Dragon: A Parable

I've read these before, and have had cause to link to them but couldn't find them again, so I'm putting them here so I can (trigger warning: sexual assault, no graphic descriptions):

Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer

Meet the Predators

(from Cause I'm Nerdcore Like That; he uses "nerd" where I'd use "geek", but I assure you, it's not enough of a cultural difference for these problems to not exist in my social circles)

There are long-established portions of the culture that define what a nerd looks like and who is allowed to speak and have their voices heard within nerd circles. The dominant face of the nerd culture is a straight cis white male one. He consumes, he indulges his devotion, he discusses, he creates. When he does, men are the only ones that are full partners in the collection of trivia, media, and information; women are the other half of the planet, the half you have to explain things to. Girlfriends are not supposed to be interested in what you are doing, they are supposed to cower in AWE. They’re supposed to marvel at your ability to work everything from the Linux operating system (yes, we understand, you loaded Ubuntu on a Graphing Calculator. WE ARE NOW SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO YOU AND OH PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOUR GUILD ON WARCRAFT) to the toaster. They are supposed to listen to your boring, surface-level dissection of comic book dynamics. They are supposed to find your "get back in the kitchen" "jokes" to be just the highest order of wit. If women accidentally have opinions about things, they must submit them to the scrutiny of the male intellect, which has full veto power on everything women think they know about nerd culture. They are quite vicious about defending the things they love from the tiny thoughts of women.

(as an aside, the comments on that article are actually worth reading. I have to start using this one: "In the words of George Takei, "If my partner sucked that hard I’d never leave the mansion.")

(You made it to the bottom of the post! Here's a bonus comic)

In case it wasn't obvious from my previous post, Fugitivus is back. Based on the twitter feed she was gone just shy of a month. My apologies for not mentioning it sooner.

So I woke up this morning (er, shortly after noon) to find that Fugitivus, the blog of the now infamous "Fuck You, Google" post about privacy concerns with Google Buzz (and the follow-up post "Screw You, Google"), is now a protected blog that I can't read with my Wordpress account (meaning the protection is not being used as a host-deny list but rather as a host-allow). I'm hoping that this is simply battening down the hatches during a storm, that the blog will be back in its full public glory soon. But it's quite worrisome - I hope she's OK, and I hope that Google hasn't, in its reckless enthusiasm to join to world of social media, accidentally chased an awesome female blogger who talks about subjects that go without saying far too frequently in our culture (e.g. rape and abuse, including when one is married to one's rapist/abuser) off the blogosphere.

ETA: From Harriet's twitter feed: "Blog set to private for now. Will return when things have calmed down". So looks like my hope was right. If you're interested in knowing when she comes back, let me know.

There's been an update to the "not like this" link in my post about Google Buzz. She's downgraded her "Fuck" to "Screw", to indicate that they hadn't quite fucked up as hard as it looked.

I just want to point out this line from the project manager of Buzz: We’re sorry that the product experience was extremely confusing. . . Confusing? CONFUSING?!? It was downright terrifying for stalked/abused women (and men, but if more men were (known/accepted as being) stalked I bet you cash money they'd've done things rather differently). I still thinks this qualifies as Evil, but at least it's not the physically-dangerous-to-your-users sort of Evil.

(as seen here)

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are committing a crime - no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

Item the first:
Dear fantasy writers,
It's really nice that you've finally gotten around to having female protagonists who go on Hero's Journeys. But would it kill you to not have them nearly or actually raped repeatedly at the beginning of their journey? If you want to show the father and/or some other evil character(s) kicking the dog, have the dog not be the 14 year old female protagonist and have the kicking not involve unconsentual sexual encounters kthxdiaf. (and being a female author so does not get you off the hook for this sort of thing)

Item the second:
First, read this exchange in the Penny Arcade news section. Then read this article about the PA gym shooter. Now check out the Wikipedia article on the seduction community and read two lines into the first section. Finally, I wish to note that this movie came out last month, and these ads have been ongoing for a while. I leave conclusions up to the reader (but here's a hint: once is random stupidity, twice is disconcerting, but over and over and over again gets really tiring and don't be surprised if it results in paroxysms of rage directed at bingo-carding asshats, so maybe you'll want to avoid doing that).

There is something I want the people reading this to understand: the behavior you practice is the behavior you will do. If you practice not listening to a woman when she tells you she isn't interested in doing something when that thing is just a discussion on LJ, what are you going to do when it involves something complex and highly charged like sex? If you practice demeaning a woman when she tells you she isn't interested in engaging with you on LJ, what do you think you'll do out in the real world?

Think twice before you act, for the sake of your future self.

Men in Power - Men's advocacy group at U of Chicago, which amongst a slew of privilege observation fail notes that women earn more college degrees than men yet fails to notice that women still make less money than men. This does not assure me that they're anything more than a group of guys who are afraid of losing their privilege in the exceedingly gradual evening of the playfield between the genders.