Disqus - Latest Comments for Theriomorph

Re: Dear Mr. President Elect . . .

Theriomorph — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:06:04 -0000

I just love you, PD.

Passing this one around.

Re: Mixed Message Movies

Theriomorph — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:22:11 -0000

"A beautiful mind" -- love the math, hate the notion that love cures mental illness.

Yes, and more specifically, for me: a smart man will have a loving, nurturing, enigma-vessel WOMAN at his back making his life possible and functional. Great performances blah blah, that movie pissed me off. Still expected, still bullshit, still offensive.

Re: Best of 2008

Theriomorph — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:47:04 -0000

*bought it*

Re: Best of 2008

Theriomorph — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:46:49 -0000

Portishead? Portishead! Pooortissssheeeaaadddd.

Re: Daily Kitteh

Theriomorph — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:48:07 -0000

Do any of you tabby lovers know a Savannah cat personally?

I'm edgy about the ethics of the breeding, but holy COW they are beautiful creatures. Like, fall over dead from looking at them beautiful.

Re: Daily Kitteh

Theriomorph — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:57:24 -0000

She slays me.

I don't understand how you don't spend your entire day following her around smooching her on that nose.

Re: Question of the Day

Theriomorph — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:57:48 -0000

All rhetoric from the Rhetorical Update of the Important Memorandum, including but not limited to:

TO: The Cult of the Feminazi Cooter
FROM: Queen Cunt of Fuck Mountain
RE: Rhetorical Update

Dear Bitchez:

Please note, effectively immediately, that the phrase "women's privacy" should be used as the umbrella term to incorporate all of the babykilling objectives on the recently disseminated 2008 Radical Feminist Agenda, including but not limited to:

• Contraception
• Emergency contraception
• Abortion
• Infanticide
• Grinding up babies for pathetic anger bread

Re: Question of the Day

Theriomorph — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:37:06 -0000

The management? Really?

Re: Blog Note: Comment System Change

Theriomorph — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:24:54 -0000

And thank you, dearest queen for helping me remember how painful it is to snort a cracker.

Ow ow ha ow

Re: WTP???!!!

Theriomorph — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:51:41 -0000

I trust the Mommy Wars sequel will be set at Kamp Killmenow.

Re: Emulating 'Liss -- I Write Letters

Theriomorph — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:11:29 -0000

Shorter me, to clarify: the acronym itself is far less the point than the demonstrated willingness or lack thereof to meet people on their own terms and build coalition from there (rather than paternalistic imposition of the privileged person's comfort zone).

Re: Emulating 'Liss -- I Write Letters

Theriomorph — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:06:06 -0000

Well said and done, PD. Thanks for sharing your letter.

blogtopus - ow. A moment to explain why that injures, since I don't get the impression you meant harm by your comment, and because particularly following PD's post about how there are ways to discuss certain parallels or similarities respectfully, and in ways that foster connection and understanding, rather than alienation (and that wasn't one of them), it stung. I hear it a lot, too, and it relates directly to the larger subject at hand: how we effectively and honestly build coalition across difference - without erasing difference, because that's neither honest nor effective.

I also use 'queer,' but I use it because I reject the bi- of the alternative (bisexual), since I am just as likely as anything else to love/be with someone whose identity is outside of that gender framework . It's also an expression of alliance with my trans beloveds and strangers to dump that language. That's personal, political, hard won by way of a lot of work listening and self-examining, and no, I'm not really okay with it being erased to make an acronym shorter and easier to remember. I also don't assume that my personal and political language of identity is going to be appropriate for anyone else, or even that the acronyms are going to reflect me perfectly (they don't and won't, but I don't and won't erase trans people, intersexed people, people who are questioning their identities and want a safer place to be able to do that, or anyone else who, like me, isn't going to fit neatly into gay, lesbian, or straight). GLBTQI is not too long - it's *still* inadequate shorthand (which I'm personally okay with using until I have more accurate and specific knowledge of people's individual preferences).

It's not that hard for me to type GLBTQI, and more importantly, it's not that hard for me to ask people how they identify, listen to and learn from what they say in response, and use their preferred language. It's not that hard for me to do my best - which will vary day to day - to approach coalition building from a baseline of respect of differences and willingness to change my privileged perspective when I learn how it harms people. It benefits me and the movements toward social justice and human rights to do this.

Long comment as usual, sorry. It doesn't feel off-topic to me, though; trying to resolve these kinds of tensions is, I believe, at the heart of building alliance. Using language in a way that presumes 'the GLBTQI community' (or that there is such a monolithic thing) is white, or that 'gay and lesbian' or some other even shorter shorthand is adequately and accurately inclusive doesn't work for me.

And as an out queer since I was six who continually hears this kind of jokey 'can't we just shorten these acronyms' (which generally means dumping the BTQI) in a context of regular invisibility in the lesbian and straight communities both, I needed to say something about this - not to pick on you, blogtopus, or to defocus attention from PD's letter, but because this is, to me, part of it.

Again, thanks PD. The conversations that have unfolded in the last several threads about this have been really useful.

Re: No Life

Theriomorph — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:29:07 -0000

Another time, had a department chair say, "I don't know why I'm even talking to you about this university--you're just going to meet someone, get married and leave."

Cheerist. What do you say? "Run away with me then. You know you want to see my cabana on the beach." WTF.

Mine, from the (ostensibly feminist, woman) department chair during the adjunct days, when I asked her if it might be possible to get another class the next term since I was trying to finance a lawsuit for my house only on my own income: "Well *I* had to marry someone to get by, what makes you think you're so special?"

Re: Daily Kitteh

Theriomorph — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:18:56 -0000

Seriously diggin' her cheek-bedhead in that second one.

Re: No Life

Theriomorph — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:38:10 -0000

When I was first applying for jobs out of college, it was repeatedly recommended to me that I not wear any rings on my left index finger, lest a potential employer think I was engaged or married and ergo "close to having a family." That was only 12 years ago.

I got the same advice a mere 3 years ago, when I first went on the academic job market.

That's so interesting. I do the opposite: wear a (fake) ring to interviews and do a sackcloth and ashes routine so I appear nonthreatening enough to hire. (Those are the jobs I get, too, so it seems to work for me.) Just goes to show the capricious nature of sexism, I guess.

Re: No Life

Theriomorph — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:19:21 -0000

S'pose that other stuff could be part of it, Regina, but the main thing (clear) was that because of my age, the way I look, and the fact that I am single the feeling was that I would create 'problematic dynamics.'

Llencellyn, this stuff is real, for sure, and legitimately scary - I guess if there's one thing I'd encourage people to do differently than I did in re: to getting academic or non-profit gigs (I do both), it's to cultivate relationships with active professional mentors who have some sway in whatever field you're heading into. In grad school, I decided that was cynical, and didn't prioritize it over following my bliss in choosing teachers etc.. And maybe it is cynical, but my experience has been that without it, you're really much more at the mercy of other people's shit than if you have people at your back pushing you through back doors. The front door is well-guarded, and with some very old barriers. My .02, anyway.

Re: No Life

Theriomorph — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:01:05 -0000

OMFG. Blink.

Right?

I went out of my way not to ever allow the fact that I was a single parent impact my job in any way shape or form

This is so infuriating. We contort and contort, but any set of choices doesn't free us from that problematic 'woman' thing.

Re: No Life

Theriomorph — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:12:01 -0000

I will never cease to find it interesting that a woman whose life is (by all appearances) solely her own is accused of having no life at all, while the woman whose life is most lived in the service to others is said to have the richest life. Funny how that works.

It would be great if someday we could live in a world where a woman's value wasn't predicated exclusively on what she invests in others and denies herself.

A-fucking-men.

Also: just as men are expected to have a wife-manager, I continually run into the expectation that as a woman writer, I will have a husband-financer/daddy and therefore do not 'need' a job. When it becomes clear that I don't (and also don't have kids, and god forbid am not particularly looking for either), I am not only what an employment lawyer once called 'a candidate perceived as a potentially destabilizing influence in the workplace' - ie: I will fuck your husband, at work, I guess - I am still quite literally told I am 'unnatural' (most recently last fall).

Anyway. Good on Campbell Brown.

Re: Random YouTubery: I Watch This All Day

Theriomorph — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:44:27 -0000

You are not alone, Space Cowboy. First time I saw this it was titled '46 seconds of your life you'll never get back.' I have purposely avoided the math since then.

Also? "Good. Good. Nice. Well done. Good. HEY YOU MISSED A SPOT."

Re: Rape isn't Hilarious

Theriomorph — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:25:53 -0000

I don't begrudge Megan her dark humor; I hang on quite firmly to my own gallows humor about such things myself. But I don't use the humor of the hangman to justify it. The hangman can go fuck himself. My bold to just note: exactly it, perfectly said.

Re: Quote of the Day

Theriomorph — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:19:16 -0000

Ha ha ha ow wow yer kidding, right?
Every time I think this man can't get any further over the top, he jumps higher.

Re: Mad Skillz

Theriomorph — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:29:18 -0000

She rocks.

Re: Mad Skillz

Theriomorph — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:28:51 -0000

She rocks.

Re: Not With My Money

Theriomorph — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:18:37 -0000

What Kevin Baker and Kirsten said way up top - it's like a bad late-night commercial: now you, too, can give your money to bigots - call now! And if you're bisexual, we have a special offer: pay twice!

Lucky me.

And may I just say, irrelevantly, because it bugged me when I saw it: it's so fucked up in so many other ways, too - intensely anti-intellectual ('Hooray! You're brilliant and you like other brilliant people! We're sorry, we cannot match you at this time.') From the linked article/interview with the founder: As for my romantic prospects, Warren had some grim news. He said that because I was bright, I "lose at least 95 percent of candidates because of IQ." And what's with the whole arbitrary and apparently anti-thinker 'happy' thing? It's very strange to me, and the embedded values freak me out.

For many reasons, I hope Compatible Partners doesn't suck up a lot of queer cash. Yuck.

Thanks, Spuds. Good one.

Re: On Labors of Love, Hope, Growing Pains, Gratitude, and Teaspoons

Theriomorph — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:39:23 -0000

Pardon -

(katecontinued -- I was surprised by your comment …Glad you are here. Therimortph, not so much. and have no idea where it came from. I've made a commitment to myself, though, to try be more present at Shakesville, in spite of feeling extremely vulnerable doing that (for this very kind of reason) - so if you have a problem with a comment I make, I invite you to talk about it with me directly. I'd prefer this thread stays celebratory about Melissa's awesomeness, but feel free to email me at theriomorph at theriomorph dot com if you want to talk about something.)

Tx.