E-PWND: the new york times gets schooled.

(I've completely lost count of my reading responses. It's the one about the NYTimes and the Dating a Banker Anonymous group.)

When I first read about the NYTimes getting punk'd I nearly did a spittake. I found it hilarious that with things like blogs coming into prominence, even a company as vast as NYT was failing to watch their sources closely and double and triple check their authenticity. With media sources jumping at the first story they get they tend to skip the whole vetting process that used to go on.

This is the double edged media sword of blogging.

As much as I love and advocate for the blogosphere I also understand that it's very difficult to keep readership when the newscycle is going 24 hours a day 8 days a week (when you use that much caffeine a mystical 8th day appears in the haze of all that sleeplessness). This causes three things to happen.

1. sourcing get's dodgy- with less time people tend to vet their sources less and their reliability can be shattered horribly if their source turns out to be a complete liar. It's a gamble: if you win you break a huge story and everyone cites you, if you lose your credibility is gone and your readership is gone with it.
2. people go for the sensational- it's something that happens in all of life. In the game of blogging and reporting people are presented with a choice between the safe and consistent which can keep them going at a relatively low level for a long period of time or they can shoot for sensational and hope they make it big. It's like the difference between lighting a long burning fire or a short fused firecracker. With the long burning fire you get a little light for a long time but with a firecracker you can either get a spectacularly bright display that will get a lot of attention all at once or it can backfire and end rather horribly.

I thought it was interesting that while the NYT had the first problem the women of "DABA" had the second. The women were willing to go for broke and misrepresent their purpose in order to get a media boost. It seems to have paid off but with more negative backlash than they were expecting, I reckon. As for the poor NYT, they were expecting to be able to do this article with genuine interest and excitement but have come out of it looking like fools. I think it's probably worse that people pity them rather than just being mad at them.

If a blog want's to make it as a big blog it needs to maintain its credibility by ensuring legitimate sourcing. In the world of information the stakes are getting continually higher. Rule one of serious blogging or journalism or even argument says always make sure your sources are strong enough to back you up.

When "Sorry" isn't nearly enough: a reading response

(reading response to Baghdad Burning readings)

I feel like a horrible person for wanting to say that I viewed the lives of most Iraqis as less advanced than the average American. I wanted to believe that the tiniest bit of good had come out of the US presence. In reading

I think that's why blogs like Riverbend's are so crucial. So many people assume so many things. We let the Mainstream Media (known as the MSM in some blog circles) tell us what to think and give us hand picked facts. As much as I <3 href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/">Rachel Maddow I know that she has editorial control over the facts and quotes being used.

That's the magic of the internet. suddenly people are able to go to the original sources, to see the tables and studies, to read the documents, and to draw their own conclusions from them. We are able to read accounts from people on the ground so we can gain new perspectives. We can see what it's like for a regular Iraqi woman but they're not the only people trying to survive. I think the flipside of this blog is something like "My War: Killing Time in Iraq" which is the war from an Army grunt's point of view.


I have a friend on the ground in Iraq right now. Some thirty miles outside of Baghdad he works his ass off every day and I'm proud of him for having the balls to willingly sign up to try to make things better in Iraq, his honest intent in joining. I'm not conservative but I have a problem with people who blame the guys on the ground just trying to stay alive.

I'm sorry that things are the way they are. I'm genuinely sorry to all parties who are suffering for it, the people of Iraq, the soldiers who have been wounded, the soldiers who are serving multiple tours, the people who have died on both sides of the conflict. I'm sorry that war has gone the way it has. I'm sorry that we invaded for empty lies. I'm sorry that we've started to build a wall to divide the city. I'm genuinely sorry for all of this but I can't help feeling that someone, somewhere in Iraq is better for Saddam not being in power.

That's why blogs like this are important: we are forced to view the war as not just two nebulous entities fighting in a way only visible on paper but as a person to person conflict. These are real people who are fighting for their lives. The world needs to realize that. The army isn't just GI Joes in straight lines firing their guns with no emotion or remorse at generic stereotypical Iraqi citizens dressed in traditional arab garb, toting rocket launchers. We need to stop missing the human element.



Stay safe Eric. I owe you a beer when you get home and you'd damn well better make it back to drink it with me.

Susan Boyle, the average person, and media cynicism: A blog response

I find it mildly amusing that I'm responding to a blog post from a blog in our class.
Liz posted on her blog, Women with Pants, about YouTube sensation Susan Boyle and her famous Britan's Got Talent audition.

I was planning on commenting directly on her blog but as I was writing it began to get out of hand and I decided to give my response it's own post over here on my blog.


I know we all enjoy the schadenfreude of watching Simon Cowell rip a less than amazing contestant but Piers Morgan can be just as horrible if not worse than Simon. I think that she should be so admired for having such courage and resolve in the face of such ugly cynicism.

Auditions are brutal no matter who you are and the fact that we enjoy the public humiliation of those who aren't wildy successful is somewhat sickening. I've worked in theatre and everyone willing to stand up on the stage and audition is braver than me. I have done some acting in high school but I never had the courage to audition for anything.

I genuinely wish the media would leave her alone in some ways. She strikes me as a particularly simple and practical woman. It drives me nuts that the media is pulling in every direction and wants more from her. They want the next level of awesome or awful. I dread that with so much exposure to the media people will start feeling more comfortable lobbing harsh criticism and outright insult at her.

What is it about our society that we require more and more?

What is it about us that we like The Starry Night better if someone takes a print, punches holes in the sky portion of the painting, and then backlights it so it's like a carnival! (I have seen it but I couldn't find it on the internet)
WTF?!

Why are we not content to just enjoy that people are generally remarkable whether we expect them to be or not and why are we only happy when they are remarkable in very specific ways?



I find it somewhat ironic that she chose to sing "I Dreamed a Dream". To be honest, it was the strongest I've ever heard it sung.

ManPants: the project that ate my life

So I finished my project about spending a day dressed as a man. Holy Cheese it took me over 10 hours to finish editing the video and I did a pretty shoddy job of it and then wrote one of the worst papers I've ever written. It was one of those wow-this-doesn't-make-a-lot-of-sense-but-I-don't-have-time papers. Awesome.

Here's hoping that 20% of my grade didn't just vanish into nothing.

To be honest the project became half for my soc class and half for this class looking at gender and how it's constructed and how it relates to me. It was incredibly important to me to take it seriously and give it everything I could.

Interestingly my parents and my sister literally laughed at me and my efforts and refused to recognize that this was personally emotionally significant for me. As a result I'm still mad at them and they're confused and annoyed. This should be fun.

In case you're wondering I'm very aware that I didn't manage to pass and I look really bizarre in the photo.

I decided to prepare it in the form of a video diary because I can get my thoughts out much faster that way. I was annoyed that youtube made me split it into two parts because of the length. It essentially comes out to 17 minutes of gender based navel gazing but whatever.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you "ManPants: A Day as a Dude"!!

This just in:

My life has continued to explode even harder.

Turns out I have a test this morning in my govt 110 class on top of my papers in my soc 348 and govt 300 classes plus the major project in my 348 class. (At least I saved my major f*ckup until the last leg this year.)

still scrambling. More details at ten.

Violence and activism...

Reading response for week...5?

When reading "Threatened into Silence" I was particularly shocked by the graphic nature of the violence threatened. I always forget how astoundingly violent the world of activism can be especially in the age of Web 2.0 which allows for almost complete anonymity.

I commend Kim for her absolute bravery in the face of what can honestly be called terrorism. I appreciate that the web allows for people who are scared to take a vocal stand. It provides a place for people who are still processing to continue that process in a more vocal way without direct confrontation. Sadly it also allows cowards and seriously disturbed people to entertain violent fantasies.

I know what it's like to have anonymous individuals threaten sexual assault on you. I've worked in two different customer service call centers and there was one particular experience that emotionally scarred me. It involved a customer using my own name in a sexual manner and my not being allowed to hang up on him so I had to listen to him. It felt like I was sexually assaulted, verbally. My superiors did nothing. That was the last call I took.

In so many cases this verbal or written semi-anonymous abuse is tolerated because it "isn't real." As a survivor of verbal and psychological abuse by a teacher I will vouch that words are as real as actions if repeated enough. My teacher never touched me but I still have scars from the things that were said.

I'm so angry that a tool, a resource as wonderful as the web can be used as a place of hatred and violence. I think there is so much work that can be done to improve the emotional safety of the web and the security of personal information.

Until these things are fixed I think that bloggers like Kim who persist despite the threats and hatred are to be recognized as women of great strength.

I'll happily admit that I'm a huge weenie and would have bailed long ago were I in her place.

Anonymous Bosch: blogging, gender, and my mom.

*a side note: my post on the readings won't be up until at least mid-morning due to my life exploding like a marshmallow in a microwave*

It was an ordinary weekend until I found this video on feministing. It's a documentary about three biological females who identify as genderqueer and their struggles in life. It may seem like no big deal but I remembered seeing part of this documentary with my mom when it first came on LOGO a few years ago.

My mom is great. She's loving and supportive and loves the gay community. When we were watching this documentary together she kept asking me if I was going to end up getting a sex change and that she didn't know if she could handle that. I said I wasn't and I wouldn't. Then I left the room and didn't finish watching the documentary.

This weekend I finished it and now I'm freaking out.

My mom said she read my blog post about my hair and was worried I was going to get a sex change. I told her not to read my blog because it's very personal. If I talk about something personal on my blog chances are I don't want to talk about it in person. Example: my gender identity. Because this is so personal if she's reading it and asking me about it in person I feel angry and betrayed. This is like my journal.

Odds are you haven't met me. You don't have any established ideas about who I am and what I should be. You have no real choice but to accept me as I am or move on. If you make me uncomfortable I can delete your comment or go to a different page or turn off my computer. You aren't going to grill me during a family dinner about the odds of me having male chest reconstruction surgery.


I'm not ready to say anything verbally. I'm just not. It's a coping mechanism: if I don't say it out loud it isn't real. I'm not ready for it to be real. I want to be left alone to sort this one out. This is personal. This is not a family matter.

Seeing that documentary just reminded me about all the stuff with my gender and my mom and the ideas of privacy in a world as public as the internet.

One of the biggest reasons the internet is great for spreading ideas and activism is that it's safe. There is no risk of someone throwing rocks at you or recognizing you from work and threatening to tell someone that you have beliefs others may not agree with. The anonymity of the net allows people to safely be who they really want to be.

Right now I need that.

So Mom, if you're reading this, please stop. Everything I write here is mine. My life, not yours. If it's important enough I will tell you when I'm ready. Right now I'm not ready.




Why is my gender suddenly an epic issue?
I'm gearing up for a major project in my Contemporary Sexualities class. I'm spending a day dressed as a guy.

Holy.Frak.

I'm both psyched and utterly terrified mostly because tomorrow I will not only be observing how the world treats me I will also be observing how I feel about myself presenting a masculine gender. The scary part? I might like it. I might hate it and never want to do it again but I don't know yet. The whole ordeal makes me feel as though I don't know myself. My little box I've lived in for my whole life could potentially be blown to bits. In the words of Stewie Griffin of Family Guy, "I don't like change!!" (I know Family Guy is horrible on a million levels but it makes me laugh and I don't feel like analyzing it right now.)






I'll let you know how it goes.

Wish me luck. I could use some moral support right about now.

Frak YOU Amazon.com!!

So apparently Amazon.com managed to drop it's LGBT books from the ranked lists as they are now classified as "Adult Material". WTF!?

This post from the blog Jezebel possibly sums up the outrage of the community the best. It includes a list of the books stripped of rankings and those allowed to keep them. It's slightly mind blowing.

All Things Digital is suggesting that what Amazon did was an accident but the #Amazonfail hashtag on twitter would indicate that it's a little late. Over the course of a weekend an entire movement has started and spread to thousands of people on the internet. Where does Amazon base its entire business? Online. Not only does Amazon now have a problem with people mobilizing on the net pushing for boycotts and demanding an apology, Amazon itself is remaining very quiet about the whole ordeal. Bad Move.

The new consumer has every peice of information at their fingertips. Our main source of information is not a library; it's an opensource encylopedia that is both free and constantly updated and sourced. We are able to track packages from the minute we place the order to the minute they arrive at our door. We want to know what's going on and if we don't then we want a reason. Keeping quiet about something this big could potentially cost Amazon a noticeable amount of business.


This whole thing pisses me off supremely because I just ordered three books from them: My Gender Workbook, GenderQueer, and Nobody Passes. I have a huge project for my Contemporary Sexualities class due on Thursday so I'm scrambling to get the last few pieces lined up. My ducks are rarely in a row; I'm lucky if my ducks stay in the same vicinity. So I ordered these books for my project and now I find out that in doing so I'm supporting a company that is undermining the validity of the LGBT community.

What does it say about our society that a story concerning corporate discrimination against an entire community gets broken on twitter?



Side Note: I discovered that it is possible to set bread on fire using only a toaster oven and a lack of understanding of said toaster oven. On the plus side I know that my smoke alarms work. Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow I am not.



(In case your wondering this is what "frak" means.)

Precious in the sight of the Lord

I went to check my facebook and for the first time in what feels like years I saw a photo of my grandmother in hospice. She's smiling and holding her sister's face, saying goodbye.

It's strange but I can't really explain how much it hurts to remember she's gone.


In my eyes she's the greatest feminist that has ever lived and I miss her.

Both my parents were victims of abuse and very much had a sense of victim mentality about them. They did their best but when I was verbally and psychologically abused by a teacher they didn't really know how to deal with me. One of the only examples in my life of someone who refused to be a victim, someone who was alway strong, was my grandmother.

When she was 17 she was told that because of problems with her reproductive system she would be unable to have children. She had four.

After a medical procedure she was told she couldn't finish high school because her school in El Paso had stairs and she couldn't use them. She transferred to Las Cruces Union High School and supported herself as a switchboard operator and lived in a boarding house.

After raising her four children she decided she wanted to become a nurse and did it. She went on to work as a nurse at Memorial Medical Center for years.

She spent much of her life traveling and didn't stop after turning 70. She spent a few summers working in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks holding her own the whole time.

She lived in her own home taking care of herself right up to 6 months before she passed. She was incapacitated by Wegener's Granulomatosis, an auto-immune disease whose treatment would have killed her faster than the disease. But even to the last she called the shots, she chose to end dialysis in June of 2007.

I was the only person in the room when she passed and those moments holding her hand are still the most important in my life. Still the hardest goodbye of all.


I suppose the most difficult part is trying to relate to someone else why someone is so important to you, why you can't let this one go. I'll be honest; it hurts less over time but the pain associated with the memories always lingers.

Seeing that photo of her hurt a lot more than I expected it to. It doesn't help that it's Easter Weekend.
Happy Easter, Wink. I still miss you.

Genderfork: a blog response

One of the things I enjoy most in the world is peoplewatching. I like imagining myself as an outside observer in the world like Jane Goodall among the chimps or Birute Galdikas among the orangutans, perched with a notebook and pencil. I tend to peoplewatch with an unnerving intensity because I often do not understand how I am "supposed to act" and I never have. I often watch to see how other people interact. I'll try to discern patterns of behavior and understand them. I suppose it's quirks like this that cause my love of more abstract blogs like Genderfork.

Genderfork is mostly photos including images of androgyny and profiles of people who defy gender norms in some way but it also includes quotes from commenters and contributors. These quotes are my favorite parts because they are often thoughtful, thought provoking, insightful and in some ways beautiful. When I found the following quote I nearly cried because I felt suddenly less alone in my somewhat scary and liberating realizations about gender. I think people often underestimate the comfort provided by gender roles.

The small question at the bottom of the quote pushes people to start interacting and asking questions. If you hadn't guessed by now, I firmly believe that opening up a dialogue is one of the best ways we can improve our world in all ways.

Teh Intarwebz, they are awesome: a reading response

If I'm numbering correctly this should be week 4 in reading responses.

I will not lie; I had to google the word "foment" to find out exactly what it meant because the image in my mind had more to do with coffee than activism.

In thinking about spaces used to generate and promote activism and participation the first thing that comes to my mind is the internet. The techniques and finer points may vary but the basis of so much social organizing and debate is based on the internet.

I could bore people with the specifics but if you look back at my post Infinity and beyond from March you will see an image which is a graphic representation of the internet as of sometime in 2005. The entire world is connected instantly and with the meteoric rise of Google the information is no longer difficult to access.

Blogs like Feministing, Racialicious, Jack and Jill Politics, and others are able to use the internet to stay on top of information and keep up with their communities. They also have the ability to use seach engines like Google and Yahoo! to draw more readers to them. The way the blog system is built with reciprocal linking, blogrolls, and instant sourcing via hyperlinks is inherently designed to grow.

I don't at all doubt the ability of bloggers and vloggers like Sarah Haskins and Smart Girls at the Party to use the frameworks of Web 2.0 to their advantage.

I will say that many of these people have the Howard Dean campaign to thank for this framework as they were the first to prove that it could be done on a national level. Despite the fact that Dean did not win the primary, his campaign manager Joe Trippi's book The Revolution Will Not be Televised explains how Dean's campaign which was based heavily on web support and participation succeeded in proving that political challenges could be brought directly to the people. Suddenly political organizing and activism was no longer people in high places talking at people it was webmasters and bloggers talking to and with people.

The same is true of activism. For so long activism was something that lobbyists did: someone set the agenda and a limited group of people were sent out to do something about it. Feedback was complicated, difficult, and extremely limited. When web 2.0 concepts were introduced the model was changed so that people are now often given direct links to contact people in places of power and let their opinions be known.

Getting something done is generally a question of knowing how to properly disseminate your information. Should you use Twitter or Facebook or a more complex tagging system for your blog?

In working on the obama campaign I watch some of the most amazing things happen using Web and communication resources. Canvassing and phonebanking organized over the internet. Peopler could print their own lists without ever having to come in to our office. Sometimes organizing can be spontaneous and other times Webmasters and bloggers such as those at Feministing can encourage their audiences to get involved thus spreading a cause far quicker and further than word of mouth or other conventional methods such as chalking a campus or flyering a neighborhood could.

I think that the claims made in the articles are valid. Everyone has a voice and deserves to have that voice heard. Attention needs to be drawn to certain issues. A huge benefit of using the web for organizing is that people are not limited in the content they choose to work with. They are not sending out a topical newsletter that will require all 15 articles to be based around the same things. Each post can be hugely different, organizing efforts can be very specific and targeted. This can, in some ways, streamline the processes surrounding organizing.

This blows my mind

check out twistori. It's based on what people are saying on twitter at any given moment. so amazingly cool. Keep in mind that twitter has roughly 5 million active users from all over the world. It gets pretty random.

http://twistori.com



Just click on one of the words on the left and enjoy.

I love the internet.