I'm afraid my family isn't going to make it. Please, please help me with ideas.

Saydrah

You know, I could have sworn I heard of some other website, a competitor to Demand Studios, and that it had a poor reputation on Reddit but was a legit source of income recently acquired by some big company that runs a search engine...

Seriously though, I'm sending you a PM.

Saydrah

ಠ_ಠ Damnit you're not even a CEO anymore, you're a VP at Yahoo.

Saydrah

I had a government teacher who wasn't boring, but she was a hippie/revolutionary who marched us all to the State Capitol with a banner to protest the Afghan war and sing hippie songs. It was pretty fun.

Glad the Feliway is helping, shame about the collar. I wonder how FLMO cat keeps hers on? Guess every cat does SOMETHING good... and that's about all I can say for her other than she's cute and a nice lap cat. Naughty kitty!

Saydrah

It means a lot that you bothered to read it and that you gave me the chance to think about it again.

I had a philosophy professor whose personal philosophy was that nothing has truly happened until people have discussed it afterward; that the existence of "past" is wholly dependent on it being aired and analyzed. I think I kind of feel that way sometimes, hence why I write very long, right-brained comments about things like this.

Saydrah

Hey there! How are things? Boys settling in okay at school?

Saydrah

Honestly, I'm divided on the issue. It was traumatic and it still hurts--not so much the "die bitch" private messages I get (and comments on my abandoned blog along the same lines) on occasion still, but the casual things like someone teasingly commenting on the "girl throws puppies in river" thread that it was Saydrah, and someone else apparently thinking they were serious about that. Fuck, you know? I've spent my entire adult life so far (and all my preteen and teen years--I started volunteering every week at age 11) spending every hour I can helping animals, and I get that? My heart just ached all day after I saw that and I just wanted to get home and hug my dog.

On the other hand, it was an immensely good thing for me in numerous ways. First and foremost, I realized I'm not as easily broken down as I used to be. There was a time in my life when I was totally destroyed for days because some assholes on a webcomic forum decided the new meme was "Saydrah is ugly." This time I wasn't at all bothered by "ugly" comments; on the contrary, I was pretty offended that someone attacked my character in a post and then finished it off with "Good thing she's hot at least!" Like them finding me attractive was supposed to somehow excuse the internet-crimes they believed I committed? What?

And then there's the Reddiction thing... I won't lie, I check in for the headlines and the mod mail (I got re-added in relationship advice and stayed on just to read the mail... it's not as funny since ViolentAcrez resigned, but THE ULTIMATE DOUCHE and EVH are still amusing) daily, but I don't spend all day writing epic length comments anymore. I'm more productive and less obsessed with instant feedback to everything I say.

Really the most important thing though has been how I see other people. I didn't do the things I was accused of here, but I did make mistakes, here and elsewhere, in how I treated people. It gets so easy on the Internet to just see people's flaws, since that's where they show the things they can't let be apparent in their real lives. You get caught up in trying to "catch the troll" and miss out on getting to know real people who've had some crazy experiences that sound a lot like trolling. Or even if you're not calling troll, it's easy to start reading into people's motivations when they're talking about one little experience in their life and they come off like a jerk for it. Most of the people who seem like jerks online are probably good people overall. A mistake can be just a mistake, not a reflection of someone's overall goodness or badness.

As an atheist agnostic, I'm kind of ashamed now to see how much I was starting to buy into an emotional Puritanism where I was judging a lot of people as bad and thinking they needed to be punished with a scolding comment. A slap back into reality for someone in relationship advice is one thing, but I'm pretty sure I was a dick to at least one person going through a really painful divorce, and I hate that. The people who messaged me to be friendly, open-minded and supportive when I was being attacked were better people than me by far at that time just for being able to take that step of thinking that even if they didn't like me, I was a real person and I probably needed a kind word. They're still better people than me, but I'm trying, and I'm seeing everything in my life improve when I try harder to presume the best of people until proven otherwise.

I think I wrote you a novella when you asked for a sticky note, but I've been having a thoughtful day and even though I've written a lot of this out before, it felt cathartic to do it again.

Saydrah

Shit, my secret is out!

Saydrah

:shrug: I don't chase karma anymore and most of the downvotes don't actually seem to affect my score, which suggests they're probably mostly bots. I like blue better than orange anyway. I have a few novelty accounts that I sometimes use, but I've been using this name online for almost ten years and I'm not going to give it up just because there are jerks on the internet.

Saydrah

::hug::

This sounds cliche, but you need to love yourself before anybody else's love will be enough to make you feel loved and cared for. Until you love you, anybody else loving you will give you that crazy, too intense, need to run away feeling. It's okay, you've got time. Better to wait for the right person than rush into a string of shallow, crazy-making relationships.

Saydrah

Protip: Just get one of those sweepers like restaurants use while there are diners around. I had to do that when I was fostering. Mama cats are not fans of the vacuum, but the sweepers don't really bother them.

Saydrah

Well, I appreciate the effort, anyway.

Saydrah

Shhhh.

Saydrah

Saydrah

I'm not ignoring your points, but I do need to get to bed, so I'm just leaving a quick response here--if you want to talk more in detail in the morning that's fine, or we can accept that we have read and disagreed with one another's views on this and move on.

Point one: I did not mention a wage gap, and that's not really one of the things I devote a lot of time or outrage to. Yes, I have seen women underpaid for the same work as men in my own work life. Yes, I have been in the position of discovering I earn less than a man in the same job. I have also been overpaid compared to men in similar jobs, and underpaid compared to a less qualified but more aggressive woman. I think that the wage gap is a feminist issue, but it's an issue that can be addressed (like many feminist issues) through education and outreach to young women. Women often graduate with advanced degrees but without having ever even role played a salary negotiation. That can and should be something feminist groups on campuses focus on changing.

Point two: You're interpreting a lot of my complaints as, "This is wrong and the force of law should correct it." I'm actually very reluctant to make "There oughta be a law..." statements. My solutions to social issues tend to be social. In cases of legal inequalities, a legal solution is called for. Fortunately, those legal inequalities are few and are currently primarily focused on abortion--which, yes, one can argue is not an inequality since men can't have abortions, but men also can't have pregnancies. That's a false analogy. Nobody forces a man to use his organs to give life to another being against his will, unless those stories about waking up in bathtubs without a kidney are true (and if so, that's already a crime).

Sometimes a court does have to step in on a social issue, but that's usually to remove discriminatory laws, not create them, such as in the case of Proposition 8. The Lily Ledbetter Act and FMLA are two proactive laws addressing gender-related issues which I support, but aside from those I tend to lean away from the creation of new red tape and toward people-driven solutions.

Point three: I do, however, disagree with the assertion that an employer refusing to hire women because of their gender is not a legal issue. I feel that blatant sex discrimination (against either gender; one of my first employers was sued for discriminating against men; I supported the plaintiff and offered to testify if it went to court--they settled outside court) is a legal issue, though not a criminal issue. The state has a vested interest, both financially and morally, in supporting equal access to workplaces. That doesn't mean quotas or tokenism (though often minority status can be in and of itself a job qualification) but it does mean provision of a forum for the redress of grievances related to blatant discrimination. Civil court is that forum in the US, though mediation or some such method might be even better.

Lastly, a quote paraphrased from a favorite blogger of mine: "Fair treatment of minorities isn't politically correct. It's just correct."

Saydrah

I said, and I quote, "Feminists are people who believe that women are equal to men."

I have a narrow definition of "right." The right to privacy is the only specific human right I would say that women in the United States lack currently. Attacks on abortion are one visible symptom of that problem. So is the inability of a female figure of prominence (aside from reality TV celebrities) to survive the release of sexually suggestive photos or videos with her dignity and career intact, while former nude model who happens to be male had no trouble reaching the US Senate. And, on an interpersonal level, the phenomenon by which women are frequently approached by strangers who become offended and hurl irate profanities if their requests for a woman's time and her personal information are turned down.

If you want to discuss privilege and opportunity, we could go into a laundry list of other things, but I feel that to define something as a right is to put a very specific and extremely important value on that thing. In large part, women are already legally entitled to most human rights enjoyed by men in the USA. That doesn't mean they aren't frequently the subjects of violent and other crimes committed by people who do not feel women are entitled to those rights, however.

But really, modern, third-wave feminism is less about saying "We don't have equal rights and we want them!" than about fighting to preserve rights that are legally granted to women but regularly infringed upon either legally, criminally or socially, and fighting to create new avenues of opportunity for a generation of women who really CAN grow up to be whatever they want to be, but who may be discouraged by social forces that prevent their maturation into empowered adult individuals, preferring to mold them into an "acceptable" sort of womanhood.

ETA: Incidentally, Ann Coulter recently, seriously called on the US to repeal the 19th Amendment and deny women, including herself, the right to vote. Phyllis Schafly believes women should be prohibited from working outside the home. Those two are perhaps the most dangerous and repulsive anti-feminists in recent history, and both are women.

Saydrah

Which part of the world would you like me to discuss in that context?

(And overall; just because one has a right doesn't mean that one should stop declaring that one deserves that right. Taking human rights for granted leads to legislation like the USA-PATRIOT Act. Assuming that you mean the United States, there are few specific "rights" that women lack that men have, but privileges and opportunities are in many ways unequal and this imbalance is deleterious to all sexes.)

Saydrah

Nope, they're downvoting you now, too, for talking to me! I guess the Book of Leviti-Reddit says that if the hivemind pokes you with a pitchfork you shall be unclean for eternity and so shall anyone who is nice to you.

It's kind of amusing how they either didn't bother to turn off their bots or they think that I actually care that they want to give me purdy blue arrows. I don't even like the color orange.

Saydrah

Do you own a dictionary, dear? Look up the word feminist. Case closed. :)

Saydrah

That or people with some sort of script that tells them when I comment. Or too much time and a bookmark of my profile.

Saydrah

Feminists are people who think women are equal to men. So yeah, if you hate feminists, you hate women. I guess one could argue that viewing someone as lesser than oneself isn't exactly the same as hatred, but that's kind of a complicated chain of reasoning for a troll.

Saydrah

Aww, who's a cranky misogynist? Him is! Yes him is! Wookit his frowny face and crinkly eyebrows. Aww, he's so cute.

Saydrah

I had just gotten over chicken pox and was all scabby. Nobody would talk to me except the only ESL student in my class, Sam, who had just moved from a French-speaking country in Africa and spoke no English at all. I knew how to count to ten in French and say Bonjour, which was more French than the other kids knew, so I guess he decided that it was worth catching whatever mysterious plague I might be carrying to at least have someone to talk to (even if the only thing I could say to him was "Hello! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10..."). We ended up being best friends until he moved again at the end of that year.

Saydrah

Maybe I was wrong and you are just cranky, not bored :( You should have a cupcake and pet a kitten. You might also like a hug. Or if you are a misanthrope, you could find a nice, solitary tree and read a good book. If none of those things help, I hope you feel better anyway.

Saydrah

I can see why you're Unemployed. You seem bored. Maybe you would enjoy a fun game. Have a nice day :)

(OH TEH NOES SOMEONE HAS PROBABLY MENTIONED BUBBLE SHOOTER ON ASSOCIATED CONTENT, SPAMZZZZZZ!!!)

Saydrah

Thank you for the compliment, since that would assume I was smart enough even in my teenage years not to have done anything stupider than that, even if that whole BS was actually true.

Inciteful Comment 2010-03-01	Well-rounded 2010-02-23
Secret Santa	Two-Year Club
Fantastic Voyager	Calendar Girl Ms. July
ComboLinker 2009-11-04	Inciteful Link 2009-10-15

Inciteful Comment 2010-02-27	Well-rounded 2010-02-18
Well-rounded 2010-02-03	Well-rounded 2010-01-26
Well-rounded 2010-01-25	Well-rounded 2009-12-21
Well-rounded 2009-12-11	Well-rounded 2009-12-10
Well-rounded 2009-11-24	Well-rounded 2009-11-19
Well-rounded 2009-11-17	Well-rounded 2009-11-13
Well-rounded 2009-11-05	Inciteful Comment 2009-11-03
Well-rounded 2009-11-03	Well-rounded 2009-10-30
Well-rounded 2009-10-26	Well-rounded 2009-10-22
Well-rounded 2009-10-21	Well-rounded 2009-10-16
Well-rounded 2009-10-13

Saydrah

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login