Misc. comments 36

[redbird]

More saved comments.

serenejournal was talking about fat politics and body image, which led me to write:

Not settling is good, isn't it?

At the same time, while the phrase "differently straight" is silly at best, I think the writer has a point about how narrow the expectations of "straight" can be--which are a lot narrower than either "with a partner of the other [1] sex" or "only attracted to people of the other sex."

Also, one of the places we are going to find allies on queer issues is among people who realize that yes, their relationships are legally accepted and/or they can pass, but they aren't quite considered normal. Not the only place, of course, but one of them. If he wants to call himself "differently straight" and it leads him to work for same-sex marriage rights and anti-discrimination laws, I think that's a win. (Then again, it would probably be a win if the whole concept of "straight" collapsed.)

[1] There is no room in that model for the idea of more than two genders.

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After talking about a class she's taking, beginning added "Speaking of which, explain the Thirty Years' War survey course-style. Three brief sentence limit, of course. Best entry gets a pony." So I commented:

The French were trying to juggle European power politics and religious orthodoxy, and thus funded all sides at various times. The Germans were fed up with everyone. In the end, Paris got a Mass, and the Lutherans got the Treaty of Augsburg.

[The pony probably belongs of right to Larry Gonick.]

[Also, "Proust in his first book wrote about, wrote about…"]

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[No context, I was commenting to a friends-locked post, in which the poster was talking about phase changes as a metaphor for relationships:

Running with metaphors: maybe some relationships have triple points, conditions where the same people could move to, or stay in, a friendship, a romantic connection, or drift apart. From outside, or maybe even from some inside analyses, there'd be no obvious sign of which way it would go: the shapes of conversation, daily activities, and so on could be very similar.

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Talking about spoilers, people who objected to spoilers or requested spoiler warnings, and people who complained about such requests, nancylebov wrote:

You don't have to like my emotions. I don't have to pretend that yours aren't getting on my nerves.

Quite.

You, or I, or anyone, have the right to walk away from a conversation. (There may, of course, be consequences, depending on the topic and people--but there can be consequences to remaining and conversing, for the same reasons. Consequences are not always bad.)

I've had friends thank me for listening to them vent, and the thanks are not inappropriate: that sort of interaction is part of close friendship, and a favor given, not a right, not something they can expect from everyone they know. (And they return the favor, if I need to vent: were the balance not there, the friendship would be far weaker, if indeed it lasted.)

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One, in comments to a post by elisem that I've pulled out on its own, but am putting here as well:

Doing the right thing from inferior motives is still doing the right thing.

Someone who doesn't steal because she believes it is inherently wrong, or thinks about the potential victim, may be a better person than someone who doesn't steal because she's worried about being sent to jail. But either is better than someone who figures what the hell, he'll steal because it's what he wants to do and there's no point suppressing his impulses.

The point of challenging racism isn't that it makes me a better person. It's that racism is evil and destructive and should be challenged, whether I do it from compassion, abstract belief in justice, or even guilt. It's not as though feeling guilty and not challenging racism helps anything.

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wild_irises noted that she wants to post more openly in her journal, and asked people who do so why we do. This is my answer:

I like keeping in touch with people. I'm reaching for a bit of the good stuff that I once upon a time got from apas (yes, we have one) and Usenet. There's no reason not to make a lot of my posts open--the books and food and gym stuff come to mind.

Sometimes it's useful for me later--trying to sort out meals last week in Montreal, I took a look at my posts about the previous year's Farthing Party because I didn't remember the names of places where I'd gone for nice breakfasts.

Occasional things that are too private to share at all go in my paper journal, as do things I want to write about while the net isn't handy. (That book also has notes like "550 Sixth Avenue, 2:00," book recommendations from random places, and what my doctor said at the last visit, or what I want to ask her about.)

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This was in response to polyfrog's post saying "Anyone — regardless of age — who is wearing a Ramones t-shirt in 2007 is a poser.
Discuss." and related mention of convention t-shirts:

Thesis: if you don't believe in wearing shirts after the event in question, you're wasting money to buy them at all. If you do believe in doing so, there's no specific point at which I can evaluate whether it's "too late" for you to be wearing that shirt.

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This is in response to a post by pegkerr about not putting or throwing things away:

I see the point of putting things away, and throwing away some other things, but I'm not very good at it. There are some practical/logistical aspects to this, to do with two people in 600 square feet for 20 years, but it's also true that I really am not good at it. But I do see the point, and am pleased when I or cattitude manage some of it.

A large part of why I've been mostly getting library books lately is that they have a defined place to be put away: they go back in my bag, and the library finds a place to put them, rather than me having to do so.

Comments

re: history stuff

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose you know why Spain and the Dutch seem to have been at war around the time of the thirty years? Most of the other European history I've read about seems to be countries with shared borders pushing and shoving but Spain's a long way from Holland..

Re: history stuff

[redbird]

I'm afraid I returned the book to the library, so I don't remember if this was still the Dutch war for independence (the Spanish side of which gets into Hapsburgs and intermarried European royalty) or rivalry over colonies and ocean trade. The Netherlands aren't very far from Spain in the terms that mattered to both of them: distance over water from Iberia to the North Sea.

Re: history stuff

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Distance from Spain to Holland fairly irrelevant. Original connection between them is that Spain and the Holy Roman Empire (which Netherlands was originally a part of) were both Habsburg countries. Much shuffling of sovereignty between them. The war with Spain was the Dutch war for independence.

Re: history stuff

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

1. Holland was a part of the Thirty Years War.
2. Spain actually ruled the Netherlands, despite being a long way away. Part of the reason Holland resented this, aside from the usual problem with being rued by other people, was the religion issue. Eventually what happened was, Holland kicked out Spain, the Princes of Orange became the rulers, and the rest of the counties that eventually the Netherlands and Betlgium accreted. The north of the Netherlands became Protestant while the south (including the province of Noord Brabant, where I live at the moment which is why I know) and Belgium stayed Catholic. Belgium didn't split off as an independent country until the early 1800s; it's not really clear to me why some of the southern Catholic parts of the Netherlands ended up in the Netherlands instead of Belgium.

I still don't understand the whole thing as clearly as I'd like, after living here for a year, but I'm about to move anyway so now I can go learn a whole new place's history.

Re: history stuff

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

More like the thirty year war was partially a result of the Dutch war for independence, commonly refered to as the Eighty Years War, officially started in 1568 and ended in 1648.

How Spain got to be in possession of the Netherlands, as well as Belgium and Luxembourg was through the Hasburgian emperor Charles V, ruler of Austria and Spain, who one by one conquered the seventeen provinces and was very low country minded. At his abdication the Hasburgian empire split, Spain got the Netherlands, tried to enforce Catholicism on an increasingly protestant population, not to mention higher taxes to pay for its wars elsewhere and finally it all ended in an open revolt. The northern provinces became modern day Netherlands, the southern provinces remained in the possession of first Spain, then Austria, until the French conquered all during the Napoleonic wars.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

About posting openly: I think it makes my LJ rather boring, but it gives me a way to chronicle things. People can always skip stuff they think is boring. I'm not really worried about someone I don't know following it -- my address has been on the net for more than a decade and I haven't had problems yet.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Regarding the "expires by" date of the Ramones t-shirt: if someone's music is worth listening to at all, it's worth listening to at any distance in time. If it wears out, it was never really any good in the first place. (But this last condition must be distinguished from your getting tired of it due to overexposure. Put it away for a few years first: when you listen to it again, then you'll find out.)

I make no claims about which category the Ramones fall into. Not my style in the first place.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

And I should add: if the music is still good, IMAO you can still wear the goddam t-shirt.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I do not disagree with you, but what you wrote reminded me of this. It was written in response to a different set of circumstances from yours. I'm quoting it because I've always found it thought-provoking and useful, and it's connected to what you said but not in a linear way:

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.

Most women have not developed tools for facing anger constructively. CR groups in the past, largely white, dealt with how to express anger, usually at the world of men.... No tools were developed to deal with other women's anger except to avoid it, deflect it, or flee from it under a blanket of guilt.

I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in anger, at least I have spoken to you.

Audre Lorde, "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism." Keynote presentation at the National Women's Studies Association Conference, June 1981. Published in Sister Outsider, Crossing Press, 1984.


What it says to me is that what you are calling 'guilt' is something I might, in the context of this, call by a different, more positive name, because it seems qualitatively different from the paralyzing self-justification/self-flagellation which so often bears that name. If your guilt leads to change, perhaps it is not guilt at all.

[redbird]

Thank you for the Lorde quote. I don't know how closely it connects, but I think it's useful.