Barry Deutsch Cartoon

Barry Deutsch is one of my favorite political cartoonists. I support him on Patreon, and enjoy his work very much.

He just posted a timely cartoon, and encouraged us to share it. I think it's pretty on point, so I'm doing so.

Can This White Woman Get Arrested?

Apparently not.

Jessie Kahnweiler, a white comedian, tried to deliberately get arrested in order to demonstrate white privilege at work. She pretended to be drunk in public, went swimming in a public fountain, patted police officers on the back (which has been interpreted as assault and resulted in arrest before when the "perp" was a person of color) and even tried to sell drugs to a couple of cops. Number of arrests? Zero.

Read the whole thing, and watch the video, here.

Thanks to Alisha for the link.

ETA: Sorry for the humongous video. :/ Blogger's size-chooser-thingy for pics and videos has never worked for me.

Paris

Paris after 9/11.

Let’s keep these people in our prayers, who so graciously kept us in their prayers after one of the darkest periods of our history.

Paris, and everyone else affected by the attacks tonight, you are in my thoughts and prayers.

Beth Greene on Tumblr

I'm not a "prayers" kind of person, but I endorse the sentiment wholeheartedly.

Marriage Equality, Finally

The Supreme Court finally grants marriage equality.

Try as they might, people opposed to marriage equality haven't been able to come up with any rational reasons for their stand. "Because our god disapproves," is not a rational reason in a nation with separation of church and state. "Because the children," is not supported by any legitimate research. (In fact, I can't give a link because I didn't save it at the time, but I remember reading an article a few years ago discussing research that showed the best outcome for children, looking at emotional adjustment, behavior, and performance in school, came from having two lesbian parents.) "Because pedophiles," is a null argument because adults having sex with minors (ignoring the complications of what that means and where the lines are drawn) is still illegal. And that idiot in California who tried to get a proposition on the ballot requiring that anyone who commits "sodomy" be executed by whatever member of the general public got to them first (no, seriously) just makes the anti-GLBT side look even more whacked than it actually is.

I'm sure there are plenty of people moaning and gnashing their teeth today. But look, the sky isn't falling. If you think gay sex is icky, then good news: you're not required to have gay sex. Your kids are no more likely to be gay now than they were last week. And if your kid does come out to you, you're still free to disown him or her, and the people around you who disapprove would probably have disapproved last week, while people who would've agreed you did the right thing last week will probably still think that now. And if your church doesn't recognize gay marriage, your church still isn't required to marry gay couples. Nothing has changed for straight people.

Which is the whole point. Nothing has changed for straight people. We can go about our lives as we always have, because the world still treats us the way it always did.

And in fact, only thirteen states still banned marriage between same-sex couples yesterday. We were already mostly there; the Supremes just acknowledged the way society was moving.

Note, though, that this decision doesn't mean homophobia is dead in the US, any more than the election of President Obama meant racism is dead. There are still plenty of people who see straight as "normal" and gay as "deviant," and who want the laws of the land to reflect their views, some of whom are active on the political stage.

Ted Cruz and Scott Walker are two Republican presidential hopefuls who support a Constitutional amendment allowing states to ban same-sex marriage. Considering that the majority of states allowed it yesterday, and polls show a majority of Americans are in favor of it, I have no idea where these guys thought that amendment would come from. There's no way they'd ever get the two-thirds ratification required to pass it, so...? Marriage equality doesn't affect them, so it looks like either their own fears and squicks on display, or (more likely IMO) it's a flag-waving act, aimed at the very small but very loud radical-right voting pool. "Hey, look how conservative I am! Vote for me!" Of course, that tactic hasn't worked in the last couple of presidential elections, but if these guys want to give it another whirl, bully for them.

And others have already discussed Clarence Thomas's dissenting opinion against marriage equality. From Thomas's opinion:

The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.

Seriously? Because being a slave, confined and beaten and raped, isn't at all undignified. Because being dragged away from your property (often losing it permanently) and locked up in an internment camp, declared a danger to the country of which you're a citizen, hated and reviled by your fellow citizens, isn't at all undignified. And having people sneer and snark at your marriage, telling you it's just pretend, and having your children harassed and mocked because their parents aren't really married and they don't really have a normal family, that's not at all undignified.

The fact that Justice Thomas, who's married to a white woman, clearly benefits from the results of Loving v. the State of Virginia, and yet declares that Obergefell v. Hodges -- which grants the exact same kind of marriage rights (and dignity) to a group of people who were discriminated against exactly the way interracial couples were discriminated against before Loving -- is wrong and pointless, is bogglingly irrational. It reflects a lack of compassion, and an "I've got mine so you all can go suck it" attitude.

There are plenty of people, though, even in conservative states, who are ready to jump right into getting gay and lesbian couples married, because "conservative" is not the same as "asshole."

Gerard Rickhoff, who oversees marriage licenses in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, has removed the words "male" and "female" from the licenses. He's prepared extra work stations and is ready to keep the office open late. He's planning to have security on site to deal with protesters, "so there's no possibility of discomfort or hate speech." And if same-sex couples are turned away by clerks in other counties, he has a message for them: "Just get in your car and come on down the highway. You'll be embraced here."

Props to Mr. Rickhoff, and others like him in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and Michigan, mentioned in the above HuffPo article, and to people in all states, of all political orientations around the country whose action and support, however loud or quiet, let this happen.

I'll wrap with a quote from President Obama: "Today we can say in no uncertain terms that we've made our union a little more perfect ... America should be very proud."

Putting Ferguson Into Perspective

Yes, what's going on in Ferguson is awful, and is causing hardship for a lot of people, most of them black. Yes, it would be better for everyone if they'd go home and get on with their lives, as Michael Brown's family has asked. But at least in this case, the people rioting have a significant reason to be angry -- a pretty clear miscarriage of justice, with an obvious racial motive. All the white people looking down their noses and crying shame on those violent black rioters for being so violent (salted with racist epithets, because of course all this violence is because that's what people of their race do) should perhaps remember all the So Much More Worthy [cough] reasons for which white people have violently rioted.

Thanks to Jason for sending me a link to this. Very telling.

Angie

Because Telling Teenagers "No" Always Works

The principal of Booker T Washington High has stepped in to cancel one of their school's summer reading programs rather than let the students read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which is all about teenagers challenging wrongheaded authority. (Seriously, read it -- it rocks.) An English teacher and a librarian had set up the One-Book-One-School program, which exists side-by-side with a more standard Summer Reading program, developing a study guide/brochure for students and parents. It explains the program, and gives questions the students should answer after they read. Notice that it also encourages the parents to read the book so they can discuss it with their kids, and allows parents who object to the book to contact the coordinating English teacher to get an alternate book for their kid to read.

Apparently giving the parents final authority over what their kids read isn't enough for the BTW principal, though. When the program coordinators refused to choose a different book, the principal cancelled the whole program.

It was pointed out in comments to the Techdirt article, multiple times, that the principal could've done nothing to more effectively encourage all the students to eagerly read this book. [wry smile] A few people suggested that this might've been the hidden purpose behind the cancellation, but I think that's giving too much credit where it's probably not due.

In response, Cory Doctorow and his publisher, Tor, have donated 200 copies of the book to the school. I'd be interested in hearing what the school does with them, considering the principal's actions so far.

Oh, and note that the school's more standard summer reading program already includes Little Brother. o_O So apparently the principal is okay with the eleventh graders reading the book, but thinks it would be harmful for the ninth, tenth and twelfth graders...?

If you're interested in reading Little Brother, which I highly recommend, Cory offers the e-book on his site for free, in pretty much any file format you might want. Check it out.

Angie

Abusing Child Protection Laws

Kaitlyn Hunt is an 18-year-old high school girl who's in love with another girl, a 15-year-old who goes to her school. They met when Kate was 17, and the younger girl's parents disapproved of the relationship, but rather than, say, talking to Kate's parents about it, or trying to resolve their concerns in a civilized manner, they waited for Kate to turn 18 and then called the police.

Kate was expelled from school, and arrested in February for "lewd and lascivious battery."

According to Findlaw:

Under Florida law, engaging in sexual activity with a minor between the ages of 12 and 16 is a felony. Because the law does not make an exception for consenting minors, Hunt could potentially face up to 10 years in prison if she is convicted, and up to $10,000 in fines.

Florida does have a Romeo-and-Juliet law. These are generally intended to provide some rational exceptions for two young people who are close in age. Unfortunately, the Florida law would only let Kate petition to have her name taken off the sex offender registry after she's convicted; it would do nothing to save her from the rest of the legal meatgrinder, and she could still spend those 10 years in prison for the heinous crime of having a girlfriend who goes to her school.

Oh, and if one might be thinking of giving the younger girl's parents the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that it's the relationship with an "adult" that they're objecting to, they've also accused Kate of turning their daughter gay. So... yeah. This is pure, hateful homophobia at work here.

Please sign the petition on Change.org asking to have Kate freed. This is a ridiculous abuse of the laws intended to protect children from actual predators, and of the sex offender registry -- unfortunately one of many. We need to make it clear to parents who disapprove of their kid's boyfriend or girlfriend that criminalizing teenagers who fall in love with other teenagers won't be allowed to stand.

Angie

There's Always One Joker

In with all the other April Fool's posts that went up a couple of days ago, one of the web site staffers over at the Locus website decided to write an incredibly unfunny joke stirring a stack of feces that'd long since gone cold and crusted over -- the incident from 2010 when WisCon, an SF convention founded specifically on principles of social justice, dis-invited one of its guests of honor for publicly posting an anti-Moslem screed on her LiveJournal. The basic message of the post was diametrically opposed to the foundations principles of WisCon, and continuing to honor this person would've been a travesty, so she was dis-invited. There was some kerfuffling, but then it died down. The person who wrote the non-funny April Fool's post for the Locus site decided it needed to be stirred up again, and saw nothing wrong with saying nasty things about Moslems, women, feminists and fat people in order to get his "point" across. Or maybe he saw that as a bonus?

The Locus magazine staff, being decent people, pulled the post as soon as they saw it that morning, and posted an apology. We know they're decent people because it's a real apology, not the usual "We're sorry you're so overly sensitive, and we had no idea you'd be so unreasonable as to be offended" kind of non-apology these incidents usually produce, so kudos to the Locus folks.

The guy who wrote the offensive post decided a little more stirring was necessary, so he posted to his personal blog, making it clear that yes, he had intended to be offensive, and yes he had meant to be taking a shot at WisCon over this 2.5-year-old incident, and that he was outraged -- outraged, I say! -- at the craven censorship to which his superiors were forced by the politically correct harpies of WisCon. Because clearly it's impossible that anyone not associated with WisCon could have been at all upset by what he'd said.

[If anyone cares, I don't work on WisCon, and have never even attended.]

I'm not linking to Mr. Shit Stirrer because I don't want to reward him for his behavior by giving him any traffic, or his blog any incoming links. I'm not naming him for similar reasons. If you click through to the page with Locus's apology, though, there's a link in the comments to his post, if you really want to read it. It's the usual self-righteous garbage bigots spew when they're called on their shit.

Jim Hines posted a commentary on his own blog, and as usual made some excellent points and worded them beautifully. One of my favorite parts:

I was a skinny, overly bright, socially inept, fashion challenged kid with glasses and a speech defect. My teenage years were utter hell. Looking back at any of those incidents of name-calling, having my books knocked out of my hands, being shoved in the hallway, tripped on the steps outside the school, having my belongings destroyed, and so on, very few of them in isolation were such a big deal. Real physical injury was relatively rare. But when those small jabs continue day after day, they add up. They whittle away at your strength and your hope, and it never, ever lets up, never stops, until you’re sitting alone in the bathroom with a syringe full of your father’s insulin, searching for a single good reason not to jab the plunger down and hopefully put an end to it all.

The backlash against the Locus article isn’t about someone taking cheap shots at Muslims and women. It’s about yet another person taking those shots, lining up to bully those who are already a popular target for abuse. And it’s about everyone else who stands around, encouraging and enabling that bullying.

The whole thing's worth reading.

And he's absolutely right -- it's not just about this incident, or some older incident, or another one that'll happen next week. It's about all the incidents taken together. If every day, someone pokes you -- never the same person twice, but someone new every day -- it might seem ridiculous to charge any of them with assault. But let it go on for weeks and months, let alone years or decades, and your body would be one huge bruise, and each new poke would be agonizing on top of the damage left by all the others. And if you complained, people would say, "Why are you making such a fuss? He just poked you! Sure, it's kind of rude, but you don't have to make a federal case out of it! Mellow out!" Those same people would glare with indignation while the person who "overreacted" dragged their purple, crippled body away.

A constant stream of offenses which are individually minor is just as harmful as one huge offense. This slam against Moslems, women, feminists and fat people was just one more in a long, long stream of offenses that members of every one of those groups has to put up with regularly, often daily. It's not minor, it's not funny, and the Locus staff acted appropriately, as any decent people would.

Angie

Scalzi Comments on a Random House/Hydra Deal

John Scalzi doesn't make a major point of discussing big publishers messing over writers, so when he does, you know it's bad. He looks over a deal sheet Random House's new electronic imprint Hydra is offering, and points out a few red flags.

* No advance.

* The author is charged "set-up costs" for editing, artwork, sale, marketing, publicity — i.e., all the costs a publisher is has been expected to bear. The "good news" is that the author is not charged up front for these; they're taken out of the backend. If the book is ever published in paper, costs are deducted for those, too. [Note from Angie: there's also a permanent 10% of net charge for the on-going sales and marketing that Hydra most likely won't be doing.]

* The contract asks for primary and subsidiary rights for the term of copyright.

Click through for more detail and some commentary I found pretty entertaining. It's clear, though, that Random House is looking to squeeze as much money from ignorant baby writers as it can, while hoping to pay out little or nothing.

Also recall that "term of copyright" these days means your lifetime plus seventy years. Your grandkids will still be getting royalty statements from Hydra saying, "Nope, haven't made up those costs yet."

This reminds me of the electronic "imprints" set up by some of the other big publishers through AuthorHouse, which were clearly meant to be cash cows for the sponsoring publishers. It looks like someone at Random House figured they could rip off writers just as well on their own, without having to hire another company to do it. Eliminate the middle-man and make more money, right? And hey, some bright RH executive thought of taking the rights for the duration of copyright, which even AuthorHouse, as horrible as its rep might be, doesn't do. Go you, Random House! Way to be eviller than a notoriously deceptive vanity press!

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, SFWA has issued a statement declaring that Hydra is not a qualifying market. [cough]

Angie

Writer Hit by Trademark Bully

I've been watching this one develop all day, since I saw John Scalzi's post about it, and things look to be turning around for the writer involved. Still, she's still pretty firmly in suckland at this point, and the fact that it's happening at all is outrageous.

MCA Hogarth wrote a book called Spots the Space Marine and self-pubbed it. Games Workshop (a large game company that publishes the very popular game Warhammer 40K) has recently decided to exercise its trademark of the term "space marine" -- it has the term trademarked in the area of tabletop games and video games -- against fiction. It sent a DMCA notice to Amazon, claiming that Spots violated its trademark, and Amazon took the book down.

Wow, where to start?

First, Games Workshop does not own the term "space marine" in the context of fiction. There've been space marines running around SF for about as long as there's been a recognized genre called science fiction, and maybe even longer. Doc Smith and Robert Heinlein had space marines. There's reams of prior art. Just because GW's got a lock on the term in the gaming arena doesn't mean they own it in fiction too, and the fact that they've started publishing fiction recently doesn't change that.

Second, as Cory Doctorow points out, the DMCA doesn't cover trademarks, only copyrights, so Amazon was under no obligation to comply with the take-down notice. They chose to do so freely when they didn't have to -- a thwap of the salmon to Amazon for being an auxiliary idiot here. (The comments to Cory's post are pretty entertaining, if you're at all familiar with Heinlein's Starship Troopers. :D )

Third, someone at Games Workshop must know their trademark assertion is completely bogus, because they're going after a tiny little indie-pubbed book, but (so far as I've heard) haven't said so much as "Peep" any of the big New York publishers who are "infringing" just as much on their supposed trademark, but who all have lawyers on staff.

This is pathetic behavior on the part of Games Workshop. I don't know where their legal advice is coming from, but it's not a source I'd ever hire, because it's making them look like idiots.

The legal blog Popehat is calling for pro bono help for Ms. Hogarth in fighting this crap, which she can't afford to do on her own. (Which GW counted on, I'm sure.) Popehat has a good track record with this sort of thing, as when attorney Charles Carreon sued Matt Inman; I'm betting they can get help for Ms. Hogarth too, and I'm looking forward to reading about the results.

I've been a gamer since I was a teenager. I played in the same FRPG campaign for almost twenty years, until I got married and moved away from my group. I used to work as a developer/gamemaster for a company that does online multi-player RPGs. I have no local gaming group, but still play computer games. As a member of the community Games Workshop is trying to do business in, I have to say that I'll never again buy one of their products, ever. They're a pack of cowardly, bullying douchebags and don't deserve my business. I hope a lot of other gamers make the same decision.

And I hope a trademark attorney or two responds to Popehat's call and gives Games Workshop a good smack upside the head on Ms. Hogarth's behalf. They definitely need a few brain cells jarred loose.

Angie

The Invisible War

I really want to see this movie. I know it's going to piss me off royally, but I still want to see it. And after researching things like this, I can't even find it in me to be skeptical about the movie's accuracy, based on what's in the trailer. If so many in Congress will help government contractors in the field (i.e., mercenaries working for the US government) cover up rapes, when these are just hired hands and not sworn troops, how can we imagine that the US Military would not do whatever it could to cover up a plague of rapes within its own ranks? What a scandal! Of course they'd cover it up, for the same reason the the Catholic Church covered up its child molestors for so long, the same reason Penn State covered up for Jerry Sandusky for so long. The authorities think that the scandal to themselves and their institution is worse than the horror of what the victims are put through.

Apologists claim that some significant number of women who report being raped are lying for whatever reason. Some radical wingnuts claim that most women who report a rape are lying. The fact is that even today, in the 21st century, enough women who report being raped are treated horribly -- during the report, during the investigation, during the trial if there is one, and sometimes even afterwards by their friends, families, co-workers -- that most women who are raped have to think long and hard about reporting it for fear of being traumatized all over again, and many never do.

This looks like a good movie. I hope it draws some attention to the issue.

Angie

PS -- of course, men are raped too. It's just as horrible for them, and the social pressure against reporting a rape is just as strong for men, if for different reasons. Most people who are raped are women, though, so that's where most of the problem is. If there are men in the military being raped by their fellow soldiers, I hope someone makes a movie about that as well. Any nest of vipers needs to be hit with a flamethrower, no matter who's being bitten.

Voter Disenfranchisement in Pennsylvania

From the Field Negro:

The first story is just about your basic racist idiot (and I'll agree with anyone who thinks it's uncool to make fun of the guy for being fat, jerkwad or not), but the second one is a great example of how Pennsylvania's new voter ID law will disenfranchise honest people. People who are poor, transient, or of color are more likely to have document issues than people who are well off, at a stable address, and white. Being old, born at a time when documentation wasn't as formal or vital as it is now, is an additional problem. In this case, Ms. Applewhite has been working on replacing her ID after it was stolen, but she's over 90 and getting everything together is tough. She's probably not going to be able to vote in November.

If the Pennsylvania Republican leaders had any brains at all, they'd be swarming around Ms. Applewhite, pushing through her document requests, making absolutely sure she gets new picture ID and a new social security card, and that her voter registration is up to date well before the election. If they want to go on pretending that Pennsylvania's new law is really all about preventing voter fraud (despite the fact that the government can't produce any evidence of significant voter fraud there) then they should make sure people like Ms. Applewhite are accommodated with all speed.

Oh, and for anyone who still thinks the voter ID thing is all about fraud, read this.

Mike Turzai, the Pennsylvania GOP House majority leader, said that a strict new voter ID law will help Republicans win the state for the first time since 1988.

"Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation -- abortion facility regulations -- in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done," he said to applause at a Republican State Committee this weekend, according to PoliticsPa.com.

The comment contradicted the usual Republican line that voter ID laws are for guarding against voter fraud -- which is extremely rare if not nonexistent in practice -- and not to help elect Republicans.

That's why they're doing it. Solving an incredibly rare problem with voter fraud is just smoke and mirrors.

Angie

Oatmeal vs. FunnyJunk and Charles Carreon

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

More Harlequin Shenanigans

Harlequin is the single biggest publisher of romance, which is the single largest genre in the MMPB world. Harlequin has always courted newbie authors, famously taking unagented new writers when other New York publishers were (theoretically) requiring agent submissions more and more. They're also one of the most predatory of the publishers, and always have been; even when I was poking around on the het side of romance, I never had any aspirations of writing for Harlequin, and what I heard from other romance writers just reinforced that aversion.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I hung out on RomEx, a roundtable on GEnie that was the Romance Writers of America's (RWA's) online home at the time, and it was a great place. Lots of readers and writers -- both published and aspiring -- were members, and there was a lot of talk about writing and publishing, among other things. There were even published writers from other genres who hung out on RomEx because the writing talk was valuable for everyone.

One of the things I learned there was that, at the time, Harlequin's standard contract included a clause saying that you had to write under a pseudonym, and that Harlequin would own it. What that meant was that if a writer wanted to move on to another publisher, she had to start over with a new name, back in the days when communicating to all your readers that you were now writing under Jane Newname was even more difficult than it is now. This kept a lot of writers tethered to Harlequin, since moving on would most likely mean taking a sharp pay cut while they rebuilt their audience.

I heard a few years ago that Harlequin doesn't do that anymore. Well, okay, that's good. I don't know when they stopped, but the fact that they ever did it was enough to keep me away; corporate culture doesn't change that much over a decade or two, and a corporation willing to do something that skeevy, even in the past, is a corporation I'd just as soon not do business with.

Then last June, we heard that Harlequin was unilaterally changing royalty rates, notifying its authors via e-mail, and giving them a deadline to reply if they objected. Wow. So Harlequin might not be kidnapping your pseudonym anymore, but they think they can modify every active author contract they've got with a single e-mail and nobody's signature. Umm, sure. Definitely not interested in writing for Harlequin.

Now, Harlequin author Ann Voss Peterson is explaining why she can't afford to write for Harlquin anymore, despite great sales -- one book sold almost 200,000 copies, and she's never failed to earn out her advance in their first royalty period. And yet she can't afford to stay with them. It turns out that she's earning an average of 2.4% royalty on each copy sold.

Two-point-four percent? Seriously? We all know the New York publishers' royalty rates are predatory, especially on e-books, but Harlequin makes them look downright generous. Click through and read what Ms. Peterson has to say if you've ever considered writing for Harlequin, or even if you haven't. The math is horrifying. :/

Angie, still not at all interested in being a Harlequin author

Michigan's Anti-Bullying Legislation

Another example of why I love Jim Hines. Michigan is working to pass an anti-school-bullying law that has a specific exception in it for religious bullies:

THIS SECTION DOES NOT PROHIBIT A STATEMENT OF A SINCERELY HELD RELIGIOUS BELIEF OR MORAL CONVICTION OF A SCHOOL EMPLOYEE, SCHOOL VOLUNTEER, PUPIL, OR A PUPIL’S PARENT OR GUARDIAN

Wow. So if you can sincerely tell a kid that his two dads are going to burn in hell, that's just fine, carry on.

Click through the link above to read the whole thing. My favorite part is Jim's summation at the bottom:

1. Bullying is not okay. Period.

2. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people.

3. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.

Especially number three.

I've added the whole set to Goodreads quotes; feel free to like it if you're on Goodreads and you agree.

Angie

Link Stuff -- Writing and GLBT Issues

So for quite a while now I've been clicking on the "Share" button on my Google blog reader whenever I came across something there that I thought other people would enjoy, but they don't make it clear how to follow someone's shared posts, and in fact I don't remember what I did to sign up to follow the two people whose shares I'm following, nor did poking around the reader window enlighten me, nor have I heard anyone else mention following someone else's shared posts -- mine or anyone's -- in the last couple of years. I'm therefore assuming that's not something any great number of folks are doing. (Please let me know if I'm wrong.) I've been posting with commentary about things I wanted to comment on extensively, or occasionally things I ran across outside of the blog reader where sharing wasn't an option, and just sharing the rest, but earlier this month I started bookmarking links in a special folder so I could do linkspam posts with greater or lesser amounts of commentary on each item, with the idea that some people might actually, you know, see them that way. Then of course I was sick for a while (again [sigh] but luckily just a stomach flu) and a few more things have piled up than I'd planned to let accumulate, so I'm going to try to get through all of them in a somewhat orderly way. After this, I'll try to keep these shorter.

Things specifically of interest to writers first:

Mike Lombardo brilliantly refutes some gentleman who thinks people shouldn't ever get paid for their IP -- thanks to Colleen Doran for posting this. I don't watch many videos online, but I'm glad I watched this one. It's a point-by-point refutation of a blog post that's basically a regurgitation of every whiny excuse you ever heard a pirate give for why it's right and proper for them to steal whatever they want, and why you're a greedy bastard (blogger's words, quoted by Mike) for wanting to be paid for your work. About ten minutes, entertaining, lots of snickers.

That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars -- Another video, just to be all organized. This is Jason Scott, who runs Textfiles.com, among other things. (He's also the guy who founded the Archive Team, the group that goes around rescuing terabytes of user-uploaded content (basically the internet's history) from sites like Geocities when they got shut down, and whatever all Yahoo is deleting this week. He gets legal harassment mail pretty regularly, and this is a talk he gave at the DefCon 17 conference about one of those times, when a guy who decided that anyone who might've downloaded a free copy of his book (which he'd originally given away for free himself, and which he was stell giving away for free from his web site even as he was suing people who had free copies -- seriously, you have to hear the story) took it all the way to a court case. Writers get sued sometimes, and so do bloggers, so I figured this might be interesting. At the very least, it's entertaining. (Note that I'm assuming nobody who reads me regularly has to be told not to act like this particular writer. [cough])

Important Versus Urgent -- novelist Camille Laguire talks about setting priorities, and the difference between important and urgent. A lot of common sense, with clear examples.

A Word or Two to Aspiring Writers -- Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff uses examples from an unnamed book by a "Nationally Bestselling Author" (I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds like someone who should know better) to discuss the ever-popular What Not To Do. Even if you're not an aspiring writer, this is worth a read, if only for the bogglement factor.

I knew the book had problems when I found myself reading the same dialogue over and over . . . at different locations and in different scenes.

There was a repeated dream sequence that, at each recap consumed at least half a page, often more. If that had been the only repeated element, I’d have been fine with it, but it wasn’t. The hero and heroine literally fled from place to place and re-enacted the same “push-me-pull-you” dialogue at each new stop. Sometimes a new piece of information would be brought forth or an epiphany would occur (to be promptly forgotten), but most often, the dialogue was simply repeated in its essentials.

It went something like this (broadly paraphrased):

“Trust me,” he says. “I’m here. I won’t leave you.”
“I can’t trust you,” she says. “I can’t let anyone in. I’m crazy!”
“No, your sister’s crazy. You’re wonderful. And I’m going to help you.”
“Really?” Can I trust him? I want to trust him. I don’t want to trust him. I …
“Trust me! I’ll protect you!”
“Okay.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here.”
“No! I can’t trust you!”
(Repeat as needed, with varying degrees of mild physical violence.)

Ooookay.... [blink] You know, if I knew you could do that and still be a bestseller, I could've saved myself a whole lot of work trying to hit wordcount targets. [Angie macros COPY and PASTE commands]

My favorite piece of advice is the last one, though:

No matter what genre you’re writing, strive to make your characters self-consistent. Don’t make a brilliant cryptographer suddenly unable to crack the Sunday Crypto-Quote. Don’t have your Oxford don talking like Eliza Doolittle pre-‘enry ‘iggins. And don’t have to women who’ve shown Darth Vader-like abilities when threatened, suddenly helpless in the face of a confrontation they’ve been prepping for throughout your whole book.

Hallelujah! Seriously, if the only way you can create tension is to give your character(s) a lobotomy, you're doing it wrong. Really. I've seen this a lot and it's always good for a few eyerolls. And why aren't editors catching this? [sigh]

FROM PASSIVE VOICE:

What Happens When an Author Dies? -- this is an excellent planning on death, wills and writers. Definitely read this if you're a writer, or any other creative producer.

Indie Author Goes Traditional – A Cautionary Tale -- in case you haven't heard, Kiana Davenport was a writer who signed with a Big Six publisher back in January of last year for a novel, after having what sounds to me like considerable success publishing short stories. She had the rights to the stories, after they'd appeared in various places, so she e-pubbed a couple of collections of these previously published shorts. Then:

In January, 2010, I signed a contract with one of the Big 6 publishers in New York for my next novel. I understood then that I, like every writer in the business, was being coerced into giving up more than 75% of the profits from electronic sales of that novel, for the life of the novel. But I was debt-ridden and needed upfront money that an advance would provide. The book was scheduled for hardback publication in August, 2012, and paperback publication a year later. Recently that publisher discovered I had self-published two of my story collections as electronic books. To coin the Fanboys, they went ballistic. The editor shouted at me repeatedly on the phone. I was accused of breaching my contract (which I did not) but worse, of 'blatantly betraying them with Amazon,' their biggest and most intimidating competitor. I was not trustworthy. I was sleeping with the enemy.

Wow. Everyone else is figuring out that having more product available in the marketplace stirs up more interest in one's work. If anything, Kiana's publication of those two anthologies would generate more interest in the novel, not less. And the stories were already out there -- "Most of the stories in both collections had each been published several times before, first in Story Magazine, then again in The O’HENRY AWARDS PRIZE STORIES anthologies, the PUSHCART PRIZE stories anthologies, and THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, 2000, anthology" -- so chances are it wouldn't be too hard to get most of those stories from libraries anyway, right? All the publisher could see was that they were competition, and apparently the fact that they were competing on Amazon made a rather large difference.

So, here is what the publisher demanded. That I immediately and totally delete CANNIBAL NIGHTS from Amazon, iNook, iPad, and all other e-platforms. Plus, that I delete all Google hits mentioning me and CANNIBAL NIGHTS. Currently, that's about 600,000 hits. (How does one even do that?) Plus that I guarantee in writing I would not self-publish another ebook of any of my backlog of works until my novel with them was published in hardback and paperback.

Not only is that outrageous, it's impossible. And seriously, do you want a publisher that thinks it's even possible for an individual to delete "all Google hits mentioning" her and a book from the internet to be responsible for doing your marketing? Because I wouldn't have any faith at all in the ability of a publisher with that little understanding of the internet and of Google to do any kind of effective marketing online, where a lot of the current book buzz resides.

The publisher declared Kiana to be in breach of her contract -- although Kiana says she wasn't; it depends on the exact phrasing of the noncompete clause -- and demanded their advance back. Kiana has decided that it's worth $20,000 to be out of that mess, and to know who the enemy actually is. I have to agree. Wow. And as Passive Guy comments, this situation is a great example of why a writer might need a lawyer, even if she has an agent. Click through to Kiana's blog for more details.

And a follow-up to the previous post, with PG commenting on comments from Brian DeFiore, a publishing insider, on why Kiana "obviously" made a huge mistake in publishing her anthologies, and how if they were print books, "we would understand in a flash that publishing two books prior to a contracted-for work would constitute a breach of contract." Really? You know, unless Mr. DeFiore has seen Kiana's publishing contract, and knows the exact wording of her noncompete clause, I have no clue where he's getting this. PG can't figure it out either.

The reason an author understands publishing competitive books is a breach of contract is if it’s actually written in the contract. Passive Guy knows this is a shocking idea in the publishing business, but, alas, that’s the law.

Exactly. You know something is contractually required or forbidden because it's in the contract. If it's not, then it's just a publisher (or whatever party to any given contract) using hand-waving and intimidation and scary-sounding language to try to bully the other party into compliance.

Passive Guy is brilliantly snarky (and informative in his point-by-point demolition) in response to Mr. DeFiore's rather condescending comments. Definitely click through and read the whole thing.

Jutoh -- TPG linked to this software product that's supposed to help you format your manuscript for various e-book file types. I haven't tried it myself, but if it does what it says it does, it should be a great help to anyone self-pubbing electronically. There's a free demo, too.

What's going on with #yesGayYA -- as is often the case when a major issue goes nuclear, Cleolinda has a great summary and set of links. In case you haven't heard, Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith guest posted on the Genreville blog on Publisher's Weekly.

Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.

Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”

The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series.

You can guess how well that went over. There were discussions, mostly pretty angry, on various blogs and sites.

A few days later, Joanna Stampfel-Volpe, an agent who works for the same agency as the agent referred to above (who was not named by Brown and Smith, nor was the agency named) posted a refutation on another blog, essentially calling Brown and Smith liars, only slightly more diplomatically. More fireworks, including a bunch of people who decided that Brown and Smith must have lied since Stampfel-Volpe said they did, and anyone who took Brown and Smith's word was stupid because clearly Stempfel-Volpe's word was... wait, what?

What it seems to come down to is that there are people who are outraged and offended that Brown and Smith called them or their friends or their coworkers evil homophobes, even though Brown and Smith didn't do that. They went public not to talk abou their specific case -- which couldn't be done anyway, since they hadn't said which agent had made them the straightwashing offer, so there was no one specific for anyone to be angry with until Stempfel-Volpe outed her agency by responding -- but rather to discuss the institutional barriers to GLBT characters, or characters with other diversity characteristics, in YA fiction.

I've seen the same thing happen in race discussions, where someone says, "You know, this particular statement/action is kind of racist," and twelve people slam them with variations of "OMG how dare you call me/my friend a racist, you evil #$%&@!" and it's all mushroom clouds from there on. People don't get that an action is not a person. A statement is not a person. That it's possible for an action or a statement to be homophobic or racist without the person who did or said it being deliberately or even knowingly racist. That's not the point. If you take a step backward and land on someone's bare foot with your bootheel, you've hurt them; the fact that you didn't mean to doesn't make their broken toes hurt any less. When they say "Ouch!" the proper response is "Oh, I'm so sorry!" not "How dare you say I assaulted you!" There's a too-common disconnect between what's said and what's heard when it comes to bigotry issues; too many people assume that they always must be personal attacks, when often they're not.

Brown and Smith said in the PW post:

This isn’t about one agent’s personal feelings about gay people. We don’t know their feelings; they may well be sympathetic in their private life, but regard the removal of gay characters as a marketing issue. The conversation made it clear that the agent thought our book would be an easy sale if we just made that change. [bolding mine] But it doesn’t matter if the agent rejected the character because of personal feelings or because of assumptions about the market. What matters is that a gay character would be quite literally written out of his own story.

We are avoiding names because we don’t want this story to be about one agent who spoke more bluntly than others whose objections were more indirectly expressed. Naming names can make it too easy to target a lone “villain,” who can be blamed and scolded until everyone feels that the matter has been satisfactorily dealt with.

Colleen Lindsay, who hosted Stempfel-Volpe's response post, said, "I later discovered that not only did I know the agent in question, but that this person was actually a dear friend of mine, someone who most certainly wasn't homophobic." She's clearly taking this personally on behalf of her friend. The bolded passage above shows that Brown and Smith weren't attacking the agent for homophobia; they were addressing an issue with the YA fiction business as a whole, wherein there's a perception -- whether true or not -- that books with GLBT characters are harder to sell. Because that's all it takes, some number of agents or editors saying "No" because they think a book might not sell, or might be more difficult to sell, or might sell in lesser numbers. No one in the business has to be personally homophobic for that behavior to exist.

Some people came out and insisted that this never happened, that they'd be shocked if it happened, that nobody in the YA fiction business would ever ask for something like that and they should know because they know a lot of people in the business, or that they published a YA book with a GLBT character and no one had a problem with it therefore there isn't a problem. Uh huh. (That's like saying "But we have a black president now, so there can't be any racism in the US." [sigh] One person, or even a bunch of people succeeding, doesn't mean there aren't barriers. If there's a twenty-foot wall around the supermarket, some people will still get groceries. That won't stop me and my arthritis -- and a whole lot of other people who just don't happen to own grappling hooks or really long ladders -- from going hungry.)

Does it happen? Apparently so. A lot of people commented on the Publisher's Weekly article with their own experiences, and quite a few of them said the same thing happened to them. Cleolinda quotes quite a few of them, toward the end of her post.

Malinda Lo has numbers on GLBT characters in YA since 1969. The good news is that the numbers have gone up quite a lot. The bad news is that "up quite a lot" means that 0.2% of YA books published in 2010 had GLBT characters. Some generous estimates put the 2011 figure at about 1%, which is better, but still ridiculously low for a group of people who comprise 10-15% of the general population.

John Scalzi is wonderfully succinct, which is obviously not one of my skills:

My particular take on it is that the authors did the right thing by saying “thanks, no,” and that in general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there’s not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a).

I hadn't meant to write quite so much about this issue, but this is important. There's more in Cleolinda's post, and I encourage you to click through.

Segueing into a Couple More GLBT Interest Links:

Why Can't You Just Butch Up? -- an article by Bret Hartinger about effeminate men and why they can't (or shouldn't have to) just behave more like macho dudes.

Gotta Love Clint Eastwood -- Clint's not the most liberal of guys, but I was mentally applauding while reading this article. In a nutshell:

"These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage?" Eastwood opined. "I don't give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We're making a big deal out of things we shouldn't be making a deal out of."

Go Clint!

The first chunk of comments is actually sane and rational, which is pretty amazing. Soon enough the homophobes and trolls show up, though. You have to love the people who can say with a straight typeface that if we legalize gay marriage, everyone will marry someone of the same sex, no more babies will be born, and the human race will die out. Wow. Logic -- get yourself some.

Angie

August Stuff and Some Links

Writing: 9204 -- 3 pts.
Editing: 4380 -- 1 pt.
Submissions: 5 -- 5 pts.
TOTAL: 9 pts.



Still not where I want to be on writing, but it's more than July, and July was more than June, so hopefully I can keep up the trend.

Some Links:

Fantasy Art -- Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor -- This Tumblr thread collects artwork of female fighters wearing armor that might actually protect more than 5% of their bodies in a fight. There's some great art here, so check it out. I particularly like this one, a cartoon that comments on the issue. :)

Iowa Student Dies After Brutal Beating in which Attackers Shouted Gay Slurs -- The media's attention has drifted away from the issue of anti-gay bullying and bashing, but kids are still dying. Marcellus Andrews, 19, was a college student and member of his church's drill team when some guys in a truck stopped and attacked him on the porch of a friend's house. They called him a faggot while beating on him, and one of these jerkwads kicked him in the face when he was down. He had severe head trauma and died in the hospital. This crap might not be making big headlines the way it was earlier in the year, but it's still happening and it still needs to stop. :(

CHRONICLES OF MANSPLAINING: Professor Feminism and the Deleted Comments of Doom -- I just ran into this one today. It's framed by a discussion of a particular incident, but in general this is absolutely the best explanation of what "mansplaining" is and why it's offensive that I've ever run into.

Then the blogger, Sady Doyle, explains how this springs from and feeds into the larger issues:

Here’s where we appeal to that “lived experience” thing. Because: Have you ever had a guy come up to you — on the street, in a bar, whatever — and just straight-up say, “hey, I wanna talk to you?” Happens all the time, right? Happens to women, all the time. But have you ever just straight-up said, “no?” Not “no, I have a boyfriend,” or “no, I’m busy,” or “no, I have to race to save the city from the Joker’s diabolical machinations, for I am the Batman,” or any other excuse: Just the word “no,” by itself?

Yeah. So you know what happens next, after you say “no.” The guy always keeps talking. He tries wheedling, or begging, sometimes. But if you say “no” firmly enough, or often enough that he gets the point, the dude just starts yelling. He tells you that you’re not that hot. He tells you what a bitch you are. (“You bitch, I have a Rolls Royce,” was my favorite of these.) Sometimes he follows you down the street, yelling at you; sometimes, he follows you in his car. These dudes are always so fucking certain that they’re entitled to your time and attention that they will harass you until you give it, or at least until you’re scared and sorry for not giving it. You do not have the right not to interact, as far as these guys are concerned.

...

That’s the real problem behind Mansplaining, and all the rest of it: We live in a culture where men are taught that, if they want women’s time and attention, they are entitled to it. They simply cannot grasp that a woman has the right to say “no.” You bitch, I have a Rolls Royce or you coward, I have more blog traffic than you: Whatever it is, it’s a guy insisting that he’s entitled to a form of attention a woman doesn’t want to give him, and lashing out at the woman for not giving it. From hence springs Mansplaining, sexual harassment, rape culture, and everything else we don’t like about how men treat women, from the tiniest violation to the most violent. All of it, ALL of it, springs from the idea that women should be ignored or punished when we say "no." Which is the idea Professor Feminism is reinforcing with his actions, as we speak.

The guys who comment here are cool, and actually see women as human beings. There are some guys in the comments at Tiger Beatdown who likewise Get It and aren't part of the problem. So many men are, though, that a majority of women in our culture treat all men they don't know well carefully, fearfully, because they have no idea which guy is cool and which guy might start with the "Who do you think you are to say 'no' to me, bitch?!" drill. Back to Sady: "That’s what it’s actually like, being a woman: Playing nice with every random asshole, because this random asshole might be the one who hurts you. And then, if he hurts you anyway, they’ll tell you that you led him on."

This relates back to my post last year on how women are socialized to be victims, and men are socialized to believe that anger is the proper response whenever a woman denies them something they want.

And to wrap up on a couple of positives:

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich -- Warren Buffett This is an NYT op-ed piece by one of the richest people in the country who thinks it's time America's super-rich paid a bit more tax. Nice to know not all the super-wealthy are scrambling for every shelter and loophole they can find. Props to Mr. Buffett -- I wish the Republican bigwigs would listen to him.

School Superintendent Gives up $800,000 in Pay -- Massive kudos and applause to Fresno County School Superintendent Larry Powell. His area has been hit with some of the highest unemployment in the country and his schools were suffering along with everyone else. Powell effectively retired, then let them hire him back for $31,000 per year, which is $10K less than a starting teacher makes.

"A part of me has chaffed at what they did in Bell," Powell said, recalling the corrupt Southern California city officials who secretly boosted their salaries by hundreds of thousands of dollars. "It's hard to believe that someone in the public trust would do that to the public. My wife and I asked ourselves 'What can we do that might restore confidence in government?'"

He also said, "How much do we need to keep accumulating? There's no reason for me to keep stockpiling money."

Another rich (or at least very well off) guy who deserves major props.

Angie

Baratunde Thurston on Trump and the Birth Certificate Fiasco

Yes, this.

With President Obama's Birth Certificate, Klansman Trump Reminds Blacks They Will Never Be American

[Edited with a link instead of an embed, because sometimes Blogger's layout is really annoying. [sigh]]

Angie

Now We Know How Bad it Has to Get for the Republicans to Disown Someone

Clue delivery for Jack Davis: You know you're a radical wingnut when even the folks in charge of the modern Republican party dump your butt because you're embarassing them.

[Caveat: yes, I know there are plenty of thoughtful, intelligent Republicans in this country. They're just not the ones in charge of the party right now, and that's a major problem for the US in the 21st century.]

Jack Davis has been pushing for a congressional seat for the last few elections, and threw his hat into the ring when Chris Lee resigned over an internet sex scandal, necessitating a special election to fill his newly empty spot. Things were apparently going well until Mr. Davis suggested, in public, "that Latino farmworkers be deported -- and that African-Americans from the inner city be bused to farm country to pick the crops."

Wow. Seriously.

Because clearly 1) all Latino farmworkers are illegal aliens, and 2) rounding up black people and forcing them to the fields to do agricultural labor worked so well for this country last time we did it.

W. Curtis Ellis, a Davis spokesman who apparently needs to look up "damage control" in the political dictionary, said afterward:

"It may not be politically correct and it may not be racially correct, but when you have African American people in Buffalo who do not have jobs and are out of work, why are you bringing people into this country illegally to take jobs?" Ellis asked.

Wow again. Apparently Mr. Ellis agrees with Mr. Davis that the whole forced-agricultural-labor thing turned out well enough in the early days of our country that it's worth trying again. (And with the "fact" that all Latino farm workers are illegal aliens.) Note also that Mr. Ellis's statement is a classic example of how, when someone says that something "may not be politically correct," the subtext is "This may well be grossly offensive, but I agree with it anyway because it's my privilege to do so." At least Mr. Ellis is working for a candidate whose world view and position he can wholeheartedly support.

Having been dumped by a Republican party leadership that's proven even it has limits, Mr. Davis is trying to collect enough signatures to get onto the ballot as the Tea Party candidate. It'll be interesting to see whether they have limits.

Thanks to the Field Negro for linking to this.

Angie

This Is How it Happens

Harriet Jacobs at Fugitivus made this pretty awesome post about how most women in our society are socialized, how we're taught to behave and relate to others in social situations, and how that leads to a culture where way too many women end up getting raped and then blamed for it. I'm going to quote the core list, because it really needs to be spread around, but I encourage you to read her whole post. I had to stop myself from just going on and on and on with the copy hilighting, because it's all true and it's all important.

If women are raised being told by parents, teachers, media, peers, and all surrounding social strata that:

* it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (“mean bitch”)
* it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (“crazy bitch”)
* it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (“stuck-up bitch”)
* it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (“angry bitch”)
* it is not okay to have (or express) conflicted, fluid, or experimental feelings about yourself, your body, your sexuality, your desires, and your needs (“bitch got daddy issues”)
* it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (“dyke bitch”)
* it is not okay to raise your voice (“shrill bitch”)
* it is not okay to completely and utterly shut down somebody who obviously likes you (“mean dyke/frigid bitch”)

If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.

Most of that crap never took with me. I've always been loud and agressive and out there, even as a kid. Most of the times I got punished, it was for something I said rather than something I did. If I didn't like someone, or what someone was saying or doing, I made it really clear. That made for a lot of awkward social situations. I've never been The Popular Girl, never had a lot of boyfriends, never really fit in perfectly with the people around me. But you know what? I've never been raped, I've never felt unsafe out in public with strangers, even late at night on lonely streets. I know where to draw lines, I know how to say no, I know how to make it clear from the start that I'm not interested in talking to someone. Polite women are the ones who get raped, and I never have been; I can't regret that. :/

Ironically enough, the only time I've ever felt unsafe in that way was at a party at my mom's house. I was in the kitchen doing dishes and a sort of second-tier family friend (Gusto? I think that was his name) was drunk and insisted on getting close and touching me. He was feeling "friendly" or whatever, and wanted to hug me and press against me. I gritted my teeth and let him have one hug, but he wanted to keep on hugging and after the first one I wasn't having any. He was sort of a friend, though, and I didn't want to make a fuss. (Don't get loud. Don't set boundaries. Don't be mean to someone who's just being friendly.) I was saying no and backing off, but I ended up cornered against the counter with a big wooden meat platter with spikes on it between me and him like a shield, spikes out. He was kind of confused for a minute or three, like he was trying to figure out how to get to me around it, but he finally got a fucking clue and wandered away.

You know, I knew nothing "serious" was going to happen. There were like a dozen people around and I knew I wasn't actually going to get raped or anything. But it was frightening anyway, and I can't even really explain why except that this guy I had no interest in whatsoever, even as a friend because he was frankly a creep from pretty much all angles, was trying to touch me and get way more in my space and way more intimate than I wanted to, and I didn't know how to make him stop without making more of a fuss than would've been socially acceptable. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to be groped, but what do you do about it when it's someone's friend and you're right there and there are people around and no one else seems to think anything is wrong? It's exactly like the paragraph in the post above about the woman at the bus stop who's being hit on by a guy. My brother Sean was right there and didn't do anything, didn't say anything to Gusto, even though he was his friend (I think he was; I know he was the friend of someone in the family, and it wasn't Mom or me; maybe he started out as a friend of a friend, but he came to our house a few times over the years) and afterward, after Gusto staggered off, when I expressed that that'd been upsetting and kind of scary, Sean was very eyerolly and dismissive. He said that if anything had "really" happened he'd have stopped it, but nothing happened and there was nothing to be upset about. It was just a hug after all, nothing to make a fuss about. He sounded kind of angry, just a little, that I'd even vaguely imply that Gusto might've done anything wrong, even though Sean was there pretty much the whole time I was being stalked around the kitchen and trying to fend the guy off with no luck.

But that's the problem -- unless it's some stranger jumping out from behind a bush to drag a woman into a dark alley and rape her, it doesn't count. Nothing less than that is worth making a fuss about. And if a woman does make a fuss about something not worth making a fuss about, then you're back to "Mean bitch," and "Crazy bitch" and "Stuck-up bitch" etc., all that social pressure to be Nice and to be Polite and to be Ladylike and to not upset anyone, to just put up and deal and smile and pretend it's all okay, because you're the woman and that's your job. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if Gusto had tried to stick a hand into my bra or down my pants, Sean would've been right there to haul him away and maybe smack him around a bit. But just wanting to hug me, to touch me in a way I didn't want -- that doesn't count and I had to be pressured into agreeing that it was no big deal. So I'm supposed to be nice and polite and go along when some drunken creep wants to touch me against my will. Keep doing that and eventually you do get raped, and everyone around you is saying, "But you didn't protest when he groped you!"

And this was ME. Loud, aggressive, social-bull-in-a-china-shop Angie, who (usually) takes no shit from anyone, and still I ended up in a situation where I felt pretty strongly the social pressure to go along, be polite, not cause a fuss in a crowd when some creep was trying to touch me. My fear of the social consequences with my friends and family if I'd shoved him away or cussed him out or raised my voice at him took away effective options, made me seriously afraid because I couldn't think what to do, and reduced me to a passive defensive action behind a spiked cutting board until the guy trying to grope me gave up and went away. What kind of a chance do normal women have, the ones who've actually been successfully socialized in all the nice, polite, ladylike behavior, when some determined, smiling guy wants more than a drunken hug and grope? Not much.

This is why rape happens as often as it does, and this is why so many people jump in to deny that it was "really" rape, because the woman didn't yell, didn't punch or kick, didn't tell him to leave her the fuck alone, didn't even protest too much when he first groped her. This is how it happens, and this is how it's dismissed.

Angie, who's very glad all that quiet-polite-ladylike stuff never really took