Three Interesting Things

1. I agree with this post about "Younger" in that is clearly a patchy show at the beginning, but there are moments that are so true and not addressed enough in TV that is is, for now at least, carrying me through the rest.

2. A twelve year old noticed an unfortunate trend in video games, that it literally cost more to play as a girl, and her Op-Ed has gotten the notice of some game makers.

3. And yes, million times to this post about Iris continually being left in the dark on "The Flash".  I'm trying to hang in there until they inevitably (right, universe?) do a musical episode (because, come on, who would waste all that musical talent) but this insistence by all the male people that Iris is "safer" (though she's already been kidnapped and threatened, so, explain that again) by not knowing is not believable.  It was barely believable at the start. It's really unbelievable now. 

The Two R's

One of the things I've noticed in recent weeks is that there are some similarities in some reactions to issues surrounding rape and racism. People of color are accustomed to folks searching out the reasons behind their mistreatment, explaining away centuries of racism with suggestions like well, stop wearing that hoodie, pull up your pants, and stop the teen pregnancy and then people won't mistreat you.  Totally ignoring the numbers that belie this*, it is a kneejerk response that refuses to look the racism in the eye and seeks to explain it away based on the behavior of the victim. 

Similarly, rape culture is so pervasive that while people maybe stopped asking if every rape victim is a virgin (I think) but there are still discussions about what the victim wore, how intoxicated the victim was (whether or not that intoxication was by choice), and that no, that person is so nice, it was probably just a misunderstanding. 

And so here's the thing.  When you are constantly confronted with these biased assumptions and accompanying microaggressions and people constantly try to explain away the things you know to be wrong as misunderstandings, well, it's hard.  You may start to internalize it, to buy into it, to think you acted, spoke, or dressed in such a way a invite this behavior.  You may try to act, speak, and dress in the ways that have been deemed safe.  And, well, sadly you will discover that people still treat you pretty much the same as before.  You may try to dig deeper into the hierarchy, to start examining those around you through this filtered lens, judging people as behaving, speaking, and dressing correctly or not, to prove you understand the difference.  And who knows, it may mean you go days or weeks before the next incident. 

And another choice is to discard all these respectability politics.  To speak out against those who try to stifle the victims instead of appropriately blaming the aggressors.  And then you might find it hard to address or respond to any criticism.  Might be infuriated every time someone, in the name of balance, told a story of a victim and qualified it with the victim's contribution to their own victimhood.

I don't want to say the answer is in the middle.  Answers often are, but the reality is the first step is understanding that these frameworks are so embedded into the culture that you have to work to discard them.  We are often taught to wait for all the facts, or to try to see both sides, but if someone has hurt someone, assaulted them, or worse killed them, well, there may or may not be extenuating circumstances, but that doesn't make the outward act correct.  Understanding motive is a natural desire - there's an entire TV show dedicated to it.  But, in the end, we need to stop the acts.  Not correct the victims. 

So, telling people to wear different clothes, or use special nail polish isn't empowering.  It is insulting that once again the onus is on the victim to protect themselves from predators, instead of society to stop enabling predators.

*Teen pregnancy is dropping across all populations in the US, as are teen abortions.  Still work to be done, but declining in all populations in the US.  

Three Interesting Things: The Data Edition

1. Someone did an informal survey of library staff and teenagers as far as what gender they perceived - based on the cover - books were marketed too.  While several survey participants noted that readers of either gender should read what they want, there are still some interesting results.  Certainly I know I gravitate towards certain covers, assuming they must contain more me-like books. 

2. The Vida counts are out this year, and there are some signs of improvement as far as gender parity in literary coverage. The women of color count, well, it showed lots of room for improvement.  As the VIDA folks say, the idea here is not quotas but awareness of trends and habits. 

3. I have not yet watched the Monica Lewinsky Ted talk, but this post from the comment moderation team about how virulent the early reaction was, and how, with the help of aggressive comment moderation, they were able to see a shift in the response, was very interesting.

To Engage or Not

One of the things I have been working on is when to engage.  In other words, to paraphrase the Serenity Prayer, to accept that there are some people and/or some situations I cannot change and to try to recognize the difference.  This is not to say I haven't fallen down the rabbit hole a time or seven, but I worry more about the times I let something, some stray comment pass because it wasn't the right place to engage in any sort of reasonable discussion and yet, I don't want to be the person who let that go unanswered.  I at least want to figure out a way to say, wow, that really makes me uncomfortable, but I then worry that I become one of those people who under the guise of not starting an argument then imposes their opinion and leaves.  Something along the lines of, "Well, that's clearly a terribly uninformed opinion, but we don't have time to discuss that further right now."  Something like that might be mildly satisfying to say, but it hardly helps.  It doesn't explain why the statement or opinion they expressed concerned you, and is really an obnoxious aggressive drive-by disguised as peacemaking. 
But there must be some sort of happy medium.  Sometimes I have found a well placed, "Wow, that's an interesting list of stereotypes," can be effective (and well, if it's not, then I feel pretty good about my assessment of how well a deeper discussion might go).  And certainly there is the, "Well, I'm not so sure about that..."  But there are times when I don't want my first interaction with someone to be, "Hi, I know you probably meant well, but generally we don't use oriental to describe people any more."*
My grandmother on my dad's side grew up in Hawaii.  Oahu specifically.  Oahu is a little island.  This is not to suggest she never travelled,  She did, but Hawaii is, in many ways a small town with a beach. There is great diversity, but not surprisingly, Hawaii's diversity trends more to Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino and other such cultures.  So, less of a population with African or Hispanic roots.  So, my grandmother was using words like colored long past their fashion with most of us.  She wasn't particularly prejudiced about black or African American folks.  My dad and I talked about it once and he said, growing up most of their exposure to black people was to entertainers, so when he thought of black people he thought of people like Harry Belafonte.  But my grandmother didn't really have a lot of opportunity to discuss such things, until she came to stay with us in DC for a few weeks and my mother was a little concerned that she'd say something somewhere in front of the wrong person who would not see that she was just forgetting the current vocabulary, but might think she was making an intentional choice.  Once it was explained, my grandmother did work on updating her vocabulary.

Another aspect of it is the not my fight part.  In this day and age where we still seem to be turning to white men to discuss sexism and racism, it can be hard to figure out the best way to support the people who need to be heard on a particular subject without looking like you're crowding onto their platform, and also not look like you're ignoring it. 

And then there is the outrage fatigue, some days my fury seems iced over, buried deep down inside where I know it should be boiling and find that it isn't.  Social media gives us access to so many more voices, but that some days seems to mean it gives us access to so many more jerks.  It isn't true, there are just as many jerks everywhere, but seeking that balance between staying engaged with the world, and making the best use of my mad about the world is an ongoing balancing act. 

Three Interesting Things

1.  I enjoyed the letter that President Obama wrote to one of the prisoners whose sentence he commuted.

2. We all know I love a good, I stepped into different shoes story, and this woman who posed as a man on Twitter for a bit found some interesting results.  (I follow some folks on Twitter who have found that changing their avatar from themselves to a white person had similar results.)

3. And well, the usefulness of this information is still being determined but it seems that one mouth virus might actually provide immune boosts when fighting off things like the flu for some people.