Category Archives: personal

News From the Outside

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I’m sitting on a repurposed fishing boat, which is now an art, music, and hacker venue. Last night I toured the guts of it, slipping between shoulder-high engines, the air smelling of diesel and slick oil. Doors hiding computer terminals, and audio mixing setups, and soldering stations, and a lathe so large they must have built the ship around it. Blo letting me onto the bridge, where the only piece of new equipment is the mandated ship locator and broadcaster. The crew asks for your preferred language and then your name when you enter the tiny mess hall, a window cracked for the hand-rolled cigarettes. I now have just enough German to nearly state that for my language, but am still too self conscious, so instead I listen to theirs.

view of Canary Warf from MS Stubnitz

View from my room on Stubnitz

It’s the first quiet time I’ve had in a week, the last being a six hour moto ride through the English countryside. Sheep perched on stone walls, eyeing us as we went by, hugging curves and throttle. Between then and now have been hours of hard work, rockstars of response tech tools building and conversing, finding overlaps and launch points. Between that and the ship were also bombs in Boston, staying up late into the night funneling the energies of people seeking information, freeing up brain cycles to respond rather than question.

And today was Camden Market, strange back alleys and food smells. Wandering aimlessly with no purpose, simply to see and examine, ask and listen. The papers held by passengers on the London Underground all have Boston on their front pages. Half the emails in my inbox are the same, the vast myriad of my social (fingers in) pie (charts) exhibiting ripples. I find a shop that sells mediocre doner and examine horse statues. Tomorrow is Krakow, after the flight to Warsaw and the 3 hour express train. The distraction and calm are perfect in coping with the vast ocean between me and anyone I could be hugging, which is the most I could be doing right now anyway.

Tonight I’ll sit on my tiny bench on Stubnitz, with my too-quickly-ending book, and listen to sounds of an empty banking hub from out my window. The disco balls will hang deep in the ship, refracting light inside the hull; and I’ll daydream about sailing away with them, with spotty wifi and floors to scrub, to write about what I haven’t yet researched.

Queersplain

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Donning my angry feminist hat.1

First, let’s get the initial argument out of the way. Sexism exists. It definitely exists in tech communities. There are long-standing scientific studies on it, whole departments of colleges based around it, and the next person who thinks we’re past it (not “doesn’t want to talk about it,” but thinks it doesn’t exist)2 is being taken out back to be flogged as a fundamentalist3. Here’s a handy timeline. This entry deals mostly with women and sexism. You all should know by now that “women” is but one word used to refer to an area of a matrix, but I feel like using my wordiness on other topics today. Know that I’m focusing on one facet of an entire intertwingled object of marginalized populations4.

Everyone grows up with social scripts, unless they are raised in a box with no interaction with anything (no way IRB is letting you do that one!). The cadence of your voice to your posture to how you indicate interest are all influenced by social scripts. These scripts abstractly guide how we interact with one another – we are cued from past interaction, seen or participated with. This is part of why it is difficult to get women to speak at conferences – because they don’t see the value of their words, because the bulk of interaction has pointed at that5. Individuals from the projects won’t take a promotion because authority is seen as negative, and they don’t want to have authority over their peers. And because these roles continue to be filled by not-that-demographic, that-demographic never sees that it’s possible for them to do it. Women specifically are also socialized into letting people down easy and into making space and providing support for other people and the group over themselves (which is great when it’s reciprocated!). So, a society that objectifies women also sets the expectation that they will be objectified. We tend to grow into the expectations set on us6.

When women talk about being cat-called on the street pretty constantly, and the response it “I don’t see that” from her male peers, that is because they don’t. It doesn’t happen (as much, or at all) when they are with her7. And they don’t know how to be aware of it when it does happen around them (and are often participating in it). As someone in the penumbral8 space of gender norms, let me queersplain something to you. I don’t get catcalled much, because the way I walk and interact with people is pretty head-on. I am not scared to get in fights, to make eye contact, and to call people on things (most of the time). My upbringing is to thank for this. My parents consciously reduced the amount of exposure I had to mainstream social scripts through television and magazines. They made sure I felt comfortable in my own skin. My self-possession is a learned behavior9, and one that I am privileged to have obtained early on. But because I apparently also have hips, harassments still happen to those around me. I see it on a regular basis, and have to constantly decide if it is worth engaging in conflict.

Persistent, low grade harassment is so invisible until seen in aggregate, that when someone does snap, it’s seen as out of proportion. We have the ideas of straws and camels backs, and practice of drip water torture for a reason. Small things add up. When asked to laugh with you about the absurdity of the situation, and that “dongle” is indeed a funny word, maybe the laughter will be a beautiful moment of shared understanding. But when it’s not about the abhorrence at the system itself, such comments are instead just another straw. It can’t be taken lightly because it’s one of many. The individual voicing that comment is responsible for being a part of that load, when in fact they should be actively lightening it. The people who share that load with you get to joke with you about how utterly ridiculous it is that you can’t be using your strength to carry other things. It would be easier to just roll with it, but that also continues a culture that makes such comments ok. It is harder to fight.

Which gets us very smoothly into this whole Pycon thing, and how Adria is a very public figure.

When you are a highly visible person, you are expected to adhere more closely to the outlines of social scripts. For privileged populations, that means being MORE of what indicates success – demanding, manic, callous. If you are from a marginalized population, it still means fitting MORE closely to those expectations within that demographic. We call them archetypes for a reason. Individuals from those populations, rare already in roles associated with success, are demure and muted so as not to tip a boat they already feel shaky in10. At the same time, people of privilege are socialized to retain their privilege. Two to tango and all that. Because of all this, I feel a public response to a systemic issue occasionally trumps individualized response11.

The thing about this specific situation is that the same startup culture which claims Safe Space To Fail for tech doesn’t provide the same support and space for learning social lessons. Social lessons which are hard, but somehow the technical community has persuaded themselves and the rest of the world they are exempt from learning. That inability to care for our own, let alone others, is killing us and keeping our brightest from finding home.

The reason this debate is so visible is because it shows the tension between what we think is the case (why some will think this is dead-horse beating) and what is (many people’s daily existence). It shows the tension between where tech and social affect each other. And perhaps most tangibly, it shows the tension between the ideals of our society and our shitty labor laws. No one should have been fired over this, though we should still be having discourse. Hate to say it, but the same patriarchy12 that makes all this shit a part of everyday experience for so many is also what upholds the idea that your employer knows best and you have no desire nor ability to stand up for yourself and each other.

The response here is not more in-fighting and drama (which are not even true responses). The action here is to realize where the flaws are and to band together, to have nuanced conversation. We need unions. We need to support marginalized groups while not infantalizing them by taking control of their own ability to stand for themselves. It’s hard work. No one said it would be smooth, but brilliant people are used to sticking to what comes easily.


1. (Can it be a wizard hat? You bet your fingers it can be)
2. This is like saying racism is done in the US because we have a black president. Your desire to move forward blank-slate does nothing to the actual starting point of a vast majority of the population. Lack of acknowledgement of history is what is preventing many potential allies from doing anything except perpetuate the current state. Handy Infograph.
3. It’s the equivalent of someone saying “I don’t believe in webpages” and you saying “but you’re reading one right now” and them saying “silly coder, you really should look around you.” If they actually decided to figure out what you were talking about, you might sit and explain it to them, open up conversations, give them a book. Here’s my favorite starting place for feminism: Said the Pot to the Kettle: Feminism for Anarchist Men.
4. Which is what meant by references to “minority,” we mean “represented in the minority” – a language misstep that I do not intend to keep making. This misunderstanding of “minority” as “population minority” is similar to cracks implying scientific “theory” is a wild guess.
5. I challenge you to observe a room of people and tally how often people are checking their phones when a man is talking versus when a woman is talking. Audiences indulge in distraction far more when a woman is speaking, and not because of subject matter knowledge nor presentation style. Imagine how that effects your self-assurance when doing public speaking. See if you catch yourself checking your own phone more often in different cases.
6. Whole other entry in the works about halo effect and expectations vesus desire. But I didn’t want to overload you right now.
7. If your response to this is just always having a male companion, you are an event-addressing, non-systems fuck.
8. (insert favorite word into a ranty post +10 points)
9. Just as yours, or lack thereof, is learned.
10. I keep my blue hair, let me tattoos show, don’t hide my sexuality not only because it’s me, but because it also sets the tone for future people. It is a conscious choice, and one that sometimes detriments my ability to make professional progress. My subcultural markers are opt-in. My sex and sexuality are not. My desire to have all of them show is something I choose at personal cost for societal gain.
11. Only addressing these things individually is like playing whack-a-mole.
12. Look how far I made it in this entry without using the word! Look look look!

Waking Irene

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Sometimes I wonder if writing about a family member or friend who has recently died is sort of like telling someone about your dreams – fascinating and useful to you, but completely without the same meaning from context for them. This entry is a celebration of someone who aged with incredibly good humor, and who has been a steady thread in my life. This is what it is to have deep roots spread wide.

Grandma Irene Murphy died yesterday. She’s been ready to go for years, but some subset of her ten children weren’t. Which means she hung on, being revived when she slipped too far, living in the same house she had for 30 years, with a rotation of those children and their spouses taking shifts to care for her. We moved her bed down into the same room Mammy (her own mother, who was married to Pappy, and whose actual names I will never remember) had lived out her final days some twenty years previous, with notably less joy than Grandma. It was the third house Irene had taken the kids to, after the farm, the farm being after the house on Spear Street.

The house on Spear Street is now my Uncle Bill’s. Decades earlier, they had left it for the farm when my Grandmother had packed all the kids in the house out to it, fleeing her abusive husband Charlie. My grandfather Charlie, who taught me that assholes can be assholes to anyone, not just their own kids, and not always behind closed doors. Charlie who used to sit at the kitchen table drinking Budweiser and smoking while basketball blared on the living room TV, taking up all the space in the house he could. Charlie who used to “take his kids out for the day,” leaving them to play in the car while he sat in the bar and drank. Charlie who could also be genuinely gentle in the strangest of moments, making it easy to forget. Charlie whose children not only fought to protect each other and their mother from, but also their own children.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned about these aspects of my grandfather, of the deep reasons behind the strange giddiness Irene’s children experienced upon his death. This amazing woman, their mother, my grandmother, was finally free to play and make space for herself in more than passing moments. I had always assumed the move to the farm, and later the move to their final house had been of choice or necessity, not of flight. Their last house, where they both lived out their lives, was two away from Peggy, proximity to family some sort of safety, at least a place for the kids to escape to. The house separating Peggy and Irene was later purchased by my parents, where they still live, and where I grew up, the house undergoing slow remodels around me as my own body and brain changed. But always, always, grandma next door. A door that was never locked, and a motorized easy chair, and saccharine pinwheel cookies, and electronic poker games.

Eight of their ten adult children live in my home town, scattered in a radius around her home. The ninth lives beyond city limits, and the final is in California, buying grandma’s house from afar so she had income and so it would stay in the family. Peggy’s kids live within a few hours’ drive, and Mary’s four children live in the state, and Theresa’s fourteen children have scattered across the country but stayed away from the coasts. In short, it was incredibly difficult to throw a party as a teenager. But grandma would sometimes look at me with this glint in her eye, and her laugh sounded like getting away with it.

She loved murder mysteries. We used to watch Columbo together – there was no TV in my parents’ house, but I was allowed an hour of television over at grandma’s on rare occasion. She was convinced John Edwards was legit, and that angels watched over us. She made curtains before her hands got bad, and would let me sketch child thought-scapes with chalk on scrap fabric, and examine how her sewing machines worked, and hunt for dropped pins with magnets. She liked my blue hair, and objectified my boyfriends, and missed my mohawk (but was glad I had grown it out). She told me I needed to give her a motorcycle ride, and if I wasn’t willing to take her, it wasn’t safe enough for me, either. She chose Baltimore when my parents offered to take her anywhere at all in the world. She laughed at herself when she had no idea what was going on, and she didn’t mind at all that she had heard the joke before but forgotten the punchline. As she slipped deeper into dementia, she cracked jokes that no one else got, that no one else had context for, and she still laughed like she was getting away with it. She aged with incredible good grace and humor. And when her children had finally gotten to see a mother they had only seen glimpses of while growing up, when they were at last ready to let her go, she gratefully and quietly died.

I just got off a plane to Indiana for the wake. A wake where so many Irish-Catholic family members will attend we simply call people a generation older “aunt” or “uncle,” anyone younger “niece” or “nephew,” and anyone your own age “cousin.” My Uncle Mike (not even a full year younger than my father) will point out the faint four-poke scar he claims is from my grandmother stabbing him with a fork when he wouldn’t shut up at the dinner table. (Mike who also once told my cousin RD that a lion had bitten his leg, rather than explain Vietnam and mines and what it is to have a toe tag replaced by a purple heart, so that’s the sort of trustworthy he is.) Her great-great-grandkids will still be in diapers, unless my sense of time is completely off. We’ll bring out albums and stories and track mud into the home we exhausted the local framing store for in a vain attempt to keep up with the propagation of this family. The hodgepodge collection of folding chairs will be brought from every nearby house, nearly enough but why not pick up another mismatched set. Everyone will bring a casserole, spilling off the kitchen table and onto the nearby counters. Someone will turn on the TV, and someone else will mute it. Aunt Suzy will wonder why I insist on wearing a tie, and an endless line of nieces and nephews will insist on airplane and piggy-back rides. We will play with blocks and marbles and race matchbox cars. (And I, for the first time in years, will not hide myself away in front of the recently-emerged fireplace in my parents’ home with glass of Bailey’s, furious with myself for anxieties.)

As the night wears on, and the children go home, we’ll drink cheap beer and reminisce about a woman who brought so much joy despite everything in her path. We’ll remember sitting in our shared yards as night fell, lightning bugs flashing and the smell of a recent rain. We’ll remember how she protected as best she could with the beliefs she had. How she left Charlie’s presence but never his side. How she made what was never enough food or money or hours sustain as many as she could. How each of her children coped with that upbringing. How some, my father included, got themselves out – and how that meant leaving others behind. The ties of family, and of love, and of dreams, and responsibilities. What it is to protect your family from your family, and see those patterns repeat. What love is, no matter what, even if you don’t want it. Love without the need to understand. Love that sometimes lacks care, and the kind of love that combats that. In the morning, we’ll shine our shoes and go to church for her, albeit less begrudgingly and a little bit more hungover, one last time.

In short, it will be business as usual. Celebration of life, celebration of death, and the ever overwhelming presence of family.

Safe and Warm in Haiti

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The day I arrived in Port-au-Prince was a whirlwind, joyful and strange and a bit overwhelming, soothed by stints of reading, and coding, and a nap. Adaptation is something all humans tend to be incredible at, myself being no exception (and possibly programmed to be even more so). Learning new social cues is fascinating rather than daunting, my main concern being not to fixate too long on any one person, lest they be put off by my stares.

That night, Emilie and I walked down the hill to a new restaurant/bar, recently opened. My own friendliness matched by one of the owners, Em asking if we already knew each other, given our laughing and kissing on cheeks (no hugging here), comrades in awareness and intent. He wants the area to be the Castro of Port-au-Prince, helping others to open shops and bars nearby, seeing the cultural shift rather than the competition. I feel the beginnings of something big – possibly struggle and tragedy, but more hopefully the expansion of the safe space we experience in their courtyard out into the streets. The weather had cooled, and the open floor plan with beautifully graffiti’d walls reminded me of Berlin. Brazilian pop played, and we capped our beers and talked for long hours. The same kind switch to English, accented by French and Creole here rather than German, so that I might participate.

Lit by oil lanterns, I feel the sort of quiet happiness you only get from stolen moments, the knowledge that you have participated in safe space when which is rare outside your bubble. But too often we long to use these spaces as sanctuaries of permanence, rather than celebration. Mecca is where we go to understand the world we strive for on a daily basis, to remind us to look up and see, rather than feel like we taking incrementally smaller steps, like some role in a philosophical mathematical proof. To be only around like-minded people is easy and wonderful, we can dive deeply into our shared interests and create esoteric structures of understanding. But those structures are fragile, not shored up by webs of links to other aspects of the world. And it is selfish to hoard those understandings, to not challenge ourselves and other people. As I recently read on the twitters, “design like you’re right, listen like you’re wrong.”

dinnercatAnd yesterday, I found myself amongst a group of hackers who gave up their weekends to fly continents away. They learned to interact at a different pace, waiting for translations. They learned just as much as the students and call center staff who came to talk. A day spent in a hot room, wind drifting through, my own tie and vest and dress shirt too much. My eventually exposed shoulders disrespectful but for my own profuse apologies and broken english allowances. One founder saying “the heat is a violence against you,” me not knowing possibly how to respond.

A sudden rush to get out the gate before the street is repaired, who knows where the means to do so came from. Despite our attempt to collect our equipment and pack into bags and into the truck, we are left watching as 7 Haitian men spread a small hill of asphalt via wheelbarrows and shovels. Rather than hover, we walk up the steep hill to drink beer from a shop made out of plywood, held together by a nail gun, and hand painted in more of this language I fail to grasp. The sun sets over the ocean, reminding us that we’re on a tropical island. Well, that and the mosquitos. We finally see some cars come up from the road we came from, and we head back to our Van of Privilege.

On the way to dinner we stop in a gas station supermarket to change money and get local rum. Again, children giggle at my hair (and the now showing tattoos) and stern adults walk them away. The numbers etched on my skin having an extra layer of indiscerability here. The harsh florescence and my own exhaustion make this a less welcoming place. Blocks away, our dinner includes goat, and taro root, and a very polite cat who holds the chair at the head of the table. The cat’s body language renders understandable, though I’ve struggled at times to understand the social cues here. I’ve realized how much of my interaction is based on wit, and compassion, and a deep understanding and care of what people expect and can handle. Here, I have none of the same leeway (because I have not built it, because I do not understand). It is atrociously good for me.

We return back to the hotel. Expats around tables, snow-marked (not pixelated) Alan Rickman and Bruce Willis on same small screen which showed Se7en the night before. We talk about making safe space for people in taking leadership roles (or at the very least being heard) who might not otherwise, and what it is to learn new things, and what tomorrow looks like.

This morning, I forgot to think about if I was being proper or not, and joked about my stick figures, and heard about cocreation. We played Bear-Ninja-Cowboy in the courtyard, and everyone laughed and cheered. Today they have a lot of work ahead of them – not the kind of work you plow through on your own, but the kind where you ensure the people around you are on the same page. Today is about building consensus, buy-in, and understanding. I am excited.

A love letter to Seattle

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I remember when I arrived to Seattle, February of 2008, exhausted and happy from a two week cross-country jaunt from Bloomington. It was the first place I ever felt at home. It’s the first place I didn’t get lost in, constantly. About a month after arriving, I was still wondering at how easy it was to be here.

Tonight I walked home from the club alone, violins and poetry in my ears (aren’t they often the same thing?).
Capital Hill and I had a moment, the sort of moment you share with a good friend or a lover in the morning, feet cozy under their legs, tea or coffee in hand, when you know the day is in front of you but more important is the Now.
I feel at peace here more than I ever have.

image by Andi Dean

image by Andi Dean

This is the first place I moved to of my own accord, not because someone I cared about deeply had requested my presence. And after eking out space for myself, Libby came. And Chris. Petra was near, and Annie and Bergen were already here but unknown to me. Later, Vivian and Noah came out. Tiny Matt would visit regularly. Our chosen family grew, and deepened. There were magical summers and warm spots in winter. I worked for a year in a law office, donning a wig every day, and training parkour in Freeway Park on my lunch breaks, some sort of punk super hero, bleeding on office papers from my scuffs and tumbles. Whitechapel kept me sane. And I learned about myself, and how to love other people, and how to let them love me. This is my home, but it’s also taught me that I can have many homes. Here, I have learned to wait.

And then I found purpose, combatting that persistent feeling in the back of my head that I had power, I just didn’t know what to point it at. The Transhumanist thought scapes I had carried from Virginia to Bloomington started to grow into tangible things. From Baron, I learned about hackerspaces and this group I admire so much, count myself lucky to be a part of, that now takes so much of my focus. I learned what it is to choose to commit to something, and what it is to decide who you love and how you love them. This has been my city, not only in that it’s where my heart is, but in that it is here I learned what a heart even is. This is where my robot love is.

I’m moving my stuff to Somerville to spend most of my days in Cambridge. Apparently people in the Boston area care about these geographical differences. Or at least the streets do. My belongings boil down to books, and clothes, and art. And more books. And comics. I’ll be working with the Center for Civic Media, and the Berkman Center if they’ll have me. While I leave the 29th of this month, I first go to San Francisco for #everyonehacks. And when I do go, I don’t go straight to Boston. I go to Port-au-Prince first, and then to DC, and then I’m in Boston. For a few days. Before I go to Paso Robles for Camp Roberts, and then Philly for family. Towards the middle of February, I arrive in earnest for a whole few weeks. March I bounce around a bit (either Seattle and San Francisco or an entirely other adventure) with time in Boston. April is only half overseas. But! May and June will be in Boston for sure. And July is.. overseas. And August is partially in Black Rock City. But the rest of the year. Seriously. Boston. I’ve already passed up a bunch of potential things to go to, speak at. Those booked engagements will get pruned as much as possible. I need to be where I am.

So I’ve been framing my art to prevent it getting crushed in the move, and saying tender farewells. This is a place I have loved. And you should love some of my favorite places and things, too. Here are some places that I have always felt comfortable, always at home.

  • Crumpet Shop : Just my favorite place in Seattle. Always happy. Always delicious. Non presumptuous.
  • Parkour Visions : Solid people. They helped me feel at home. And they teach you how to use your body and your environment.
  • Ada’s Technical Books : It’s a hackerspace, but with books. Good talks every week, good people, and mate!
  • Techbound : If you’re into this sort of thing, these are the folk to learn from. (NSFW)
  • Odd Fellows : Just a great coffee shop to hang out in. Does all meals, coffee, booze, solid wifi, etc.
  • Hot House : Naked lady spa. Seriously helped keep me sane.
  • Six Arms : Sure, it’s a McMenamin’s, but I sure do heart it. Good booze, and the staff leaves you alone. Perk if you’re working, not if you’re dining people.
  • Remedy Teas : 150 loose-leaf teas, and themed with science. Usually bustling without feeling overwhelming. Also the staff is super cute.
  • Row House : Again, with the all meals, decent coffee, solid wifi. They do flights of whiskey and sometimes of strange meats. You can work from here all day.

Join me at Row House on the 26th of January from 16:00 to 20:00 if you’d care to say hello, goodbye, or whatever. I shall be reading and taking quiet time, welcoming company.

My roots grew here. But even as I write this, I know that people are postgeographic in my brain, but Seattle is like a family chest, full of fond memories. You can take it wherever you go. I will return to the people who are my chosen family, who are always with me.

Inappropriate

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I run into the problem a lot that one of my favorite folders in TheOldReader is my NSFW one. It contains images of beautiful tattoos on beautiful bodies of all kinds, of intimate exchanges, of expressions of gender and love. But it’s labeled “NSFW” because I can’t load it in airports or coworking spaces or .. most anywhere, really. But that also transfers pretty clearly into how I filter myself for professional situations. I have ranted about this before. But this particular day prompted a tiny rant on Twitter about how much it sucks to have to constantly keep parts of my personality under wraps. There were a myriad of responses.

The general trends of feedback were as follows: female-bodied and queer folk affirm through response or favorites. Some folk suggest a division of presentation (public/private). And some say “what’s the big deal with expressing such things?” I would like to lovingly point out that the people in this last category are cis gents, whom I adore and with whom I am friends (hey, I have plenty of friends (and lovers) who are straight!).

Given that I work with all sort of populations from all sorts of backgrounds, my appearance and expressions have been carefully shaped in some ways. I no longer sport my mohawk. I tend to wear long pants rather than stompy boots and fishnets. My tattoos and piercings are easily covered. This is not so much an issue of subculture, this is much more an issue of how sexuality and respectability tend to be mutually exclusive. Which is to say: if I were to act and dress as I like, I would be sexualized, and therefore viewed as less competent. Which is a funny trade-off, as in especially technical communities, competence is seen as sexy. But the moment you enter one sphere, the other attribute goes away (for most people) (the link is about promoting sexualization to obscure the competence). Welcome to one of the tightropes which must be walked by the simple act of being female bodied. (But I don’t do that! you might say. Well, it’s not just about you. It’s about a long line of actions and incidents which by necessity make me wary of any sexuality-respect-shaped exchange. Both of those links have a trigger warning, and are more severe than what I’m personally speaking of, but they do get the point across.)

I say this because the idea of “just be awesome, and everything will work out!” is a privileged viewpoint. It’s something that can be said when you play on the easiest setting. Here is the thing – I have jeopardized jobs, missed opportunities, and lost friendships because I thought my competence was more relevant than my attractiveness (whatever the level of either of those). (I have also jeopardized jobs, missed opportunities, and lost friendships for other reasons. I am not scaping the goat here, as it were). For most of my life, and to some degree still, what is (or is not) between my legs has meant passing up those opportunities meant I might not get another such opportunity. This is not a “screw that person, something better will come along!” life. Now that I live in the enchanted world of people who “get it”, this is less of a problem. We can share dark humor, stories about compersion, and analysis of queer theory. But the path to here was long, and that’s from a privileged white girl.

From “Said the Pot to the Kettle” by Margaret Killjoy

It’s hard to talk about these things in public, because respect for me goes down, and therefore respect for what I do. We do not see individuals as many-faceted beings (something I think is deeply tied to our idealization of geniuses rather than polymaths), and so if I talk about gay rights or safe words, that is suddenly what I am to the exclusion of all else. I’m supposed to “pick my battles.” Which brings us to the second sort of response, which is to divide profiles. Now, I do have a snark twitter account, which very few people have access to. That is where I am snarky, which is something I don’t want other people to see. Unwavering optimism tempered by experience is what I think is most effective in public discourse (at least for the things I like to do), and so I keep my “really? seriously?” things to myself.

In contrast, my sexuality is a big part of my personality, and I would like it to be ok to share that. One of the reasons I find sexuality in general so fascinating is because it is the most basic part of being an organism (ANY organism), but is the most socially constructed for humans (the link as but one recent striking example). In general, I am wary of fracturing identity online, because I feel it’s important to stick your neck out (again, privilege talking) to make it safer for others to fully express themselves. (Caveats here about pseudonymity, activism, finding a new self, etc etc etc inserted here). Only by presenting ourselves respectfully as multi-faceted creatures, and calling bullshit when such a thing is not treated as the norm, can we build this better future.

So while I would really, really like to be able to crack a joke about Jesus dying on the cross because he forgot the safe word to a group of educators, humanitarians, and military folk, it’s just not going to be the case. It’s considered inappropriate coming from me. Which sucks, because Ye Olde Boys Club still can, if they want. What I have decided on, while writing this entry, is that it is worthwhile for me to be more outspoken so that it is easier for the people who come after me. But maybe I’m only saying that because I’m sitting in San Francisco right now, and it seems so easy. And I hope that my competence and ability to execute now fully trump whatever does or doesn’t happen between my bits and other people’s bits. And as in the links I’ve included here, I’d prefer people go after me than after someone else. I like the fight.

Thankful

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My life is amazingly spoiled, and it’s due in large part to the people in it. It’s nice to have a day on which I can be explicitly thankful. In very rough chronological order, here is a start. (It was kind of fun to try to remember when I had met people, given they are such threads in the tapestry of my life – I didn’t use a calendar. Perhaps later I’ll go back and try).

For my parents, whose methods for raising me have bordered on creepy in how thoughtful they are, but always functional.

For my brother, who has taught me what unconditional love is.

For my sister, and the closeness we’ve shared even when we are far away.

For my aunt Christie, who has been more generous than any niece deserves.

For Diz and Caleb, who hug so hard they shake.

For Libby, who has provided balance to my crazy as I learned to do so on my own.

For Vivian, who really does have the most beautiful snakes.

For Cbat, for providing insights and a home.

For Sougwen, for cigarettes on the walk home and hidden stories.

For Petra, a constant point of bright light, even when so far away.

For Grace, who has always made me think of entirely new things.

For Noah, who has been a provider and subtle heart.

For Preston, and going dancing.

For Magpie, who has taught me about nuance and long term plans.

For my sister in law, who has made my brother a better person.

For Ben, and making time for lunch.

For Qais, who has never judged me.

For Baron, who has become a corner stone in my life.

For Janine, who has always been easy to be around.

For 3ric, who always pushes me to be better.

For Ella, an ally, friend, and cohort.

For Rob, who has always been kind and open without having expectations.

For Sirus, for always being there.

For Beth, who has given me a long-view.

For Kav, who has taught me it is useful to ask for what you want.

For Jordan, sharing frustrations and a way to make things better.

For James, teaching me the tools I use to express myself.

For Sean, who has given so much back with such gentleness.

For MerBear, my partner in crime (and best wifey).

For Raine, and teaching me that beautiful friendships can come out of awful situations.

For Fabienne and Skytee, who have always been more welcoming than I know what to do with.

For Riley, who has constantly urged me to examine my assumptions and be better.

For M@, who held my hand even while I hurt him.

For Strand, and the absurd amount of patience you have had with me.

For Robin, whose unabashed warmth has made me more kind.

For Levi, who taught me humanity.

For Case, my partner in brains and bots.

For Eric, and his unblinking support.

For Jenbot, for washing my hair.

For Sunny, who has given so freely of herself I can’t imagine not doing the same.

For Meredith, who challenges and fights and utterly inspires.

For Lindsay, who has made expressing thoughts safe and easier.

For Diggz, who took a risk on a very strange bet, and believed in me even when it seemed not so good.

For John, giving shape and meaning to my skills.

For Tendy, for including me and handing me a light in dark times.

For Schuyler, and your unabashed geek about the skies.

For Rubin, and our shared sense of quiet desperation (and your hidden joy).

For Mark, who taught me it’s necessary to be a monkey.

For Isis, and making birthday pan-cakes.

For Lisha, who has been a solid baseline of engagement.

For Estee, who teaches me about how brains and hearts and the world are deeply connected.

For Heather, and unwavering support.

For Christina, who has more emotional intelligence than anyone I’ve ever met.

For Galit, the best of kittens.

For SJ, who has made safe space.

For Desi, who stuck her neck out.

 

For the Jigsaw crew, who has taught me to keep caring.

For all the people who have let me stay on their couches, making my travels that of home-to-home rather than vagabond.

For the Saturday Morning Cartoons crew, for teaching me what Home is.

For the Ardent crew, for your brains and your rants and your art and most of all.. your elevator shaft.

For the Awesummit crew, who taught me maybe we can win.

For the Boston crew, for reminding me that amazing people are behind all my favorite projects.

For the Aspiration crew, who made it ok to be as opinionated as I am.

 

I apologize if I have missed you – and would like the opportunity to express my thankfulness for you if you’ll just let me know.

An Open Letter to theoldreader.com

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Reader was my favorite social network, hands down. I was incredibly sad to see it go. When I found out theoldreader.com existed, I was giddy all day.

I wrote the team to thank them (hello at theoldreader dot com) and to also trouble shoot a bug. They were incredibly kind and prompt in response. After they fixed the glitch my massive address book was causing, I asked the following:

Next dreams:
What are privacy settings? Can only people I follow see my posts, only the friends of people I post comments to see those comments?
Multi-shares in same social network list people who shared rather than showing the post repeatedly.
But these are again, dreams, not issues.
Are we going to be able to pay the team a nominal amount to keep the project going? I would like to be able to support a group to do continued support rather than having this thing we all love die again.

Their response:

As per our privacy policy, all shared posts are currently public. We do have ‘private accounts’ feature in our roadmap that will allow users to expose their shared items only to a limited number of accounts they choose. However, this has very low priority for us; most users only read public RSS feeds that are available to everyone in the first place, so hiding them makes little sense.
We have discussed the mechanics of multi-sharing before and decided to stick to the current implementation to avoid mixing comments to two different shares into a single thread. Sometimes people discuss not the shared article itself, but rather the sharer’s comment to it – so, each shared post becomes unique in a way and deserves a separate comment thread.
At the moment The Old Reader is not backed up by any company, and we are still looking for the best way to allow our users to support the project. We will definitely update our blog when we decide on something, so make sure you are subscribed to it :)

Here is what I have sent them. I hope you’ll join me in politely, lovingly, requesting the same. I would also like you to be willing to throw in to support the team if that is the route they go.

I’d like to lobby that privacy get moved up the list. A few reasons, personal, individual, and communal. First, I work in humanitarian and disaster response, with volunteer technical communities and military alike. I also have an incredibly dark sense of humor. The people I work with tend to check out who I am and what I like – having another public space on which to express myself doesn’t really allow me to express myself. Those same working conditions also make it incredibly important that I be able to have a safe space to talk and connect.
On an individual level, I saw friends discover themselves because Reader was a safe space. Things like gender, sexuality, and approach in life are not things which can be held without care. People with very public lives have been able to go through self-discovery with a small group of trusted friends.
And finally, communal – while with privacy my own shares are only to those who I have approved, my comments on a friend’s share are visible to their friends. *This is essential* – there is at least one pairing from our previous ShareBro network which happened because of this serendipity in safe space. They are now married.

As it is now, it’s more like a Tumblr than it is like Reader. I hope you’ll institute the privacy and sharing layers sooner rather than later. Again, I’m happy to contribute what I can towards this being a sustainable effort.

All my best, and thanks again,

Willow

Coping Processes

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I’ve been struggling with social anxiety a lot lately. I’m aware of my stressors, the main one being the way I’ve been framing my work. It’s gotten to low-level panic attacks for days on end. Yes, I know I work too much. Yes, I know I tend to care far too much about the wrong things. Let me re-state that. I mis-prioritize my actions based on the outcomes I would like (I don’t execute in ways that will further my end goals).

And then the crux of the problem – I am actually an introvert who just happens to be good at people. I feel like the stage tech who gets dragged out on stage to act, and I just want to be in the dark reading cues and flipping switches so other people can bare their souls. The people who like doing that sort of thing. That said, I find people fascinating. I love how individuals build a society out of their communities. But. Every single person I cross paths with, or see on the street, or see the lighted window in a building.. each of them has a life that is just as complex (if not more so) as mine. And most of it will never overlap with me – which is great. But it’s so.. massive. And complicated by all the other lives abutting theirs, the social factors they’re not even aware of, that we’re all monkeys in clothes with language. And then one person comes up to you and asks you where the bathroom is, and it’s like “do you even realize what that means? That we have bathrooms! History and context and memetics! And that so many people used that public restroom before you!” I don’t even care about the washed hands (I mean I do, but not in this context), there’s just so much past-ness (thanks, Dymaxion, for the term) behind that stall door. And should we even be using toilets? And that’s just a tiny portion of everyone’s day that no one really thinks about. And then the person just blinks at you, and you point them in the (supposedly) right direction, and they walk that way. And then someone else comes up to you. Rinse and repeat.

So. That. I’ve started medication that is situation-based, only in my system for so long, to deal with the anxiety. And there’s the possibility of mood-stabilizing drugs, but first I have to set up a double-blind and match a placebo. Which brings us to the point of this entry (you knew we’d get here eventually): processes for coping. But first another tangent!

One of the reasons I’m medicating is because it’s incredibly difficult to keep a routine when on the road, what with switching timezones constantly and staying in other people’s space. Pacing around half-naked and sweaty practicing German after a morning run can only be done in the closest of friends’ living rooms. But the nomadic lifestyle is so incredibly worth it. And even a routine is just a coping mechanism, a way to stave off the anxiety. Something my psych said that made me feel better about the situation was “I don’t think it’s psychosomatic – you would have dealt with it by sheer force of will. There is something going on in your brain you don’t have control over.” Which also freaks me out, but oh well.

Processes help. Routine when you can find it. Meditation is a process. Quantified Self can be a process. I talked to Ed of i3 Detroit (and recent transplant to Boston) about his process. He’s listed out people who are important to him in a column, and dates across the top row. He draws a smiley or frowny face for what sort of topic he called them about, when. He can see how to balance good calls and bad calls, and make sure that he’s been keeping up with folk. I’m going to try this out. The best I can hope to do is once a month – I hate the phone in general, and even this would be a vast improvement over the current complete lack.

What do you do to cope? What processes do you have?

How do you know who is important? My three criteria are that they make me think, they make me laugh, and they aren’t drama. I am blessed that my list of people is so long. That doesn’t mean I’m any good at keeping up with people who I should be indicating my fondness of. I *suck* at keeping up with people. I am very present where I am, which means I’m just not pinging people that aren’t there right then. Which has been a difficult place for me to get to. Apparently humans take some time every day to contact folk who aren’t physically present. I thought about auto-sending emails of affection and check-ins, but that seems fake. What I can do is set alarms for myself, to be sure I do things when I should. That’s more authentic, right?

Also, you should totally check out Ed. He’s awesome. He does things like Penflake, and now works with the Center For Civic Media, my biggest organizational crush right now. Be still my activist techie heart.

He also made a way for people to create easily in the same way.

I wanted to do something interactive for Maker Faire last year. I had been drawing my PenFlakes, and thought it would be cool if people could design their own and print them out. So I created FlakePad, a javascript/HTML5 web app that enforces the basic symmetry of a snowflake, and provides a hexagonal grid to work off of.

Aside from being a great way to get my hands dirty with HTML5, the most interesting part of the app was creating the hexagonal grid. I wound up learning about and utilizing Isometric Cubic Coordinates. These coordinates provide an amazingly simple way to label hexagons on a grid, as well as a relatively simple transformation to and from standard Cartesian Coordinates. The basic trick is to recognize that a hexagonal grid, can be seen as a projection of a 3D arrangement of cubes centered on the plane x+y+z=0 (imagine Q*bert, the old NES game).

Livin’ Green

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TL;DR : My sister is in a voting thing, and it would mean a lot to her (and me) if you were to place your vote here.

I don’t know how many of you know this, but my family is *totally* awesome. Activist attorney father, artist jewelry-smith draftsman mother living in the town my dad grew up in. They’ve been married for quite awhile, and met when my half-sister was two. They spaced us kids so if we had gone to school like we were supposed to, they would have had padding to save back up and send another one out.

We are a physical family, hugging and leaning and playing. When I was young, we used to wrestle. I still toss my younger cousins around. The goal used to be stealing the hankie from my dad’s back pocket, him carefully laying aside his wire-frame glasses. It meant I was never scared to get into a fight – I’m comfortable in my own skin and know what it is to get into a tuss.

My brother is an oneophile with a love of words and deep study. He has the complete OED, and cherishes his rare copy of a reverse-etomological dictionary (broken out by roots, rather than listing roots after the words). He makes puns which much be explained via culture, historical events, and nuances of language. He wears bowties. And still, under it all, the understanding of what it is to be comfortable in your own body, not just as a thing to carry your head around, but as something that is a part of you.

And my sister! Despite having grown up only seeing each other once or twice a year, we are incredibly close. She is a story teller, a physical comedian, and feels the world with such passion I don’t know how her heart handles it. I attribute much of my adaptability and acceptance to visiting her home in NYC while young (and still today), seeing Off-Off-Broadway plays and the night life of the city. She does jazz and modern dance, clowning, and acting. I suppose they can all be the same thing.

She’s supported herself for years between her artistic endeavors and teaching people to be comfortable in their own skins through personal training. She’s moved from the stage to film, bouncing between LA and NYC. And now there’s this thing, Fit or Flop, for TV about the next personal trainer. Jessie has a good grasp of what is involved with the process of growing her business, and where the value in this competition lies. I think she should win. And while I usually don’t go for TV nor for popularity contests, this involves both. And I’m ok with that because it means so much to me that the world sees how awesome she is.

The brand management prize is hefty and would allow me to reach many people across the world with my comprehensive approach to overall health and fitness.

Please join me. At least vote once. If you’re zelous or feel like automation, it can take one vote a day per profile for two months.

  • Direct: http://www.fitorflop.com/contestants/jessie_green/
  • Twitter: @JessLivinGreen
  • Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/LivinGreen

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JESSICA GREEN MOVEMENT REEL from Jessica Green on Vimeo.

And my favorite thing she’s done.