Linkspam

[white_hart]

A History of the World in Admin - I am now a professional administrator, and this is spot on about both the vital importance of administration, and the reasons why privileged (mostly) white (predominantly male) people don't understand that, and why that's one of the pieces in the Brexit clusterfuck jigsaw.

(I also encountered a classic example of this in the wild recently, in the shape of a flowchart for a new process which said "HR will do X", as if HR was a magic thing that just happened and not made up of already-busy people who might not be able to find time to do X on top of all the things they already have to do.)

SFF knitting fans may like this pattern for Jedao gloves, inspired by Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire.

I was very sad to hear of Jeremy Hardy's death last week, as he was one of my very favourite comedians (and possibly the one I've seen live the most times, which is some consolation). Of all the tributes and obituaries, I did like this one by Mark Steel, though you do have to put up with the Independent's appallingly ad-heavy site to read it.

John Crace's account of living with anxiety struck a lot of chords with me.

This advice column from Autostraddle, How Do I Tell If I'm A Butch Cis Woman Or A Trans Non-Binary Person?, was really, really helpful as I continue my ongoing process of trying to work out whether I'm uncomfortable with femaleness per se or just femininity. (I was particularly struck by "dysphoria isn’t the exclusive domain of trans people — it’s entirely valid and actually quite common for a cis person to feel uncomfortable in their body", which has shifted everything into a much clearer focus.)

Ellen Kushner's short story The Duke of Riverside is part-prequel part-sequel to Swordspoint, and made me really want to read the other books in the series.

Arkady Martine's The Hydraulic Emperor is a fabulous story about collecting and sacrifice and what the far, far future of cinema could look like.

For the_comfortable_courtesan and her fans, How the Pre-Raphaelites became obsessed with the wombatt.

How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans is a good summary of the rise of the TERFs, and the links between anti-trans ideology and colonialism. (This Twitter thread on TERFism as one of many gateways to white supremacy makes a similar point. Basically, Pterry had it right; evil begins when you start to treat people as things. It doesn’t matter so much which group of people you decide are less than human because they’re different from you somehow, it’s always the first step on the same road.)

The author of this article on depictions of Queen Anne's body seems to think that Sellar and Yeatman's depiction of Queen Anne as dead all the time was their own invention, rather than being an obvious application of their "all the history you can remember" approach to the idiom "and Queen Anne's dead", but is otherwise an interesting look at the subject.

Pixar's sweet new short film Purl looks at sexism in the workplace from the point of view of Purl, an animated ball of yarn.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm terrified of brioche stitch, but those gloves are tempting.

[white_hart]

I've never actually tried it, though I really feel I should...

[cmcmck]

It is by no means the exclusive domain but I suspect that dysphoric trans people (as I was) are the most at risk of self harm or suicide.

That style of dysphoria invariably becomes impossible to deal with at some point. I got as far as fifteen then something was going to break if I didn't deal.

What real steams me about TERFs is that they are doing precisely what was done to gay and lesbian people a generation or so earlier.
To misquote a well known phrase- some people are trans- get over it!

[perennialanna]

It's not a misquote if Stonewall have had the t-shirts printed...

[cmcmck]

Stonewall?

Ah, you mean S'onewall?

Please excuse me- I think my cynicism's showing.

[white_hart]

I’m sure that, like all things, dysphoria has different degrees, and it must be much harder when the physical wrongness is coupled with being misgendered all the time, but I found it really helpful to know that my sometimes quite intense dysphoria about my chest doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than me having sometimes quite intense dysphoria about my chest.

The TERF rhetoric really is depressingly similar to the Clause 28-era anti-LGBT rhetoric.

[cmcmck]

Exactly! In my case it meant that everything was wrong all the time and that isn't easy.

It is horribly familiar and their connections with the Christianist far right really depresses me especially when they seem incapable of seeing that it is so.

The real mystery with all of it is that if I'm not saying how do they suppose they'll know?

[white_hart]

They clearly think that they can tell whether people are trans or not without looking, which I gather has caused problems for butch cis women who have received abuse for going into women's toilets and been accused of being men.

The connection with the Christian right is just so completely, depressingly unsurprising.

[cmcmck]

All for the high crime and misdemeanour of being tall in most cases. I happen to be just 5'6" which rather blows their assumptions out of the water! :o)

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you for that butch vs non-binary article; it's not quite the question I'm asking myself but it's so much closer than most of what I've been able to find. It was really good for me to read too.

[white_hart]

I think, from previous conversations here, that we have been asking similar questions, so I’m glad you found it helpful too.

[fencesitting]

I read the Cis Butch or Trans? article earlier in the week, and my reaction was: am I allowed, as a straight person, to call myself butch now? It's always been how I wished to identify, even though I'm definitely not gay (or even bi).

And then I went and ranted to A about The Patriarchy and clothing.

[cosmolinguist]

Gender presentation isn't anything to do with your sexuality. You can absolutely be straight and butch. Lots of people are. :)

[fencesitting]

@white_hart nailed it, I didn't want to appropriate an identity but I think times have moved on when I wasn't paying attention. :)

[white_hart]

I’ve seen people claiming that straight women claiming butch/femme gender presentation is appropriating lesbian culture, but I’m inclined to disagree; if we’re accepting that gender presentation is completely separate from gender identity it seems ridiculous to tie it to sexuality as if cishet women were all the same and performative femininity was somehow innate in them.

[cmcmck]

You should see some of them tie themselves in knots over my being trans and straight- to the extent of being married (whisper it) to a GUY, even! :o)

[fencesitting]

Back when the idea of being butch initially presented itself to me, it was a Very Different Time, and yeah, I didn't want to appropriate an identity. (After I shaved my head and went to uni, lots of people thought I was a lesbian, which I found flattering!)

[maia]

A History of the World in Admin - I am now a professional administrator, and this is spot on about both the vital importance of administration, and the reasons why privileged (mostly) white (predominantly male) people don't understand that

Yes, yes, yes, yes, OMG yes!!!!!

[alithea]

Oh, I'd managed to miss the Riverside story and it's an excellent one - thank you! I do wish she'd hurry up and write the Jessica Campion novel, I'm suffering withdrawal now Tremontaine is finished.

[white_hart]

I definitely need to read the other books sometime!

[alithea]

You do, yes :) Although if you're like all the other fans I know of in our joint circles, you'll find 'The Fall of the Kings' disappointing in comparison with the others.

There are quite a few short stories although some of them take some tracking down - I don't think she ever found a publisher for 'The Man with the Knives', I have an illustrated chap book version produced by a friend of hers that Jenn had to buy and send from the States because they didn't ship internationally.

[norfolkian]

Totally agree about the importance of admin. I've worked as an administrator for quite a long time and my job now still involves quite a lot of admin. I've also worked with the entire range of colleagues and managers, from people who treat you like crap because they believe they are somehow better than you, to people who get it and are utterly appreciative of what you do.

I was also very saddened by the death of Jeremy Hardy - sadly I never did see him live.