sundries

[rm]

Last night my father sent me an email about my paper. Despite my specifically stating that I did not want this to devolve into a judgmental conversation about psychology and god, guess what's happening? And he's not even done yet. I have to respond to his letter today, which is, in many ways, incredibly kind, supportive and gracious. But I loathe "I know you asked me not to do X, but I am going to do it anyway." There's only one reason that happens, and it's not a pleasant one.¹

Am totally submitting a proposal for the academic con at Dragon*Con, just have to write in on paper instead of my head. Tried last night, did laundry and took a nap instead.

The oil spill, one month later. ONE MONTH. OIL STILL SPILLING.

Something is happening on DADT today, but what it is, no one is sure. Not only do we not know how the vote is going to go, we're not even sure what the repeal means, as one thing that's being floated is that repeal will merely transfer power to decide this issue back to the Pentagon, and in fact bring us no closer to allowing the gay men and lesbians already fighting and dying for our country to do so openly. Keep an eye on this, as it may be one of those things that gets worse before it gets better. ETA: post with language on this and analysis, in short: "we'll discuss the potential negative impact of homosexuals forever and never fix anything" seems to be a pretty good interpretation of what's up.

Mississippi school denies prom was fake.

The Warren Cup was once banned from American museums because it features explicit sex acts between men. NSFW if classical art is a problem.

Anyone possibly toying with doing scholarship on RPF (or just wants a handy thing to talk about in relation to its existence), should check out this post immediately. via brewsternorth on Twitter.

Last night on Angel and Buffy: Gunn is sort of a dick in terms of getting how to have a relationship and get your damn job done. Also, him and Fred? Paranoid much? Wesley's behaving pretty well; not perfectly, but pretty well. Also, OMG, Hamburger Drive Through Oracle! Paired with the Buffy fast food episode. LOVE. The Earthquake, Fire, Blood has just happened and Angel has made his cryptic remark about a snack and that's all we saw last night.

Meanwhile, annoying Willow plotline continues to be annoying. Seriously, how did we go from "magic is an ethically grey area that can lead to toxic adventures with dark dark things" to "spells don't really do shit other than make you feel good, it's your birthday!"

---

¹When I first dyed my hair black when I was 15 and spending the summer taking classes at Yale, my father got very angry, despite the fact that black hair isn't all that different from my natural color. In the ensuing argument, I used the Angry Teen Strategy of Petulant Kids Everywhere, and said "It's my hair!" My father replied "No, it's not." I have lived every moment of my life since then understanding, rightly or wrongly, that he considers me his property.

Comments

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

From the NYTimes article:

It has even announced its arrival on the Louisiana coast with a fittingly ugly symbol: brown pelicans, the state bird, dyed with crude.

::sob::

This is so awful, and it keeps getting worse.

[themaskmaker.livejournal.com]

Regarding your footnote: Oh, yes. I remember my father doing something very similar. And over hair, too. I remember thinking, "I need to leave home as soon as possible."

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble processing that whole hair story. I'm not sure what to say. Ouch? Sorry?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Better or worse that I've already received multiple private messages that were "me too"?

[sevendayloan.livejournal.com]

Ooh, the Drive-Tru Oracle! That made me laugh so much.

As for the Willow plotline ... don't worry, it gets better, in my opinion. There's that mini arc of anvilicious magical stupidness, but I'm pretty sure you're on the last episode of that shit. It's much improved from there on, in my opinion. :)

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I have a love hate relationship with my hair for this very reason. It wasn't so much that my mom was/is possessive about my hair, it was that she used/uses it to manipulate me and guilt me about my body image.

Gah.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Your DADT article's from before last night, when word came out that something billed as a 'compromise' had been worked out, and it was now expected that repeal would pass. If I'm reading it correctly, it's a scare-quotes compromise because while it contains a provision for Defense to complete its review/study before the repeal goes into effect, that would have had to happen anyway -- there was always going to be a phase-in period. So this is looking like a mere face-saver for the opposition, and an all-around Good Thing.

Benen has more on the details here.

[weirdquark]

Better in that it's nice to know it's not just your parents being assholes; worse in that it's a prevailing cultural attitude that kids (and probably girls in particular) are seen to belong to their parents.

I dyed my hair in high school a couple of times to make it a redder shade of my natural color and my parents were both fine with it. I don't remember how this came up, but when I was in college my mother asked me, in this very tremulous "please say no" voice if I was planning on dying my hair a weird color. (And if I had been, she would have dealt, because both of my parents are good at being supportive and letting me be my own person, even if they don't always get it, but she was relieved to hear that I wasn't.)

There's that list of conversations college students don't want to have with their parents after going to college: "Mom, I shaved my head/dyed my hair bright orange" "Mom, I got a tattoo" "Mom, I pierced [some part of my body that isn't my ears]" "Mom, I'm gay".

My mother: totally fine with me being queer. It's the body modification, even something as temporary as hair, that would have freaked her out.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

If your dad wants to believe he's an old Roman paterfamilias, you might point out that you've lived more than a full year without spending a night under his roof. Thus, by Roman law, you're an emancipated adult woman, and can conduct your own affairs without your father's approval.

(And yeah, I realize that telling him this probably wouldn't be helpful. I just wanted to point out that even 2000 years ago you wouldn't have had to put up with this.)

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

OMG! I also dyed my hair black as a teenager when it was already about as close to pure black as most natural hair colors can be. I recall my dad throwing a fit, telling me I looked liked a hooker, and ordering me to "wash it out." Needless, to say it was permanent. I laugh now. Easy enough more than 40 years later.

[rm.livejournal.com]

When I pierced my eyebrow my dad told me I was "just like Patty Hearst."

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

My dad didn't consider me his property (as far as I know), but anything in the house was "his".

He used to take my bike without asking me, and wouldn't stop when I asked him not to. So I started locking it up. He demanded the key, and I refused to give it to him. He was furious, because how dare I lock up "his" bike? He considered it his property because he claimed he had paid for it. Except that he hadn't paid for it-- I had bought it with my own money, which I had earned at my own job. (Didn't count, though. That money was "his", too.)

That argument went on for an entire summer, and that incident, which happened when I was about 17, has coloured our entire relationship since. We stopped really being friends, and over the years things have gotten very chilly between us. Because it really wasn't about the bike. That's when I realized he didn't respect my privacy, my property, my opinions or me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

There was an incident when I was in college, when I brought a male friend home for Thanskgiving because he could not afford to fly home to the west coast and my parents rescinded their invitation for him to say on our couch after we arrived because "he's too thin and must be gay and we don't want that for you." No matter how much my parents have seriously, seriously mellowed and we get along pretty good now, that happened, and it's never going to unhappen and it hangs between us a lot.

[elisi]

Also, OMG, Hamburger Drive Through Oracle!
\o/ That is one of my favourite things EVER!!! How it manages to be both ridiculous and deeply unsettling at the same time still amazes me.

Damn, you're in for treats (deep, dark, excellent episodes) on both shows now!

And re. the DADT repeal then Sullivan has links and thoughts.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

I remember my mother telling me that if I ever cut or coloured my hair like Cyndi Lauper's, she would kick me out of the house. I was ten.

As a result of that, I didn't dye my hair until I was 27, and even then I only got blond highlights. (Now it's red, so I got over it, apparently.)

[graene.livejournal.com]

Yes, that. She was so thrilled I didn't get her nose and look Jewish, but then dragged me in for perm after perm in elementary school because I didn't look Jewish enough. Uhm? And after I lost it, well...

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I can hear something like that coming right out of my own father's mouth.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, and it's like "what on earth are you talking about?"

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

I feel like the only person who doesn't like this "compromise", because it's just giving cover to the politicians by saying that the military can put off the change indefinitely if they choose to, when all indications are that they will choose to. Maybe Congressional approval is a step in this process (although I can't follow the logic enough to know if it actually is), but I am NOT going to be a happy camper when President Obama flies the Mission Accomplished banner when the bill is passed. It isn't passed until DADT is dead, and that isn't going to happen before he finds the will to act like the Commander-in-Chief and TELL the generals what to do.

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Oh...oh Wesley! God, I might just watch these next few episodes with you!

I hear stories about hair like this, and want my parents to retroactively adopt everyone. Of course, I didn't do unnatural colors until I hit 40, at which point I said "Fuck it, it is never going to happen any sooner" and got electric blue streaks. I miss them.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

"he's too thin and must be gay and we don't want that for you."

Did they mean it as "We didn't think you were aware and we don't want your heart broken" or "We don't want you associating with homosexuals"?

Either one is really ugly, I'm just curious.

[rm.livejournal.com]

More the second. I was being daring and didn't know what was good for me, apparently.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I can see why you'd still be mad about that-- they were making assumptions on your relationship with this guy, judging him on his looks, and rescinding their invitation was rude and left him with nowhere to stay. What happened to your friend? Was he OK?

I have to give my parents credit. They were never very judgmental towards my friends or relationships, and our house had a revolving door on it. My brother and I never felt as though we couldn't bring someone over. They never really interfered in my friendships or relationships, except for one time. When I was about 15, my best friend Wendy was really going off the rails after the death of her mother, and my parents tried to forbid me to see her anymore because they thought she was a bad influence. Of course it didn't work.

As it happens, they were totally right, because Wendy was awful-- but the kind of awful you don't even notice until you're so invested in things that you can't get out. She was my best frenemy until I cut her out of my life about 5 years ago, and I am still reeling from it. So if I had listened to my parents when I was 15, things probably would have been a lot different. But I will never, ever tell them that.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Of course I haven't seen the precise language (and in a sense there's no precise language to see, until a bill actually passes both chambers and any necessary conference), and a great deal will depend on the actual words. But with that caveat, it seems to me that there's a real victory here that goes beyond anything Obama could achieve via executive order.

The reason we even have DADT is because the exclusion of gays and lesbians from military service has been a matter of statute from time immemorial. Ordering the military services not to enforce the ban is like not enforcing sodomy statutes -- it leaves the law in place, and allows for overenthusiastic Texas police to decide to enforce it out of the blue, unless and until you finally get the Supreme Court to tell them they can't. Getting the exclusion out of the law, even if its operation is suspended until a review is complete, actually eliminates the basis for DADT. Which means that once the process is complete, a Republican administration couldn't change things back without getting an actual change in law through Congress.

I mean, yeah, it would be good to have the big symbolic gesture from the White House. But getting the underlying rules of the game changed may matter more down the road.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I dyed my hair in high school a couple of times to make it a redder shade of my natural color and my parents were both fine with it.

As did I - I wasn't particularly interested in tinting my hair a radical shade, but my hair naturally goes redder when it's had a touch of the sun, and I quite like it.