mothwing | Entries tagged with found online

A lot, especially when it comes to her singing and the choirs she can sing in. Her ensemble performed "Lux Aurumque" at their last concert, which is beautiful piece by the conducter and composer Eric Whitacre (here's also a TTBB only version of this here commissioned by the Gay Men's Chorus of LA).

Whitacre is not only noteworthy because of his beautiful music, but also because of his virtual choir- this is them with Lux Aurumque:

I love the VirtualChoir project, you can join here.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Location: Germany, Bremen
Current Music: Lux Aurumque

Before I post my resolutions (which I'll without a doubt break this year, too) I have to share what I spent most of my time procrastinating with today, the Old English poem Deor.

It's from the Exeter Book, and it's strangely encouraging to me. In it the singer describes the various misfortunes that have befallen various heroes and then, finally, himself, always closing, "þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg", which is usually translated as, "this may overcome, so may this be", though it's more ambiguous in the original (for annotations, see here, and a modern English translation as well).

Cut for length.

Triggers: mention of rape, too, which goes for the modern version, too.

Welund him be wurman wræces cunnade,
anhydig eorl earfoþa dreag,
hæfde him to gesiþþe sorge and longaþ,
wintercealde wræce, wean oft onfond
siþþan hine Niðhad on nede legde,
swoncre seonobende on syllan monn.
Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg.

( Read more... )

( Reading of the translation on YT )

Current Mood: cold

Taking to heart this TED-talk as well as Jane McGonigal's book and this ExtraCredits episode on gamifying education I'm working on ways to make my class more motivating next year. If all things go well, I'll be teaching an 8th grade and I'm going to try to apply some of the things they propose.

Researching this is fun, too, because through this I've discovered awesome things like:

ChoreWars - a browser-based game in which you can enter an epic chore competition with your roomies

and

Plusoneme.com - which lets others give you points for your RL stats.

Current Mood: amused

You've all probably heard it already but I'm still slightly gobsmacked at the amount of sense written by this BioWare person (much better write-up over at ontd_p here and sf_d here).

What happened is this: they put out a game in which the fe/male main character can be romantically approached by both male and female NPCs. And everybody sees what's wrong there, clearly not enough content for exclusively straight males! But FEAR NOT, STRAIGHT MALE FANS!

One straight dude takes it upon himself to let BioWare know that they've neglected their main demographic, straight males (emphasis mine):

( To summarize, in the case of Dragon Age 2, BioWare neglected their main demographic: The Straight Male Gamer. )

I'm not surprised, but what did floor me was the reaction of the company. Rather than say things on the lines of "but it's cheaper that way" or "focus on the F/F romance, it's hot", Daivd Gaider talks sense about privilege (with costliness thrown in, though, sadly):

( The romances in the game are not for "the straight male gamer". They're for everyone. )

Not that this makes me more likely to buy the game which still sounds pretty failtastic for various reasons, but this is nice.

Current Mood: sleepy

Lots of sensible things about LGBTQ representation are being said over at

sparkindarkness' journal on how problematic subtextual and Word of Gay type of "representation" in canon are.

«Ok a rant about LGBTQ representation – and why hints don’t cut it»

[...]

No, it’s not enough. Your hot men who have what may be a lingering look or touched each other a little longer than you thought was strictly necessary or y’know are just “so gay together” do NOT count as GBLTQ representation. I don’t care if you’re sat there with your slash goggles and you’re going to run on home and dash off a ream of steamy steamy mansexing (but hey, if you’re going to, maybe you can avoid tropes like making one of the men shorter than he is on screen so he can ‘bottom properly’ and other such badness? Ugh, yes really) your slash fantasy is not a GBLTQ representation.

[...]

sparkindarkness .

There are also smart things in the comments on how problematic platonic and asexual relationships are being made if every platonic on-screen relationship is automatically seen as sexual by

kazaera here.

Current Mood: chipper

Someone pasted together twenty versions of Walther's Palästinalied, and I quite like the result.

The text in MHD and NHD: Álrêrst lébe ich mir werde...

Watch on YouTube

It seems that the best chance of finding books about women without love plots is when searching among YA novels and historical novels involving royal, crossdressing characters hell-bent on learning how to fight, as long as they can keep their hands off servants and mentors, that is. Not entirely surprising, but sad.

The books below, judging by summaries and reviews, have good chances of not containing love plots.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Understood Betsy - orphan Elizabeth Ann leaves her sheltered city life for a life on her aunt's farm and its various chores, which she rapidly grows to love too much to leave again.

Allan Frewin Jones' Warrior Princess series: Branwen, aided by faithful former slave Rhodri, becomes a warrior princess and defends her home and hearth against the Saxons. I'm foreseeing Branwen/Rhodri, but who knows.

Astrid Lindgren's Ronja the Robber's Daughter - in spite of her family history, Ronja does not want to become a robber, neither does Birk, the son of her clan's closest enemy. They flee and their families have to work together to find their children.

Donna Jo Napoli: Hush. Irish Princess Melkorka and her sister Brigid are sent away for safekeeping when a plot on her family is threatening her life and are captured by Russian slavers instead. They try to keep their royal birth secret by not speaking. Upside: no love plot, downside: gangrape.

Rebecca Tingle's version of teen Æthelflæd, The Edge of the Sword. King Alfred's teenaged daughter Æthelflæd is not happy with the prospect of having to marry an older ally of her father, even unhappier with her bodyguard, but learns how to fight and protect those close to her gladly, which soon becomes necessary.

Theresa Tomlinson's Wolf Girl. Wulfrun's mother is accused of stealing a neclace and Wulfrun sets out to prove her innocene.

Other loveplot-less books:

Michael Ende's Momo- Orphan Momo live s in a ruined amphitheatre. When everyone she loves start falling prey to the Men in Grey and their timesaving bank, she steals their life time back. German classic really eveybody should read.

Annika Thor's Sanning eller Konsekvens (Ich hätte nein sagen können) -Nora doesn't like the way her class, especially rich Fanny, are mobbing big-chested Karen, but finds out to what lengths even she herself will go to get her best friend Sabina back, who is best friends with Fanny these days.

Current Mood: chipper

I found these ridiculously easy paper stars on the internets (German here) and I'm using them for a mobile for my window.

One Din A4 page is good for about 13 stars, btw.

I'm thinking about putting something like this in the centre:

Now I only need some fishing line to attach this to my window frame.

Do any of you have more ideas for quick and easy window decoration? I still need something for my kitchen window.

Current Mood: creative

The endless amounts of white, fluffy snow! now that I get to enjoy it from inside)! Reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales" aloud three times must have worked some kind of charm.
Going to Ikea with N. and coming home with stuff we don't really need. Like this mirror and these covers. I'm thinking about this lamp, too, but I don't like the way you can see the lighbulb and I think I'm going to get a candle instead. Or this one, which is also pretty.
Föhn mich nicht zulooks like fun - pretty much all of this year's trainees have purchased this book which is apparently a humerous memoir of a bad trainee's exploits.
Looking forward to baking cookies tomorrow
The Horrible Histories series which can be found on YouTube. Have some Charles II:
This aritcle:
«The cultural genome: Google Books reveals traces of fame, censorship and changing languages»
Abstract: We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of "culturomics", focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. "Culturomics" extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities. Entertaining summary here.

Summary with brief overview here.

Current Mood: full

I wish I were done for today. But no, there's still the oral report waiting to be finished and that other oral report and I haven't heard back from some of the people who volunteered yet.

Ever since I found ( this dub of 'We Didn't Start the Fire' set in Stormwind ) I've rediscovered Billy Joel, especially:

Current Mood: bouncy

Now not only available on Kronos!

I still want to hear juHrop, too.

Current Mood: geeky

Bionic legs! So cool!

We can all live real healthily on €160/month (German), for those of you who don't know yet. Oh, we're also all male, so forget money for tampons or cosmetics (we do shave, so we get the razors), and we don't have sex, so no contraceptives (or do we use free condoms? Not sure...). Go us! I kinda want to try this next month to see if I can really pull it off (a visit to the hairdresser apparently costs €7, so does the membership fee for the library, should we get bored. We could also go to the zoo for €2,50 (lawl) or to the swimming pool for €1,50. Should we get hungry, we can always fill up on fresh grapefruits that are available for purchase at a price of €0,99/kg, or on apples for €0,76/kg. Why work if all these luxuries are so readily available?)

Current Mood: aggravated

It's hot. I am bored. I'm unemployed. I have nothing else to do. Still. What the hell is this? Someone posted this on

theaudiolibrary and in spite of better knowledge, I gave it a try. I'd like to believe that this is ironic, but I can't, because this is so close to similar nice-guy narratives. It'd make a good litmus test for feminist allies, though.

It's about a whiny-ass sleep-deprived misogynistic white ~nerdy~ socially inept bully victim finding his muse in a dark and ~edgy white gawth ("post-goth") girl. I don't even know where to start. I'm guessing it's supposed to be "ironic" in that hipster sense that makes me wonder if people are using the same kind of dictionary.

This hero's misogyny and racism is incredible, as is the female characters flatness and her tendency to try and be "one of the guys", and in spite of the hyperbolic tendencies I can't bring myself to believe that this is not an author writing from his own personal and completely unironic experience.

I especially enjoyed the main character's whining about being treated badly when he's walking around thinking of female bodies as decoration, and the casual ass-pats he gets from his Goth-muse for staring at women like pieces of meat, because it's "fine for him" to do that. Because he's still young. Also, it's important to note that his chest-baring muse chooses not to "flaunt" her breasts. Unlike those hussies, you know? She still shows him her boobs, because that's just what girls do instead of explaining about minimizers. With, you know, words.

Oh, or the hero being upset with his one friend and bringing up the fact that he is one of the few white guys who know why black history month exists! So how dare he be upset with the white hero!

Or the countless occasions when the storyline is twisted away from NG's obvious shortcomings in the human decency department at the moment where he's almost about to get called out on them, and get re-rendered as a pity party for the hero or morphed into a wish-fulfillment sequence. Like the scene in which the "nerd guy", when the "goth girl" calls him out on his obvious sexism, calls her out on her failed, attention-seeking suicide attempt. That'll show her. Or when the girl he lusts after without knowing anything about her just because she is beautiful tells her about how girls sometimes can be shallow, especially if they turn him down. And then makes out with him. Because's he's just that special.

He does seem to realise he's just as bad as the other guys, but the realisation is a mere blip of cognitive activity in a sea of self-centred ignorance, and while I wish readers are supposed to see that and point and laugh, I am not convinced. This appears to be a character honestly trying, and I am not sure whether this is book is someone cleverly telling the story of a privileged-as-fuck male teenager trying and failing to improve, or a failed attempt at writing a story about a quirky, yet relatable and most of all redeemable hero.

While it is possible to read this as the story of an inept narrator with an incredibly ironic focalizer I find it hard, and that still does not mean this book is worth the paper it is printed on, because it is not less annoying than similar and completely unironic accounts. It is so over the top that I wish I could be certain it was meant to be a mental kick in the rear for the target audience, but since I find it hard to believe that an audience who'd find this character relatable or interesting would even be able to see the irony I have my doubts about that working out. Maybe I'm underestimating people, but this book is still a waste of space unless you always desperately wanted to see the subtle workings of a privileged whiny white guys' mind and needed this book to come along to tell you about that, because you hadn't encountered any other sources on that so far.

For me, it's white noise and whining. It's whining about comic books, whining about not getting girls, whining about having a step father NG doesn't approve of, whining about having an unborn sibling, whining about not getting to go to a convention, and curiously enough, the fictional world always bending to his whiny will, which is annoying as hell, as by the middle you, or at least I started hoping for him to finally get a comeuppance. Even though this character clearly is in need of some serious therapeutic help.

In this as in the comic books/graphic novels the hero enshrines, I really, really don't manage to see the appeal.

Advertising featured in my brother's oral exam, and for some completely weird reason they never discussed what types of images are used to advertise - female bodies or parts thereof. These weird gender blinkers made me curious - with something as omnipresent as using female, heavily sexualised bodies to sell (other) objects, how can they really arrive at any kind of solid analysis of any kind of advertising, especially in ads about alcohol...?

Crocky and I soon discovered Jean Kilbourne's oeuvre on women in ads through her "Killing Us Softly" series focusing on women in advertising. She also has a documentary on thinness in advertising called "Slim Hopes", and what I liked especially about that "Slim Hopes" is the connection she draws between thinness and moral purity, especially virginity. She has some really neat examples of how the metaphors that used to surround sexuality and moral is now associated with eating because both of those "appetites" have to be controlled.

Some of her main points from the study guide:

« Food & Advertising »

Food and diet products are often advertised with the language of morality. Words such as “guilt” and “sin” are often used to sell food.
Sex is frequently used to sell food. Many ads eroticize food and normalize binging. These ideas support dangerous eating disordered behaviors.
Thinness is today’s equivalent of virginity.
Women are shamed for eating, for having an appetite for food.
Control is often associated with thinness in advertising.
The obsession with thinness is related to the infantilization of women and the trivialization of women’s power.
Prejudice against fat people, particularly against fat women, is one of the last socially accepted forms of prejudice.
Women are sent the message that they shouldn’t eat too much, that it is appropriate to eat only a cereal bar for breakfast, and that they gain power and respect by controlling their bodies. When advertising for food is examined in conjunction with the prevalence of extremely thin models, we discover a recipe for disordered attitudes toward eating.

Jean Kilbourne.

She also almost quoted Granny Weatherwax ("There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.")

« Objectification »

“Women are constantly turned into things, into objects. And of course this has very serious consequences. For one thing it creates a climate in which there is widespread violence against women. Now I’m not at all saying that an ad… directly causes violence. It’s not that simple, but it is part of a cultural climate in which women are seen as things, as objects, and certainly turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step toward justifying violence against that person.”

Jean Kilbourne.

Hardly news, but the documentary/talk is entertaining and interesting to watch even in spite of the annoying watermark and the miniature size.
I can't wait to see if one of our libraries has it.

Current Mood: calm

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: aggravated

I have to admit, this abstract really leaves me wanting more and raises some questions, especially about what the point of this is, really. It may be my headache, but I really feel as though I'm not getting something here.

«Standing OUT/Fitting IN: Identity, Appearance, and Authenticity in Gay and Lesbian Communities»

Sexuality scholars have noted the historical connection between appearance and gay or lesbian identity. However, as the social landscape for lesbian women and gay men has shifted over the past forty years, little research has documented how such changes influence gay and lesbian individuals' appearance choices as they form, manage, and maintain their identities. To explore the impact of this "post-closet" (Seidman 2002) era on the identities and appearances of lesbians and gays, in-depth interviews were conducted with twenty individuals, aged eighteen to thirty. Findings suggest that while most people use appearance to attain a sense of authenticity after "coming out," achieving a feeling of authenticity in gay and lesbian spaces presents unique challenges as individuals come under scrutiny by the community.

David J. Hutson‌.

1. Post-closet era. Post. Closet. Era.
2. How, pray tell, do you "use appearance to attain a sense of authenticity"...? I mean, I'm guessing here that they're aiming at the struggles that femme women face to "look gay enough" in the eyes of some people and the backlash that butch women get for "embodying a negative and harmful stereotype", but I'm still left with the feeling that I need to find myself a pansexual outfit ASAP. Maybe some bisexual pants? Does that mean that Crocky has to cut her hair? I just... yeah.

Also, I am not sure why they went for a qualitative study here, and I'd really appreciate if someone enlightened me. And also, the point of this. So twenty people say that they use their appearance to signify their identity ~authentically~. And now?

Current Mood: confused

Google Reader threw a wobbly the other day and flooded my feed with posts from the past, which allowed me to catch up with stuff I hadn't seen back in the day. I missed this post at Genderbitch's: "For the Uninformed: Privilege, Perspective and The Little Things That Jab" - and I assume that a lot of you have already seen this, but if you haven't, do go and read it, it's great (as well as the post it replies to, "The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck" over at Shakesville).

I'm especially grateful for this part:

For the Uninformed: Privilege, Perspective and The Little Things That Jab

[...]

I am mtf trans (obviously from the blog title XD). I was born male bodied and I transitioned to female bodied. Unlike a lot of trans folk (who viewed things through the lens of their identities as a different gender and therefore wouldn’t have had problems with how they were treated for the same reasons as others would) my identity hasn’t really played a huge role in the lens I apply my own experiences. This was mostly because I came to the realization about why I hated the male structure I had very late in the game (I actually assumed it was normal to hate having a penis XD) So I consider myself formerly a guy who figured out that he needed a female body (due to dysphoria) and therefore was better off as a girl (identity and sociologically wise) for practicality sake. This is atypical, so don’t expect all trans folk to have the perspective I do on gender.

Which means I experienced male privilege as male privilege (instead of being transformed into transphobia by the lens of identity) and I experienced the loss of male privilege (as I myself transformed from hormones and whatnot.)

It was a shock, I will tell you. As a person perceived as a guy by society, I was not constantly challenged, stereotyped, joked about and pushed down. There were some small things. Depictions of guys in tv were sometimes irritating. Occasionally there were jokes about the dumb guy stereotype. And there were constraints on self expression for guys that were a bit irritating. But even if I violated those rules, I usually could tell opposition to piss off or criticize my criticizers right back and everyone thought that was an utterly natural thing for me to fight the silly claims from people, even if they didn’t agree.

Post sociological and HRT transition. What was an occasional flow of jokes, jabs and attacks became a torrent. I was bombarded. Television was filled with all sorts of stereotypes, attacks, mockeries of women. Pressure to conform was harsher and more persistent (instead of just guys calling me a fag for having long hair and wearing toe socks it was now everyone calling me a weird dyke or telling me that I need to femme out more for wearing guys cargos and t-shirts with a faux military jacket). And my attempts to dispute that pressure, my responses at all really (even the nice ones) were now regarded as me being a bitch, a harpy, a “feminazi” or being unreasonable. Whereas before, people disagreed and discussed with me, now, they simply dismiss it completely.

I was shown, completely (and perhaps embarrassingly) how little perspective I had on what society does to women. And that is why I understand how insidious privilege is. It is silent, it is crafty, it sneaks up on you, latches on and makes it impossible to even question it without seeming nuts. And there’s the problem. We aren’t nuts.

This shit is real.

- Genderbitch.

Current Mood: grateful

I'll get back into the discussion on home schooling later (thanks for the input!), but right now I have to moan about Hannover's GL(b) pride event. Granted, it's a GL event by tradition, bisexuals sneaked in only later, and trans folks' movements seem to be pretty disassociated from the LGB stuff that is going on in Germany. Still.

See, this year, there's fifty events, many of them sports events organised by our LGB sports club. However, out of these fifty events, most of which are aimed at everybody, twelve events are for gay men only, and only six events are aimed at women in general. Why is that?

And some of the titles are unintentionally hilarious:

Stadtrundgang „Frauen an der Leine“ (the Leine being a river, though the name has a double meaning, making that either "Walking tour: Women on the Leine" - or "Walking tour: Women on a leash").

Offene Werkstatt! Für Frauen, Lesben und Mädchen. ("Open workshop! For women, lesbians and girls" - cool, lesbians aren't women now. Awesome).

But there are also some interesting events, and I'm thinking about going to some of the events on offer, especially the meeting with the people who do educational events at schools.

Take the Who Should You Vote For? England quiz

Green		44
Liberal Democrat		24
Labour		16
UK Independence	-21
Conservative	-30

I like how I got minus points for the conservatives here.

EDIT: D=
WTF. Though I have to admit I picked "?" more than I did in the other quiz, so maybe that's because I got the SNP?

Take the Who Should You Vote For? Scotland quiz

Scottish National Party		47
Green		30
Liberal Democrat		14
Labour		6
UK Independence	-23
Conservative	-24

Though I think I prefer Votematch.

Current Mood: uncomfortable

Big women like sexy underwear, too? And there are ads for that underwear? Neat, I thought.
How did the network react? "Omg, it's a fat person in underwear, cover your eyes! Take it down!"

This is the ad in question:

Also, this post about going to the OB/GYN while fat made me incredibly angry. It shouldn't have, after all the other nice stuff I've heard about people's GYNs (sexual harassment, violation, humiliation, scare tactics into submitting to a procedure, dismissing concerns and pain as "this doesn't hurt, ever, so pull yourself together" etc., and that's just the people I know offline).

Yes, I get it. Fat people ought to blob along elsewhere and not subject themselves to the innocent eyes of other people (even though, as junkscience claims, this will make perfectly thin women worry about their body image so deep, deep down that even they themselves don't realise). Yeah. I'll go do some homework and let my lifesaving chocolate nuts prepare me for boobquake.

Current Mood: annoyed

Not being an Apple user I have to admit that I never got Apple Apps, and I'm kinda hoping that this is a bad joke and the only reason that our broadsheet press picked up on it is that they're as tech-illiterate as their readers (me being one of them, occasionally), but.

Just. Wat.

Getting Flirty

Improve your flirting by decoding her micro expressions. If you know what she thinks, you know what to do!

FEATURES:
- 3 Micro Expression Training Games: Death Match, Speed Flirting, Flirter’s Paradise (train your speed, accuracy and vigilance)
- Over 120 photos of emotional expressions from a professional “Getting Flirty” photo shoot with 6 international models
- Show your proficiency in the Champion’s Test and receive your own certificate with your photo and name
- Huge Training Camp with detailed description of each facial expression
- Solid scientific background

- Source

Kudos on the assumption that all men are heterosexual and idiots who can't read facial expressions or, failing that, can ask for clarification.

Yeah, I'm procrastinating.

Current Mood: procrastinating

JK Rowling on single mothers, poverty and politics in the UK.

from: «The Single Mother's Manifesto»

Yesterday’s Conservative manifesto makes it clear that the Tories aim for less governmental support for the needy, and more input from the “third sector”: charity. It also reiterates the flagship policy so proudly defended by David Cameron last weekend, that of “sticking up for marriage”. To this end, they promise a half-a-billion pound tax break for lower-income married couples, working out at £150 per annum.

I accept that my friends and I might be atypical. Maybe you know people who would legally bind themselves to another human being, for life, for an extra £150 a year? Perhaps you were contemplating leaving a loveless or abusive marriage, but underwent a change of heart on hearing about a possible £150 tax break? Anything is possible; but somehow, I doubt it. Even Mr Cameron seems to admit that he is offering nothing more than a token gesture when he tells us “it’s not the money, it’s the message”.

Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say “it’s not the money, it’s the message”. When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is “get married, and we’ll give you £150”, he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation.

How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life’s necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message — would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?

JK Rowling.

That also goes for reviews on Amazon! Stupid me. Still, reviewers, if you have to sign your review with "BTW, I'm neither racist nor religious, just my opinion", then you ought to know that there's something wrong with what you were writing in the first place?

Also, I just read through the entries for the 4th lesbian literary award hosted by Édition El!es (if you speak German and like bad writing, check it out!), and those entries scare me. They read like something that has a high potential to end up on either

canonrants - only that stylistically, I'd expect that kind of stuff on FFR or

verreiss_mich . Though considering the host I probably should not be surprised - apparently, they're publishing books of authors who terminated their contract with this publisher and changed to the other notable lesbian publisher, the Konkursbuch, and there's also been trouble concerning authors not getting paid for their work. Classy.

Heteronegativism - The Attitudes of Gay Men and Lesbians Toward Heterosexuals

Although many studies have been conducted on homophobia, little information exists about the attitudes of homosexuals toward heterosexuals. In order to compare the attitudes of both groups, a well-known homophobia questionnaire (Hudson & Ricketts, 1980) was reworded to assess the attitudes of homosexuals toward heterosexuals, forming a “heterophobia” questionnaire.
The less clinical term “heteronegativism” is introduced here to refer to the range of negative feelings that gay individuals could possess regarding heterosexuals. Sixty homosexual students were matched with 60 heterosexual psychology students on sex, age, race, and education. Each group was given its respective “phobia” questionnaire.
Hypotheses that homosexual participants would report less phobia and more negative experience than heterosexuals and that gay women would report more phobia than gay men were supported. Hypotheses that level of abuse in closeted homosexuals would be positively correlated with phobia scores and that being “out of the closet” would be negatively correlated with phobia scores were not supported.

Stephen M. White, Louis R. Franzini, '99

Yes, I'm trying to keep myself from thinking about my exam tomorrow. My two youngest students in the tutoring centre are in sixth and seventh grade respectively and they're at the tutoring centre because their written work is poor. Writing is not the most popular task for many kids, and the fact that their lesson is on Friday afternoon, after school does not help. These lively kids are usually very fidgety and find it very hard to concentrate - no wonder, given the fact that they're in the centre for ninety minutes between two and four on after a week of work!

Last week I had one act out an action with the other had to construct a sentence in the tense that he was revising, and all their sleepiness and demotivation went away as if by magic. Earlier, I had them set each other vocab tests on the board in adjacent rooms to give them an excuse to move around, write on the board, and teach each other rather than doing another test in written work.
A few weeks previous, I had them set each other dictations, which is a little too hard for the kid in sixth grade, but surprisingly doable. Spelling games like Scrabble, Boggle and Quiddler adapted for the needs of my students are also really popular and we usually use those during the last ten minutes. They've been known to insist on staying in ten minutes longer just to finish a game, and they do remember the words they used during the game, so that seems to work, but lately, I've been running out of ideas for quick things that are cost-effective with regards to the lesson time they take up.

My youngest student has not only failed their last vocab test, but he's also supposed to learn the irregular verbs - he never does his homework and learning things by heart seems to be nigh impossible for him. When we talked about their vocab learning methods, the younger dude said something along the lines of, "If I ever did learn my vocabulary lists, I'd probably copy them down and learn them by heart." Pwned by conditional II there, kid.
So ever since I heard that they had to study the irregular verbs I've been trying to come up with ways to make this more fun, and I think I might have found something:

Crocky uses this to teach her younger piano students to read sheet music, and I'm thinking of making something similar for irregular verbs. It's just a slightly shinier way of getting him to quiz himself, really, but who can resist a d12 - even if it happens to have irregular verb forms written on it?!
Also, it's a perfect excuse for me to have fun with cardboard, glue, and possibly even adhesive book covering. Other obvious options include crossword puzzles and bingo, but they also involve sitting down, and this at least allows some moving around. I realise it's not that much.

Are there any other way of getting students to improve their vocabulary? I'm quite partial to the vocabulary duel, too, which might still work with their age group, and similar things to make quizzing each other sound more appealing - especially if they involve moving around.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Germany, Hanover

So things aren't going too great with my exam preparations and I'm scared stiff (lack of concentration being a major factor here - I blame the meds), but at least I discovered what I think are good hues to use for skin colours. I realise her nose is weird, her shoulders are broader than my bishie!Severus' (because I can't do human anatomy), and the background shows that I ran out of patience and motivation, but I'm new to this stuff, and considering that I last seriously drew something in 2001 before the dog and the dragon the other day I'm hugely inflated with pride here.

Severus and Minerva patrolling the dungeons

Another thing that has me in raptures today was reading through

isurrendered , which everybody needs in their lives and ought to consider watching. It's a community which this meme spawned:

"THE MEME
1. Comment to this post with "I surrender!" and I'll assign you the basis of some TV show idea. (Science fiction show, medical drama, criminal procedure, etc...)
2. Create a cast of characters, including the actors who'd play them
3. Add in any actor photos, character bios and show synopsis that you want.
4. Post to ~~your own journal~~ this community!"

The submissions are all so awesome I'm sad they don't exist IRL - they have the most interesting plots, great characters, surprisingly gender- and race-balanced casts and seem to have spawned their own fandoms and fanfics already. I might go back and do recs for individual shows on there, but everybody needs to check this out for themselves, anyway.

Current Mood: unimpressed with myself

This has been so predictable. Crying children. Miracles of saved children. Crying women. Women stuck in the rubble, making me wonder what complete asshole of a photographer prioritised taking a picture over helping. White people in uniforms helping. And dogs helping, too.

The stories in pictures as seen by me in onine versions of papers and magazines has a pretty predictable pattern common to all disasters - victims are always female, people showing emotions are usually women, looters are usually male, people helping are usually white. Still, this earthquake killed about two hundred thousand people, and some of them are bound not to have been young, attractive women. And even those nameless, storyless women who are crying and being saved and being tended to by white saviours now are bound to get up and go out and search for their families, find their children, bury their dead. They may dig through rubble in the hope of finding someone still alive even today, and help organise the people come to help, because they are bound to know her home better than the foreign white saviours. And then they will help rebuild homes, and then go back to their lives as farmers or doctors or servants or teachers.

In many newspapers, it seems as though the Haitians don't do anything apart from lying half-naked and dead in mass graves, stumbling around in a daze, shooting each other and going looting, while white people are helping and Keeping Order. The earthquake was a horrific tragedy, and its sickening that this kind of reporting apparently helps to get people to donate.

Current Mood: cynical

Has anyone already seen this? It's a project hosted by the Freie Universität Berlin on discrimination. From their home page:

The Reality about Discrimination in Germany - Assumptions and Facts
Discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation is a social reality. Reliable information about characteristics and fields of discrimination however is scarcely available. The aim of our research project is to collect empirical data on discrimination in order to provide a factual basis for further legal and political debates. The results of our research are intended to raise awareness for discriminatory practices and patterns in German society.

And in German:

Realität der Diskriminierung in Deutschland - Vermutungen und Fakten
Benachteiligungen aufgrund von Alter, Behinderung, Geschlecht, Hautfarbe und ethnischer Herkunft sowie sexueller Identität sind gesellschaftliche Realität. Die unterschiedlichen Arten und Häufigkeiten von Diskriminierung sind jedoch bislang wenig untersucht. Ziel unseres Projekts ist es, diesen Forschungsstand zu verbessern und dadurch die Informationsgrundlage für zukünftige rechtspolitische Diskussionen zu erweitern. Unsere Ergebnisse sollen zur Sensibilisierung gegenüber diskriminierenden Verhaltensmustern und zu deren Abbau beitragen.

They're asking people to submit anonymous accounts of discrimination they experienced or witnessed here; you can do so in German, French, Polish, Russian, or Turkish.

Report away!

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Hannover, Germany
Current Music: Audioslave - Be Yourself

I know I'm late with this, but in case there are still some Germans who'd like to give via SMS and haven't yet, here's how:

More information can be found on Spendino.

Current Mood: blank

"Sky: from ON sky: "cloud," from PGmc *skeujam: "cloud, cloud cover", from PIE base *skeu-: "to cover, conceal". Meaning "upper regions of the air" is attested from c.1300; replaced native heofon in this sense. In ME, the word can still mean both "cloud" and "heaven," as still in the skies, originally "the clouds.""

Today, "sky" is the word for "cloud" in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. "Cloud" only became the word for "cloud" by the thirteenth century due to metaphoric extension - it used to mean "formation of rocks" (OE: clud).

The word for cloud used to be weolcan, which is the origin for the word "welkin",which is obviously very close to the modern German word: "Wolke".

On a related note - can anyone recommend Skeat's etymological dictionary? It seems to be fairly affordable (in contrast to Klein's and Partridge's) but I'd like something a little more up to date, yet inexpensive.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: List, Hannover

I made up my user name, Mothwing, myself. I liked the sound, I had just discovered the riddle about the bookworm, and I thought it'd fit somehow.

Turns out that it's also a character in a book.

In a book in a series called WarriorCats. Warrior. Cats.

On the series Wiki page I learned that:

"Mothwing is a beautiful, triangular-faced, dappled-golden tabby she-cat with a long coat rippling with dark tabby stripes and large amber eyes. "

Awww. On Wikipedia, I learned more about her story:

"Mothwing, a beautiful dappled golden tabby she-cat with amber eyes, is the current RiverClan medicine cat and formerly a rogue named Moth. She is the daughter of Tigerstar and Sasha, a rogue cat, the littermate of Hawkfrost and Tadpole, and half-sister to Brambleclaw and Tawnypelt. Her medicine cat mentor was Mudfur, although she initially trained as a Warrior and had already received her Warrior name by the time she became the medicine cat's apprentice. She, along with Hawkfrost, had trouble being accepted into RiverClan because their mother was a rogue and their father was Tigerstar.
Eventually, others accepted her because Mudfur found a moth's wing sign, which he interpreted as an omen from StarClan approving Mothwing as the next medicine cat of RiverClan. It is later revealed that Hawkfrost had actually put it there without Mothwing's initial knowledge in order to help himself in his plan to gain power within his Clan. After he revealed the truth to Mothwing, her faith in StarClan was destroyed (this makes her and Cloudtail the only two Clan cats in the series to not believe in StarClan), though Leafpool, Willowshine, and Jayfeather are the only cats to know this.
Though she does not have faith in StarClan, a vital requirement for a medicine cat, StarClan have let her remain a medicine cat because they have seen how hard she has studied and trained for this role and for clear her devotion to her Clan. She has mentored one medicine cat apprentice, Willowshine. As her two great-grandmothers are direct descendants to SkyClan (Cloudstar and Birdflight having Gorseclaw and Spottedpelt as kits), Mothwing and her brother, Hawkfrost, are part-SkyClan, part-rogue (Sasha being their mother) and part-ThunderClan (Tigerstar being their father), although Mothwing is very loyal to RiverClan, her adopted Clan."

Medicine. Cat. Medicine cat.

Part of me wants to check out this series.

Other than googling useless information I'm revising translation and reading up on the history of literature from the sixteenth century onwards for the exam at the end of the month.

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Germany, Hanover

Trawling the internet in search for an article (which I'll have to pick up at the uni library. No e-copies for this one), I found this workbook that is supposed to up the readers' vocabulary in preparation for US standardised tests:

Now, I agree that this series is God's Gift to ESL teachers because everybody, or at least every single one of my wee tutees over the age of fourteen, have read it in English - even if they're really weak learners, so I agree, this can be a powerful teaching tool and motivator to get kids interested in reading a book in a foreign language. Learners.

I didn't know native speakers needed to revise their knowledge of the meaning of "marble", "murmur", or "butterscotch" for their SAT scores so badly that there needs to be a workbook.

Current Mood: curious

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie
Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy

FREE RICE, the awesome website which offers a vocabulary-related word game and donating rice to people who need it. Check it out!

Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Current Mood: calm

The place where I met most of my dear flist, the place where Crocky and I shared our love for HP-related things online.

Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Current Mood: nostalgic

I rediscovered this on Youtube today. It's a French children's series from the olden days on the body which I watched religiously. There were series by the same producers on history, inventions, space, and other subjects. They were fun to watch and taught me more about the different jobs the individual parts of the body have for it than any biology lesson I ever had later on.

Current Mood: amused

Dear Reader

Baudelaire considers you his brother,
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs
as if to make sure you have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing
in the doorway of these words.

Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study,
takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you.
Tennyson lifts the latch to a moated garden,
and with Yeats you lean against a broken pear tree,
the day hooded by low clouds.

But now you are here with me,
composed in the open field of this page,
no room or manicured garden to enclose us,
no Zeitgeist marching in the background,
no heavy ethos thrown over us like a cloak.

Instead, our meeting is so brief and accidental,
unnoticed by the monocled eye of History,
you could be the man I held the door for
this morning at the bank or post office
or the one who wrapped my speckled fish.
You could be someone I passed on the street
or the face behind the wheel of an oncoming car.

The sunlight flashes off your windshield,
and when I look up into the small, posted mirror,
I watch you diminish—my echo, my twin—
and vanish around a curve in this whip
of a road we can't help traveling together.

~ Billy Collins.

Anyway, back to reading up on the fate of poetry in the foreign language classroom, its uses and methods for teaching it to the unsuspecting student.

Current Mood: cynical

Well, to be honest, people in Switzerland, they're not that much different from Germans in Cologne, really, a couple of years back with their nno-mosque signs. Central Europeans are apparently never happy when a non-Christian religion wants to add buildings to their houses of worship that are a threat to the easily scared, seeing as they are perceived as obvious symbols of financial and political power. They're a sign that in reality, non-Christians over here are not how people here like their people from a non-Christian background to be - quiet, shy, downtrodden, in their place, grateful, tolerated.

I seem to remember that in Germany back in the day commenting on articles, saying that even if they were fine with minarets in general, they did not want them to be higher than the spires of Christian churches - which, considering that the buildings of banks and several chimneys are considerably higher than church spires and remain scorn free, says a lot about the priorities of our good Christians over here.

Still, the posters back then strike me as... well, a little more tasteful than the ones used in Switzerland:

Really tasteful colour combination there and style there, guys, but still better than the others, really driving home their association of the shape of the minarets with those of rockets in these atrocities.

When I read today that these people, the people with the above posters, the people who made obvious the association between houses of worship and terrorism, that these people won, against all predictions and common sense with a surprisingly high amount of votes, I was absolutely floored. The initiative was launched by nationalists, people I thought were about on one level with nationalists over here, a small group of politicians that is worrying and too powerful for my taste, but still a minority which does not have too much political influence, thankfully, not really. These people made Switzerland add a charming sentence to their constitution which simply reads, "It's forbidden to build minarets".

What the FUCK, Switzerland?

I'm with the people who made these:

"The sky above Switzerland is big enough. "

Too bad the minds in Switzerland are not.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Location: In a city with minarets

In the documentary "Guys and Dolls", this one guy shares (at about 4:50, I think) that:

"I expect women to be naturally attracted to the kinds of guys who do exciting things. Whatever you fly, you can try and impress women with that, and they will try to look interested and impressed, but what they actually want is a guy with beer in one hand and a pack of fags in the other who watches soap operas, I guess. And they're just not impressed. It's kind of baffling to me, I guess.
So yeah, here I am, a super hero, but it's deemed irrelevant. So yeah, looks like it's just me and the dolls for the rest of my life as far as I can see. But there are worse things in life than living with dolls, really."

Good that he found the right kind of partner, I suppose.

Current Mood: scared

So Channel four did a documentary on transsexual children as a part of their Bodyshock series. I have some qualms with that documentary on the "extremes of the human body", because seems to border on being a freakshow rather than a respectful depiction of "extreme" bodies too often for my taste. But so far, so good, congrats on your "extreme" status, maybe it's educational and respectful in spite of that.

A few minutes in, it turns out that it's not - for some reason completely beside me, they decided to use incorrect pronouns because they thought it would make the documentary "more accessible" to the clueless cispopulace.

Yeah, it's so OBVIOUS that it'd be so much LESS confusing to have the Voice Of Authority, the narrator of the documentary, use the wrong pronouns and leaving the doting, supportive parents use the correct ones. Unsurprisingly, people (examples here and here) are quick to point out what is wrong with that and write to Channel four, to which they get the same standard response.

And the response is really lovely. They apologise if "some" people were upset by the use of "biologically accurate" pronouns, but that they felt they were trying to do the right thing, and "almost all" the reviews were "favourable" and everybody loves their documentary a bunch and they were doing the right thing.

I don't know, but I'd imagine that if you're going out and making a documentary about a particular group of people, and the group of people are pissed off about the results, you ought to listen to them?
And maybe, if you talk about how people "will have to get used to using female pronouns" for a person, you ought to take a fucking hint?

Current Mood: aggravated

Now also available in Colorado, and I learned that there's Clitoraid for those who can't afford it. I know that the surgery has been available in Germany for years (it's covered by the insurance), and it's a good thing that there are people offering it in the USA, I didn't even know that it wasn't available over there.

What always absolutely floors me is how often people feel the need to state that there is little known about female sexual organs and that many articles on the subject feel it necessary to point out that FGC is usually a whole lot more invasive than the male counterpart that isn't. Why on earth don't people know that?

Current Mood: cheerful

I found this on YouTube yesterday. It's a parody of the movie written and produced by what appear to be a bunch of Highschool students. Some of the jokes are ... well, unfunny (child molestation! LOL!), and it's sadly not complete yet, but the parts they do have are pretty impressive nonetheless.

angie_21_237 , in case you're watching this, do you also think that the Mike Newton in this one somehow reminds you of someone from our year?

( Twilight the Musical )

Current Mood: awake

Ich sollte es eigentlich ja besser wissen, aber ich habe diesen Artikel gelesen:

Gleichgeschlechtliche Partnerschaften - Kinder brauchen keine Hetero-Eltern

Und dann hab ich noch einen Fehler gemacht - ich habe die Kommentare auch gelesen. Hier mal eine Auswahl, es ist zum Schreien:

"Ja, es muss ein tolles Gefühl sein wenn man in der Klasse oder auf dem Pausenplatz mitteilen darf das man eben nicht ein Mami und Papi zu Hause hat sondern zwei Mami oder zwei Papi...
Den dem Hedonismus und Egoismus moderner Erwachsener dürfen keine Grenzen mehr gesetzt werden."

"In einem Punkt verlieren einige heterosexuelle Paare doch drastisch, wenn homosexuelle Paare bei der Adoption gleich gestellt werden: und zwar jene hetersexuellen Paare, die auf natürlichem Wege keine Kinder bekommen können.
Denn um die gleiche Anzahl Kinder bewerben sich dann plötzlich viel mehr Paare. Und die Wahrscheinlichkeit, den Kinderwunsch erfüllt zu bekommen, sinkt für Mann-Frau-Paare, die biologisch nicht Eltern werden können, drastisch."

"Denn eines ist mal klar, die Anzahl der Kinder die freiwillig zur Adoption frei gegeben werden, ist verschwindend gering und die klassische Familie IST für Kinder der beste Ort um auf zu wachsen und nichts anderes."

"Nur, weil so manche bunte Erscheinungen des menschlichen Lebens immer hoffähiger werden und sich auch ein entsprechendes Lobbywesen dazu gesellt, ist hier noch längst nicht alles im Sinne der Natur."

"Ich hätte auch erwartet, dass Homo-Kinder öfter homo werden."

"Homosexualität ist natürlich- aber ob es natürlich ist, Kinder durch homosexuelle Paare großzuziehen? Homos haben gegenüber Heteros in der Gesellschaft keine Nachteile. Sie können es offen ausleben ebenso wie Heteros."

Was soll einem dazu noch einfallen...?

So, ich gehe mal wieder an die Arbeit hier.

I sorted through links I had saved on del.icio.us a while ago, rediscovered Wordle, a device that turns the most common words in a text into pretty word clouds, and decided to feed it shady online versions of popular Fantasy books.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

So, who is this book about?

( More worldes )

I found this article today and it looks interesting. I 'm storing it on here because the uni PCs won't let me get onto my e-mail provider's web page for some odd reason.

Abstract:
Friends are of crucial importance to lesbians’ lives, their significance heightened due to lack of acceptance from blood family, work colleagues and society. Despite a proliferation of literature on lesbians’ love relationships, lesbians’ friendships remain understudied. In the light of theorising about widespread shifts in intimacy patterns in modern industrial societies, this thesis examines the role of friendship for contemporary lesbians. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, using lesbian feminist, feminist psychological and mainstream sociological theories to interpret lesbians’ negotiations of their friendships and preoccupations with their own continually developing sense of self.

The study finds that firstly, the most significant issue in negotiating friendships is deciding on a lesbian identity despite socialisation to ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. Friends are expected to be accepting and supportive or they are lost. Discrimination, the fact that the lover is the ‘best friend’, struggles with difference in lesbian communities, time constraints and a more general shift to individualism mean that community and family contacts are replaced by small, supportive and affirming friendship networks. These meet needs and within them lesbians negotiate a sense of self, but for the most part with no template of political consciousness. Secondly, while friendships are important, they are also difficult. The fluidity of the friendship relationship, blurred boundaries between friends and lovers, and women’s moral ‘imperative to care’ all provide barriers to communication. Thirdly, while lesbians value ‘the relational self’, a confident sense of self is challenged when close-connected relationships sit at odds both with mainstream, heterocentric culture, and with traditional models of psychology which promote independence and separateness.

Lesbians who are confident communicators, who have access to alternative feminist discourses which value relatedness, and who, together with their friends, are open to change, are able to negotiate satisfactory friendships and relationships. The study demonstrates lesbians’ complex subjectivities as changing selves are negotiated through friendships, love relationships and communities, particularly through experiences of loss.

niaseath found this awesome little gadget - the best thing is that everything you do turns out pretty due to the joys of pentatonic music.

Current Mood: calm

Via

sf_drama . That community is full of win sometimes.

The eight "equally important" parts of how thinness and happiness can be achieved:

1. Honesty
2. Physical appearance
3. Exercise
4. Mindset
5. Sex
6. Food
7. Men
8. Faith

Current Mood: amused

Having had lots of fun with the Zeit.de version of it, I'm currently playing around with the "EU Profiler". It's a questionnaire on your position on 30 key issues for the this week's election which compares your answers to your country's parties' position on said issues, or to those of other European parties.

While my results and my ideal match are not terribly surprising, I liked being able to look at such a concise summary of why I'm going to vote the way I'm going to vote. I missed the comparison with party stances on individual positions which the Zeit version had, but the international comparison option is awesome and surprising in many cases.

Current Mood: cheerful

Recently, an article in Die Zeit on the role of German fathers in time of post-feminism sparked a ~~lively discussion~~ gender wank in the comment section that is still going on a couple of months later. I occasionally read the comments only to find that people seem to be following this guide to the letter: Derailing for Dummies. Read it. It's brilliant.

Die Zeit is supposed to be a German quality paper but the comment section is a gathering of tabloid brains who use their college vocabulary to discuss issues that were relevant back in the nineties and say things that I usually only hear from particularly dim YouTube users.

The gist is: we have achieved equality, the pay gap is a thing of the past, all feminists hate men, and where are my rights and my "boy's day"? It is women are damaging men because there are so many of them in our educational system, so that's one way how women oppress men: by forcing men out of the educational system. Also, evil women force their weak partners to be a "New Man" and then leave them for the "old" kind, leaving their poor partners battered and broken - which only goes to show how much more powerful women are these days.

People are spouting things like these:

"How dare you call me misogynistic! I was only saying that women are clearly better suited for child raising and men for studying physics, it's in their nature, and everything else would be denying basic facts of biology."
"You do realise that your tone is not helping your cause, don't you?"
"How is it not oppressive that boys don't have Girl's Day!"
"Since we have equality, the only role in life that men have left is that of impregnating the women who choose them, how come women aren't conscious of that immense power they have over men? They can choose them! They are more powerful than men, who have to fight for women."
"Oh, sweetie, that is so typical for a radfems like you. Really, it makes me laugh, how can you expect us to take any of this seriously?"

To make it worse, it's all in the awkward, letter-to-the-editor-style my countrywomen and -men use when conversing online, and it's in my mother tongue, so that comfy linguistic and emotional puffer zone I have when I read idiots discuss these things in English is non-existent and ten minutes and three pages into the discussion I feel like strangling someone. It's not only the sheer small-minded ignorance of the arguments, it's the vocabulary. If people use words like "radfem" or "feminazi" in English, it's just a word, it doesn't have any of the playground-humiliation connotation "Kampflesbe" or "Kampfemanze" have (although nowadays I think that "Kampflesbe" [militant dyke] is pretty cool).

The way the mostly upper class users don't realise that in this world, not everything is about them and that there are plenty of people, like, for example, "working class" girls and boys or people with a background in migration who still do NOT have the opportunities they themselves had is truly baffling, not unusual, judging by the experiences I had in education courses with gender topics at my university. When they do discuss people Not Them, they do so with a detached, generalising arrogant ignorance which is not much better. Gnah.

It's a bad outlook when discussions I have with xenophobic High School dropout teenagers from the US about why LGBT people should all be locked up in jail are less threatening for my faith in mankind than merely reading discussions among supposedly educated, self-proclaimed "liberal-" and "open-minded" Germans.

Current Mood: apathetic

Something nice for a change: I usually only whine about this city, but finally, I found something that I love about this city: it has may bugs!!
Yay, may bugs!

I saw the first ones today on my way to my appointment with my GP and rescued two from the street and put them back between some shrubs in the park. I hope they don't get stepped on.

I love, love, love these beetles, and I am not sure whether I should be glad that I don't live in a time in which they are so numerous that they they threaten our harvests or sad that they are so rare that when I saw one of them today I stopped and watched it until it has waggled out of sight, trying to remember when I've last seen one - which was back in the late nineties, and even back then my mother called me to show it to me because it was such a rare sight.

Also, I found 'Es gibt keine Maikäfer mehr' on YouTube - ah, childhood memories - and pest control wank in the comments. Seriously, Reinhard Mey fans, I would have thought you were above that. o_O.

"A new way of thinking"? Now, we can't be having with that, indeed.

Best laugh I had since NOM's Gathering Storm ad with their rainbow coalition - the ads this organisation makes increase my suspicion that they are an organisation of IRL trolls who are secretly supporting LGBT people.

Current Mood: amused

Profile

Mothwing

Books

January 2022

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Page Summary

How much do I envy Crocky?
Deor
+1 on cleaning the kitchen.
Awesomeness over at BioWare
When subtext =/= buttsex.
Something shiny.
Are You A Kissing Book? Part II
Crafting
Good things
Music and moustaches
Another Klingon opera!
Various
... the hell is this?
Size, dieting and sin: Jean Kilbourne on Advertising
Why human females make those noises during het sex.
To quote Hartmann: Herre, des wundert mich.
Girls aren't allowed to get angry.
Local pride event - leashes optional, I hope.
UK Votery
This'll go nicely with my stress-induced bingefest
WTF?
The Single Mother's Manifesto
Never read the comments.
I promise I'm not heteronegative.
Fidgety students
Addictive things
Haiti in the news
Realität der Diskriminierung in Deutschland - Vermutungen und Fakten
Haiti
Completely useless discovery of the day: Sky.
In which I find out that I am a medicine cat.
Now I could do with lordhellebore's "aghast" icon...
Day 24
Day 22
Mal was Anspruchvolles...
Sehr geehrter Leser
Oh, Switzerland
I can't decide whether this is hilarious or scary
8 and Wanting a Sex Change
Restorative surgery for survivors of FGC in the USA
Twilight the Musical
Dummes auf deutsch
(no subject)
"Relating Women: Lesbian Experiences of Friendship"
I could spend hours on this.
Thin And Happy
Eu Profiler
My countrymen embarrass me.
The nice kind of bug
You say it as though it's a bad thing...

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