tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37557702024-03-13T16:41:01.884+00:00Silence WithoutEst. 2002 - BRINGING YOU THE VIEWS OF TESSADOMTessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07523122977323033271noreply@blogger.comBlogger1138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-30963393005621261282019-03-16T08:48:00.000+00:002019-03-16T08:49:13.099+00:00Christchurch, White Supremacy & Us<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
After the Sydney gunman had walked into the Lindt Cafe, after I'd made my tweet, after the tweet had gone viral and the siege ended, I was interviewed at 7am on Radio National Breakfast by Ellen Fanning. <br />
<br />
I'm not someone who thinks quick when put on the spot. The interview went well, but still, I've replayed one question and answer over and over in the intervening years, because I didn't quite say what needed to be said.<br />
<br />
Fanning had asked if Sydney's emphatic support of #illridewithyou was indicative of character, if that <i>was</i> [Australia]. <br />
<br />
What I wish I had had the coherence to say, is:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Yes, but it is not all that we are. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Because no matter what the Sydney gunman brought with him when he came to Australia - his personality, philosophies, behaviour - nothing he encountered in his time here turned him from his path. He encountered no one who gave him pause, made him reconsider his beliefs. He was not rehabilitated for his violence against women, nor was he deemed threat enough to be imprisoned. There were years here, in Australia, in which he could have been changed, or stopped. But he wasn't. And that is on us.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Because #illridewithyou was, and is, a reaction. Without white supremacy being openly and loudly displayed - on our radios, in our newspapers, by our political representatives - there would be no #illridewithyou. There would be no need.<br /> <br />We are the hatred and the supporting hand both. All of that, the good and bad, is us, and our responsibility.</i></blockquote>
<br />
I wish I'd said that. <br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
“You’ll have to forgive me, these won’t be my best words...”<br />
<br />
On this heartbreaking day, Waleed reflects and calls for unity. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheProjectTV?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TheProjectTV</a> <a href="https://t.co/mIOI0eGamb">pic.twitter.com/mIOI0eGamb</a></div>
— The Project (@theprojecttv) <a href="https://twitter.com/theprojecttv/status/1106471346303754240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
<br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<br />
The Christchurch shooter was born in Australia, grew up in Australia, and all his views and beliefs he developed here, in Australia. <br />
<br />
I wish a lot of things had gone differently. Each time mass murder like this occurs, and is tied back to Australia, I remember that for a moment we had changed the narrative. It wasn't one of fear and hate and fear and hate. We had a volume that made liars of the pundits and talking heads and the then Prime Minister about what would and would not be accepted. We changed the narrative.<br />
<br />
But I couldn't be that focal point. I just couldn't. If I'd stayed louder for longer, perhaps that change would have made a deeper impact. If I'd been more organised and savvy with branding and spokespersons. If that momentum had been sustained, maybe the Christchurch gun man could have been changed, or stopped. He is Australian. He is our responsibility. <br />
<br />
It's for me and me alone to make peace with all that I did and did not do, but it is for us, Australia as a whole, to look at what has changed in the intervening years, and what hasn't.<br />
<br />
We failed the victims of the Lindt Cafe siege, and we have failed the Muslims of Christchurch. There are victims lying dead in the future, just waiting for the present to catch up with them, whom we are also failing. This failure and these deaths will continue, unless we change. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
I feel so sad. We begged you to stop amplifying and normalising hatred and racism. But you told us we were 'politically correct' and 'freedom of speech' was more important.<br />
<br />
The more you gave the far-right a platform, the more powerful they got. We begged you.</div>
— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) <a href="https://twitter.com/oz_f/status/1106419337567428608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
<br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<br />
We are the source of terrorism. We have nurtured white supremacy in our politics and our media, and now that poisoned tree has borne fruit and cast it across oceans. Let the same penalties and sanctions we have imposed on other countries in the name of security against terrorism now be imposed upon us. We deserve it. We have earned it.<br />
<br />
We must change.<br />
<br />
Stop touting freedom of speech as being equivalent to a right to be heard. Stop giving platforms and funding to hatemongers - Andrew Bolt is <i>still being paid to speak bigotry</i> - and allowing hatespeech to become mainstream. Irony is no defence for bigotry. If you speak fascism and racism, then ironic or not, you are a fascist and racist. If you are not challenging those around you for these jokes and edgy comments, your silent makes you complicit in this. To pass unchallenged is to pass with approval. Stop this behaviour before it becomes mass murder.<br />
<br />
None of us stopped the Christchurch shooter. None of us gave him pause, turned him from his path, or simply blocked his way. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-22S4uYC_l8s/XIyyt0rfAUI/AAAAAAAADFw/gK9SX0GPNWozGQaT8olUmSVYSHfRxTgVACLcBGAs/s1600/pyramid.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-22S4uYC_l8s/XIyyt0rfAUI/AAAAAAAADFw/gK9SX0GPNWozGQaT8olUmSVYSHfRxTgVACLcBGAs/s320/pyramid.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Give financial, practical and emotional support to targeted people and those who are victims of hate and fear. This is the one thing I was deliberate about when coining the hashtag. The intent and the wording are completely centred and focused upon the targeted and the victims of bigotry. It is an acknowledgement of the harm and threat to their person without requiring that same harm be quantified. It is simply about them and their lived, every day reality. They are seen, and will not be ignored.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Nothing in the hashtag was about the perpetrators of bigotry. We know they're there. Attention is given to them at the further cost of those they victimise. The victims of bigotry, of white supremacy, are wounded with physical and emotional violence, and that hurt then compounded as they are abandoned to endure the aftermath alone, without support. The focus is consistently on the perpetrator, giving them power through attention. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The hashtag was never about them.</div>
<div>
<br />
<div>
It's not enough to turn up at a counter rally for nazis if you're not sparing a thought for the residents of the Jewish aged care centre that wake up to swastikas and vandalisim. If you don't make the world a better place for the people who have to endure all this hate and violence and vitriol, then <i>it is not enough</i>. Change can be brought about by empowering, supporting and bolstering those peoples targeted by white supremacy. The change required is a many faceted thing.<br />
<br />
None of this work is easy, or glamorous, or satisfying. It is done because it is necessary, and that is all. It is necessary. White supremacy cannot be allowed to continue.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This isn't well written. There are great knots that get in the way when I think upon this. Eloquence would be nice, but is ultimately irrelevant.<br />
<br />
We need to do better.</div>
</div>
</div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-56897562114804207922018-10-19T00:54:00.000+00:002018-10-19T00:54:59.594+00:00Mechanical Animals - Two Bees Dancing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Preorder MECHANICAL ANIMALS <a href="http://www.hexpublishers.com/publications_mechanical-animals.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GSHQ353" target="_blank">here</a>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Two Bees Dancing</i> is the first (and only) story I've written since "all that stuff happened". There's a reprint of <i>Acception</i> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sunspot-Jungle-Expanding-Universe-Fantasy/dp/0998705977" target="_blank">coming soon</a>, but reprints require exactly zero angst on my part, so in this instance it doesn't count.<br />
<br />
Angst, man. What even.<br />
<br />
How long have I known the story was accepted for publication? Ages. Um, possibly more than a year. How long has the cover art been sitting in my inbox, with links to the preorders? Months. Have I advertised the anthology? Nope.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1YCzZPteiyA/W8kp1m3T0VI/AAAAAAAADDs/Pk3oPAHCzlg663E7f4VpdlV0SpPPeKY9gCLcBGAs/s1600/MechAnimalsCover.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1YCzZPteiyA/W8kp1m3T0VI/AAAAAAAADDs/Pk3oPAHCzlg663E7f4VpdlV0SpPPeKY9gCLcBGAs/s400/MechAnimalsCover.jpeg" width="260" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">HOW GOOD IS THIS COVER?!?!?!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
This is not bog-standard writer insecurity, which I've had. And to be fair, still have, but it is entirely eclipsed by this dread sitting heavy in my belly and choking my words. I just...can't...draw attention to myself.<br />
<br />
So this isn't a post letting all know that I've a story coming out. This is a record documenting the evolution of the story, and it's just for me. Just a little bit of sleight of mind.<br />
<br />
I'm always surprised when editors solicit me to submit. It's not that I doubt my craft - I'm not winning awards, but my writing doesn't suck - it's just that my publication record is so very thin and sporadic. My rate of production is so low I'm surprised I remain on anyone's radar. But S did ask me, and the theme for MECHANICAL ANIMALS is just, I mean, c'mon. How could I not?<br />
<br />
I had no story lying around to cannibalise, so I had to start from scratch. Pretty early on I settled on mechanical bees as a tool of state surveillance. Metadata and the government's desired powers over it were topical at the time, so privacy was high on my mind. I spent months fleshing out the infrastructure of these bees, brainstorming sessions with friends and so many pages in my notebook just thinking in longhand. Concept is my strength. Finding the narrative/plot in that concept is not. The bees were not telling me a story.<br />
<br />
I don't remember how or when the narrative actually came to me. I think I recognised that, still burnt and wounded from "all that stuff that happened", the narrative structure needed to be simple, and the voice not so removed from my own. At that point, I didn't have a voice. To a point, I still do not. But this felt like learning to trust myself as a writer all over again. Small steps. Strip the concept down to bare bones and bloody hell don't make the POV some corrupted AI bee-bot.<br />
<br />
The conflict between surveillance and privacy remains in the narrative, but now playing harmony with the disempowerment of the disabled and chronically ill.<br />
<br />
Because I was, then, just dragging myself out of deep incapacitation. Trying to conjure a future for myself when my present was still open wounds and trauma and the horror of minutes that never end, knowing that if there was only a little more support, I <i>could</i>-<br />
<br />
<i>Two Bees Dancing</i> feels like the spiritual sequel to <i>Acception</i>. Actually I look at them and I'm like, Tessa, you've written the same story twice now. Perhaps that's simply because the journey to the end product was so similar. Perhaps because they're both born of deep-welling magma. But they aren't the same story. (THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY WITHIN THE WORD LIMIT. IT IS ACTUALLY A PROPER SHORT STORY. ARE YOU PROUD OF ME I"M PROUD OF ME.)<br />
<br />
S gave me a chance to prove myself, to myself. It's surprising to be invited to submit, but also gratifying and humbling that an editor have faith that the story produced will be worthwhile. This opportunity gave me far more than publication. I've no idea how to make 'thank you' convey everything I want to convey. Two words and I'm a writer undone. Regardless, thank you.<br />
<br />
MECHANICAL ANIMALS offers a table of contents that is quietly jaw-dropping and promises to offer a deliciously diverse range of interpretations on the theme. And the titles! Gracious, the titles. Not going to lie, a good title will win me over every time, as coming up with even just an 'okay' title is <i>hard</i>. Like this, <i>The Hard Spot in the Glacier</i>. How enticing and tantalising is that? I need exams to be over so I can eat this.<br />
<br />
MECHANICAL ANIMALS will be shipped on 27 November. </div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-32990301135062253712018-09-20T09:04:00.000+00:002018-09-20T09:05:11.608+00:00Plant Notes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
To mark the beginning of mid-semester break, I gave myself some long lazy playtime on campus. A bucket of water and secateurs and a ramble around the gardens. A snip here, a snip there. Propagation is a hell of a drug, especially when your campus is nestled within a botanical garden that is quite literally packed full of uncommon and unusually beauties.<br />
<br />
Plants have this magic power called 'totipotency' which enables them to revert a cell that already has a specialised function back into a sort of primordial undifferentiated state, and then change that cell yet again into a new specialisation. This is why you can cut a sprig of rosemary, and even though what you have in your hand is a branch that has never touched the ground, it will nonetheless grow roots where previously no roots would grow. They're wizards. Plants are wizards.<br />
<br />
That said, the power of this shapechanging ability does vary from species to species, and some plants are better at it than others. My previous attempt to strike cuttings of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carissa_macrocarpa" target="_blank">Carissa macrocarpa</a> failed, which was partially expected as the literature indicates as much. But, it's spring, and the time of year, particularly the time in the plant's growth cycle, one attempts to propagate via cutting, can influence success. Hopefully the warm weather and a little rooting hormone will up my chances. There are also some seeds, harvested from the few fruit I could find, sitting in a greenhouse. They have a long germination period however, so it will be some time before I know whether or not they took.<br />
<br />
I've also propagated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambusa_oldhamii" target="_blank">Bambusa oldhamii</a> previously as well, although only one of those cuttings took. Again, the time of year may have influenced this. It's a marvellous bamboo. The sort of bamboo one dreams of, if that dream is a painting and the painting is the idealisation of a bamboo forest. More than one plant would be nice.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.anbg.gov.au/gnp/interns-2011/calothamnus-quadrifidus.html" target="_blank">Calothamnus quadrifidus </a>is new to me. I'm a sucker for those incredibly unusual Western Australian plants. I have no room for these larger shrubs and trees, and don't want to put them in the ground here, but still... An individual branch looks as though it should be a conifer, but it in Myrtaceae. The flowers have a touch of Grevillea to them, surprising red things that erupt from the stem. Did no research on propagation by cuttings on this one, so we'll just wait and see.<br />
<br />
Always make sure your containers have drainage holes. The take away tub I used for some<a href="http://www.cpbr.gov.au/gnp/tassle-ferns/index.html" target="_blank"> tassel fern</a> cuttings did not, and when I wandered by the fog house to see how they were going, I discovered they were in fact swimming. Didn't seem to bother the cuttings in the slightest, but I repotted them all the same. The cutting I have in water propagation at home hasn't done anything yet, but hasn't wilted either. That's not nothing.<br />
<br />
I ventured down to the field station and hacked at the <a href="https://www.iewf.org/weedid/Malva_parviflora.htm" target="_blank">Malva parviflora</a> around my veggie plot. I'd let it go far too long, and it was beastly. Did not attempt to pull out the roots. Smaller plants put up an incredible fight, so I'm content to cut its head off whenever it pops up instead. Planted some <a href="https://www.veryediblegardens.com.au/iveg/vegetable-lore/snow-peas-and-sugar-snap-peas/" target="_blank">Sugar Snap peas</a> and this time remembered to put a bird net around them. The ducks on campus are greedy little buggers. Harvested some silverbeet, poked at the garlic, sprayed myself in the face with a leaky hose.<br />
<br />
There were orphan plants on offer outside the nursery when I got back from the field station. <a href="http://esperancewildflowers.blogspot.com/2012/02/calothamnus-gibbosus-corky-net-bush.html" target="_blank">Calothamnus gibbosus</a>, sibling to the one I'd just taken cuttings off. These were incredibly pot bound. Incredibly. So much so, they'd grown well out of their tubs and were in fact pot bound in the tray they'd been sitting on. Had to cut them out of their plastic, and cut the root ball. It was so incredibly hard and tight. Like weaving, one said. I saw topographical lines in the tightly packed roots. I don't know if they'll take kindly to the root damage, but free plants. Why not?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Today I tackled some of my projects at home. I potted up my <a href="http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.aspx?ID=307" target="_blank">Pseudopanax ferox</a> into an air-pruning pot significantly bigger than its current pot. Got potting mix everywhere. It'll be happy in there for good few years go come, and I won't have to worry about the roots girdling. I don't think I've really shared any photos of this plant. It's just...very difficult to snap. Really needs a photography backing sheet to show its bizarre form. I do love it. Ma calls it my 'minimalist Christmas tree'. It looks like a drawing of a tree. A very simple drawing at that.<br />
<br />
The <a href="https://www.anbg.gov.au/gnp/interns-2004/platycerium-bifurcatum.html" target="_blank">elkhorn fern</a> I've had for more than a year, and have had no troubles with it at all. It grows beautifully. I just haven't been able to mount it successfully. Partly my own ignorance. It had come away entirely, so I gave it a clean up, cutting away most of the rooting mass at the back and dividing the fern, as it turned out there were actually 3 all smooshed together. I bound them to the mount with old stockings. Hopefully, especially being as its growing season now, it'll root in this time.<br />
<br />
Potted up some tubestock I picked up from <a href="https://www.skinc.com.au/" target="_blank">Bili Nursery & Landcare.</a> They're indigenous to the area, which in this case means the SE sandbelt, not the clay soil I'm on. None of these darlings will be going in the ground. Not until I pull my thumb up and start doing serious soil work. Anyway, what's particularly cool is that these plants are propagated from local remnant growth, and they're unexpected for an area I think of as being entirely urbanised.<br />
<br />
I picked up <a href="https://www.anbg.gov.au/gnp/gnp11/eryngium-ovinum.html" target="_blank">Eryngium ovinium</a> as I do love a spikey sweetheart. I have another Eryngium - not native - which does not at all cope with our summer. In fact, I thought it was dead, except it started suddenly growing back beautifully in winter. I'm hoping this native Eryngium does better in summer, so it's a wait and see plant.<br />
<br />
I was very excited to find an Isopogon - <a href="http://wpvherbarium.biosciences.unimelb.edu.au/flora/Isopogon/ceratophyllus/" target="_blank">Isopogon ceratophyllus</a> - which occurs naturally in Victoria, so I had to grab that as well. Its leaves are wider than those of I. formosus, which is now fairly well known in cultivation. They could almost be mistaken for Grevillea leaves.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://fe.yarraranges.vic.gov.au/Residents/Trees_Vegetation/Yarra_Ranges_Plant_Directory/Yarra_Ranges_Local_Plant_Directory/Lower_Storey/Herbs_and_Groundcovers_1m/Acrotriche_serrulata" target="_blank">Acrotriche serrulata</a> was new to me. Or, at least, if I'd seen it before, I hadn't noticed it. It's a meek little thing, with quite a cute little habit - almost looks as though its bonsai'ed itself - but the selling point is the nectar pods it puts out after flowering. I'm told these taste like crème brûlée. Yeah. You read that right. Damn straight I'm giving that a go.<br />
<br />
And finally, I repotted my <a href="http://australiansucculents.com/articles-news/acacia/acacia-aphylla" target="_blank">Acacia aphylla</a>. Bought as tube stock ages ago, now a good little plant with only a little bit of weird sideways growth due to odd positioning.<br />
<br />
I'm actually terrible at "not acquiring any more of those WA specialist plants that look so cool".<br />
<br />
It was a really nice day. Warm bright sun, a light breeze, and the magpies sussing out the birdbath. There's an old apron I use when mucking about in the dirt, but it doesn't stop me from getting dirt up my nose and in my socks. Sometimes I wear gloves, but it doesn't feel proper unless my fingernails are black and brown. And bugger, I forgot to put the shade cloth on the greenhouse. Tomorrow. I'm well pooped now.</div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-42245498687110944392018-06-11T04:59:00.000+00:002018-06-11T04:59:47.997+00:00Plant Notes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://www.rareflora.com/amorphophallusbul.htm" target="_blank"><i>Amophorphallus bulbifer</i></a> had finished rotting out its leaves, so it was time to move the pot out of the fernery. One nice little corm of good health in the palm of the compound leaf. These corms drop to the ground when the leaves die out over the dormancy, and go on to make new tubers. I don't know if this one is big enough to do so, but I popped it down on the pot anyway. Pot has been moved beneath a table, outside. There it will be protected from the frost and getting too much rain, but still get some good cold temperatures.<br />
<br />
Pulled out the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba" target="_blank"><i>Ginkgo biloba</i></a>. Roots were just starting to peek out the drainage hole. It's fully dormant at the moment, so a good time for it to move house. I'm a little concerned about the roots. They're marvellously healthy, but will of course go woody, and I couldn't help thinking about the issue of root girdling which occurs with woody plants. The roots grow around the circle of a pot because there's no where else to go, and with age they thicken and end up strangling the plant. An airpruning pot could help this...except that <i>Ginkgo </i>really wants to keep its feet wet. I'm not sure how it would like all that drying out. Possibly, I may just have to accept that this particular <i>Ginkgo</i> will not be a giant in the ground, but stay wee in a wee pot for its life. Hmm. When I potted it up last time, I put a chux in the bottom of the pot, specifically to retain water down there. That does strike me as a rather daft move, but the plant apparently loved it and had no problem just busting through it. So. No harm done? Not a move I repeated this time, but the roots were so knit through the chux I didn't take it out.<br />
<br />
For the time being, it's now in a bigger pot. Gave it a small prune, watered it in, and have put it back in its place to be ignored until it wakes up again in spring. I'm trying again to root the cuttings. They didn't take last year. We'll see.<br />
<br />
Finally remembered to bring nail scissors into the greenhouse, and gave a lot of plants a nice tidying. Lots of dead inflorescences that needed snipping. Amazing how removing the scruff makes a plant look so much perkier.<br />
<br />
I've learned so much about plants, but I still don't feel like I know what I'm doing.</div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-22826428438014834342017-09-14T03:27:00.003+00:002017-09-14T03:27:53.979+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've wanted to write about the marriage equality vote for some time, particularly how #illridewithyou resonates with the Yes campaign. But, I'm sitting here listening to the skirls of rising panic of all my cringing bones, and I can't wax insightful.<br />
For most, my mixed-race identity was erased from the hashtag narrative. It became about white people standing with non-white people. It became about allies, and their visibility.<br />
When it comes to marriage equality, that's the only position I can take.<br />
Racism and homophobia have different histories and manifest in different ways, but each are rooted in dehumanisation.<br />
If you only spend your energies on those fights which affect you directly, then you are only acting out of self-interest.<br />
<br />
A non-binding postal vote is just like a hashtag; it won't change anything, but it will make a <i>difference</i>.<br />
<br />
Straight people: vote Yes, and put that vote back in the post. It costs you as much as retweeting a hashtag, and it matters.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-17314194212316757452017-03-08T03:13:00.003+00:002017-03-08T03:13:43.747+00:00Pieces of Wednesday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Waking up with the same headache that put you down is grossly unfair.</div>
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<span data-offset-key="frrg5-0-0">I follow Sam around the house chanting "Shame. Shame." He remains unrepentant concerning the dog poo he left on the back ramp.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5j32t-0-0">Salicylic acid is not a lipid.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="43iqk-0-0">In the tree outside my bedroom window, a grey miner bird calls out. Again. And again. And again. And again. For hours. My headache beats with each cry. My headache too is annoyed by the bird.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9u1ef-0-0">In another room, a brief call to Malaysia. </span></div>
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-79468944774451657292017-03-03T04:36:00.000+00:002017-03-03T04:36:38.931+00:00Movement Unseen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When using a light microscope, adjust the coarse focus before utilising the fine focus.<br />
A blur of peacock blue and glory red suddenly coalesces and becomes a map of tiny rooms and coloured walls. The cross-section of a leaf, unbelievably thin, on a plate of glass. I can't stop the gasp and don't wish to. The student beside me looks my way. I don't look away. I can't look away. It's magic.<br />
<br />
Confirmation of permission to study part-time comes on Friday. Classes start on Monday. The breath I have been holding for months comes out, and has not yet stopped, because months is only the first gust of a change years in the brewing. High pressure systems, low pressure troughs, and a wind that has nothing standing before it.<br />
<br />
The lecture is dense and rich, and I am not overwhelmed because this is what I want. Golgi. The shape of the word does not tell me how to speak it, and I wait for the lecturer to give this noun to the air. Gohl-gee. That which manufactures substances the cell needs, within the cell. My handwriting chases the lecture across the page, a mess of missing letters and cryptic shorthand, throwing arrows to printed slides and underlining key phrases. I'm already saturated. I can feel the information being given rolling off me like water will fall away from a lotus leaf. I am a hunter and must catch everything I don't absorb, to consume later. I am tired. I can't read what I've written.<br />
<br />
Two subjects a semester, two contact days a week. When I say it like that, it sounds pathetically easy. What possible challenge could this pose? The Tessa who was an employed person in the past worked four days a week, which is the equivalent of the full time contact hours this course requires. Time is not an abstract concept, however. Time is the marking of change, and I have changed, and I am not that person any more.<br />
<br />
The microscope shows me tiny bacteria dancing in the cell of an <i>Edolea ssp.</i> leaf, and I can only think of that dance and those little lives as 'jitter bugs'. Within that cell the chloroplasts are sizeable and their green is the green of the entire plant. A colour that eats the sun. A colour that need consume no other living thing to survive. The nucleus a pale grey sphere, sitting apart from the chloroplasts. On the projector, cytoplasmic streaming; the chloroplasts whirling round and around the cell as the world spins round and round. There is so much movement in this unmoving plant.<br />
<br />
I didn't come here to make friends. A reminder. The class I am not enrolled in, which fell between ecology on Tuesday and biology on Thursday, has been a bonding for which I was absent. The formation of groups has begun. I did not come here to make friends, and I do not need the social acceptance of my colleagues as I once did, but I can see the absence of camaraderie come exam time, the absence of a shared journey. To seek out these things is to spend energy I do not have to spend. I know what my priorities are, and do not regret them and mourn what will not be. There is no conflict in this.<br />
<br />
A scraping of the inside of my cheek wiped onto pristine glass. On the projector, the lecturer's own cells. There is something confronting in this, something utterly vulgar and vulnerable in the casual way she shares the tiny pieces with which she is made. There is no green, for we are not autotrophs. The cytoplasm is pink and the membrane near invisible. The nucleus a darkened oval. They are disorderly, folded over and scrunched together like sodden paper. I am looking at myself through the microscope. The instructions for building my physical self lie before me, and make no sense to me. There's something repulsive in what I am seeing. I must know more.<br />
<br />
The heavy traffic is a blessing. Should I have an accident, I won't be travelling fast enough for it to cause much damage. I'm saturated. I'm strained. Fatigue sits curled in my lap, patient. I just need to hold myself together long enough to get home. Drive carefully. Turn the music up loud. Louder. Blast cold air. Fatigue knows it will have its way, that I will let it have its way. It is well before tea time when I go to bed. I sleep until after lunch time the next day, and still fatigue is draped across my shoulders. This is why you need part-time, I remind myself.<br />
<br />
Too exhausted to concentrate, I crack open a text book borrowed from the library.<br />
<br />
I do this because I want to.<br />
<br /></div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-46224869333990060392017-02-20T09:31:00.000+00:002017-02-20T09:31:00.719+00:00The Great Wall (of Deep, Deep Sighs)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yeah, look. Just. Look. I went and saw it at the cinemas because I wanted to. Ancient Chinese fantasy and wuxia films are dear to my heart. The consumption of media which is problematic as fuck is normal to me, because the production of media/narratives which aren't problematic is rare. Those of us who don't see ourselves on the screen or on the page are used to balancing enjoyment and criticism simultaneously.<br />
<br />
I wanted to like this film, and to an extent, I did like it. But I also wanted - if it was going to be a massive appropriation of history, culture and narrative - it to be a gateway drug, because wuxia films are The Best. Don't argue with me. There's no point. I love these narratives and I wish more people around me shared the love. At the very least, this film could serve as an entry point.<br />
<br />
Except it isn't a wuxia film. <br />
<br />
Spoilers ahoy.<br />
<br />
Having now consumed my problematic media, I chowed down a few articles addressing its problems. Oddly, the two mostly widely accessible articles I've found which do a passable job of addressing the films problems (on <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonwillmore/the-great-wall-is-a-glimpse-into-our-terrible-movie-future?utm_term=.na1yNg0Yo#.heZRkX4dK" target="_blank">BuzzFeed</a> and <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/17/14638482/great-wall-review-matt-damon-lizard-monsters" target="_blank">Vox</a>) both state that it isn't yet another White Saviour Film.<br />
<br />
Ummm. Yes, it is. The presence of Badass Commander Lin (played by the badass Tian Jing WHO HOLY SHIT IS GOING TO BE IN PACIFIC RIM 2 HAAAAAAAIIIIIIII) at the end of the film and the fact she strikes the final blow does not in any way cancel out the fact that it took Matt Damon's ability to think outside the box to capture a Tao Tei (more on them later) and the plan to eliminate the Queen Tao Tei was his idea.<br />
<br />
No, his character doesn't swan around being overtly smarter, stronger and swifter than those around him. He (thankfully) doesn't go around attempting to enlighten anyone. There's honestly not enough depth in the film to allow for that.<br />
<br />
But the narrative still centres him. It is to him that the narrative gifts heroic acts, unorthodox inspiration and the opportunity to masterfully save the lives of the extras around him with some super slick moves.<br />
<br />
The first time this happened, I felt my heart break. Those moments of preternatural reflex and anticipation in battle are something particular to martial arts, and to see them granted first to Matt Damon and not any number of the warriors around him - who have all allegedly been training their whole lives for this - was...well. It set a tone from which the film did not deviate. The White Hero was portrayed as impressive. As <i>cool</i>. His counterparts were not, save one.<br />
<br />
Commander Lin is awesome. Like, so awesome. Like, her entire command is also comprised of badass women who bungee jump from the wall to impale the Alien Lizard Dogs from Space on spears and then spring back up to get another spear and do it all again. How badass? So badass. The ideals of Chinese beauty being just as narrow of as those of Western beauty aside, her character is solid, steady, and <i>not swayed by the charms of the white man</i>. I cannot tell you how important this is. There is a mere hint of romance present in a lingering and shared look which never develops further than that. She is sure of herself, of her abilities and her convictions, and it is she that teaches him a thing or two about the world, not the other way around.<br />
<br />
There is a trope in wuxia of the tragic lovers, who for one reason or another cannot be together and yet spend so much time gazing at each other and admiring each other and respecting each other up until one of them dies. Tragically. Usually in the act of protecting the other from death. I feared this was Commander Lin's fate, BUT IT WASN'T. SHE AIN'T GOT TIME FOR THAT. SHE GOT ALIEN LIZARD DOGS FROM SPACE TO VANQUISH. NOR DID SHE LEAVE HER LIFE TO GO WITH MATT DAMON ONCE THE WAR WITH THE ALIEN LIZARD DOGS FROM SPACE WAS OVER. She was all, like, I respect you, we've been through some shit together, wish you well, baaaai. Like at the end of Pacific Rim, their last interaction could be viewed as unspoken romance...and can also be viewed as not. Commander Lin has an agency, life and destiny all of her own, which exists beyond the narrative of the white man, and FUCK. YES.<br />
<br />
(As an aside, despite the film being about a war with Alien Lizard Dogs from Space who just want to eat everything, despite the majority of the cast being male, the only time the camera lingered on soldiers being torn apart, literally torn apart by the Alien Lizard Dogs from Space, was when Lin's all-female soldiers were diving from the wall. And I do mean the camera lingered. Other soldiers also met this fate, but the camera barely gave them a moment's notice. It could be argued that this was because those women were the first casualties during the first assault, thus the long, horribly violent and emphasised deaths were presented to highlight how terrible a foe they faced, but it honestly came across as gratuitous violence against women.)<br />
<br />
She's the best thing about this film. It's only redeeming feature you might say. I mean, she's a character with a bit of depth, just a bit, which is more depth than anyone else had. There are no other characters, really. Well, I guess Matt Damon is a character. His character's name is William, but all I saw on the screen was Matt Damon. He gets to learn, make some life altering choices, but this isn't a deep film. Between the two of them, I reckon there's one character. Everyone else is a plot device or a prop. Poor Andy Lau. As Strategist Wang, his sole purpose was to be the mission statement at the start of every chapter telling everyone what had to happen next. Dafoe's character isn't even one dimensional. Pedro Pascal is a foil for Matt Damon and that's his sole purpose, and everyone else has colour coordinated costumes to indicate who is who on the set.<br />
<br />
It's worth noting that those dismissing the White Saviour narrative overlook the fact that he saves a nameless foot soldier (who was marked for a tragic death the moment that happened, and yep, no surprises there), he saves Lin when she was surrounded and about the be eaten, and he saves his Spanish Offsider from gaol. Like I said, the final blow may not have been from his hand, but he's the one running around saving everyone.<br />
<br />
Did you get that Pedro Pascal's character was Spanish? From Spain? Because just in case you didn't get it, he waves a big swathe of red silk at an Alien Lizard Dog from Space like a matador to a bull. Because he's Spanish. From Spain. He also makes questionable moral decisions because while he's European, being Spanish he's not a proper White European. Which is an important distinction that highlights how good Matt Damon is. Pascal does great with what he has to work with, which is very little. He's as wasted as Andy Lau.<br />
<br />
As for those Alien Lizard Dogs from Space...look. Just. Look. Director Yimou Zhang is quoted as saying, <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/what-are-the-tao-tei-in-the-great-wall-these-mythical-monsters-are-hungry-38748" target="_blank">"What makes our film unique is that these are ancient Chinese monsters."</a><br />
<br />
Kinda? I mean, the Tao Tei / Taotie are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taotie" target="_blank">a thing</a>. Not a particularly defined thing, as it were, but definitely the idea of a monster from China's history.<br />
<br />
Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Palahniuk also wrote, "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken." Giving them a name from Chinese history doesn't change the fact that they were Alien Lizard Dogs from Space (seriously, in the film they're from space) and sporting an entirely Hollywood CGI monster aesthetic. I'm not yet able to articulate exactly what it was about them as a whole or as individuals, but when these monsters appeared, I knew I was not looking at a Chinese monster. Others may disagree.<br />
<br />
Much as this film is billed as being co-created by China and Hollywood (I find it interesting that Hollywood gets to exist as an entity separate from the USA, but the Chinese film industry doesn't), many of the names in the closing titles who were responsible for the look and detail of the film were not Chinese names. Perhaps that's how we end up with monsters that look like they wandered into the wrong set.<br />
<br />
Also they were from space.<br />
<br />
Is that police-y of me? Possibly. Probably. This film is, however, the appropriation and sanitisation of a history and culture for the purposes of Western consumption. The Chinese movie industry wants some of those juicy Western audiences. There have been in roads made; a lot of credit must be given to Jackie Chan, and since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the great Chinese epic has had moderate success. But, the Western audience doesn't like subtitles. Living in a monolingual world leaves one feeling rather entitled about the communication around them, mostly being that it should be in their language or GTFO. Subtitles turn so many viewers off, which breaks my heart. (Dubbing is an industry which I believe could be an amazing thing. Look at any English dub of anime! Yet so many foreign language films are given dubs which do a great deal to throw the viewer out of the viewing experience. Lip sync being a trivial issue.)<br />
<br />
Damon himself has defended his role in the film by pointing out that the film was written with a Western lead in mind, which mostly indicates the lack of critical thinking involved in his response.<br />
<br />
Subtitles is one battle. The other is representation.<br />
<br />
The recent Jackie Chan film Dragon Blade is another amalgamation of Western and Ancient Chinese epic narratives, which features Jackie Chan being his usual charming, honourable, goofy self and becoming entangled in a feud of succession in the Roman Empire, which has come to play out in his stomping ground. It featured Adrien Brody and John Cusack as Imperial Romans, and as with The Great Wall, featured a great deal of spoken English scenes.<br />
<br />
The Romans, however necessary to the conflict, weren't the centre of the film. Jackie Chan was. Even as well known and well loved as he, the box office takings for this film in the USA made <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=dragonblade.htm" target="_blank">0.1% of the total takings around the world</a>.<br />
<br />
The idea that only stories centring around white men, Western white men, will sell to Western audiences, appears to hold true when viewed from the outside. The Chinese film industry wants in on the Western audience. So, the writing of a Western character being central in the film is a marketing move, and a ghastly one. It further compounds the idea that a narrative only counts when it hangs from a white man's shoulders. It is complicit with and practically gives permission for Hollywood's continued appropriation of Asian concepts and culturescapes (the casting of Dr Strange and the live-action Ghost in the Shell being the most current examples of this) whilst erasing the very people to whom these ideas are foundations of identity.<br />
<br />
This film is nothing short of a perpetuation of the problems of racism in Western media. It isn't for China's film industry to amend their ways - that is a whole different conversation. It is for the Western world to seriously, meaningfully, no seriously, get with the whole picture when it comes to representation, when it comes to who <i>should</i> be the vehicle for what narrative.<br />
<br />
I hoped it would be a gateway drug. But it isn't. It's an empty narrative full of costumes and design which signal something that isn't there.<br />
<br />
I was hoping, maybe the film would be a mix of two worlds, the way I am. But it isn't. It's set dressing and posturing. (Maybe that's all I am too.)<br />
<br />
I was hoping it wouldn't be what it looked like it was going to be.<br />
<br />
Sigh.<br />
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<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">No seriously, from space? Why?</span></div>
<br /></div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-47247982161305532332017-01-18T04:29:00.003+00:002017-01-18T04:29:58.914+00:00Love by the Pus-Choked Sea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For most of my adult life I've used analogies to navigate the process of living. For example, I've always been a strange fish. The complete lack of representation of anyone I could relate to in the media I consumed whilst growing up means that I am now unable to see myself in any narrative. Not even those which now feature people who look like me and live like me. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But I see myself reflected elsewhere. In 2007 footage of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frilled_shark" target="_blank">frilled shark</a> surfaced, captured by divers off the coast of Japan. She was in distress, swimming lopsided, and died within a few hours. It was surmised she was sick, to have been so far from her natural habitat. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I saw myself in that slow, heavy shark. Meant to swim in cool, quiet darkness, in stillness and solitude in which the cycle of seasons are not measured by light. To be a silent creature passing by other silent creatures with nary a pause. To venture in to the world is to enter warm, shallow waters, bright with sunlight and full of extroverted fish in dizzying crowds. Society asks that I live in these bright, balmy waters, but I'm not made for it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
That shark was caught and couldn't swim home. I've learned to flee into the depths sooner, rather than later.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
I'm one of a sentient and intelligent species, however, and can adapt. There are ways to exist in shallow and busy waters. I was not one creature, but many. A whole school of fish, the many pieces and parts of me moving not necessarily in unison, but with coherence. Sometimes, when there were sharks in the water, the school was in chaos. Other times, the school was a mesmerising ribbon of silver, curling around a thriving seamount. I had to fracture myself to move through a social world. It wasn't an injury, just another way of existing. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These seem like such trifling little toys, now. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Can I speak of anger for a moment? Anger is magma, and the volcano only erupts when there is naught else it can do. Magma comes from the depths as well. Sometimes it can be controlled, sometimes it can be channeled, but it will always want out. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Trauma does not come from within. Trauma is the meteorite that slew the dinosaurs and lays waste to all the strange and wonderful things a life can grow. A depth not of me nurtured that meteorite, out there in the world, and then slammed it upon me. Perhaps I invited my meteorite, but then, who honestly anticipates the extinction of the soul?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I used to contain multitudes. My mind had no boundaries, no beginning nor end, the multiverses playing out in layers of consciousness I only barely acknowledged. There was never only one Tessa. How could there ever be only one Tessa? I could survive everything, because there was always more of me, so much more of me. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Until the meteor struck, and the ocean died.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm not a fish. I'm not a school of fish. I'm one, only one, standing on the shore of a disease-mangled ocean. The surface is broken by the bloated carcasses of so many fish, the waves do not form those smooth glass tunnels of my memory but are chunky with skeletons and decay. Pus floats like polar ice on these waters, riding low, yet still so much sitting high. The water that laps at these bergs of sickness is stained with the blood of ruptured corpses, stirred by a wind corpulent with decay, the reek so heavy its a wonder the air has the strength to carry it. All this wasted meat. There are no scavengers to enjoy this feast. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The extinction of the world leaves only one, wondering when the horizon drew so near, why there is nothing else but this beach. </div>
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<div>
How small I have become. How very small.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
No one can see this, but I spend my days standing in that disgusting soup with a bucket in my hands and the taste of putrefaction in the back of my throat. One heaped bucket at a time, I pull the empty bodies of fish from the surf, I scoop pus from those rancid bergs, I work and work and work to clean that ocean. Behind me, on stained sand, are mounds of detritus. All the poison I pull from the ocean in slow-growing mountains. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are birds hidden in the pus. Birds that survived the first impact and surging tides, birds who tired of flight and tried to rest only to discover that pus is not an island. Caught in that quagmire, feathers slick with it, they floundered and sank and drowned in the symptoms of my wounds. They appear from the stuff suddenly, frightened and frightening and staring in panic.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Sometimes the waves bring up secrets from depths that no longer exist. I have a hook and a rope and being the only one I pull these behemoths to the shore. Their jaws are a mile from crook to crook. None of them smile. A sunken eye larger than the sun, cloudy in death, reveals nothing. I drag these monsters up the beach, their skin sloughing off in great curtains, and go back to my bucket.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It is unglamourous work. There is nothing to romanticise in this filth. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Occasionally I find another me. One of the multitudes lost in the cataclysm will wash ashore. Maybe she will be in a foetal position with her face hidden in her palms, or perhaps she will be standing with her fingers curved, her spine curved, all her bones curved into the question. There is nothing to be done for these pieces of me. I try to comb the pus from their hair, take the scabs from their skin and leave them on the beach where they are found.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Squalls are unkind. Sometimes I can see them coming and find myself a shelter amid my own ruins. Other times they take me by surprise and I find myself hunkered behind a soggy pile of scabs, the bucket over my head drumming furiously with the unforgiving rain. These storms bring new wreckage to the shore. There is always more.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I don't often venture close to the impact site. The turbulence in the air over that space is upsetting, the tides vicious and mean, and the miasma so thick I cannot see nor hear nor breathe. I don't know if occasional exposure to it will help me or not. I only know that it is there, now, and I must live with it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One bucket at a time, when days and nights have no meaning, and the tides are always bringing more, more, more. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's hard to accept love, here, now. I don't know what there is to offer. But then, I know what it is I love in those precious people around me who also struggle with a history of invisible injury. Their wounds are a part of them, and so I must love those wounds. Their wounds do not define them, so I can see a person who exists with or without that struggle, who inspires love. Their struggle is a heart breaking over, and over, and over, and for taking up that fight I love them too. Fiercely. So, perhaps this is what can be seen in me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Later, I will have a bounty of silver scales and event-stained skeletons. Later, the bones of these deep giants will be revealed as towers of glass, casting shadows which are not shadows. Give me enough time and the mountains of pus I move from sea to shore will dry and harden. The pressure of aeons will turn that once rancid mucus into beautiful, milky stones, which when polished and then held up to the ear will hum quietly of grief. Entire ranges of humming peaks. I can give you the ambergris of lost whales and the surrendered pearls of unknown clams. Strange and unimaginable mosses will creep across this long grave. Algae will bloom in this sickened water. There is an ecosystem in the future and its ghosts reach back in time to here, now, urging me on. One day, multitudes of me may wake again.</div>
<div>
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Sometimes I do nothing. Sometimes I look at all I have done and all I have yet to do, and the futility of it all becomes overwhelming. I sit in garbage and the vomit of the ocean and there is nothing in this universe to hear my wail.</div>
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The tide creeps up the shore to suck at my toes, and I pick myself up, pick up my bucket, and carry on.</div>
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I have contained multitudes, and so I can grow a new world. This is not unknown to me. </div>
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I do not know what it will be, but this new world creeps closer, one bucket at a time.</div>
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-55017269183642461472016-12-26T10:57:00.001+00:002016-12-26T10:57:39.387+00:00we learn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/SUCCULENTS/Family/Asclepiadaceae/22160/Ceropegia_stapeliiformis" target="_blank">Cerpogia stapeliiformis</a> is identified as being particularly hard to grow in cultivation. Being as it looks like a fat dead stick, I had to give it a shot. Unfortunately I doomed myself to failure the day after bringing this baby home. It had some light scale growing on it, and using a Q-tip and some soapy water I wiped away what I could. Even that light touch of moisture was enough to start in rot on the growing tip of the longest stem. I've since amputated and sealed the cut with ground cinnamon, but the rot appears to have spread throughout the plant anyway.<br />
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My woolly senecios aren't looking too happy either. <a href="http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/SUCCULENTS/Family/Asteraceae/19309/Senecio_scaposus" target="_blank">Scarposus</a> and <a href="http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/SUCCULENTS/Family/Asteraceae/27697/Senecio_haworthii" target="_blank">haworthii</a> require the same conditions and care: heaps of sun and extremely careful watering, as they're also prone to rot. I pulled both of them up today to check the roots. Scarposus is looking okay in the roots, but extremely limp and withered in the leaves. In any other succulent, I'd assume that would be from lack of water, but this one I'm not so sure about. Haworthii has unfortunately had a big root die off. Still some good living ones visible, but on the whole, not great. I'm mostly certain the potting medium and pots I had them in were contributing factors here, so I've repot them both in near pure scoria and more open pots. I'll think about giving them some water in a couple of weeks.<br />
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I'm one of those foolish individuals who creates their own superstitions. The Senecio haworthii I bought the day I sat my STAT tests, as a celebration. In my mind, the possibility of me going to university is now inextricably entwined with the life of this plant. Things aren't looking good.<br />
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The university sent out an email notifying all who'd applied for the course I've taken aim at that this course will no longer be offered as part time. No reason was given for this.<br />
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It's a spanner in the works. Full time the course is 20 contact hours a week, with homework and prep on the side. Sometimes, I feel strong enough to manage that. Most of the time I don't. Much as I want to try full time, I had been assuming I'd do the degree part time.<br />
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Right now, unemployed, I'm living part time. Fibromyalgia first manifested as my working part time, but after the last few years and all that has happened, I exist part time. There are so many hours that perhaps another person could use productively, that I spend simply being exhausted. I know I can study just fine, I'm doing it right now with chemistry. The system just needs to be flexible. I'm willing. I can do these things. In my own time.<br />
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There's small room for wiggle, as in the case of "exceptional circumstances" the Dean may allow a student to complete the degree part time. I don't yet know what constitutes an exceptional circumstance, and until I know whether or not I even have an offer I don't wish to draw attention to myself. This degree only has a small yearly intake, and I have a pretty distinct name.<br />
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It could be that chronic illness is not an acceptable reason for part time study. In which case, the only option I have is to drop the course entirely. The offer of a refund of the VCAT application fee is small compensation given the surrounding money I've sunk into merely making myself eligible to apply.<br />
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There are other paths and plans. But.<br />
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I want to get myself into a place where I can stop trying to get into a place, and start focusing my energy on being in that place. I want to stop reaching and reaching and reaching and start building.<br />
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It is all learning. Sometimes plants die, and sometimes plans are thwarted.<br />
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Other plants thrive. Other plans work. This disappointment will pass. One day.</div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-41005606530712619162016-12-02T07:01:00.000+00:002016-12-02T07:01:19.978+00:00The Unchanging Ginkgo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We had a <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba" target="_blank">Ginkgo biloba</a></i> plant when I was a child. It sat in a pot on the front verandah by the door, where it was mostly neglected. It always fascinated me. A book on dinosaurs had told me that this was a relic of prehistoric times, that this plant was kicking around millions of millions of years ago with <i>dinosaurs</i> (everything is a dinosaur when you're a kid). It was a <i>living fossil</i>. </div>
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This confused me to no end. I'd stare at this small plant which was shorter than I was and wonder how could it possibly be that old. Especially since it was dead, I mean, they'd found it in the fossil record. Maybe this was a cutting from some ancient behemoth ginkgo, but then, where was this monster dinosaur tree? How did such an incredible time-travelling plant end up on our front verandah? What if we killed it? Oh gods, what if <i>we killed the living fossil?</i> Took me rather a long time to realise that 'living fossil' simply meant it had not evolved from that form in the intervening millennia. Even the smartest of kids have - often peculiar - intellectual blindspots.<br />
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We did end up kill the living fossil. Poor plant.<br />
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Because of this misunderstanding I've always viewed the ginkgo with awe, and it is a plant that lends itself to awe with ease. Those leaves are so simple and elegant, reminiscent of nothing in the neighbouring yards or the school playgrounds. Their lack of complexity in form and placement evoke an era of evolution that is only visible to us in fossils. The hint of what is to come, what surrounds us now, in their texture.<br />
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As an adult, I appreciate the living fossil for what I perceive to be its stubborn indifference to the passage of time and the incredible changes wrought in the world around it. The supercontinent of Pangea no longer exists, but this plant does, unchanged. While its surrounding peers figured out how to do flowers - flowers! such complex, deceitful structures! - and changed their leaves and skin to suit the environment, the ginkgo just sat back and said, "Nah, I'm good." Admittedly, it's likely that the ginkgo is extinct in the wild and has survived these past centuries only due to the practice of planting them at temples and shrines, shared by many cultures around Asia.<br />
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This ginkgo tree is planted at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsurugaoka_Hachimang%C5%AB">Tsurugaokuhachimangu</a> in Kamakura, Japan. I visited in 2007, and did indeed get to see a ancient behemoth ginkgo. From the wiki: <br />
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<i>The ginkgo that had stood next to Tsurugaoka Hachimangū's stairway almost from its foundation and which appears in almost every old print of the shrine was completely uprooted and greatly damaged at 4:40 in the morning on March 10, 2010. According to an expert who analyzed the tree, the fall is likely due to rot. Both the tree's stump and a section of its trunk replanted nearby have produced leaves.<br />The tree was nicknamed kakure-ichō (隠れ銀杏 hiding ginkgo<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Installing_Japanese_character_sets">?</a>) because according to an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_period">Edo period</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legend">urban legend</a>, a now-famous assassin hid behind it before striking his victim.</i></blockquote>
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...Oh. I wasn't aware the old fella had toppled. I'm glad its bits are thriving. It's around one thousand years old, which is breath-stopping to consider. Very glad I was able to see it whole and proud.<br />
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The assassination in question:<br />
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<i>Under heavy snow on the evening of February 12, 1219 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dky%C5%AB">Jōkyū</a> 1, 26th day of the 1st month), shogun <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamoto_no_Sanetomo">Minamoto no Sanetomo</a> was coming down from Tsurugaoka Hachimangū's Senior Shrine after assisting to a ceremony celebrating his nomination to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udaijin">Udaijin</a>. His nephew <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugy%C5%8D_(Minamoto_no_Yoshinari)">Kugyō</a>, son of second shogun <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamoto_no_Yoriie">Minamoto no Yoriie</a>, came out from next to the stone stairway of the shrine, then suddenly attacked and assassinated him in the hope to become shogun himself. The killer is often described as hiding behind the giant ginkgo, but no contemporary text mentions the tree, and this detail is likely an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_era">Edo era</a> invention first appeared in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Mitsukuni">Tokugawa Mitsukuni</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinpen_Kamakurashi">Shinpen Kamakurashi</a>. For his act Kugyō was himself beheaded a few hours later, thus bringing the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiwa_Genji">Seiwa Genji</a> line of the Minamoto clan and their rule in Kamakura to a sudden end.</i></blockquote>
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One thousand years is a long time, but when considering a time line of 270 million years, a handful of centuries is nothing.<br />
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(When anthropomorphising Evolution as some sort of deity artisan, for which their every project is a work in project, forever being tinkered with, it's easy to imagine the ginkgo as a work that has sat forgotten on a shelf somewhere for the aeons of the planet's life, gathering dust but still perfectly functional, while Evolution considers the merits of iridescence in plant cells.)<br />
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When I spied this wee plant at the <a href="http://frbgm.imiscloud.com/Main/Plant_Sales/Growing_Friends/FRBGM_Content/Plant_Sales_Folder/Growing_Friends.aspx?hkey=4661fe49-27bb-4722-8113-9e4d090c0ddc" target="_blank">Growing Friends' Nursery</a> Sale at the <a href="https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/whats-on/botanic-and-rare-plant-fair/2016-10-22" target="_blank">Botanical and Rare Plant Fair</a>, I forgot all the other lovely plants I'd been eyeing off, picked it up, hugged it, and brought it home. A dinosaur plant of my very own! With such fine, healthy leaves, and that rich youthful colour!<br />
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I was told I shouldn't be buying trees, stop buying trees, Tessa we do not have any room for trees, but it was mine now. Mine mine mine. </div>
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It has proved to be endlessly entertaining. Fast growing in the current heat, it gobbles up our ridiculously strong sun. Whereas eucalypts appear to have evolved leaves to mitigate the ferocity of the Australian sun (being largely scythe-shaped and hanging long and vertical, so that the high sun mostly hits their edges, and it is the morning and late afternoon sun which they make the most of), the ginkgo holds out its leaves like hands waiting for more. The birds leave it alone. The pests leave it alone. A small spider has made a home in a curl in the lower canopy. </div>
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All the care guides I read indicated that the ginkgo does not take well to transplanting, and does not at all like having its roots disturbed. Moving it into its current pot was anxiety-inducing. I tried my best to remove the entire plug from its original bucket and not shift the roots at all, but that didn't happen. The soil slipped and everything fell apart in my hands, the roots wrenched about and naked and pretty much exactly what I was trying to avoid. Potted it up best I could, and for the next couple of weeks watched it like the natural worry-wort I am. </div>
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I'm not sure what the fuss was about. This plant had exactly zero reaction to being repotted. Possibly its fussiness about its feet was overstated.</div>
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It's quite a communicative plant. It gets very, very sad when the soil is dry. It wilts. Not like most other plants, whereby wilting means a drooping of the leaves and stems. No, the ginkgo folds over entirely, like a toddler putting on a show, like a melodramatic pout, like there is no point in going on, I give up, go on without me. Once the soil is wet again, it straightens up within an hour, as if nothing was ever wrong. The leaves don't dry out or crisp up, no colour change, nothing. Just pure drama.</div>
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Dad went hunting for some vegetable or fruit he remembers being in the family congee when he was a kid. Asking at a store led him to a vacuum sealed parcel of creamy white orbs, which turned out to be ginkgo nuts. They went into his latest batch of congee. They're similar to fungi and mushrooms in that they have that crisp and firm snap and resistance when being bitten into, but then a smooth buttery texture that follows. It isn't until bitten that they release any flavour, which is distinctly sour. This sourness isn't quite strong enough to be unpleasant, but is none-the-less sour which I associate with being unpleasant, so on the whole, the flavour is quite confusing. </div>
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It makes sense. I'm guessing these nuts developed before the creatures that ate them developed had developed a sophisticated palate which needed to be bribed with delicious flavours, if the tree was even using animals as distribution. Now the ginkgo is all, This is the way I've been cooking my nuts for longer than your species's grandspecies existed. Ain't got time for your tastebuds. Be grateful for the protein and begone.</div>
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No one knew if my ginkgo was male or female, so I'll just have to wait and see if we get a home-grown source of ginkgo nuts. </div>
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It is a species that has survived asteroid-impacts, extinction-level events, the end of so many worlds. When I look at young trees I see giants. Already a living fossil, in this scrawny trunk is a future ancient. One day, perhaps my ginkgo will be a behemoth. It has that potential. I will never see it, but it is a dream both the ginkgo and I share.</div>
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-89028913855776572922016-11-30T09:13:00.001+00:002016-11-30T09:13:28.416+00:00Green Sticks I Have Known and Loved<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There's no accounting for taste. Why we prefer one type of book but not another. Why we keep falling for the same type of person at the expense of so many other types. Why I'm drawn to these odd plants but not those odd plants.</div>
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These three stalks belong to the Euphorbia genus, and none of them do much other than be green stalks. I love them.</div>
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On the left is what I have hesitantly IDed as <a href="http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/SUCCULENTS/Family/Euphorbiaceae/27008/Euphorbia_alluaudii" target="_blank">Euphorbia alluaudii</a>. Hesitantly because I bought it as a small cutting at the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show back in March, and it came with no tag. It was just a funny green stick. In the intervening eight months it has continued to just be a funny green stick. It never puckered for want of water, never shrivelled from too much water, never changed colour with changing light conditions or the shifting seasons. It has seriously done sweet f-all. In fact, it was only in repotting it into the above container that I had any proof it was alive.</div>
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Look! It has roots! It was doing something after all!</div>
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Plants find their own way to communicate their needs. Well. What they're doing is reacting to their environment and altering their structure to best protect themselves, but it can be a form of communication for the gardener. This plant apparently wants for nothing because it doesn't communicate anything. It's a native of Madagascar (maybe), and I can't imagine Melbourne providing the same climate and soil as Madagascar, but hey, it's happy. So, having transplanted it, I'm going to continue ignoring it.</div>
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The middle is <a href="http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/SUCCULENTS/Family/Euphorbiaceae/25170/Euphorbia_debilispina" target="_blank">Euphorbia debilispina</a>, which did come with a tag, purchased at the yard sale of an award-winning plant grower. A native of southern central Africa, I haven't had it long enough for it to start complaining about the conditions I'm providing. My goal is only ever to not kill my plants.</div>
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On the right is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphorbia_antisyphilitica" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Euphorbia antisyphilitica</a>, (ANTI-SYPHILIS?!) which was purchased from the same sale and thankfully tagged. Despite being another nondescript green stick of the Euphorbia, this hails from southern USA to Mexico. I'm expecting it to do not much at all.</div>
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They should all do well going in to summer. I intend to leave the pot where it can get full sun and pretty much cook them alive. Hopefully this will get them nicely established before the cold soggy seasons roll around again. </div>
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Why am I drawn to these seriously undramatic plants? I have no idea. They're ridiculous. They're just sticks. Frustratingly vague sticks. Still, I love them, I go stand in front of them with my hands on my hips and purse my lips and curse them for being ridiculously low maintenance and entirely happy. </div>
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-10106981828499655962016-11-18T04:23:00.000+00:002016-11-18T04:23:43.433+00:00A Case Study on Well-Spoken, "Reasonable" Bigotry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Geoff shared this on FB. A couple of days previous I had shared the <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/safety-pins-are-meaningless-acts-of-solidarity-made-to-assuage-white-guilt-20161114-gsotga.html" target="_blank">same article</a>, commenting that Hamad's writing did a pretty good job of summing up my position of the subject. It's an article that touches on many nuances of the current climate, but ultimately boils down to the fact that symbols are empty without the accompanying action they symbolise. Wearing a pin does nothing if you're still bystanding the oppression of others.</div>
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I opened my big gob, and the following exchange ensued:</div>
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I bowed out when I said I did.</div>
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Beyond pointing out that the system in America allows the public to choose their presidential candidates (unlike here in Australia in which you can only choose your party, and no one but the actual party members get to pick the leader of that party) and they most emphatically chose the overt bigot and sexual predator as their candidate, I'm not going to break this down again. </div>
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I am, however, going to explain why this is just another iteration of bigotry. </div>
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This will be framed in terms of racism, although the framework should overlap with pretty much all forms of oppression. When I say 'white', I'm speaking of the Concept of Whiteness which has saturated western society, which isn't necessarily tied to one's heritage, especially given that being white doesn't stop the Polish in the UK from experience hate crimes, nor protect white Jewish people from anti-semitism. </div>
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I will be using CALD - Culturally and Linguistically Diverse - as shorthand for non-white people. I came across this term in the essay <a href="https://medium.com/@omarjsakr/fuck-your-echo-chamber-680990d25d84#.c451d5amf" target="_blank">'Fuck Your Echo Chamber'</a> which is also well worth a read. Previously I would have used PoC - People of Colour - but I've never been fully comfortable using it, as it is a form of appropriation, having been coined by Black African Americans, for Black African Americans. CALD appears to be Australian in source. </div>
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For the most part I will be speaking from a position of oppression and marginalisation, and so speaking upward, at those whom have privilege. Given this instance will be focused on racism, it could be interpreted as being solely aimed at white people, but my hope is to speak broadly enough to encapsulate the general axis of privilege.</div>
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This will bleed together events in America with politics in Australia.</div>
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For some of you it will be old hat. Don't worry about it, it isn't meant for you. For others it might be new, in which case I apologise for the coming torrent of jargon, but there's only so far down I can break this before it becomes too disheartening.</div>
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Onward.</div>
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The overt bigots are easy to spot. They're yelling "Fuck Off! We're Full!" or "Grab her by the pussy!" They're dangerous - literally - and it's highly unlikely that any of them will change their world view without something extremely drastic happening to them personally. There's been much discussion on what can be done in the days following T's appointment as president-elect, and a ghastly amount of that discussion pushes for people to reach out to and understand the 'other side', ie, those who voted for him. </div>
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This actually reeks of White Saviour-ness, even though it is targeting predominantly the white demographic. </div>
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Bigotry already has privilege, and in this case, <i>power</i>. To reach out to someone is generally framed as appealing to their better nature, and someone who already has power has no real impetus to change their circumstances. Casting bigots as just misunderstood and waiting for a kind hand to show them the way is assuming that this hasn't been tried. It has. For centuries. The oppressed can tell you that asking nicely accomplishes nothing. It also appears to forgive the bigot of all the harm and damage they have already perpetrated, excusing it as "they didn't know better". This ignores the voices of those who suffer at the hands of bigotry, who have be asking for consideration for a very long time. This is not something any one should have to ask for. </div>
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There's also the assumption that bigotry will want to have this conversation with you, the privileged ally. For the most part, bigots don't think of themselves as bigots. They see themselves as realists, or intellects, and are acting for what they perceive to be the greater good. A conversation that may change their position must alter that definition of 'good'. People do not react well to the implication that their idea of what is good is wrong. </div>
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I've had this conversation many, many times, with many and varied people. Mostly with very good people with very good intentions. On the occasions I've actually got through to someone, it is because they were already willing to actively learn and listen. I can count the number of times I've been successful on one hand, and these were people who were already savvy to the forms of bigotry. They deepened their understanding of the nuance of oppression, but they were already allies. </div>
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For the most part, however, I receive push back and defensiveness. I won't count how many times I've been told that I've hurt someone's feelings by pointing out what they're saying is problematic, which typically prioritises the feelings of the well-intentioned ally over the feelings of me, the person being othered. This then puts me in the position of having to point this out as well if I'm to make my point. I assure you, they don't like hearing this any better. The whole thing where it is now considered more hurtful to be accused of racism than it is to actually perpetuate racism plays out in many different ways. </div>
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I now assume that when I point out bias/bigotry, no matter how nicely or politely, this will be the outcome. It ends with me saying my part, and then saying no more as the other party continues to justify and excuse themselves. It does not end with learning. If learning is something that comes later, very few have come back to actually acknowledge their part in the interaction, and what it cost me.</div>
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You could say that's on me and possibly I suck at conversation, which is entirely likely. I might be able to bash out a blogpost, but I can't hold my own in a conversation to save my life. However, I am not the only person saying these things. There is a resistance at play which has nothing to do with my conversation skills.</div>
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Bigotry that is not easy to spot comes dressed in good-manners, is well-spoken and often sounds perfectly reasonable. While folks being abused and/or in physical danger need immediate assistance, if you want to change the culture, then it is the well-presented bigotry you must also challenge.</div>
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Geoff's original comment probably doesn't ring any alarm bells for the privileged ally. Or, perhaps it did, but the privileged ally was unsure of what exactly was off and how to address it. I explained in my first comment the problem with his framework. And in my second. He would not engage with the subject of the article, which I tried to bring it back to, and he thus attempted to control the direction of the conversation according to what he had decided was valid.</div>
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This was a derailment of the actual subject, and a derailment used to then dismiss the entirety of what was said in the article. The net result was the dismissal of both the voices and pain of CALD people. </div>
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He further remarks that this is 'bad and divisive journalism'. When the marginalised speak of their oppression, specifically when speaking against the privileged and powerful, they are often chastised for being 'divisive' to the cause. This is one way the privileged silence the oppressed, as this implies that these problems faced by the oppressed are not legitimate, and that the problem is the complainant, not that there is something to complain about. Shut up and fall in line is the real message.</div>
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It becomes slightly more overt when Geoff states that it goes "beyond racist whites in the US". This is partly true: the current state of US politics is a giant mess of racism, sexism, classism, and probably many more ugly -isms, and in fact the current state of politics in Australia is the same mess, just playing out differently. However, Geoff is in this case using it to dismiss responsibility from the white vote, while at the same time ignoring the fact that the 'we' he claims need to seek answers also includes the article author, Hamad, a CALD person in Australia, whose article is actually guidance for action. </div>
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By that point, it was pretty obvious to me that he was not listening. He hadn't listened to Hamad, wasn't listening to me, so I felt pretty sure that <i>unacknowledged and unaddressed </i>internalised bigotry - be it racism or misogyny - meant he'd already dismissed the voice of any CALD woman. There was basic groundwork he'd have to do on himself before this particular conversation was going to be in any way productive. </div>
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Perhaps a properly white person would have had more luck. Perhaps he would have viewed my words coming from the mouth of another white person, or man, as being worth heeding. </div>
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That particular comment thread ended civilly. This second comment thread, not quite so much. </div>
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First of all; mad cheering to Lukas for stepping in. Bro, you have my sword. For context, Lukas is also CALD, and in the USA.<br /><br />Second; Geoff's tone goes through a significant transformation. His first response to Lukas is almost conciliatory in nature. His second comment is another story. As indicated by the timestamp, it was edited. Initially it contained nothing but tags for myself and Lukas, presumably to get our attention. That's what I saw before I turned off, at any rate.</div>
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It appears that when neither of us came when summoned, that conciliatory tone evapourated and what is nothing short of white privilege having a foot-stamping tantrum came out.</div>
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For starters; no CALD person is at the beck and call of a white person, especially a white person who has previously dismissed and derailed CALD voices. Nor does any CALD person owe validation to a white person when said white person suddenly decides to project a sympathetic tone. Opportunities to do thusly had already been ignored, and as indicated by the foot-stamping, that attempt at sympathy and care was not sincere. It is likely at that point Geoff realised that he sounded like a typical privileged white person (because he did) and so was trying to alter that impression. He became aggrieved when we did not immediately appease this attempt.</div>
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This is exactly the issue with the safety pin. The words Geoff chose and when he chose to use them indicate that he was more concerned with not being seen as 'one of Those Whites' than he was with the actual experiences of CALD persons facing bigotry. When he was not rewarded for this 'goodness' he accused both of us of playing games with identity politics and of generally spouting BS. Not to mention going off at Lukas about discussing race politics in the USA, he who is actually living in the USA, which Geoff certainly isn't. It was Geoff who started with comments on the race of voters in America.</div>
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The implication here that identity politics only apply to CALD persons and is in fact divisive is based on the assumption that whiteness is not an identity, but the <i>default</i>. This <i>is</i> the basis of white supremacy. Lukas's final comment is a good summation and I will again point you toward <a href="https://medium.com/@omarjsakr/fuck-your-echo-chamber-680990d25d84#.ns3ch8ip9" target="_blank">this excellent essay</a> as it contains a fine breakdown of how identity politics are used by the privileged and powerful all the time.</div>
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Geoff also implies that by calling for consideration, Lukas and I and the groups we signify are to blame for 'alienating' the left and centre. This is essentially tone policing, telling us we need to fall in line and know our place for the sake of white feelings. He is telling us to behave according to the expectations of the privileged. This is a means of silencing the anger of CALD people, by threatening to withhold support if said CALD person isn't 'nice'. Doing so indicates that the CALD person is not viewed as an equal person, thus the support dangled on offer is not real support. He also forgets that CALD people populate the left and centre. </div>
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Due to the fact that the Australian media is currently fixated on American politics we have been inundated with updates on what T is doing and saying. This has had a palpable affect here. The re-election of the Liberal Party in Australia (here, the Liberal party is the conservative right, don't ask) along with the One Nation Party winning multiple seats has emboldened the bigoted elements in this country. T's appointment is further validation for many bigots, be they overt like the One Nation Party or standing in the closet door muttering about how the place is going down hill. Hate crime happens here, and the US election has seen a noticeable increase on what was already increasing. Giving platform to T and the like is giving them power. This is a g<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/australians-fascinated-by-us-presidential-election-but-ignorant-of-home-affairs-20161107-gsk5kb.html" target="_blank">reat article here</a> on the hypocrisy of Australia's obsession with the US elections, given our own track record and current practices. US politics are influencing the landscape of our society because we're <i>listening</i>.</div>
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Only two CALD people challenged Geoff's comments. No allies.</div>
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There are many reasons why this could have happened. This is specifically for those who didn't see the problem or didn't know what to do.</div>
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My suggestion has always been and will always be to <i>listen to those over whom you have privilege</i>. This isn't accusing you of bigotry, but pressing you to acknowledge the privilege you have. While I've primarily spoken here from the position of the oppressed, I have great big mountains of privilege. Within Australia, with my biracial identity, I am still in the position of coloniser over the Indigenous people of Australia. My privilege is being of Asian descent, which means in the false hierarchy of "which dirty migrants are worse" I'm actually not too bad. I'm a cis woman, largely heterosexual (tragédie), middle-class, and while chronic physical and mental illness restrict my abilities, I'm pretty much able-bodied. That is a lot of privilege. </div>
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So when I tell you to listen down the privilege ladder, I'm not suggesting you do anything I am not already doing myself.</div>
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What this will do is broaden your understanding of the impact of bigotry, and more importantly help you to recognise the myriad forms bigotry will take. I'm guessing not many recognised the bigotry present in Geoff's initial comment; I did, because while I talk about these matters a lot, I spend even more time listening. In this instance, Geoff revealed his true colours with very little prompting. Learning to recognise nuance, recognise derailment, dismissal and erasure even when its dressed up with Cornell University figures, is the first step in challenging bigotry. You can't fight what you can't see. </div>
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I owe a great debt to Blak and Black women, to trans, non-binary and queer people . Listening to them has helped me recognise much of my own unconscious bias and keeps me humble. The time they take to speak is a constant learning experience. I can only strive to earn what they teach. Thank you. It's from you that I have the courage, confidence and conviction to speak now.</div>
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Listening will assist you in being a better ally. An ally should not speak over or speak for the oppressed. That's once again the centring of privilege and making it about you. It may seem subtle, the difference between saying "I think X" and saying "So-and-so said this, which I agree with," but there are magnitudes of difference. The former positions you as the font of wisdom, the latter amplifies the actual oppressed and signals your support. It draws attention to the voices that should be heeded.</div>
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More importantly, listening will help you to identify the unaddressed bigotry you carry within you. We are all of us guilty of bigotry in one form or another. Growing up in a western country, surrounded by western media - the news and entertainment - and western advertising will plant so much conditioning in your unconscious that yes, you will reject the notion that there's even a speck of bigotry in you, the mere suggestion is abhorrent. I grew up surrounded by all this, and have had to, am still dealing with, all manner of internalised bias which is to the detriment of others and myself. My childhood taught me to be ashamed of my racial heritage. It takes a lot to unlearn.</div>
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Glass houses, thrown stones. You cannot challenge others for what you have not addressed in yourself. The most unconfronting way to do this is to listen, listen, listen, and assume, <i>take for granted that you are part of the problem</i>. </div>
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No one can see you listening. You'll have time to apply what you learn to yourself, be disappointed in yourself, figure out how to do better by yourself, and this is far more comfortable than, say, having me decide to make an educational moment out of your comments.</div>
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But finally, listening empowers the oppressed. </div>
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The oppressed demographics have been oppressed in western countries fooooorrrrr aaaaaggggeeeesssss. They have been repeating themselves foooooooorrrrr aaaggggeeesssss. What I'm saying now is what so many others have said before me. I am not saying anything new. </div>
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If you want to know what to do: <i>listen.</i></div>
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If you want to know where to donate: <i>listen</i>.</div>
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If you need the tools to take up this fight: <i>listen</i>.</div>
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In not listening to the oppressed, but heeding and following the privileged, we have ended up here, now. What needs to change; the oppressed have already figured that out. What needs to be done to bring about that change; the oppressed have already figured that out. The only thing needed to bring this about is for you, me, us, the privileged, to <i>listen</i>.</div>
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If you think by writing this I am out of line, mean, "bullying" or the like, I suggest reading through all this again. So often the onus of education is put on the oppressed. We are the ones who have to argue for our own humanisation. You can see me entering into a discussion in these comment threads, and I deliberately policed my tone to make it palatable. When those tools don't work, then I will use other tools. If you wish to control the manner of your education; educate yourself. Policing how the oppressed educate their oppressors is yet another example of privilege speaking, again. Pointing out that Geoff was not seeking education is once more centring on the privileged. The oppressed are not going to wait for their oppressors to wake up. </div>
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The worst that may come of this is Geoff having his feathers ruffled and ego hurt. T is a clear example of the consequences a white man will suffer when exposed as a bigot, ie, none. I've done Geoff a mercy and not put his name in text, removed his surname from the screencaps. No search engine will link this to him.</div>
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What comes from the views Geoff broadcast is the further entrenchment of insidious bias and privilege, which enables the violent and abusive bigotry so many are focused upon. </div>
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This isn't a call to dogpile. If you perceive it as such then you haven't been listening and I'm not sure I want what support you were going to offer. It would have been nice if some allies had stepped in to simply say "I agree." That time has passed; he's completed his emotional cycle. Because Geoff's position is founded on unacknowledged and unaddressed white privilege he was never going to hear me. He might have heard his peers though.</div>
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Geoff isn't throwing bricks through windows, nor hurling abuse. Regardless, his expressed views are bigotry. This unacknowledged, unaddressed bias and privilege won't lead to him starting fires, but it is this exact same unacknowledged, unaddressed bias and privilege that enables bigotry to flourish, to normalise, to become overt. </div>
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Chances are that most of us will never actually have the opportunity to intervene on an abusive bigot and play the hero. Should such an instance arise, then hell yes step in. However, for the most part, fighting bigotry is unheroic. It involves frustrating and uncomfortable and tedious conversations with people you respect and admire, with your close friends and distant friends, it involves upsetting people, it involves being 'mean', it will end with people being angry at you, relationships marred and possibly ended, and it <i>needs to be done</i>.</div>
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It is just as important to challenge insidious bigotry as it is to stand up to overt bigotry. This must be fought, at all levels.</div>
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This was sent after I'd left the conversation, and before his foot-stamping.</div>
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I was not having a conversation.</div>
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I was challenging the bigotry.</div>
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-36956292918277566432016-09-14T07:46:00.000+00:002016-09-14T07:46:19.661+00:00So You Want to Go Back to School<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Your education is more than 7 years old, well out of date. You will have to complete recognised bridging courses to meet the entry requirements.<br />
<br />
Bridging course: $800<br />
<br />
You are unemployed and Centrelink gives you $540 a fortnight in Newstart allowance.<br />
The bridging course requires complete payment before study can commence.<br />
You apply for a payment plan, providing details of your Newstart allowance.<br />
Your application for a payment play is rejected as you do not earn enough.<br />
You ask your parents for help.<br />
<br />
At the end of the course, you will need to sit a final exam.<br />
<br />
Final exam: $75<br />
<br />
As you are a non-school leaver, you will need to take STAT tests to prove to the university that you are capable of study.<br />
<br />
STAT multiple choice: $100<br />
STAT written exam: $100<br />
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The STAT test must be booked and paid in full at the time of booking.<br />
You use that tiny bit of savings you'd nestled away.<br />
<br />
You must lodge your application for the course you desperately want to do.<br />
<br />
Application fee: $50<br />
Application fee after 29 September: $100<br />
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Copies of your academic transcripts are required.<br />
After three days of unpacking, you find them.<br />
You are not religious but some entity somewhere needs a blood sacrifice for sparing you the cost of ordering new copies.<br />
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You are a bit nervous about the STAT tests, as it has been close to 15 years since you last smelt academia.<br />
There are preparation workshops offered for those sitting the tests.<br />
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Multiple choice workshop: $170<br />
Written exam workshop: $170<br />
<br />
It's just too much.<br />
<br />
Ask again for financial help and improve your chances?<br />
Skip the workshops and possibly screw your chances?<br />
<br />
By this point, you have already forked out over $1000 for the ability to apply.<br />
<br />
There is no promise you will be made an offer.<br />
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You aren't even thinking about the HECS debt.<br />
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-26901753928209311372016-01-04T06:37:00.001+00:002016-01-04T06:37:51.048+00:002015: Acknowledgements<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[The larger part of me is still afraid to bring any of what I experienced upon another, let alone the people I love, so I cannot name you. It is still important to acknowledge you, however. If you find yourself in this, then it was meant for you. I apologise now if you think you should be here but find that you aren't. I've tried to encompass all, but I doubt that's possible. I've lost my voice and my ability to brain confidently.]</span><br />
<br />
Thank you for giving me a home that has always been open to me, whether I be child or adult. That sanctuary is not something to be taken for granted, and simply knowing it to be there has always given me strength. Thank you for being proud of me, though my unorthodox life choices have caused no end of worry, and for relishing in my strange accomplishments and adventures. Thank you for growing in me a sense of self determination and responsibility. Thank you for never doubting me. Thank you for making me someone who could do what I did and survive.<br />
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Thank you for opening your home to me, and letting it become a home for me. Thank you for letting me be a useless wreck and feeding me and nourishing me with your glorious cooking and house full of goofy laughing. Thank you for finding me, amid all the trauma and mental catastrophes, and showing me that I was still there.<br />
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Thank you for saltwater and sunshine, for sitting in quiet over avocado on toast and for squealing about big blue gropers and squid. You made it easy for me to step out the front door when it was at its hardest, because I knew you were at the end. Thank you for curling up with me on the couch and watching terrible telly. Thank you for being a safe place.<br />
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Thank you for your wonderful, luscious and vigorous conversations. I always felt safe drifting into rougher waters with you, because that grace of spirit that comes so naturally to you will see a smoother navigation than I in my mind. You are an inspiration of kindness and gentleness, two things I crave but find so wanting within myself. From your patience, I find patience. Thank you.<br />
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Thank you for being the cavalry. You amazon warrior valkyrie. You and that happy-maker I still have not met saved me. Saved us. For that, you will always have my love and loyalty, my door will always be open, and, and, there is no way I will ever be able to repay you. I know you don't expect or want repayment, but. Thank you. I hope you are never in such dire straits as to need cavalry, not ever. However, even if never called upon, this cavalry stands by solely to rescue you. Thank you.<br />
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Thank you for finding time for me when you can barely find time for yourself. You've always soothed this howling heart. You're a beautiful constant in my haphazard life.<br />
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Thank you for being so understanding. You listened, and gave me what I needed to continue as long as I could, and it is only because of you that I lasted that long. I doubt I'll meet another your peer for a long time.<br />
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Thank you, the staff at Coogee Medical, Equilibrium Psychology and Spiral Medical, for handling this shattered wreck with care, and making sure I survived the worst of it. I honestly don't know how I would have managed if I'd been put off at any point by a brusque encounter or indifference, such a damaged thing I was. Thank you.<br />
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Thank you for that phone call. You grounded me in the storm and showed me how to see the way forward. Thank you for laughing. Thank you for being the first person out there to say "You can do this."<br />
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Thank you, neighbourhood. for being so softly suburban, so muted and quiet. Thank you for rolling out great swathes of silence in the deep night, silences so vast I can hear the sweep of the night birds as their feathers tear the air. Thank you, home, for just not being right on top of a major traffic and pedestrian interchange, including buses, and seriously <i>heaps</i> of pedestrians, and look, if you're ever considering renting the flat above Oporto in Coogee? Just say no. Between the Pav turfing out its clientele at closing time and the 4am street sweeper you'll get maybe a couple of hours unbroken sleep a night. The texture of overgrown gardens and lawns, and greyed wooden fences, and lichen on tiles, and powerlines through trees, and a train in the distance, a car passes nearby, somewhere a door slams, and this is a soundscape in which I can exist. Thank you.<br />
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Thank you for being my friends. I thought I was lucky before all <i>that</i> happened, because I had to be lucky for having so many incredible and awesome people in my life. I don't really know what word is appropriate now. 'Blessed' perhaps, although I'm not religious, but the idea that it is a gift, and a divine gift. You are a fortress around my heart, and when it seemed all the pestilence of the internet was spitting at me, you just kept on being you, kept on being beautiful, kept on being in my life and telling me that I was worth having around as well. I love and am loved <i>by you</i> and not all the bile in the world can touch that. You are treasures no one can steal. I don't know what I've done to deserve you in my life and I don't care, I'm just glad that you're here, and you still choose to be here, and as long as you're here, I can't be that broken. It does one no good to rely on external validation, but I can't say there's any real belief in the internal validation I present myself. You've given me in so many words and acts undeniable proof that awesome people do not share my opinion of me, and see something here worth waiting for. I don't trust myself in the slightest, but you haven't changed. I trust you with me.<br />
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Thank you, new friends, who have seen something worth hanging onto amid all the breaking down I've done this year. This is a greater compliment than you realise, and it is very much appreciated.<br />
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Thank you for not telling people that I'm the person who did the thing. Thank you for letting me be unremarkable.<br />
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Thank you for being wonderful upon finding out I was the person who did the thing. I've lived in fear, waiting for someone to find out and have a go at me in person, so I really haven't let many new people in on it. You who do know, though, you're ace.<br />
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Thank you for that text message, DM, private message, email. Even if I didn't reply to it, I saw it, and it probably made me cry, because every grain of kindness, love and support given to me has been a precious thing. I have kept them all. I know I've been a dead end this year, there have been so many missives I just haven't been able to answer. I am sorry. Thank you. They meant and still mean much.<br />
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Thank you for the invitation, and for the fact that you keep inviting me, even though I barely pretend I'm going to attend. It's not for disinterest. Combination fibromyalgia, major depression, social anxiety and trauma echoes mean I just can't face people. It's definitely not you. I want to be living my best life, which includes turning up to help you celebrate that which deserves celebrating. One day, I hope to do this, and thank you for inviting me in person.<br />
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Thank you for sitting with me over a cup of tea and letting the conversation go where it may. Thank you for sitting with me in silence. Thank you for giving me your time and your company. I don't know that my own quality of company is worth your time at the moment, so your time is a greater gift for it.<br />
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Thank you to all the retail, hospitality and customer service staff who have just done their job with a friendly smile. Social anxiety means your smile is a life buoy. Thank you to all those too who have let me wander through unaccosted and unnoticed.<br />
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Thank you for all the support. All of it. I don't think I got to see even a percentage of what rushed by, and what I saw was as vast as only the internet can be. The long tail of trolls did its damage to me, but you, you're a voice that far outnumbered them. I can say that with certainty. Vile and loud as they were, there was always more than us than there were of them. In a weird way, this thing that completely destroyed me, has reminded me of what hope tastes like.<br />
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Thank you for asking me to take part in research, to be interviewed for projects. I'm sorry I've not been able to accept any of these invitations. The fact is, I just haven't had enough therapy. All these projects and dissertations are tasty, however, and I've started to see bits and pieces of research findings surface. This <a href="http://www.soundminds.com.au/navigating-the-city-as-a-young-muslim/" target="_blank">podcast</a> does a great job of breaking down how hate speech affects social spaces, and ends on a comment that- It seems arrogant to believe because so many others have been doing hard work for so long, but if it is true, even just a little bit, then. I think it all might have been worth it. One day, I'll be able to give you what you want of me, and I'll be excited to contribute. Thank you for keeping on with the good work.<br />
<br />
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to prove myself. It is an honour and the work is so important I don't feel worthy, but I could not let go for the world now. This has become a rich vein of joy and satisfaction in my life, and the chance to prove myself to myself is very much appreciated. One day, I may have confidence again, and I'm certain it will grow from these small tasks. Thank you for trusting me with this, and for sharing so many wonderful stories with me. Thank you for letting me be a small cog in a good machine.<br />
<br />
Thank you. You've born the brunt of my breaking, which has been a process of interminable hours strung together in endless months. You've seen the worst of me come out as the best of me fell away, and yet you still reach for my hand in your sleep. I am so sorry. Thank you. I've said these words so often I don't know if they mean anything anymore. I don't know what I am anymore, but I know that we remain, because you still choose us. Thank you.<br />
<br />
I didn't get through last year on my own steam. I made it because of you. Thank you.</div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-8651743701629955012015-06-11T06:48:00.000+00:002015-06-11T06:48:57.503+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Wine - alcohol in general - has never been a taste I've acquired, and so I cannot compare the silence to wine, nor murmur of how I drink it like wine and sigh with satisfaction. Having basked in this for a month now, I still notice that wondrous, lustrous silence. I've never prayed, and so do not know how to give thanks for the soft texture of the night and the great dimensions it governs, for there is a depth that can only be found in a silence that spans topography, in which a car door, the call of a sleep-startled bird can be heard across the valley. This emptiness and stillness is a treasure the likes of which I may never take for granted, and shall forever be of a value for which there is no number large enough to encapsulate. The grunt and tick of hard drives, the wheeze of the fridge, the sound of gutters shifting in the wind, my hair rustling against the pillow, the sound of my breath in my throat, once again I can hear the pulse of blood, my blood, my pulse. </div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-1592900446156735982015-04-26T09:35:00.000+00:002015-04-26T09:35:31.928+00:00I'll Walk With You<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Over at <a href="http://bookviewcafe.com/" target="_blank">Book View Cafe</a>, <a href="http://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/bvc-author/vonda-n-mcintyre/" target="_blank">Vonda N. McIntyre</a> has put forth the idea "<a href="http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/04/15/i-will-walk-with-you/" target="_blank">I'll Walk With You</a>".</div>
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<i>I’m distressed to see that some folks who were planning to come to Sasquan are thinking of skipping Worldcon this year.</i> </blockquote>
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<i></i><i>Because they’re frightened.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>I understand why people are frightened, given the racist, misogynistic, and dishonest screeds they’ve been subjected to. It isn’t — alas — unusual for verbal abuse to escalate into physical abuse; and anyway verbal abuse is no fun to begin with.</i> </blockquote>
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<i></i><i>But I was thinking about what might help counterbalance the situation.</i> </blockquote>
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<i></i><i>Have you seen news reports of people responding to threats against a particular group by offering “I’ll ride with you”? Here’s the first Google hit off that phrase:</i> </blockquote>
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<i><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-30479306">http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-30479306</a></i> </blockquote>
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<i></i><i>I will walk with you at Worldcon.</i></blockquote>
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Finances being what they are, I won't be attending any of the large US/UK conventions this year, thus there is no decision for me to make. However, if money were no obstacle, what with PuppyGate and Vox Day continuing to be exactly what he is and the general climate of the SF&F publishing scene...I'm not sure if I want to attend. </div>
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So I'm pleased to see #illridewithyou translated into the con-going crowd, with other <a href="http://sasquan.org/" target="_blank">Worldcon</a> attendees offering to walk with anyone who doesn't feel confident roaming around the con. The culture of ribbons and badges is an already set up means for advertising this, and I've seen mention of formal organisation by the con organisers. What with more and more conventions implementing and enforcing anti-harassment policies, I hope this is another step toward making the convention scene less threatening and intimidating.</div>
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It's actually wonderful to see this without being directly involved. #illridewithyou will always draw an intense and rather complex emotional reaction from me, and I suspect it will be some time before I can write about it coherently (just composing this post has been difficult, and it isn't even that great a post). This I can view as someone offering to stand with me. Even though I am not attending and don't know most of the people stepping up in the comments, just seeing how many and how quickly people have volunteered for this is a warm ribbon around my heart. Visible and unconditional solidarity matters, it really does. I cannot speak for anyone else, but knowing this has started matters to me.</div>
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Once again, this doesn't have to be about the privileged being white knight for the oppressed. Those who feel threatened by what is going on in the scene, by the culture and climate of the world we live in and the fact that the bigots seem to be getting desperate and dangerous in their resistance to change; remember that you are not helpless, nor do you need physical prowess or the right gender or skin colour to act of your own agency. </div>
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I created #illridewithyou as a non-white woman who learned of another non-white woman aiding a third non-white woman. </div>
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The solidarity and support of allies matters, but needn't be waited upon. If I could attend, I would put my hand up too, advertise my presence, and just be visible. For my sake, and for all others who feel the threat and encroaching silence.</div>
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I might have created the hashtag, and I might be one of many grains of sand on the SF&F beach, but right now I'm not the person to seed this idea on this beach. Thank you, Vonda, for taking that first step.</div>
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-14097240500593806222015-03-24T10:09:00.002+00:002015-03-24T10:09:47.767+00:00Hey! A Good Thing!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Before the hashtag, there was 'Acception'.<br />
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'Acception' was solicited by Gillian Polack, who was specifically hunting stories dealing with cultural baggage. Being equal parts immigrant and coloniser in a colonised land, it was very much a theme close to my heart. </div>
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I honestly don't remember how the story transitioned from a partial drafs with all the excitement of a damp hanky to the version that went to print. In fact, I don't really remember writing this story at all. I edited it. It required (and because writers can never let alone I think it still requires) editing. Perhaps it is what others mean when they say a story came through them; not from them.</div>
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Baggage has had a turbulent life as a book, and after much heartbreak and man obstacles, it has finally returned.</div>
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<a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-TnYRklMAEQg/VREtMwD26DI/AAAAAAAAB_Y/h9X976eeF3g/s640/blogger-image-105765454.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-TnYRklMAEQg/VREtMwD26DI/AAAAAAAAB_Y/h9X976eeF3g/s320/blogger-image-105765454.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The Post-Hashtag audience may be amused to know that the story I wrote takes place during the coming revolution, which takes place in Melbourne, the protagonist of which is Tessa Kum. Yeah, I really did that. Hero Complex out the wooza except not really.</div>
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The Before-Hashtag audience I daresay may be relieved that the hashtag didn't pan out like the story did. Funny. Even after all these years, this story is still precious to me. I'm not sure I could or even would write that narrative again, but being written I find myself returning to it. Perhaps because the story says something I needed to hear, and still need to hear.</div>
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There are also some marvellous pieces in this collection. Stand outs for me are the stories by KJ Bishop, Yaritji Green and Monica Carroll. Excellent tasty stuff. </div>
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Baggage can be bought as <a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/Baggage/9781479403264" target="_blank">paperback</a> or <a href="http://www.wildsidepress.com/Baggage-Tales-of-Speculative-Fiction-edited-by-Gillian-Polack-ePubKindle_p_6459.html" target="_blank">ebook</a>.<br />
<br />
For that matter, 'The Fate of All Wens' is available as an ebook together with 'By the Moon's Good Grace' by <a href="http://kirstynmcdermott.com/tag/by-the-moons-good-grace/" target="_blank">Kirstyn McDermott</a> in Volume 12: Issue 3 of the <a href="http://reviewofaustralianfiction.com/issues/volume-12-issue-3/" target="_blank">Review of Australian Fiction</a>. McDermott's story is current shortlisted for a Ditmar, so you don't just have to take my word for it when I say it is an incredible, powerful piece of work. $2.99AUD for two stories is pretty excellent. That's less than a fancy cup of tea and you get owlbears and wolves and all sorts of lovely words and images and perhaps some not so lovely ones too, all of them so worthwhile.<br />
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<div>
Tangentially, the Triumvirate over at the <a href="http://galactisuburbia.podbean.com/e/episode-116-18-march-2015/" target="_blank">Galactic Suburbia</a> podcast have named myself as well as <a href="http://www.feministfrequency.com/" target="_blank">Anita Sarkeesian</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/thequinnspiracy" target="_blank">Zoe Quinn</a> and <a href="https://www.patreon.com/user?u=439829" target="_blank">Brianna Wu</a> tie winners for the Julia Gillard Award of sort of general feminist badassery. The Galactic Surburbia award for activism in SFF goes to Sofia Samatar for her awesome acceptance speech calling out the elephant in the roof: Lovecraft's unfortunate head.</div>
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The Julia Gillard Award was named after former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in particular for this speech:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="197" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SOPsxpMzYw4" width="350"></iframe><br /></div>
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Which, look. She had some abhorrent policies, but this remains for me the greatest use parliamentary speech time EVER. </div>
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Am honoured to be a grasshopper amongst giants, am honoured to accept anything in the name of this speech.</div>
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One person is not a movement. One person plus one person plus one person... and we are heard. This recognition is for everyone who reached out and took part. Carry on being awesome. </div>
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-73449714521441357502015-02-09T02:54:00.001+00:002015-02-09T02:54:33.694+00:00Reclamation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I knew I had to let those last two posts stand for a while, without speaking over the top of them, so I did. Then I thought the usual recap/new years post would be a good way back in. Now it's February.<br />
<br />
Swift acclimatisation is no longer one of my skills. The past year felt like the whirlwind dance of the unbalanced; reacting, correcting, overcorrecting, reacting, reacting, reacting. Then blindsided. I think, maybe, possibly, now the fall has ended. The bounce, the settling of all my pieces as gravity has its way, and it will have its way. Things have stopped moving, but I don't yet have my bearings. Disorientated. Echoes of vertigo. Nothing is moving but the storm inside this teacup.<br />
<br />
Developing chronic illness means your days become filled with demonstrations of all your limitations. As the levels of ability and functionality you took for granted are stripped away, so too does your world become smaller. Examples of what you cannot do are presented one after another after another. That is the effect – not side effect, the <i>effect</i> – of chronic illness.<br />
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It has been near impossible for me to keep this thought from tripping over the edge and into seeing my illness as proof of my own personal failings. For years I have struggled to accept the stiflingly close horizons of my illness. Being better than I was does not mean I am yet anywhere near acceptance.<br />
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Illness has robbed me of many memories, but not how it felt to take mobility and endurance and clarity for granted. My muscles and sinew remember. My brain remembers. I have not become smaller at all, but anything that could be called a resource has been drained. I could be full of health, but I am hollow.<br />
<br />
And this fucking hashtag, it just threw all this in my face with all the subtlety of an asteroid. In the Pre-Hashtag Era, I thought I understood the pain of saying, "I cannot." It took a while to surface what with all the abuse and hate and attention, this tired old dilemma trying to be something new. It is not, in fact, a dilemma at all.<br />
<br />
The part of me that always wanted to be a revolutionary or go on a great and epic quest for the fate of the world has been screaming, shrieking and shrill, that I must go! Get out there! I've made a <i>difference</i> and it isn't change but it's not nothing and this is an opportunity that you cannot engineer and will never happen again and just fucking <i>pull yourself together and launch</i>.<br />
<br />
Because I'm a sucker and an idealist and an angry minority and I've had a taste of power, and the potential was-<br />
<br />
<i>is</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
-well. If you know it then you know it.<br />
<br />
I could see change in that. Actual change. Infinitesimal, but <i>change</i>.<br />
<br />
I want change. So bad. To bring it about with my own hands I wouldn't even stop to consider. Not a doubt. Not a moment.<br />
<br />
But.<br />
<br />
I cannot.<br />
<br />
I want to, and, I cannot. This is my reality, and there's no amount of "You just gotta believe!" that will alter anything. Even if I do not accept my illness, I have years of practice at recognising my limitations when I come charging up at them. None of us believe we will ever be that hero making all right with the world, but then, I don't know that many of us are presented with opportunities to do so either.<br />
<br />
It was never going to happen, so I have lost nothing.<br />
<br />
But now I know, and my daydreams aren't as extravagant as they used to be. This is a learning that hurts, and even as it hurts, still I look at that wilting opportunity and long for the <i>what if...</i><br />
<br />
Nothing has changed. I am still an undisciplined and intermittent writer on a part-time income due to chronic illness. This is still a personal blog. It started with inane trivialities of my life, evolved into a rather entertaining playground, and has lately been a sandbox for sorting out my thoughts. This visibility will no doubt cause its nature to evolve again. There are no plans to open comments again, for starters. I've not the spoons to moderate, nor much desire to give the haters another channel.<br />
<br />
Whatever I choose to do with this space, it is personal. It is for frivolity and whimsy as much as the weight of the world. I write for myself, and specifically regarding this blog, I do not wish to fall into the trap of writing for a perceived audience. I am a writer. This is writing. Nothing has changed. This is as it always was. My online activities may be more cautious, but only for my own sake. I must not become a persona. I must not perform for a perceived audience. Just think, and write.<br />
<br />
Tessa, stop justifying yourself.<br />
<br />
This is my space.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It is good to have it back.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-13704091202900270622014-12-21T23:48:00.000+00:002014-12-21T23:57:52.438+00:00#illridewithyou Redux<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /><br />For being the creator of the #illridewithyou hashtag I am copping abuse for being: <br /><br /><ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>white </li>
<li>not white </li>
<li>PoC </li>
<li>not PoC </li>
</ul>
<br />Read that a couple of times. <br /><br /><br />Now read it again. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />Once more. <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />It doesn't get any less fucked up the longer you think about it. <br /><br />A lovely couple gave me some incredibly elegant flowers. I didn't have a vase to do them justice (don't really have the house to do them justice), and when they bloomed, it just seemed that the thing to do was lay them in Martin Place. <br /><br />Then it occurred to me that there are at least two current memorials in Martin Place - for the siege and the Peshawar school children - and that if I were to ever mention I'd considered this, there would be demands to know which memorial these flowers were laid at, and that no matter which memorial, people were going to use that as ammo to keep up the abuse. <br /><br />And people wonder why sometimes I get fed up. <br /><br />I'm biracial, specifically, I'm English/White Australian and Chinese-Malaysian. What this means is that I am all four of the above accusations <i>at the same time</i>. All the time. Every day. Whether I'm accidentally spawning global grassroots activism, looking sadly at those last two sheets left on the toilet roll or sending professional sounding correspondence for work; I am all of these things. It's complicated. <br /><br />Much of the criticism I've seen hinges on the assumption that I'm either white <i>or </i>non-white. This being Australia, I am specifically framing this in terms of whiteness. The fact that the conversation has already tripped over this misguided binary dichotomy before even the first step indicates that the problem of racism is so deep in Australia, in the western world, we'll need to raise a generation of fact-checkers before we can develop critical thinkers and even get past the derailing question of exactly whose voice is valid. <br /><br />A mutable identity means that the privileges and oppressions granted me are fluid and constantly changing. They're influenced by how suntanned I am, what angle the light is coming from, the people I'm standing next to, whether someone is too caught up in what is proper to just deal with my most bodacious family name, and so on. I occupy the positions of both oppressor and oppressed, at the same time. When I say it's complicated, it's because I never stop having to wrangle this. It isn't only the white-dominated conversations that fail to take this into account. Much of what is discussed among non-whites leaves biracials standing in the kitchen doorway, looking at the party, and not quite seeing a space to step into. Biracials are not uncommon. I am not unique. Inconvenient perhaps, but not unique. <br /><br />I've no interest in addressing the people who weren't listening and haven't been listening for longer than this. The racists who responded by simply continuing to be racist aren't a surprise, and I don't have much to say to them. They're not actually that many, just loud, and getting increasingly frantic because the audience they assumed they had, they don't. That the Far Right have worked themselves up into such a frothing tizzy about little ol' me and a hashtag is pretty amusing. It's almost as though they think I have power. <br /><br />Nope. Still just me and a hashtag. <br /><br />Apparently, here and now, that is power. <br /><br />Noted. <br /><br />All this bigotry is pointed at me, but not about me. Evidence of this can be found in the lack of basic fact checking which would trump the crimes I'm accused of, because they're not actually interested in being accurate with their attacks, just as long as they land a blow. I was just the next target to pop up, and I'm not listening to them, although I do have to wonder how it would be to have a reading comprehension level which ensures you take everything you read literally. That must be a strange world to live in. <br /><br />Anyway. The allies and progressives, the people who have put their hand up as wanting to see social and cultural change; it's the criticism stemming from these quarters which is relevant. My last <a href="http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/illridewithyou.html">blog pos</a>t assured many with legitimate doubts, but not all. I'm writing this post now to give the conversation a kick in the pants. <br /><br />This act, offer, invitation, this hashtag, this idea well has the potential to become a patronising pile of oppressors coming to the rescue of those they're oppressing and patting themselves on the back for saving the poor Othered masses. It most certainly does, and being as no one owns the action of another, in the hands of many this is exactly what it will be. If you see any individual falling into this behaviour, you are welcome to call them on it. White knighting is simply another - far more insidious - face of racism. I recognise this because, again, I occupy the positions of both oppressor and oppressed. <br /><br />#illridewithyou began because a non-white woman learned of another non-white woman helping out a third woman garbed in hijab. <br /><br />There will be the appeasement of white guilt in the hashtag's lifecycle, but there sure as fuck wasn't any in its creation. I created it because I understand what it's like to be scared. I am 5"3' with rosy cheeks and a cute button nose, and not bodyguard material. If someone shapes up, I'm not running, but I'm not going to come out on top either. <br /><br />This is centered on the victims of abuse, not the perpetrators. Our culture leaves victims to fend for themselves, and our justice system quite frankly shits all over them, and doesn't apologise for it. Victim blaming is a disgusting behaviour Australia practices both overtly and unconsciously. Justice is blind in order to treat everyone equally, and in doing so treats no one fairly. I can't stop violent abusive bigots from being violent, abusive, or existing. That's not something in my power to address. Victims, though, people worried, scared, hurt and hurting; this is within my power. <br /><br />When an idea for cultural change is proposed by a non-white person, it is mostly ignored. That's why things are they way they are, because the oppressed have been agitating for reform for centuries, yet here and now the country we live in is sick.<br /><br />When an idea for cultural change is proposed by a white person, it is shouted down as being yet another act of white knighting, regardless of who else is involved, and usually it is. <br /><br />I am both of these things. I am the person who should not be speaking according to both sides of the conversation, and simultaneously the person who should be. <br /><br />This makes me wonder whom amongst us is permitted to enact change. From whom is change acceptable. Whatever this rare unicorn of a racial identity it is, I'm unaware of it. I'm inclined to think it doesn't exist. Which further makes me wonder how change can be expected to come about at all. <br /><br />Stories have reached me of people who have been assaulted for volunteering in #illridewithyou. I'm not going to say more than that or point out any examples, because assault is traumatic enough without all you haters suddenly popping up and being gross. To those of you who have been hurt; I am sorry for my part in this, and hope you have good people around you. It's okay to not be okay when you've been assaulted.<br /><br />The hashtag didn't create bigotry. It simply turned turned up the volume on those who care. As a consequence, the bigots will and have upped their game, as though western society is in some sort of arms race between bigotry and compassion. You riders, to stand beside someone under fire is to also come under that fire. It's okay to be afraid and hesitant to step up. This world is scary. Non-white people know this, and cannot opt out. Riders will always have a choice whether to make the offer or not. That choice is the difference between the privileged and oppressed. It's not something to be ashamed of, it simply is what it is. Non-white people do not deserve the abuse and hate aimed at them, and if you step up, no matter who you are, neither will you. It will happen none the less. You know where your limits lie. Please remember to respect them as well. <br /><br />Stories have reached me of bigots being shut the fuck down as a result of #illridewithyou. A taxi driver told my partner that a school friend of his daughter, who wears a headscarf, had a bus load of people move and sit with and around her when a bigot started having a go. The incident on the Upfield/Craigieburn line has been well reported. A friend coming through Sydney airport told me that an entire line of people waiting at the taxi rank shut down an angry, belligerent, self-entitled man harassing the curb management, who are usually non-white persons. Thousands of badges and stickers handed out. A community bike ride from Lakemba to Martin Place. Muslims from around the world reaching out to say thank you, thank you, thank you, because these things have gone without saying so long, no one believes them to be true, and now #illridewithyou <i>needs </i>to be said. <br /><br />These are just the precious scraps that make it through the cacophony of bigots shrieking like spoilt children who don't want to share their toys. There is so much more happening out there, because no one needs to make a big show of taking on this idea. They're just going ahead and doing it. There are people who, upon realising that this is an act open to them, don't wait for permission to start; they just get down to business. <br /><br />Word has reached me of a woman allegedly assaulted by a Muslim taxi driver. Her husband being some prominent chap is trying to do that reverse-racism thing, indicating this happened because no one would ride with her. I'm presuming he means because she is a white person. This is a derailment of another important conversation about which I also have plenty of loud things to say, as it's trying to imply she was assaulted for her skin tone, and not the fact she is a woman. I'm angry that she has been assaulted, and hope she is okay, and with good people around her. <br /><br />Women know about street harassment and the threat of attack from the random male public. All women, regardless of race. Street harassment is only just beginning to get the attention it should. You don't have to believe it. Women know the way this horseshit works, and learn from a very early age. As I write this, news of the shooting in NYC is breaking. All the focus is on the two officers who were shot. The shooter's girlfriend, who was also shot, is given in all the articles I've seen at most a sentence, but usually just a clause. This society does not value women, and so their deaths are deemed unworthy of attention. Violence by men, misogyny and sexism form another, simultaneous, sickness in our culture. Both these conversations need to occur, and their points of intersection recognised. <br /><br />What is lacking from the Basic 101 is nuance. None of us live in a vacuum and nothing occurs in isolation. I've said multiple times that I don't see this idea as being applicable to Muslims only. Anyone with a visible cultural identity stands to be a target when in public. Anyone with skin that isn't white; anyone who isn't a cis heterosexual man, which includes all women, regardless of their sexuality or chosen gender, and any man who is not cis heterosexual, and all the queer and trans and varied orientations and genders one can be; anyone wearing religious garb, even those considered 'safe' - cooing over how adorable Buddhist monks are in their robes and creepshotting them is another form of othering; anyone who is visibly differently-abled, disabled, with invisible syndromes, complexes and illnesses; any one who visibly does not conform to the narrow-ass view of what is considered 'okay' by this society. Women, regardless of their background and identity, are able to use #illridewithyou to buddy up just as much as the religious are. <br /><br />Perhaps that's another reason for the naysayers. I'm not a man, and no men were involved or consulted in the creating of this. Subconscious dismissal of women's voices is real. If you doubt me feel free to do some research and educate yourself. It'll actually reveal a lot about social communication which is just plain interesting. <br /><br />That said, if this idea had come from a man it would have been problematic from the outset; expecting Muslim women to want anything to do with unknown men in a hostile culture. Schrodinger's Racist, and all that. <br /><br />Once again, who is allowed to instigate change? <br /><br />That's the wrong question. How about; <br /><br />Why should anyone wait for your approval to act? <br /><br />As far as I'm concerned, you naysayers can go sit on a pineapple and spin. <br /><br />To quote a wise friend and fellow biracial, you're better than this. Substandard criticism is vexing. <br /><br />Racism has a simple definition, but the conversation around it is immense, convoluted, complex, intricate, nuanced, and extremely raw. Racism as a cultural structure is vast and often looks infinite. There is no quick and easy fix for bigotry, especially when so much of it is locked in legislation. I won't wait for a single big easy fix. Fuck that noise. If change is ever to come, then it must be <i>enabled</i>. Even if in frustratingly, insultingly slow, small increments, it must be enabled. <br /><br />I want sound a massive shout out to you riders just getting on with it and being awesome. I want to holler and cheer for you minorities just getting on with it and being awesome. Been chewing over the titles that seem applicable - hero, legend, champion - (which you all are) which have been showered upon me as well, and they don't smell right. The current love of superheroes is great fun for the comic lovers, but the persistent purveyance of the superhero narrative can't be doing amazing things to the zeitgeist. Settle down; I'm all for comics too, but as someone invested in writing, I do pay attention to the narratives swimming in the media we consume. Superheroes are pretty ace, but they're also pretty damn <i>special</i>. They come swooping in and provide big, easy fixes to scary problems, and we normals shout hurrah! And there is much rejoicing. <br /><br />Can't help think this breeds the expectation that we don't need to make any effort to fix things because some unicorn superhero will be along shortly to sort out this inconvenient mess for us. <br /><br />Think of all those normal people who are just passing by but still charge into burning houses and save lives. Typically they're shaken and downplaying their role, because it wasn't a grand gesture on their part. They were just being who they are. The same as you. <br /><br />No unicorns are coming. <br /><br />You're much, much cooler than all the superheroes combined, and more excellent than all of the unicorns. Big call. I'm making it. There's a potential future in which being an awesome, compassionate, respectful and considerate individual will be the norm, and it's growing in your footsteps. <br /><br />Hmm. Guess I'm not as devoid of hope as I was. <br /><br />#illridewithyou <br /><br />Still. <br /><br /> </div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-23732268104380739012014-12-16T07:20:00.000+00:002014-12-21T23:58:44.404+00:00#illridewithyou<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The sunrise is too pretty. I haven't slept, but my adrenal gland is putting in the hard yards, so I still feel mildly lucid.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">They asked me if I was surprised by the response to the hashtag. As though anyone but a marketing department could be anything other than bewildered by having an idea go viral. Of course I wanted it to be picked up – why tweet it at all otherwise? – but this is electrifying and not a little alarming. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is no campaign back here, unless one heartsore woman flapping her chops on twitter is a campaign. This wasn't planned. The rocket launched and I have no idea how to fly this thing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To all who have spoken up; it isn't for me to say, but, thank you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hashtags have a life cycle dependent upon attention and constrained by the very platform that gives them such power. It was never my intention to try and maintain any control over the hashtag, but given I was trending globally within hours, and sustained for hours, I must take some responsibility for what is forming. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nuance is easily lost on twitter, bless those blasted 140 characters. There is much language being used – 'help them', 'protect them', 'their safety' – which is slippery, and this idea was already sitting close to the <a href="https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=white%20saviour%20complex" target="_blank">White Saviour Complex</a>. I think it may have slunk closer in the night.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We need this. So much of what is broadcast in general is hurt and damage and grief, that just to be reminded that other people care is no small thing. When feeling helpless, any tool is better than none, and there is so much to fight.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But this isn't about feeling better. It's about respect. There are people who cannot take basic respect from the general public for granted, and so to those who may benefit from it I simply offer the physical reality that they will not be alone for this leg of the bus trip. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although this has risen from the events in Martin Place, it is a sentiment that does not stop at Muslims, or anyone wearing their religion or culture, or who does not dress according to their expected gender, or who is simply too not-white or not-male to ever take safety for granted. In those terms, I would be included as someone at risk. I'm afraid I'm not particularly intimidating and being a non-white woman it could be argued that I add to target attraction, instead of detracting from it. I suspect this is why I do tend to gravitate toward non-whites in public anyway. Some sort of safety in numbers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But I have to say, the thought of anyone deciding to approach me in public in order to protect me for my own sake without considering that, like everyone on public transport, I just want to be left alone; that thought rather gets my hackles up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So many people have reached out to say what this hashtag has meant for them. So many. Whatever grand wild delusion was galloping through my head when I created the hashtag has slunk off dejectedly, being unable to compete with reality. Some of you have already been helped by this, and that is. No words. No words. Thank you. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But keep in mind, please, it is not for anyone to burden their need to help upon others. Respect that while too many are afraid to go out in public, many still walk the streets confidently and comfortably, and need nothing from any of us. If you're asked to buddy up, that is an amazing honour and sign of trust. That is enough. Don't expect more. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Don't let it become a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NotAllMen" target="_blank">#NotAllMen</a> where the focus fell off the actual issue of misogyny and violence and became entirely about assuring gentlemen they were good people, not bad people. Don't centre this on yourself. It isn't about me, or you. The desire to do right is in no way related to actually doing right. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
It is important that the offer be made, and equally important that nothing be expected in return.<br />
<br />
The people who don't feel safe; <i>they don't feel safe</i>. We don't. I don't. They may not feel safe enough to tell you your good intentions are lovely but unwanted at this time. The ability to read minds isn't required for any act of kindness to remain a respectful one. Kindness that is forced upon a person is not kindness.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We need this, but not as a bandaid. We've always needed this empathy, and we always will. But not just to make ourselves feel better. To make the world better. And keep it that way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A hashtag is a flash in a pan, but this <i>will</i> is not. This <i>is</i> a long campaign. Longer than this life. Hold on to that.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">#</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, a little about this startled bunny in the spotlight. This will be largely self-indulgent navel gazing, and those of you who need this hope, love and light right now should stop reading.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stop.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Because I can't give you that hope, love and light. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So many have said they have felt hope because of this, and accused me of having a heart full of it. This is definitely the change I want to see in the world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But this act does not come from a place of hope or love. Hope has been scarce for too long, and I can point at the day on the calendar at which it finally ran out. I have lost hope for positive change. My every act of solidarity, dissent, support, revolt comes not from the hope for change, but the anger of change that never came. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That man, he lost hope. He knew what he was doing and how this would end. One sad, angry man and look at the hurt we have let him do. The hostages, all of them. The ex-wife whose murder to which he was allegedly accessory. We failed her too. He was sad, and angry, and he did this because we, this country, enabled him. I am so sorry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm not even good anti-hero material. I actually am a cranky introvert who just doesn't like people, and not in a cute and loveable way. I'm also biracial, which is complicated. I have Opinions and as you can see they get waved around a bit, and I'm mulish enough not to be conveniently quiet to keep things nice, because nice achieves nothing. Plus I have enough health issues to mean I'm simply not going to do enough to sustain this. I cannot. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I act because I am angry, and this world is fucking horrible, and I am sad, and if I cannot sit on the mere hope that the world will change, then there is nothing left to do but get out and push. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I must enable that positive change to come, even if I don't believe it will. I must open the doors and windows and invite it in unimpeded and cherished. This idea did not come from a good place, but it isn't about me, and may become something better. Please let it become something better. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The fact is that while I offered this platform to voices that need to be heard, there haven't been any volunteers except for the singular and indefatigable <a href="https://twitter.com/_amygray_" target="_blank">Amy Gray</a>. Massive and many kudos to this woman for picking up the baton while I collapse into a pile. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The fact is that I don't blame anyone for not taking this up. The attention is searing and I am indeed thinking of the Eye of Sauron. To step into this is to make yourself a target for all that is awful, and I don't expect anyone to take this on, especially those who are already targeted. The offer remains while the media have any interest in what I say. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I expect some bad things will come of this, for which I am sorry for my part. I also expect some good things, because they have already happened. There doesn't seem to be anything else to expect. There's no stopping this now.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For those asking I explain my 'shockingly racist' blog posts; the post you're no doubt referring to is pretty self-explanatory. Rather surreal feeling the need to state that some of my best friends are white, and half of my family. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Speaking as one of those not-white people, I do humbly request a scarcity of white knighting. Bear your visible stickers like Neighbourhood Watch signs; not medals. It feels arrogant to say so, but I'm already proud of you. There are so many valid and justified reasons to stay quiet, and there is no shame in doing so. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm stepping back because I cannot and will not be a warm fuzzy story. That narrative is a trap. The fact that the hashtag is already being seen as competing with the narrative of the siege and hostages is proof of that. They are not in conflict with each other. I've not dwelled on the hostages and those who care about them because I can think of nothing to say in the face of such trauma. I hope they have safe spaces open to them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For the time being, I'm sorry but I won't sharing my bus trips. The point was to simply offer company if it would help. This sudden notoriety is alarming enough for me; imposing it on anyone else would be presumptuous at the very least. The only reason I can only do this because so many people have already put their hand up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The glow of initial solidarity hides the hard edges of true support. These displays have occurred before, and will occur again, but change is slow in coming. This is just my reality. I'll still be a tired biracial woman wary of being approached by strangers tomorrow, the day after, the day after that, for the rest of my life. Hatecrime and bias in our infrastructure will continue, because these wounds are centuries in the making, and we need to work so much harder to even consider healing.</span><br />
<br /><br />Extreme situations make heroes of barristers and store managers. For most of us, there are no extreme situations, and no heroes. Just you, me, and the rest of the world. <br /><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/illridewithyou?f=realtime&src=hash">#illridewithyou</a><br /><br /><br /><br /> #<br /><br /><br /><br />Hello, members of the media. I won't be giving any further interviews, but if you hop on over to my twitter account there are a few recommendations for people whose perspective on current matters is worth attention.<br />If any Muslim feminists would like to speak out, let me know and I'll usher the media your way.<br />The Indigenous people of Australia have been attacked in public for their appearance since first landing. If any of you would like to speak out, let me know and I'll usher the media your way.<br />This incident was born of misogyny and domestic violence. Last month was White Ribbon Day. The experts have always been there. This is the time to talk to them.<br /><br /></div>
</div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-50138244976415702642014-12-03T00:50:00.000+00:002014-12-03T00:50:40.655+00:00Interval<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
All the life hides in the rocks, but sometimes I like to swim out away from the liminal colonies into the heart of the bay, where what lies beneath that barrier between above and below is sparse and empty. Above that open land I float, surrounded by a shifting jade which has no depth, no perspective, simply colour that surrounds me. Below, the sand is pale and whorled with the fingerprint of the waves, the same waves that lift me up and away from this, suddenly, and drop me back down to watch plumes of sand take flight, dance, settle in pattern anew. Untethered and orphaned seaweed waltz languidly across these little valleys and mountains, and amongst them too are carried comb jellies, their grand ball gowns torn apart by the waves and trailing in tattered skirts behind them. Although lifeless, the water still ruffles the tiny cilia of the hems, and when the sun, bent by the shape of the water, falls upon them, they throw rainbows like secrets. To touch them is to wonder if this, perhaps, it what it is to touch a ghost. A school of tiny silver fish dart away from me, but I am motionless, without hunger, and they come back to circle within my shadow. They light up, bright, pure, when skeins of sunlight catch them, and it is like watching lightning, small and sweet.</div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-75691623068841163982014-11-19T06:06:00.000+00:002014-12-18T07:21:22.916+00:00LOOK! I WROTE A THING!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Volume 12, Issue 3 of the <a href="http://reviewofaustralianfiction.com/issues/volume-12-issue-3/" target="_blank">Review of Australian Fiction</a> includes 'By the Moon's Good Grace', an incredibly raw and hard story, the ending of which left me feeling heartfull and nourished, and 'The Fate of All Wens' by<br />
<br />
<br />
Ahahahaha, I actually froze there. It's the first time I've typed [title] by [author] for this story.<br />
<br />
by Tessa Kum.<br />
<br />
Heee!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7EAdjxkAuU0/VGwyBo4INQI/AAAAAAAAB8g/tE9MImNqwkY/s1600/RAF_VOL12_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7EAdjxkAuU0/VGwyBo4INQI/AAAAAAAAB8g/tE9MImNqwkY/s1600/RAF_VOL12_3.jpg" height="640" width="464" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
So much gratitude and appreciation for <a href="http://kirstynmcdermott.com/2014/11/11/new-story-in-review-of-australian-fiction/" target="_blank">Kirstyn McDermott</a> for inviting me to co-contribute, and her story is worth the price alone. An incredibly raw, hard piece with a happy ending that left me feeling heartfull and nourished.<br />
<br />
Always credit and thanks to the <a href="http://deborahkalin.com/biblio/" target="_blank">Deb Kalin</a> for reading my weirdly-shaped drafts and being a useful voice, not only in terms of critique but for keeping this writer calm. Super kowtow in awe before Megan Bartlet, who literally must have lasers for eyes, that's how sharp her proofread was. If you'd like to secure her services, she may be contacted at megan dot bartelt at gmail dot com.<br />
<br />
Anyone who has put up with me wailing about my health all these years will know what this means to me. Couldn't have done it without J, who sees the worst of me and still enables and supports my loud mouth with love and a laugh. I mean it. I literally could not have done it. You my thing.<br />
<br />
Literature lovers: this story explores the questions of free will in a spiritual world, in which the vying responsibilities to the self, the family and the community play out against a snow-crusted world at the dawn of civilisation.<br />
<br />
Genre lovers: Owlbear monsters! Huge ass trees covered in dead people! Recreational drug use! Badhorse women being badhorse! Prophecies! Wicked glittering plagues! Diarrhoea! Ancient powers! Stuff! Things! Incidents! Events! Happenings! And how!<br />
<br />
That's the important stuff, all that up there. Everything about to follow is the excited-puppy I WROTE A STORY that every writer does even if they pretend they don't. Incredibly self-indulgent and most likely containing far too many exclamation points.<br />
<br />
I am very excited!<br />
<br />
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!<br />
<br />
I mean it! Lots, and lots, and LOTS of waffle.<br />
<br />
Because I'm afraid my brain will forget the story of this story, and I don't want to lose it entirely.<br />
<br />
Oh also potential spoilers. Although kinda not really.<br />
<br />
I don't remember where the original image came from. Usually I can point at something in the outside world which, as ambiguously related as it might be, has tripped into an idea. I saw a young woman carrying her friend - dead, frozen - through the snow, in order to nail her to a tree, to keep her safe. Honestly no idea where it came from, although I do suspect the subconscious may have been paying a great deal of homage to Deb Kalin's 'The Cherry Crow Children of Haverny Wood', which I would command you all to go and read at once! If it were yet published. It's coming. I'll be very loud about it when it does, because holy shit.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I had no story to stick that image in, I didn't have any preplanned world to drop it into, it took me months to even discover Wen's name, and I think I have about four aborted attempts at writing it. All very different.<br />
<br />
Things I learned (because you learn things with the writing of every story, even if you're learning the same lesson again):<br />
<br />
If you don't know the ending, you, Tessa, really have no idea how to write forward.<br />
<br />
You really do need to finish your worldbuilding before attempting to write as well. Otherwise you'll have to revise so much you might as well throw the draft out and start over. Which is what happened. Several times.<br />
<br />
Your brain is too foggy to proofread your own work.<br />
<br />
Remember how you got so far into your novel by realising you only needed to write the important pivotal parts and ignoring the rest for filling in later? You really need to do this all the time. Seriously. Write the scenes out of order. Drink tea without milk. Go wild.<br />
<br />
It's really hard to write about the snow when living in a sub-tropical climate by a wonderful sand beach.<br />
<br />
The 'junbu' is a fictional sibling of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FOphiocordyceps_sinensis&ei=0SRsVIaXENawogT_iIKgBQ&usg=AFQjCNEVN9J1WllzoXiH6B-nhdh5z77TSA&sig2=8_lQzb8WV1qlI1LpFHxuow&bvm=bv.80120444,d.cGU" target="_blank">yartsa gunbu</a>, a product of one of those fungi that works via mind control and cadaver automation. It is fascinating reading, both for the simple biological run down of the melding of insect and fungus, and the economic impact and strain demand for yartsa gunbu is having. This article in <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/08/tibetan-mushroom/finkel-text" target="_blank">National Geographic</a> goes into more depth, and has incredible photos.<br />
<br />
Wen became Wens when I thought her name was in fact a label, with all orphans simply named thus. When the Wens became more, I do not know. Where that idea came from I also don't know, as it doesn't smell like something I'd normally come up with. I've a horrible suspicion I've done that accidental idea-lifting thing. Bloody hell.<br />
<br />
Well. The Wens are pretty awesome in their own right anyway.<br />
<br />
Normally there's so much time between submitting and publishing that this writer can fall out of love with the story, and thus approach it more as a reader. Not this time. I was in Melbourne, at a happy-bursting wedding, and taking some time out from the socialities to noodle in my journal, and perhaps simply being in an unfamiliar place shook some blocks into place, because the story just seemed to coalesce before me. One moment it was a mess, the next, BAM! Cohesion. I love that feeling, when suddenly you know you really do have something to work with, and your idea isn't total tosh.<br />
<br />
And while I was sitting there, watching my friends dance like shit yeah, an email from Kirstyn arrived asking me if I was interested in co-contributing to RoAF oh but you only have a month if you want to do this.<br />
<br />
It was just too perfect, you know. The story had just fallen into place so I was high on that energy, and to be given a deadline with a most excellent carrot at the end... I did try to talk myself out of it. There was no way of knowing if I'd be able to deliver in that time frame, either a finished product or one that was of a suitable standard. I haven't had a story published for, I don't remember. When Year's Best Australian picked up Acception for a reprint, I think. I haven't finished a story for even longer. There are dear friends I have known for years who have never had to put up with me publishing a story before. Because. Well. There are five million bazillion jillion posts in the archives talking about the psychological damage inflicted by RSI and a chronic illness, and the shift in brain chemistry brought about by medication does creativity no favours. I wrenched the identity of writer from my core. I didn't think I'd write again. The need to survive the very real and physical chance that my health was never going to improve was a higher priority than anything that looked like a writing career. If any of you wondered how I dealt with the damage to my career I did with my last angry post, there's your answer. I'd divested myself of interest in a career years ago. My goals are much more humble.<br />
<br />
Getting to jump up and down like this is one of those goals. This is enough.<br />
<br />
EEEEEE!!!!<br />
<br />
So of course I said yes!<br />
<br />
And then dove face first into drafting and flailing and becoming frustrated that my brain will not hold all the words I want access to at the same time. And I yelled at my story on twitter when it was being uncooperative, and I drove J nuts blabbering about bears and taiga flora, and it was so exciting to feel the story grow into its pages, and then I actually had it all written, and all the scenes moved into the correct order, and I wrote THE END, and holy shit I'd written a story.<br />
<br />
I WROTE A STORY!<br />
<br />
I love it. It was only written in September, I'm still madly infatuated with it. It was not hard to write, because there was kindness in the story. There are moments I love deeply, and instances in which I can see all that lost time was not entirely wasted.<br />
<br />
That said, there's some right clunkers in it. That's what happens when you stop writing for years on end. Your writing gears get rusty and you get flakes of rust in your story, messing things up. It isn't as polished as I'd like, and I'm still not entirely sure I have Wen's voice right. Nevermind. It is still enough to say I WROTE A STORY.<br />
<br />
AND NOW IT IS PUBLISHED.<br />
<br />
HUZZAH.<br />
<br />
I can do this. I can still do this. There's no rain that could spoil the triumph in my heart.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-69644176349241525612014-11-06T09:14:00.001+00:002015-10-16T09:27:59.433+00:00The Long Campaign Against Racism (Bogged)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #444444;">[quick links to the <a href="http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/the-long-campaign-against-racism-bogged.html#original">original post</a>, </span><a href="http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/the-long-campaign-against-racism-bogged.html#middle">first update</a><span style="color: #444444;"> and </span><a href="http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/the-long-campaign-against-racism-bogged.html#end">second update</a><span style="color: #444444;">]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Hugo Update 5 April 2015</span></h4>
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</span> <span lang="EN-GB">Six months after first hitting publish I am updating this post, specifically due to the <a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/04/2015-hugo-award-nominees" target="_blank">Hugo Shortlist</a>. This is for those of landing here because of the Mixon piece, which refers to comments left on this post, and from which this post still gets too much traffic from.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Those comments are no longer visible because a month and a half after I posted this, a man walked into the Lindt Café in Martin Place and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Sydney_hostage_crisis" target="_blank">Sydney Siege </a>took place. In response to the rise in racist attacks this even triggered the hashtag #illridewith you began trending in Sydney. #illridewithyou was simply an offer to sit alongside those subject to racist attacks on public transport. It went viral and was picked up by traditional and new media outlets across <a href="https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%23illridewithyou" target="_blank">the entire world</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I created #<a href="http://junkee.com/i-started-a-global-viral-movement-heres-what-i-hope-from-illridewithyou/47419" target="_blank">illridewithyou</a>,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">As a result of unwittingly making myself very, very visible, I’ve been targeted with enough hatred and abuse to hide current comments and close this blog to future comments for the foreseeable future. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Six months have passed. In that time, efforts to bolster true diversity and create nuture safe spaces for minority voices have been undermined by WASPs – the same WASPS who were in a tizz initially – continuing and continuing and continuing to ‘raise awareness’ of RH’s past behaviour, long past the point of what is useful or reasonable. As I said below six months ago; RH has publically owned and apologised for her actions and the damage she has caused, the fact that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this is not enough</i> indicates that this was never about taking an anti-harassment stance but of personal vendettas being played out on a communal level. That Mixon’s brief of evidence was published after RH’s apology is indicative of this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I said initially that individuals were enacting racial bias with the anti-harassment steps they were taking, probably unconsciously. They’ve had time to balance the racist pall cast by their initial actions – many suggestions made below still stand – but they haven’t. Quite the opposite. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Because of the hashtag, Breitbart did a piece on me, and brought me to the attention of the Far Right and GxxxxGxxxrs simultaneously. It’s been fairly awful and I’ve learned rather a lot about mass bullying and abuse tactics, so much so I feel pretty comfortable saying the tactics being utilised against RH now are mostly indistinguishable from GxxxxGxxxr tactics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Vox Day has also made the Hugo Shortlist. He has a lovely long history of toxic behaviour, bigotry and bullying, and also did a piece on me. It’s pretty vile, and the comments are ripe with the sort of talk that does not a safe space make. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And then there’s the Puppies. All of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This is not diverse nor safe space making.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The Hugo awards used to mean something. Hell, I dreamed of winning one, once. I want to be able to congratulate my friends on being shortlisted, I want to feel proud and excited for them for receiving well-earned recognition and acknowledgement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I want to, but I don’t. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The Hugos are a platform for public vendettas and bigotry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I wish I could write out all the nuances of this, explain how detrimental this is, how much damage this has done and is still doing, but I’m tired. I was tired and hurting six months ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">But, you know. Awards need stories; stories don’t need awards. In these six months many stories by myriad diverse authors have been released into the wild. Fireworks in the abyss. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span> <span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Copied from below: </span>I see now that in my opening salvo there is much to be interpreted as attempting to absolve the bully of bullying. That was not my intention. I still stand by my attempt to try and highlight that there is more damage going on from other vectors in all this, but the approach was a mistake. I'll leave it as it is, as I'm accountable for what I've said, but for those who feel I have dismissed their hurt; I am sorry.<br />
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</span> <span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[quick links to the <a href="http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/the-long-campaign-against-racism-bogged.html#middle">first update</a> and <a href="http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/the-long-campaign-against-racism-bogged.html#end">second update</a>]</span><br />
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</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="original"><span id="goog_951402182"></span>Original Post<span id="goog_951402183"></span></a></span><br />
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</span> <span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Three well-established authors doxxed and blackballed a younger, up-and-coming author.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That's a bit shit. I mean, if we want to talk similes, then stomping on the fingers of the people climbing the ladder behind you is it. I'd like to think of the publishing industry as having space for all voices. Accepting that this isn't the state of affairs is still a long ways away from being okay with the idea that the elders of the scene get to pick and choose who is considered worthy to come sit at their feet, to the point of putting those unworthy in physical danger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That's a bit shit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That's what G***rgaters do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Two older white western women and one older white western man in a western country doxxed and blackballed a younger WoC in a non-Western country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That's a bit shit. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that's a bit fucking racist, mate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That's what G***rgaters do. Their artillery is primarily fuelled by misogyny instead of racism, which is really just a different shade of shit. Misogyny, racism: the same machine. The same purpose. The same design. The same effect. The same shit everywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is what Tricia Sullivan, Liz Williams and Nick Mamatas have engaged in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Much of the discussion I've seen has focused of the victim, because western culture loves to point all its shitcannons at the victim. The onus of proof always becomes the victim's responsibility, who must be able to account for the motivations, emotions and actions of their attackers, who must justify over and over again why they, the victim, let this attack happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You know the name of Z** Q**nn. Do you know the name of her ex-boyfriend?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">The one who did the doxxing?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Their names are Tricia Sullivan, Liz Williams and Nick Mamatas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Persons of Colour are not monolith. The only thing people who fall under the PoC label have in common is that they are not white, and I do deliberately and explicitly say 'white' as the term PoC is American in origin, and thus the hegemony is white, white, white.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">We are not white, and that is all we have in common.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That is all that is required, really, for those in a hegemony to assume all the world is structured as they are familiar, and assume that we, too, are some reflected shadow hegemony.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">The word ‘diversity’ is thrown about so much these days, by very nice people with very good intentions. You can see it starting to coalesce; the guidelines for what will be the acceptable change to indicate 'diversity' has been achieved, while for a great many of us, thanks to this 'diversion', nothing will change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You, with your privileges, may learn how to communicate with a PoC. The life experiences they share are valuable and precious and, most likely, quite different to what the next PoC will know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">There isn't a 'not white' setting you can switch on in your brain to talk to us. PoC are not monolith. We are not legion. We are often but a collection of scarred souls who recognise the wounds in each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I'm trying to overstate this, because you, the fucking hegemony, are so busy spouting all the right words and making sure you’re seen to be doing something that you've completely obliterated the complex, intricate nuances, contrasts, juxtapositions that exist between PoC and PoC. You talk about diversity but only seem to be able to act using the broadest, clumsiest definition of what that should be. You're still thinking of us as a collective 'them'.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Having a PoC agree with you when you're shouting from a tower of privilege does not lend any extra credence to you. We are fucking <i>diverse</i>, we are conflicting politics, clashing opinions, and opposing philosophies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">More than that, it's also a disgusting manipulation. There was another WoC publicly caught up in this attack. She was implicated as the original who doxxed the victim to Tricia Sullivan and Liz Williams, and she denies this. Due to Tricia Sullivan's blog post and a carefully timed silence on both the part of her and Liz Williams, this WoC caught the brunt of backlash. I fell for that backlash too, for which I am sorry. They carefully positioned her so that she became the target and focus, not them. The imbalance of power between white women and WoC cannot be ignored. By dandling this WoC before the masses as a friend and ally they've effectively nullified her own agency. They used her for their own ends, and masterfully so. The blog post from Tricia Sullivan was far too late to have actually been of any effect in helping protect her 'vulnerable friend'.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Having PoC friends does not add legitimacy to your actions, white person. You are still white. You are still benefiting from an imbalance of power and this will not change in your lifetime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Nor, might I add, does it lend additional credence to mine. But then, I am a PoFuckingC, and I don't require external validation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">To come at things from a slightly different angle, Nick Mamatas’ doxxing was not motivated by vengeance, racism, or a wailing ego. In LJ comments he claimed to dox the victim so as to change the narrative, ie, take control of the situation out of the hands of Tricia Sullivan and Liz Williams, who were conducting whisper campaign to blackball and dox the victim. He states the victim contacted him after he'd doxxed her to redact a couple of personal details, but otherwise had no problem. He also stated that he'd doxxed the victim in order to 'reign her in'. Forgive me if I don't go delving into LJ to find said comments, because the thought of even skimming that horseshit is no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Here is an editor who behaviour polices an author. I understand publishers have invested in authors and don't want a PR mess, but there is a difference between sending someone an email telling them to calm their farm and doxxing them. Authors, would you like your publisher to feel comfortable displaying that level of control over your public life?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Here is a white western man in a western country doxxing a WoC in a non-western country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">He did not have her permission.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Pretty sure 'reign in' is a really politically correct way of describing what G***rgaters are trying to do to their targets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Women must be put in their place. People of Colour must be put in their place. Young people must be put in their place. And so on, and so forth, ad infinitum, until you, white person, probably straight cishet and able-bodied, have put everyone in their place and are left standing atop a pile of bodies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Most of you don't seem to know what hypocrisy looks like.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">An example of hypocrisy: demanding a bully be held accountable for their actions and then contributing to an environment which actually makes that impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Here's another: demanding apologies and accountability from a bully, receiving actions towards that in good faith, and not demanding apologies and accountability from the bullies who did worse to said bully.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">And another: being outspoken against G***rgate and promoting the work of Tricia Sullivan, who has stated publicly on her blog that she doxxed and blackballed. Hanging good intentions and bleeding hearts from a doxxing does not mitigate the crime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I haven't written about this because.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Fuck, I don't even know how to articulate that, and I'm not involved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Because, ultimately, I had given up hope for positive change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I have given up hope for positive change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I have given up hope for positive change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Regardless, when it comes to horseshit like this, I love to be wrong. I'll leave the doors and windows open to welcome any opportunity for the better, even if I don't believe it will come. Can I tell you that when I read the victim's apologies my heart sang, because right there was effort, hard work, and a push toward positive change. It gave you, the white masses, and opportunity to come around as well. To make this fury and fight one that is a stand against bullies, instead of a demonstration of racism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I haven't been proven wrong. I didn't expect to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I also didn't expect to see the white publishing scene – let's call a turd a turd – take on my Shovel of Oh You Are So Right Tessa and start digging graves with it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Suddenly, you're all promoting Tricia Sullivan's new book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://storify.com/niche/solidarity-is-for-white-women" target="_blank">Solidarity is for white women</a>, hey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">There's John Scalzi over there, making a point of featuring Tricia Sullivan's work, and making an even larger point of deleting comments that 'drag in online drama from elsewhere'. You know John Scalzi, right? You guys fucking love him. He's generally a beacon for progressive reasonableness, a vocal ally, decent writer and I've seen him dance. People like him. He's a great guy. I've noticed that you, white person, are really championing him for his overt stance against G***rgater. He's a rich white cishet man in a western country, he has privilege coming out the wooza, it's ace to see him going in to bat against the G***rgaters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Because doxxing is bad!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">But not all doxxing!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">("Not all men!")<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Doxxing is okay if done to a PoC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is the message John Scalzi sends when he promotes the work of Tricia Sullivan. He has significant platform and volume and he ticks all the privilege boxes. The reach and impact of this message should not be dismissed or underestimated. It is tacit approval of her actions, taking the position that she should not be reproached but instead supported.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This lack of intersectionality undermines all the otherwise good work he has done. How can I take "We Need Diverse Books" seriously – which I really fucking want to, and do – when there are white feminists such as John Scalzi providing implicit support to a white woman who has shown not a moment of regret for what she has done to a person of colour?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I can't.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I’ve let this post sit since first bashing it out. Since then, Laura J Mixon has taken it upon herself to write a bloody <i>brief of evidence</i> on all that the victim has ever done wrong. It has two (2) appendices, and I have no intention of reading it. This is after the victim issued two apologies, neither of which smelt <i>faux</i>. It is apparently not enough for a PoC to publicaly make efforts to mend their ways and atone for the damage they’ve done. The white women have said so. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Doxxing, blackballing and writing stalkerish reports is not enough punishment for you to be satisfied. Apologies given is not enough for you to feel satisified. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I doubt there is anything that will ever be enough to satisfy you, white person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You are not doing anyone a service. Just as we are never able to not be PoC, you are never excused from being white. You will always hold the balance of power, and there is nothing in the current circumstances that absolves you from your privilege. You are kicking down. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">The message is that people like me are lesser. The message is that you, the hegemony, just like the idea of being progressive. You love the idea of being good and active and part of the rebellion. You love that idea. But you're not prepared to think of non-white people as anything other than lesser. You're not even prepared to admit the possibility of this unconscious bias.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">To dismiss this as 'online drama' is an exercise of white privilege. To call for everyone to 'get back to work' is an exercise in white privilege. To 'stay out of it' is an exercise in white privilege. I'm repeating myself because for fuck's sake <i>this is repeating because the problem is not being addressed</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is not online drama. This is our fucking lives. This racism, bullying, racism, discrimination, racism, solidarity for white women, racism is every fucking day. We're not making a fuss because someone got our coffee order wrong, we're speaking up against you the oppressor doing oppressive shit. Again. And again. And again. Because you, the privileged, the oppressing, the shining white right, aren't listening. You've no idea how to walk the walk, and the last couple of weeks have revealed that most of you are far shitter at talking the talk than you imagine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is not a distraction from work. This is work. Trying to change the world is work. I sit on the bus and think about this. I sit on the toilet and think about this. I write my fucking fiction and I think about this. This isn't a television soap opera. We're not standing around the water cooler gossiping. We're not white, and this is work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You’re not Katniss. You’re some git in the Capitol, gossiping while you watch us tear each other apart for you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Don’t point out all the PoC also supporting Tricia Sullivan’s work as if that makes it okay. PoC cannot be judged by the same criteria that you are, white person. The imbalance of power between you makes that impossible and ultimately pointless. I recognise that a minority can be complicit with its own oppression. I recognise that although each PoC suffers the same blind, blundering racism as the next, and I also recognise that how we learn to survive such a life sentence is not something to be judged lightly. That conversation is for another time. This conversation is about you, white person, and your hypocrisy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I mean, here's an analogy that might work for you: try being unwillingly unemployed for a while. Awful, isn't it. It's degrading, humiliating, debasing, and the longer it goes on the harder it gets to smile when you walk into an interview room. You've no money. The writing of job applications is actively shit for you mental health. This whole situation is actively shit for you mental health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Know that? Remember how it felt on a weekend, when there was nothing different about your day? Every day was the same. You don't get a break from being unemployed. You don't get to 5pm and are like, well, that's me done for the day. You're still unemployed when you stop to make dinner, and you look at the contents of your fridge and calculate how many meals you can get out of that versus how much money you have til your next dole cheque, and when you watch a movie all the people are working and able to pay their bills and buy that coffee and go out with their friends without asking for charity and you're watching this because a friend gave it to you on a USB stick not because you can afford to see a film, or use that much of your monthly download, and you go to bed knowing that tomorrow you'll be unemployed as well, and will think the same things again, and again, and again, and you don't ever, ever, ever get to clock off from being unemployed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That there is a privileged example of unemployment. That's still at the easier end of unemployment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Now imagine that you're not able to do anything about your unemployment. Just imagine that for a moment. You can't address the problem at hand, you cannot act to alter your circumstances or shift your fate, just imagine, for a moment, that you have no agency to enact change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Just imagine you have to endure these miserable circumstances without being able to address them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">When I watched hundreds of white people mob WoC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">While I am still waiting for you, white person, to apply the same standards to Tricia Sullivan, Liz Williams, and Nick Mamatas as you did to the victim.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">When I see you, white person, dismiss this entire event as drama and distraction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">When I hear you dismiss the voices of PoC as not being work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">While I watch you support and promote a white woman who publicly admitted to doxxing and blackballing a WoC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">When I see you wave your flags and chant your slogans against G***rgater and not Tricia Sullivan, Liz Williams, and Nick Mamatas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">When I see you still, <i>still</i>, writing <i>reports</i> after the victim has already conceded.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">When this happens on top of posters in bus shelters, conversations overheard between high school students, radio broadcasting, the books that are placed face out and the books that are left spine out, correcting X on X’s own culture, newspapers with their bold headlines and white owners, television commercials with such white teeth, dramas with dramatic white people, the packaging on soy sauce, the easy appropriation of patterns in the mass-produced fabric of underpants, the desserts in the freezer aisle, the looks I get, the looks I don’t get, the names that don’t get interviews, the assumptions, the assumptions, the assumptions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">When I, a non-white person, see this all this, I realise that the only opt out is death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Dramatic; yes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Rhetoric; no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is our <i>lives.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">None of us can take a break from not being white. You, white person, with all your supposed good intentions, will never let us. Either because you're actively racist, racist but with too delicate an ego to ever do anything about your racism except cry about the mean PoC, or willing to remain silent and let us carry on without support.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You've already won. You won centuries ago when you left Europe and decided to crush the rest of the world. Conquer, colonise, crush. Centuries this has gone on. You have centuries of victory and triumph.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You've won again. You've succeeded in driving PoC from the scene. You succeeded in driving me and others from the internet. You've wrenched open schisms between PoC which will take years of hard work to heal, if they heal at all. We're diverse, we're not monolith. We're divided, and you will always ensure that remains so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">What does this do to a person? How does all this shape the heart that endures it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">From this I have learned about hate. Hate, like anger, is a poison for me, and so I've worked on myself hard to ensure I'm not attracted to the philosophies and perspectives of hate. But from this, from watching all of you, I am learning about hate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">My privilege is being born in and living in a western country with a decent income. My privilege is being ambiguous in my physicality; as it's not easy to identify which 'other' I am, most people are hesitant to voice what they know to be racist-ass opinions around me. The discrimination and bigotry I experience is largely unconscious and insidious, and in fact not grounded in hate at all. I'm fortunate. Very fortunate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I don't feel hated as a WoC. Hate implies that the hater believes the target of their hate to have some sort of power or control. No.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">As a WoC I feel cheap.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Not worth as much to you, white person, as your fellow white people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I'm learning about hate because I am coming to hate you, white person. You have all the control, all the power, all the privilege, and there is nothing holding you accountable. I hate the double standards and hypocrisy you display, the rank dishonesty of your conduct. I hate that you can harm us, when we cannot harm you. I hate that you have actually impacted on careers, multiple and not even directly, with your hypocrisy. I hate that you're so dominant in the publishing industry there's very few venues I'd consider safe to even submit to now. I hate what you have done to PoC I don't know. I hate what you have done to PoC I do know. I hate what you have done to me, and I was not involved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I've seen phrases coming from the mouths of people I'd thought knew better, and I have learned that sometimes 'us vs them' is true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I hate that I am learning this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Naive trust now broken, I find myself silenced anew.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Being open about my mental health is my way sabotaging the stigma surrounding mental illness. Because I am comfortable discussing it openly, publicly and honestly, others are comfortable discussing their experiences with me. The more comfortable they are with these words on their tongue, the more tools they in turn have to wield against their own struggle, the more comfortable they too become with speaking openly, and thus this is my contribution toward change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Watching this conflagration has done terrible things to my state of mind. I am not in a good way, I'm in a very doubleplus ungood way, I am on the brink of being in danger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Purely because I know people who disagree with me have already made moves to dismiss my voice, I have not been able to speak openly about this. It would be too easy to use against me. "Oh, no wonder Tessa has a wasp up her arse, she's a bit cracked up at the moment."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That sounds reasonable. I even say it to myself. Such is the power to silence someone who is oppressed at multiple indices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I am not angry because I am struggling with mental illness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I'm struggling with my mental illness because I am angry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Having one does not invalidate the other. It is neither rhetoric nor melodrama to state that you, white person, are fucking with my depression. I hate you for that too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Liz Williams was particularly fond of slinging around ablest slurs. I'm not going near any of her online pisspots to check if she's ever tried to atone for that. Highly doubtful. She's a white woman, after all, all the solidarity is for her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I have depression, and for those of you that need that statement quantified, I've been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. I have fibromyalgia, which slams me with fatigue and a cognitive fog that make the air pollution in Beijing look like a wisp of smoke. My memory is unreliable and I have to reverse engineer whatever it is I'm doing many times a day, an hour, over and over minute to minute. I'm a sensitive little introvert who is stomped on by the oblivious extroverted population. That's enough to keep me occupied and frequently crippled by despair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">None of this invalidates anything I've written here. None of this undermines my arguments. Knowing that I'm as addled as I currently am means I've take my time over these words, and tested them over, and over, and then over again because I will have forgotten whatever paragraph I had just reread. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is a very basic example of intersectionality. Nothing occurs in isolation, none of us live in a vacuum. Complex and sensitive issues are being processed by jamming them into a binary dichotomy, because everything is being processed as You the Oppressor and Them the Others Who Are Complaining. Until you let go your fixation on binaries, until you stop centring yourself on every single stage, until you stop considering yourself the default/normal, until you recognise and respect that your opinion is not warranted or wanted in all areas of discourse, until you glean that sometimes it really is not your place to act, this 'online drama' is going to happen again, and again, and again, and again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">My bitterly disappointed heart believes most of you are too self-entitled and comfortable with your privilege to attempt this. You'll think the right things to make yourself feel good, but thinking, talking, and walking are all vastly different. It's hard work. Very hard work. I know because I do it on myself, and I do it over, and over, and over. The privilege of growing up in a western country comes with the cost of internalising all that western horseshit. The same horseshit that works against me. It's complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Oh, now here's an analogy I can't pass up. Remember the teacher in Donnie Darko who is so oft quoted as "doubting your commitment to Sparkle Motion!" Prior to that beautiful moment she calls for the banning of a book at a PTA meeting, stating that as she's the only person present who is both a teacher at the school and has a child attending as a student, only she "transcends the Parent-Teacher Bridge."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Being biracial and raised in a western country, I grew up thinking I was a 'normal' (read: white) kid, and internalised all the horseshit I'm currently calling you, white person, out on. Oh yes I did. I watched the same TV, read the same books and hung out at the same shopping centres as the white kids. Which was everyone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Being biracial and raised in a western country, I was never allowed to belong because I wasn't a 'normal' (read: white) kid. Because I looked different. Even if I was white as fuck on the inside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I TRANSCEND THE WHITE PERSON-OTHER PERSON BRIDGE.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Know that when I call you out, what I'm calling out is what I've recognised and worked on deconstructing in myself. The hard work I'm asking you to do is nothing that I don't ask of myself. The standards I hold you to are the same standards I expect of myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I recognise the internalised horseshit you're toting because I tote it myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I hope you'll work at it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Honestly, I don't expect you will.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I gave up all hope for positive change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">However, in the interests of equality, I do call for a sharing of the laziness. I for one am getting very fed up with investing trust in a white person only for them to either dismiss the struggles of PoC or turn around, spout some thoughtless racist shit and then cry 'bully!' when called on it instead of you know, listening and respecting. I really can't be fucked spending more energy on you, white person. You're fucking lazy, well, so am I. PoC come in all shapes and sizes, including bitter, mean and lazy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">So if you identify as a feminist, either in conversation, bios, correspondence, whatever, make sure you're specific. Identify yourself as a White Feminist, and PoC everywhere won't bother you. It won't mean you're a bad person, just that you're easier to assess from a distance. Like G***rgaters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I'm not involved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is the impact your actions have had, are having, will continue to have, on me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I don't speak for all PoC, but don't for an instant doubt that I am not alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">To my friends reading; I recognise by posting this I will hurt some of you, and for that I am sorry. I hope you will understand that, aware of my identity as I am, none of my relationships are free from politics. This is the reality of the world we live in. You are welcome to speak your mind, here or via other channels. I hope too you will understand that I have let many hurts slide in the past and will continue to do so in the future because I love you, and it is because I love you that I have to say this now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">We are different.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Please listen.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="middle">9 November 2014 on a Sunday arvo - EDITED TO ADD:</a> </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">The conversation has evolved, and at this time I think it would be prudent for me to address a couple of things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">A couple of commenters have stated they’d initially dismissed this post as pointless rage, or just another angry rant, but on a second pass conceded I raised some good points.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> an angry rant. I mean, phwoar. Did you see that? Plinean. That was plinean. That was an eruption of awesome proportions and, wow. I’m really angry. I mean, I knew I was, but even I’m shocked. After that blast, after I’d given myself enough time and distance to remember how to breathe and for my adrenaline gland to settle down, even I was taken aback. I didn’t, I mean, I didn’t. (You did, Tessa. You’d accepted this price long before pressing ‘publish’.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">But why would anger in a PoC speaking of oppression be considered pointless?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">America has a whole bloody news network dedicated to giving old white men a platform from which to shout angrily, and America is so loud that the rest of the western world has no say on whether or not this is permissible, conscionable or allowable; it saturates my world too. The apex of the privilege pyramid shouting and shouting and shouting and my anger is dismissed as pointless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">The SFF publishing scene cannot be divorced from this reality and to attempt to do so would be irresponsible. There is an incredibly damaging trope that exists purely to enable the disenfranchisement of black women in America, one of the most oppressed people in that country, because by segregating the judgement of that anger from the context of that anger, that anger then becomes…pointless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Why would the anger of the oppressed ever be pointless?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You’ve won, you’ve been triumphant for centuries, I say again. Of course I’m angry. I’m furious. I had that screed of rage seething in my heart for far too long, until the balance tipped and the short term consequences of not screaming into the abyss were going to far outweigh the long term consequences of becoming a mouthy PoC, and that is the product of living at the softer end of discrimination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">My anger is not pointless. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Reenacting the eruption of Vesuvius has done much to relieve my internal pressure, but the anger remains. Magma cannot be reasoned with. Magma will not be told it is without merit and evapourate in a puff of convenience. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">My anger is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">justified</i>. My expressing of my anger is fucking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reasonable</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I’m not shouting at clouds; I’m screaming into the fucking abyss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I have been patient my whole life. I have been respectfully asking to be respected, I have been avoiding being derailed by the Tone Argument by cutting my emotions from my words just to increase the chances that you might listen to me, white person, and not dismiss me as ‘another angry minority’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is the result of running out of patience. This is the point at which I take my small cup of a writing career and smash it against the wall. This is the point at which the idea in the idealist dies. This is the point at which my effort to remain respectful in the discourse, in the hope that this will promote and nurture respect that I may one day experience, starves and dies. A colossal fuck you to anyone who thinks I owe it to you to keep fighting the good fight, for a given definition of ‘good’. A massive, monsterous fuck you to anyone who thinks I owe you a moment more tolerance of the shit you’ve been pushing for centuries, shit you don’t have to live with, white person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You are owed more anger than mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Defending a victim who is a bully is not synonymous with defending, condoning or enabling abuse. To infer such is disingenuous, and disrespectful to those who share my stance who have also suffered abuse. I think we can all agree that bullying is vile, and I think you, bunch of writer types that you are, should be capable of recognising this. Otherwise I despair the simplicity of binary moral narratives that the publishing industry must hold. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I had made a deliberate choice not to discuss the victim’s behaviour in my initial post. Discussions anchored upon what the victim did or did not do and the degrees of her horribleness danced and continue to dance around the question of whether the victim <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deserved it</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">There were things I thought could go without saying, but. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This has long since gone past the point of being a reasonable discussion raising awareness of someone’s problematic behaviour. This is victim blaming, and it is a pile on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">A person can be both bully and victim at the same time. These two states do not cancel each other out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Being as the victim was both PoC and bully, people are rightly pointing out that by the victim’s behaviour, ammunition has been put into the hands of the bigots. This is true. I’d also say that’s true of a giant fuckload of people, John Scalzi being the first and most related example that springs to mind. He’s receiving accolades. He’s fine and pretty much untouchable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Tossing out this line simply emphasises the message that PoC must meet a higher moral and social benchmark than you, white person. We’re allowed to be arseholes and scumbags and make terrible mistakes and the wrong decisions like you do. We’re obliged to stay in line to make your job easier. That is oppression and silencing of yet another kind, and it smells horribly like allowing the indefensible to occur for ‘the greater good’. The problem is in the reception, it is always in the reception. The double-standards are the gold-trimming on your anti-bully banner. The problem is that while you decide the price, you’re not the one to pay it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Some have argued that the victim wasn’t really doxxed, being as the connection between two pseudonyms reveals no actual personal details. The victim has often stated she had stalkers, serious enough to warrant anonymity. The revealing of another alias is still something a stalker can and will make use of. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">We are all about believing victims. Right?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">But not this victim…right? That would be inconvenient.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">It is not for you to determine when a person’s privacy has been invaded enough for the damage and danger to be considered real. It is not for you to determine at what point someone else is allowed to feel their privacy and safety violated. To dismiss this because it is inconvenient for the villain in your narrative to be a victim is double-standards, it’s victim blaming, and it’s racism and it’s hypocritical. Again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">By not touching on the victim’s behaviour, I am not dismissing it. I think we can all say that bullying and abusive behaviour are toxic things, the mitigation of which should be acted upon. I was trying to shift the focus, but the conversation keeps reaching back into that mob. Like Common Miner Birds, mobbing, mobbing, mobbing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is not a nice neat narrative where the morally right and good and the wrong and bad are clear-cut. This is real life. A person can be both bully and victim at the same time. One does not invalidate the other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Like it or not, the victim’s narrative is going to shape the narratives of all PoC to come. We’ve already seen how many guards are at the gates, and who we’ll need to pay tribute to, and we have seen what happens when a PoC steps out of line. Here, you justify the extreme lengths you’ve gone to by waving the victims of bullying around like a war banner. The next PoC who comes along and doesn’t pay tribute can already see what to expect. Maybe next time it won’t be bullying with which you, the white person, assert your moral superiority and right to crush those you don’t approve of. I’m not you, I can’t travel your thought paths, so it isn’t for me to predict what guise you will work under.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">What will you say when you come for me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are coming for me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">More to the point, the pain of victims of bullying does not invalidate the pain of victims of oppression. It seems to fall higher in the hierarchy established by you, the white person, as being more worthy of attention, although that’s hardly surprising given the current climate. A victim of bullying at least has the potential to be white. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">These wounds the victims of bullying and PoC bear do not nullify each other. They exist and will continue to exist and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hurt</i> regardless of whether you believe them justified. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You’ve done a fine job of creating a space for the victims of the victim to come forth. I have been told that some people have only felt safe opening up now, and I’m glad they’re able to open up at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">The healing afforded for these victims need not be bought with the silencing of PoC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Again and again the crimes of the victim are put on parade. Again and again people are telling me, as though I haven’t been watching and reading the same words as you. I know. The victim knows. We all know. The victim has made moves toward some sort of peace but you, white person, continue waving that banner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">What makes this racist is the simple fact that you, white person, have not done this to your own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Jim Frenkle, Vox Day, Harlan Ellis, Will Shetterly. For fuck’s sake, how many <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">decades</i> did you let Frenkle prey in the scene before some young uppity voice of dissent forced your hand? You <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">let him sexually assault people</i>. You fucking enabled him <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for years</i>. But he’s gone! you cry. We got rid of him! Your hand was fucking forced. You wouldn’t have done a thing if one of his victims hadn’t stuck her neck out to ‘make a fuss’. He would still be employed in a position of power in this field if it was left to you, white person. But we got Vox Day out of SFWA! Holy shit, how many years did that take too? How many mouthy PoC’s publicly pushing their dissent did it take for you act? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Years. Decades</i>. Remember Elizabeth Moon and Wiscon? How long did you ‘consider all sides of the story’? How slow were you to act? How, when discussing the making and maintaining of safe spaces, ‘fair’ is it to give the voice of the privileged equal consideration as that of the oppressed?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Fucking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hypocrites</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Those are only the publicly notorious. I’d say most of you are in far better positions than I in being able to identify predators and poison. Geographical and financial barricades keep me from being a regular con-attendee, chronic illness has curbed my own crippled little career so I’m simply not active enough and in contact with enough people to know what is going on in the back channels. You, white person, are probably far better equipped than I to do something about these people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Do us both a favour, and don’t for an instant try to downplay the existence of such predators and the damage they are currently doing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Recognise that you are picking your targets, and you’re picking the target that has no power and cannot harm you, and you’re doing sweet fuck all about those other victims because that predator is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">white</i>.<u style="text-underline: double;"><o:p></o:p></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is a muddy narrative in which both sides have acted reprehensibly. I’ve been invited to read various accounts, and I have. I’ve seen and heard enough to know that the public narrative is unreliable from both sides. I’ve also taken the time to consider what my stance would be if I were to take what various parties have said be at face value, and have concluded it would not be different. All roads lead to Rome, and to the crossing of my own Rubicon. At this point, for me, the details of the doxxing no longer matter. How we got here no longer matters. What I see are the privileged circling and mobbing a PoC with a viciousness that comes from centuries of practiced oppression. Whatever path we take, we still end up here, white person, because you don’t listen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">One side has all the power, the other does not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">As you, white person, do have all the power and privilege, I would very much appreciate it if you could stop namedropping PoC when engaging with me. I shall repeat:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">There isn't a 'not white' setting you can switch on in your brain to talk to us. PoC are not monolith. We are not legion. We are often but a collection of scarred souls who recognise the wounds in each other.</span></i></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">And:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I don't speak for all PoC.</span></i></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">To take that further, it also means other PoC do not speak for me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">You, white person, hold all the power. I am challenging you from a position of weakness. Do not drag in PoC names to shield you, don’t you dare try to throw them before me with the inference that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> PoC’s voice, which is conveniently similar in view to your own, is somehow a more legitimate voice than mine. That PoC is not talking to me, and if they were, the conversation would be a very different one because a conversation between PoCs at least has the potential for both parties to be on relatively equal footing. A conversation with you, white person, never will be. I’ll say it again, having PoC in agreement does not somehow lend your point of view extra credence. Argue your position <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">from the position of privilege you occupy</i> and stop tossing in PoC as if they will absolve you of your privilege. They’re not chum to distract me, the nasty PoC shark. I am talking to you, white person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I am not alone, but I entered into this prepared to argue my position alone. Because fuck you, I’ve seen enough damage done to PoC, I will not call on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anyone</i> to speak up. You’ve made a space for victims of bullying to come forth and hopefully heal but only by shitting all over a whole demographic. A really broad, clumsily general in definition demographic. PoC are now afraid to come forward. But you will throw them in front of me, try work on the schisms that exist within this complex and intricate group of people so that I attack them, not you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">This is depressingly reminiscent of so many historical battle philosophies. Going to battle the enemy? Well, send in the [insert disdained demographic here], the enemy will waste all sorts of ammunition reserves firing at them, what? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Own your fucking privilege. This conversation is with you, white person. The power imbalance is so huge and so engrained that you don’t see the hypocrisy in your strategies. Fight your own fucking battles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That imbalance is why I, and many other PoC, hurt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">It is magma. It doesn’t require your approval or acknowledgment to exist, it will flow and flow because the source remains whole and healthy, and much like magma, it will keep coming out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Make this not about racism. Please, please, prove me wrong. Go clean out your own cellar, white person, before HAZMATing ours. Stop asking us to trust that this is a special case, that this one time you tear a PoC apart it is unique, it doesn't count, and you wouldn't ever do it to us because we're not like that. There are no grounds for trust. You are not worthy of trust. Stop justifying your actions. You, white person, keep justifying this frenzy, and in doing so the message is sent that the suffering of the PoC watching horrified from the margins is also justified. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">That’s not your fucking call. For fuck’s sake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Listen.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Don’t set this precedent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Please, just.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Let us breathe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I would like to make one amendment to my original post. I have given up all hope for positive change; that is still true. The responses I have received so far have not challenged my position, and for the most part the responses have been thoughtful and far kinder than the tone I set. I would not change the degree of anger in my writing if I had my time again. It is there because I want you, white person, to see how deeply this effects me. Maybe from this you will a catch a glimpse of the scale of the hurt, which has wholly consumed me, and is doing the same to who knows how many others. It is awful. Analogies of volcanoes and natural disasters abound not to intimidate you with the scale of destruction, but so you can comprehend the scale of destruction. All that magma sits in my rib cage and hurts. It’s awful. It is awful. It is hurting me far more than it hurts you, white person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">But. Yes, there is a but! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I know I am not alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I screamed into the abyss, and in that endless darkness the abyss answered with fireworks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I am not alone. We are not alone. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I have still given up hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">But.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I have not given up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Find your fireworks, you howling hearts standing on the edge. Find your fireworks.</span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="end">EDITED TO ADD Wednesday arvo 12 November 2014:</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The conversation continues to evolve, and life doesn’t stop for any of us.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I guess I’m used to anger – clearly it has been building up for some time – but I have no practice in wielding it. It is anathema to me, and this experience hasn’t challenged that. There is no way to use it without it becoming stained, and by no one’s actions but my own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It took two hands to wield that anger. To control it, to keep it from simply burning the house down, took two hands and the making of an internal debt that is now being collected. I had to put down the ability to take joy in things. There was no room left in me. The anger took it all, the volcano destroyed itself in being itself. There’s no fire left, only ash now. Only ash.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This isn’t a baited sympathytrap. This is simply my reality. The overtime put in by my adrenaline gland the last few days has lent me some emergency resilience, but at a price. I’ve spoken more online than I have in the last few months, and now tendonitis and ye olde RSIs are rising creakily from sleep. The stress and threat provided by every new comment, regardless of whatever the contents of the comment turned out to be, has done astonishing things to my fibro. My flobby little braingrapes have processed so much information in the past few days – and when considering the pain of others nuance is everything – that they’re now simply out of juice. I don’t consider myself as having the capacity to contribute anything useful to the dialogue right now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I have to stop. That is all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Because it was specifically brought to my attention, I will make a quick comment on the idea being floated of beginning a mentor programme specifically for oppressed and vulnerable writers. None of what I’m about to say is spoken in anger. I have none left. This is spoken in tired monotone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I very much like this idea, especially as it is not limited to PoC. I think we all remember how utterly bewildering the industry was when we first dipped our toes in, and the fact that it never really stops being bewildering is something underemphasised. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">SFWA would, from a purely logistical stance, be a great platform to germinate such a programme, being as the administrative infrastructure is already in place. However, from the point of view of the vulnerable, it is not yet a safe space. Change is happening, and it’s definitely change for the better, but until the organisation has a proven track record of not blundering into bigotry, and has done so for some years, it is not a place I would trust with vulnerable voices. Not yet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">For that matter, I feel that the spirit of the concept will be undermined if it is crewed and helmed by the privileged. I infer to no individual when I say this, it is simply a pattern that has proven itself time over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A space cannot be trusted as safe, while those for whom it is supposed to be sanctuary do not have control over it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It is again asking the vulnerable to put power in the hands of the oppressor and then trust the oppressor with that power. This is a trust that has not been established or earned, and there are no grounds to argue that, right now, such trust should be given.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">As space over which the privileged have power will never be safe for the vulnerable. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I hope this is not taken as an attack, but constructive criticism, the devil we’re all too familiar with. I see there a gesture made in good faith, and although I have seen too much to hope anything new and good will come of it, I must enable the chance, and hope this will be given consideration should this idea come to fruition. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And with that, I’m tapping out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It hasn’t even been a week, and I daresay many will choose to read this as me not being able to take what I dish and fleeing; whining, wailing and cowardly. They may choose to read on, or not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Anger is an incredibly powerful tool, but it is also a weapon. Just as I cannot be anything other than Other, anger cannot not be a weapon, no matter how I wield it. Axes and hammers and brute force. It is ugly. Threatening, intimidating and upsetting. It is what the oppressed live with day in and day out, along with fear, hurt, and doubt, not because of what is happening in the SFF scene now, but because this is the state of the world. It would come out, one way or another. It will do its damage, one way or another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">No doubts have sat with me, and I haven’t second-guessed my decision. Surprisingly. I stand by the validity of my anger and the expressing of it. I still accept the cost of expressing that anger. I do not regret this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I have learned a little, though. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">To weaponise your voice is to become that tool which is also an instrument of attack, and though you may be very careful in what directions your anger is aimed, still you stand, howling, and that is frightening. To everyone. The people standing behind you as well as those opposing you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The current state of the world needs weaponised voices. We are so far from being able to have this conversation as equals. Not in my lifetime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">But a weaponised voice should not be used in all places. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">You need to see that this anger is not pointless It is born of anguish and grief, not indignation, and is of a scale beyond comprehension. It is an anguish shared by those hurt by abuse and those hurt by discrimination. I used my anger like fuel, rocket fuel, to launch this cry into space. Now it’s in orbit, and the rocket is space junk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">After anger, there is space for grief, and in grief, there are small niches of healing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I have no hope, I do not believe, but I must enable that healing. Windows and doors open, it is an opportunity worth inviting, courting, coaxing in. Take away hindrances. Let the way be clear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">By weaponising my voice I have taken a position. I don’t consider myself to be in the camps that have formed, but I have made my stance known, and not been gentle about it. In doing so, there are people who bear the wounds of bullying who will not feel comfortable speaking up in a space in which the inconvenient PoC shark is swimming, and there are people who must endure the same oppression that has twisted me around who do not agree with how I have processed this, and they too will not feel safe speaking out in a space in which I may be lurking. PoC fall in both categories easily. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">My satellite is in orbit. The signal was sent. It was what was needed to survive, and now that I know I will survive, it is for me to step aside and allow others that right as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">My part in this conversation has been specifically aimed at the white hegemony; this next bit is not for you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">We PoC are not monolith. The diversity, contrast and resonance which can be found in those three letters are sublime. Our paths are so extraordinarily different, a difference that can be just as hard to traverse as that between oppressor and oppressed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">But in this western world, we are all subject to the same prejudices and wounds. We are shaped by the wounds we carry, wounds collected every day since birth. It is exhausting and debilitating and unrelenting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">We may not agree on the finer points, we may be in adamant opposition over the larger points, we may think each other complicit in sustaining the status quo and the damage perpetual and be devastated by that perceived betrayal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">All of these things are true, but I cannot and will not judge you, and I won’t condemn you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">We are just people. To survive this for years on end, knowing that there will never be any respite, contorts the skeins of our soul. We say nothing because we need to survive that moment there and then, in order to be able to get up the next day. We compromise ourselves both deliberately and unconsciously just to make sure we can still see a way forward, to leave us with enough in our bucket to worry about groceries and the weather and whether we have any clean socks. We let our guard down and make questionable decisions because we’re tired, we’re so tired. We want so much to believe your good intentions are enough. We cannot afford to give all over for the good of the future when the present already asks too much of us. In this sense, enduring bullying and enduring oppression play out identically.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This plinean howl is me coping, compromising, doing what I need to do to stay out of hospital. I do not say that to garner pity or sympathy (please, do not), nor do I say it flippantly. This is my reality. Sadly, I know that, in this, I am also not alone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">All roads lead to this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Only you know what you have had to do in order to survive. Only you know which of the many damages on offer you can live with, what regrets you can live with. Each of us stands as an individual with a perspective the evolution of which only that individual will ever understand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I don’t agree with you, and I don’t need to in order to recognise this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">You, I will not judge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Thank you, again, to those who have engaged and responded with more kindness that my tone invited. There’s that wonderfully saying, which my brain is currently mangling, which goes something like: you shouldn’t say thank you when being given something that should be yours by right. That is true. It’s also true to say that unpacking privilege is hard, learning to listen is hard, and everything about this is hard. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Look at this. Traffic spike from the initial posting of this on Friday. Such reach. The mind boggles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PBl7q5PUohg/VGMGgCMPB3I/AAAAAAAAB7s/FaKmbQ6c11o/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-10%2Bat%2B10.05.29%2Bpm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="138" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PBl7q5PUohg/VGMGgCMPB3I/AAAAAAAAB7s/FaKmbQ6c11o/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-10%2Bat%2B10.05.29%2Bpm.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This blog has no volume and the reach is tiny. I thought to myself, I am actually being listened to. This might be a nudge toward change. But, then I saw this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SpkkXlzbY6M/VGMGwG-ZplI/AAAAAAAAB70/sjIpe2tgmo0/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-10%2Bat%2B10.18.45%2Bpm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SpkkXlzbY6M/VGMGwG-ZplI/AAAAAAAAB70/sjIpe2tgmo0/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-10%2Bat%2B10.18.45%2Bpm.png" width="265" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">No, not much reach at all. Very few people are listening. (I probably account for a large chunk of the yellow wedge, with all the reading, previewing, rereading I've been doing.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">When I look at those graphs, I must be thankful for those who listened, and who gave my voice genuine consideration. Thank you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I’m withdrawing to go sift my private ashes, and because withdrawing, too, is a means of surviving. I’ll be leaving the comments open, as some have taken this post to be a safe place to speak, even with the veil of anonymity. I will certainly enable that. I hope in withdrawing my absence will also make other spaces safer for those I have silenced in my rage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This isn’t retreat or defeat. I simply don’t have any spoons, or knives, or forks left to give. There’s only ash. Staying out of hospital will always be more important than activism. For me, one cannot happen without the other. I will never be able to contribute as much as a healthy person, and so I call this enough, on my terms. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I’m still here. I daresay, now that I’ve made myself this ridiculous new hat, inconvenient PoC shark will venture into the crowded waters again, when a volcano is grumbling. But later, later. The fare of this blog and my other social media platforms will return to what they have always been: self-absorbed, introspective, pretentious and self-deprecating wank. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I’m giving myself permission to return and update this last section as I see fit. Add to, not edit. I’ve been writing this across the span of the day, simply because my mind won’t hold all I wish to address at the one time. I’m sure there are things I’ve missed, but this needs to be put in place now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I’m going to dive deep and dark, and I’m going to survive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">You hurting from abuse, you hurting from marginalisation; may you find your way through this and do the same.</span></div>
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</span> <span lang="EN-GB">Aha! I remembered some things to add.</span><br />
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</span> <span lang="EN-GB">Shit, I just forgot one again. No, wait, got it.</span><br />
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</span> <span lang="EN-GB">I see now that in my opening salvo there is much to be interpreted as attempting to absolve the bully of bullying. That was not my intention. I still stand by my attempt to try and highlight that there is more damage going on from other vectors in all this, but the approach was a mistake. I'll leave it as it is, as I'm accountable for what I've said, but for those who feel I have dismissed their hurt; I am sorry.</span><br />
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</span> <span lang="EN-GB">Also, there was some definite good to come from this. The pledge by publishers not to reveal the personal information of their authors is definitely a good thing, and should be acknowledged. Forgive me for not linking, but I'm loathe to direct the animosity aimed toward me at anyone else.</span></div>
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Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3755770.post-2384264736532335512014-10-29T10:24:00.000+00:002014-10-29T10:24:27.746+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Sometimes, I just have to whinge. Only the poor souls who have this blog on a feed reader will notice this post.<br />
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We moved on Saturday. Nothing <i>bad</i> happened, except it was much longer and stressful than anticipated, and ended up costing twice what I'd expected. Certainly hadn't expected it to take in excess of 6 hours. But that's Coogee for you. No parking access for movers, and nothing but tight twisty little stairs.<br />
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I had to be present the whole time, and sitting watching people you're paying move large heavy objects in the heat and stairs without assisting is awful. Even though I knew I couldn't do the same without doing damage to myself. Even though I'd specifically paid for these people so I would not have to.<br />
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I don't know if I will ever stop apologising for advocating for myself.<br />
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The new flat is small, which is fine, but until all furniture is assembled and in place, until the boxes are mostly unpacked and sorted, it's a horrible awkward maze. Cramped cluttered places make for tense little minds.<br />
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New location means far more traffic noise. And human noise. Quality of sleep isn't as good, but then, I've been so tired of late it probably hasn't mattered.<br />
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Toilet no longer a claustrophobic closet which enforces guilt re: my not having a lovely slender frame. We have an enormous old cast-iron freestanding bathtub which I know will come in very handy.<br />
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I'm tired. I'm just so tired. Tendonitis from shoving boxes around to get mildly unpacked. Shoulders and neck and wrists and elbows aflame. Exhaustion so that my bones feel as though they are made with lead and grief. The mental fog is thick as...nothing. Perhaps double cream is thick as cognitive fog.<br />
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Even Poppy is exhausted. She spent the first couple of days falling asleep on my laptop. Not playing, not preening. She simply didn't have the energy. Starting to come better now, but it just goes to show how hard an event like this hits a house.<br />
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I just.<br />
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Wish.<br />
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I could be a fully able bodied.<br />
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And do these strenuous things our society requires of us.<br />
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I'm very tired.</div>
Tessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12620582836939851015noreply@blogger.com0