The pile of interesting things - Early July 02021

Let's begin with how The Untamed, the television adaptation of a specific novel, follows the dictates of both the market and the culture of its home broadcast audience when it stays well away from anything that might be explicit content, with all of the head-scratching that sometimes accompanies what gets determined to be "explicit". Also, a well-deserved admonishment to fans in countries that have glass houses that stone-throwing is a bad look for them.

An Adventure in Time and Gender talking about the Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft, an important part of the history of medicalizing transition and in blurring the lines between a person and an object of scientific study. And the Lesbian Avengers and their role in trying to make being gay more visible through direct action, although there's some speculation about why the group disbanded that draws the eyebrows up.

A 1970 essay about problems that will still sound familiar to audiences of our day, about how being serious about the revolution and changing things will require white men to give up power and to let others lead. And that white men will have to hold themselves accountable for the sexism and the objectification and tokenism that they do (of women and of everyone who isn't white). (And that white women will have to stop trying to assist white men in hopes that they will be able to access the power that white men have.)

When we talk about how children and teens need supportive adults in their lives, we also mean that it's best for children and teens to have adults in their life that those children and teens can see are (relatively) functional adults and that have identities and experiences similar to their own. When you hear about having lost a generation to things like HIV/AIDS. the ramifications are more than just the physical loss of life (and the intense anger that should be directed at those who allowed them to die and slow-walked any treatments and research), they're about how an entire generation of kids lost potential mentors, supportive adults, and people who could have shown them that they can be themselves and it really does turn out fine, even if the thing that was obvious couldn't yet be spoken aloud. And people who would push back against the narrative that the children have to be protected against learning about the existence of queer people, lest learning about their existence somehow result in an otherwise straight-and-cis person becoming queer or trans nonconsensually. As is noted, the narrative that all adults who aren't your parents are untrustworthy predators is perfect if what you want is to isolate someone from any other worldview from the parents', no matter how abusive that worldview is. (Not to mention the statistics about how abusers of children tend to be people who have positions of trust over them, or are at least known to them.)

For the grownups, and those growing up, the loss of a generation also means losing people who could lead the way on showing what a fulfilling queer life might look like, even if that life has none of the hallmarks of what the Boomers or other generations before assumed were obvious indicators of adulthood, like steady jobs, financial independence, and raising children in a (presumably heterosexual) marriage contract. The kinds of things that I still struggle with about adulthood in general, even if I have achieved many of those markers that were unmarked defaults.

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Start with a $120ish Chinese-made phone being sold as a $500 Freedom Phone that's undergone a skin change and preinstalled certain apps. Add in some kickbacks for people who are helping shill this overpriced phone. Then add into that the complete reluctance to release specifications and the likelihood that it uses a chipset that's notorious for being insecure and easily modifiable by anyone. (And, really, the Gizmodo article does a great job of showcasing that if what you want is freedom from corporations making decisions, or systems that are less likely to be spied upon, there are options available.) What do you get? Something that looks a lot like a grift intended to fleece those whose loyalty to a particular person increases their susceptibility to having their money parted from them. Especially when doing the freedom and security that someone wants correctly is more difficult that simply choosing a particular phone.

Last for today, unsurprisingly, if a society lacks a fundamental respect for a particular gender in a gender binary, it's not likely that the gender that thinks themselves superior is likely to read anything published by the gender it considers inferior. Or pay them appropriately and equally for doing the same work, or accord respect to the people that work in a perceived-inferior field, or, or, or. This is not a new realization in any way, but the solutions, or even the recognition of there being a problem by the gender that considers itself superior, are still not happening in any great amount, nor are they challenging each other on the matter (because they don't see the problem). And so people who should be remembered for their artistic skill are instead relegated to being of no interest at all to the winners who want to write their history books.

Additionally, a four-day work week is not the radical change people assume it is, and places that have implemented it have generally had excellent results. Not to mention that the still-ongoing pandemic proved to us that having people who were working from home didn't cause everything to collapse, and so it seems pretty logical that we could implement some of that, or a four day work week, and things wouldn't collapse, either. Even in places like the library, that's open all seven days in pre-pandemic times, having a four day week, and even then, one of those four days being working from home so that projects, meetings, virtual programming, and things that require sustained concentration can get done.