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May. 14th, 2012 03:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* Saturday, Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry spent most of the four hours of broadcast time they had between them on nuanced and far ranging debate of LGbT issues. This in itself is impressive for shows run by straight folks. Another thing struck me though. Normally when there's an LGBT news item, the straight news show folks usually call in Dan savage as if he somehow speaks for the whole community despite all the -isms attached to his name. Neither of them did this. They called in a diverse group of writers, activists, and politicians, instead of having Dan Savage or some other white cis gay man speak for everyone. This looks like real progress to me. Thinking back over the last week, the other news type shows I watch took a similar approach. I mean, of course Rachel Maddow knows better, and her coverage was as moving as I expected, but the straight folks were mostly doing the same thing. Three major LGBT news items in the course of a week, and people were calling in a diverse group of people who actually knew what they were talking about to discuss them, instead of just going for one problematic interview because it's easier than including a variety of people with a variety of specialties and experiences. Also for the record, I am okay with including fierce allies such as the Rev. Dr. William Barber and the esteemed Mayor Cory A. Booker as long as they aren't the only voices we are hearing, which seems to be the case.
Let's hope it's a trend.
* Recent discussion of Private School culture as relates to both Romney and Glee got me boggling at just how weird private schools can be. I once got in a fist fight over the Scarlet Letter. He got in trouble. I did not, even though I was the one lept over the desk to get him in the middle of English class. No, I don't remember what he said to set me off. We exchanged a few punches and then the teacher hauled him out of the room, which I remember clearly. I suspected at the time that I wasn't punished because there wasn't a teacher in the Upper school who hadn't wanted to punch him at one time or other. (He was a love him or hate him sort, but even those who liked him could find him insufferable now and then). This is one of two fist fights I had in the middle of class in High School, neither of which I got in trouble for. (I've written about the other one, where the Teacher defended me on the grounds that, "I would have hit him too." I also got away with elbowing a guy hard in the sternum right in font of a teacher during track practice. I was willing to take punishment as it was worth it, but given what he was saying just before I stopped and let him run hard into my braced elbow, they let me get off without even a warning).
Seriously, Prep School is a whole other world from the Public schools where I taught.
* Mr. O'Donnell made some comment about the things Mr. Romney did in high School being against the rules in a fancy prep school. I went to one in the '70's and '80's and the group violence was constant. I never once saw a teacher stop a group of boys from sticking another head first in one of those big grey trash cans. They did it in the open in Middle School between every class change to some poor kid who's parents were less important. This doesn't even get to the semi-consensual sexual acts male bullies perpetrated on smaller boys, and all the other forms of brutality small and large. The violence mostly moved off campus in high school, but you'd still see homoerotic two guy fights in the halls and the occasional group assault. Somehow, I doubt it was much different in Mr. Romney's day. There's this complicated set of unspoken rules about who is allowed to harm whom with impunity and under what circumstances. The organized whole school hazing was dying down by my day, but the small group and one on one bullying was endemic and hardly ever punished. We were expected to fight it out or endure it without complaint. Complaining was always punished, both by the adult and the bullies later when they got the complainer alone. The vaguely sexual nature of both Romney's assault and the tone of his more verbal bullying sounds pretty normal to me. In a boy's private school context. (My school had been a boy's school for nearly two hundred years and began it's slow gender integration progress the year I started at the age of four. It was still very much a homo-social boy's school culture).
None of this is even vaguely okay. It is the truth, however. It's also why I never even applied to teach at a private school. In Pubic School, I not only had the right to intervene in bullying, but I had full backing of Admin to shut that down wherever I saw it. In Private schools, the teachers are often the worst bullies, and not just as a matter of individual assholery as in Pubic school, but as a matter of school philosophy and unified plan. It takes bullying to a whole new level when you have to face not only the unchecked bullying of your peers but five or six teachers and an administrator working together for years to deliberately make your life a living hell.
Private Schools generally have kick ass academics, but they absolutely aren't physically or emotionally safe. Also, keep in mind that rich kids can generally afford more expensive drugs and more of them than poor kids, and even though things look fine on the surface, there's likely to be cocaine floating around with the pot and alcohol at parties, or at least there was at my school back then. Who knows what it's like now.
* I was so relieved when books like Real Boys and Odd Girl Out started coming out. It was nice to have everything I believed about the way classroom and school management were actually positively reinforcing bullying was actually objectively correct. I couldn't have taught under the old theories, but I could sure get behind intervening early in psychologically astute sort of ways. I still definitely endorse transferring your kid if possible if things get terrible, because individual school cultures vary even in the same district and a fresh social start even with the associated upheavals is better than trying to tough it out while wearing a target all day every day. OGO backs me up on that.
* This diagram shows a fraction of the basic rights I would lack in most states: http://browngurlwfro.tumblr.com/post/22843504607/homosexualintellectual-trans-rights-in-the
* This article underlines an even more basic one, "A Call to Stop the Killings in D.C.:" http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/advance/2012/04/19/call-stop-killings-dc
It can't be said often enough that when we are murdered, most jurisdictions still don't bother to investigate.
* RM found, "Tam Lin is Human: Glee Balladry and Faerieland: http://triflesandparsnips.tumblr.com/post/22767329181/tam-lin-is-human-glee-balladry-and-faerieland
* Glee S:2:
1. I think I forgot to mention that I think "Isn't She Lovely" was the best fit for Artie's voice of any of the songs I've seen him do so far.
2. I think I'm going to have to rewatch most of the last disk to poke at odds and ends.
3. OMG, Rachel's coat in New York. I can't decide if it's brilliant or too on the nose.
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's FTW.
5. I know Glee is deliberately heightened reality and certain things you have to accept like them doing different songs every week with little or no practice instead of working a program week after week like we did in choir. I get that, I really do. At the same time, them writing professional level songs, practicing them with student musicians, and choreographing hem over night? Too much for my ability to suspend disbelief which is always constantly stretched. It kept pulling me out of the thing, and meant I was expecting the to fail spectacularly. Of course I was also expecting that from the over confidence. I was actually disappointed they only failed a little. Was that the effect they were aiming for? I can't tell.
* Sherlock S:2:2: Much more to my taste, extremely clever casting.
* Supernatural: "See you next season." Really? REALLY? Is there no forth wall anymore?
Let's hope it's a trend.
* Recent discussion of Private School culture as relates to both Romney and Glee got me boggling at just how weird private schools can be. I once got in a fist fight over the Scarlet Letter. He got in trouble. I did not, even though I was the one lept over the desk to get him in the middle of English class. No, I don't remember what he said to set me off. We exchanged a few punches and then the teacher hauled him out of the room, which I remember clearly. I suspected at the time that I wasn't punished because there wasn't a teacher in the Upper school who hadn't wanted to punch him at one time or other. (He was a love him or hate him sort, but even those who liked him could find him insufferable now and then). This is one of two fist fights I had in the middle of class in High School, neither of which I got in trouble for. (I've written about the other one, where the Teacher defended me on the grounds that, "I would have hit him too." I also got away with elbowing a guy hard in the sternum right in font of a teacher during track practice. I was willing to take punishment as it was worth it, but given what he was saying just before I stopped and let him run hard into my braced elbow, they let me get off without even a warning).
Seriously, Prep School is a whole other world from the Public schools where I taught.
* Mr. O'Donnell made some comment about the things Mr. Romney did in high School being against the rules in a fancy prep school. I went to one in the '70's and '80's and the group violence was constant. I never once saw a teacher stop a group of boys from sticking another head first in one of those big grey trash cans. They did it in the open in Middle School between every class change to some poor kid who's parents were less important. This doesn't even get to the semi-consensual sexual acts male bullies perpetrated on smaller boys, and all the other forms of brutality small and large. The violence mostly moved off campus in high school, but you'd still see homoerotic two guy fights in the halls and the occasional group assault. Somehow, I doubt it was much different in Mr. Romney's day. There's this complicated set of unspoken rules about who is allowed to harm whom with impunity and under what circumstances. The organized whole school hazing was dying down by my day, but the small group and one on one bullying was endemic and hardly ever punished. We were expected to fight it out or endure it without complaint. Complaining was always punished, both by the adult and the bullies later when they got the complainer alone. The vaguely sexual nature of both Romney's assault and the tone of his more verbal bullying sounds pretty normal to me. In a boy's private school context. (My school had been a boy's school for nearly two hundred years and began it's slow gender integration progress the year I started at the age of four. It was still very much a homo-social boy's school culture).
None of this is even vaguely okay. It is the truth, however. It's also why I never even applied to teach at a private school. In Pubic School, I not only had the right to intervene in bullying, but I had full backing of Admin to shut that down wherever I saw it. In Private schools, the teachers are often the worst bullies, and not just as a matter of individual assholery as in Pubic school, but as a matter of school philosophy and unified plan. It takes bullying to a whole new level when you have to face not only the unchecked bullying of your peers but five or six teachers and an administrator working together for years to deliberately make your life a living hell.
Private Schools generally have kick ass academics, but they absolutely aren't physically or emotionally safe. Also, keep in mind that rich kids can generally afford more expensive drugs and more of them than poor kids, and even though things look fine on the surface, there's likely to be cocaine floating around with the pot and alcohol at parties, or at least there was at my school back then. Who knows what it's like now.
* I was so relieved when books like Real Boys and Odd Girl Out started coming out. It was nice to have everything I believed about the way classroom and school management were actually positively reinforcing bullying was actually objectively correct. I couldn't have taught under the old theories, but I could sure get behind intervening early in psychologically astute sort of ways. I still definitely endorse transferring your kid if possible if things get terrible, because individual school cultures vary even in the same district and a fresh social start even with the associated upheavals is better than trying to tough it out while wearing a target all day every day. OGO backs me up on that.
* This diagram shows a fraction of the basic rights I would lack in most states: http://browngurlwfro.tumblr.com/post/22843504607/homosexualintellectual-trans-rights-in-the
* This article underlines an even more basic one, "A Call to Stop the Killings in D.C.:" http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/advance/2012/04/19/call-stop-killings-dc
It can't be said often enough that when we are murdered, most jurisdictions still don't bother to investigate.
* RM found, "Tam Lin is Human: Glee Balladry and Faerieland: http://triflesandparsnips.tumblr.com/post/22767329181/tam-lin-is-human-glee-balladry-and-faerieland
* Glee S:2:
1. I think I forgot to mention that I think "Isn't She Lovely" was the best fit for Artie's voice of any of the songs I've seen him do so far.
2. I think I'm going to have to rewatch most of the last disk to poke at odds and ends.
3. OMG, Rachel's coat in New York. I can't decide if it's brilliant or too on the nose.
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's FTW.
5. I know Glee is deliberately heightened reality and certain things you have to accept like them doing different songs every week with little or no practice instead of working a program week after week like we did in choir. I get that, I really do. At the same time, them writing professional level songs, practicing them with student musicians, and choreographing hem over night? Too much for my ability to suspend disbelief which is always constantly stretched. It kept pulling me out of the thing, and meant I was expecting the to fail spectacularly. Of course I was also expecting that from the over confidence. I was actually disappointed they only failed a little. Was that the effect they were aiming for? I can't tell.
* Sherlock S:2:2: Much more to my taste, extremely clever casting.
* Supernatural: "See you next season." Really? REALLY? Is there no forth wall anymore?