winterlady, posts by tag: humans behaving inhumanly - LiveJournal

        There is an author by the name of Tim Wise who wrote this column about the workings of race in America. Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, on over 400 college campuses, and to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care.

This article hit me squarely between the eyes. And I consider myself to be like Stephen Colbert: “I don’t see color”. But I had to admit, as I was reading this, I had a fear reaction. I’m still not sure if the fear reaction was my own fear... or fear of what I imagine would happen if something like this took place. But you should read it for yourselves.

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

The rest of the article is here.

I occasionally bounce around Huffingtonpost.com. Okay - more than occasionally. It's my Political Hotspot of choice. Today I happened to catch eyesight of an article that made me read it. It literally MADE me read it. Talk about your ability to hook a person with a headline. I'm going to post the link here and the first paragraph - with a caveat. If you read it, read the whole thing. It's about a woman's experience in Israel on the last night of Hanukkah. It's amazing and shocking and sad and very, very, human, I'm afraid.

As much as we think we're always "better than the other guy" - we're really not. Not ever.

God Dammit, I was spat on by The Chosen People.

I had been chased around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the last few weeks getting gleeked on by the entire Felix family. Gleeking isn't a serious offense and it is often laughed off but for how silly this annoyance, spitting is no laughing matter.

I've had it in my head that during these nine months of traveling, I will probably be disrespected in one way or another. We are getting into some heavy topics and have already been involved in some pretty intense discussions regarding religion, war, peace and progressive thinking and I can only assume that this sort of tension can bring out violence, harsh words and the occasionally spitting. In many cultures spitting is a means to degrade another, and I've heard stories of such action in developing countries.

I DID NOT, however, think in a million years that I would be spat on by a religious Jew in Israel.
The rest of the story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/broo…

I listened to the speech Barack Obama gave in Cairo and something caught my attention. He did not say, what you normally hear, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

What he said was, "Do unto others as I would have them do unto Me."

"I do - unto others - as *I* would have - *them* do - unto Me." Not the ubiquitous "you"... he used the personal pronouns I and Me. He takes responsibility for his words and his actions and what he puts out there.

dasubergeek had a fabulous post Here on an article written about a woman coming to the decision to have an abortion. And there was some good back and forth arguments made for and against the concept.

But it dawned on me as I was reading the discussions - that at no point during the debate, was the idea that men should take any responsibility for this issue. And I realized, as I was reading, that the phrase "I do unto others as I would have them do unto me" was just missing. Not because the debate was anything other than civil, but that there is no consequence to men as a gender. There is nothing for them to loose or gain by this argument other than civil discourse on an idea.

And I think, as long as this is the case, then - with all love and respect to men - this is not their topic for debate. This is a topic that women should debate. Until men bear the weight of the responsibility for their part in conception, I'm starting to think that they should have no voice in the outcome of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I read the article that he posted about. Found here: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com…

And I was both appalled and saddened by the young woman who was having to make this decision. Her confession that the masters program she was entering into was deliberately harder on pregnant women made me want to vomit. Just vomit. That "education" should come at the cost of a child or a family is vulgar and barbaric. That women are having to make these choices - the rest or their lives or a family - is vulgar and barbaric. I had no idea. I had no clue. And it makes me want to take a blow torch to the institutions of knowledge. Because they're fucking hypocrites. And it gave me insight into the people that are running our country and our companies. All of those "Masters" candidates... no wonder they have no compassion. It's literally taught out of them.

Why is this allowed to stand? Why are THEY allowed to get away with that barbaric behavior and then bitch and moan about women who get abortions?

FUCK YOU.

As for the young woman, she also saddened me. She had all these resources that were made available to her. People willing to pay for her health care, and her doctor's appointments - making sure she had means to keep her baby safe... they all go down the tube. And a family who might love her child won't get it. But she didn't feel like she could carry a baby to term only to hand it over to someone who might want it. But she didn't feel like it was enough of a support system to get her through what she needed to go through.

...and personally, I really disliked her for this attitude. In this case she could have had a whole support system looking out for her - and rather than risk getting attached, she's just going to get rid of it? That's a pretty piss poor attitude. Suck it up and take responsibility for your actions. And maybe, take the opportunity to say Fuck You to institutions who put women through the shit you're going through. You think you really make one damn bit of difference in the field you're going into? That you are SO important? Maybe your opportunity was to be a light for other women struggling to get educations while being pregnant. Maybe your gift to others was to be the person who made their stand against institutions who put women through this shit.

And I'm sad because she's as weak and flawed and human as the rest of us. She had the courage to put herself out there and ask for options. She had some courage to look and be ridiculed for her choices. But she made her choice. And as much as *I* don't particular care for it, it IS her choice to make.

I kipped this from the blog of Neil Gaiman. He wrote it, I didn’t... But it says a lot about how far we haven’t come as humans.

I wound up strangely out of sorts today, after my journey down to Dave's. The toilets on many trains in the UK have ridiculously unintuitive ways to open and close doors, with mystery buttons inside the toilet to close and lock the door that are hard to find, even for the sighted. I watched a blind man head into the train toilet. He couldn't find the door to close it, said "excuse me, can some help me?" until a fat man in a suit sitting next to the toilet stopped pretending he wasn't there and pressed the close door button for him. Then I watched the fat man hurry down the aisle and past me and back into the next compartment for all the world as if he was embarrassed by what had just happened. Soon enough there came a frantic knocking on the toilet door as, obviously, the blind man couldn't get out (secret, randomly placed buttons would do it, but you have to find them first). And there was a carriage full of people between me and the toilet, so I waited for someone to get up, press the outside button and let him out. And nobody did. now the knocking started again, louder, and more panicked, and I looked out at a carriage filled with people who were pretending very hard they hadn't heard, and were all now gazing intently at their books or papers. So I got up and walked down to the toilet and let the man out, and showed him back to his seat, because it's the least I'd want if I was blind, and it's how you treat a fellow human being, and for heaven's sake. And then I went back to my seat, and everyone looked up at me and stared and smiled with relieved "thank god someone did that" smiles, and I sat down grumpy and puzzled and remain grumpy and puzzled about it still. I'm still trying to work out what on earth was going on there -- I don't think I did anything good or clever or nice. I just did what I would have thought anyone would do. Except a train filled with people didn't, and in one case actively appeared to be running away in order not to. And I puzzle over, was this a carriage filled with particularly self-centred or embarrassed people, has something fundamental changed in the years I've been away from the UK (unlikely, and I don't believe in lost Golden Ages), did those other people really somehow blindly fail to notice that there was a blind man trapped in the toilet...? I have no idea and I write it down because, as I said, it puzzles and irritates me, and if it ever turns up in a short story you'll know why.