Holidays

National Coming Out Day (UK) or Columbus Day? You decide.



Thanks to sineala for reminding me! Very elegantly put: "I am still queer, and, yes, it is important to say these things." Yeah. And my brain still just doesn't do binaries at all, and I'm OK with this. For a long time, that wasn't the case.

In the context of whether this is a good approach, see On Being Out. This is not a demand on those who simply aren't safe, and are facing more than enough demands already. Excellent observation from the F-Word post:

I have to say that I’m beginning to wonder if it might actually be more useful if, on National Coming Out Day, those who hold views which may be considered prejudiced, if not downright bigoted, are expected to let the rest of us know. At least then we could make informed decisions about whether or not we want to out ourselves. Yeah, I know: that’s an entirely unreasonable wish and isn’t going to happen any time soon - but, hey, I can dream of a time when the power imbalances are addressed in a way that might actually benefit those of us on the receiving end of the bad things, right?

And another pointer couldn't hurt: Make It Better Project.

Just knowing that there were other non-binary people around--that it was even a possibility, rather than just part of my being interestingly insane*--would have helped me immensely, back then. That's a huge reason I feel a responsibility to be vocal.

* Yeah, the jury's still out on that one. But I'm OK with that, too. ;)

"I'm drowning from too much stuff" -- SOTD

Source. Lyrics.

L7 may have been amusingly bad musicians in a lot of ways, but I still gotta love them. ;)

Predating spoon theory (not to mention more complex, and helpful to me, versions), and if anything more useful to me for years. (You mean there might be very good reasons that "I get scared when the telephone rings"?! *shakes head*) I just reach that point much more easily than most people seem to.

I don't think the viral exhaustion is better today, but I'm less freaked out and depressed by it. So it seems a little more manageable, in the old “suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance” way.

Just a little while ago, I managed to finish getting dressed and head across the street for some food. (They may have been truly crappy to work for, and I may have been avoiding that store since I got injured and quit, but sometimes it's really, really nice to have an Iceland within 300 yards. Pride be damned.) With any luck, I'll have the energy left to bung the frozen fish in the oven and open the bag of salad. :)

ETA: The fish still wasn't in the oven when Ingvar got home, so he very reasonably (and kindly) suggested it's Kebab Night again. (Well, GF kebab with chips instead of pita for me.) I may have some of the bagged salad on the side to pretend I'm getting enough vegetable matter.

Quick hit: Surprise -- The Very Dark Side of U.S. History

Via the_future_modernes: Surprise -- The Very Dark Side of U.S. History

Over the decades, congressional and journalistic investigations have exposed some of these abuses. But when that does happen, the cases are usually deemed anomalies or excesses by out-of-control soldiers.

But the historical record shows that terror tactics have long been a dark side of U.S. military doctrine. The theories survive today in textbooks on counterinsurgency warfare, "low-intensity" conflict and "counter-terrorism."

Some historians trace the formal acceptance of those brutal tenets to the 1860s when the U.S. Army was facing challenge from a rebellious South and resistance from Native Americans in the West. Out of those crises emerged the modern military concept of "total war" -- which considers attacks on civilians and their economic infrastructure an integral part of a victorious strategy.

In 1864, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman cut a swath of destruction through civilian territory in Georgia and the Carolinas. His plan was to destroy the South's will to fight and its ability to sustain a large army in the field. The devastation left plantations in flames and brought widespread Confederate complaints of rape and murder of civilians.

This ties in nicely with some things I've been reading and have mentioned here: Barbara A. Mann's The Tainted Gift: The Disease Method of Frontier Expansion and especially George Washington's War on Native America. That "total war" approach--with a very explicitly genocidal twist--is kinda what George Washington's War on Native America is all about. And it was going on well before the 1860s. (Heck, AFAICT Cornwallis was about as destructive as Sherman almost a century earlier.) Very purposely looting and burning to wipe whole populations out, abusing and slaughtering noncombatants, etc.? Hardly that new.

BTW, I think that kind of thing--really in the 1860s, in this case--has also contributed to the misguided appeal of continuing to use Confederate imagery (by people who aren't flaming bigots). Some of the stories still passed down in my family--e.g., exactly how Old Aunt Sarah died, trying to take down a gang of marauding soldiers before they could reach the extended family's house--are enough to curdle your blood. (Very similar situation to what's detailed in Sallie Watie and Southern Cherokee Women in the Civil War and After: 'the tribulations of those “who must stay at home” more resembled the situations of people living in combat zones than those of women keeping the home fires burning', because they were deliberately made into combat zones.)

And, yeah, I find it extra-disturbing that this history has been brushed over well enough that people writing about the dark side are apparently totally unaware of it. Even more than the later stuff, which is given a pretty good introduction in this piece.