A thing I have also done and also giant space squid

I am sure there are people who have never, ever talked meanly about a friend they loved and enjoyed. But I've been guilty of it - to blow off steam when annoyed or to show off or be "witty". I could just faintly see that a person could do that, but on a huge scale.

The part I find it hard to believe is thinking that a convention full of geeks + google means that stuff shows right up in people's RSS feeds and alerts. Also ? 4chan and SA person and posts about how to troll, cannot be innocent.

I think of all the times I have been upset and had to deal, and the times I have had to talk down my glorious, wonderful, brave, freaky, wild genius friends because of the moments of disjunction, and I am still so angry.

Anyway I am too tired and vicodined to think, but am home finally. Gloriousness! Bed! Cats! Not being on a horrible airplane!

In other news...

On the plane I read an awesome Ken McLeod book which I did not notice the name of, about a project manager who has sex with an inexplicably hot nymphmaniac spy and then another inexplicably hot shaved-headed nymphomaniac space pilot. Meanwhile, lots of amusing politics, giant space squid, lizardy grey flying saucer aliens who are kind of sexy, the Oort cloud and asteroid belt is full of microscopic stromatolite god-aliens, really you can't go wrong. I marked all the annoying sexist bits in the inside back cover.

Also read Sylvia Kelso's Amberlight which I enjoyed very much for her odd and poetic language, very leapy & coiled & springy - and the gender reversals & oiled men with gilded calves kept in Towers by their grim warrior wives who are also super rich and powerful because of matriarchal hereditary ability to communicate with alien consciousness energy/electric/magic stone which they quarry (WHILE ON THEIR PERIODS DUH) & sculpt and which is a thinly veiled metaphor for political power. They sell the statue things to foreign governments who use them to oppress & conquer. The guy who Tellurin, the protagonist rescues (from being left for dead in gutter after brutal gang rape) Ohh, this is about to be a spoiler. No, I'll write about it when I have more energy & can be more coherent. Tellurin thinks he is really hot and objectifies him at every turn especially when he's fierce yet helpless; angry & psychologically damaged; reluctant yet tarting himself up with the gold nipple paint for her anyway. Let's just say, it's kind of hot, but also problematic and instructive. I very much enjoyed the motivations of the characters and the HUGE BATTLES with lasers and mirrors and catapults & explosions. Do people give up privilege and power easily? NO THEY DO NOT. The end!

Trolls being trolled

Looks like now what's happened is, someone from SA re-posted zathlazip/hypersurfaces/Rachel Moss's original post over on a sort of SA-meta-wank forum. They used her photo to make a new account, so that it looks as if she just reposted it herself.

So, this community of jokers is turning the misogynist firehose right back onto zathlazip. They're calling her names, evaluating whether or not they'd "do her", and mocking her for whining and trying to get the post taken down.

Looks like she did try and succeed in getting the post with its pages & pages of racist, sexist comments removed.

((edited: I found this post from an anonymous commenter on SA, who posted this exact text with the last names blanked out. I did not post it, but later, the person who did told me who they were.))

Rachel ____,

Taking secret photos of people at WisCon and posting harassment on Something Awful is more damaging than you realize. You did not post personal information, but forum goons are already starting to stalk people. You are hurting peoples' academic lives and real-world careers.

I'll refer you to your school's policies on sexual harassment:
http://www.oed.wisc.edu/sexualharassment/

If your post on Something Awful is still up on Wednesday, I'll contact Dr. _____ of the Department of Environmental Chemistry and Technology, explain the problem, and ask him to ask you to take it down.

I hope you put this to rest before it gets out of control.

See how her "friends" on SA mock her,

got an e-mail from someone at the con threating to report her writings to her college... She immediately caved and started crying asking the mods to delete the thread.

Normally this would get you made fun of by goons -- but since this is a girl the White Knight Action Patrol immediately swooped into action and deleted all traces of the thread from the Goldmine.

I'm surprised that SA took it down. They make a lot of money off popular posts like that one.

Most of that thread is more fat-person-hating and woman hating and photos from the con re-posted, with comments on our fuckability and ugliness. we are all ugly, fat lesbians. Yup, all of us. Just fyi.

One comment did kind of make me laugh about the clothing swap, they bet you could make a few hundred sweaters off the cat hair on those clothes. YEAH CRAZY CAT LADIES OF THE UNIVERSE UNITE!!

Then another bit cracked me up, under a photo of me and the birds of prey last year, some dude commented, "Is that cripple under the impression that a Wonder Woman T-shirt constitutes a Wonder Woman costume" Hallo... dumbass... I was ORACLE.

Other comments on photos of me,

"The irony of a super femnazi bitch wearing a Wonder Woman shirt is just too much for me to handle"

"So what's Wonder Cripple's superpower? Being able to walk?"


Actually, yes. Hahahah! It's a miracle, I can walk!

Anyway.

I'd like to go back to thinking about all the awesomeness at the con, and tonight will post some book lists and some more panel transcripts.

( Cut for image of anonymous note left for a panelist, probably by the same troll )

Real solidarity attempt

Googling "hypersurfaces" and "anorexia" and then "bulemia" gave me some fuel for thought. I do want Rachel to get help and support that she needs. That is also part of my (our) feminism. Rather than try to separate herself from qualities that she feels deeply are worthy of hate and mockery, and be stuck in conflicted feelings, and isolated, I do beg her to be frank with her doctor, psych, loved ones, and herself. So, it is not an apology or I don't mean it as one for what she did, but I think we can find some understanding of her state of being, or some compassion for it.

From looking around, it seems clear she has been trying to get a grip on her eating disorder which she has had for most of her life, since she was a child. Asking on the net, reading blogs and forums, giving pretty decent advice to others, even (on Yahoo Answers). I did cry a bit in sympathy as I read her story and her state of mind in 2007.

http://fishyvb.something-fishy.org/archive/index.php/t-176257.html

I wish she would be able to have some discussion, and support and help, because for a person like her hanging out in a place like SA, could only intensify her feeling of being unworthy of love or personhood. It seems so much like hell.

I am the wrong person to speak about this in many ways.

I don't want people's justified anger at her to push her deeper into isolation. I hope she has friends who will stick with her and help her and that her boyfriend (who she says tries to stop her from throwing up) can help her figure out what to do.

I still feel angry with her but I feel infinitely sad also, I also feel that might be condescending of me, if so, I'm sorry.

This is an illustration of how the people who hate us often are us, and need our help.

I look at her trying to get a grip and to help other women, like here: http://thevelvetsun.livejournal.com/248185.html?thread=1424505&style=mine#t1424505

I got a little bit over obsessed with this. I want to talk with wild_irises about it, I feel like she will get how I feel, and will have something good and wise to say, and she will instantly see (and probably did extrapolate already) the state of being of this person.

So, now I see why Rachel hates the fat-positive movement, and she should probably not turn to those blogs for help. But, SA is not the place to go either. Aren't there good support groups, and others who are not "pro ana" but who could talk with her without shaming her, and who understand her experiences?

Transcript of panel on Marq'ssan Cycle by L. Timmel Duchamp

Here is my transcript. I'll put it on http://wiki.feministsf.net in a bit.


I really enjoyed Joan Haran's points and we talked more at lunch. She explained a bit about Kristeva & abjection, which made a lot of sense & some of it was familiar from my dipping a toe into theory. It turned on a giant searchlight for me too for many scenes in the books, the prison and illness/rehab scenes especially and things like the smell of the blue recycled/treated water that subexecs must use for bathing.

I missed many bits of this as it was hard to listen and talk and type at the same time.

( Transcript of WisCon 32 Panel on Marq'ssan Cycle )