Signs Taken for Wonders

Green Card!!!

It arrived when I was at ICFA. It is, in fact, green! Apparently I'm supposed to keep it on me at all times. I'm going to ask other immigrants about this, because I don't like taking important, hard-to-replace documents with me to the gym.

Green Card!!!

As I sat down to write this post the following Guardian article popped up in my Facebook feed: Why the Left is Wrong about Immigration .

I read it with interest, obviously. And I was left scratching my head. Maybe it's because I'm in the USA rather than Britain, and I don't know Britain's cultural immigration battles that well. But as an argument I thought it was deeply flawed.

( Read more... )

As an argument against easy immigration, I give this article a C- . Being what Americans would call a "big government" person, I'm for the government exerting careful control over immigration,* but I'm anti-stupidity.

At some point I'm going to post a reflection on my immigration  experience & American politics. But not today.

*P.S. Americans: Why is it that the same people who support small government and free markets tend to be the  ones calling for more government control over the mobility of international laborers -- mobility that's dictated by the supply and demand of the free market?

An unusually sweet and reassuring piece for the Chronicle of Higher Ed. A lot of it rang painfully true for me, particularly the "I felt as if I had no future" part.

Turning 'Plan B' Into a 'Plan A' Life

"Perhaps no one who knows of me as an Oxford editor would think that is the case, but virtually everything in my life since my high-school graduation has been the result of not getting what I really wanted. To think about autobiography or personal history in a historical way, my life's course has been set by moments of contingency—when societal, economic, or familial forces collided with internal forces, usually despair, self-doubt, or personal rejection.

Without detailing what I really wanted, I will just say that I've come to appreciate that being No. 2 or lower on the hierarchy has made me who I am. That person is surely more resilient as a result, and there is extra sweetness in achieving what I have had to work hard to get."

Texan freed after DNA clears him in wife's slaying


It always amazes me, in reading about cases like this one,  how members of the police and procecution can be so set on "being right" that they are willing to ignore or supress evidence of a person's innocence. 

Sure, we all suffer from "I'm never wrong" syndrome. But to put someone in jail for life, or execute them, rather than back down? Sheesh.

So I never mentioned Sady Doyle's George R.R. Martin piece in part because I didn't think it warranted the attention. Doyle clearly wanted to skewer the series. She makes some good points, she makes some funny points, and she also misses the mark.

Alyssa Rosenburg had a thoughtful response. To this I'd add that I have a problem with Doyle's pre-mockery of her respondents, and specifically her portrayal of them as 'nerds upset that she doesn't like their toys.'

For the record, when you begin a blog post with  sentences like "George R.R. Martin is creepy," you are not talking about toys. Last time I checked, Martin was a person.  

The fact that Doyle then uses this "toys" rhetoric to justify deleting critical comments is disturbing. I don't have a lot of respect for the author of an article about rape who  a) objectifies others b) uses this objectification to deny that she is actually talking about Real People and c) silences her critics rather than allowing their voices to be heard.

But reading Doyle's article did make me wish that I could point to a couple scenes of male rape in the GoT books, or in "gritty" high fantasy in general. It's not as though men don't get raped. They *particularly* run the risk of getting raped in war. But it's not a problem society likes to acknowledge in real life or in fiction.

Which brings me to this very interesting article in the Guardian: The Rape of Men.


Not only does male rape happen, but all indicators point to it happening a lot in war. But it's almost never  reported. The reasons for this are steeped in patriarchy's construction of masculine power, and can have consequences that differ from those facing female rape victims.

In short, I think Martin's overdue to address male rape in Westeros. We've had at least one man get sexually tortured and mutilated, but so far male rape hasn't even been threatened.

(Or has it? Those books are so damn long I might have missed something.)