sundries

[rm]

Folks, sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong, sometimes I don't have all the data, sometimes the answers aren't clear cut. I often assemble these sundries as I'm going through my day, which particularly means the "sometimes I don't have all the data" thing comes into play a lot. There are also lots of cases where I feel information should be out there, even if it's not information I feel qualified to make a thorough judgment on.

Anyway, last night (when I had no Internet! it's broken at home again) rosefox alerted me to this thread regarding an ICFA-related scholarship opportunity for PoC. Talk about: 1. me not having all the data at first (yikes!), 2. the situation not being clear cut (more opportunity for more people; GOH is Nalo Hopkinson vs. ugly RaceFail history) and 3. Me being entirely not qualified to say how anyone should proceed as a I am not an ICFA member/participant, a person offering a scholarship, or a PoC.

So! There's a scholarship opportunity. And there's some important concerns about it. And now you have links to both. As always, I appreciate when you guys have got more than I've got on things and can help me fail better.

Meanwhile! Patty and I are seeing Quartett at BAM tonight. It's based on Dangerous Liasons.

Link from keori: Alan Grayson truly gets how and why politics should be theater.

Bath & Bodyworks employee fired for being Wiccan. Thanks to hughcasey for the thorough write-up.

Large Hadron Collider now felled by birds and baguettes! No, really. Via firefly_124.

"Kiss me where I can't" -- Gilded Age Monuments and Secrets.

WHUT?

Apparently only men tell important stories. Wait, haven't I heard this before? From unpublished exes of mine that wanted my career to be as non-existent as their own?

via lipsum: What the whole God, guns and gays thing is really about -- one particular construction of masculinity as an excuse for irrational, fear-based behavior.

Instead of The Innocence Project's results being taken seriously, the involved students grades have now been subpoenaed to find out the "real motivation" for their justice-related work. Northwestern is refusing to comply.

LGBTQ issues that should be on everyone's radar right now? ENDA. Sadly, I imagine it will be a tougher sell in a bad economy -- the evil gays may take your job. Also, a moment of rage: President Obama, where are you? If you are such a strong advocate for my rights why not even one mention on the Maine situation? Why no emails to Dems in Maine before the vote?

I'm totally worried about how this whole Ft. Hood shooting thing is going to play out. We should probably be discussing the mental health of our soldiers, but instead, I (and many others) worried that it will just be one more excuse for anti-Islam rhetoric. On another note, the civilian police officer who stopped the shooter happens to be a woman.

I'm glad Precious is getting good reviews.

I am up to 7,247 words on ConSweet. The quality of some of my writing is going downhill, because I haven't figure out how to do everything I need to do, but the quality of my first draft writing is actually usually much higher than first draft quality, so me actually writing a first draft and Getting Shit Done is probably fine. Oddest thing current in book: a shopping cart full of pineapples.

via feyandstrange: Doctor Who cufflinks. The rubber Dalek ones are supercute I think. Ianto cosplayers, note Cybermen cufflinks; yes, I fucking dare you!

Comments

[delchi.livejournal.com]

it will just be one more excuse for anti-Islam rhetoric.

One thing I read but have yet to verify , is that he was written up multiple times for telling his patients to turn to Islam as a method of dealing with their problems. Not to pick on Islam, but trying to convince someone that the solution to their emotional/combat stress/etc problems is religion is a bad thing all around. If a individual decides to choose religion as a method to deal with it - that's one thing ... but to have a specific religion spoon fed to you by your doctor during treatment ... that's bad IMHO.

Also I think that all religions suffer from damage to reputation due to the 1% of their members who do stupid things, however not all of them are treated the same way. For example if a person who practices Islam goes on a shooting spree and people rally against it , it's called anti-Islam rhetoric, but when a Christian shoots a doctor who performs abortions and there is backlash against Christians it's not called anti-christian rhetoric.

I have a few friends who practice Islam , and they are not planning to blow up anything or run around shouting 'death to America' or other stereotypical actions. The same goes for Christians ( most of my Christian friends are pro choice ) and Catholics ( who have never molested a child nor would they ever want to).

I think that when a person does something off the charts, as a society we look for the lowest common denominator and blame that for their actions. We have preconceived notions fed to us by popular media & social norms and jump to them effortlessly. I don't think Islam is a special case.

Here is how it can work .. and note that I do not approve of this kind of thinking nor does it reflect my thoughts or opinions ...

If the shooter was white , and male the assumption would be that they are a gun nut hoarding AK47's for the day the commies attack.

If the shooter was black and male , the assumption would be that they are a bad home life and ghetto upbringing / rap music / no father criminal.

However , if you were to add religion to the mix ...

If the shooter was white, male and Christian the assumption would be that the were a religious zealot acting out on their interpretation of the bible

If the shooter was black, male and practiced Islam , the first word on the lips of millions would be " terrorist "

In general facts take a back seat to something easy to swallow that does not take much time or brain power to produce. Luckily we have " news " outlets that are happy to provide that. Granted this does not apply to many people, and especially many people here , but I feel we are in the minority.

[featherofeeling.livejournal.com]

For example if a person who practices Islam goes on a shooting spree and people rally against it , it's called anti-Islam rhetoric, but when a Christian shoots a doctor who performs abortions and there is backlash against Christians it's not called anti-christian rhetoric.

I think that's because the backlash you're talking about is very different. Take the first case, with a hypothetical Muslim shooter. Even if the crime had nothing to the person's faith, you're still going to hear a lot of nasty rhetoric about Islamists and terrorists. Internet commenters on news sites are already lining up to attribute the Ft. Hood shooting to the man's faith and background, and were even before reports started coming in (whether true or false) that seem to substantiate that. Fox News reporters last night were actively trying to find that the man had converted to Islam or had extremist beliefs. More, many Americans tend to conflate "religious extremist" with Islam itself, rather than to the person who belongs to the Muslim faith. You hear a lot of rhetoric about the violence and hatred inherent in Islam whenever a Muslim does something criminal. When Muslim = fundamentalist = terrorist already in many people's minds, a backlash against Islam is a lot more likely and troubling than one against Christianity would be in another situation.

Whereas in the second case - in which Christian beliefs are explicitly behind the shooting - you might get a reaction against Christians putting their beliefs into action, or against what would be called a fundamentalist ideology within Christianity, but it wouldn't target all Christians. In fact, you'd be likely to hear a lot about how the shooter violated the tenets of Christianity. There are a lot fewer people saying the same thing about Islam, and we're called naive and bleeding-heart liberals for doing so.

Also, I agree somewhat with your four scenarios, but in the Ft. Hood case, I think that If the shooter was white, male and Christian the assumption would be that...he was psychologically damaged by the stresses of seeing the effects of war, and that we should look after the mental health of our soldiers. Being white and being Christian would mean that he would probably have the privilege of having those traits be invisible, leaving people to treat him as an individual rather than as a representation of a minority.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think the tonal issues you raise here really depend on who is doing the coverage, as we have no universal media voice anymore (which is both good and bad, and often seriously weird).

I.e., Fox's take on a theroetical Christian-identified shooter is going to be waaaaaaaaaay different than MSNBC's or CNN's (which will also probably have some differences between the two of them as well).

Apparently, for example, Fox is very focused on this guy's possible Palestinian roots, which makes sense with the nature of Fox's pro-Israel stance, while most other US media I've caught so far has mentioned his parents being Jordanian (which, as eumelia explained to me may or may not preclude the Palestinian connection).

I think we're worse as a culture at seeing Islam as something more than a single monolithic faith. I think with Christianity, people also tend to see it as a single monolithic faith, but those perceptions run a pretty broad (and almost weird) gamut.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that doctors should keep their own religious beliefs out of the treatment room - they owe their patients better than that - but I do wonder if a white Christian doctor was advising troubled soldiers to turn to God, it would have been viewed in the same way, or if he would have been written up for it at all.

Regarding the backlash of an Islamic crime vs a Christian one, I don't think the response is to scale. You're unlikely to see Christians having abuse shouted at them in the street, fearing violence or discrimination just for leaving their homes, having their churches defaced, and you won't see any kind of backlash being reinforced institutionally - people are not going to be stopped and searched by the police for looking like Christians, for example. This is because most people view Muslims as being Others in our society while something approximating a Christian morality and belief system is considered the baseline, the norm, even among people who are not religious themselves. There's a wide understanding that fundamentalist Christians are twisting their faith to their own ends; that understanding does not exist widely about Islam.