@clouddweller Totally. I remember enjoying both StakeOut movies, and What About Bob is a classic in my book. But to fixate on his opinion about an industry he is at the far, far end of is just silly posing.

@HLGEM Good gravy. Here’s the I-thought-about-it-before-I-posted-it version:

I maintain that it is not white men that are a (the) problem per se, but 'whiteness' and 'masculinity'. Our understanding of both these terms which confuse our communications and incense our emotions.

Anyway, sorry if I ignited anything painful. And thanks for taking the time to tell me what you thought and felt. It's the whole point really.

@HLGEM Sorry. Sorry all that fucked up shit happened to you. Really, like I said earlier elsewhere, I’ve been on both sides, as much as that is possible.

And I get that I don’t and can’t really totally get it. I can’t have your experiences, nor you mine.

Still, to say that the entire class of white men need to sit down and shut up is childish nonsense.

And it has nothing to do with you getting your fair share, or anyone else, their’s.

Did you see what I posted before about power and strength? Think about it. They are not the same thing.

My current strategy vector is this: Fuck all those stupid white men. And the white women by the way, too, an often ignored intersection of jerkdom. Lot of jerks that happen to not be men, and now that I think about it, many not white. Huh. Assholes across the spectrum of humanity, not a surprise, still a disappointment.

In fact, looking back quickly over centuries of history we see that white men have the market cornered, and still do, on being complete fucking dick wads when the mood suits them only because of historic accident, not superiority of any meaningful measure, not by divine providence, just flipping chance.

Which, if you don’t get my whole implication schtick, means you, we, can do something about it. You're soaking in it.

Just a side-note: When I grew up, watching a lot of tv as kids of my era often did, some of my biggest heroes were women. Who am I kidding? It is still true today. Mary, keeping her writer hubby in check, then working at a news station. Marlo, being the girl before the new girl. Maureen deflating Carrol. Sass-a-matic Bea. That is to say Mary Tyler Moore, Marlo Thomas, Maureen Stapleton, Bea Arthur, they represented what was happening with women in a way I could appreciate, could understand. And characters like these still do. Still are. Have you seen The Morning Show?

Anyway, shit fuck goddamn it, sorry you had to go through all that. And I’m sorry that so many who superficially look and sound like what I look and sound like treated you as they did. It is so amazing that folks can still smile at strangers. I hope you still can.

@pratik 😁I think it safe to say that I generally mean “fuck”. 😎🤭🤫😶😬🤐🤠

But that aside...not a goody two-shoes, but earnest enough often enough for me to be (happily, gently) surprised a bit, surprised when you put on a language costume of sorts, a mood and tone, and then deftly poke fun at something worth poking fun at, if only to relieve the pressure...it helps I find.

...and if any interest, Kyle Kinane is a keen observer and a big language fan. Some of his stuff is available on Apple Music. No affiliation but Kyle, you owe me, buddy.

@benx lol. sleep well.

@jayeless “What did she say? Over a hundred somethings...so, tall!“ ← it works. :-)

@pratik jeebusmahoney! lol. you are going to frighten the children!

[ edit: seeing this staring back at me, it seems a bit cold, dark lol energy somehow. Urgh.

I know Pratik a bit, and I believe myself to be safe in assuming his verbal gesture to be understood as hyperbole in service of satire; let’s celebrate the horror as an achievement. And I also trust that if I am mistaken in this assumption I will be speedily disabused of it, perhaps directly.

Reminds me of a routine by Kyle Kinane (a pro funny person) where he related being disappointed during a London visit by Jack the Rippers low body-count. Five? An hour for five? We got someone in the US killing five people right now! ]

@benx I’m getting a little out of sync with your backs to my forths (or is it the other way around?) and I’m sounding a bit more aggro than needed, considering I am safely in a room sitting in front of a piece of glass with a keyboard.

I do want to comment on your last...but I’ll wait a bit...

And I respect very much your patience and tenacity to have stuck with it this long.

@benx I can’t believe you and so many others have such a hard time understanding this.

"puzzled as to why you might not be aware of the differences"

You are judging me based on nothing but your notions of who I might be and a few hundred lines of text. It is repugnant.

You have no idea who I am, not my race (bullshit concepts can have limited utility), not my gender, nor my gender expression, not my age, or nationality, or ethnic heritage, or education. None of it. Maybe a cursory web search to validate your opinion. You read my blog. That’s enough, surely. I say all kinds of odd things, shouldn’t be too difficult to deliver a little embarrassment bonbon to your hungry acolytes. "Can you believe he said this....!!"

You are diminishing everyones experience by saying things like this:

"...I can think of so many examples of how everyday life is harder for women and people of colour..."

Harder than your life? Harder than mine? There is way too much variability in the human experience for this urgent generalization horse-shit to hold any water except in the most refined and well ventilated salons. Look at us helping the savages.

Most have probably written me off long before this post, and probably before this paragraph, and as much as I hate to appear thirsty to get my street cred morality passport stamped by impatient whiny self-appointed protectors of the borders of truth, I can say the following:

Because of the particular facts of who I am, the physical truth of my existence, and the sort of activities I’ve gotten into over the years, I have seen both sides of these equations, in real actual in this moment right fucking now situations, and it is ugly all around. Racism, sexism, ageism, gender-ism, nationalism, all of it. It all corrupts outward and eventually produces threats of violence and then actual violence. They are the kind of ideas that consume all the thought around them.

And they all, without exception, stem from the misuse of language, whether through ineptitude or malice.

And that’s why I’m such a c_nt about it.

@HLGEM Please have something to say before letting your fingers wiggle like that. Who or what is smarter by some distance? Who is the sad man? Don’t talk in riddles please.

So far your contrib is a picture of a sticker, to complain about history, and to suggest a solution to our problems would be exchanging oppression costumes.

Stop. Think.