Not Anonymous

Good morning. I've decided to try entering journal posts on the move, considering the fact that I'll be travelling extensively over the next two weeks. And yeah, I'll be taking my tablet Officer Kalakaua with me, I thought it would be fun to try to chronicle the vacation in long form and not just tweet randomly.

I don't know what my connectivity is going to be like, so this may all be for nothing, but it's worth a try.

I'm still laptop deficient, relying on my phone and tablet for most things, but seeing as my work is Internet based and the access to my mother's guest account on her desktop, I am most certainly not offline.

I do, however, miss the reliability of a pc. My tablet isn't capricious as all that, but the amount of DYAC that come from this little touch screen keyboard are too comical, not to mention that my go to websites tend to be a bit borked.

Still, it is a lot, I'm aware.

Here's to being around here more during my holiday!

Hey,

I put a cut on my recent posts due to receiving totally correct PM's from other phobics who don't want to read about my exploits.

I'm so sorry my posts caused undo distress due to my thoughtlessness.

From now on any posts (and I don't think there will be, hopefully) that deal with my phobia will be cut.

Please do not feel shy to contact me about posts that you may find upsetting or triggering, I do not want what I write to be the cause of any distress that can be avoided or at the very least controlled - I know, I read/watch things that might trigger me, but I psych myself up before hand.

All my love.

I cleaned my room yesterday.

Those of you who have been with me for a few years know that this is generally a full day's project, a morning till night kind of deal.

It wasn't so bad this time. I only filled two garbage bags and discarded of a broken computer that was sitting there, masquerading as a dust collector.

My room suddenly has a fresh smell and feels airy. I put a lot of my knick knacks into storage, including my 30+ snow globe collection. I did that when I moved back in with my parents last year, but this time I also rearranged my current collection of stuff.

All this is very mundane, but it's also significant, because once again I neglected this place and I think I neglected you all, which isn't fair, ever.

Hopefully this clean really is a new leaf for me, because I've also been feeling creatively stunted for a while. I haven't written meta in months (for a variety of reasons) and I've been stymied when it comes to fic that I'd like other people to read and not self indulgent exercises.

My life has been pretty monotonous unfortunately, I haven't had time to return to roller derby and I'm basically working all the damn time.

I'm sorry I wasn't around for important things that happened to you guys. I have no excuse other than the fact that long form writing seems to be out of my reach lately.

Love you all.

This has been the worst week ever at work. Renovations and hypervigilance fucking suck.

There was a bright light of the Hawaii Five-0 episode.

But that's pretty much it.

I'm so tired and I have to work this weekend.

Remember when I said I'd be around more?

Yeah, okay.

Trigger Warnings: Genocide, sexualised violence, and rape.

It being International Woman's Day, I figured I'd talk about the Holocaust.

In case you didn't know, it's more shocking that ever thought. You'd think it was impossible for the Holocaust to be an even more terrible moment in history than it already is perceived and conceived to be.

The New York Times story states:

Thirteen years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.
[...]
The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

Emphasis mine.

I have to say when I read this, I felt sick. I was honestly shocked. The Holocaust is a piece of history I've taken the time to learn about - entire branches of my family tree were eradicated during the second world war - and much of my knowledge came from what I'd been spoon fed by the education system of my country.

You're probably asking yourselves why I'm talking about this on International Woman's Day.

If you continue reading you'll reach this little factoid:

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.

Emphasis mine.

Why is The New York Times disinclined to call rape, what it is? I think the idea of rape as a war crime is still something that mainstream media is reluctant to talk about, because rape is sadly ubiquitous in "times of peace".

More to the point, the way rape is perpetrated during war and upon an occupied population is very often misrepresented and downplayed, often because rape, during war, is "expected". It is a risk of war, much like bullets and bombs. If you are a woman in a war zone, you should prepare for the enemy to use their weapons upon you.

"This is my weapon, this is my gun."

My point is that that little titbit is all that was said about the "special treatment" of women during the Holocaust. There is a great deal we do not know about the difference women and men experience war and how acts of war are perpetrated on their bodies.

More often than not, women are not counted as people, but as spoils. Hence the creation of special brothel camps.

Women Under Siege's report to the new findings gives a good overview when it comes to how much more needs to be done in order for justice to really be done.

Rape and genocide go hand in hand. Rape and war go hand in hand. But for some reason, they're not always counted as crimes against humanity.

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I've been wanting to write this since this morning!

You guys, I was rec'd on crack_van!

The lovely kristen999 let me know this morning, I think I would have been completely oblivious if she hadn't.

I totally had a Sally Field moment of "You like me, you really like me!" thing going on, it was rather pathetic.

My story Rainbows Have Nothing to Hide was rec'd here.

Oh man, that was just the self esteem boost I needed!

A few months ago, and I suspect by now it was actually last year, I wanted to help revive DW and LJ.

I then promptly fucked off to while my days on twitter and tumblr. Go me. I can see the effects in my writing here, it's all short sentences and tiny thoughts.

I've always liked big, long, and meandering thoughts, the kind that span the entire line of a page and make you want to see what the next thought will be. I don't know if that effect is managed all that well, but one tries.

I figure this is a good opportunity to reintroduce myself to the people here, some of you are really new and we never got the chance to really talk to you before I decided instant gratification was more satisfying than the slow build of comment threads.

So, who am I?!?!

The question of the ages, as it's wont to be.

First thing, I'm Mel, I've been on LJ and DW for a number of years, and they share the moniker of "eumelia". As you may have noticed.

I generally brain dump and talk about feelings regarding my life, my fandom, my politics. All of these are deeply intertwined.

It's really due to my job that I've hardly been writing here, my time is limited and I'm generally exhausted most of the time due to the long hours that I work. I work for a large internet company and I spend many hours on the internet reading the news. Yep, I'm living the dream.

I'm a lesbian-bisexual-queer cis woman, yes all of those things, at the same time. I'm also gay. I'm feminist. I'm Jewish and have a great deal of white privilege due to the fact that I'm Israeli. I vehemently oppose my country's occupation of the Palestinian people and have a great longing towards the the Diaspora. Israel doesn't always feel like home, I suspect no place on God's green earth will ever feel like like home.

I'm atheist. That's important to me because I spend many years wanting to believe and not understanding why it didn't make sense to me. And yes, it's really easy being a Jewish atheist, because the former is an ethnicity and a culture and the religion is part of it, and even opposing the religious doctrines doesn't make me any less of a Jew, just like incorporating tradition doesn't make me any less of an atheist.

I'm a fangrrl. I squee. I also harsh squees, like a champion. I'm okay with being that person. My current fandom is "Hawaii Five-0" and yeah, I'm still surprised at that, as I'm not really a procedural person. But it's inspired me to write and my identification with one of the characters has kept me going for a while now.

I have PTSD. I don't really "suffer from it", I dislike that term when it comes to things that make my brain the way it is. I've been living with it since 2006 and what it's a bit hard to explain how it affects my day to day life. But if you're curious or want to know something, I'm not shy about talking about it.

I think that's the biggest things. I may have forgotten something. Do feel free to introduce yourselves here, I'd like to get to know the new peeps and just catch up with the old peeps. You know who you are.

I love you all.

I can't believe it's been another two weeks since I've written here.

You guys, I'm sorry, this is a crap way of communicating with you all. Some of you I'm communicating with on other platforms, but for a lot of you this is it, plus the fact that new people have joined my lists here (DW and LJ).

I'm really frustrated that all I'm managing to do these days it spurt our thoughts of 140 characters or less, and lazily reblog shit on tumblr.

I used to write here all the time, about everything.

Now I feel like I'm just scratching my fingernails on a blackboard.

I also feel like not much is happening in my life, so why bother? I know, that's a very defeatist attitude and I need to do something about it.

I will write something about my life today, very soon in fact, so stay tuned :)

I would like to turn back to the tie scene. The whole court room scene in fact, as it’s a good opportunity to discuss something that bothers as a general rule and I don’t think it’s discussed openly enough in fandom.

About a year ago, I very pretentiously and arrogantly posted a post about “being queer in fandom”, you can read it here (on DW or LJ, as is convenient), and I got a lot of insight from the feedback (and reading what anons thought of me on that meme), which aided me over the past year of teasing out what really bothers me as a queer fan in what is evidently a rather straight fandom.

What I write here, as should be evident, is my own opinion and comes from my own feelings. And while I’m talking about my specific fandom, this is something that I’ve seen happen all over slash fandom, so let me hear what y'all have to say.

It should be readily clear to everyone who watches H50 that Danny and Steve as a romantic couple will never happen in canon. It won’t. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t want it to either.

I’m saying this now, because the season has given us many beautiful moments (on the boat, with the bomb, the straightening of this tie, and many other smaller ones) which have been fantastically fun to explore and have given us great insight into the nature of Danny and Steve’s friendship and relationship.

These are not, as they say, gay moments. They’re not. Because trust me, if they were, we’d know about it. Because subtext is not, I repeat, not representation. And the fact that I ship them doesn’t mean my friend ships them. Them not shipping Danny/Steve isn’t anymore more right than shipping Catherine/Steve, the main difference being, and wait for it, it’s a big one, Catherine/Stave is actual, fucking, canon. And regardless of how you interpret their relationship (romantic, convenience, fuckbuddy) their sexual relationship is canon.

When I hear people in fandom accuse others of homophobia for not shipping Danny/Steve all I can do is laugh bitterly. Talk to me when someone shouts “Dyke” at the street at you, or tells you all you need is a good fuck by a man (i.e. threatens you with rape), or your parents demand you “behave yourself” at a wedding because god forbid I slow dance with my girlfriend. Unless someone has said that slash is gross because it’s gay, it’s not homophobia, so get the fuck over yourselves.

Danny and Steve are not “gay for each other” (may that trope die in the fiery pit from whence it came) and the insistence of certain places in fandom that they are, is fucking offensive. Let me tell you why. It smacks of appropriation. Just like saying that not shipping a certain ship is homophobia, the insistence of that ship is a fetishisiation of a fantasy of same sex male relationships.

I hate the marriage jokes and the “dads” comment. When I hear them and see them, all I feel like is a punch to the gut. As though any kind of close same sex friendship is something to mocked, especially if it’s between two men.

As mentioned, those are jokes, my best friend and I have been mistaken for a lesbian couple, we’ve been told that we act like we’re married.

We’re not together and we never were. She’s happily married to her partner and I’m happily single being very lazy about finding love.

In the show, the idea of Danny and Steve being “married” and a couple is laughable and a joke, thus it is presented as such. It is constantly averted in order to maintain them being canonically straight. What is explored in the show and what makes it special is the nature of male/male friendship and the expression of those feelings in a way that is uninhibited.

Slash is an interpretation. Slash isn’t representation.

When I see factions of fandom insist on the “canon “of Danny and Steve as a gay couple all I see is a bunch of entitled fangirls appropriating gay identity and culture.

If you really want LGBT content, stop trying to make your own personal OTP into a peepshow and go look for shit on your own. No, really, here you go.

If your *squee* feels harshed I’d like you to take a step back and consider that some of us are invested in actual LGBT content because for the love of god, we need it. I need it. I’m not looking for gay content on Hawaii Five-0, but I would like my identity as a gay and bisexual woman to be fucking respected and to not have it appropriated for the benefit of someone else’s *squee*.

I love this show and I love fandom and I want us all to do better.

H50 is not the only fandom to do this. This is a pan-fandom issue that needs to be discussed openly and internally, because I honestly don’t care about the way we’re perceived by others, it’s not about them, it’s about us.

While I don’t think the show queerbaits as such, the fandom can behaves like it does. Moreover, it behaves like queerbaiting is a good thing, when all it is, is the creators having their progressive cake and eating it. I’m glad Lenkov et al aren’t falling into that trap, because no matter how much we insist, H50 transformative fandom on Tumblr and AO3 and LJ/DW is tiny. And while we may be loud, we are not the target audience and he certainly doesn’t cater to us (no matter how much he likes the vids and the fanart, and it's awesome that he does).

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