This kind o'stuff...

Is why a large chunk of the population avoid religious matters altogether.

Here we go... (I've cluttered up the comments with my shock at that behaviour).

When a Christian is bereaved, and writes a piece about it online, do atheist bloggers (not anonymous trolls, real people) comment with "Look, there is no afterlife. NO AFTERLIFE."?

No. Because, you see, that would be no place to discuss theology or politics.

I don't care if the comment was intended to be "friendly" or "helpful". What comes across instead? "Ah, this agnostic woman feels vulnerable and unhappy. I'll get her converted while she's mentally too weak to resist."

As a regular reader of that blog, that commenter is perfectly aware that my dead grandfather was an atheist. He raged against religious indoctrination and cruelty until he died (if anyone's interested, for him the main issue was how religion is used to keep oppressed people down - y'know, the whole message of "all things bright and beautiful" etc.).

I know many, many very good people of many faiths. It's a cliche, I know, but I don't want to bash all religion (here my grandfather and I would part ways, he did!).

But now, you see, he is DEAD. And my mother is bereaved.

On various Trans Day of Remembrance threads on the interwebs, someone always turned up to argue issues of feminist and queer theory.

That behaviour was wrong, and this behaviour is also wrong. I'm aware it is the interwebs, free speech and all that, but you wouldn't do it in a conversation.

Changing History

I'm probably the last Terry Pratchett fan to read his newest novel, Nation. It's not a Discworld, this one, and it gives free rein to the darker topics that one can really only touch upon in comic novels.

And I'm not sure if Pratchett intended this reaction, but the happy ending almost broke my heart.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ALERT!

He uses his "parallel universes get out of jail free card" for good reason here. The British Empire is at its height when a flu outbreak wipes out a great deal of important people, leaving a good, intellectual, unhappy, unprepared man as the King of England.

He's not, really, central to the story, though. A storm that wrecked the ship which carried his young daughter has also killed nearly every inhabitant of an island chain that is not located in the Pacific Ocean, no, not at all.

A young boy travels home to find his whole Nation dead. The voices of his ancestors ring in his ears, and he knows that he must keep the Nation going. He is now a chief, caring for the survivors that wash up on his shore.

Because this is a novel, the young girl is also alive, washed up on the same island.

I won't spoil the intricate plot in the middle. The King has, of course, been searching for his daughter. When they are reunited, she immediately becomes angry at the behaviour of his entourage. Turning up like that with flags and guns, insulting her friends! Treating them like they're "savages"!

And the King of England... listens. He teaches the surviving islanders cricket, with which they are less than impressed, and admires their ancient artefacts. He's not able to stay the tide of colonialism by himself, but is able to... manipulate the situation to give the people the best possible chance (at his daughter's suggestion - she has inherited his brains*).

The people tell him which trappings of "civilisation" they would like, and which they decidedly would not. On their terms.

The world isn't a fairytale. From most English characters comes the applicable bucketloads of racist hate and disdain. But at the end of the book, I was supposed to be concentrating on the two main characters... but I was almost crying, wondering if history could have gone that way in this universe, with someone in a seat of imperial power deducting from empirical evidence that brown people are people...


Incidentally, as far as I, a white person, can judge, Terry Pratchett definitely "gets" issues of race. Also, I am female-assigned, and I know that he's truly brilliant when discussing sexism. I love a certain passage in Men at Arms in which Vimes, the grumpy protagonist (I'm sure any similarities to the author are entirely coincidental) gets stuck at a dinner table with a lot of rich, powerful people. The topic turns to... immigration.

They begin their usual slightly racist (speciesist, fantasy world) ranting... and he has fun egging them on until their real, appalling opinions emerge. They don't suspect a thing.

"You know," Vimes shook his head, "you know, that's what's so damn annoying, isn't it? The way they can be so incapable of any rational thought and so bloody shrewd at the same time."


*In a scenario that is not racist, I shan't give away the joke that explains why it isn't a racist depiction, a cannibal is impressed enough to express a wish to eat them.

The most offensive thing you'll read this decade...

Don't look at this article if you're having lunch. You'll lose your appetite pretty quickly.

A synopsis: Kid with Asperger's has been shot dead by his father. Lots of other autistic kids are killed by their parents. It's such a shame that these children have autism, which makes their parents kill them.

I was going to write something blackly comic about it, but I just can't.

Parts of it, yes - "Jacob Grabe, 13, could sense a storm coming several days out. He would get agitated and make strange noises. Silverware bothered him. He could eat only from plastic forks and spoons. He breezed through complicated algebra but struggled with basic division." Oh no!! He must die!!!!1

Nope, I can't even laugh here. Because Oh no, he must die is what his own father thought, and this journalist totally empathises with that thought process, like it's a logical one that people often go through.

I want to rewrite part of the article, in fact, to make it more respectful (well, it could hardly be less respectful). However, this piece about a murdered child doesn't really bother talking about the child. So, I've nothing to go on - I can't put "Jacob Grabe, 13, loved computer games and detective novels" because I've no idea what his interests were.

Jacob Grabe: RIP.

The other children mentioned, whose names the author doesn't bother with (I'm aware that the little girl was called Katie McCarron): RIP.

And here's an idea that should be common sense:

Say you're planning to have children. If you think you'll "snap" if they are neurologically atypical - DON'T BOTHER. Introduce yourself to the humble condom or contraceptive pill.

If you're ever likely to shoot a child, suffocate them or burn them to death because they are disabled, please shoot yourself instead, before you have time to breed. It is YOU "society" should reject, it is YOU who shouldn't be "mainstreamed".

Signed: Oliver, an autistic guy who will also, actually, never be able to live a "normal life" but has NOT been shot by either of his parents. Crazy world, eh?

Questions...

Is there an equivalent, for any other group of people, to pronoun slips for trans people? Something that is not necessarily purposeful, but can be purposeful, and pops up in every single conversation?

Because I can't imagine somebody who really does care about somebody else, say, a overweight person who's sensitive about their appearance, talking like this:

"Catherine, who is a lard-arse, went to work today, and she's got a fucking massive arse, and she got some difficult calls from customers, god, she's fat and ugly, and then she went home".

And, once one person doesn't bother to use the right pronoun, it infects other people, and the trans person is immediately totally undermined -

"What did that hideous gargantuan woman do after that?"

Is there an equivalent? Of course, people from every marginalised group have to face racism, or ableism, or whatever continously - but from people who truly care about them? And even from people who understands, to whatever extent that is possible, what it's like to be them?

I also want to know - what proportion of post-hormones, post-op transsexuals are really no-hormones, no-op transsexuals who were just desperate not to have that discomfort and pain in every. single. conversation?

A River in Egypt

My mum has written the definitive post about my grandfather. I still can't really be upset that he's dead, because both he and I were aware of the impossibility of the concept. My grandfather was immortal.

He projected an air of immortality wherever he went - from his "I'm king of the world" pose in photographs, to his undisguised contempt for "old codgers", most of whom were a decade or so younger than him.

I remember thinking Hagrid ludicrously naive when he gently suggested that my grandfather might not, actually, live to be a hundred.

In conclusion, it's equally ludicrous now that everyone's saying he's "dead". I saw his body, of course, to check - but they'd shaved off his beard just before I last saw him alive, so it looked nothing like him (he hated his face without hair, I have no idea why he consented to the procedure).

Now I'm thinking about it, this might be considered the "denial" stage of grief. Er... NO IT ISN'T.

Joyful Fun

So today, I went to the doctor's and talked about getting referred to a GIC (note that I said neither "saw a doctor" nor "got referred to a GIC").

I ALREADY have a pounding headache created by bureaucratic fools. This headache will be permanent for a few years, I guess.

My grandfather is dead. I'll write a coherent post about him later.

We're a family of Jewish atheists. Did we take the ashes home from the funeral? Nope. We took home all the extra food and lived on it for two days.

Half-formed thoughts about Bad Things

Currently, I've been thinking about how people cope with stress and trauma. My grandfather is currently in hospital and failing to respond to treatment, and I just hope that my grandmother isn't behaving the way she normally does when there's a problem (I can't go and see him, because I've got full-blown flu, which would kill off him and half the ward in an instant). I hope she's not being REALLY REALLY EXTRA CHEERFUL and totally dismissive of everyone's concerns - that's what generally happens, and that upsets him (he's unconscious now, so actually I don't suppose it matters).

"My head has fallen off."

"Nonsense! Buck up, you'll be fine!"

My grandmother refuses to read books, or to watch films, that might be at all sad in any way. Now, this coping method is pretty bad on its own - but where does it leave her when something happens that she can't ignore? Does she go completely crazy? I don't actually know the answer to that one, not having been alive at the deaths of her parents.

Note that I'm coping with this situation by mainly ignoring it - that's simply because I can't get my mind to believe it. The doctors have said "Your grandfather is going to die" before, and they've reached that conclusion by grossly underestimating his physical and mental strength.

What about coping with traumatic events in the past? Well, my grandmother "dealt" with that one by not telling anybody about it, until she finally snapped and told the nearest person, who was an eleven-year-old child. Who wasn't allowed to tell anyone how freaked out he was by the revelation, because it was a secret.

Again, not so good.

For people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and for some people without, there's the issue of triggers - situations or sensations that cause you to recall the event. If it were possible, you'd cope while avoiding these altogether.

However, it's my understanding that, sometimes, you can't really predict when you'll be triggered. Say you were in a car accident that killed your friend - no-one has to mention death, or car accidents, or your friend's name, because somebody who's just shaken your hand at a party is wearing the same strong aftershave as the paramedic who pulled you out of the wreckage.

And that's why a lot of people with post-traumatic stress seem to be coping extremely well - firstly, maybe they can keep a calm detachment when the incidents are mentioned, because words don't necessarily register on that visceral level, and secondly - well, in a way it's all or nothing, isn't it? If you can't predict when something will trigger you, you can't avoid it; you just become an excellent liar in your non-verbal communication.

(These are things that I've learned from talking to people with PTSD and people who wouldn't be diagnosed with it, but have suffered trauma. I don't know anything else about PTSD, please correct me if I say something completely wrong.)

So... my conclusion to this part? I'll try more to ignore irrational-appearing behaviour, I guess, and not treat people like they're insane when they do "go off on one". Actually, I generally do that anyway - everything other people do is equally incomprehensible.

I realise that most people have suffered severe trauma. Get any group of people in a room, somehow get them to trust one another, and you'll hear some awful stories (especially if those people are women/female assigned, because they have the more hideous side of reproduction to deal with, and of course they're more likely to have been raped).

I say that so I can mention that none of what I would consider the more terrible things have happened to me. I'm not trying to compare my experiences to those of those people, and I'm not going to tell you what I'm talking about. In the scheme of things, it's not important enough for anyone to pursue it.

I am triggered by two things that I know of. One is fairly easy to avoid entirely, and another is everywhere - but, here's the key thing, most normal people slightly dislike it. Like the reformed Discworld vampire who knows that "I'd kill for a cup of coffee" is part of common parlance, I can say "Egad, that's so annoying!"

Of course, that can backfire. On many occasions (actually, it happened a few days ago!) I can say "Egad, that's so annoying!" and lots of other people can agree (Hagrid always does, and he has no idea what happens in my head... well, I guess he does now). However, the perpetrator(s) can then say "Lol! You're all irritated! I'm in a happy and childish mood, so I'm gonna do it some more!!!" which is the kind of humour I'd enjoy (anyone seen that comic by the trans guy that proclaims "Failed to Mature"?) on any other occasion.

So, I'm thinking that... if you're reminded of the Bad Things all the time in daily life... facing them head-on might, counterintuitively, be easier than trying to avoid all related subjects. Because the related feelings appear anyway.

That's probably the conclusion that every mental health professional in the world has come to with ease, but meh. I'm going to ignore it, as I'm sure most people do (just not on the same level I described earlier).

You can probably tell that I'm only typing this because I've nothing else to do - too sick to get up. And very feverish, as you can also probably tell. This wandering train of thought actually started with the Worst Film Adaptation of a Novel Ever Made in the History of Cinema, the film of Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights" (the film has a different, goddamned stupid, title, as I'm sure you know).

If you haven't read the books, fine - go and rent the DVD. You'll think it was a reasonable film.

If you have read them, spend an entertaining hundred minutes chewing off your own ears, instead. It will be infinitely less painful.

This cinematic travesty (how is it even possible to hire Nicole Kidman and Ian McKellen! and get something that shite?) is relevant because the story has been systematically stripped of all negativity. Dead child? No, no dead children allowed here, sorry. But the dead child is absolutely vital to the story... quick, play the saccharine music and hope nobody notices that there is now no story!

There's a hideously, appallingly mutilated child, too. That one is even more vital... OK, let's show him for precisely four seconds, with no relevant reactions from any other characters, and move on, and ensure that the film has no atmosphere whatsoever, because then no-one will care about him anyway - LOOK AT OUR CGI!!

My grandmother would certainly enjoy watching that film. But I don't understand what would make it entertaining. The bad guys don't do anything... bad. Well, nothing we can take seriously. So... why are the good guys after them, again? Is it because creepy music plays whenever the bad lady appears, thereby giving them a clue?

By the end of that gloriously cheerful cinematic romp, I'd completely separated its characters from those in the novel, and wouldn't have batted an eyelid if the whole lot of them had exploded.

In fiction, Bad Things musn't be underestimated.