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Wow.

GO AND SEE THIS SHOW.

hmmm_tea, actionreplay and spiker_uk will post properly I'm sure, because it really is that good.

It's dance/circus/theatre and utterly incredible. Gravity-defying. Enthralling. The music is incredible. The stunts are breath-taking, and then the girl in the red dress - that was heart-breaking. Both Spiker and I felt it very powerfully, and I was reminded of a painting that my father had done.

( From a gym/circus background )

Quite literally. One thing that LJ has done has given me a network of people to talk to. While I would love to live in the same city as you guys (and I do for some of you), being spread over the world means that there's someone I can ring/ping/talk to. Which matters hugely.

Yesterday at work, I saw what happens when isolation happens. I spend 3 days a week working at a university. One of the tutors referred a student (single mother), whose kids had written to the university, saying that they were scared their mother was going to harm herself as finals approached, and that she was going to be a really good nurse. I managed the first half-page, and couldn't read any further, in case I blubbed in the office.

Blogging on LJ isn't just a diary, it's a connectedness, a reminder that you're never as alone as you want to think you are. It's a place that allows you to see how far you've come with the click of the mouse. And it's a place to dump stuff when it all gets a bit too much. I've written posts in tears, in anger, in stony silence and in laughter. The process of remembering a day helps me to reflect on the good and bad, and while some of it is kept private, each day I am able to see that no matter what the grey memory filters of depression want to tell me, there has been something good about the day, and I have done something towards reclaiming my life from the Black Dog.

I think there's a reason that so many people on LJ have a history of Mental Health issues. Those with ASD tendencies tend also to be geeky, and the people through the screen reduce the sense of isolation felt in a space. It's a place to put forward opinions, have arguments, write and read fiction, to learn something new and pass on something old. It's a good place to get virtual hugs, and the sort of help that splits down the chasm that can prevent us seeking help in realspace.

Thanks to you people, I have some sanity. I can see that I've moved ahead, that I'm doing things to improve my life. I have grown in my Christian Faith. Mental Health affects all of us. Just because we aren't diagnosed, we can also do things that make us happier, more whole and fulfilled people, just as physical health doesn't have to be diagnosed as poor for us to want to improve it. Blogging can be like walking - a step in the right direction.

It's usually World Mental Health day on October 10th. I encourage you to blog this week about Mental Health issues. If you do so regularly, then taking a longer view might be interesting, or a different view point.

Been pinged by a couple of people offline about what I'm getting at with this blogging for mental health thing.

Blogging in and of itself can be a way of promoting good mental health. It can provide a way of monitoring ones mental states, recording what has made us happy, and venting about what has caused us unhappiness, as a first step towards actually being able to change something.

It can help friends help us, and give us the support to make positive changes. In LJ comms we can find cheerleaders to help us on a journey to self-actualisation, or just about helping meet daily needs that will help us in turn build into a bright future.

Blogging for mental health can be about blogging about those things that affect our mental health - prejudice, privilege, discrimination, racism on the one hand and friends, food and family on the positive.

If people join in, I'll try and link here in public posts. If you want to link, quote, or anything else, please do.

Love
Mim

I know that there's a few people on this f-list who've got Mental Health issues, or who are affected by them. If you're friends with me, then that's certainly the case.

October 10th is usually World Mental Health day. How about we make it a blog for Mental Health Week? Blog about the tings that make us feel good, the things that don't, and the ways that we can change the world we find ourselves in? Write Facebook notes, LJ posts, blogspots, whatever you want.

Or write stories, fanfic, anything that shows a reality of mental health-related issues. How about the intersections of Feminism and MH, or physical/mental health? What about the can of worms to do with Racism and MH, and equal access to healthcare?

Feel free to disseminate this anywhere you see fit. Winter's coming, lots of us are going to feel a mood dip after the lousy summer we've had. This is a chance to do something about it.

Etty's Wedding Present is starting to take a shape :). I've blocked the squares.

( photo )

I saw Boris going through a red light in Tavistock square. The light wasn't good enough to get it on my camera-phone, which is a buggeration.

I love Mamma Mia! Except for one thing, and that's a fairly big one.

We saw it last night, and the "othering" of the black lad (he's about 19) who is the best man disturbs me. In the sequence around "does your mother know" several stereotypes of a young black male are employed - hot, flirty, the use of the nappy by Tanya, sexually potent, barman.

For me it really jars in a film about women, and women who are in command of their own lives at that. It passes the Bechdel test - the women talk about the business, and the choices they've made - and when it talks about men, the attitude is that settling down for when you've had fun and got on with life.

The portrayal of the local women is better - although in the Dancing Queen sequence they need the encouragement of Donna in order to (literally) throw off their burdens - and they tend to just be the chorus, although we see them as having agency. "Money Money Money" sees them presenting their invoices - they're not just working for love, or because they love Donna, which isn't always shown in some films.

The chorus is racially mixed, the leads are all very white. There's something to be said for the fact that the initial relationships are formed pre-1981 and thus the older generation would be more likely to be all white, but I would have liked to see the two bridesmaids being something other than Very White.

Something that has been brought to my attention today has been the link between violence against women and various violent crimes.
The Oxford St murder was against an alleged rapist.
I am aware now that a murder in the last 2 weeks involved an alleged rapist.
I am aware of a serious violent incident two months ago that involved an alleged rapist.

The second two are incidents that I have knowledge that is not in the public domain, but comes from trustworthy sources. In the second two cases the women went to their brothers rather than the police (one woman was 20, the other 12) and it was the brothers that attacked the alleged attackers.

I haven't dug any deeper yet, but having spoken to my source for the second one, she has told me that a number of the knife crimes that she is aware of have involved avenging a woman who has been attacked.

Having spoken to my source for the third one, who was one of the attackers, the police had been very unhelpful towards the young woman in question, even though it was likely there were witnesses. He has told me that again, attacks on women are one of the major reasons for violent attacks. After all "the police don't do jack shit".
( musings about a system of reporting )

It also means changing a culture of misogyny and objectifying women. All of those convicted for multiple/gruesome murders of women (the Ipswich and Croydon cases for example) had a history of serious misogyny and domestic violence. The first two rapes mentioned above had aggravating features, the third was a different sort of fish-kettle.

There are issues of racism, of lowest-class culture which leads people to believe their lives aren't worth much and it's worth taking their own lives into jeopardy (the third tale concerns a gang of white kids - it's not just about the black kids). There's also issues of hopelessness - interestingly the latter two cases both involved very bright kids with low educational attainment. There's stuff about alienation to be unpacked.
However the common factor seems to be about poverty, the denigration of women, and hopelessness. The areas of the UK where women have better opportunities and better outcomes are the areas where crime is dropping (I need to find the reference for this) - one of the things I hear at TVU is about women going into nursing as a way of empowering their children to do something, and improving their own lives.

I'm using the "every little helps" tag because I think that this is about addressing the areas of sexism in daily life, of the double standards. The person that told me about the second crime is sending her son to live with his father because it's an area where women are shown more respect. She can't afford to leave and given where she's living the house prices just tanked she can't afford to sell up, and she lives in fear.

It's for the people like her that something needs to be done, because she lives in fear that her son will be next.

Read the gospel narratives, and it becomes obvious that Jesus is a party person. Any excuse he's out there, getting everyone else drunk (John 2), or telling stories about other peoples parties (Wedding banquets, Feasts, Parties). He eats in the homes of tax collectors and sinners, and is secure enough in himself to deal with situations that others wince at - in the home of Simon the Pharisee. He's not above a miracle or two to ensure everyone is fed, and invites everyone to share what little we have. Showing how a little love can go a long way is a powerful thing.
He also makes time for himself. He goes away with his friends, although a lot of His time with them is about training them so they can spend time with the wider group. Mostly, though, one gets the impression of someone engaged with the world around Him, taking responsibility for Himself. The group that Jesus gathers around Himself are not Nice People in the way that Jesus' family would have been, but a wide variety of individuals - fishermen, tax collectors, teachers, women, men. The group is not homogenous, and I frequently amuse myself by imagining the interactions between Simon Peter and Matthew the Tax Collector, or between Thomas, John and Bartholomew. Even Jesus's equivalent of a home group would be more diverse than entire congregations in the UK (thanks to Martyn Atkins whose article and book prompted this thought). One analysis of the names in the group suggested that the disciples could well be of slightly different ethnic backgrounds within Judaism, which would make sense due to the position of the Holy Land.

Jesus goes into a home, accepts the hospitality that is offered and allows Himself to be vulnerable. In her book, Katharine Jefferts Schori (On a Wing and a Prayer) talks about radical hospitality - the vulnerability that Jesus demands of the 72. Jesus sends them out with no resources besides one other person who they probably didn't know that well, and gives them a brief - love people, heal them, offer grace. That they were scared shitless comes out in their elation afterwards, their surprise that the demons submit to the name of Jesus. KJS talks about how she had to learn to accept hospitality from people who were very poor, and give them an opportunity to offer a little rather than always being Ms Fixit.

The very poor are frightening for some, precisely because they are a group of people just like us (see my comment to tincomh). It was this that led to two older women setting up the Wednesday Club in Kingsway in the late seventies. In Carol Hathorne's The Accidental Church something similar is set up in Chadsmoor in the Black Country. Both were groups that sought expert advice, but also recognised the value of doing something simple and making charity begin in the home. By comparison at King's Cross we're well resourced - 28 people live upstairs, we have a lot of police based on KX station and in the neighbourhood, we have access to the resources of WLM, and we have experts available to help with our shelter. Similarly at Wednesday club - as well as the volunteers, there are 11 people living on site. Yet it is still frightening to be confronted with things that we'd rather not admit about ourselves and no matter how much we know intellectually, it is still discordant.

Most of the street people that I know are very generous, literally sharing what they have to protect the new person on the street, showing them where the comfy doorways are, the places to get food and help are. That generosity comes of having so little, and the realisation it could be even less, but mostly comes of just being human. I see that same generosity in some of my wealthy friends also - the sharing of talents that could be used for profit instead being used as currency and community. It isn't restricted to the poorest, but it's somehow more obvious among them. We hear about the poorest who were invited to the King's wedding feast, but we forget that some of the original invited guests must have come along. And it's also a wake-up call to revise our expectations. The very poor are perfectly capable of joining in and being part of a group. Same as the wealthy/spoilt/immature brats are also capable of behaving themselves in a classroom.

There is something liberating in realising how little we truly have to lose, or at least, that matters. We only have opportunities that we may or may not squander in our future, and the stories in our pasts. Ultimately we only have the loves of those around us. The rest is just vanity and puff according to Proverbs.

Part of the meta-ethic of the gospel is a realisation that homogenous spaces are dead spaces. Where we're all nodding along with a lecturer we're not actually learning anything, we're just having our ideas indexed and ordered in a slightly neater fashion. It's when we become angry, or hurt or scared, where we have a visceral reaction that we are at a place where we will actually learn something that matters if we allow that to happen. The places we encounter resistance are the ones that we have to work through slowly and carefully, and not rely on someone else to work out for us. If we abrogate responsibility for the development of the world immediately around us, then we will continually find ourselves out of our depth, because we haven't realised what we're standing on, or the forces that are tearing us apart from those that love us. My own self-centredness can make me solipsistic, assuming everything is about me, and that my actions don't have real consequences, that they don't really matter, when if something is provoking a reaction in me, it is a place of resistance to be discussed, rather than assuming something about authorial intent in the writing of it. It becomes easy to write off self-worth and focus on self-esteem (another post on this will be heading over here). I know because I've done it, and it's something I still work with a spiritual director on.
If we are with a group of people who are very similar to us in outlook, we are unlikely to meet resistances and places to learn. It takes practice to be able to acknowledge the resistances and keep coming back to them, and it takes work and effort. No one said anything worthwhile would be easy. The challenge of accepting the idea of a preferential option for the poor is in acknowledging our own poverty, and our own worth.

The preferential option for the poor, as I understand it, doesn't mean that the poorest will always be at the front of the queue. It means that they will be treated exactly the same as everyone else has been. Part of this comes from the idea of the labourers in the vineyard, all who are paid a fair day's wage for 12,9,6,3 hours work. Those who were available for the last 3 hours would be the most disreputable, the strugglers and the stragglers. The possibility of earning a full day's wage would have been alien to them - think of those in our own society who are ill with depression, who would dearly love to be able to do a "fair day" of the full n hours. God's reward for all of us is the same - full salvation (aka full healing, fully alive). But it means something different to each of us. The rewards of the kingdom are the what we sign up to at the beginning of the day - that which God freely offers us and invites us to accept.

Judging by other parables, it strikes me that the owner of the vineyard would have paid less if those contracted to work 12 hours didn't fulfil their capabilities over those 12 hours. It's not about working our way to heaven, but getting on with the job that we have before us, focused on the one paying us in this instance, and supporting one another in what one does. It can be easy to assume that we are the ones that are working 12 hours, and thus feeling hard done by. Perhaps another way of looking at it would be to assume that we are the ones working 3 or 6 hours, to the limits of our abilities and have the humility to know that God loves us and cares for us.
It was hearing Paul the other day, a former night-shelter resident, talking about the kingdom to a neighbour on the street that made me realise how there are street folk who've put in their 12 hours work, and deserve a place to rest at the end of the day.

The value of a day's pay to the 12-ers and the 3-ers would be vastly different. A 12-er would expect to get hired every single day, and the wage would be what was expected. For the poorest, a 3-er, that money would go a long way, and perhaps would represent a week's work. The vineyard owner treats them the same in terms of what is paid out, yet for the poorest, the value is huge - it is a preferential option. The weakest would have been available for the whole day, and they have "lost" a full day, just as the 12-ers have.

The easier comparison would be with gay rights in the 21st century. If a gay couple has been together 30 years but only married for two because that was all that was open to them, then they should have the benefits as if they had been married for 30. Pensions should be adjusted for this. And if in the present day gay people have put off marrying their partners because of the homophobia they have encountered then this should be accounted for. It is "preferential" only in that in general this is not a problem for the straight population in the same way (unless there are other intersections such as race and disability), and thus does not need to be changed in civil society in the same way.
Civil rights, Human rights should be adjusted to reflect that we see gay people as equally able to commit for life as straight people. And there may need to be additional protections under the law in order to make this situation equal until society has accepted and moved on. Where those protections do not exist we have seen in previous. note: I haven't tackled racism here because I don't have as good a grasp of the history in different countries as I do the issues surrounding gay rights, but would like to acknowledge that it would be a suitable example. Mea Culpa.

This version of the preferential option for the poor acknowledges the role that society collectively has in putting people in positions of poverty and disabling them. While it is the responsibility of each of us to work to our utmost - the locus of responsibility is within us - there is also a responsibility to acknowledge the manner in which our actions impact upon others and adjust accordingly our expectations of the world around us.

It means seeing an idea through to a conclusion, to when it bites us. If we live in a secular democracy (like the US) founded on the ideas of equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it means following this through to the ideas we may find unpalatable. It means that if we choose to ally ourselves to Jesus of Nazareth then we accept the consequences of the place we find ourselves in - acknowledging our own poverty, and that what we see as unfair might need re-considering. It means owning the resistance we feel to an idea or group of ideas and working through the knots rather than engaging in sophistry, anger and avoidance to keep oneself looking "cool" and "right with the lord". I'm trying to work it out for me right now, as I'm resisting certain bits of it and where the compromises come in. For me it's about dealing with issues I have which developed from experiences in certan churches outside of London, where parochialism and provincialism overtook the inclusive nature of the gospel and allowed for avoiding the cosmopolitan nature of the City of God. Once again it means Growing Up, which always hurts a bit :).

Disclaimer: The women on LJ who have in part prompted this post, know who they are. The rest is from non-LJ land.

This post on Dogpiles got me thinking.

We've had incidents recently wherein person x has done something (OSBP springs to mind, as does Hexennacht) and a large group of people have piled on, expressing their distaste for it. This sort of post pile-up can be useful as a means of communicating a general distaste for what is going on, and showing the individual that the antagonists are not the only ones that think in this way. Quite often that person will go away, having got all hurt and angry themselves (chopchica has a very good summary post about the latest anti-semitism row and how the deeper feelings of those involved come to the surface).
( meta, lovely meta )

I seem to be doing well for public posts this week.

Must be because there's a lot going on, including the London mayoral elections. Which are tomorrow, and I would like to remind those Londoners on my f-list who are registered to vote.

I have a dilemma, because I don't much like the three main candidates.
( read on )

Why I am not a feminist or a womanist

The above post has got me thinking, and in many ways has echoes with some of my issues as feminism, as it has been presented to me. I hesitate to call myself a "womanist", as I believe I run the risk of appropriating something that doesn't belong to me, but I am happy to call myself an ally, because I believe that there are huge intersections of race, class and gender that require action.

It translates into my writing. I now have a few (original rather than fandom) characters who are definitely black that I want to write, but I'm hesitant, because I'm not sure if I'm appropriating someone else's story. At the same time, however, there is the issue that unless white writers feel able to create CoC then we won't get a representative media fandom. IBARW had some good posts on this, but mostly from a US-centric position, and I didn't read enough then to find those writing from a non-US-centric position.

Part of my issue with feminism is to do with American Privilege that seeps into the discussions - a lot of the blogosphere is Amero-centric, including the feminist discourse, and also the issues surrounding race and media-fandom, including an assumption that the way social class works in the USA is the way it works in the rest of the world.
There are problems also with British Privilege as well, in that our culture has a history of colonialism and the appropriation of language which is unparalleled, I believe. One of the reason we have so many words for things is that we keep stealing them and don't put them back.

One of the interesting things that I have come across at work and church has been a certain reversed cultural imperialism, where our attitudes are thrown back at us. A number of churches in Africa, particularly Nigeria but also Ghana, have been recruiting missionaries to come to the UK in order to restore us to the right path. A number of the Nigerians I meet at work have a similar attitude, that their role is to teach 2nd, 3rd, nth generation Black British people how to be Black, how to be true to their African roots (which doesn't go down well with those of W.Indian descent, at least by my observation). I've also had Chinese people espousing similar positions, including telling how those of African descent should handle themselves as "outsiders" in the UK.

However, I wind up wondering how to tell a tale, be respectful, and yet remain true to what I have observed in what I create. There was quite a lot about this during the IBARW and various carnivals, which has influenced me in the past, as has karnythia among others.

On my to do list, once I'm well enough to read properly, is to sit down with more Althaus-Reid, as she's edited a couple of books on controversies in sexual theology and see if I can come up with a term from her work for the sort of theology/philosophy I want to engage with. Indecent Theology (because poor women can't write "Decent" Theology according to some male theologians) sounds like something I should look at. As far as I know, she is Brasilian (and native/hispanic), and thus is writing from who she is.

However this relies on the Cough That Will Not Stop behaving itself. Not being able to read proper books is annoying. Short blog posts is all that I can cope with.

This post has some links about the Open Source Boob Project.

When I first heard about this, I wondered if it was about supporting breastfeeding in public. That after all is the point of Open Source Boobs (free as in software, not as in beer, etc) isn't it?

Then I found out more and felt physically sick. theferrett just didn't get it. Didn't get why this was so offensive, why creating an environment in a Con like that was soooo not a good idea.

When I'm doing Brownies, one of the things I do each term is a communications skills evening, where we look at learning how to say "no", "yes", how to negotiate, when to break a confidence and how to judge what the consequences will be. I can't help feeling that maybe this needs to be part of teaching at High School. We've also had posts in the past by zvi_likes_tv on the concept of tone in fandom race discussions, and the OSBP has made me realise some of the communication gaps. The problem is that good tone doesn't always persuade someone, but bad tone seldom manages it. (see further down for some ideas on the white m/f divide. I don't know if this would work in other settings)

One session would be in "how to ask a person out, how to let them down gently, and how to handle it afterwards". 2-way class. Girls ask the boys out (knowing that they will be told "no") and the boys ask the girls (knowing that they will be told "no").

In that class would also be "how not to behave and why after being rejected". There would also be opportunity to get feedback about how the "no" came across, because sometimes women are too nice when they don't mean it. The boys would learn what "no" looks like in its myriad forms, including the "too nice" ones.

There would also be "your anger/tears, your responsibility" (whether it's because your pride's been hurt, you're left feeling vulnerable, you want to cover your embarrassment or you just want to win the argument) as a follow up, although not explicitly part of the same thing as above, as there's a wider lesson. This would be dealt with in single sex groups initially. Speaking for myself, the thing I'd like to learn is "how not to cry" because while it's effective at the time, it's not actually helpful in the long-run and doesn't do anything useful. Rather like Anger. Perhaps if, in both situations, we were able to treat it as something that requires a time out, and not legitimise either response, we might get somewhere. Emotional incontinence is not a good thing in public discourse.

Then there needs to be something about how to draw boundaries, something the OSBP failed at dismally by failing to see the wider issues. Immanuel Kant's ideal of universal imperatives gets unwieldy (that is that one should act as if what one does is universally true) but it holds well in this. In the Open Source Boob Project, the question is "is the idea really OK that any (apparently interested) woman may be asked if she can have her boobs groped" with no culturally acceptable available reciprocal action towards the other party.

Teaching the girls about Boundaries and Negotiation is fun. One of the things that we do is how do people see a situation. Most people don't want to see themselves as monsters and will resist all attempts to paint them into this corner. They want to see themselves as humane, good people, and will do all sorts to justify this fact. This "Ask Amy" column has a good example. The frugal environmentalist sees herself as being careful about herself and her environment. Her partner sees her as a stingy thief. It comes across strongly in theferrett's posts as well. He sees himself as doing something funny and good, and doesn't understand why, specifically, it was so bad. So we get a generic apology, and still he doesn't get it.

The example we have at Brownies is Child A trying to persuade Child B to cut school. Child A sees herself as offering B some excitement, something different, something good, and can't understand why B would refuse. Child B sees it as someone trying to make her break rules, and she's not keen on hanging out like that.
The example for high school would be about Person A asking out Person B in order to sleep with them. In sales it's known that the more times you get someone to agree with you, the more likely they are to sign on the dotted line. Same principle goes for dating. Person A would make lots of statements that B could agree with, until it's natural to agree to that. Apart from the fact that there's a little discomfort point, something's not quite right. The lines of consent get blurred. A thinks B's consented - after all, A has said yes to everything so far. B thinks B hasn't consented - B hasn't actually said "yes" and has been looking for a way to get out all evening.

I headed this "sexual violence" because it's sexual violence awareness month. As most of my regulars know, 5 years ago last month I dumped my then-fiance because he was an unpleasant individual. He couldn't understand it. He thought he was being nice. It took a year before he realised and wrote me a full letter of apology, detailing why he felt like he'd got things wrong and gave enough detail to make me realise "he'd got it". I gather that he'd stumbled into a workshop on domestic violence at Greenbelt by accident and had a hard, cold realisation of what sort of a monster he'd been. He'd apologised, briefly, before, but it took a smack on the head to realise. That sort of realisation hurts.

It takes courage to see our monstrousness. It's even harder being able to see why someone may think us a monster, and realising that, in humility, there's no way around behaving the way we just did. We can only help people help themselves if they realise there's a problem. Going back to the idea of a course, teenagers can be shown how they are perceived before it's entrenched.

It's easy to say someone is obviously a monster. Most people aren't obvious monsters.
It's caused huge problems in church in the past, when there has been a wilful blindness to a behaviour - so people will put up with a temper tantrum, snobbery, and TEAPOT theology from familiar people (in the above case, an ordained minister even) - but will kick out challenging people who have done nothing wrong, just because they're different. We want to believe in the fundamentally "nice guy" or "evil guy" rather than see people as mixtures of both, and call to account the evil while treasuring the good. It's not a zero sum game - good doesn't cancel out evil, they're measured on different scales.

From a writing point of view, it's about creating characters who are real, and who can justify their behaviour to themselves in a perfectly convincing way. There's also a need to realise just how much real people will put up with, versus what a person likes to think about themselves. If we are going to use writing (science) fiction to communicate the idea that this behaviour is not acceptable, then thinking about how we draw these sorts of characters is important. There's no point in having this brouhaha if we're not going to make use of the creative and dramatic energy that has resulted in order to move onwards as people.

I think the final item in my course would be conflict resolution. Trying to get a resolution at the first possible opportunity isn't necessarily a good thing, and can lead to the "salesman problem" earlier, where someone feels emotionally battered. I've seen it in relationships where a woman talks a bloke into getting married. Men know that being nagged by a woman doesn't work, and yet the male equivalent (aggressive persistence, including switching communication media until the woman hides/breaks/gets a restraining order) is lauded in romantic movies and the rest. There also needs to be an understanding about what the resolution is going to look like, which begins with knowing what the problem is.

The stuff in fandom about child porn and racism has made me feel sick. I've been getting away from the mainstream of fandom for sometime, and the loudest stream of fandom's getting to bothering me. Living in a world that's so much apart from the mainstream of RL bugs me because I used to do it. It's not that imaginative engagement with the world doesn't have merit. Maybe it's envy due to losing my muse. But looking at the images and the context in which they were posted, my instant response was "that's not good". Imagination has merit, because if wired in, it can become a catalyst for changing the world we inhabit. Too much of it, and it becomes the master. "If you can dream and not make dreams your master" as Kipling put it.

If we scream so much, so defensively, maybe there is a problem that we're shying away from. Maybe at some level, we know it's not quite right, although we don't know what would be quite right. Identifying with Harry Potter characters can be good and useful as it gives us a common language, but it can also blind us from some how we're seeing ourselves (or how we're being seen MTTP) - as vulnerable? as victim? identifying with the young male/older man dynamic? as oppressor?

We know that the world we inhabit isn't quite right either. There's more than the white, patriarchal, heteronormative, hegemonic discourse. Neither traditional constructs of masculine or feminine speaking patterns are very helpful. Gender roles aren't quite right. youth/age roles aren't quite fitting. Racism is blatantly wrong. Righting that wrong is a can of worms that I don't feel able to discuss right now. The Goldilocks syndrome - using fiction to try on an idea until we find it "just right" can help. However Goldilocks was also doing something morally wrong - she was stealing from the three bears. We need to try things on for size/heat/comfort without stealing from others in the process. (NB - I'm not saying fanfic is "stealing" - see above re: giving a common language) Over-correcting, saying anything goes, means that we can lose something of our ability to function at times. Witness the number of posts where people say "I have to post it here, because no-one IRL understands" time and again.

Further over-correcting, without any rationale, rhyme, reason or process, seems also to be happening and thus we get distracted. We flap about LJ, when we need to flap in the wider world as well. It hurts when we're made to see we're doing something wrong. That's why the fandom Race discussion has been painful, as lots of people woke up to being part of a collectively racist experience, where an individual might not have done anything heinous, but contributed to something bigger. It's why the Child Porn discussion is distasteful as well, and the two storms in the same week aren't helping, as people are already battered and bruised. Fandom has a collective mindset, a system, that is producing racism, and encouraging art that objectifies child/adult sexual relationships, although the individuals involved may be against both things. The manner of confrontation in both cases, the "You have..." that leaves no room for anything but a springing back denial to push someone away in order to make sense of it. It feels like two people standing 2 inches from each other, in each others faces/spaces, and not giving room to come the agreement "Yes, I/we have done..." and then "so what are we going to do about it". It's why assertive communication matters. Not masculine aggression or feminine passivity (the speaking patterns above) but finding a new way.

If we solely existed as entities in cyberspace with no link whatsoever to the physical world, maybe the pictures would be OK. Maybe we'd be able to have something exploring "miscegenation". But we can't, because we're real world people as well, with issues that we bring, with the burden of the past and present from both sides of whichever arguments. We can't pretend to be what we're not, or we become that which we despise. The miscegenation row demolished the idea that we can exist solely intellectually, or even have that conceit. I hope the same thing can be done about the images of child/adult sex in porn communities.

It's hard to justify 'artistic merit' in a community called "pornish_pixies" or "daily_deviant" where the name suggests it's all about the porn and the comments are "that is so hot" (not for that specific post) and similar.

As ever, it's part of a wider question of evil. One of the joys of HP is the way evil and good are shown to be an intrinsic part of each character. We are shown a continuum - Harry is "good" but self-centred and whiny. Arthur Weasley is good, but patronising. Fred and George are "good" but show signs of bullying. Percy is more ambiguous. Snape is unpleasant but good. Dumbledore is deeply flawed, and I don't think he is good, though he has done good things. Umbridge is officious and does bad things, yet glimpses of why - some self-loathing for example - are also shown. We see Voldemort as both evil and human. The potential for good and evil resides within all of us, and is brought out by the systems we inhabit by choice and circumstance. Our awareness of what that system is producing is a step towards reforming it.


ETA Edited for clarity.