Category: rants

Categories
feminism rants

Three Non-Exhaustive Lists

Things that are none of your business (a non-exhaustive list):

  1. My decision to not change my last name
  2. The last time I shaved my legs
  3. The conversations I have with my gynecologist
  4. If and when I’m going to have kids
  5. If I’m on birth control and why

Things that are none of my business (a non-exhaustive list):

  1. Your sex life and the consenting adult(s) with whom you conduct it
  2. How many kids you decide to have
  3. Your weight and how you choose to manage it
  4. How you deal with your crippling anxiety disorder
  5. The way you want your end of life care handled

Things that “my” money gets spent on that I dislike immensely (a non-exhaustive list):

  1. Tax breaks for religious organizations
  2. The TSA
  3. No Child Left Behind/Race to the Top (not to be confused with education in general)
  4. Drone warfare
  5. Professional sports venues

I hope you can take a look at the three above lists and catch my drift. But if not, allow me to summarize: My personal life, which includes my medical decisions, is none of your fucking business. Your personal life, which includes your medical decisions, is none of my fucking business. No one gets to pick and choose so that their money only gets spent on things they personally like when they are part of a societal collective, whether we’re talking about a government budget or group health insurance.

You’ll notice the third list is entirely about things the government spends “my” money on that I don’t like, rather than health decisions people make under their insurance that I would decide differently. I tried to make a list like that (for example, if I suffered a traumatic brain injury and thought I even had the right to make those choices, I’d probably cut you off after three kids, max) but I found the entire concept so deeply repugnant I couldn’t do it. Because your medical decisions are none of my fucking business.

As you may have already figured out, this is about the Hobby Lobby case the Supreme Court is hearing right now. That this is even a question disturbs me more than I can really articulate. I was under this strange impression that when a company employed me, it purchased my time, my effort, and my skills–not the manipulative right to weigh in on my life outside of work.

I’ve seen people point out a lot in this argument that you know, there are other reasons people take birth control pills. Not just contraception. Which is true, and does point out a nice hole in the moralistic bullshit. But that argument also bothers me, because it can effectively legitimize the unstated claim that it’s anyone’s business to begin with. It can be heard to imply that well, there are certain uses of the pill that are legit, it’s not just for sluts who want to sleep around. Just like the whole “rape and incest” exception for abortion tacitly supports the idea that some abortions are totally more legitimate than others.

Your abortion is none of my fucking business, by the way. Just like your use or non-use of birth control. Just like your sex life. Just like your type II diabetes or your depression. Your health and the maintenance thereof is not mine to control.

So let me tell you a story that’s none of your fucking business. I was on birth control pills for well over a decade, and it wasn’t because I had crippling cramps or endometriosis. It was because I was an adult human being in her twenties who didn’t want to have kids, and who believed (and still believes) that sex is part of being human and living life, as opposed to a crime punishable by pregnancy.

Don’t like that? Good thing you have your own life to live.

When I was unemployed and paying ridiculous amounts of money for COBRA on my old healthcare insurance, I had to drop off birth control pills because my plan didn’t cover them and I was struggling to make my mortgage payments. I’d just met someone (Mike) with whom I was head over heels in love–but neither of us were in any kind of place where kids were an option, and we still aren’t now. It was pretty scary until I could afford to buy the pill again, which involved Mike helping me out financially. And that’s always fun.

Oddly enough, if I’d been a man who couldn’t get it up, the plan would have still covered my Viagra. Even more hilariously, if I’d become a failure statistic for condoms, the plan would have covered my much more expensive pregnancy. A pregnancy which likely would have made it significantly harder for me to find employment, and probably prevented me from going back to college at that time.

That’s why I was so indescribably happy when the ACA mandated birth control in healthcare plans, because of bullshit like that. These things matter. When you have no money, these things matter a hell of a lot. These things shape the course of a person’s life.

And that should not for Hobby Lobby or anyone else to decide.

Categories
rants

The Kids Are All Right

Just finished my first panel at ConDFW, “Androids at the Dinner Table: Gadgets, Social Media and Society.” I was expecting to pretty much talk about things like the use of cell phones at the dinner table, the gross creeper potential of devices like Google Glass, and even some of the fun people have been having with stuff like Google Streetview.

It…didn’t really turn out that way. We talked about cell phone issues a teeny bit at the beginning of the panel, but after that the topic wandered a bit into publishing today versus back in the day territory, and also the usual “kids these days” tropes. Which seems to happen often when there’s a panel talking about society in the present and near future.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t count as one of the “kids these days” any more. I’m in my thirties. But maybe I have a different perspective on a lot of these issues because I grew up during the surge of this technology. We went from mobile phones being these hilarious looking bricks or things attached to your car when I was in grade school, to suddenly in high school the rich kids had them, and by the time I had my first career path job (at 19), I’d bought my own and they were everywhere. I cut my teeth on dial-up bulletin boards before the www and browsers were really a thing, and by the time I hit high school we had a computer in every classroom and I was making websites on geocities and posting my terrible Sailor Moon fanfiction online.

And maybe I also have a different perspective about the kids these days because the roundabout way I got my degree (returning to a traditional university after a near decade-long hiatus) and my current social life have put me in a space where at 33, I’m dangerously close to being fossilized.

So, speaking from that perspective: Lay off the kids.

We’d rather text people than call. So what? We establish our personal space in crowded environments using a cell phone rather than a newspaper or book. So what? We meet people we like and get to be friends with them via social media, chatting back and forth in endless instant messenger conversations, watching movies together by live streaming. So what? Instead of sitting down at the local nerd lord’s kitchen table, we roleplay on journal systems or forums or by IM or have players skype in. So. Fucking. What.

I’m beyond tired of hearing about how we’re isolated, how we don’t know how to talk to each other any more. Have you ever considered that maybe, you just don’t know how to talk to us?

I have more friends now than I ever did before the age of the internet. I have more friends who will drop everything and talk to me if I’m having a problem, who will go out of their way to help me, who will create art with me. I have more friends that I can meet online for card games or roleplaying games or first person shooters (like paintball without the cardio component or the injuries), than I ever have in “real life.” I have more friends who have laughed with me and cried with me and been connected to the transformative moments of my life.

There is little anyone can say that will offend me more, and in a more personal way, than claiming that my friends are not real because we are so separated by physical distance that we have to use technology to communicate.

And kids these days don’t read? Don’t create? Can’t imagine?

You literally cannot use the internet without reading, without communicating using the written word. Did everyone sleep through the YA boom that Harry Potter set off? Have you been avoiding the young nerds who will talk your ear off about this amazing world they made up and want to use as the base for a video game or comic or novel? Have you completely missed the massive presence of fanfiction and fanart, a set of interlocking communities that are populated by people of all ages, yes, but mostly young people? Have you avoided the innovative ways “the kids” are expressing themselves on youtube and with podcasts and using services like vine?

Doing something differently doesn’t automatically make it inferior. Living life differently doesn’t automatically make it less of a life.

So let me tell you about the “kids these days” I have come to know. They are smart, and they are creative, and they are empathetic. They are people who are deeply worried about how the older generations have fucked up the world they’re going to inherit. They’re people who are aware of what kind of giant mess the schools are ejecting them in to, and yet they’re still reaching out to each other across unimaginable distance and doing what human beings have always done: create, and connect, and love.

The kids are all right.

/drops mic

Categories
rants sexism sfwa stoopid

You only hate boobs because you hate freedom.

Or: the most hilarisad thing I heard this weekend.

So, this ties back into the SFWA thing from last year. You know, the bulletin cover that made me sigh profoundly and roll my eyes? And then the wanksplosion that caused me to write a post to specifically say “Fuck you” to Malzberg and Resnick? It is the gift that keeps on giving. Only this time it’s just funny, in the same way watching a cat fall off a desk is funny.

There is apparently a petition circulating in regards to the SFWA bulletin because…censorship! And first amendment! And freedom! The petition is courtesy of David Truesdale. If you’ve never heard of him, read the review he did of Apex Magazine #55 and that’ll basically tell you what you need to know. He’s also, it’s important to note, not a member of SFWA, which makes the entire concept of this petition extra wtf-y.

The link to Radish Reviews really covers most of the mockery that immediately springs to mind. Holy double bonus fuck you asshole points to David Truesdale for his super gross allusions to slavery! Because not being able to belittle entire groups and enjoy scantily clad women courtesy of a professional organization is totally same as the injustices and crimes perpetrated upon countless people throughout history!

But three points.

One: While there is arguably a “female gaze” in operation in movies like, say, Twilight, “men get objectified too” is a bullshit argument. Particularly when the objectification being cited involves the big muscular manly man ideal. I’d argue most of the time, that stuff isn’t made for female consumption; it’s created as the manly ideal men are supposed to want to meet. (Another mention here, and a succinct summation here.) Which is, yes, still incredibly fucked up, but send your thank you note to the patriarchy and its ridiculous love of over-emphasized sexual dimorphism and gender roles.

Two: At this point, the moment I see the phrase “politically correct” I automatically roll my eyes. Because it is invariably a whiney, impotent asshole defending their supposed right to not only aggressively be an asshole, but to aggressively be an asshole in a sandbox over which they have no control. Here’s your “you tried” gold star.

Three, and by far the most important: SFWA is a professional organization. And it’s not the only professional organization of which I’m a member, so don’t even try to blow smoke up my ass on this one.

I’ve also been part of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) for years (far longer than I’ve been part of SFWA, actually). During those years, not once has AAPG sent me a bulletin that contained pictures of scantily clad women draped on rock formations or pretending to study seismic lines while sticking their pert bottoms in the air. Not once has AAPG sent me an official communication that included dismissive discussions of “lady geologists” and how hot the first wave of women in petroleum geoscience looked in bikinis. AAPG, I will also note, has an online moderation policy for its content that reserves the right to delete racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive comments.

(I suppose this must be because as much as they love oil and gas, they hate freedom. Or something.)

Now, this could be because I just haven’t been reading the bulletins carefully enough. And it’s not because geology as a science managed to completely avoid historical sexism. And it’s not that the G in AAPG actually stands for “gynocracy” because trust me, if you’ve ever been to the national meeting, you’d know that there are still way more men in the field than there are women.

So I’m just going to throw this out there: maybe there aren’t bikini babes in the AAPG bulletin because, I don’t know, AAPG is a fucking professional organization that has women in its membership and wants to maintain its credibility as an organization in the public eye.

How fucking hard is that to figure out?

I don’t give two shits if the historic legacy of an industry is one of bikini babes codified sexism. You know what? One way or another, that’s how it is in most industries! There is a difference between understanding the roots of one’s industry, and perpetuating and celebrating it. There’s a huge fucking difference. Particularly when those historic roots being perpetuated in a modern context are insulting to a big whack of your membership and the public.

The publications of an organization are its face to both the public and its membership. Effectively, what is in those pages is viewed as being in line with the organization’s values and vision because the organization fucking paid to put it there.

SFWA members don’t pay their $90 annual dues to be told what to think or how they should express themselves in the pages of the Bulletin, nor do they want their own thoughts (through their articles or columns) to be deemed “acceptable” or “right thinking,” or adhering to some jumped-up (always subject to change at whim) PC style manual by some hootenanny “advisory board”” of boot lickers. [from here, pdf from main post]

Yeah, you know what I don’t pay $90 for? Being belittled by the professional organization of which I’m a member.

Go fuck yourself.

Categories
feminism rants

I only cut my hair because I hate you

So there was another one of those articles going around. I’m not going to link to it. It’s bullshit clickbait misogynistic trolling and you can find it via my tumblr if you desperately want to. But come on, you know how those articles go:

Women do a thing I personally do not find attractive! I am shocked that they do not care deeply about my opinions on how they look. In fact, the only possible reason for their not caring about this important topic is that they’re mentally unstable and unfeminine! I will now back it up with a series of bullshit anecdotes and call it a day! Knock it off, women, or no man will ever want to fuck you–and by no man I mean me, only I totally would if you’d just acknowledge I exist please please oh pretty please oh god I’m so alone there’s a literal layer of rust on my penis help me I’m going to die and get eaten by my pet reptiles one of these days and no one will even notice I’m gone–and the very idea of that should shake you to the very foundation of your being.

idgaf

i dont care

Yeah, yeah, whatever. It’s good for a game of name that logical fallacy, but that’s basically it. This kind of nonsense really just boils down to the supposition that everything women do should be with pleasing men in mind, and the very idea that we might be doing it for ourselves is too shocking to consider.

I’ve got my own anecdotes, and one thing I’d point out is that most of the women I know who wear makeup? Don’t do it for guys. They do it because they like how it looks and it makes them feel powerful. It’s like social war paint.

And me? My decision to have short hair has nothing to do with latent masculinity, psychological damage, or a desire to scare the shit out of insecure little boys on the internet. (Though god if I’d known short hair was going to make penises shrivel up and fall off with its mere existence, I would have shaved my head a decade ago.) I used to have hair down to almost my waist. Then I had to spend close to a month helping out on a drilling rig. In Wyoming. In the summer.

Do you know what kind of pain in the ass it is to try to wear a hard hat with hair that long? And how freaking dirty your hair gets? You bet your ass I cut that shit off, down to an A-line. And then I spent a summer in Houston, where I didn’t have a car. I biked everywhere. And I discovered that even chin length hair is just Too Damn Much Hair when you’re that sweaty (oh right, proof that I’m not an actual girl, because I sweat EW GROSS), so off the rest of it went.

At which point I discovered that I look pretty damn good with short hair, and that it’s actually faster and easier to get short hair to look cute to my satisfaction. Three minutes with a hair dryer, a teensy bit of product, and I am more than satisfied. I like how it looks. I like that it’s easy to maintain. I like that I can completely dye it in less than ten minutes and don’t spend time better used writing our sleeping out playing with my cats trying to pick tangles out of it. I like that my fucking hair doesn’t control my life.

Maybe that’s why this is so existentially threatening to people who are inclined to pen articles complaining about women and our personal beauty decisions. I didn’t cut my hair because I hate men, or because I needed an outward expression of my deep psychological issues, or because I want to destroy western civilization and replace it with a dystopian gynocracy. This isn’t about them and never has been. No matter how much time I might choose to spend with someone else, when it’s the middle of the night and the monsters are howling on the doorstep, I’m the one who faces them wearing my own skin and in that moment it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

I cut my hair because it’s my hair, growing on my head, and I like it that way. And I really couldn’t give less of a shit about outside objections.

Guys, we like you, we really do. Or at least some of us do, whether in a sexual way or not. And this might be difficult to grasp, but try: even if we like you, you are not the center of our worlds. I know it’s a horrifying revelation, especially after most widely available media has spent your entire life telling you that you are totally the most important thing on the planet. But I think you’ll live a happier and more fulfilled life if you can manage to grasp the simple idea that we don’t care if you want to fuck us. In fact, if you’re going to write stupid shit like that, we’d really rather you didn’t.

Thank you.

Categories
education rants

No really, you should care about education. Even if you don’t have kids.

Well I was going to rant about this on tumblr but my app isn’t uploading the post (too much froth?) so fine, it can just live on my blog.

Okay, childless/childfree people, let’s talk for a minute. I don’t have kids. I doubt I ever will. I still vote for every way to fund education that I can, and I pay close attention to school board elections and other education issues. And it’s not because I have nieces that I love, and it’s not because I am so rich that I’m desperate to give my money away. It’s certainly not because I don’t have other things I’d rather be doing with my time and money.

It’s because I am trying to ensure that kids learn how to think and cooperate and socialize, so that they grow into adults who can think, and cooperate, and socialize.

I’m not a fucking island. I don’t run this country on my own. (If I did, it’d be a much different place.) The decisions that other people make effect me deeply–just look at environmental issues and the battle we’re still fucking having about denial. And the kids of today are going to be running this place when I’ve retired.

Allow me to repeat: The kids of today are going to be running this place when I’ve retired.

There is a reason people with wacky ideologies try to pack school boards–look at creationists and their endless quest to fuck up childhood education. This stuff matters. This stuff controls the future in both short and long term.You think your life would be half as good as it is now if fundamental biology education got torn up by the roots?

Education matters. Even if you don’t have kids, and will never have kids, education should matter to you. You are not paying for someone else’s little annoying monster to learn how to add fractions and not eat paste. You are paying to live in a place where the people around you can maybe understand complex issues that affect everyone.

And yeah, right now that doesn’t seem to be working. I agree it’s not fair to hook things to property ownership. It’s damn unfair to kids in places with low property values, and it’s an obviously bad idea unless you have a (gross) personal interest in perpetuating class-based inequalities. But I’ve also yet to see a funding issue of ANY kind pass by popular vote. (Up until this year I lived in Colorado.) And I agree something needs to change if we actually want to pursue that golden ideal of producing people who can reason and think critically and address the challenges of the modern world. But starving schools of funding ain’t it, and ignoring the issue ain’t it, and saying it isn’t your problem because you don’t even like kids sure as hell ain’t it. Why do we even keep having this argument?

Maybe because we still haven’t figured out that education isn’t a product, it should be a public good. Maybe because we’re still having more arguments over how much money teachers make than how much money people who get their living off capital gains make. Maybe because we’re more concerned with test scores than actual end results. Maybe because fiddling while Rome burns should be our national pastime, not baseball.

And we’re also still having this same damn argument about how you shouldn’t have to pay for education if you’re childless/childfree. Whether they sprang from your loins or not, whether you like it or not, you will be sharing the world with all of these kids and their ability to think or not will affect you and all other living things on this planet in ways you cannot even begin to imagine.

Education matters, and funding it matters. If you want humans to stop repeating the same stupid mistakes over and over, it matters.

/drops mic

Categories
fandom rants writing

Fanfic < "Real" fiction?

Okay, darlings, I’m getting just a little tired of this shit. Since a thing involving fanfiction happened of course we’re up for another round of arguing about the “worth” of fanfic. Because what is the internet for if not being a long distance dick about things other people like? Well, let Evil Auntie Rachael lay down some fucking truth for you.

First off, define “real” fiction. Unless you’re writing pure history or biographical stories, you are literally making shit up. Define real in that context. I dare you.

Okay, so you mean original fiction? When we’re talking written narrative fiction, I should note that original is a pretty loaded word. Everyone likes to laugh about there only being three (or five, or six, or pick a number) plotlines in the entire world, and it’s really all just about giving it a twist or telling it a new way. Are you telling me fanfiction can’t do that? Even the idea of original characters is a loaded one, since we’ve got archetypal characters for a reason, and you can make a compelling argument for nearly every character belonging to an archetype, with the serial numbers cunningly masked by, say, curly hair and an interest in bowling. (And here, we aren’t even touching the entire issue of licensed tie-in fiction.)

So do you really mean fiction for which someone would potentially pay money? First, please explain to me how assigning monetary value to art makes it more legitimate. Because here I was thinking the true value of art was actually a thing without price, namely the act of creation itself and the idea the art communicates. And second, getting paid for fiction is not that easy. TRUST ME.

But Evil Auntie Rachael, original fiction is better quality than fanfiction. Really? Give me five minutes and Google and I will find you ten fanfics that display more sophisticated writing, better plotting, and deeper characterization than Twilight. Give me a full day and some dramamine, and I bet I can find you ten Twilight fanfics that are better quality than the work upon which they’re based.

The only thing original fiction gets to hold over fanfic in regards to quality is that it’s professionally edited. (IF it’s traditionally published or if it’s self published AND the author coughed up the dough to independently hire a content and line editor.) And sometimes, that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Every single one of us has read a book in our lives where we threw it on the floor in disgust and announced that we could totally do better than that.

Fanfiction is an incredibly valuable tool for learning and honing the craft of writing. I wrote fanfiction for years and years. I know other writers who wrote fanfic for years and years (and most of them have published far more than me). Some of us still do. What fanfiction taught me was how to build a plot, and how to plot long, and stay true to character while I was doing it. Writing fanfic isn’t easier or harder than writing original fiction–it’s the same process, the same parts of your brain.

And you know what? Fanfic is fun. You’re not writing it to a deadline, you’re not thinking about how many fucking times it’s going to be forcibly ejected from a slushpile, or which of your darlings the editor is going to expect you to kill. You’re writing it for the sheer joy of writing something because you like it and you can. God, and the feedback! You have an instant fanbase of people who will actually engage with you about your story! I wrote one short little fic after I saw Thor: The Dark World and in the time since I put it online I have literally received more feedback on it than I have in total for every piece of original work I’ve ever published. It’s like pure black tar heroin for the sad little twitching addict that is a writer’s ego.

Two years ago, I sat in on a panel at Worldcon where two editors from large publishing houses said yeah, they know people in publishing who keep track of fanfiction because it’s a way to find amazing writers. Patrick Nielsen Hayden said:

There is no ceiling on how good fanfic can be because it’s all unpublishable. You can find great writers.

So you can shut the fuck up about the supposed inferiority of fanfiction now.

Oh, and if a published writer has the sheer ego necessary to tell you that all fanfic is creatively inferior and doesn’t count, you tell them to go fuck themselves. Tell ’em from me, too. At the end of the day, we’re all just making shit up.

Categories
fandom rants this shit is fucked up you need to do better

Dear Interviewers: Please Refer to Wheaton’s Law, Re: Fanworks

Wheaton’s Law: Don’t be a dick.

So this happened. It’s just part of a long pattern of interviewers basically trying to embarrass both actors and fan writers/artists by bringing them forcibly together. (See also: people showing Tom Hiddleston pornographic fanart during interviews.) These people are dicks. Dicks of phenomenal magnitude. I’d say they should be ashamed of themselves, but the very fact that they’re doing this kind of bullshit pretty much shows that they have no shame.

This is the thing about being a fan writer or artist: your creative space is implicitly under the radar, made by the creators of the original work willingly turning a blind eye to give fans room to play. I wrote fanfiction for years and years (and still do, to be honest, very occasionally) and for the most part you do so on the understanding that the creators of the original work will never see what you’ve done. You’re writing for yourself, and for other fans. That’s what makes it fun and joyful. It keeps fan communities strong, which for the most part is a good thing, since yay loyal fan base. No one gets hurt (outside of shipping wars casualties), no harm, no foul, everyone is happy.

Now, it’s different if a creator (or actor) asks for fanworks to be sent to them (like the amazing Trollando Jones asking for fanfic!) or if, say, you come up with something beautiful and tasteful and want to send it as a tribute*. It’s also different if someone actually goes looking for work on the internet. It’s the internet. Enter at your own risk.

But this pattern of taking fanwork and shoving it in the face of people involved in the original movie (etc) is beyond gross. It’s mean-spiritedly shitting in someone’s sandbox for the sake of being a dick. And I shouldn’t even have to say that it’s gross to force something embarrassing on unsuspecting people in public, and megagross when it’s pornographic.

And it’s gross to search out fanworks just for the purposes of publicly mocking them. I feel like I hit my head and woke up back in high school, when the mean girls were stealing my notebook and staging dramatic readings of my horrible teen angst poetry. Fuck you for trying to make the act of creation feel unsafe. Fuck you for punishing people for loving something. No, really, fuck you guys.

And for good measure, fuck everyone who thinks what is basically cruelty for the sake of being cruel is funny.

(Don’t be ashamed of your fanfic.)

 

*-I shouldn’t even have to say this, BUT: sending pornographic work to someone who hasn’t asked for it is never, ever okay. Kind of like sending other people pictures of your genitalia is never okay. Same principle. Including someone in your sex life non-consensually is never okay.

Categories
me rants

10 Reasons I Fucking Love My Period

  1. The headache. I know, what could be more fun than bleeding out of the crotch for five days? Doing it while one of your eyeballs feels like it’s going to be forcibly ejected from your skull! It helps you prove you’re a REAL WOMAN by enduring constant pain without losing your temper and snapping the goddamn neck of everyone who tells you to smile because it can’t possibly be that bad. GUESS WHAT MOTHERFUCKERS I AM LEAVING A BLOOD TRAIL THAT A DEAF DUMB AND BLIND SHARK COULD FOLLOW IT IS THAT BAD AND I AM STILL UPRIGHT DO NOT EVEN FUCK WITH ME.
  2. Bloating is FUCKING AWESOME. Severe drought could hit us at any fucking time thanks to all those asshole world governments still refusing to goddamn thing one about global climate change. So you have to be prepared. Well guess what. I’m carrying like FIVE EXTRA POUNDS OF WATER with me. Sure my pants no longer fit but when you’re crawling through the blasted wasteland that used to be river country and pleading for a drop of moisture GUESS WHO WILL BE LAUGHING THEN.
  3. Normally if I want my tits to hurt, I have to go kick my own ass with bench press like other mere mortals. NOT THIS WEEK, THOUGH. OH NO. I get all the boobache I could possibly want, no effort needed. MATCH THAT, FUCKERS.
  4. I smell like blood and that’s how you know I AM NOT EVEN FUCKING AROUND. Sure, this time it’s not the blood of your parents, your kids, and your favorite dog. BUT THAT COULD CHANGE AT ANY MOMENT. [Note: Even if I did not love the smell of salty ruin in the morning, you could not fucking pay me enough to squirt shit that smells like flowers down there, I love my ladyjunk WAY TOO MUCH OH AM I MAKING YOU UNCOMFORTABLE? GOOD.]
  5. Normally a cold ass bitch of my caliber would have to watch a kitten being slowly crushed to death by the weight of societal apathy to even feel so much as a pang of sorrow. But not this week. I GET TO CRY AT FUCKING GUM COMMERCIALS. Emotional release, baby. I get it all out in less than a week and then I’m back to the uncaring gaiety of your average Bond villain for the rest of the month.
  6. Tell you what, I fucking love not being able to take a decent shit for nearly a week. Shitting is for pussies and people who lack conviction.
  7. Cramps are nature’s way of letting you know that you have a fucking pain tolerance that won’t quit because you KNOW if science could even PRODUCE something so badass as the genetic love child of Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Fucking Norris, if that lantern-jawed piece of pure badassery had a uterus trying to turn itself inside out and crawl out of his [hypothetical] vagina, he’d be on the floor begging for a merciful death by corkscrew. BUT US? We just keep going like the fucking zombie Energizer Bunny and maybe, just maybe, slap a heating pad on that shit if it’s particularly bad this month because AIN’T NO ONE GOT TIME FOR THAT.
  8. I GRIND MY TEETH IN MY SLEEP BECAUSE I AM PREPARING TO TEAR OUT THE THROATS OF MY ENEMIES.
  9. Anyone who thinks life gets more fun than shoving a wad of cotton into your vagina like it’s the cork for a champagne bottle of gore has obviously never lived.
  10. The insomnia is fucking awesome, and then the headache so you like can’t even fucking THINK because thinking is that shit limp-wristed intellectuals do shut up and work with me here. Sleep is for people who don’t got shit to do, and my shit to do I mean sharks to hunt down and murder with your bare hands. I KNOW YOU FUCKERS ARE HUNTING ME I CAN FEEL IT AND I AM READY YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE FUCKING WITH.
Categories
rants

I Hate Tipping

I really wish we’d just get rid of tipping in restaurants and go to paying servers an actual, living wage. I haven’t been a fan of the practice ever since I went to other countries where tipping isn’t the norm or isn’t the main source of income and saw that it’s something that actually works. And I just got thinking about it more today because of this article from Slate.

As an aside, I’ve often been informed that our service is superior in America because our servers have to hustle for tips. Having eaten out in Japan (no tipping), Germany, Australia, and England (places where tipping happens but is not the primary source of income), my totally anecdotal experience says: not really. I’ve had both good service and bad service in every country in which I’ve ever had a meal. I’ve had courteous servers and rude ones, dedicated servers and ones who obviously could not give less of a shit. The only true difference I’ve noticed is the pacing of the meal varies quite a bit outside of America. And when I mentioned that, I was informed by my German coworkers that it has nothing to do with servers not hustling. They just think Americans are fucking mental (I’m paraphrasing here) for making our meals as short and fast as we do. So there’s that.

Anyway, I’ve now had a waitress as a housemate for nearly half a year, and that’s only served to increase my complete dislike for the way we deal with tipping in America. Here’s why I don’t like it:

1) It makes budgeting very difficult for the people who have to live on tips. With no set hourly wage (beyond the laughable tipped employee minimum that is generally under or way under $5/hour) servers don’t know exactly how much money they’re going to bring in on a given day, let alone a given week or month. If you bring in enough that any fluctuations are just gravy, that’s probably not so bad. But I get the distinct impression that’s not the case across the board.

1a) As a side note, since servers are paid so little hourly, that makes it relatively low cost for managers to overstaff their servers, which means that each server has fewer tables, gets fewer tips, makes less money. So it may be good for you because you’re the server’s only table so she’s very attentive, but it sucks a lot for your waitress.

2) It punishes servers for things outside their control. Okay, sure, if you see your server ignoring your empty iced tea glasses for twenty minutes while he stands by the kitchen and texts his friends, I suppose that’s fair enough. But I’ve seen servers get shorted on tips because the food came out slowly (generally the kitchen’s fault), because a hamburger/steak/etc wasn’t cooked to the desired degree (also quite possibly the kitchen’s fault), or because the server was slow because she was trying to run the entire floor herself (likely the manager’s fault for not scheduling properly). Which functionally means the server is getting screwed out of money for mistakes made by someone who is paid hourly wages or a salary. That feels profoundly unfair to me.

3) People just don’t tip enough, period. It appalls me that today, in 2013, there are still people who think it’s acceptable to go to a restaurant if they can pay for their meal but not for the tip. There is no excuse for that. But on the other hand, it would be wonderful if all prices just automatically included a decent tip (hm, like a service charge!) so you knew exactly how much you’d be paying before you went into a meal.

4) I don’t buy that it makes service better or motivates servers. If nothing else, if your server has busted their ass and still gotten fucked out of a couple of tips by a misbehaving kitchen or stingy diners, I would be seriously shocked if they felt any motivation to hustle after that. Which will then just perpetuate a viscious cycle of bad service and bad tips and bad service and bad tips.

5) It does something weird to the power dynamic. The server is employed by the restaurant owner. They should be getting paid the majority of their wages by the restaurant owner. By having them work for tips, in a way that puts the server in a position of being more employed by the customers than by the owner. Which puts them in an incredibly bad position, say, if a customer asks them to break the restaurant rules. Maintain the rules and piss off the customer and then get a bad tip? Or break the rules, maybe get a good tip, but risk being fired or causing trouble for your employer? Yikes.

6) Basically, what that article said about tip disparities along lines of gender, race, etc. It’s shitty and unfair to put someone’s livelihood in the hands of people who might be on a power trip or let their personal prejudices determine how far they’ll open their wallets. At least when you decide you’re going to be an artist, unless you’re totally blind you go in under the full knowledge you’ll be depending upon the kindness of strangers. Servers are supposedly people with regular jobs. (And often, hah, they are artists trying to supplement their kindness of strangers income with more kindness of strangers income. Awesome.)

7) Frankly, I think it sucks for consumers as well. While I like the feeling of leaving a big tip and hoping I’ve made someone’s day, you know what I don’t like? Feeling horrible and guilty about all the assholes that tip like shit. Particularly if I’m in a big party. I’ve been forced to make up for what I feel is the stinginess of friends and acquaintances more times than I’d like to recall.

For fuck’s sake, just pay these people a living wage and let me eat my hamburger without wondering if my server is going to make enough money tonight to justify the gas he spent to get to the restaurant.

(Until then, I’m still going to keep tipping 20% minimum. It makes the math easier.)

Categories
feminism rants sfwa women in science writing

Lady [Insert Job Title Here]

This may come as a shock, but I am not a “Lady Geologist.” I do not examine women visually and use lab tests in order to understand their physical properties, provenance, and environment of deposition. I have never gone up to a female stranger, hammered a chunk off of her, and sent it to the lab so I could determine the abundance of her constituent minerals. That kind of thing would, I assume, land me in jail.

I’m a Sedimentary Geologist. I commit those sorts of friendly acts on sedimentary rocks, which are mineralogically more interesting and also don’t mind if you take a hammer to them. (Okay maybe they do mind, but they have no legal standing under current US law.)

I would likewise think that “Lady Lawyers” don’t limit themselves to female clients. And “Lady Engineers” don’t spend their time designing more durable women in AutoCAD. And “Lady Writers” (this I can speak to personally) don’t just write women or about women. And “Lady Editors” don’t leave trails of women in their wake, panting and covered with marks made in track changes.

Oh, right. The “Lady” is supposed to indicate that we’re a professional of some sort that happens to be a lady. And what’s wrong with that?

It’s simple. By feeling the need to point out that holy shit, that engineer is a woman, you are paying lip service to the idea that it’s only normal for men to be engineers. That women are the exception instead of just a normal part of the professional landscape. When you append or job titles with the unnecessary flag of gender, it effectively removes us from the work ecosystem and marks us as an invasive species, abnormal and not belonging.

Maybe I could have understood that more back when women were just starting to claw our way as a group out of the role of housewife, but our presence in the workforce hasn’t been a surprise in decades or far longer. (At my ripe old age of 32, I literally do not remember a time when women were not doctors, lawyers, and engineers, though admittedly not without struggle.) It isn’t shocking–SHOCKING!–that women write scifi. You have heard about this little book called Frankenstein, right?

And using the word Lady instead of Woman? Just makes it sound more cutesy and condescending because it’s a callback to all that chivalry bullshit. I’m not a lady, guys. I’m a woman. I’ve yet to hear someone referred to as a Lady Anything when her accomplishments or her gender weren’t then subsequently (if subtly) belittled. Wow, look what she did, and she’s a lady! Look what that lady did, unlike all those other women! Pretending to be amazed over and over again that we are here and working and doing just fine effectively erases our presence in the past.

Do you get what I’m saying? Do you get why I (and many of my fellow women, though please don’t think I am in any way claiming to speak for all women) are getting a little tired of that shit? Do you get why, even if it wasn’t meant to be patronizing or paternalistic, it might sound that way?

Good. Now kindly knock it off.

When I’m at work, I’m a goddamn Sedimentary Geologist. I’m a Writer. The presence or absence of tits does not change either of these facts.