Why can't I just be a brain in a mobile box identical to all the other mobile brain-boxes around me?

In a recent discussion, my sister and I were comparing our stories in being whistled at, yelled at, and having our bodies commented on in various ways when we're walking alone. One suggestion as to the disparity of our experiences was that we differed in how conventionally attractive we were.

See, the more I thought about this, the more I realised that while my body probably naturally falls more into the realm of conventional attractiveness in this society, her face does more so than mine, and she does all the right things. She plays an American woman way better than I ever could or want to. So now I'm very, very curious as to which of these factors is more important, and why.

Now, admittedly, I think most of the differences in our experiences are due to the fact that a) she never gallivanted about Shanghai past 10:00 PM, when all of the exchange students were drunk but not drunk enough to forget their English, and the Chinese men were tired or drunk enough to forget that you're a foreigner and therefore generally worthy of respect, and b) that she never walks around a certain part of town where the high school kids who skip class go to smoke and skateboard during the day.

But hey, it still makes for an interesting question, and now this inquiring mind wants to know. Now, how to go about testing this? Hmmm.

Remind me again. Why are there no ads that assume the viewer is a real person with feelings?

Here's something I posted on the almighty Bookface today. I'm interested in seeing how this changes my ad "experience".

Woo self-referential!

I hate it when people that I respect, and who I generally trust to be fair, sensible, rational, all those good things get it wrong.

Most recently, this has happened to me in a couple of places. The first, in a Blag Hag post, addressing the issue of racial diversity and lack thereof in the atheist community.  Great, right? So I'm reading along, nodding my head, when all of a sudden--holy misinterpretation of the original comment in order to pick of fight!

The juicy little chunk of text in question:

Then I read this comment at the Richard Dawkins Foundation website, presumably from someone within the community:

"We (like there is a 'we' in the atheist community) should have second best speakers at events, choose them solely on the colour of their skin, otherwise we might appear racist.
We should have second best speakers at events, choose them solely on the colour of their gender, otherwise we might appear sexist."

Whoooooooosh.
The assumption that minority speakers are inherently second best? Now that is racist and sexist.

  "Inherently"? Now where on earth are you pulling that from? Will you give a person the benefit of thou doubt? Yeesh.

See, I don't believe that we should have "minorities" as anything just to be PC if they're not as qualified as someone who's "non-minority". However, I also believe that if there seems to be a lack of qualified [insert "minority here] people to do X job, then that issue needs to be addressed, because in no way should this be the case. However, until they're up to an acceptable quality, I think it's exceedingly stupid to put someone who's less qualified in a position of power or authority just to look good. You're just going to be perpetuating ignorance.

Now, that rant is over. Shall we move on to exhibit B?

Here, ladies and gentlemen and queeries, we have a brilliant article on What Privilege? titled Non-Survivor Privilege and Silence. It probably has the most good points condensed into one place of any article I've read on the subject, and is definitely worth a look. As a survivor, it made me feel so much less alone, and also determined to break the pattern, and if you've never experienced abuse before, I think being exposed to the observations in the piece is a must, so that you know what to look out for, and understand the effect of some of the things you may unthinkingly do or see as unobjectionable.

That said, one sentence nearly made me close the page in disgust and never, ever come back to it again. I didn't, mainly because I got distracted and got a snack, and by the time I got back to it I had calmed down a bit. But seriously. In the middle of a bunch of very sensible things, the author drops this monstrosity.

He might as well help round up victims for abusers. He’s perpetuating the unfairness by perpetuating the silence.

I'm tempted to tell myself that the site got hacked, and the hacker only added this one line of text as some sort of joke. But really, it's just there to remind me that no matter how reasonable I may think I sound, I still need to be very careful and not make idiotic statements like the above when discussing subjects that I care deeply about.  Or at least, I hope that when I do, I'll have it gently pointed out to me by someone who knows I'm not usually a raving madwoman, instead of some snarky teenager on the internet.

O hai thar...

...No Shave November.

Because you know what? I am so sick of people telling me that I have too much hair, too little hair, hair in the wrong place... And all of it along the tunes of "this is bad and wrong and unattractive". So I'm not shaving in hopes of figuring out if I think it's worth it to shave, and how I feel about the whole thing.

Besides, it's the perfect complement to NaNoWriMo.