White Privilege Excuses Racism Towards White People? Are you serious?

So further to my post yesterday, I was on feministing kinda following up. Basically, every time I tried to imply or outright say that racist comments were made about white people and just downright offensiev comments, I kept getting people throwing White Privilege in my face as if it dismisses their harsh remarks.


So anyway, I'll link this new post that was apparently created to spark more constructive debate, but basically people are just saying the same thing to me as before. I'm saying it's wrong to say racists things to white people and they're saying "white privilege" and simply dismissing the horrible things that had been said and that I have every right to feel outraged by them.

In a round about way they are basically tell me that because white people aren't confronted with racism direct at them on a regular basis, that it doesn't matter when it actually does happen. Can I call bullshit right now? Cause I am.

Furthermore, the article was all over the place anyway, and I'm sure author Samhita didn't mean to offend people. She admitted to being a bit of a hater which I think is an understatement, but whatev. The thing is she's bouncing around talking about cultural appropriation and disgentrification. Although related, uh well they also take place independant of one another so the debates sparked were all over the map.

Also, after speaking with a friend about this whole thread, I realised that maybe the US is just really unrelatable to Canada in terms of the black/white racial tension. I've never lived in the United States but my family has and they've told me some fucked up shit about the racial tension in Milwaukee high schools. But I have no personal experiences to relate to in the US.

Sigh, I think I feel a bit better after blogging about this thread. I can't really organize my thoughts so well since my thoughts travel too fast but I think I got some of my arguement/problem down here. The more annoying part is that I bluntly told them that I thought they were using "white privilege" to dismiss my complaint and they basically ignored what I said and kept saying that I don't know anything about white privilege! Cause apparently in their opinion if I was more "informed" about white privilege, I wouldn't be complaining about racist remarks directed at white people... right.. that must be it. I must be ignorant. Racism is racism people.


The New Article

Your Hurting My Feelings Because Your White!

So I have to totally find some different forum to read. I mostly just read punkottawa and feministing. They're user friendly and fast paced but today I realised that I'm very annoyed with feministing with constantly playing the race card. There was an article that could have been good, about gentrification. But it totally bombed when author Samhita went off and said

"To move into a community, uninformed, taking from it, not giving back and flaunting your expensive Ipod and "ghetto chic" accessories, is a form of violence."

She was focusing on "white" people appropriating black fashion for themselves. Ignorantly wearing red bandannas like the Bloods. It was just silly to me to worry about something as stupid and fleeting as fashion. Or to lay claim to an aspect of fashion. We're not talking about religious symbols here, we're talking about peices of fabric or jewlery that can be purchased by anyone, regardless of their race. They are openly available items!
So anyway got mad that people we're being so touchy and wrote:
"well, if I see anyone wearing punk pins and they are not punk, I guess I should get offended when they come into my punk neighborhood. I guess they are taking a form of violence against my culture... oh wait, i'm white, apparently I dont have a culture."

This comment will no doubt get my profile kicked off the site. Whatever. They can't help but go for the race card constantly on that website. I get it, your more oppressed than me cause your a women of colour! Is this some kind of oppression contest? I thought we were all women and equal in our womenhood? The shitty thing is that I fully understand that women of colour may hit more road blocks in the road of life. I get it, it's more difficult. But I don't understand why they gotta bring "non-feminism" related issues into the feminist forum, just because it has something to do with race. There wasnt anything to do with feminism in that whole damn article. This happens more and more. If you wanna go whine about being an oppressed person of colour, aren't there other forums for this? oh and go ahead and dismiss everything I just said by calling me a racists. I love it when people call me racists in that forum because I'm sick of hearing about non-feminism related issues on feminist forum.

This article made me wanna toss my cookies!?

This! is disgusting.

I don't recycle and I ain't gonna:

I'm a horrible person. I bought bottled water! ack. A few weeks back I was reading this article in McLean's about how evil bottled water is and realising that I do buy quite a bit of bottled water. I've been working to correct this. Yet I keep forgetting to buy a freaking thermos!? Reason I always bought bottled water, was because it's so damn convenient. I need water for the ride into work so that I can drown my hang-over. You can't re-use the bottles from bottled water because they are nearly impossible to keep clean. With the level of E.coli in tap water these days, you really have to clean your drinking mug,thermos,bottle of water every day or else the E.coli builds builds up in it. Children have been getting sick in Canadian public schools from re-filling their plastic bottles day after day without properly cleaning them. Sick eh? Anyway, I've been trying to not buy bottled water at all and intend to get a proper water bottle. But today I am at fault for buying evil Evian water which I never realised, is actually pretty expensive. It also says that it has calcium in it?! WTF? I dunno, is the calcium there from the rusting pipes they pour this from?he-he.

At any rate although I know that I can't really make a dent in the bottled water market. (although I know David Suzuki can! ) I'm still going to continue to not buy bottle anything plastic bottles. Years ago I had cut down drastically on buying boxed items from the grocery store and I re-use all my plastic tubs of margarine. But really what are they gonna do? "oh no ! one less girl is buying bottled water! What will we do? Good thing we got all those ignorant fucks walking around buying elaborately packaged goods!"

There's a thing about me that people find funny. I'm for the conserve, conserve. I'm not for recycling. In fact I completely disagree with recycling anything that isn't tin cans and glass. (and I really don't care much for doing the glass cause it's pretty damn pointless too) Tin cans are really the only that's worth it to recycle. The thing is, plastic is damn harmful to the environment and (little can actually be done with fucking recycled plastic anyway) and its inexpensive and not in danger of drying up?! "let's save the plastic trees!" It actually costs us a hell of a lot more economically city for city, to recycle plastic. In fact our recycling programs are an enormous waste of money in my opinion. Not that I'm all caring about money, but I think public money could be better spent on the whole climate change problem everyone's crying about. Do you even know the amount of pollution involved in recycling plastic!? gawd! It's sick. Further more, I hate the defence line to justify recycling: "but it creates more jobs!" Oh wait, you mean those shitty high-turn-over, physical labour intensive, under paid jobs right? Why hell, I wish we could have more of those!

The reason I recycle cans is because it's not an enormous economic strain on the environment. Cans are actually worth something and they're fairly easy to recycle. Bing!:
"Recycle your cans. Tin and steel cans save a lot of energy if they are recycled. Reclaiming one ton of steel or tin saves 1.5 tons of ore. Tin recycling saves an estimated 2,600 kilowatt hours per ton. Steel recycling saves and average of 4,300 kilowatt hours per ton or 47% of the energy required to process steel from raw materials."

And here's a website that talks-up recycling aluminium cans: http://lotfi.net/recycle/acan.html

Recycling paper is stupid to me as well. The reason we have any trees at all is because the companies that make paper, fucking plant the trees and yes they are gonna tear them down, but hey hey! they're going to plant more! They effectively rotate and replace the trees. Woohoo!


I know, I know. Your all thinking I'm a big jerk because I toss my paper out. I don't throw it in a blue bin (although sometimes my boyfriend does) But whatever happened to Reduce, Reuse and recycle? Why is it just all Recycle now?

Recycling to me, is basically the governments way of trying to make people feel less guilty for be wasteful jerks. Recycling has become a huge scam and economic strain and I'm just going to reduce, reuse and fudge the last one.

Pregnancy Discrimination

Ah Pregnancy Discrimination. A lot of people seem to think this doesn't happen.. but when it comes to the job market.. oh hell yes it does. I myself have realised this recently when applying for a new position in the company I currently am employed at. So I got the position (yeay me) but in the interview I thought it was rather odd that my boss asked me whether or not I planned to have children in the next few years. I said no, because for me, kids aren't in the books until I have a house. Yet I still wondered if I would have got the position if I had said "actually yes, I plan to have a child before Christmas" or "funny you should ask, I'm pregnant with my first child" . Although its highly frowned upon to ask a gal if she's planning to go on maternity leave anytime soon, it's also not exactly illegal and when your in private sector, what exactly can you do without a union or proper HR dept?

As I was reading on Feministing.com, apparently in the United States its an issue as well. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reported more more complaints than ever in regards to recrimination against pregnant women. Apparently the complaints have risen nearly 19% (4,901 last year, from 3,977 in 1997). That's pretty nuts! I for one am a bit worried about what will happen when I am ready to have my first child! I think I'll have to research all the nitty gritty of maternity leave in Canada before I do so.

I have to say that I find it incredibly hilarious that our culture can push women so hard to have kids (and make those who choose to abstain feel inferior) and then offer little support when they decide to squeeze one out?!

Just A Silly Story

I have to tell this hillarious story. It's short don't worry. So the first real relationship I ever had was this horrible mess(as most first relationships) When I first met him he told me his name was Jonas. A month after we've been dating someone calls him Danny. I get all confused and I'm like "why is that person calling you danny?" and he's like "cause that's my name" .all very hesitant. He had told me his name was Jonas. I was confused and said "why does everyone call you Jonas? I mean you even introduced yourself as Jonas? " and he says "oh that's my stage name" .

For the first month of our relationship, I had introduced him to everyone as Jonas. We ended up toegther for nearly 3 years, 2 and half maybe? Something like that and the first words that came out of his mouth were a lie. I should've known after the first month. Bah.

Puppy Mills!

I've recently been blabbing on my livejournal about how much I want a dog and am currently looking for one. As a result I have looked into many options. In my hunt, I found out a lot about aquiring a pet in Canada (and the US) . There are many classified sites that allow people to advertise the selling of puppies and pets. However, I've come to realise that the majority of these animals have come into existence by backyard breeders and not responsible breeders. I didn't really understand what a backyard breeder was until I did some research. I had always heard that you shouldn't ever buy a dog or cat from a pet store, yet i never knew why. Call me ignorant, by I had never got an animal (besides fish) from a pet store, so how would I know anything about it? Apparently these backyard breeders are people who inhumanely keep their animals in cages forever. Not caring for them and merely breeding and feeding them. These animals are endure untreated health problems and confined spaces for their entire lives and live only to reproduce offspring for sales of the breeder. When I did the reading and saw the pictures I was disgusted. After reading numerous articles and websites about the matter I've decided that I cannot aquire a dog through any other means besides adoption. The backyard breeders are the reason their are so many unwanted pets in North America. It's just so sad. For a bit of reading here's a website

Feminism on PunkOttawa

I decided to post this thread just out of general interest for the thread I started on Punk Ottawa. I was interested to know if there were any lurking feminists and I found a bunch! There are also some interesting points made which I thought people may want to read.

BEST BLOG EVER!

So my friend sent me a link to probably the best Blog I've ever read! Where my favorite ladies find these things, I have no idea! But it's so great I'm gonna add it to my link list. Go visit it!HERE!

The F Word!

So alright, I use the title feminist to describe myself. As I was on PunkOttawa earlier today I decided to make a post asking about how many feminists were out there and I was kinda annoyed that there were people who, although believed in equal rights, wanted to be separated from the term. One person used said they would rather not be associated due to feminist extremists. Another person stated that they simply are just a human being and wished to remain unlabeled... pretensious but ok..

Anyway, doesn't really matter but it kinda urked me. I mean, rejecting a label, okay but rejecting a label because of a few bad apples? Is rejecting the word feminism not kinda working against the whole concept behind feminism?

Shellac's New Record!!! AHHH!!!

So guess who has a new album coming out!? Yes Shellac is gracing us with another album! Due out June 5th! I'm jumping up and down. Excellent Italian Greyhound is their first album in SEVEN FREAKING YEARS! I can't wait to grab it on vinyl and with any luck they'll even put out some of their awesome unique 7". I have not downloaded this album, but as usual I prefer to wait and listen to the album at time of purchase. I loathe all who download music! Buy BUY! True music fans buy and support our favs. Although I'm sure the members of Shellac are well-to-do, still, lets be nice and thanks them properly for putting out another record.
Here's the track list:

The End of Radio
Steady As She Goes
Be Prepared
Elephant
Genuine Lullabelle
Kittypants
Boycott
Paco
Spoke

Internet Stalking

I'm ranting about forums and blogs.Well actually I'm ranting about online trolling and harrassment. There are quite a few forums that I visit. Most of them are music forums but not all. I'm easily identified as "The Frog Queen" on most of them. Now some of these forums I've been posting on for nearly 10 years, but why? I've come to realise that forums are one of my pet peeves. I rarely post on any of them anymore but continue to read them. Basically its just a hostile environment. People always putting each other down, arguments between uninformed individuals, harassment... basically if you say anything remotely opinionated you will have a whole slew of people putting you down. I see it all the time. So why do we feel the need to reach out and type to somebody who won't even read it in real time? I suppose its the same reason so many socially under-developed people love the internet- because we can say anything we want with a certain amount of anonymity and we don't have to face anybody. No repercussions.

I have been blogging for approximately 10 years now. Basically I started blogging when I discovered my first forum. I created an online diary and eventually I created a website called "Life with Rockets" detailing my sexlife and little else. That particular site became retired after I left Halifax. It was started during a particularly awful part of my life in which I became engrossed in sex and wanted to learn a bit more about what drives us to get down and dirty.

One thing I find incredibly funny about starting sites like those is that people leave anonymous messages on them and start lurking. It's weird because 9 times out of 10 it's someone that you actually know by aquiantance. On the Life with Rockets site I had a number of people lurking about and most of them had not so nice things to say. What are peoples motives for doing the lurking, posting negative messages and basically haunting your site ? What exactly do they gain from this? My guess is that it's actually a way to touch base with someone they envy, maybe even wish they were friends with but instead of taking a friendly stance, they lash out in a negative way. It's also something Ive come to realise is stalking- internet stalking. This has actually happened to me a few times in the past. People reading one of my blogs found out who I was and approached me while I was enjoying my night at x-night club. This is always strange. The ones who pretend to know exactly who you are, those ones give you the willies. Its all fun and good to say "hey I like your blog, it's entertaining" it's another thing to run up to someone and act like you know them because you read a few thoughts online. Some proceed to leave messages on your blog... that's internet stalking as far as I'm concerned.

Now the problem with the internet is of course it's not policed. You got threats being made, bloggers being harassed, and yeah you could easily say "if can't take the heat get out of the sun", but what if you got something to say? Does that automatically entitle disagreeing parties to add death threats or other harassing comments to your blog??

Edible Ottawa!

I've started another Blog! I know, I have to find something more useful to do with my time! Please visit Edible Ottawa! Your online critical review of Ottawa restaurants.