Bi, bi, bi! It's Bisexual Awareness Week, where we all get a penalty on rolling stealth checks. If you'd like to help mitigate the negative impact or better yet, CELEBRATE bisexuals with us, check out this bundle! (itch gets 0%)
My book, Pet, is available at a 3rd of its normal price! You can pick up the first book in the series free or start with Pet. Come read about Zack, a disaster bi with a polycule that needs so much therapy. SO MUCH.
Bi Visibility Week Mega-Bundle: 50 items for $50.00
If you missed the bundle, you can always still buy Pet at any retailer you like!
The book on sale!
Hate is a four-letter word—one that hits home for Zack Henderson only three years after being the victim of terrible violence.
While settling into his new life, he finally manages to put the past behind him. Just as he believes he is finally safe, though, hate comes smashing through his door. When everything he cares about is torn away from him, he must find the strength to make decisions of which he had never believed himself capable.
In a world with vampires, humans can still show that being dead is not a prerequisite for being a monster.`
"It's like we're all brainwashed from the time we're babies to think to think that we have to be straight."
Austin in "Felix Ever After" by Kacen Callender
Those quotes kind of made me think. I mean, yes, it is sometimes exhausting to be around straight people, especially if they behave like assholes towards members of the LGBTQIA+ community and you don't even know if you belong to that community or if you are straight. It really makes you wonder if one day, you'll become an asshole like them or the victim of their assaults. The most exhausting thing is (which is also talked about in the book) that some straight people believe that being queer is something that can be cured or contagious like it's an illness. I don't get it. People don't become magically straight if they watch a straight couple kiss, so why should this be the case for watching a queer couple kiss? Your sexuality is not something you can cure or something you can control. It just subconsciously happens. The problem is the heteronormativity that controls the world. Everyone just assumes that they are straight because it is "normal". Unless you don't have a crush on a celebrity of the opposite gender or you really think about who you want to be, you assume that you are straight, right? That's the part that makes it exhausting. Straight people never really explore the possibility that they could be something else, something completely different and therefore don't even think about being queer.
I personally believe that no one is really completely straight. There are so many ways to being queer and so many labels that many straight people might identify themselves with some of those labels. I'm not saying that everyone should be in the LGBTQIA+ community or identify partly as being queer. I'm just saying that there's a possibility that there are many layers to being straight as well as to being queer. In theory, everyone should be pansexual. Or many people say so, even without knowing what being pansexual even means. The moral in our society is to "be attracted to the personality rather than the body". The saying "never judge a book by its cover" basically means that a person shouldn't like another person based on their looks. So, in general and really oversimplified, pansexual and therefore queer. You see where I'm going with this? There are more sexualities than just straight and just queer. Why not blend one with the other? Why not mix things up? Who cares? No one is just one of those two things even if some people might not acknowledge it.
I truly believe that the continuous fight between straight people and the LGBTQIA+ community needs to come to an end. To be honest, I don't identify as anything and kind of devoted myself to being a heterophobe just because I thought that it is unfair to hate on queer people without getting any hate back. I don't know. Fight fire with fire, I guess. The concept is really weird and doesn't make any sense. Especially because there is some hate within the LGBTQIA+ community towards specific sexualities. I don't really know why and I don't really get it. In a community, you should support each other and be there for each other. Not hate other people in the community. That's really not how it works.
All I'm trying to say with this post/statement: Don't hate on others. Or, well, you can hate but don't seriously hate. You know? For example, in the book "Felix Ever After", the main character was harassed by an anonymous person for being trans. That kind of hate is unacceptable and overall unjustified. If you are mean to a family member or a friend or you just can't stand a person because you don't like their personality or whatever, yes, it is probably justified to hate. Mostly because you almost never really mean it. You can say "Oh, I hate that teacher." or "I freaking hate this kind of music, it drives me nuts.". It doesn't mean anything. As long as you don't hate on anybody's identity. Then we have a serious problem. And the Internet kind of supports hate.
Like Marc-Uwe Kling (a German author) said: The great thing about the Internet is that finally everyone can give the whole world their opinion. The terrible thing is, everyone does.
Due to the Internet and being connected to the whole world, everyone can express their opinion and negativity. Yes, liberty of expressing yourself but some opinions really don't need to be voiced. Sometimes, it is better to shut up.
(Anyhow, thanks for reading and putting up with my rambling. I hope this made sense. Otherwise, just skip and forget about it.)
Dresden has declared itself in the grip of a ‘Nazi emergency’. But when one museum boss was targeted by extremists, she opened her doors to
In today’s polarised political climate, cultural producers face a difficult choice. Should they engage with reactionary voices, and risk normalising them, or boycott them, and risk alienating them further? Wagner’s path at the Albertinum offers a third possibility: a case study in how arts organisations can win over a hostile public, while remaining true to their ideals.
...Other German arts institutions have adopted a firm shut-door policy on the far right. In Leipzig, an AfD-sympathising artist was excluded from an annual painting exhibition. In Berlin, the director of the Friedrichstadt-Palast theatre stated that AfD voters were not welcome at his venue.
But in Dresden, where the far right courses through all strata of society, Wagner sees the duties of a public institution differently. “Pegida and AfD voters are everywhere here. They’re among families, colleagues and our network of sponsors. Where are we if we simply say we’re not talking to one another?”
Wagner implemented a roster of dialogue events and strategies across the Albertinum. The first step was an open-invitation discussion series. In the museum’s airy central atrium, long central tables were set up, flanked by curved rows of seating. Up to 600 people showed up at the events, including Pegida members, as well as many of the individuals who had attacked Wagner.
“It was initially very difficult,” she recalls. “We had shouting, door slamming, a lot of arguments and accusations. But it did develop in a positive direction.” One of the men who had previously sent Wagner hate mail stood up and apologised. Another said the Albertinum had come to feel “like our living room”.
This domestic atmosphere was key for Wagner, who titled the discussion series We Need to Talk. “I found it important to establish this feeling of personal relationship. We had participants from across the social and political spectrum, with a range of attitudes. And we learned a lot from each other.”
Then came curatorial strategies. Like many places porous to far-right extremism, Dresden’s identity is punctured by experiences of erasure. Capital of the state of Saxony, the city was once a major economic centre, flush with trade and baroque architecture.
February 1945, 90% of the city centre was destroyed by allied air raids, killing up to 25,000 residents – the majority women and children. Then, after a period of architectural and industrial revival under the East German government, reunification saw Dresden lose much of its employment, ownership and young people to the west.
Wagner seeks to retrieve periods of artistic energy from these successive waves of loss – not least Dresden’s lively interwar abstraction scene. “Kandinsky, Mondrian, Lissitzky were all extremely active here in the 1920s. I want to remind Dresdeners of that modernist history, and nurture their openness to and pride in what happened here.”
Through the dialogue series, it also became clear that her public wanted to see more imagery from the East German era, as well as paintings depicting the wartime destruction of Dresden. This presented a dilemma: both genres have been leveraged by the AfD to goad a sense of civic victimhood.
Wagner’s solution was not to deny her visitors’ wishes, but to challenge any simplistic victim narrative with additional nuance and context. Paintings depicting Dresden’s destruction were presented alongside international anti-war works by Maria Lassnig and Marlene Dumas. An installation by Wolfgang Tillmans showed the destruction of Dresden alongside that of Coventry. “I wanted to make sure we weren’t isolating these works, that we were showing them on eye level with other perspectives.”
Wagner also honoured the request for more East German art, but deflected the patriarchal discourse of the AfD with an emphasis on the country’s female practitioners. An exhibition curated by Susanne Altmann showed 36 female artists from East Germany and other former Soviet states. Next year, a thematic show will emphasise East Germany’s inclusive ideals, exploring its allegiances with South Africa, Mozambique and India.
Not everyone is persuaded by Wagner’s measures. Shortly before last Christmas, she was moved to hear a refugee and migrant organisation gathered in the museum’s atrium, singing festive songs. As she watched from the gallery above, a nearby German man tutted disapprovingly at the multiethnic chorus. “Poor Germany,” he said.
It was a depressing reminder of the challenges she faces. But Wagner isn’t giving up. For her, it is exactly this kind of personal exposure that might lead to better social cohesion. “As a museum,” she says, “we are one of the few places where such direct encounters can still happen.”
Oof. This isn't an easy line to walk. And controversial too. I myself have pretty dang mixed feelings about this.
Walking Within Wisdom #2 - 8-21-19
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ~Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Although I rarely watch the news, I woke up to a cacophony of emails, social media and alerts on my phone about the #POTUS comments yesterday about “Disloyal Jews”.
TRUMP: "I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat -- it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty."
Even though I have just started doing Walking in Wisdom to shift away from this, the crazy, distractions, politics and hate speech AND although I am not interested in putting my time and attention to “fight” about this, I believe that if I can start DOING small things that don’t suck me into the hate and distraction AND redirect my time and energy toward something that makes a difference, bringing hope, inspiration, perhaps it will help me? So I figure I will give this a try today.
The main voice/tweet/quote that showed up in ALL of my “feeds” this morning was Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt: "It's unclear who @POTUS is claiming Jews would be 'disloyal' to, but charges of disloyalty have long been used to attack Jews. As we've said before, it's possible to engage in the democratic process without these claims. It's long overdue to stop using Jews as a political football," Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt
So this morning instead of random podcast roulette for my walking within wisdom, I looked for a podcast with Jonathan Greenblatt and/or the ADL to redirect my time and attention and found this for Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) from 2017
https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/leading_through_turbulent_times
As I am an avid follower of all things social entrepreneurship, I have read quite a bit about and by Jonathan Greenblatt but I somehow missed that he was now head of the ADL… For those of you who have never heard of him here is the opening paragraph on his wikipedia page:
Jonathan Greenblatt (born November 21, 1970) is an American social entrepreneur, corporate executive, and the sixth National Director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Prior to heading ADL, Greenblatt served in the White House as Special Assistant to Barack Obama, and Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.
Also for those who don’t know about the ADL - Anti-Defamation League is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States. The ADL states that its mission is to "[fight] anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, [defend] democratic ideals, and [defend] civil rights for all", doing so through "information, education, legislation, and advocacy"
Although this podcast was recorded in 2017 it could have EASILY been recorded this morning. Greenblatt talks about leading the ADL during turbulent times and fostering a culture of innovation within an established 100 year old + organization.
The description from the podcast says:
During the conversation, Greenblatt draws from his background in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. During the Obama administration, he served as special assistant to the President and head of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation at the White House. He previously co-founded Ethos Water, a bottled water company that donates a portion of its profits to help clean water initiatives around the world, and ran the media company GOOD.
So what wisdom, hope or inspiration did I glean from this podcast? Gratefully a few things…
The first is how he met his wife… A former boss of his from the Boston office of the ADL was now working the Los Angeles office of the ADL. As all good Jewish Mothers do she insisted he come over so she could feed him and she set him up on a blind date with his now wife. 17 years and 3 kids later they are still married :-)
Another piece of inspiration was when he described how he was “headhunted” for the position at the ADL. He was a social entrepreneur he had never run a nonprofit, never worked in the Jewish Community, “its a civil rights organization and he certainly wasn’t a lawyer.” He truly believed they weren’t really interested in him, “they just wanted help to be networked to the right person.” He talked to them and he didn’t have anything to lose so he gave his feedback to the search firm - he didn’t want anything from them so he was liberated to speak his mind! Look what it got him ;-) He is truly humbled that the ADL gave him this opportunity to be accountable to this legacy… This is totally inspiring to me as an outlier, disrupter, positive deviant there still maybe hope for me 💕
Although there were many things in this podcast that I found really helpful his description of the founding of the ADL and its mission was most inspirational to me… Its mission is to “Stop the defamation of the Jewish people AND secure justice and fair treatment for all.” In 1913 jews had NO social capital, there was significant antisemitism with signs everywhere that read, “no dogs, no blacks, no jews”… Jews couldn’t live in many neighborhoods so it made perfect sense to create an organization to support and advocate for the Jewish people. What didn’t make sense was that the ADL would focus on not just “our community” it would focus on ALL COMMUNITIES this was completely audacious for the time 1913 and EVEN NOW! Having a dual mission has animated the organization for generations.
This was a great podcast for me this morning. I found this experiment inspiring especially after the barrage of hate… What are you doing to deal with what is happening in the world, can we walk and talk? Will you share your wisdom with me?
We need another plague or huge disaster, but like, one that wipes out the misogynistic, homophobic, pedophilic, and just generally bad humans in politics, corporates, and the violent actors that pull shit like Pulse (May their souls rest peacefully in their next life). And just generally bad people.
So something happened today. We have a local crossdresser. I don't if she is transgender or just likes to wear feminine clothing, but I refer to her as she because just in case, and she dresses better than a lot of cisgender women in my crappy town--except today I didn't agree with the power rangers t-shirt she had with pretty dressy skirt and tasseled vest, but whatevs. I was talking to her--her name's Matty--and helping her with the uscan because they are awful, and I told her to have a good day and whatnot, and she clip-clips out in her stylish heels and groceries. And an old lady waves me over, and I went over thinking she needs help, or maybe she recognizes me from being a client of my mom (she's a hairstylist) or something. But she puts her arm around my shoulders and says "So what did you think of the lady with the beard?" all snide and sleazy. Obviously trying to make fun of Matty--Matty had five-o'clock shadow at that point of the day. And I just burst out "I love her!" The lady jerked away from me like I'd burned her, and I just kept going, "She's the sweetest person ever, and she always smells good. She--" and I just kept referring to her Matty as "she" and practically chased that little old lady out of the store singing Matty's praises.
