Some tasty blogging for us all to digest – and things to think about in the New Year

I’m a big Joss Whedon fan, but this post certainly got my attention. My reading of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character in particular was different – I always thought him very clever, and noble in his own right, and that it was his ultimate compassion that both destroyed him and caused him to be re-born at the end of “Serenity” (shades of Woland’s words to Margarita after Satan’s Ball, methinks – but that’s a whole other digression), but the ideas expressed at Secular Apostasy need to be pondered (if only I had cider to assist me in my ponderage – if only it were cold enough to drink cider in the first place!). Wouldn’t it be interesting if there were a sequel to “Serenity,” starring Ejiofor’s character? 

This is just… well… There is a collection of a great deal of quotations on the issue at hand, please click on the links that kaktus provides.

The Apostate is showcasing some unpublished drafts – a fascinating exercise. Happy anniversary!

Here’s litlove on motherhood. Not that I’ve got any plans for that in the year 2008.  But I just might bookmark this post, for it will be useful down the road. Litlove has also announced the launch of something called The Best of New Writing on the Web. Something I hope will really take off in the coming year. Check it.

BlackAmazon is friends with someone I know offline (through one of my old jobs, actually). She was born in the same year as I. She loves the Chat Noir posters!!! But that’s all besides the fact that… Well, please go on over there and read. 

Kim’s pissed. Also, I’ve just noticed her lovely award graphic in the sidebar. At the risk of sounding completely un-profound: ROFLMAO.

And then there’s also a parody entitled “It’s Fard Out Here For A Pimp” –  a self-identified half-Irish Muslim revert discovers that even pimping can be halal. Think this is outlandish? Going too far? Man, I have met someone eerily similar once. And a journalist friend of mine once described a conversation that could have been the inspiration to this post – something that happened in London while he was on assignment, the “highlight” of his trip, as it was.

Screw the Old 5K! Let’s Run to the Radfems!

I ran Cross Country in high school. Hence the lame joke.

My offline experiences with self-identified radical feminists have tended to be very positive. Someone whom I consider a mentor is a radical feminist and a heavyweight thinker and academic (and a damn fine human being). A lot of my own thinking about life in general has been shaped by amiable back-and-forth discussions with radical feminists and about radical feminism. And even during times of disagreement and strife and mistrust (the Duke Lacrosse case comes to mind) – somehow, in the offline world, civility was still the standard. 

So you can understand how baffling and distressing it is for me to enter the world of radical feminist blogging, and read comments like the ones in this thread (scroll down to #21 to see what I mean).

Now, for a bit of context, blogger Renegade Evolution recently had a horrible day at work (please proceed with caution here – the description of what went on is jarring to say the least). She was harassed, threatened, subject to vulgar, racist, and sexist insults, and had to leave the gig early. She is a stripper. When she wrote about what happened, she received sympathy from her regular readers, as well as from radical feminist bloggers with whom she had conflicts in the past. She also, of course, received anonymous comments that framed her experience in the crushingly familiar rhetoric of “you basically asked for it.” It didn’t take long for the situation to degenerate.

Some of the results of that degeneration can be read here.

The Internet was created fairly recently, blogs even more so, but already it feels as though these blog-wars are as old as the world.

Here’s my (fairly uncomplicated, I think) take on this situation: a sex-worker posting about a terrible experience is not automatically “running to the rad fems” or whatever. Framing the issue is such is pretty damn presumptuous and, oh, the irony, completely paternalistic.

I personally don’t think that Renegade Evolution has an overarching problem with all radical feminism. I think she has a problem with certain bloggers who have decided that they alone represent radical feminism – or, for that matter, any form of “real” feminism in general. I think this situation once again proves that the invocation of feminism can be used against people in damaging, hurtful ways, if the situation presents itself. Funnily enough, a radical feminist WOC cautioned me about this, years ago. 

A Dalek by any other name… 

“Two thousand miles is very far through the snow”

I used to listen to this song while still in bed on winter vacation mornings, on my blue flannel sheets with the snowflakes and snowmen.

I used to listen to this song in the car, usually idling, waiting for someone in someone’s driveway, usually with a cup of coffee making splotches on my jeans because I always insisted on waving it around to this song.

I used to dance to this song (the video is hard to watch – but it’s a good one, trust me).

And this one is my new favourite. Although for everyone else, it’s their old favourite. But I’m a slow-learner, babe.

Merry Christmas to the wind in the haunted, frightened trees, to the light in my old bedroom window at night, to the wannabe existentialists and the people who swear horribly while trying to wrap things in cheery reindeer paper without bothering to take the cigarettes out from their mouths, to snow that’s always falling in enormous, Hollywood-size snowflakes somewhere else, to yellow grass, to eggnog-swillers with giant angel brooches, to the man who sold me a pair of shoes yesterday and didn’t laugh (much) when he caught be singing “Santa Baby” under my nose (I am my own Santa, baby), to my kid brother Vladimir and all other children, and those who were once children, and all the people who annoy me, and all of the Orthodox Christians who won’t even celebrate until the Seventh of January, and to wolves in the woods and hitchhikers on the roads, to the people I ever-so-clumsily love, to everyone I’ve ever met and to everyone I’ll never meet, to everyone reading this.