Updated This week in The Slacktiverse, May 19/20 2012

The Blogaround

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Appropriating Victims' Experiences
This is serious priority inversion, and it happens all the time in real life and in literature, and it irks me so very much. I have to assume it's a symptom of Privilege; when everything in your entire life has been framed in terms of how you -- Privileged White Male Vampire -- feel, then of course a traumatic experience that happened to someone else should immediately (and only!) be framed in terms of how the Privileged White Male Vampire in the room feels about things! It's just the natural order of things, right? Privileged White Male Vampire feelings come first.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: The Patriarchy Hurts Women, Too
We live in a harmful Patriarchal society where women are frequently judged, insulted, and slandered not by their words or their positions or by their beliefs, but by their gender and sexuality. The intent is to de-personify women who commit the crime of being public figures, who work publicly for political and social change.

sarah writes: This week, I celebrated my brother's college graduation and wrote a "stuff I've been reading" post

Kit Whitfield continues her analyses of famous first sentences. This week: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.

Storiteller's week was full of bike-related celebrations that included people of all ages, as she describes in National Bike Month, Week 2: Proclamation and Parties. To follow up, she led a community ride to a beautiful National Park that winds through Washington D.C. and Maryland, complete with a mini-picnic, in Ride Report: Rock Creek Ramble. Not everything in Storiteller-land is idyllic though. Slugs are nastily invading her garden and chomping down on her plants, as she describes in All Creatures Small and Not-So-Great.

Laiima writes: This week I wrote about how my colonoscopy went and investigating vocabulary becomes more intriguing than I expected

Literata shared her favorite moment from Fertile Ground Gathering, wrote about becoming a QUILTBAG ally thanks to two women in North Carolina, explained why feminists of all genders have better sex (Trigger Warning: Discussion of sex and female anatomy including language NSFW. Includes words that some people may find unsettling.), and celebrated that a poem of hers was published in the just-released anthology Mandragora.

yamikuronue reports: This week I posted about my dying tomato plant in addition to the usual TPD post (in which I was a little confused) and Easily Amused (in which I decided I think I like Hubert). Going forward, tea reviews are going to be less frequent, but stay tuned this weekend for the premier of a new guest segment.

Michael Mock reports: This week at Mock Ramblings, I started by talking about my boys in House of Idiosyncrasies, described a pleasant development in my current writing project, and a less pleasant development in Suspicious Character Reported, explained the little-known perils of buying Superhero Toothbrushes, recorded a story idea so I could come back to it later in Children's Games, and described an evening in the life of a daddy. Finally, I started a new series of posts with the aptly named Pimp My Art Friends 1: Robyn Seale.

Coleslaw writes: There is a beautiful new bridge over the Mississippi River replacing the St. Francisville ferry, since the Huey P. Long is A Bridge Too Far away for the former ferry riders to use. I wrote about two books I have read recently, You Lost Me and (warning, some graphic medical details and references to 9/11) The Woman Who Wasn't There.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: When We Like Problematic Art
Artistic analysis isn't about finding The Answer. It's not about making a list of Good Art and Bad Art and then having everyone realign their tastes to match. It's not about coming to an agreement. It's about experiencing different viewpoints and understanding why other people think differently from you

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
(Trigger Warning: discussion of rape, rape culture)
Twilight: When Rape Plays Matchmaker
And this is the seduction of victim-blaming, the idea that sensible people can agree that Bad Things just happen, like the tides or tsunamis, and there's nothing we can do about them except insist that the potential victims of Bad Things police their every little movement and action in an attempt to avoid the unstoppable Bad Thing.

In case you missed this

Amazon.com Announces the Most Well-Read Cities in America[The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since June 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents.]
See also: D.C. Suburb Tops List of Most "Well-Read" U.S. Cities (Slate.com)

This week Reporters Without Borders published the PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2011/2012. There has been quite a bit of movement in the list since last year's was published.

(Trigger Warning: Frank description of conditions in prisons and the difficulties of gender reassignment)

She’s the only jail guard in the history of the province — and perhaps the country — to undergo a sex change and continue on the job.
....
She said she knows she can lessen the pain of others by showing how she confronted her own pain and fears.
“God made me who I am because I have a mission to educate people. To help people behind me, following in my footsteps.” From Andre to Andrea: Don Jail guard thrives on job after sex change, The Toronto Star, May 15 2012.

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is John Scalzi writes an explanation of privilege using a gaming metaphor and pointedly not using the term 'privilege'.

Things you can do

The Global Fund for Women plays a leading role in advancing women’s rights by making grants that support and strengthen women’s groups around the world. We mobilize and redistribute resources that enable women to develop creative solutions to local, regional, and transnational challenges. We bring grantees and donors together in an international network that promotes women’s action for social change, equality, peace, and justice worldwide. You can donate to the Global Fund for Women here.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Comments

[Steve Morrison]

"discription" should be "description".

[Slacktinonymous]

Do people remember my comments from last year about creepy stuff in a gaming club? Where people said I should leave?

Well, something bad happened to me. It was a different guy. I wasn't assaulted, but the guy threw up a million red flags and did creepy stuff in-character. I was threatened with punishment for discussing what happened with any club official except one who I had had prior problems with, and that official stonewalled me for almost two months. My attempts to have the creepy in-character stuff redacted were rebuffed by two different staff. When I attempted to educate club members on rape culture, the responses were ones of extreme hostility.

I have essentially been run out of the club, and have resigned my membership. I could really use some support, and some people's opinions about whether I actually did anything wrong. If you'd like to help me with this, please post your email address on here, and I will contact you.

[MercuryBlue]

Judging only by what you've said here, Slacktinonymous, you have done nothing wrong and a good deal right, and if this club was something you enjoyed then it's a damn shame they made you leave.

[The Board Administration Team]

If people prefer not to post their email addresses on the board they can send them to TBAT and Slacktinonymous can pick them up from us.

[Slacktinonymous]

Thanks, TBAT.

[cjmr]

Speaking of things that need to be arranged...

As June 9 is rapidly approaching, could the people who are interested in the June 9 DC Slacktivites meetup dinner also share email addresses in the same way so that more firm plans can be made out of sight of the general public?

[Froborr]

cjmr: froborr at gmail. Looking forward to this!

[Literata]

cjmr: literatahurley at gmail
Yay!

[Mike Timonin]

Slactinoynmous - I'm not sure how I can help you, but my e-mail is little.carrot at gmail

[storiteller]

For the meetup, as I thankfully don't have much experience with the sort of situation Slacktinonymous describes: willbikeforchange at gmail. (It will forward to my personal address, which I don't like sharing publicly.)