You EMPLOYE Miette? You make Miette pay rent? Jail. Jail for father ten thousand years

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@thatlauraruby
You EMPLOYE Miette? You make Miette pay rent? Jail. Jail for father ten thousand years
Complicity
Weāre celebrating Womenās History month with 31 days of posts focused on improving the climate for social and gender equality in the childrenās and teensā literature community. Join in the conversation on Facebook or Twitter #kidlitwomen
Around this time last year, I pitched a YA novel to my agent, Tina Dubois. I described the novel the way I normally describe my projects: āThis is the most batshit thing Iāve ever done, lol.ā Iāve used such language to describe my writing for yearsāitās weird, itās quirky, itās totally banana-pants, the kind of language that echoes criticisms I got from teachers and fellow workshoppers over and over again. āWhatās with all the cats and bears and ghosts, Laura?ā or āWhy donāt you write in order, Laura?ā or āNobodyās going to care about this, Laura.ā The work that I thought was my best and most honest others said wasnāt realistic, wasnāt universal, was too weird or too hostile. (āWhy do you hate men so much, Laura? Did this actually happen to you, Laura?ā) As hard as I try to fight it now, Iām still carrying these criticisms around with me, they have affected me, infected me. Iāve let my insecurities dictate how I discuss my writing. So much so that Iāve regularly sabotaged myself with my own agent, a woman I consider a friend, and a trusted part of my community. Ā Ā
An interesting essay in VQR has been making the rounds. In this essay, writer Lili Loofbourow talks about the ways in which we, as a culture, approach male vs. female work, a way that we instantly sum up the work of women rather than deeply engaging with it. She calls this approach āthe male glance, the narrative corollary to the male gaze. We all have it, and itās ruining our ability to see goodĀ art. The male glance is how comedies about women become chick flicks. Itās how discussions of serious movies with female protagonists consign them to the unappealing stable of āstrong female characters.ā Itās how soap operas and reality television become synonymous with trash. It tricks us into pronouncing mothers intrinsically boring, and it quietly convinces us that female friendships come in two strains: conventional jealousy or⦠saccharine loveā¦ā Ā
She goes on to write that, āWhen we look at a girl story, most of us go a tiny bit stupid. We fail to see beyond the limits of our own generic expectationsā¦Even when weāre moved by the work ourselves, our assumption, time and again, tends to be that the effects these female texts produce are small, or imperfectly controlled, or, even worse, accidental. The text is doing something in spite of itself.āĀ
I have realized only recently that when I pitch my own work, I go more than a tiny bit wonky. My work is āimperfectly controlled,ā i.e., ābanana-pants.ā Accidentally batshit and unrealistic and non-linear, but hopefully resonant in spite of itself, or rather, in spite of the woman who thought so long about it and worked so hard to write it. Ā Ā
Iām a lifelong feminist. I have been one since I learned that the word āgirlā was an insult. To say that Iām utterly horrified by the way Iāve been talking about stories that mean so much to me would be an understatement. Ā
Even worse, the male glance not only hampers our ability to evaluate good art, it also hampers our ability to make good art. My agent just saved me from myself when I handed in a middle-grade novel draft a few weeks ago. She pointed out that in my zeal to critique women who gleefully participate in the subjugation of less powerful women, I sometimes resorted to insulting their bad dye-jobs, their appearance, rather than interrogating their alignment with a powerful system that requires them to throw other women under the bus. Ā
Well, shit. Ā Ā Ā
So, the male glance limits everyoneās perception and production of art, including our own. The white gaze does the same thingālimiting art, twisting it, crushing it to fit well-worn, limiting, even damaging tropes about people of color. Toni Morrison wrote about this in her brilliant book Playing in the Dark. But, in the same way the male glance also affects men and their work in ways men canāt always see, the white glance/gaze also limits the white imagination in a way that many white people canāt see in their own work or the work of others. This is what led white audiences to express shock and dismay over the fact that The Hunger Gamesās Rue was Black,Ā white Academy members to dismiss the genius of Ava Duvernayās SelmaĀ and Jordan Peeleās Get Out,Ā white reviewers to be confuzzled about the complex lives of people of color in books, especially those written by women of color,Ā and white writers to become tearful and defensive when critiqued about representation (points to, uh, the entire Internet).Ā
While itās important to see the effects of the white gaze in otherās work, itās also important to turn a critical eye on our own work. My (white) myopia led me to make the mistake of including a racial slur often levied against Mexican immigrants in my very first middle-grade novel, Lilyās Ghosts. Despite the fact that this language was clearly considered wrong in the world of my novel, despite the fact that I thought I was telling the ātruthā about a particular interaction, I didnāt think about how hurtful it might be to young readers, or why I thought it was necessary (it wasnāt). After receiving a heartfelt letter from a boy who told me he loved the story but wanted to know why Iād included this slur, and after conversations with friends and colleagues, I removed the language for the electronic edition. I still cringe when I think about it. Yet this isnāt the only mistake Iāve made, and wonāt be the last.
Someone once said that people become storytellers because at some point in their lives, they werenāt heard. I, myself, have spent most of my life feeling like the mythical Cassandra, always telling the truth, but never believed. But you can get stuck there, shrieking at the world, HEAR ME, SEE ME, when you actually have been heard and centered at least part of the time, when the systems in place have benefitted you and your work over the work of other people. Trying to dismantle such systems is unbelievably difficult. As Lili Loofbourow writes, āGenerations of forgetting to zoom into female experience arenāt easily shrugged off, however noble our intentions, and the upshot is that we still donāt expect female texts to have universal things to say. We imagine them as small and careful, or petty and domestic, or vain, or sassy, or confessional.ā
I donāt believe my work is small or vain, sassy or confessional, but Iām so used to calling it āweirdā that Iām not sure what else it is. I have to find new language for it, a new way to talk about it: āIf itās not ābatshit,ā what is it, Laura?ā Ā Lately, Iāve been asking myself a lot more questions. Where have I been complicit in denigrating my own writing or even myself? How many times have I referred to my own successes as sheer luck? How do I pitch my work to others? How do I gauge my own worth financially and otherwise? Where have limited/limiting ideas about girls and women bled into my writing?
I also have to ask myself other questions, questions that might be more difficult to ask and require much more effort to answer: Whose voices havenāt I heard? Where and how have limited/limiting ideas about people different from me infected my work? How can I express gratitude for all the things that kidlit/teenlit has given me while acknowledging that others have not gotten the same opportunities? When should I step aside and give someone else a chance to speak, and listen as best as I can? Whose voices could I lift up and support? How can I take responsibility for things I say, do or write with openness and thanks instead of defensiveness and handwringing?
One of the cultural scripts that all Americans have been fed is one of rugged individualism, a script that says a real (white) man can save a real (powerless, pretty white) girl, the world and himself with no help from anyone else. But when I think about the community Iām grateful to be a part of, when I think about the ways in which so many thoughtful and engaged women and non-binary folks support one another, even save one anotherāI know that script is totally batshit. Ā
It will take all of us, together, to rewrite it.
Heās getting his groove on (full version) šµ
~ Turn up the volume šš»šµ
Tubbs the snow-cat
HE MUST BE STOPPED.
SURF CITY, N.C. -- Leaving the beach with a few new shells and shark teeth is considered a good day. But when the shark tooth is millions of years old, you've hit the jackpot. Colossal shark...
Megalodon
tiny kitten and tiny owlĀ
It is a fact universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of an opinion must be in want of a correction. Well, actually, no it isnāt, but who doesnāt love riffing on Jane Austen? The answer is: lots of people, because weāre all different and some of us havenāt even read Pride and Prejudice dozens of times, but the main point is that Iāve been performing interesting experiments in proffering my opinions and finding that some of the men out there respond on the grounds that my opinion is wrong, while theirs is right because they are convinced that their opinion is a fact, while mine is a delusion. Sometimes they also seem to think that they are in charge, of me as well of facts.
Rebecca Solnit, MEN EXPLAIN LOLITA TO MEĀ http://lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/
Thatās about right
teddytrumpet
Will my cat try to pull these stunts?
@long-silver-bullet
Lin-Manuel Miranda Talks āHamilton,ā New York And His Influences
A few things you need to know about this hot coffee case:
It wasnāt an issue of the coffee being because no fucking shit coffee is hot, but McDonaldās had over heated their water to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Thatās 121C. Not just hot, but really FUCKING hot. Your fancy Starbucks lattes are brewed to 150 degrees.
The 79 year old woman had this cup of 250F (121C) coffee between her legs when it spilled so 250F (121C) coffee spilled on her genitals
She got third degree burnsā¦on her genitals. THIRD DEGREE.
She had to have skin grafts to repair the damage
When she sued McDonaldās, it wasnāt for millions of dollars, it was for $20,000 to cover hospital costs and court fees. 20-fucking-thousand.
It was the courts that awarded her the amount of money she got. Again, she only wanted hospital bills and court costs
McDonaldās changed their heating policy, but not before making her sign a gag order keeping her from talking about this case
So she had to live on hearing little shits like you call her stupid and money-grubbing, and other horrendous stuff because she dared ask the company in the wrong to fix what they fucked up.
MORE FUN FACTS:
9. The woman who was burned was not driving the car, she was a passenger.
10. The carĀ was not in motion when she was burned. The car was parked so she could add cream and sugar.
The coffee case is one of the biggest examples of a carefully-crafted smear campaign by a company that is in the wrong trying to hide that.
Additionally, several people had been badly burned by McDonaldās coffee prior to that case, both employees and customers, and McDonaldās had been fined and told to lower the heat of their coffee. They refused to lower the coffeeās heat, continuing to serve a product they KNEW from EXPERIENCE was dangerous, because they could.
When she was burned, she reached out to McDonaldās for them to cover her medical expenses. They sent her a coupon booklet as a big eff yuu.
She required skin grafts not just on her genitals but on her thighs, buttocks, and I think stomach. Like, it was a lot of skin grafts! And did you know that skin grafts donāt always take? She was very severely hurt by a product that McDonaldās knew for a FACT was dangerous.
But nah, go on talking about how she was just foolish and greedy, thatās obviously the case, big corporations have all of our best interest in heart, really they do.
Her name was Stella Liebeck. She has since passed away but I think itās important to name the victim in this story. Her name was Stella Liebeck and the coffee was so hot that it fused her labia together. It melted her genitals closed. But itās all just a giant joke, huh?
By the way?
Liebeck, who also underwent debridement treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonalds refused.
At that point, she had medical bills of over $11,000. She was anticipating more. She didnāt have much money.She just wanted McDonaldās to pay for the damage their coffee had done so that she could get medical treatment. Seems reasonable, right?
McDonaldās countered with an offer of $800, then turned down repeated requests to settle. Ā
And there werenāt several people who were burned before Liebeck. It was a LOT worse than that.
During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebeck[ā]s. This history documented McDonaldsā knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard.
So McDonaldās knew that their coffee was burning peopleāin some cases, causing third-degree burns. They knew it for TEN YEARS. And they did nothing about it.
Oh, and the jury award?
The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages. This amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill. The jury also awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages, which equals about two days of McDonaldsā coffee sales.
:::
The trial court subsequently reduced the punitive award to $480,000 ā or three times compensatory damages ā even though the judge called McDonaldsā conduct reckless, callous and willful.
So all of the jokes about how rich Liebeck got off the settlement? Nope. McDonaldās ended up not even haping to pay most of it.
Nancy Tiano says her mother was ānever happy about the incidentā and that āthe burns and court proceedings took their toll.ā During her final years, Tiano says, her mother had no quality of life. The good news is that the settlement helped to ease the end of her life by paying for a live-in nurse.Ā
Thatās where the money went. For medical care.Ā
Donāt forget that the REASON that they serve their coffee at DANGEROUSLY high temperatures (Injuring literally thousands of customers) is because coffee brewed and kept at those DANGEROUSLY HIGH temperatures tastes fresher longer, so less undrunk coffee has to be thrown out throughout the day, so McDonalds can MAKE MORE PROFIT on their damn coffee sales.Ā
I hope that what I can contribute is something that hasnāt been seen before. (x)
The Cat harvest is bountiful this year.
From imgfave.com
Reminder!Ā Book Smugglers Publishing is currently open for submissions for short stories to be published between June and August 2016.
For the publication period between June and August 2016, the theme is:
SUPERHEROES
What Weāre Looking For:
DIVERSITY. We want to read and publish short stories that reflect the diverse world we live in, about and from traditionally underrepresented perspectives. We more than welcome stories featuring LGBTQIA characters: PLEASE SEND THEM TO US. It should go without saying that weād hope for a respectful and responsible approach to creating diverse worlds and characters.
Middle Grade, Young Adult, and Adult audience submissions are welcome. Good speculative fiction is ageless!
We are VERY keen on receiving Romance stories ā or stories with strong romantic elements.
We are VERY keen on receiving Horror stories ā or stories with strong horror elements.
Creativity & Subversion. We love subversive stories. We want you to challenge the status quo with your characters, story telling technique, and themes.
Guidelines for Submission:
We are looking for original speculative fiction, between 1,500 and 17,500 words long.
These SFF offerings must be previously unpublished; we do not accept simultaneous submissions.
Profanity, sex, and other explicit situations are fine as long as they fit within the context of the story.
Submissions are open now, and will be open through December 31 2015 11:59PM PST. Any submissions received after that date will not be considered.
Payment and Terms:
We are funding this ourselves because we are passionate about finding new and diverse voices in SFF. We will be paying $0.06 per word up to $500 (although we welcome stories from a minimum of 1,500 words and up to a maximum of 17,500 words long).
We plan on publishing these short stories for free in their entirety on thebooksmugglers.com. We also plan on selling these stories in ebook (and possibly limited print editions) at a 50% net royalty, with potential inclusion in future anthologies (royalty to be negotiated). We ask for exclusive rights for one year, and non-exclusive rights following that.
How to Submit:
Submissions (and questions!) should be emailed to [email protected].
REMINDER - we are currently open for short stories. We pay pro rates (up to a cap of $500) and we eagerly want your subversive stories. We would very much like to receive tons of Romance! YA is welcome too. Stories written by authors of colour? YES YES PLEASE. Stories featuring LGBTQIA? HECK YES, PLEASE SEND THEM. Ā Ā Ā
BUMPING this because the deadline approaches! GET SUBMITTING.
This had me laughing so hard.
The same thing is done with racing horses. Except that they use a goat. [x]
(Fact Source) Follow Ultrafacts for more facts
HELLO FAST CAT I AM YOUR DESIGNATED DOG FRIEND
Opponents would literally attempt toĀ kidnap each otherās goats in an effort to upset the horse and cause them to lose the race. [x]
I have a weird derailing question. Is this the origin of the idiom about getting someoneās goat?
As a matter of fact, it is!
Peeple is for one type of person.
It seems like the general consensus about Peeple, the proposed new app touting itself as āYelp for peopleā is that it is the worst idea ever. Iām glad about that.
My first thought on hearing about Peeple, and their system of letting a third party start your page without your consent, and without the ability to opt out, was that meant my rapist could start a page about me. Without my consent. And control how others viewed me by āreviewingā how they feel about my personality, my integrity, my believability, a woman who was the teenage girl he raped as punishment āfor being ~a bad friend.ā Peeple puts my reputation at the mercy of a criminal. Again.
Peeple could put me in physical danger.
My second thought was that the ex I changed my public name to avoid could start a page for my real name and, unbeknownst to their intentions, people who are still privy to my legal name would comment ā letting them know where I am, what Iām doing, and how I live now. A casual acquaintance in my new life, thinking they are leaving a kind āreview,ā would give my ex a window through which they could break into my life, my home. Since I canāt opt out, the safest choice for me would be to minimize the number of people who even know me ā could review me, even positively. Peeple allows a sadistic abuser to isolate me from family and friends. Again.
Peeple could put me in physical danger.
My third thought was that Peeple is the ultimate tool for outing people. A positive āromanticā review, viewable to someoneās āprofessionalā sphere, means those social circles intersect. For many queer people, even people who are fully out in their personal lives, that is a job threat. I am super, super out in 75% of my life ā but the 25% where I am not out is where I draw most of my income. Being outed to Conservative prospective clients not only jeopardizes my livelihood, it could tell homophobes who, and where, I am and what I do. And, coupled with my job, when to find me.
Peeple could put me in physical danger.
Not even to get into how I feel, as a Jew, about a system of categorizing human beings by numbers and allowing third-party control. It seems, idk, familiar, and like a bad idea. I donāt need the kids who drew swastikas on all of my stuff in middle school to rank me or rate me or in any way be part of the public presentation of my self.
I am, and should be, in control of the public presentation of my self.
(Space between āmyā and āselfā because I mean my SELF, my ME-ness, the total package of who I am to the world. And who I am to the world is not who I am to one ex, to one employer, to one friend. Who I am to the world should be determined by me, not filtered through others and claimed by a third party.)
Peepleās creators claim that they are empathetic entrepreneurs, but their suggestion that ānegative reviewsā (OF YOUR PERSONALITY???) would encourage people to ājust work things out!ā shows a stunning lack of empathy ā or basic understanding ā of living with any kind of marginalization.
Like many queer people ā well, like most humans in general ā my life has layers and circles of influence. They donāt need to touch. Who I date has no bearing on how I work, and how I work doesnāt affect how I make friends or who I want to make social connections with. How many people will lose out on jobs because a prospective employer can see that theyāre gay ā but in a capacity that canāt be proven, taken up with HR, defended against?
I can understand that for the creators, the idea of outing likely never crossed their minds. Further than that, many straight people seem to think that itās a one-time catch-all event and that if a queer person is out somewhere, theyāre out everywhere. But in a society where hate crimes happen, where peopleās careers are ended, where family members are disowned, where ideologies and work are dismissed, because of sexuality, Peepleās assumption that professional and romantic circles should ever touch is deeply dangerous.
(Not to mention that itās gross: professional and romantic circles SHOULDNāT touch. Unless youāre Jim and Pam on The Office. Allowing someoneās workplace superior to see, or rate, or participate in any way, in their romantic/sexual life is harassment and just kinda disgusting.)
How many students might I lose if their parents decide they donāt want a queer Jew working one-on-one with their child? One of the appās creators claims that she thinks Peeple is an aid to āknow who to trust with her children,ā but the more I think about the app, the more her statement feels like āknow who wonāt expose my kids to diversity I disapprove of.ā
Frankly, if you need a number rating on an app to judge who should be around your kids, you shouldnāt have kids. The intense underground networking of abusers and pedophiles that already exist would only benefit from Peeple: give each other high rankings, āvouchā for each other, appear harmless ā and gain more victims, or discredit the claims of existing victims. The same goes for circles of violent MRAs, PUAs, domestic abusers⦠the Law & Order viewer in me says āhell, even serial killers.ā If people start to rely on numbers like Peeple, rather than on interaction and intuition, to judge peopleās safety, everyone hurts. But especially the most vulnerable in our society, like children.
People cannot be āvertically integrated.ā
Someone who is a 5-star employee, the nicest guy in the office, can be a 0-star life-or-death-warning domestic abuser. Peepleās algorithm of privileging āpositiveā reviews not only dismisses that people are not the same in all areas of life, but dismisses the reality of such a personās propensity for danger. Peepleās algorithm says, āsure, heās abusive, but heās also always on time and tells good jokes, and that means more in the long run!ā
There is no connection between someone who is nice and someone who is good. Someone who is kind and someone who is trustworthy. Abusers of all types rely on their charm and their likability to pass undetected, and Peepleās algorithms can only make it easier. I would guess that my rapistās rating will be very high: he was very smart and charming and funny and passably good-looking if you ignored his shark-dead eyes. My abuser was the class pet of every teacher heād ever had and the kinda guy who was buddies with just about everyone.
That doesnāt mean they should be trusted with your kids. (Or yourself.) The conflation of likability with trustworthiness or goodness is always, always a bad idea.
And all of this completely ignores mass trolling! The Peeple creators claim that they donāt think anyone would ātalk smallā on their app, and that people are required to use their real names, but as Kat Blaque demonstrated this week⦠online terrorists donāt care. To look at the mentions that harass Jill Filipovic, Lindy West, #ShoutYourAbortion, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Deray McKesson, ANYONE who speaks controversially, is to see that people who make ātalking smallā a lifestyle choice DO use their real names. They think theyāre right.
And they can ruin lives. Ask Anita Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn or Brianna Wu.
The āsafeguardā of needing a phone number to review someone is laughable. Or would be, were it not so ineffectual that itās terrifying. Earlier this summer, I was targeted by an individual or individuals for a [thing I canāt talk about because thereās an inquest ongoing but whatever] and part of their harassment strategy was to sign me up for automated long-distance phone calls that arrived every ten minutes, day and night.
I had never given these individuals my phone number. But uh, the phone book exists, and records are hackable, and knowing someoneās phone number does not prove you know them ā or have ANY right to dictate how other strangers can view them.
If I score negative reviews, en masse, for being an outspoken feminist, am I supposed to work harder to reverse that? Even if their reviews arenāt shown, would my low āstar ratingā mean that I need to change who I am to garner favor with people who hate the intrinsic truths of my being? Mollify who I am to earn back higher ratings from the people who want me to be silent?
Peeple is less a tool for positivity than a tool for social control through threats and intimidation. We donāt need any more of those.Ā
Beyond that, the idea of a singular rating that integrates āromantic, personal, and professionalā lives into one āpersonalityā only applies to one type of person: the freelance independently wealthy workaholic app creator, probably.