I wasn't very happy when I wandered into the gift shop. I was eighteen years old, nearing the end of my school years, and suffering from the kind of identity crisis that introspective teenagers can get themselves into. I didn't like who I was but felt stuck with it; I was having trouble making decisions about my future; I was in various degrees of crisis with the people around me. Not thinking very highly of myself I had limited faith in my ability to fix any of my problems, but I knew things couldn't go on like this. Something had to change.
When I picked up the pink leaflet advertising a meditation class, I was reaching for something. I'd tried a bit of meditation from a book and it had given me some kind of peace for a few moments; being an identity-panicked teenager, the fact that alternative lifestyles were in fashion among my peers but that nobody had tried meditation was not an insignificant factor. But it wasn't the casual interest of an experience seeker or a confident woman; it was the desperate grab of a girl who needed something and couldn't think of anything else. Before I ever attended a class, I was committed.
What I didn't know at the time was that the leaflets weren't left there by some visiting advertiser. The shop and the classes were run by the same organisation - the same organisation that ran cafes, a publisher, and numerous other 'right livelhood' business with a turnover of several million pounds a year. I'd walked into a small branch of something bigger, wealthier and more powerful that I could have guessed from that cheap little flier. Since then the organisation has changed its name, and perhaps its practises as well, but in 1995 it was calling itself the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, the FWBO for short. A nicely reassuring, mainstream-sounding name. It was two years before the Guardian article came out that talked of misogyny, sexual abuse and suicide.
At the time it surfaced, I was a regular attendee. Did it make me leave the movement? It did not.
That was just one centre that went a bit wrong, I was told. The woman who told me was a nice person: she'd been kind to me, and indeed was kind to everyone, and she spoke as one who knew and trusted that things weren't like that here. The story didn't seem to match my experience; nobody had sexually abused me. And besides, she was a 'member' of the Western Buddhist Order, an insider with a Buddhist name, while I was just a 'friend', a drop-in - and the Order was pretty clear that just visiting the classes (and paying £3.50 for each), going on retreats (and paying a few hundred pounds for a week, less if it was a 'working' retreat where you repainted the shrine room or dug rocks from the ground to smooth it over for a lawn) and meditating daily (or almost daily, and feeling guilty about the missed days) didn't make you a member. She was, I wasn't. So I assumed she knew what she was talking about. It didn't stop me coming.
Neither did the other discussions I heard rumbling around over the dinner table on retreats. There was talk of how the founders saw men as spiritually superior to women - and since the retreats were single-sex, that meant us, all the women round the table. One woman - a 'mitra', a sort of half-member - said that her revelation was this: enlightenment was so worth having that even putting up with subordination was worthwhile. I wasn't sure I bought this, because it didn't seem to address the point: my discomfort was not with subordinate status (after all, it was a hierarchical place anyway), it was that I simply didn't believe that women were less than men and felt that saying they were was a grave moral failing, one that called a person's spiritual judgement into question.
But I let it go. I'd never met the founder, and in an organisation this size I probably never would. For me, it was about the people at my local centre and the people I met on retreat. These were nice people, kind, thoughtful, dedicated and not at all exploitative, and none of the men treated the women disrespectfully that I could see. It raised some doubts about the founder, but it wasn't about him, or not for me. I stayed.
When I left, it wasn't an abrupt break. It was a gradual drift, largely triggered by reasons that lay me open to charges of being a spiritual shopper, a casual consumer - but which were actually nagging doubts, little breaths of discomfort that, now I had a new life and felt better about myself, I didn't have to suppress to stay on the life raft. I went to university and the Cambridge centre was a long, dark walk away from my room, and I didn't much like the people there. One man - an Order member - asked me how many breaths I could count in a meditation before I lost track, as if we were talking about how much I could bench press. And this was an Order member? This centre didn't seem worth the walk; I liked my new friends better than him. I started writing on arts retreats run by the organisation, and found that this was my real passion - and the fact that the founder's poetry was much studied and admired by followers despite being pretty poor stuff was something I saw much more of than I saw misogyny or sexual abuse. I wanted things that the Order spoke rather sneeringly of: a family, heterosexual relationships, some experience of the world before I gave it up.
Little things. Or big ones, perhaps, glimpsed through little moments. Doubtful values. Claims to be the exclusive source of fulfillment that didn't tally with reality. Pressure to conform with rigid lifestyle mandates.
Writing this article, I wanted to type the words 'They didn't hurt me.' And I think the experience did me more good than harm. I grew in confidence. I deepened my sense of beauty, vitality, being present in the world. I learned I could write. I started to find a self. These are not small things. This place that had hurt other people was, for me, the soil in which a seed of joy started to grow. I'm a happy person, and it was in that cult that I started to become so.
But there were other moments. Crying fits I couldn't explain. Guilt at being unable to sustain perfect 'mindfulness' every waking second. A sense of shallowness because I was who I was: a girl who didn't want a monastic life. Even now, when I hear the word 'Buddhism', I don't feel a sense of peace: I feel constriction, uncertainty. Fear.
And then there's the fact that I gave money to an organisation that, by all accounts, did other people some very serious damage.
Like the Westerner I am, I exercised consumer choice. I took the good and left the bad, as far as I could, on the shelf; I walked away when I found more attractive options. Eventually.
But I know what it is to feel the pressure to choose between believing someone you trust - or want to - and having your emotional lifebelt rupture. I know how easy it is to miss the glaringly obvious when you're looking at it from below. I know what it is about cults, bad religions: the followers are much better people than the leaders. The followers I knew were idealists, aspirers, people seeking a life of morality and integrity and insight. They were lovely people ... and they were the ones I actually spent time around. Their loveliness stood between me and the dark shadow of the movement, and for a long time I couldn't see over it.
I was young and naive, but I was also mobile: university changed my circumstances completely, in a way that often isn't available to people in doubtful movements. I was passionate about the movement, but peripheral to it: no authority figure particularly wanted me for anything, so the pressure on me came solely from the environment and not from direct personal relationships. I was lucky: I wasn't important to them.
I'm in no position to judge anyone for staying in a dark faith.
From the outside, it's obvious: the leader is a bad person saying bad things. Who but a bad person would follow such a teacher? But from the inside...
People talk of the six blind men trying to learn what an elephant is: it's a rope, it's a trunk, it's a wall. It's an image often used for different understandings of the divine. But it's an image for understanding cults, too. It wasn't a cult to me. It was a rope. I held on, and it pulled me to a new place. And then I let go, and landed safely.
I think sometimes of the people I knew back then. I hope they're all right.
When I picked up the pink leaflet advertising a meditation class, I was reaching for something. I'd tried a bit of meditation from a book and it had given me some kind of peace for a few moments; being an identity-panicked teenager, the fact that alternative lifestyles were in fashion among my peers but that nobody had tried meditation was not an insignificant factor. But it wasn't the casual interest of an experience seeker or a confident woman; it was the desperate grab of a girl who needed something and couldn't think of anything else. Before I ever attended a class, I was committed.
What I didn't know at the time was that the leaflets weren't left there by some visiting advertiser. The shop and the classes were run by the same organisation - the same organisation that ran cafes, a publisher, and numerous other 'right livelhood' business with a turnover of several million pounds a year. I'd walked into a small branch of something bigger, wealthier and more powerful that I could have guessed from that cheap little flier. Since then the organisation has changed its name, and perhaps its practises as well, but in 1995 it was calling itself the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, the FWBO for short. A nicely reassuring, mainstream-sounding name. It was two years before the Guardian article came out that talked of misogyny, sexual abuse and suicide.
At the time it surfaced, I was a regular attendee. Did it make me leave the movement? It did not.
That was just one centre that went a bit wrong, I was told. The woman who told me was a nice person: she'd been kind to me, and indeed was kind to everyone, and she spoke as one who knew and trusted that things weren't like that here. The story didn't seem to match my experience; nobody had sexually abused me. And besides, she was a 'member' of the Western Buddhist Order, an insider with a Buddhist name, while I was just a 'friend', a drop-in - and the Order was pretty clear that just visiting the classes (and paying £3.50 for each), going on retreats (and paying a few hundred pounds for a week, less if it was a 'working' retreat where you repainted the shrine room or dug rocks from the ground to smooth it over for a lawn) and meditating daily (or almost daily, and feeling guilty about the missed days) didn't make you a member. She was, I wasn't. So I assumed she knew what she was talking about. It didn't stop me coming.
Neither did the other discussions I heard rumbling around over the dinner table on retreats. There was talk of how the founders saw men as spiritually superior to women - and since the retreats were single-sex, that meant us, all the women round the table. One woman - a 'mitra', a sort of half-member - said that her revelation was this: enlightenment was so worth having that even putting up with subordination was worthwhile. I wasn't sure I bought this, because it didn't seem to address the point: my discomfort was not with subordinate status (after all, it was a hierarchical place anyway), it was that I simply didn't believe that women were less than men and felt that saying they were was a grave moral failing, one that called a person's spiritual judgement into question.
But I let it go. I'd never met the founder, and in an organisation this size I probably never would. For me, it was about the people at my local centre and the people I met on retreat. These were nice people, kind, thoughtful, dedicated and not at all exploitative, and none of the men treated the women disrespectfully that I could see. It raised some doubts about the founder, but it wasn't about him, or not for me. I stayed.
When I left, it wasn't an abrupt break. It was a gradual drift, largely triggered by reasons that lay me open to charges of being a spiritual shopper, a casual consumer - but which were actually nagging doubts, little breaths of discomfort that, now I had a new life and felt better about myself, I didn't have to suppress to stay on the life raft. I went to university and the Cambridge centre was a long, dark walk away from my room, and I didn't much like the people there. One man - an Order member - asked me how many breaths I could count in a meditation before I lost track, as if we were talking about how much I could bench press. And this was an Order member? This centre didn't seem worth the walk; I liked my new friends better than him. I started writing on arts retreats run by the organisation, and found that this was my real passion - and the fact that the founder's poetry was much studied and admired by followers despite being pretty poor stuff was something I saw much more of than I saw misogyny or sexual abuse. I wanted things that the Order spoke rather sneeringly of: a family, heterosexual relationships, some experience of the world before I gave it up.
Little things. Or big ones, perhaps, glimpsed through little moments. Doubtful values. Claims to be the exclusive source of fulfillment that didn't tally with reality. Pressure to conform with rigid lifestyle mandates.
Writing this article, I wanted to type the words 'They didn't hurt me.' And I think the experience did me more good than harm. I grew in confidence. I deepened my sense of beauty, vitality, being present in the world. I learned I could write. I started to find a self. These are not small things. This place that had hurt other people was, for me, the soil in which a seed of joy started to grow. I'm a happy person, and it was in that cult that I started to become so.
But there were other moments. Crying fits I couldn't explain. Guilt at being unable to sustain perfect 'mindfulness' every waking second. A sense of shallowness because I was who I was: a girl who didn't want a monastic life. Even now, when I hear the word 'Buddhism', I don't feel a sense of peace: I feel constriction, uncertainty. Fear.
Like the Westerner I am, I exercised consumer choice. I took the good and left the bad, as far as I could, on the shelf; I walked away when I found more attractive options. Eventually.
But I know what it is to feel the pressure to choose between believing someone you trust - or want to - and having your emotional lifebelt rupture. I know how easy it is to miss the glaringly obvious when you're looking at it from below. I know what it is about cults, bad religions: the followers are much better people than the leaders. The followers I knew were idealists, aspirers, people seeking a life of morality and integrity and insight. They were lovely people ... and they were the ones I actually spent time around. Their loveliness stood between me and the dark shadow of the movement, and for a long time I couldn't see over it.
I was young and naive, but I was also mobile: university changed my circumstances completely, in a way that often isn't available to people in doubtful movements. I was passionate about the movement, but peripheral to it: no authority figure particularly wanted me for anything, so the pressure on me came solely from the environment and not from direct personal relationships. I was lucky: I wasn't important to them.
I'm in no position to judge anyone for staying in a dark faith.
From the outside, it's obvious: the leader is a bad person saying bad things. Who but a bad person would follow such a teacher? But from the inside...
People talk of the six blind men trying to learn what an elephant is: it's a rope, it's a trunk, it's a wall. It's an image often used for different understandings of the divine. But it's an image for understanding cults, too. It wasn't a cult to me. It was a rope. I held on, and it pulled me to a new place. And then I let go, and landed safely.
I think sometimes of the people I knew back then. I hope they're all right.
__________________________________________________________
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.
@Laima writes: could you (try to) answer why someone would *want* to honor a deity who can't be satisfied? I mean, I don't understand what the appeal is supposed to be.
I don't know. Maybe they didn't see her that way and it was just the vibe I got from their ritual work--She Who Is Never Satisfied is one of my personal demons in a *big* way and it doesn't take much to invoke her.
Maybe it was an insider/outsider thing: they held themselves to a high level of artistry and seriousness and did not feel that those of us outside the in-group were up to that, so they mirrored their imagined Brigid-reaction as critical and rejecting.
We hit a lot of snags of this kind with the public rituals: one person's benevolent goddess or god or archetype is another person's personal demon. This is what the right of veto was for; and a main job of the guardian was to make sure those vetoes were honored.
I do not believe I have ever had a bad experience with Brigid herself, only with her worshippers. I am very grateful for the novel--that was a wonderful, heady, scary, overwhelming experience and it remains probably the best thing I've ever written.
Posted by: MaryKaye | Mar 25, 2011 at 01:19 AM
I can see the appeal of such a deity as a caution against complacency. As (from what I understand) a patron of artists and artisans, her presence in such an aspect serves to remind one that one can always improve and should never stop seeking to improve one's skills. Iunno, just a thought from an outsider.
Posted by: Ravanan | Mar 25, 2011 at 02:35 AM
I don't think that's weird, I think it's brilliant. I've been doing something similar. I just wish I'd thought of it as early as high school/middle school. (then again one problem I had in secondary education was that I was afraid of doing the slightest thing that might make things worse. It's easier to take chances when you have some perspective)
(it occurs to me that instead of reading all those high-school stories at the time I should've been watching "It gets better" videos. Except they didn't exist at the time, good thing they do now)
Posted by: Caravelle | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:41 AM
Brava Kit, for sharing this. I don't have a lot to say right now because my brain is shutting down for the night, but thank you.
Posted by: Andrew Glasgow | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:11 AM
I've been using QUILTBAG as a noun to refer to the set of all QUILTBAG people. For instance, to a cis het acquaintance who felt like an outsider in a certain community: "Is it because you're outside of the QUILTBAG?"
It seemed appropriate because the acronym references a container, but is this a bother?
Posted by: interleaper | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:25 AM
{{hapax}}
{{everybody}}
@Kit: I don't have a lot to say either, because my brain seems to be on shutdown as a default status lately. But I will add that it gave me great pleasure to hear you say, so confidently and without qualification, "I'm a happy person."
On books and cults: has anybody read 36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein? It's got academic and religious "cults" in one package. I'm not sure I actually believed in the characters, but the conversations were a lot of fun.
OT:
@mmy, who knows Canadian history: today's Unshelved.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Mar 25, 2011 at 06:52 AM
{{{Amaryllis}}}
Because you're Amaryllis. Do I need another reason?
Posted by: Raj | Mar 25, 2011 at 07:09 AM
Since Jason brought up a documentary on ex-gay ministries yesterday, I thought I'd share this email I received this morning from Peterson Toscano, one of the creative forces behind bXg:
This is a particularly important campaign right now because Exodus (the largest ex-gay ministry in the U.S. and possibly the world) has been trying to recast itself lately as this helpful, misunderstood organization. (For more information about this, see Peterson's blog post, Love the Straight Supremacist-Hate Straight Supremacy.
I've offered the following tweets on the campaign (warning: the URL's may be triggering for some people):
I know I'm not the only QUILTBAG person here. So if any of you have a Twitter account and have tried to change or repress your sexuality (or know someone who did), please consider participating in this campaign. We want Alan Chambers and other ex-gay promoters to see that it's not just three or four people who have experienced harm from trying to deny our true sexuality.
Posted by: Jarred | Mar 25, 2011 at 09:04 AM
{{{hapax and everybody}}}
Mary Kaye, thank you so much for sharing about that. I've recently taken on increasing leadership in several situations, including coordinating some public rituals. (I intensely dislike "and now everyone gets hir individual time to chew bubblegum to the great god Bazooka," especially in open rituals.) Your commentary is helpful to me.
Madhabmatics, fwiw, I see deity figures and archetypes as two different kinds of things. Some deities naturally "fit" certain archetypes, or vice versa, and others can be made to fit together if you stick your tongue out and squint, and others just don't. Sometimes I need to go straight to the archetype, as in Mary Kaye's Capitalized Name Of Archetype. Sometimes saying "If $GODDESS were going to be $ARCHETYPE, how would she do it?" is a useful juxtaposition, especially if Brigid embodies characteristics I want to embody in my life, but I can't see how to bring them to a particular role or task.
It's more like the deity is a person/a (Patrick Stewart) and the archetype is a role (Captain Picard). (Of course, it's complicated by the fact that we only know about Patrick Stewart from what other people say about him - you can go and ask him yourself, but when you talk to other people, Patrick Stewart will never come down from Utopia Planitia and say "no, that's wrong" or "I've changed since then," so it's still just multiple second-hand reports.) Still, that's not a bad metaphor for the idea of different deities playing different roles/archetypes. Sure, Lugh might be my definitive idea of the Sun God, just like Nimoy is my definitive idea of Spock, but it doesn't stop me from appreciating Apollo or Zachary Quinto, and not every question about Spock is a question about Nimoy personally.
Posted by: Literata | Mar 25, 2011 at 09:29 AM
I don't know. Maybe they didn't see her that way and it was just the vibe I got from their ritual work--She Who Is Never Satisfied is one of my personal demons in a *big* way and it doesn't take much to invoke her.
I'm reminded of a friend who feels a certain draw to Freyja, yet is afraid of her. My friend sees Freyja as a goddess of beauty and worries that Freyja will reject her because she doesn't meet today's standards of beauty. As someone who is devoted to Freyja, speaks with her often, and even channels her, I agree that Freyja is a goddess of beauty, but has an incredibly broad view of beauty. At this time, my friend is still struggling to see that, however.
Posted by: Jarred | Mar 25, 2011 at 09:42 AM
Oh, grad school. Did I miss this train?
I was in a one-year MA program at an Ivy League, which I won't name, except to say that I live in Philly. :) While I don't regret going--I pretty much have my job now because of it--it was a really exhausting time for me. In my particular program, MAs were really not given any sort of support. We didn't have advisors, so if we wanted help, we had to go seek it out. And that's intimidating when your professors are top in your field. Plus, yes, I paid out the nose for it. I'll be paying back my loans for a very long time.
The other thing is that there are so few open positions in the humanities these days. The number I heard was 1800 in the entire country. So departments tend to pick and choose their "stars" and focus on them, and the rest fall by the wayside.
A friend of mine just left the program (she was a PhD candidate). We were talking about our experiences recently, and she mentioned that she was much happier now. Not a coincidence, I think.
Posted by: sarah | Mar 25, 2011 at 10:45 AM
@Jarred-
by the way, I logged into Netflix and looked through my instant streaming history to see what the name of that documentary was. Its called "One Nation Under God."
Posted by: Jason | Mar 25, 2011 at 11:06 AM
@sarah: I was in a one-year MA program at an Ivy League, which I won't name, except to say that I live in Philly. :) While I don't regret going--I pretty much have my job now because of it--it was a really exhausting time for me. In my particular program, MAs were really not given any sort of support.
The rough rule of thumb is that MAs are seldom given any support in a program that also includes PhDs (with exceptions of course) if the MA students are not planning to continue on to a PhD.
The nicest way to do the MA PhD double with lots of support at each level is to go to a grad school where they do not have a PhD program but pride themselves on graduating MAs who either go on to work in the field OR who get accepted at prestigious PhD programs.
Then with the MA apply to the PhD program. You have an MA and so can teach even at a major research university as long as there is a PhD who "oversees" things -- and so you can generate a lot of money for the department.
And demand full funding. Really. Demand it. Every single person in my cohort came in with a "no tuition as long as you TA'd two classes as year" package. (Not TA'd two semesters but only 2 classes in a year.) We also were in the same health care system as the profs except the department paid all our premiums for us.
One thing to look at when choosing colleges/universities is whether they describe "full funding" as available after students have passed their comps/qualies/prelims. This usually means that they accept quite a few students (who are paying full tuition) that they have every reason to believe will not pass the comps/qualies/prelims and thus will be unable to proceed to the "PhD candidate" stage. The many students they are fairly sure will not make it to the candidate stage are basically being used as cash cows to fund the students who do become candidates.
Posted by: Mmy | Mar 25, 2011 at 11:07 AM
@Jason: Thanks! I may have to check it out!
Posted by: Jarred | Mar 25, 2011 at 11:10 AM
This is the experience of a lot of people with Asperger's, because of what Will Wildman described: we naturally give off social cues that don't match the ones we're trying to give off, and often aren't acceptable. We instinctively have difficulty with nonverbal communication and learning the rules of social discourse, and bullies zero in on kids with Asperger's very viciously as a result. School is a safety hazard for many kids with Asperger's because of the bullying. Most adults with Asperger's have some social anxiety, if not full-blown avoidant personality disorder, as a result. I would probably have ended up with avoidant personality disorder if I hadn't had the right camp counselor at the right time when I was twelve. That camp counselor, and the staff at that camp as a whole, helped me believe that I was loved by God and could be loved by others. I was abused in the leaders in training program four years later, and while I still have PTSD from that, it didn't undo all the good that that first counselor did.
Also, many people with Asperger's, myself included, are much more socially comfortable and competent on the Internet because of its relative lack of nonverbal communication, and because online we can compose our responses on our own time, instead of having to come up with something right away. I've also found the gaming community relatively congenial--I LARP World of Darkness, and while I've had trouble maintaining close friendships in that community due in part to my not being interested in a lot of other geek stuff, it's been an enjoyable social outlet.
@hapax and Kristin, thank you. And thank you also to Kit for your offer of explaining common phrases, which I missed earlier.
Posted by: kisekileia | Mar 25, 2011 at 11:18 AM
@mmy: Yeah, I knew that going in, I wouldn't have funding. All PhDs in my program had full funding. They started TAing their second year.
At the time, I didn't really know if I wanted to go for the PhD or not, especially because in English, you're kinda set in academia if you decide on the PhD. I went into the MA, realized I didn't want to do research, got my degree, and left. I may go back in, say, ten years. Right now, it wouldn't be a good choice.
Posted by: sarah | Mar 25, 2011 at 11:18 AM
This is a good piece on ex-gay abuses: www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/reports/YouthInTheCrosshairs.pdf
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Mar 25, 2011 at 11:40 AM
@Kit: Thanks!
Posted by: Jarred | Mar 25, 2011 at 11:51 AM
@Kit--Thank you so much for that resource.
Posted by: Lunch Meat | Mar 25, 2011 at 02:33 PM
A friend of mine just left the program (she was a PhD candidate). We were talking about our experiences recently, and she mentioned that she was much happier now. Not a coincidence, I think.
Heh. I still have that Matt Groenig cartoon ("Meet the Bitterest Person In The World -- The Ex-Graduate Student") up on my wall, because it reminds me how incredibly FREE I felt when I left my PhD program (ABD). (I latter learned that this particular department was famous for borderline abusive non-support of students -- I thought it was just me.)
For some reason, professional graduate programs seem to be better in that respect. Don't get me wrong, they can be BRUTAL, but it seems somehow ... more impersonal, in a way. At least in my experience, it doesn't get into your head the way the academic departments seem to.
Posted by: hapax | Mar 25, 2011 at 02:52 PM
@hapax: Well, it might be related to academic graduate programs being the last vestige of the medieval guild/apprenticeship system, while American professional grad programs are (at least in my experience) based on the same German collegiate system as (most? all?) American undergrad programs.
As I understand it, both are distinct from the English collegiate system, which is what they use at Oxford (I'm not sure about other British schools), but the English system has in common with the guild/apprenticeship system that you have a master/tutor/advisor who is particularly and personally tasked with your development, while in the German system you have multiple professors each of whom has many students, so it makes sense it would be less personal.
Posted by: Froborr | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:00 PM
To clarify: You probably still have multiple professors each of whom has many students in both the apprenticeship and English systems, but one of them is assigned to have a closer teaching relationship with you. In the German system, all your professors are pretty much equally (which is to say, not very) responsible for you. Though you may independently develop a closer relationship with one, it's not required or expected.
Posted by: Froborr | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:03 PM
Oh my, that grad school link mmy put was kind of... triggery for me? Is that the right word?
Not that I'm mad or anything. It's just that my grad school wound obviously still hasn't healed yet. Not sure what to do about that either. Suggestions welcome. My hands are getting all shakey now.
It's not just humanities, apparently. I was in natural science, and I may have ruined my career. Not sure yet, but given that once I got out of grad school I was fired from my internship, then spent almost a year on unemployement, and now am an adjunct barely scraping by, um...
Well, and also how I came really close to killing myself a couple of times while I was in grad school because I was trying and failing to do what I had wanted to do since I was a little kid, which means I'm a complete worthless failure...
Anyway, if y'all have any more resources on grad school recovery you could post that would be awesome. I really should be in therapy right now but I can't afford it.
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:06 PM
@hapax: when I left my PhD program (ABD)
ah, the dumping of the ABDs "on the market." A lot of programs underfund their PhDs and tell them that they will have 'no problem' finishing up their dissertation while holding down a full-time job.
The money as a visiting professor is so good (relative only to the pittance the grad student has been receiving in funding from their department) that the ABD just can't resist it.
Then they arrive to find out that
a) their office (if they have one alone) is almost impossible to get any work done in
b) the college has nothing close to the resources they had access to before and consequently even gathering data becomes an almost insuperable difficulty
c) their new home will not underwrite their research because it isn't relevant to their teaching AND their old home won't fund their research while they are at another institution
d) they can no longer get even the meagerest bit of attention from their committee now they are no longer physically present
e) they can't get any articles written either because when they are not exhausted from teaching/preparing/grading they are busy working on their dissertation
f) they reach the end of their contract period to find themselves no closer to completing their PhD and without any publications to show for it
g) then they have to go out on the market again but with a slightly tarnished ABD and a threadbare resume
h) when they finally finish their dissertation they fly across the country (at their own expense) to defend it and find when they arrive that none of their committee has bothered to read it yet. The next morning two of the committee members express "deep reservations" about a dissertation whose drafts they had never bothered to read and suggest that the candidate just rip it up and start over again.*
*This last did happen to someone I know.
Posted by: Mmy | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:07 PM
Froborr: "...but the English system has in common with the guild/apprenticeship system that you have a master/tutor/advisor who is particularly and personally tasked with your development, while in the German system you have multiple professors each of whom has many students, so it makes sense it would be less personal."
I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong with grad school for me, but my inability to find any advisors that clicked well was probably a big part of it. I knew I was in trouble when my official advisor asked me why am I in grad school anyway and suggested maybe I should just go back to working at Barnes and Noble, and just go birdwatching on the weekends.
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:12 PM
[[hapax: For some reason, professional graduate programs seem to be better in that respect. Don't get me wrong, they can be BRUTAL, but it seems somehow ... more impersonal, in a way. At least in my experience, it doesn't get into your head the way the academic departments seem to.]]
Perhaps it's the way academic departments make you feel if you're, say, not one of them. I felt rather out-of-place once I realized that I didn't get my PhD, as if somehow I was inferior.
Posted by: sarah | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:20 PM
I just found out that Fringe has been renewed for a fourth season. Not to derail, and I'm not sure if there are fans here or not. But I am so absurdly happy about it, I nearly cried.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:32 PM
It's interesting: I was miserable but in a great department in undergrad (which had more to do with being in a small school in the country rather than a nice big university where I could find a karass), and happy in a somewhat challenging department in grad school. I don't know if I could have predicted these things in advance, but the flags (both red and green) were pretty obvious when they happened:
* Undergrad department allowed students to veto new hires, even though they didn't know it was coming. The profs welcomed our input and took it to heart, and ended up hiring someone we were all happy with. I can't tell you how happy all the students were once we found out that our opinions mattered.
* Conversely, the grad department didn't listen to any of the complaints about the differing standards for men and women when they were doing hiring. The sexism was really blatant: the men they brought in had fewer publication records and no teaching plans where the women had both, and the men got hired. When we complained, they got in a bidding war with another university over a female grad student with fewer publications than any of the female grad students in our department (but from an Ivy) and could not see why this would peeve us off.
* My grad department was far better than one a friend went to in the same discipline, though: if you got ill and were a woman, you got pushed out. Evil is not too strong of a word for those people.
Somehow, all of this was much more obvious to me than my post-academic toxic workplaces. Maybe it's just because I have an academic mindset, or perhaps the business world has more subtle primate dynamics that I can't pick up, but toxic academic departments got me articulately angry but toxic workplaces just got me sad and self-hating.
Posted by: RP | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:40 PM
Is it wrong that I seriously wish Peterson Toscano wasn't the main public face of Beyond Ex-Gay? His play, "Tranfigurations," is horribly transphobic. Not intentionally, I think, but extremely essentializing... It turns Biblical characters into trans sideshows. And then when I went to his blog to politely express criticism, i was told that I was a troll, and anyway he had "trans friends who had no problem with it." Yes, well, I have trans friends who *did.*
Sorry, I know it's off-topic. If it weren't his baby, I'd be more comfortable with participating.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:43 PM
Not that "I have friends who..." is a real argument. That was sarcasm. I was just kinda put off by the whole thing.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:45 PM
For some reason, professional graduate programs seem to be better in that respect. Don't get me wrong, they can be BRUTAL, but it seems somehow ... more impersonal, in a way. At least in my experience, it doesn't get into your head the way the academic departments seem to.
So true. This was precisely my experience. My original MA (in a professional field) was far, far better than the academic departments I ended up in.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:47 PM
@Neohippie: (i)I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong with grad school for me, but my inability to find any advisors that clicked well was probably a big part of it. I knew I was in trouble when my official advisor asked me why am I in grad school anyway and suggested maybe I should just go back to working at Barnes and Noble, and just go birdwatching on the weekends.
No, that goes beyond not clicking. That's abusive. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. In my experience, you get so isolated within the department that you start to wonder if the people who are mistreating you are right. I don't know how recently this happened to you, but I left in the summer of 2009. The whole experience completely fucked with my confidence. I'm still coming out of it, I think.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:56 PM
MaryKaye's suggestions for large public rituals (religious or secular, anything that's meant to be participatory):
(1) If at all possible, do a dress rehearsal with the biggest group of volunteers you can, and make them pretend to be the expected crowd. So, if there are going to be 100 people on a circle, mark out a huge circle and spot your rehearsal staff around that. (Odds are, the celebrant can't make herself heard on the other side, and chants will separate horridly into different tempos. Then you will know you need drumming/sound amplification/a different plan.)
(2) Appoint at least 1 guardian per 50 people whose sole job is to troubleshoot. The guardian handles latecomers, cell phone calls, knocked-over candles, people who faint, temper outbursts, etc, etc. They should have NO other role in the ritual as then they won't be available when needed. Introduce them to the group: make their role clear.
(3) If you are outdoors or otherwise in uncontrolled space, make the physical boundaries of the ritual really clear. Lawn torches, rows of folding chairs, safety ribbon, whatever suits your site. You want everyone, both inside and outside, to know where the boundary is at all times.
(4) Teach chants and responses in advance, and keep them simple. For some reason, a small group can learn a new chant more easily than a big group.
(5) Appoint a stage manager to handle props and supplies; don't double this with a core ritual role.
(6) If children are involved, one or more extra guardians are probably needed.
(7) Any large group is likely to have vegetarians or vegans, people with allergies, people with celiac disease. Think very carefully before making food a required part of participation, and if you do, stick with carefully chosen foods--rice cakes are okay for most people, or apples, pears, peaches. Similarly, be circumspect with incense and anointing oils.
(8) There should be a clear grounding activity either during the last part of the ritual or immediately afterwards: sitting or lying on the ground, eating, meditating, washing are some possibilities. At any big ritual you will have people who aren't sure what to do with the ritual energy when they have it, and it's unkind to send them home "buzzed".
Most of these apply to smaller rituals involving strangers, too. We have found a guardian invaluable for any group, any size, though for tiny groups they usually have to be a participant/guardian. Above around 20-25 I would go for a committed guardian who does nothing else. That's probably the single most valuable lesson I've learned from doing public rituals. Our guardian may even have saved our lives once, the night the church furnace chimney collapsed and the building started to fill with carbon monoxide--he was the one who heard complaints of a funny smell, investigated, and ordered the evacuation.
One last thing--even if you have an awesome guardian, it's usually a good idea to rotate the role. It gets exhausting.
Posted by: MaryKaye | Mar 25, 2011 at 04:57 PM
Sorry, I *did* manage to mess up the html on that post. Once more:
@Neohippie: I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong with grad school for me, but my inability to find any advisors that clicked well was probably a big part of it. I knew I was in trouble when my official advisor asked me why am I in grad school anyway and suggested maybe I should just go back to working at Barnes and Noble, and just go birdwatching on the weekends.
No, that goes beyond not clicking. That's abusive. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. In my experience, you get so isolated within the department that you start to wonder if the people who are mistreating you are right. I don't know how recently this happened to you, but I left in the summer of 2009. The whole experience completely fucked with my confidence. I'm still coming out of it, I think.
ETA: I have to add that I love how they throw lots of little digs into this kind of thing. "Work at Barnes & Noble," "go birdwatching." In other words: "You're one of the common folk. You don't belong here." Crushing at the time. But, well, for me... When I finally started despising those people as much as
To be honest, though? I *do* think I'd have tried to hurt myself if I'd remained in that program. The day I left, I'd never felt so free. So, at least for me, it's been a relief. And my life hasn't been great since, and making a living is definitely a struggle, particularly given the scarcity of jobs in my field where I live... But practically all of the people I've come into contact with since have seemed awesome in comparison. I hate the mind games they play in academia, and I don't deal well with passive aggression.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:03 PM
if you got ill and were a woman, you got pushed out. Evil is not too strong of a word for those people.
This is essentially what happened to me. I spoke out about things. I complained about that one class in which women and people of color were roundly mocked and insulted in trying to speak up in class. Then there was the time I gave a class presentation in a course that was very much not "in my area..." And the paper happened to be excellent, and when we took the mid-class break right before my presentation, five of the guys (two thirds of the class) stayed away for 45 minutes... And then came back and loudly heckled/mocked the whole thing. I took that seriously and complained about it. And then the director of grad studies (and teacher of that class!) said he found my insistence that "this cannot happen again" a "bit frightening." Seriously. Frightening. There was probably a bit of passion in my voice, but it ain't like I brandished a weapon or anything.
But when I was diagnosed with Lupus and asked for one semester of leave (unpaid!) to take care of my health, they didn't grant it. But the men in the program seemed to be coddled over the most minor illness. And excused for marginalizing the women and people of color. And we were named as the problem. Oh, btw, neohippie, I too got the lecture about how maybe I wasn't right for the program, I was obviously so unhappy... Never mind I had a 4.0 and a better publishing record than the rest of my cohort... It's sickening. And it's so *clearly* not a meritocracy, but about who plays the political game better. It's funny... Originally, I dreamed of being a professor because I hate small talk, and I thought I'd be free to speak openly and that differences would be embraced. Yeah, no.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:17 PM
@Kristin: I just found out that Fringe has been renewed for a fourth season.
Oh FSM that is the best news I have had all day.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Posted by: Mmy | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:19 PM
No, that goes beyond not clicking. That's abusive. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. In my experience, you get so isolated within the department that you start to wonder if the people who are mistreating you are right. I don't know how recently this happened to you, but I left in the summer of 2009. The whole experience completely fucked with my confidence. I'm still coming out of it, I think.
Thanks for your sympathy, Kristin. I graduated in December of 2009, which in some ways seems like a long time ago, but obviously I'm still not over it yet.
Another problem I may have had is I was just in the wrong program. Someone else menitoned professional vs. academic programs. My university had both, and when I entered I didn't quite understand the distinction between the two, both officially and also culturally (if you catch my drift).
One program was called "population and conservation biology" and one was called "wildlife biology." I had my BS in ecology and had no idea which of those I should pick (my understanding of the subject made it seem like hairsplitting to make those two things separate programs at all), until I was told that wildlife bio was a "good old boys club that only cares about deer for hunting, and that you don't want to be in if you're a woman" so I picked pop bio instead.
Pop bio turned out to be the more academic one, while wildlife bio turned out to be the more professional one (getting you into a career with, say, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, rather than being a tenured professor of biology at a university).
Anyway, I found this out much too late, and in retrospect I wonder why my advisors told me to just quit grad school instead of suggesting I change my major. I think it may have to do with the rivalry between the two programs. I was bored to tears doing ecological modeling on a computer or gene sequencing all the time instead of being out in the field, so they decided I was not cut out to be a biologist instead of suggesting that I needed to enter a more hands-on, "applied" field of biology. It was like they'd rather see me fail than hand me over to those redneck wildlife biologists.
(On the other hand, I'm sure the wildlife biology people saw the pop bio people as ivory tower elitists, but once I got changed to a non-thesis student I found myself able to take any classes I wanted to finish up my now-watered-down degree, so I nabbed some wildlife biology classes to fill out the rest of my credits, and boy were they ever FUN classes. Too bad it was too little too late though, because now I was just a reject from another department who couldn't handle a thesis and am just trying to finish up with the non-thesis option.)
Anyway, the moral of the story is be REALLY CAREFUL when picking a grad school program. Because once you're in, they will absorb your soul and you won't even be aware of any other options you may have!
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:19 PM
@Kristen: Is it wrong that I seriously wish Peterson Toscano wasn't the main public face of Beyond Ex-Gay? His play, "Tranfigurations," is horribly transphobic. Not intentionally, I think, but extremely essentializing... It turns Biblical characters into trans sideshows. And then when I went to his blog to politely express criticism, i was told that I was a troll, and anyway he had "trans friends who had no problem with it." Yes, well, I have trans friends who *did.*
You know, that's a side of Peterson I've never personally seen, and I'm more than a little shocked by your experience. Thank you for making me aware of it.
Posted by: Jarred | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:19 PM
@ Jarred: I was shocked by it too. Even though I never knew him personally, I always linked the blog and recommended it to people. Hopefully, that was out of character.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:27 PM
ETA: I have to add that I love how they throw lots of little digs into this kind of thing. "Work at Barnes & Noble," "go birdwatching." In other words: "You're one of the common folk. You don't belong here." Crushing at the time.
Yeah, that was totally the message. I worked at Barnes and Noble part time while I was an undergrad to pay my way through. I am a first generation college student, and wanted to get a job that was interesting and fulfilling rather than just for the sake of a paycheck. My mom also filled my head full of notions that I COULD do that, and worked hard to make sure I could go to college so I wouldn't follow in her footsteps as a career bank teller.
So it was a pretty devastating blow when I was told I wasn't cut out to be in that field, and I should consider just getting "a regular job", and if I like nature so much then I should just go birdwatching on my days off.
(Also, I don't want to diss retail workers. Thing is, I also really suck at it. Some people love those kinds of jobs, but I am a TERRIBLE salesperson and an introvert. The only reason my boss liked me was because I was more reliable than the teenagers that worked there, but a few of my coworkers actually liked working there and were very good at the job. I just wanted a job that I was good at too.)
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:32 PM
@mmy: Yes, I did a happy dance. I don't think I've ever been this excited about a TV show not getting the axe before. For some reason, I am *ridiculously* emotionally invested in this show, even for fandom. I was feeling *stressed out* about the writers not knowing and "ZOMG, what if they can't tie up loose ends in time?" Like I said, I'm absurdly excited about it.
@Neohippie: Anyway, the moral of the story is be REALLY CAREFUL when picking a grad school program. Because once you're in, they will absorb your soul and you won't even be aware of any other options you may have!
Yes, this can't be stressed enough. In my own case, I was so deeply in tune with the ways in which some religious practices can be coercive that I didn't even see this one coming. Long ago, I'd have found the article mmy posted from the Chronicle histrionic and ridiculous. That was before grad school destroyed my career, and before I saw it happen to a bunch of other people too. And before I started thinking about the fact that everyone I knew in the field (from that particular program--students and faculty) seemed to have a wretched, miserable life.
So, yeah, 2009. It does seem like it wasn't that long ago, doesn't it?
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:38 PM
Yeah, that was totally the message. I worked at Barnes and Noble part time while I was an undergrad to pay my way through. I am a first generation college student, and wanted to get a job that was interesting and fulfilling rather than just for the sake of a paycheck. My mom also filled my head full of notions that I COULD do that, and worked hard to make sure I could go to college so I wouldn't follow in her footsteps as a career bank teller.
So it was a pretty devastating blow when I was told I wasn't cut out to be in that field, and I should consider just getting "a regular job", and if I like nature so much then I should just go birdwatching on my days off.
(Also, I don't want to diss retail workers. Thing is, I also really suck at it. Some people love those kinds of jobs, but I am a TERRIBLE salesperson and an introvert. The only reason my boss liked me was because I was more reliable than the teenagers that worked there, but a few of my coworkers actually liked working there and were very good at the job. I just wanted a job that I was good at too.)
Oh, yeah, no, I don't think it's you (or me) dissing retail workers. I've done many of those jobs too (and also sucked at them. I even got fired on the first day of telemarketing one time.). The point is that *they* see anything else you could be doing as inferior. And, yeah, it's a *highly* class-influenced system... Even if the established professors have working class roots, they can be so out of touch by the time they get to that position that they don't realize that the rest of us have to, well, worry about money. I remember going to a reception that one of the professors held in his home, and seeing his *original Renoir* painting on the wall. Seriously, what kind of people--and how many--own Renoirs??? At my school, Philosophy profs were making overblown salaries--upwards of $100,000 per year. It was not Ivy League. It was just a snooty continental philosophy place.
I noticed this particularly when I switched from Poli Sci to Philosophy. I don't know if there's anything to it, but... At least, in Poli Sci, most people I knew were fairly practical and sympathetic about grad student poverty.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 05:48 PM
Oh, also @ Neohippie: Once I got out of that program and got myself back (so to speak), I felt a little glad that I wasn't a good fit for the place. Because, once I could think a little objectively about it, I realized that would have personal implications that I wouldn't like. I really was not "one of them." I mean, I am still dealing with the confidence problem that caused, and I sometimes have nightmares that involve those faculty members.
And what happened next was *hard,* but at least I felt a bit of relief on realizing that I no longer had to operate under the assumption that all of my teachers and colleagues were cruel, devious hacks--and that everyone was out to get me all the time. Because, actually, they're not (!) doing that to me out here in the world. And people operate under basic standards of professionalism.
I'm introverted and quiet and not exactly the life of the party, but I *don't* actually offend the sensibilities of "just folks" no matter what I do. And, no, my "tone" is really not universally experienced as "combative" by regular people (These were some of the department's problems with me.). I mean, even my Southern Baptist family here in the South is better about the queer thing than the "feminist scholars" I knew back in school. And the realization that every work environment for the rest of my life need not involve such unremitting misery--well, that's a relief.
There were two realizations that played into my decision not to fight to go back to school there: 1. I saw that I could be a lot less alienated for better money in practically any other job. And 2: The prospect of working with these people for the rest of my life made me feel awful (Continental philosophy is a small world in the US).
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 06:18 PM
Kristin: "Once I got out of that program and got myself back (so to speak), I felt a little glad that I wasn't a good fit for the place. Because, once I could think a little objectively about it, I realized that would have personal implications that I wouldn't like. I really was not "one of them.""
That's a good point, one that would be good for me to remember. One thing that seemed significant was that most of my professors didn't seem to be very happy or fulfilled people. I remember one time when one of my main professors waxed poetic about the "true immortality" of being published in a peer-reviewed journal, like that was his main goal in life; like that's what really makes a life meaningful. (He was a Dawkins-style millitant atheist too, and so that was also kind of a dig at people who believe in an afterlife.)
While I think that getting published is cool and all, but I don't know if it's the full measure of your worth as a person, or even the greatest legacy to leave posterity. I mean, really, even if I did manage to get some paper published on the population dynamics of juniper trees or whatever, does anybody really care about the person behind that name on a journal article? (Unless it's a person who is notable in some other ways besides that one journal article.)
And what happened next was *hard,* but at least I felt a bit of relief on realizing that I no longer had to operate under the assumption that all of my teachers and colleagues were cruel, devious hacks--and that everyone was out to get me all the time. Because, actually, they're not (!) doing that to me out here in the world. And people operate under basic standards of professionalism.
Well, I'm still a little too shell-shocked to think this way, myself, since I've only recently managed to get any kind of job since graduation (as a part-time adjunct teaching freshman bio at a community college). I'm still constantly worried that my boss really hates me. My heartrate still goes up every time I get an email from her, even though so far I've gotten no criticism at all. But I'm really dreading the evaluation at the end of the semester. I had a nightmare about it the other night, with boss telling me I was the worst adjunct they'd ever had.
What might really help would be to finally get another boss who thinks I'm awesome. I haven't had one of those since this summer internship I had in 2008, so it's becoming easier and easier to believe that was a fluke.
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 25, 2011 at 07:12 PM
Mary Kaye - thank you again. I'm going to copy that out and put it in my liturgical work notes. Sorry, btw, if my previous about deites/archetypes was too silly; I was trying to keep it light and may have gone overboard.
I'm going to be offline for a while; I'll see everyone again in early April. Until then, cheers!
Posted by: Literata | Mar 25, 2011 at 07:41 PM
What might really help would be to finally get another boss who thinks I'm awesome. I haven't had one of those since this summer internship I had in 2008, so it's becoming easier and easier to believe that was a fluke.
Same here. I'm kind of...dubiously self-employed at the moment. Living off of what I write, but I don't make much currently. I've had a couple of temp jobs. I probably need something more stable--and to continue to write on the side until I'm successful enough to live off it...
Oh, and the "true immortality" business made me gag. My department was all about the hero worship--and professors tended tended to wax poetic about practically everything. When they broke with the ideas of an old teacher, they'd describe the painful process of "breaking with their intellectual fathers." And, yeah, they'd say stuff like: "One day, Frau Gadamer and I--I was one of the Gadamers' adopted family members--were with Gamader at a tennis match. And he realized [insert some romantic thought about Hegel, I don't remember it anymore, but something to do with a tennis ball], and I saw in that moment how easily the play of ideas came to him. It was a beautiful moment teaching moment. Heidegger had been a great thinker and an imposing one, but *Gadamer* was just so alive." An aside: That was the professor who owned a Renoir and spoke scornfully of his working class family--and background.
Oh, and about the aspect of relief: I hope I didn't come across as pressuring you to feel that way too. I do have more hopeless days--and the main worry about self-employment is the health insurance issue (I can't get privately insured b/c of health problems). So, yes, I'm stresesd out. And I found a way of getting free health care through the medical hospital here, so it's not *that* serious right now.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 25, 2011 at 07:52 PM
I'm a housewife now. I began training for secretarial work when I was 14 or 15. I wanted to be the secretary who is the boss of all the other secretaries and the personal assistant to the man or woman behind the big desk. My dream job was in city administration or down at the courthouse. I even had this in mind while I was toying with a degree in anthropology: I assumed that whatever I got my degree in would be my love, but secretarial work would pay the bills and provide security. (As it happens, anthropology wasn't what I loved after all--if I ever get to go back to school, I want to be a folklorist.)
It took me almost 20 years to understand that some of my odd career decisions and outright brain farts were my subconscious trying to tell me that I didn't want do to the things that upper-level secretaries did. I do not grok the people management thing, for one. Also, I either show too much initiative or not enough; I am not good at having a boss.
It took me even longer to figure out that I had accumulated a shelf full of books about early childhood education and another shelf of classic children's books, plus a notebook (begun in early grade school) of "Why Are We Doing This Pointless Thing in School?" moments, because I wanted to be a homeschooler. I wanted to teach children at home.
Holy crap, I wanted to have children.
So here I am. There are days I want to run away and backpack across Europe, but this is where I'm supposed to be.
Unfortunately, housewifery is one of those things we only do if we settle. I get this all the time. What a load of crap. I tried doing what I was supposed to do with my intelligence and drive to excel and blah blah and I hated it. That tension is gone.
Posted by: Jenny Islander | Mar 25, 2011 at 07:59 PM
New guest post up on the main page of The Slacktiverse
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Mar 25, 2011 at 08:21 PM
Kristin: "Oh, and about the aspect of relief: I hope I didn't come across as pressuring you to feel that way too."
No, I didn't feel pressured. I just hope I can feel more relieved eventually, but apparently it's going to take time. It's one of those things where I know it on an intellectual level but not on a gut level yet. I know those professors were jerks, but I still feel bad for failing them.
Jenny Islander: "Unfortunately, housewifery is one of those things we only do if we settle. I get this all the time. What a load of crap. I tried doing what I was supposed to do with my intelligence and drive to excel and blah blah and I hated it. That tension is gone."
Good for you! I'm just starting to realize how hard it can be to separate what YOU want to do from what OTHER people want you to do (or even what you THINK other people want you to do).
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 25, 2011 at 08:38 PM
Something I'd say is that 'following orders' isn't necessarily how cults do things. Sometimes, I'm sure. But there's also the implied order: the lecture or sermon or seminar or book that talks in the abstract about how a truly spiritual/committed/righteous/healthy/individual/clear-sighted person will do such-and-such.
Oh, yes. I grew up Jehovah's Witness. I wouldn't call the Witnesses a cult, but there's definitely a lot of writing between the lines in The Watchtower.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Mar 25, 2011 at 09:01 PM
@ Kristin, neohippie, mmy, Jenny Islander and anyone I've managed to space: Please partake of the Empathy Tea and Sympathy Cookies (Iguana on the left, gluten-free on the right) over here in my small corner of the interwebs. You have all reminded me just how lucky I got to steer myself through grad school, and how easily I could have blown it. (Also, how utterly easy it would be for the fabulous department with which I am currently peripherally associated to blow itself away. Reminder needed, reminder noted.)
I did get lucky -- psych (and particularly neuropsych/CB) is a relatively new field, and the departments I studied in were marvelously supportive, egalitarian and tolerant of differences. I can't say there weren't issues -- class especially because the ability to GO to grad school is often a class issue -- but the ways issues got handled made all of the difference. I never got the "you're not suited for this" line -- when I considered dropping out for personal reasons, my department bent over backwards to help. But my secondary interest (history, specifically historical demography and socio-economic trends*) could have easily broken me if I'd made that my primary field.
I went to a barely funded state school, where the state's interest in higher ed pretty much ended with football and a healthy bidniz environment.** Looking back on it, the differences in funding between the departments was probably a big reason for the differences in cultures within the departments. Psych is relatively well funded -- research in psych has a good chance of being lucrative very quickly, so it attracts both private and public revenue streams, which means there's money for funding grad students and more research, and keeping the lights on. History... well, not so much. In my experience, the Hist. department acted like a population dependent on a marginal, resource poor environment (which that specific department, at that specific time, was): heavily invested in the hierarchy, unwilling to invest any resources in most of the population and treating the majority of that population as revenue streams. (Hist. grad students called themselves "serfs" and the Emeriti "Lord Qwerty" and "Lady Asdfgh", which should have been sufficient warning...) When I started there in the early 90s, the hist. department had been underfunded for decades, and what had started as a crisis had developed into a long emergency with little hope of restoration. Grad student survival in that department meant following exactly in the reigning Emeriti's footsteps, with their funding approval as the carrot and stick.
Since then, when I've swapped grad school tales with my peers, I keep noticing a running, sub rosa theme of poor funding. (I know. Anecdata. It appalls me, too. But if I had time to seriously study everything that catches in this sticky brain of mine, I'd have to be immortal.) Those of us who ended up on the science side of psych had much better experiences (not necessarily great. I don't think there's such a thing as EASY grad school.). It's the poverty argument all over again: groups without access to resources fare worse; those with resources accumulate more resources. I can't say a department's poverty causes abuse (brilliant departments can run on baling wire and bubble-gum) but they're strongly correlated. Dominance and money/resources are both social currency; maybe when there's enough resources to go around, domination becomes less emotionally necessary?***
And off topic: My apologies for vanishing and I hope I don't do so again, but I'm on day 36 of the Headache That Will Not End. (Yes, I'm getting medical care, and no, it's not a tumor. It seems to be a particularly treatment resistant sinus infection.) I am finding that chronic pain saps my energy awfully fast, meaning that things Not Work, Not Food and Not Necessary Chores are getting jettisoned. I hate it and hope that I can get it under control, but I am making no promises.
*Yes, I admit it, I wanted to be Hari Seldon when I grew up. And I'm really, really, really sorry for the pseudo-field called psychohistory. It's not my fault.
** Not THAT state, but another one of our National Laboratories for Bad Government.
*** Not that funding was the only difference: my psych departments were heavily weighted towards women, while the history departments were heavily male; history heavily weighted towards old money (since grad students were self-funded rather than departmentally funded) while psych had a lot of first college grads in family; the history departments were much older in terms of average age of faculty and average age of department and politically, they were at opposite ends of the spectrum... As usual, It's More Complicated Than That.
Posted by: CZEdwards | Mar 25, 2011 at 09:50 PM
Mary Kaye: "I do not believe I have ever had a bad experience with Brigid herself, only with her worshippers. I am very grateful for the novel--that was a wonderful, heady, scary, overwhelming experience and it remains probably the best thing I've ever written."
I found this very interesting. I have several friends who are Brigid worshippers and have never heard of any aspect of her as a perfectionist, but I can see how it can make sense with a deity associated with skilled crafts.
One thing I've learned is that pagan gods can have much the same problem as Jesus does. You can have Jesus worshippers like Fred and ones like Tim Lahaye who get VERY different messages from their deity.
It might not be quite as extreme with gods from polytheistic religions, since at least with those you get a choice of deity from a variety of options that are all considered valid, but still... well, look at one of my favorites: Odin. I see him as primarily a god of wisdom (and the willingness to make sacrifices to gain wisdom, and the Havamal has some pretty neat stuff of a Grandfatherly Sage Advice genre), but I've met other people who seem to latch onto his much scarier, violent aspects.
Someone else mentioned Freya as a goddess of supermodel-type beauty. Yeah, I've seen that too. I once found a whole website of Pornstar-Freya type art that I found pretty disturbing. Not exactly my idea of a Strong Independent Woman that I would like think of Freya as being.
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 25, 2011 at 09:55 PM
I just found out that Symbionic Titan* is being cancelled because it didn't have enough things in it for them to base toys on.
RAGE.
*If you're not familiar, it's an homage to 70s combining mecha anime made by the guy who did Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, and the good Clone Wars series (the 2d one). It's one of the best things on TV right now.
Posted by: Froborr | Mar 26, 2011 at 12:56 AM
Raj says: That someone as wise and strong as Kit could be drawn in - even temporarily - by such an organization really says something about the subtle power of such organizations.
That's a really comforting way to look at it. I've always been a little bit ashamed of my parents (or at least my dad, who was in his early 20s when he joined; it would have been my grandparents on my mother's side, since their whole family joined up in her early teens--yeah, I'm 3rd generation in that group on one side!) for having fallen in with a group like that. To me, some of the claims the group's leadership made about direct, new revelations from God and about the end of the world/civilization-as-we-know-it (so you better join our group, so you know how to survive!) seem really silly in retrospect. Or at least kind of out there. And yet...yeah, I can kind of see how they could be seductive. My dad still says to this day that he believes in the original revelations and ideas of the group, even though he also completely agrees that they fucked the hell up and he has apologized many times for having raised us in an emotionally unsafe environment. I guess he feels the original goals were idealistic, if far too prone to human corruption, or something. I disagree with him pretty strongly on this: I think most of the ideals were unworkable from the start. But I can see how some of them were an attempt to reach the numinous, mystical, spiritual world and connect it to daily life...which is a good thing to try to do, and something that my dad would totally find attractive.
(Aside: my dad the church history student and mystic...should totally meet hapax someday. You'd probably get along like a house afire. I would love to lurk in that discussion, omg.)
Anyway, so the more I realize how not-uncommon my family's experiences were, the more I can, maybe, stop feeling like we were somehow Bad People for not knowing what we were getting into, or for staying so long. (Without of course saying we're not responsible for times we hurt other people, of course.)
*****
Hmm, QUILTBAG as a noun. Yeah, it does sound a bit off--it probably doesn't bug me as much as some, but given that a "quiltbag", while a wonderful thing, is an object, and we're people who've often not been treated as people...yeah. I'll try to remember to use it as an adjective. (I do so love having something pronouncable made out of the alphabet soup!)
Posted by: Nenya | Mar 26, 2011 at 05:27 AM
Anyway, so the more I realize how not-uncommon my family's experiences were, the more I can, maybe, stop feeling like we were somehow Bad People for not knowing what we were getting into, or for staying so long. (Without of course saying we're not responsible for times we hurt other people, of course.)
I have a dog in this fight, of course, but I think that most people in problematic groups like this are definitely not Bad People. In fact, I'd say the odds favour them being good people: without a lot of lower-tier people who are obviously nice, sincere, moral and kind, the social pressure to follow the leaders' odder ideas wouldn't exist. No nice followers, no cult.
I think I may do another post later on the persuasiveness of the cult atmosphere, but my basic opinion is that groups like these work by playing on people's virtues rather than their vices. People who aspire to be spiritual and moral, people who want to belong to a good and kind community, people who want to improve themselves and learn ... these are the people cults work on. Cults don't 'brainwash' people by force or because they're weak: they simply zero in on some prosocial traits and game them.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Mar 26, 2011 at 05:59 AM
One thing I've learned is that pagan gods can have much the same problem as Jesus does. You can have Jesus worshippers like Fred and ones like Tim Lahaye who get VERY different messages from their deity.
I don't find it to be a problem. More a feature than a bug. People need different things from gods, so of course they see them differently.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, who is very tired | Mar 26, 2011 at 07:09 AM
MadGastronomer: "I don't find it to be a problem. More a feature than a bug. People need different things from gods, so of course they see them differently."
Well, as a former atheist (and on some days, current atheist) I find it to be problematic, because it seems to indicate that they aren't real. I mean, if everyone just sees what they want to see in a god, then kinda shows they don't have any separate, objective existence, right? If they did, you'd expect to see SOME consistency in how they interact with worshippers. (Basically, how come Odin or Brigid or Jesus or whoever don't pop up and say, "hey y'all, I'm not really like that"?)
Sorry if this is going off on a tangent. I don't expect any answers to this. It's just something I tend to think about a lot when I'm having yet another dark night of the soul. I wish it didn't bother me, but it does.
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 26, 2011 at 11:29 AM
@CSHolocene Those of us who ended up on the science side of psych had much better experiences (not necessarily great. I don't think there's such a thing as EASY grad school.). It's the poverty argument all over again: groups without access to resources fare worse; those with resources accumulate more resources.
Thanks for what you wrote. I *am* glad that this doesn't happen to everyone. I've actually called what happened to me "hazing" in the past.
I definitely believe that the money issue has a lot to do with these problems, but I don't think that was the case at my school.. And, yes, the sciences are definitely better funded in general. I think this was somewhat true of what I've called my Functional Program in political science. The people who wanted to be statisticians were extremely well-funded. Those of us who were interested in political theory and anthropological research were not as well-funded. And that created some resentment, and it's definitely true that some of the theory/constructivism folks were a bit more disgruntled than the positivists... At the time, I thought it all was a bit fucked up, but I've since changed my perspective. That no one actively bullied or worked to sabotage students was *a big deal,* and something I shouldn't have taken for granted.
But the problems with the next department were not *really* about money. I didn't make enough money to cover my escalating healthcare costs, *but* our department was considered the "best" place for continental philosophy in the US. They were drawing in loads of famous people by giving them huge salaries (another reason I was willing to go there despite the scandals I heard about). We made more money--and were guaranteed five years of funding. The other humanities were not. We made more than most of the social scientists as well.
I believe that the problems there had to do with a corrupt and very cruel administration. Class issues came up, of course, but mostly in my department, and mostly because Americans who get advanced education in philosophy usually do it because they can *afford* to.
But anyway... I'm not hugely social, but I *did* make an effort to ensure that most of my friends were people outside the department. And it really shocked me to see how bad the sciences students were treated. Along with basically *every* other field at the place. I knew three people of color in *three* different fields who were summarily kicked out because they were told they were "too angry" and "not a good fit" (fwiw, these were some of the most affable, pleasant people I've ever known.). I had another friend in the Chemistry department who had been there for ten--ten!--years because his advisor wouldn't let him change his experiment or sign off on any of his work. He's been dutifully teaching classes for years, but they're not even giving him *that* source of funding anymore. And another person I knew in the Chemistry department was sexually harassed by her first advisor, so she had to completely change subfields and do *all* of the coursework over again. Her next advisor wasn't all that great, but at least he didn't harass her outright.
I never thought that an administration had so much influence over what happens in individual departments, but it certainly did there.
In any case, I mean... On some level, I guess I'm kind of drawn to outcasts, being one myself. But these were all people who had impeccable tact and professionalism and all of it... I believe the administration created a hostile environment for students. I *did* find out from an administrator that they were all instructed to fail as many students as they could *before* they go ABD because that doesn't show up in their records, but failed PhD candidates do. That particular administrator, I think, hated his job. He kept saying, "I'm probably going to get fired over this," when he gave me information that I needed for my lawyer. I think he probably wanted to. He knew I was going to use the information.
Another thing he told me... And I think this was the day I realized I'd not been totally paranoid, and that sickening feeling I had about people out to get me was *actually* based in fact. He read a letter to me that the graduate school director sent him. It included multiple counts of trumped up charges--and outright lies about my alleged "misconduct." For example, he noted that I didn't send him my course syllabus until the night before the class started. What he left out, though, is that we weren't *supposed* to send him the syllabus, and *none* of the other students did, and I was just doing it to be responsible and make sure to cover my bases. Because I was doing the dual PhD in Women's Studies, he let me opt out of a one-credit seminar that he was teaching that year so I could do a WMST course. In his letter, he wrote that I had "refused" to fulfill the requirements of the philosophy department, and this was his example.
Oh, and... One last thing? The thing where I just decided to up and go? They fucked with the students in my course. I took a week off when I got mono and a never ending bronchitis infection (I supposedly had allotted sick time, though no one ever took it but me. It was not encouraged). So, the head of the undergraduate department agreed to fill in for me. My classes had been going great, but I started getting weird, insolent notes from students complaining that my requirements were too "demanding." I knew something had happened, but it wasn't until another student filled in on the last day--and called to tell me what happened--that I knew. The undergrad administrator had told my students that she had *never* heard of an undergrad class having both a final exam *and* a final paper. I couldn't believe it! First of all, I never had an undergrad class *without* both items, and a quick polling of academic friends revealed that, yeah, the final paper/final exam thing is pretty common. She told them that my requirements were "ridiculously demanding" and that they should bring this up with me as soon as I got back. Which of course they did. In the middle of class. I realized then that these people had *no* sense of professionalism whatsoever--and if I couldn't even depend on that, I couldn't work with them.
And I caved 'cause it wasn't worth the fight at that point. I mean, seriously, it would mean less grading for me, so whatever. I told them that my plan all along had been to let them choose either the final exam *or* the paper--or both... So, anyway, yeah, I caved. My one good friend in the program told me that continuing to act with integrity was just getting me more and more into trouble--which was true. And at the end of the day, I don't really particularly care that they didn't have both assignments. I *do* care that an administrator of the department went into my class and undermined my authority as the teacher. Which led mostly the men in the class to believe that they could demand whatever they wanted of me (mostly just to give them an extension on the paper, take the exam late... People were just trying to take advantage of me. She basically poisoned both of my classes, which I think was the most hurtful thing that they did to me because I *loved* teaching, and it was the one thing I had in the department that they hadn't destroyed.
Posted by: Kristin | Mar 26, 2011 at 12:17 PM
The longer I read, the more I want to talk to Jason for a long time. You sound a lot like me. Sometimes I see what you (Jason) did there, and I want to say, no, right here, change this. Sometimes, I don't see, and then Jason gets called out, and I go wait, what happened?
Sorry, Jason. Identifying with someone's problems is another thing that makes people uncomfortable around me. I reckon you understand.
Posted by: Thalia | Mar 26, 2011 at 12:32 PM
Well, as a former atheist (and on some days, current atheist) I find it to be problematic, because it seems to indicate that they aren't real. I mean, if everyone just sees what they want to see in a god, then kinda shows they don't have any separate, objective existence, right? If they did, you'd expect to see SOME consistency in how they interact with worshippers.
*blink* What, you've never encountered people of whom others have wildly different views and opinions? Or people who've changed greatly over time. Of course, gods are not people, or indeed anything else, and their natures are not the same, so no, I don't find it to be any kind of evidence against their existence. Think about people's wide variation in the connotations they hold on words, especially words of abstract concepts. Think about the vast differences in the definitions of art or interpretation of specific works of art. Do you consider these things evidence that concepts or works of art do not exist?
And there is a certain kind of consistency -- what they're gods of, certain patterns of symbol and behavior -- it's specifics that vary.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, who is very tired | Mar 26, 2011 at 02:31 PM
Think about people's wide variation in the connotations they hold on words, especially words of abstract concepts. Think about the vast differences in the definitions of art or interpretation of specific works of art. Do you consider these things evidence that concepts or works of art do not exist?
Hmm, you may have a point there. I didn't mean to get into an argument or anything. I could be totally wrong. It's probably the depression talking. (That is, since I like paganism, my depression likes to tell me it's a bunch of silly BS, and comes up with stuff like this about why. It's not always reliable, but sometimes it's hard to tell.)
Posted by: Neohippie | Mar 26, 2011 at 04:04 PM
Neohippie, I don't know if it's your depression or not, but I would say that the hypothesis lacks . . . depth, maybe, or critical thinking, or something. It doesn't sound like a carefully considered position, it sounds like something a 17yo who's just decided to reject all religion comes up with. I don't mean to get into an argument, either, or to be insulting here, but I know when I'm depressed (or manic) and I come up with really ridiculous notions, it can help me for someone to say to me, "No, that's really stupid, you're not thinking clearly." (Sometimes, but not always, more gently than that.) So I hope I'm not out of line, and I apologize if I am.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, who is very tired | Mar 26, 2011 at 04:10 PM
Oh, such a thing is evil alright. And yet there's the Milgram experiment: random ordinary people can and will electrocute to death a complete stranger, begging for mercy, at the request of someone wearing a lab coat. Sure, you would never do such things, just as you would never become a Vietcong/terrorist/whatever supporter. So go ahead, declare such people as evil and... wait a minute.
It's easy to judge. Such judgement typically leads to nothing except self-glorification ("I wouldn't have done this") with nothing to back it up. Leave judgement of actions to courts, and concentrate on guarding against your own dark side - for that darkness can and will use completely unfounded self-rightenousness to make you its slave.
But unless you're a veteran, you really can't judge soldiers, because you don't know if you'd done any better. You can say some action is wrong, but you don't know if you'd done it as well. So go easy on that judgement thing, okay?
Amusingly enough, in my darkest hours, I've found that pride - the very deadliest of the seven mortal sins - has often been my best ally: "I'm better than this, I will not lower myself to that level!" Just goes to show that no aspect of creation is inherently evil, I guess.
Posted by: Hartti | Mar 26, 2011 at 04:57 PM
Civilians are in a way better position to judge veterans, not because they have any special insight into combat situations, but because it's really troublesome to let people who spend most of their time being taught to back up your fellow service members no matter what sit in judgment over people they are trained to react 100% favorably toward.
This sort of situation leaves to "thin blue line" behaviors in police departments and encourages cover-ups and frames, so why does everyone assume it'll lead to justice instead of a "thin green line" in the military?
You don't even have to say "I definitely wouldn't have snapped and killed a bunch of civilians and then tried to cover it up" to judge someone doing that, it's enough that they did it. Not judging members of the military who commit atrocities is valuing their lives over the lives of everyone they killed.
Posted by: Madhabmatics | Mar 26, 2011 at 05:29 PM
Amen, Madhabmatics.
Posted by: Nenya | Mar 27, 2011 at 03:46 AM
What Madhabmatics said. Also, Hartti, it doesn't matter if we would also have done it if we were in that situation. It is enough to say that it's wrong, and would be wrong even if we did it, too. I'm not perfect, I've done wrong things; that doesn't prevent me from judging others.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, who is very tired | Mar 27, 2011 at 09:34 AM
pride - the very deadliest of the seven mortal sins
And that right there is the strongest reason why Christianity didn't work for me.
Posted by: Lonespark | Mar 27, 2011 at 09:48 AM
The first This week in The Slacktiverse post has just been published on the main page.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Mar 27, 2011 at 05:27 PM
@kisekileia - No matter what your neural wiring, years and years of ill treatment will leave a person damaged. I'm neurotypical, but naturally offbeat and sensitive enough that I was an excellent target for people to treat poorly. I'm so, so sorry that you've had such awful treatment from people. How terrible is it that when I hear a story like that now, I sort of sigh and nod and think "with how the world is today, it's to be expected, isn't it...?" And then I think that all us strange, hurt people should all go purchase our own island, and then I realize that we've got the Internet...
Sometimes, one caring person can make all the difference. And sometimes it's a succession of caring people, like a string of little lights to lead you out of the darkness.
(And ooh, another LARPer! Another WoD LARPer! :D How very exciting to hear! It's an excellent social outlet. A great way to meet people you share interests with... and heck, a great way to practice being social, in an In Character context. Also, a great excuse to buy highly impractical clothing. "But I need it for my new Ventrue!" is why I've just plunked down for a new wig... Ahem. You with any particular club at the moment, or just playing in a troupe game? I'm up in Canada, and part of the soon-to-be-renamed Camarilla.)
Posted by: Lampdevil | Mar 28, 2011 at 11:12 AM
New The Slacktiverse guest post up on the front page.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Mar 28, 2011 at 12:31 PM
Re judging of soldiers: it seems to me that "judge" is overloaded. We should be able to say "this person did these things, and that is not acceptable" without also saying "so this is a Bad Person" - perhaps the foulup is in our training or organisational structure that encourages people at the sharp end to go Milgram-follower when things get tough.
Posted by: Firedrake | Mar 29, 2011 at 04:51 AM
Hatti :
Do you hold this position in general or do just soldiers and other members of groups you hold in high regard get this courtesy ?
If I'd been in those soldiers' position I might have done the same. And if I had I should have gone to prison, and the whole military culture I'd been in that enabled and covered up my crimes should have been overhauled. Like that's gonna happen in today's US...
By the way, after going back to the first page to see the comment that elicited this response I see that said comment goes at great length to put the abuses in the context of the US military, its recruitment and training policies and society in general. The word "the system" comes up a few times. I'm all for hauling out the Milgram when I feel people are being too condemning and judgemental but in this case it's clear the commenter was aware of how the people they were judging had been put into those situations by circumstance and explicitly focused on actions and the larger system involved instead of just the individual. You assumption that this :
"Sure, you would never do such things, just as you would never become a Vietcong/terrorist/whatever supporter. So go ahead, declare such people as evil and... wait a minute."
represented that commenter's point of view is simply contrary to the text. Said commenter never even brought up "evil". Indeed, in a subsequent post they brought up "judge not lest ye be judged" and the impulse to judge while thinking oneself immune to criticism.
I'd somehow missed that comment on first reading so thanks your bringing it to my attention. I'm hoping your post was a reflexive reaction to that comment's first few lines because otherwise I really don't know what to make of your reaction.
I totally agree. I disagree with the assumption that anyone who criticises anything is saying "so this is a Bad Person" and needs to be chided. In this case it was clearly not so. And I certainly don't think soldiers should be the only ones this applies to.Firedrake :
Posted by: Caravelle | Mar 29, 2011 at 08:29 AM
Madgastronomer :
I do think it's evidence that concepts such as "art" might not have a single consistent meaning.
And there's also the issue of how much disagreement we'd expect on fundamental propreties of the outside world versus abstract, subjective concepts. But what this means for gods completely depends on what version of gods we're talking about and it only raises issues for some of them.
Posted by: Caravelle | Mar 29, 2011 at 09:01 AM
OMG, a week later I discover people have been talking about RPGs (in amongst grad school politics, but that's more my fiancee's thing)!
Deirdre said, "(Games I own include Red Dwarf, Arrowflight, BtVS, Paranoia, Monsters and Other Childish Things, and Serenity. One day I will get up enough courage to run a Paranoia game...)"
I didn't think anyone else even knew about Arrowflight. I thought it was interesting for its time, except perhaps for the Native American Elves. I think I sold it and the one supplement off awhile ago though.
Also, not talking about WoD... I still have nightmares about the Mage "whiskey flask" debate. *shudders*
Posted by: Ysidro | Mar 30, 2011 at 12:06 PM
*blink* Lampdevil, it's entirely possible that we know each other IRL. I'm a Canadian Camarilla member as well, Dire Epiphany domain. (BTW, my having Asperger's is NOT something I openly discuss in the Cam. Some people know about it, but I prefer to keep tabs on exactly who knows what.)
Posted by: kisekileia | Mar 31, 2011 at 09:28 AM
...oh! Dire Epiphany! Cool! It's a small Internet after all, ain't it? I'm from the House of Dark Tidings domain. (And hey, s'cool, I can understand how there are some things that are out and about with everyone and some things that aren't. Hey, if you wanna take this off-board, pop me an e-mail at ptmducky at hotmail dot com? :D)
Posted by: Lampdevil | Mar 31, 2011 at 10:12 AM
Kit, thank you for sharing this. It struck light into something I have been dimly puzzling for some time.
Posted by: zigforas | Apr 01, 2011 at 10:23 PM
The Serenity game is so much fun, and really lends itself to in-depth character building.
Plus, there is now an offical Map of the Verse!
Posted by: Ruby | Apr 01, 2011 at 11:27 PM
Kit wrote: 'I think I may do another post later on the persuasiveness of the cult atmosphere, ...'
It would be good if you did; you have experience of a cult, and you write well.
I also have a dog in this fight, I'm an ex-member of the FWBO, and have been criticising them for years on the web, trying to warn people about them, and about cults in general, but with only limited success. Sometimes I think I might be a bit too polemical and gung-ho, maybe a more softly-softly writing style like yours could work better. So I hope you do have the time and the inclination to write more.
Posted by: Pensive Hamster | Apr 16, 2011 at 02:37 PM
Hey Lampdevil, you're a canadian wod larper, do you know Christian Farrer or Katherine Misiurka?
Posted by: Madhabmatics | Apr 16, 2011 at 03:02 PM