Monday afternoon belligerence

[raven]

Dear Dan Savage: fuck off. Seriously. Just... fuck off.

(Actually... yeah, dear world, you're all being so classy. Proposition 8 didn't work out, let's blame black people and Hispanic people and Asian people as a bloc, because that's not hypocritical at all.)

Yeah, in other news, mental health, I do not have it. After a couple of weeks or so of being better, I'm now kind of... not. I'm panicky and paralysed all the time, pretty much, and sleeping fifteen hours a day because that's healthy and normal, and I spent the weekend flailing at shimgray in comically pathetic fashion. The thing is, I kind of don't want to go back to the doctor's yet again and have them ask if I'm getting outside enough and have I considered counselling. (This is why people do silly things like put their heads in the gas oven, isn't it? It's because they've been asked for the fiftieth time if they're absolutely sure they get enough exercise, and don't they think mentoring would help.) Because... yeah. Whatever. I have been nice and sensible and tried, like a good girl, to get up in the morning, and I have taken my pills, and I am two thirds of my way through a course of talk therapy, and I still feel like shit.

Today, I have my laptop here, and I have my criminal law books next to my pillow, and I fully intend to read them, but I'm not getting out of bed. No. Not going to happen. Inchoate offences, here I come.

Comments

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

Proposition 8 didn't work out, let's blame black people and Hispanic people and Asian people as a bloc, because that's not hypocritical at all.

I KNOW, RIGHT? It's like, shut the fuck up, stop making yourselves look like idiots by finding people to blame, and overturn the thing already.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

And they're using the same rhetorical techniques as the far right do, too! They're saying things like, "I don't mean all black people but all the black people I know hate gays." For fuck's sake.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

I KNOW. It's the stupidest fucking thing ever. ::seethes::

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

Have you read this open letter to white activists (http://slit.livejournal.com/416627.html)?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, that was excellent, thank you. Especially on the easy co-option of civil rights struggles and the mass bloc assumptions, which is what was annoying me subconsciously but I couldn't put my finger on.

[sophiahagia.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, I am disappointed to be an American, especially after reading things like that.

And hey, staying in bed all day FTW. I'm right there with you. *hugs*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It pisses me off so much because normally, I like Dan Savage, you know? He talks sense quite a lot of the time.

(And, hey, bed is the best thing EVER.)

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I first saw the reactions to Prop 8 passing on [The Other] bias_cut's journal, and just, wtf. Because the best way to celebrate the US's first black president is to start claiming things would be better if black people hadn't or weren't able to vote? What UNIVERSE? It's so, so disgusting.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Or should vote how white people tell them to! That would do it. Or be just so goshdarn grateful for white people overlooking their centuries of privilege to vote in a black president that they fall over themselves to vote as a tractable bloc.

(I notice that the Asian vote hasn't come under scrutiny because it happens to mirror the white vote exactly. Oh, my, aren't we a model minority.)

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Proposition 8 didn't work out, let's blame black people and Hispanic people and Asian people as a bloc, because that's not hypocritical at all.

FFS.

I mean, I saw it fucking coming, because people have enough issues with the whole corelation does not equal causation thang at the best of times, and if you can throw in a chance to be pettily prejudiced at the same time, it's more or less a given. But, y'know.

In unrelated news, I am so with you in the 'but I'm doing all the stuff they say makes it better why isn't it better now' club. *smile*

Next weekend I may have free time in Oxford. I also have a phone again, with the same number as always. Wanna try attempting coffee?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Would absolutely love to, if I'm feeling up and alive. Give me a ring when you're about?

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

I have been nice and sensible and tried, like a good girl, to get up in the morning, and I have taken my pills, and I am two thirds of my way through a course of talk therapy, and I still feel like shit.

It's allowed. You don't have to be perfect any of the time, and especially not Right Now This Instant.

And... sympathy.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

It's allowed. You don't have to be perfect any of the time, and especially not Right Now This Instant.

And... sympathy.

This is exactly what I wanted to say as well. And since I am allowing myself to be imperfect too, I will simply nod and second them.

And offer *hugs* to loneraven.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I just... there comes a point when you're sick of yourself, you know? Staying in bed all day is, when you come to it, really rather boring. I would rather be in school. But my stupid braaaane doesn't let me.

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. :( *morehugs*

I'm afraid I can't offer any advice on making it better, but *hugs*.

[liminereid.livejournal.com]

The post I made this weekend, I';m really gettign why you didn't like it now and why you were doubly right. I hadn't comee across people blaming the African American community band that amkes my post look like horrible bandwaggoning. For the record if I blame anyone I blame to confusing wording and the mormons.

Hugs about the mental health. I hope something shifts and it gets easier for you soon

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you for hugs. :) And yeah, the whole issue is such a knotty one because it is confusing, and making it simple isn't necessarily a good thing.

Arrrggggg

[ra-sar.livejournal.com]

Actually... yeah, dear world, you're all being so classy. Proposition 8 didn't work out, let's blame black people and Hispanic people and Asian people as a bloc, because that's not hypocritical at all.)

OMG YES. The number of people I've had to tell off since Tuesday for being racist or just plain missing the damn point is wayyyy too high for the number of supposedly progressive people I know. I mean, most of the blogs I read seem to have the right idea and are really addressing these issues well, but it's not leaking through to the MSM and folks keep parroting it rather than using critical thinking skills and it's stupid as hell.

Add into the mix the misdirected responses people are having about the Mormon church (for real, a friend of mine sent me a goddamn PETITION to get the LDSC's 501(3)(c)---non-profit--status removed). It's like, holy crap. Sign a petition to change state law so that out-of-state groups can't contribute to in-state voter measure campaigns or something. Don't go after a religion! (and I don't even mean that their actions and beliefs about gay people can't be challenged and debated, but that protesting in front of Mormon temples, trying to destroy the institution or "boycotting Utah" are not productive or ultimately helpful actions in the slightest and will probably have the opposite desired effect. And make the us LGBT movement look like huge dicks to boot.)

Also, there's the appropriating the civil rights movement's language and history which, I understand the temptation, but no. Not the same thing. Not going to happen the same way. Different problems. Different goals. Different history. Get over it and get creative, people!!

Re: Arrrggggg

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I really, really feel your rage. People, supposedly liberal enlightened people, have been being just vile over this. And the Mormon thing is just misguided in the extreme. Just, what sort of logic goes into that? Argh.

(How'd the protest go, in the end? Or hasn't it happened yet?)

Re: Arrrggggg

[ra-sar.livejournal.com]

It's saturday. It's getting really, really exciting. I think it's going to be a Big Deal since it's entirely grassroots with no big orgs organizing (no orgs period, in nyc) and with at least one and usually more protest in each state (seven in NY as of last night).

Last night I went to a discussion panel with the writer of the NY same-sex marriage case, Hernandez v. Robles (said it was not state constitutionally mandated and that the legislature should deal with it) and now I am REALLY fired up because it was a packed room of all the best folks in my school arguing combatively with this NY CoA (the supreme court of NY--we name our courts backwards) and him just floundering only to make really sexist statements or trying to insist that there is an intellectually honest rational basis for laws outlawing same sex marriage in the argument that straight couples can accidentally procreate so we need to channel them in to marriage so their kids are protected, but 'homosexuals' don't procreate accidentally (with each other) so we don't need the channeling function. Yeah.

Re: Arrrggggg

[ra-sar.livejournal.com]

I have to amend some of my earlier comment too--apparently religious orgs AREN'T 501(3)(c)'s but slightly different and actually the LDSC may not have been allowed to do what it did, in which case its tax status is way more threatened and I can forgive SOME of that, but even so, that STILL doesn't make it a strategically sound, non-assholish way to go about getting our rights.

HOWEVER, folks in Utah R DOIN IT RITE (http://hunterforjustice.typepad.com/hunter_of_justice/2008/11/the-prop-8---mo.html).

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

I think in the past few days a lot of us have finally moved Dan Savage from the On Notice board to the Dead To Me board. (Anti-Prop-8 demonstrators yelled racial epithets at black GLBT folk who'd come to demonstrate with them, and his response was another lament about the results of "African American homophobia" (http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/11/thats_not_helpful). AUGH.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I had not seen that! That is just foul.

[tau_sigma]

*hugs* I wish I could offer more than that. You are trying, you are trying so hard and it is not your fault that you feel like shit. It will get better again, I'm sure of it. Working from bed sounds like a brilliant plan.

*more hugs*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*hugs you too* Thank you. I kind of wish I had a portable bed I could just whip out of my bag when needed...

[47-trek-47.livejournal.com]

Exercise does help. It's a good thing, and while I was doing it, I could tell it was making me feel good.

BUT

FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHEN YOU'RE DEPRESSED YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF DOING IT. DO NOT PRESCRIBE US SOMETHING THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DO. IT WILL NOT FIX ANYTHING, BECAUSE WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO IT.

The same goes for eating well, "doing things we enjoy", "thinking positive thoughts", and pretty much ANYTHING EVER.

I rant. Sorry. But it makes me mad. I've had depression my entire adult life. About six months ago, I finally got on the right dosage of Prozac. Amazingly enough, after I was mentally healthy, I was able to exercise and lose weight and such. Recently, having stupidly gone OFF my Prozac for awhile, I... stopped exercising and such.

The doctors? They do not understand the direction of the cause and effect.

*hugs you* Hang in there. And go to your doctor, and don't let them tell you anything you know isn't true.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* I always want to stand there, dripping wet with the rain, in my big boots and with my cycle helmet attached to my bag, and say, "No, no, of course I don't get any exercise! What on earth gave you that idea?"

And... yeah. Mentally healthy people find it hard to do exercise, and to think like chicken-soup-for-the-soul, so why depressed people are expected to, I don't know. And, also? I am depressed. "Depressed" is not co-referential with "stupid".

Yeah, I rant, too. :) Many hugs to you too, my dear, and thank you. If I can get out of bed tomorrow, to the doctor's with me.

[cscottd.livejournal.com]

(Actually... yeah, dear world, you're all being so classy. Proposition 8 didn't work out, let's blame black people and Hispanic people and Asian people as a bloc, because that's not hypocritical at all.)

It also isn't true. According to fivethirtyeight.com, new voters (83% of which voted for Obama) voted against Prop-8 by a 62 to 38 margin, and Hispanic voters aged 18-29 also voted against Prop-8, by a margin of 59 to 41 (similar statistics weren't available for black voters), so it seems highly unlikely that minority voters were responsible for its passage.

According to several similar fact-checking sites, it seems likely that the biggest factor in the passage of Prop-8 was actually generational.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

There is some data people are going off that I've seen (am a little zonked right now, or I'd look it up for you) but as far as I can see, it's wilful interpetation so people can leap unfounded conclusions. It is infuriating.