many trolls and pro-GamerGate guys did not like. She started receiving a lot of harassment on Twitter and decided to turn it into a positive. For everyone negative or harassing tweet she received, she’d donate adollar to Feminist Frequency up to $1,000. John Scalzi said he’d match those donations.

I thought this was great. I tweeted something to Anne Wheaton about how I thought it was magical that she found a way to turn a negative into a positive. I had at least 4 people come out of the woodwork to say something negative or antagonistic to me.

One of my personal favorites was one guy who insulted my intelligence on the grounds of his own faulty logical. GamerGate can’t be harassing Anne Wheaton because then a feminist cause would be getting money therefore she must be making it all up.

When I dared to tweet about the harassment I received, I got it back tenfold. I posted a snarky tweet with this picture with the hashtags troll and GamerGate. Someone actually jumped on me about how it was wrong to call all pro-GamerGate guys trolls. When I pointed out I was merely calling this person affiliated with that cause a troll, I got no response.

One brave soul was a jerk and immediately blocked me so I couldn’t respond. What a BAMF.

Another person asked what was going on. One of his buddies said Anne Wheaton’s wife “trolled GG and pretended to get “attacked” (you know the drill)” [sic]

A couple of guys weren’t as bad as the rest. We wound up have a very long conversation about several things. They were reasonable at times like admitting the GG crowd had a hair trigger that night. But they could also be antagonistic at times.

When I said I was a feminist one of them said he could show me decades of feminists behaving badly. Should he judge me on it? His friend said, maybe they should. If I reacted the same way, it would have merited an attack.

Someone else jumped in the conversation with a list about the illusion of “male privilege.” That merits it’s own post but I knew better than to get mad or truly engage. The same guy who apologized for the hair trigger response of his community also insisted feminist was a portmanteau of 'feminine' and 'supremacist' and challenged me refute the MRA list since they were "just facts.".

I told him his tone indicated he was more interested in refuting what I had to say rather than listening and I wouldn’t change his mine in 140 characters. He readily agreed this was the wrong format for this kind of conversation. I was impressed that we were at least able to agree on at least some points.

It did shed some insight on to why so many trolls came out from under the bridge to aggravate me. According to them, by posting something supportive to Anne Wheaton, I was issuing a challenge. I was going into battle picking a side.

I completely disagree. Saying one supportive thing to someone does not mean you’re taking up arms. If that’s the case, these trolls were looking for a fight.

It also defeats a big part of their argument. If Anne Wheaton is making up all this harassment, why are trolls coming after me? I did even less to provoke them than she did.

When I asked what the point of starting an argument with someone on the Internet was, I got a decent response. “Same thing as fights everywhere solved. One feels righteous, the other cowed.” Basically, it doesn’t solve anything. It just makes the trolls feel big and bad.

These guys were better than their counterparts but not by as much as I’d like. They were receptive to what I had to say and I felt more heard by them than most of the other bridge-dwellers. I also pointed out their list of MRA facts don’t exist in a vacuum. We have to look at the society around them to appreciate what they truly mean.

The whole time I was receiving hate, I was worried someone would track down my information and use it to hurt me or call in reinforcements to attack me. Not all GamerGate guys are pure evil but they’ve generated enough horror stories that they’ll never be seen as a neutral party.

I was pleased I could have a conversation with some of these guys rather than just the usual vitriol.  I bet not everyone can say that.

PopSugar Reading Challenge Book 15 or Text Me

I hit up my local library to find a few books for this challenge and discovered they had Texts from Jane Eyre. I saw a preview and it tickled my funny bone. I devoured this book in an afternoon.

It was as great as I’d hoped since I had to hit Wiki up a few times for context because it covers such a wide range of literature. My favorites were Medea, Plato, Pride and Prejudice, Gone with the Wind, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Lorax, and Harry Potter. 

Hamlet and Peter Pan made total sense but I really just wanted to pop them in the throat. And Holy Great Gatsby Batman, that was a saga.

It was funny but I’m glad I got it from the library rather than bought it. It was like, not love. I'll stick with the tumblr for now.