Linky Linky Link Links

Sorry I've been so quiet here. The last month or so has had lots of ups and downs, times of just getting by and making it through, lovely quiet times of vacation... no big earth-shattering events really, just... life. Lots of life.

It's also possible Gracie's been a little harder and more time-consuming recently, but I'm not quite sure. It might just be that I'm watching more TV... I don't want to watch so much, but when someone's in the living room watching Angel, how can I resist? I ask you.

You know how I was planning on regularly featuring other blogs here? And how I did one post in the "series," over a year ago?

Now that I mention it, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't know. Um.

So, as I go through the blogs in my RSS reader, I have some tags I use regularly, which include, "Could use for a blog post," "Or maybe forward or share," and "Wonderful things I want to remember (use sparingly)."

Yes, even my blog tags are exceedingly verbose. Anywho.

I'd still like to do those "featured" posts, with one blog at a time. I started on one for Patricia C. Wrede's blog. But it recently struck me that unless I just want to keep building up more and more and more links for some mythical day when I'll post about them all, I should, well, post links more often.

So I started a tag in my RSS reader for "This week's links," and I think I'll try to use it regularly, and in the weeks I skip, just untag that week's links again and start over. And I may throw in some random bookmarks from the week too, stuff I happened to see that isn't from a blog I subscribe to. But just from the last week. Keep things a little more manageable. That's the theory, anyway. I'm not making any promises.

This means, most weeks, I probably won't have much of a theme. But meh. Lots of random highlights from teh interwebz! Woo!

They won't all necessarily be brand new, either. When I read blogs, I find the oldest post (that isn't so old it's a time period I've given up on), and then I catch up within that particular blog before moving on to the next oldest post, and so on. Right now I'm about 20 days behind. Plus there will probably be some lag between my drafting a post and actually publishing it, because I'm like that. I know there's a lag this week!

So. Without any further ado, here are... some of my links. I had quite a lot, and ended up only including a few in my draft of this post. I was going to add more still, but... well, now it's this week. There are some awesome ones I didn't get to, but oh well.

CaptainAwkward: "#497: On 'keeping the peace' with an unlikeable mansplainer"

Language warning. This is, more or less, on why you shouldn't "keep the peace," especially as applied to someone who is chronically jerky towards someone else with less privilege.

("You can’t solve injustice until you admit and truthfully reckon with injustice. If we have the expectation that our institutions will always cater to the wealthy, the white, the able-bodied, the cis-gendered, the straight, and the male and treat people who point out the cracks in that system with contempt and silencing and pleas to be nicer and “keep the peace” (not to mention outright denial that there is a problem), we become the problem. We are saying that this state of affairs is “the peace” that is worth keeping, and acting like the peace isn’t broken over and over again with every instance of injustice, white supremacy, inaccessibility, ableism, transphobia, etc. The peace has already been broken.")

It's pretty awesome. Because I've gradually become much more feminist in... oh, maybe the last year or so? I feel like I should warn that if you are not sympathetic to feminism, this is not the article to convince you -- it isn't, nor is it intended to be the article that does that work. It isn't 101. There are other links for that which I might share with you sometime. But if you're already slightly sympathetic or open to such things, and you either know some of the lingo or are willing to follow the links within the article to learn the lingo, well, I think this is a good one for you.

(And yes, as in the above quote, racism and such come up too -- but because of the nature of the original letter writer's question, the focus is mostly on "mansplaining," which is why my focus here, introducing it, is mostly on feminism.)

I was going to quote a long section from towards the end, but I couldn't find a place to cut off the awesome until it was almost a 600-word quote, and that seemed a bit... excessive. Even for me. I'll just say that I especially liked the theoretical scenario with the mansplainer, and from that dialogue, especially this bit:

"‘Splainer: blah BLAH blah you just don’t want to admit that you’re WRONG and GIRLY and WRONG that’s why you won’t debate me. What about blah? What about BLAH? Behold, I am the Devil’s Advocate!"

And then from there through to the "Keep this in mind: It was always that awkward… for you." paragraph.

Side note: Yes, Biblically, we are supposed to be peacemakers. I'm not so sure this is the type of "peace" Jesus was talking about. Just because people use the word doesn't make it so.

And ah, speaking of feminism...

The Actual Pastor: "My Take on Women in the Church"

I do like this. Doesn't go into depth about the Biblical interpretation, but fits with some things I've been thinking for a while now. Especially about the consistency issue, which certainly, well, IS an issue.

Okay, now a sad one. Sorry. Bear with me here, we're almost done!

Learning to Hope: "Pandora"

This isn't the most stand-aloniest blog post ever, but I think it kind of works. Here's the blog's "About Me," for some context:

"I'm a 26 year old former Caregiver. This is my voice to talk about my life- mostly about learning to live now. My husband was diagnosed in November 2009 with Glioblastoma Multiforme- terminal brain cancer. He was only 25 and I had literally just turned 23. He fought hard for almost 3 years before he passed away September 2012, just a month after turning 28. This was my blog about our life. This is still my space to find Hope. This is now my public battle to show what life is like as a 25 year old Widow."

Why follow a blog like this? I first discovered it from this awesome post. To me, it's kind of like watching Grave of the Fireflies -- the movie may not strictly be "enjoyable," watching one of the saddest things in the history of EVAR, but it feels important. Reading this blog... it's a struggle an actual person is living through, and taking the time to listen, even virtually, seems like, well, the least we can do (rather literally). Even when it is only virtual, even when you're just a lurker, and you don't know anyone else in a similar situation... I think it's good to be aware of the pain that's out there in the world. Can make you a little more empathetic at the least, right? So. Even though this post is better in the context of the blog, it's not a bad sample, either. Read it.

(Side note: Grave of the Fireflies is not so much a story of the struggle of an actual person, but it's close enough. Though fictionalized, it's easily the sort of thing that happened to many children in that time and place. Empathy for pain in a major event from a culture's history is important for empathy to the people from that culture. And then... change more details of the story, and it's still happening around the world today.)

Alright. Enough of that. This one's just fun!

Wil Wheaton dot Net: "because it's the recliner my nephew deserves right now"

Also so cute. And short, so, yay!


Wow. I just managed to make a links post 1,397 words long. That's... special.