Witches on the Internet: Still Actually Witches, Thanks.

Oh, look. More offline-elitism and “the internet isn’t real life” snobbery.

It seems that occult publisher Scarlet Imprint has fallen prey to this common misconception:

Two Venn diagrams with peach and green circles.  Green is "things that happen on the internet", peach is "things that happen in real life".  The top one, labeled "How people act like it is", shows them only barely overlapping.  The bottom one, labeled "how it actually is", has the green contained entirely as a small part of the peach circle.

The thing is, I don’t actually have an argument against SI’s decision to quit Facebook. My own FB is more of a vestigial limb at this point, left over from the days when it was a student social network and I was a college student, and before the current era of GIVE US ALL YOUR DATA ALL OF IT RIGHT NOW SO THAT WE CAN SELL IT AND ALSO PRIVACY WHAT IS THIS STRANGE CONCEPT OF WHICH YOU SPEAK? I use it as little as is humanly possible, mostly to stay in contact with long-distance family members and to participate in private groups for a few different things, and my profile is damn near barren even to people who have the right permissions to see everything. So I get it. I get feeling like FB is more burden than blessing, and wanting to disentangle yourself from it.  And I don't blame SI in the slightest.

What I don’t get, and am really annoyed at hearing, is this idea of “Real Witches™ shouldn’t use technology because ewww, internet”:

Magicians should be asking themselves very serious questions about how they relate to technology. … We are fortunate to say that many of the best practitioners we know have no online profile, and would suggest that those who are most vocal online should perhaps have their claims taken with a pinch of salt. … We would suggest that your practice would benefit if you get the hell out of it, or at least minimise your exposure to the cognitive load.”

And I would suggest that your practice would benefit if you fellate a pitchfork. But we can’t all expect our asinine requests to be taken seriously, so I won’t hold my breath – and I strongly suggest you don’t hold yours.

If you feel that your personal magical practice would benefit from not spending much or any time on the internet, okay. Do what feels right to you. Do what works best for you, your practice, your gods if you have them. But don’t take that and assume that the same automatically holds true for all witches if they’re Real Witches™, and cast aspersions on those who choose to maintain an active, vocal online presence by implying that they/we are fakes. That doesn’t make you a better or more respectable practitioner. It just makes you a pompous, self-righteous douchebag.

And frankly, if you’re not ALSO taking the claims of witches you meet offline with a grain of salt, I worry for you. A person’s physical presence before you is no guarantor of integrity or truthfulness. In case you were new to this concept, allow me to inform you: people lie sometimes. They do it on the internet, and they do it in person. They have a few more tools to conceal their lies online, in terms of identity and such, but when it comes to claims of magical practice and/or ability, how exactly are you to know any better what a person is being truthful to you about in person, considering we’re largely talking about personal, subjective experiences? You ALWAYS need to independently fact-check people’s claims. You ALWAYS need to run them through your personal bullshit-o-meter.  Being in someone's physical presence doesn't eliminate that common-sense requirement.

I mean, would you take the word of Sarah Lawless less seriously, with her exhaustive photo-documentation and lengthy explanations of her practices, than some fluffy-bunny nitwit in the early stages of their Silver Ravenwolf phase who happens to be standing next to you going on about their love spells?  Just because the fluff is sharing physical space with you, and Sarah is not?  That's some fucked-up criteria there.

See, SI, here's the thing: not all practitioners have access to in-person, offline communities to learn from. Even of those who could find local community, myself included (I live in the Bay Area, CA; there was a witches ball in my small, outskirts-area home town a couple months ago.  I might have to cross a bridge to get to an actual coven or public ritual, but maybe not.), not all of us are capable of social interaction in that setting. Some of us would spend most of our energy and attention at an in-person gathering worrying and stressing about the interaction with other people, and would gain very little in terms of actual experience or knowledge. Not to mention, some of us like having the pre-filtering option of reading someone’s blog or what have you for awhile, to get a feel for what kind of practice they do and what their beliefs are before we decide to invest time and energy into trying to get to know someone.

Is it possible to hit a content-overload point on the internet and sorta fry your brain’s functionality? Sure. But it’s possible to hit content-overload from reading too many books, too. Gods know I’ve done both. And it is exactly as possible to hit the power button on the computer/phone/etc to take a break from the “cognitive load”, as it is to put down a book and do something else for awhile. I don’t exactly do my meditations or spellwork while scrolling through tumblr, you know?*  

But I do learn techniques and get ideas from some truly amazing people who are very vocal on the internet.  Some of it hasn't worked for me.  Some of it has.  Funnily enough, this has happened at about the same rates as stuff I've picked up from books and the odd conversation with people at pagan shops in my area.  Gee, it's almost like the method of knowledge delivery is pretty much irrelevant to its value...

Oh, and Scarlet Imprint: look up urban witches.  If witches can work with steel and concrete as well as grass and trees, why the fuck would electricity and the internet be some kind of impediment?  

*Though now I'm wondering about that.  If you could find a certain type of blog, and use the flow of images as you scroll through as a sort of active meditation?  Hmm.

I Was Horribly, Horribly Wrong

Last year I wrote a post about a truly awful eyesore of a "breast cancer awareness" (take a shot) vendor with shirts like "I [heart] motorboating" and "Nice Jugs!" and "Boobies Rock!", about how shitty it is to peddle a movement about CANCER as being about the sexayness of the potentially-cancerous body part in a way that completely dehumanizes and erases the PERSON suffering from the deadly disease.

I thought, after that kiosk and those shirts, that the "LOL BOOBIEZ" model of breast cancer "awareness" (take a shot) could sink no lower.

A screencap of PornHub, a site that does what it says on the tin,  titled "Help Pornhub support breast cancer research simply by watching videos!" and going on to explain that because "We all love boobs" they'll donate 1 cent for every 30 videos viewed from their "big-tit" and "small-tit" categories to an unspecified breast cancer research charity.  So that "While you're enjoying the boobs, you'll also be helping to Save the Boobs!"

I have never been so wrong in my life.

@JerryBrownGov Vetoes Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

While Gov. Brown deserves some praise for signing a first-of-its-kind bill to ban pray-away-the-gay "therapy" for minors*, and signing a bill to allow young undocumented immigrants to obtain CA driver's licenses, he also deserves a massive whack upside the head for his decision to veto AB889, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Protip: You can't claim that the (overwhelmingly brown and female) workers of an industry deserve protections - and we're talking basic shit like guaranteed meal breaks, rest periods for live-in caretakers, and overtime pay - but turn around and veto it because it might cost more.  Yes, it will.  Duh.  That has always been how worker protections are.  But, see, the principle here is that people's safety and basic needs and ability to do their job without abuses are more important than the almighty dollar.  Just to clear that up for you, since you seemed to be confused.

It's couched in claims of concern for the poor and elderly who might have to pay more and thus not be able to afford caretaker support.  This is a legitimate concern.  You know how to address that, though?  Social support programs to make up the difference.  Fuck, go right to single-payer healthcare and you'll skip a lot of the trouble with that in the first place.  You know how not to address it?  By refusing to institute basic protections for the workers.  Don't take it out on them.  They deserve better.

He also pulls a line straight out of the anti-union-big-business playbook by saying that requiring such protections might mean there are fewer jobs overall because employers are having to pay more.  Gee, that sounds an awful lot like the arguments businesses have used against every union and every labor law ever - "We can't pay healthcare as well as wages, we'll go bankrupt and you'll all lose your jobs!"  "We can't afford to offer paid time off, it'll raise our costs and we'll have to lay people off to make ends meet!" etc. - and it's just as shitty coming from a supposed Democrat who just vetoed a worker protection bill as it is coming from private-sector PR.

It's especially shitty when it comes from a supposed Democrat who also vetoed two bills that would have instituted more stringent worker protections for agricultural workers by requiring that employers provide water and shade to prevent heat-related illnesses and deaths, basically by saying "yeah but this will actually lead to holding agribusinesses accountable in court (rather than just issuing them citations that are literally planned for in the company's accounting structure), and we don't like that."

But as was pointed out on tumblr, Brown knows what he's doing.  These bills overwhelmingly affect undocumented and migrant workers.  Who can't vote.  So he bolsters his cred with businesses (the California Chamber of Commerce opposed all three bills, gee I wonder why?) without losing much in actual votes come election time.

Smart politics.  Shitty decisions.

*Which I will have way more on tomorrow, because Liberty Counsel is already threatening to sue, and their histrionics are both predictable as fuck and hilarious.

Is it Christmas already? Judge rejects challenges to contraception mandate - HARD.

Go read this.  No, seriously.  Go read it.

Oh, fine.  For those not inclined to click through, Judge Carol Jackson of a federal district court in Missouri basically told anti-contraception assholes where to shove it.  She stated flat-out that the ACA's contraception mandate does not infringe on religious freedom, period the end:

… [T]he health care plan will offend plaintiffs’ religious beliefs only if an OIH employee (or covered family member) makes an independent decision to use the plan to cover counseling related to or the purchase of contraceptives. Already, OIH and Frank O’Brien pay salaries to their employees---money the employees may use to purchase contraceptives or to contribute to a religious organization. By comparison, the contribution to a health care plan has no more than a de minimus impact on the plaintiff’s religious beliefs than paying salaries and other benefits to employees.

Is it just me, or is there an implied "...so shut the fuck up already" at the end of that paragraph?

And it goes on from there, rejecting every single argument they put forth, from the "defining a religious exemption means the government is excessively entangled in deciding what's religion and what isn't therefore it's establishment of state religion" claim (??? So they're fine with the IRS dropping all tax-exempt statuses for religious organizations, right?  Because there has to be a definition somewhere for those, too.) to the "compelled subsidized speech" claim (just because someone, at some point of the process, uses words to facilitate something happening doesn't make the thing happening fall into the category of 'speech'), and basically said "Yes, you *can* claim that the regulation was "arbitrary and capricious", but you're flat the fuck wrong, so go away."

I'm sure it will be appealed, etc., but this is a fantastic start to work from.  Thank you, Judge Jackson, for shutting down their collective temper tantrum so thoroughly from the word 'go'.

You know your priorities are fucked-up when...

...You decide that it's important to participate in civil disobedience and invite arrests over people's healthcare plans - WHICH THEY PAY INTO, THIS IS NOT FREE STUFF WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE - covering birth control, when no major Christian political group has had civil disobedience actions over things like the gutting of the social safety net (Jesus was pretty big on that whole "take care of those in need" thing, IIRC), or unofficial wars and drone strikes (what was that whole "Thou shalt not kill" thing, again?).

...You then invoke the legacy of Dr. King to justify your bullshit: "Just as MLK was arrested for the rights of his fellow men, so we will stand."  Motherfucker, NO.  You are "standing" for the wholly-imagined "right" to control the bodies and healthcare access of other people.  You are not standing for any kind of actual rights or freedom from oppression.  How dare you try to link yourselves to him, as if you had anything in common?

...and you refer to your protest as "[laying] down our lives and our freedom so that future generations will have that freedom, and the liberty to practice their faith."  Your lives are in no danger, you grandstanding shitheads.  If you want to talk about people who are laying down their lives, where are your protests and civil disobedience about the shitty way this country treats veterans, the crap pay active-duty soldiers get that leaves many of them ON FUCKING FOOD STAMPS, the jobs bill specifically to help vets find work after they leave the military that Republicans shot down?

So, ActsFive29, as you begin your publicity stunt this evening, just remember: you are a terrible pack of lying liars who lie, and I'm pretty sure Jesus would be pissed at you for pretending this is what he wanted.

(Btw, does anyone know the source for their claim that they're having to pay a "$1 monthly abortion surcharge"?  Where the fuck are they getting that idea?  I am seriously confused.  I mean I know they're talking out their collective ass as to what the mandate entails anyway - kids, it has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU PERSONALLY, this is about the insurance companies and what they are required to cover as part of any plan they offer -  but this is a new note of batshittery I haven't yet seen, so I'm wondering where it came from.)

You Don't *Haaaave* To...

Ozz and I have a running joke, when one of us wants to playfully guilt the other into something.  I'll be up and about doing stuff, and he'll ask me to get him a soda, for example.  I'll get mock-exasperated with him, like "Oh, what, it's not enough that I [whatever I was doing at the time], now I have to get you your beverages, too?!"  And he gives me puppy-dog eyes and says "Well, you don't *haaaave* to..." and I roll my eyes and laugh and get him his stupid drink.

And I feel like that's sort of what this asshole is doing, only not cute or funny or playful at all, but spiteful and partisan and leveraging the full power of Catholic Guilt™ for political ends.  You don't *haaaave* to vote Republican...but you'll probably go to hell if you don't.

Because it's apparently far more important to reject policies addressing issues Jesus never saw fit to talk about, like abortion and teh gayz, in a way the Church dislikes, than to reject policies that specifically contradict Jesus' actual message of caring for the poor and helping those in need.

Cool story, bro.

(I hope someone brings action against him for using the power of the pulpit to tell people how to vote, in direct contravention of IRS rules about church tax exemptions.  He says "I'm not telling you how to vote," several times, but there's that whole letter of the law versus spirit of the law thing, and a child could tell that his "I'm not telling you how to vote" schtick is nothing more than a CYA.)

PSA: On "Fluffy"

Do not EVER

EVER

EVER

FUCKING EVER

refer to fat people as "fluffy".

Fluffy is a thing that small poofly dogs and kittens and ducklings are.  

It is sometimes a thing that a person's hair might be, depending on the humidity.

It is NOT

a fucking descriptor

for my goddamn body.

It makes it sound like you think my fat is made of whipped cream or something equally stupid.

And maybe it's just me?

But it's the sort of descriptor that inherently casts fat as negative

by awkwardly being "cutesy" dancing around it

And also it implies

(and again this could just be me)

that my fat is just the "fluff" surrounding my actual body.

Like it's pillow stuffing filling up my skin

and if you took it out I would be skinny.  Like it's that easy.

Newsflash: my body is fucking fat.  Fat is the state of my physical being.  Fat is not this separate thing that rides around with me.  It is part of me.  There is no skinny girl inside me trying to get out.  There is just me.  And I will fucking end you if you imply otherwise.  I have no patience for that shit.

So just be aware that violating the terms of this PSA in my presence will result in immediate evisceration.

Verbal if you're out of reach.

But if you're within reach, I make no promises.

Have a nice day.

Happy Labor Day (to the upper-middle class white-collar employees who ended up benefiting from the labor movement)

This image crossed my Tumblr dash yesterday, and I reblogged it, because I appreciate the sentiment.

A vintage black-and-white image of a labor rally with a large banner reading "Workers of the world unite"; superimposed text reads "This long holiday weekend has been brought to you by the blood, sweat, and tears of the labor movement."

A bit later, I saw a notification that someone had reblogged it from me, adding their own comment:

hahaha i have to work every fucking day of it

Which reminded me of the reason I generally have stopped wishing retail and service employees with whom I interact "have a good weekend" or variants thereof at the end of our interaction.  Because I remember when I worked retail, and I got one weekend off a month (maybe; LB was big on the belief that the managers, in addition to knowing the store operations stuff, were also the top salespeople and should always be present at high-traffic times, so we had to work most weekends), and well-meaning 9-to-5ers would cheerfully wish me a nice weekend as I handed them their receipt on Friday afternoon.  And I'd smile and return the pleasantry, of course, because that's what you do, but I was always thinking, "Sure, it's a nice weekend for you.  It's just two more workdays for me."

And it occurred to me that there's a lot to be said about how, decades after the main body of the labor movement made the major gains that it did - 40-hour weeks, minimum wage, paid holidays and vacation, etc - the bulk of those rights are going to the well-off white-collar employees, while the low-wage workers who actually formed the original labor rights movement have seen those protections eroded or denied outright.

Anecdotally: about a week or two into working at my current job (I'm the admin/receptionist for a general contractor's office), my boss stopped by my desk and said "Remember to take your breaks, okay?  I see you staying at your desk most of the day, you need to get out more."  I laughed and replied, "Thanks, I will - but honestly, my last job was retail.  This whole job feels like a break to me - I'm getting to sit down for 90% of it!"

At LB, I was one of a dozen part-time employees, with incredibly inconsistent scheduling - I was guaranteed 20-35 hours because I was a manager; the regular associates could get anywhere from 2-12 hours in a week, but rarely more than 15.  And nobody had a consistent schedule of days/times/shifts, it changed every week.  I had no access to health insurance, no paid time off, no sick days or vacations.  Lunches were 30 minutes exactly, and you were responsible for remembering to take your 15-minute breaks and clearing it with the manager on duty (and good luck getting the okay for that if it was busy on the floor).  I made a couple bucks over minimum wage and considered myself lucky for that.  And yes, I was required to work all holidays, including this one.

At Stq, I work 8-5, Monday-Friday.  I will have a good health care plan, with the premium covered 100% for me and 75% for any dependents - meaning I won't have to pay a dime out of my paycheck for it.  I'll accrue 3 hours of PTO per week, which will be retroactive to my beginning to work there (I started as a temp and we're playing paperwork games with getting me transitioned to perm, so I don't have these benefits yet, but it's when, not if).  Lunch is an hour, taken whenever I feel like it so long as I let someone know I'm leaving so they'll know to pick up the phone, nobody will care if I come back a bit late (if they even notice at all), and as I mentioned, my boss will actually remind me to take breaks and get out of the office from time to time.  I'm making about $4 over minimum as a temp, and my wage as a permanent employee will be about 2x minimum wage.  And I'm getting to spend today sitting on my ass in my pajamas fucking around on the internet and writing blog posts about it.

Does that seem fair to you?

So if you want to thank the labor movement for the holiday we some of us are having today, get involved.  Take note of bills eroding worker protections - not just big brouhahas like Wisconsin, but smaller things on the local level, too - and get involved in the fight against them if you can.  Support unions.  It's a fairly unpopular opinion to take in conversations a lot of the time, but it's necessary to push back against the right-wing framing of Those Damn Unions Making Businesses Go Broke (so shut up and let us abuse the workers for better profit margins).  Google around, find a local worker's rights org, and see what they need and what issues they're working on - the AFL-CIO might have something local, and it's a good place to start.

And if anybody has more or better ideas for getting involved, by all means, that's what comments are for!

Today in No Fucking Shit, Captain Obvious

As DIY Abortions Rise, So Does Guesswork and Failure

More women are heading to Mexico to buy abortion-inducing drugs, the New York Times reports, and it's opening them up to failed terminations and other dangers. ... Abortion-rights advocates are concerned that a lack of awareness about clinical options in the United States — as well as a lack of funds — could lead more women to go underground and risk their health in this way.

Gee, it's not like we've been fucking saying this FOR YEARS NOW or anything.  No, this is a totally unforeseen development!  Utterly unexpected!  Shocking!  Provocative!  Unbelievable!  ...whoops, sarcasm reserve ran out.  Been using a lot of it up on Tumblr lately, sorry.

On The Third Attempt to Pass Egg-as-Person Legislation in Colorado, Former Supporters Shy Away

[T]he political ramifications of the personhood amendment should continue to be a key part of the coverage. The amendment, which would ban all abortions and some common forms of birth control, is clearly of interest to women, in particular, and women are a key voters in Colorado elections.

You mean to tell me 51% of the population are a key voting bloc in elections?  My god, will the revelations never end?  Fetch me pearls to clutch and a fainting couch on which to delicately fall!

 My kingdom for a liberal media that's actually liberal and doesn't act like these things called "women" are mysterious creatures whose issues can only be observed from afar.  >.<

Why Do We Celebrate This?

A few years ago, when I was still living out in Tennessee, I brought my first girlfriend home to visit family for the holidays.  She had never been to NorCal before.  The architecture here tends to be heavily Spanish-villa/mission influenced; I remember as we were driving somewhere, and we were talking about a particularly spectacular example of it (a country club out in Napa, IIRC), she got quiet for a moment, then asked, "Why?"

"Why what?" I replied.

"The mission-style architecture.  Why is that still such a thing?  Why model buildings after a period of colonization, where the purpose of the original buildings you're inspired by was to forcibly take over and convert the Native populations?"

I was at a loss.  "Because it's our history?" I offered, knowing what a weak excuse that was.

That conversation was brought to mind today by this post over on Calitics, a California-specific politics blog where I get most of my local- and state-level political news.  Fort Ross, an old Russian outpost and historic site on the northern coast of California that was one of the first European settlements on the west coast, turned 200 yesterday.  The post was a simple enough quick-recap of the history of it and a "happy birthday", but it got me wondering.

Why do we celebrate this?

Especially since the subhead was about it being one of the first European settlements in the area, like that was the salient point and major accomplishment we were celebrating?

What we're "celebrating" is a new phase in the invasion and colonization of the Americas.  An event which ended in the deaths of many, and the near or total obliteration of hundreds of unique cultures, simply because they were here first and white people wanted the land for them(our)selves, and which has left a legacy of racism, poverty, and appropriation that continues today.

Do we have these bicentennials (or really, far-more-centennials) for enduring Native settlements?  LOLno.  Both because most were destroyed by colonizers and the people forcibly moved away, and because even if they hadn't been this wouldn't be a priority for the general public.

And that disparity in and of itself should tell you that this is not the innocuous "yay history" it seems at first glance.

We should not be uncritically celebrating this.