Happy First of May! If you’re an Occupier, have a good time protesting and being on general strike! If you’re not Occupying anything, then have a nice time at work or school or watching Avatar or whatever you do all day!
Today I would like to present a bunch of links about assorted interesting things which I feel my readers may enjoy!
TW for descriptions of violence. Most importantly: SUPPORT CECE MCDONALD! Cece is a trans woman of color, one of the most vulnerable members of our society, who was falsely accused of murder. Help Cece and help prevent racist and transmisogynistic violence.
TW for murder. Speaking of trans women of color… a trans woman of color was shot in Oakland. RIP. She is one of us.
TW for explicit descriptions of rape. Thomas at Yes Means Yes has been running a series on rape and abuse in BDSM communities. It’s important for kinksters, of course, but also for anyone who wants to look at a case study of how rape culture functions in a close-knit community.
TW for discussion of rape. Great article on how to have sex with an asexual person. I always get irritated at sex-positivity that erases asexuals, graysexuals, demisexuals, and low-libido people from the discussion. Either we’re for all consensual expressions of sexuality, INCLUDING NOT HAVING SEX, or we’re not.
Male Kindness Isn’t Always A Mask for Desire, an interesting article from Role/Reboot about how not every dude wants to get in your pants. As someone who has in the past concluded that every nice gesture meant dude wanted to bone me, it was very relevant. Also I totally know who the author is and I’m not telling.
TW for a brief mention of rape. A discussion of male self-hatred from Alas A Blog. I’m just going to point significantly and mutter Knight/Beast Dichotomy under my breath, okay?
Ten Unbelievably Shitty Things America Does to Homeless People, because fuck you homeless people you clearly have not suffered enough. Also, please note how many of these tend to affect unsheltered (i.e. more likely to be male) homeless people.
TW for graphic images. A Pulitzer-Prize-winning series of photographs about Scott Ostrom, an Iraq war veteran with PTSD.
TW for explicit descriptions of combat death and injuries. Peter Sagal talks about visiting Walter Reed. This is harrowing but very important and very affecting. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan hurts real people.
Via Racialicious, professional sports players show their support of Trayvon Martin. It’s enough to warm the heart. If only I were particularly clear on whom any of these people were…
Speaking of Trayvon, the ACLU brings us a mother’s story about the challenges of raising a black son in a racist society.
Advertising sins! A hilarious parody of how gendered advertisements end up being. Seriously, gendered advertisements are terrible, but I’m going to be a little sad when they go away and I no longer get to read awesome parodies of them.
The bachelor pad, because This Is A Manly Man Thing For Men (even though it’s traditionally girly) is not new at all. They’ve just gotten way more obvious about it.
TW for explicit descriptions of abuse. An extensive and troubling discussion of caregiver abuse of disabled people.
Occasional commenter (she who is much loathed by the spam filter) Daisy Deadhead talks about a dude expelled from Bob Jones University for watching Glee.
TW for mentions of rape and abuse. An interesting bit of feminist history: the debate between political lesbians and heterosexual women. Note that a lot of the people are very “all men are the enemy” about the whole business.
A classification of microaggressions. They’re talking about race, but it’s important for all kinds of social justice.
Hilary Clinton on doing a movie with Jason Segel. This will brighten your day, and also possibly your life.
Pugs talking in all caps. THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS ARSON.
Finally, NSWATM would like to wish occasional contributor Ami Angelwings a very happy Ami Day, celebrating yet another year of her sparkly reign as the Angelcatbunny Queen of Geek Feminism.
aliarasthedaydreamer
Ami Angelwings
Hershele Ostropoler
Cheradenine
jlandrith
kaija24
2020
noahbrand
Cliff Pervocracy
ozymandias
Shora
sirgabe
figleaf
John Hawkins
No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? 
Nothing about the links. Instead, I wanted to say that I spent my entire Saturday watching Avatar. Ozy, WHERE DID YOU PUT THE SPYCAM?!?!
I just want to know so I can pose provocatively into it. 😛
Your link to the post about caregiver abuse of disabled people is broken, by the way.
Also, I see Amanda has another post up in the series that features a whole bunch of mostly-female serial killers who targetted the disabled, with a potentially huge number of other cases that haven’t gone investigated or got much media coverage because they don’t fit our image and the police’s image of what a serial killer looks like or how they operate. They’re just not what we see on the TV in dramas like CSI or NCIS.
Makomk: Link fixed.
Patches: What secret spy network? >.> <.< I definitely do not have a spy satellite continually watching everyone! Of course not! That would be silly. And wrong. Very wrong. (nods seriously)
Fascinating article on bachelor pads and the inclusion of consumption now by men, that paradoxically increases the masculine norm. Advertising again. Had it not been there, I wonder how are society regarding gendering norms might have been altered. Might have we become more or less rigid in judgement about sex and orientation and expression? They wanted men to consume more, so they couched it in terms that you buy more you’re a real man and get laid more. Not only laid more but the ladies will be lining up to ensure you do! What a hoot. Beauty products mfg’s are teally missing an important history lesson here for sure.
I’m sorry, I find all allusion to outdoor fucking in May highly offensive. I’m in the southern hemisphere, so outdoor fucking conclusively finishes for us in May (unless you’re really turned on by hypothermia). It’s really hemispherist and insensitive of you to erase us like that.
/sarcasm
Adding to Makomk’s comment: Serial killers who enter a medical or caregiving profession to prey on the sick and disabled are known in criminology circles as “Angel of Mercy Killers”. As already mentioned, women are more likely to be AMKs than men, especially in the caregiver sector. In the US at least, if you have very good reasons to believe that someone is an AMK, you’d probably be better off contacting your local FBI branch rather than the police. Not that this would *necessarily* help, mind you, because the FBI has people who ignore serious things for stupid reasons just like any other organization which contains people. But it would be more likely to help simply because the FBI knows that “Angel of Mercy” killings are a real thing, and police rarely do.
That political lesbian thing is really weird. On the one hand it was in the past when we didn’t have the science on nature v nurture and when patriarchy was worse. Onthecother hand, really kind of freaky in the “well what are we supposed to do?!” category. Would be cool to see Greta Christina or holly pervocracy tearing it to shreds.
Regarding the “Male Kindness Isn’t Always A Mask for Desire” article.
I think it’s a refreshing insight into other people’s experience. But, since the author presents himself as a rather traditionally attractive/handsome man, I wonder what kind of influence that has on the people surrounding him, their perception of his intentions, and their way of sharing their perceptions with him. And also what kind of thought he has put into that.
Props on the JoCo reference.
Huh. Is it just me, or does that asexuality post seem to refer to PUA tactics a lot, in kind of a sideways way? I was going through it and kept thinking, wait, has this person read my book?
I just noticed this. THANK YOU! 😀