Posts by TracyMac
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[in response to Jackie]
Yes, I've been really fortunate that some people who've had that conversation with me have been really skilled at it. And that goes the range from "I can't really handle this right now" to "it's time to get your head out of your arse"....Thinking more, it seems to be a skill I select partners for. Hopefully I'll acquire it myself one day.
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The "ring theory" when I first read about it, felt like a really good codification of stuff that I was trying to implement in my own life. Vent outwards, not inwards.
I fall down majorly when it comes to the advice-giving thing. Unfortunately, my job is about troubleshooting and figuring shit out, so if someone starts talking about a problem to me, no prizes for guessing what my first response is. At least as I get older, I am more aware of how patronising that can be. It's an ongoing "learning experience", let's just say.
Another aspect, though, is my own personal limits. If someone seems to be stuck in constant rut of Problem X, from the fairly routine through to the quite serious, and my own reserves are low, there very much is a limit to how much I can listen to someone's tale of woe without feeling overburdened myself. I think one of the mechanisms of advice-giving - for me at my weaker times, and kind of independent of the troubleshooting tendency - is that if my empathy circuits are overloaded, advice-giving can be a means of trying to show that I care, even if I can't give them what it is they're really asking for.
While I actually know it's not productive, the conundrum of gracefully saying to someone who is seriously and genuinely struggling, "look, I actually have my own [less serious, perhaps] crap to contend with, and I feel like more and more is being dumped on me by you right now", while indicating that I actually still fundamentally care, is not one I've solved yet. Advice welcome. Heh.
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Hard News: Friday Music: An Outstanding Evening, in reply to Martin Brown,
No, because you don't pronounce those as "us" and "uke". You speak the individual letters, therefore "UK" and "US" are still appropriate. And even that's comparatively recent usage. Remember when it was U.S.A.?
All caps these days pretty much implies each letter is pronounced separately. And yes, of course there are variations to the "rule". It's English after all, and names for things, so if you want to style yourself as MARTIN, pronounced "Martin", fine by me. :-)
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Hebe,
Because I’ve got all day.
All weekend too.
Damnit, late to the party again. *Stands forlornly with scones, crochet hooks, rope and carabiners*
Whelp, since I'm in a slightly different timezone, I can help cover the night shift.
Signed,
A Woman
(Who has read Dworkin, but who really does prefer others, for feminist writers of the Second Wave. But who appreciates her role in constructing ideas and food for thought (to argue against, mostly, but at least from knowledge)).
PS. I haven't piped up earlier, because my PAS reading has been spotty this week. And to be frank, I don't give a fuck about politicians fucking, unless it's exploitative, hypocritical (i.e. gay fundamentalist pastors fulminating against sodomy) or impedes their ability to do their jobs. I only got halfway thru the original article on the bus this morning, let alone the comments - not so much "invisible" as MIA.
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Hard News: When a riot went on, in reply to Myles Thomas,
Thank god that part of NZ is over.
Oh yeah. Never really got any 80s nostalgia that goes around periodically, except for some (certainly not all or even most) of the music.
This extends to those who get all nostalgic about demos, and the relative lack of people on streets these days - things were so shit in so many ways back then that there was a lot more impetus to get on those streets.
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On another note, regarding the "triggering" thing, I personally find the term one of those slightly wishy-washy words that isn't as helpful as it could be.
Firstly, you can't cover all potential triggers - me, I get triggered when people talk about kids reading under the bed covers. But I think we all accept that there won't be absolute emotional safety in what we read or hear.
What I'd rather is if people just briefly highlighted what topics are mentioned that are of the often-triggering type. And leave out the word "trigger", because it actually adds nothing in that instance.
Also, some things affect us less than others - I don't want to look at graphic pictures of animal abuse, but I might want to read the news story about a sexual assault. The words "trigger warning" alone give no context. Often they are qualified, but then that seems redundant.
So, "Bob Jones opines ignorantly on sexual assault case". "Article on animal cruelty/puppy farming (graphic description, photos)." "News report on child abuse case", Etc etc. That approach works really well, I find.
In that way, it's not relying on some phase that is in most common use in particular corners of the internet (ones I frequent too, as it happens). I'm all about using non-jargon terms (as it still is) when plain English really isn't overly cumbersome in this instance.
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Would this make you "feel" better? - from many women's perspective (and genderqueer/trans men), a man who is not well-known to them may be a potential threat.
What you seem to be doing, in this part of the thread, is confusing an abstract but meaningful perception by most women as a particular animus against you personally (and men as a class). Your perception is pretty much incorrect, and now that 6 of us have told you the same thing, will you now get the message?
Please READ the entire thing about Schroedinger's Rapist. And some comments. The first 50.
And finally, for my particular issue, if you are over 5'8" and weigh more than 90kg, yes, I personally will find YOU threatening. And the bigger you are (not so much if you're lanky), the more threatening I will find you. I can't help that reaction, and if you think I enjoy flinching everytime my boss appears from behind me (he's a lovely bear of a man who I've now known the best part of a decade), you should have another think.
And he also knows full well that I'm "the jumpy type" and somehow manages not to get butthurt about my involuntary reactions to him. Perhaps that attitude could go far with your perceptions of strangers who are NOT in fact accusing you of anything untoward.
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I've never been particularly bothered (or enthused) by EDM, but since its fuckup (in the US) of what they label as "dubstep", I have beef.
I love the original UK dubstep, and sure, genres evolve. But I really wish Skrillex and co had labelled their stuff "EDMstep" or something.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Lilith __,
Co-signed.
As I stated earlier, there are some "alt" therapies out there that work, and are demonstrated to do so in standard studies.
I'm not trying to ram homeopathy down anyone's throat, but it's had the concept of individual constitutions and heritability of some conditions way before genes were discovered, while modern medicine is only belatedly coming around to the realisation there is no silver bullet that will cure everyone with syndrome X.
But due to the problem with consistently proving its efficacy in standard testing (and the la-la underpinning theory), I wouldn't want or endorse it being delivered by the NZ public health system.
What I would appreciate, though, is the "science has all the answers" crowd to refrain from patronising me about my fairly-well-informed health choices. There is room for both antibiotics and rescue remedy in my life, and I am fortunate enough to afford the latter if I choose. Whether I spend that money on a potion or, say, a private counsellor is no-one else's concern.
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(Whoops, in reply to Cecelia, and Deborah got there first).
Osteopathy, for one. There is the more woo-woo branch (some of which works for me, but I'm happy to pay for). The stuff like treatment for the same kind of mobility issues and injuries that you'd send someone to a physio for have been demonstrated in multiple independent studies to also be effective when treated osteopathically. I believe the same goes for chiropractic.Since the heath system already has the concept of funding providers for specific treatment types (you won't get funded for cancer treatment at the physio), I can't see why similar lines can't be drawn for treatments that give repeatable and verifiable results, regardless of some of the underlying theories.
On that basis, I wouldn't expect things like homeopathy or magnet therapy or iridology funded, although I've had good results personally from the first (and think the last is bunk. Yes, irony, I know.)