Teleen's Journal

I was going to cut this, but couldn't decide where, so scroll if you don't want a rant with mentions of misogyny, homophobia, and racism.

You'll notice that I used AND instead of VERSUS in my subject line because unlike what seems like most of the rest of the Sherlock Holmes-loving world, I like them both.

Shocking, I know.  Blasphemy!  I, a woman of thirty-six years and reasonable intelligence, can actually like two shows about the same character who have completely different approaches AT THE SAME TIME!

My sarcasm, it is showing.  Mostly because I'm more than a little irritated that someone actually blocked me on Facebook over this shit (a while ago, actually, this rant has been building for that time - I figured I should get it out before it boiled over).  For that, I think they are an asshat.  They were also an LJ friend and guess what?  I blocked them from this journal.  Because I can be online petty too.

For the record, it took me a few episodes to get into the groove of "Elementary."  I wasn't sure about having Joan instead of John (for probably a lot of the same misogynistic reasons as those who absolutely refuse to watch it, even if I didn't want to admit it) and was even less sure about Jonny Lee Miller's ability to play Sherlock.  Guess what?  He pulls it off.  He is not Benedict Cumberbatch, but he's not TRYING to be.  Miller is is own version of the character.

I started to compare them, but there is no comparison - they might as well be playing completely different roles.  Well, what do you know?  They ARE playing two different roles, neither one doing a "better" job at it than the other.  They each capture Sherlock Holmes in the modern world, they simply approach it very differently.  And I like them both.

Did you hear that?  I.  Like.  Them.  BOTH!

It bears repeating, because I don't feel like I should be forced to choose here.  There is no "side," no "right" or "wrong."  They're both good in their own way.  They each have strengths and weaknesses, neither of which do I wish to discuss at length, mostly because I've seen "Elementary" more recently and so right now I like it more.  When "Sherlock" comes back, I'll probably like it more for while I have it.  It's a matter of changing gears, not fucking RELIGIONS.

Also for the record, I don't give a flying fuck about CBS "not being true to the character" by moving him to New York and giving him an amazing woman partner.  Nor do I give a flying fuck about those who say that CBS "just wanted to cash in on the popularity of BBC's "Sherlock."  Um, yeah - that's what TV networks do.  And sorry boys and girls (I would say men and woman, but the people in this "debate" have shown themselves to be little more than silly children), but neither concept is anymore "true" to Conan Doyle's work than Robert Downey Jr.'s version is.

Fact: John and Sherlock may be your slash OTP, but in the original, Victorian-era canon, they were friends and Watson was married.  To a woman. 

Fact: in the BBC's "Sherlock," both John AND Sherlock have shown attraction to women.  That's not to say that they can't also love each other romantically (hello, bisexual poly woman here), but they are not shown as sexual towards each other.  If anything, Sherlock is shown as being more asexual, with the exception of Irene Adler.  There have been a lot of jokes about John and Watson getting or being together in "Sherlock" canon, but as others have pointed out far more eloquently than I, "bromances" and "winks to the camera" do not equal gay inclusion. 

So sorry slashers, it's not homophobia to turn Watson into a woman for a new TV show.  For "Sherlock" fan fiction, I can see the argument because writers are changing the canon gender of a character because they don't like the idea of two cis-men together. 

For an entirely new show, no, though I do see where you're arguing from.  Your argument is flawed, but I see it.

Fact: the backlash of misogyny and racism against Lucy Liu since "Elementary" came out has been disgusting in the extreme, especially since she is made of total awesome in the role.  Martin Freeman can kiss her beautiful ass, as well.  Don't fucking tell me he was joking.  It was unfunny, m'kay?

To be honest, all of this bullshit (along with the mods of horror at the most popular "Sherlock" LJ site) have kind of turned me off "Sherlock."  I'm not saying I won't watch it (though it's now rather in the category of "liking a problematic thing"), but I'm avoiding the fandom even more ardently since I got blocked on Facebook for telling someone I felt they were missing out* to summarily dismiss "Elementary," because they were "completely opposed to Watson being a woman."

Why?  There is no answer to that question that I've seen so far that isn't rooted in misogyny.  Somewhere.  Yes, Watson was canonically male.  But canonically, both Holmes and Watson lived over 100 years ago, so canon is pretty much out the window the moment writers take a modern take on it.

Vaginas are icky, I guess.  And heaven forbid a vagina come anywhere near beloved characters that have been redone and remade so many times I think that only "The Three Musketeers" have them beat for variety of productions.

Finally, to be perfectly clear, I'm not saying that anyone has to watch or like either show.  However, I am saying that it's possible to enjoy both without it being some epic battle over who is more awesome.  And I also think it's wrong to judge something without having watched a single fucking episode.  Now, there are those who say that one can judge something by its previews ("Battleship," anyone?), but when most of the negative press has more to do with casting decisions than actual acting critiques, I start to smell a misogynistic, racist rat.

*The person argued that I wasn't respecting their judgment by saying they were missing out.  They're right.  I wasn't.  And I'm not apologizing for it, especially since they blocked me on Facebook over it because they didn't like my telling them (fairly nicely, I thought) that they were full of shit. 

Sadly, I can't link to it here because it has the person's real name attached, but there's a viral image on Facebook that is a screencap of the following status:

I caught my son walking home with the gay kid from across the street.  My hand and his butt are going to be sore for the rest of the night.

A friend re-posted the image with the following caption:

Complete parenting fail.  The best way to teach your children hate and bigotry is to violently abuse them.

As her name was on it (she has an uncommon name and the pictures matched), I sent her the following message with the picture attached:

I wanted you to know that your incredibly awful parenting has gone viral. Congratulations on teaching your son hate, bigotry, and fear through abuse. You are disgusting and should be ashamed of yourself.

She'll probably be able to get the image pulled if she reports it to Facebook, but for now I'm happy to see her publicly shamed for being an intolerant child abuser.  There's also a fan page that's been set up to bash her with the tag line, "Proud homophobe and child abuser."

If there's anyone out there thinking that I (or anyone else) shouldn't sink to her level by shaming her, bothering her with messages, or any other such rot, allow me to remind you that she's the one who hit her child because he walked home with a child who may or may not be gay.  If you're on her side in any way, shape, or form, your comments aren't welcome here.

So Keith Olbermann and I definitely don't agree on everything.  I've actually written him e-mails in the past chastising him for equating a female political figure to a prostitute and for contributing to the rape culture.

Tonight, though, may be where Keith and I part ways.  In his "Worst Persons" segment for December 13, 2011, Keith has the "Runner Up" as Joe Amendola, Jerry Sandusky's lawyer, who invited people to dial 1-800-REALITY if they believed the witness statements.

Yeah, someone (deadspin.com) called 1-800-REALITY and it's a gay men's sex hotline. 

( Cut for homosexuality & references to pedophilia in the same sentence, :(. )

I feel utterly sick about this.  Yeah, I already knew that Keith Olbermann wasn't perfect, but -  And the "but" is what's killing me.  I've let a lot of his behavior slide because most of the time, what he has to say is worth hearing.  However, to be absolutely fair, I usually watch his show on fast-forward, just watching headlines and skipping most of the pundits, so I may have missed a lot more fail in the past.  It's going to take him owning up to this egregious error for him to regain my respect after this.  I'll also be interested to see if anyone else comments about his homophobic choice of words.

What makes this even more horrible is that I used to think that his Special Comment on Prop 8 was one of the best things I'd ever heard a straight ally say. 

[Error: unknown template qotd]I would erase the intrinsic idea that most human beings have that anyone "Other" is someone to be feared.  I know the place where it comes from is one that helped our ancestors to survive (because it told us that the thing that went "bump" in the night might be a bear coming to eat us or that a stranger might be a drain on resources already stretched thin by subsistence living), but I'd truly rather that our species never have made it to this point, instead of us being sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and generally horrible to anyone who doesn't fit within our specific definition of "normal" (which is something that literally varies from person to person and no one really has set values for anyway).

( Cut for length and mentions of harm. )

Bottom line:  I would erase all of the excuses and justifications that people use to rationalize hurting those who are different from them.   

Mostly because it reminds me of the one Broadway show I went to, "Ragtime," with a lot of old people from the ninth circle of hell, uh, the area where my mom lives, who had NO idea what the play was actually about when they booked their tickets and were dead silent and/or asleep through most of it.  The discomfort on the bus ride home to Ohio was palpable.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.  I'm a bad, bad person.  Though their discomfort was more racially motivated than anti-BGLTQP, I found myself feeling happy that they'd been accidentally forced out of their narrow little box and even a tiny bit hopeful that perhaps something had made them think, even if it was just for the evening, before going back to that dour little corner of the red state in which I live. 

Missing Trans Woman Found Dead

There are several issues here, so I'm going to try and address them one at a time and be as coherent as I can despite my surprisingly overwhelming sense of grief for someone I didn't even know.

A quote from the article: She worked with people with disabilities but also had a police record for prostitution.

It saddens me beyond all measure that they felt the need to mention her police record for prostitution in the same breath as her work with those with disabilities.  As if one negated the other.

But I forgot.  Sex workers are inherently tainted, aren't they? 

As far as her status as a trans woman and the bearing it has here, given past cases, I have to wonder if it wasn't the cause of her death.  If the person who killed her (assuming it was murder - the police report says she died of asphyxiation, but not if it was due to an outside person) did so because they found out she'd been born with male genitalia.  And it makes me think of all the people out there who think that transgender persons are under ANY obligation to disclose their status, when the leading cause of death among transgender persons is MURDER because of ignorant bigots finding out their status.

To be clear: if you think that a trans person should tell anyone that they are trans for ANY reason whatsoever, you're an asshole.  It's their business and only theirs.  Not yours.  Not mine.  Only.  THEIRS.  Period. 

I've had this argument before and I'm going to make something else clear - I'm done arguing.  If you have an opinion that differs, keep it to yourself.  While I'm normally okay with having discussions here... not about this, not today and maybe not ever again.  Not when I keep seeing stories like this because of the sort of hatred that still exists in this world that will allow a bigot to justify ending an innocent life simply because of how that person is living it.   

Again, I don't know that this woman was murdered, but given past history, it's the most likely cause of her death. 

Cross-posted to Abolish Slavery - Legalize Prostitution.

Inspired by more than one comment on the post that this post links to, I'm finally going to weigh in on the whole anti-PC, thought-police, this-word-has-another-meaning-and-no-one-can-own-a-word, I-don't have-to-change-simply-because-you're-offended school of thought.

I'm going to begin by saying that I'm guilty of using pretty much every word that is at issue at one point or another, some as recently as last year, so I'm not saying that I'm not in a glass house here. 

However.

For those who are against changing their language to remove certain words from their vocabularies because another person is offended by it, I ask the following question:

Who does it hurt? 

Seriously, who does it hurt to make the effort not to use words that others have found offensive?  I know that it's an effort to do so, so I guess someone could argue that it's hurting them by virtue of the fact that changing one's vocabulary and deleting certain words is hella difficult...  Well, I have to say that it's more difficult in the offline world, but online?  It's as easy as being careful of what one types.  I realize that for some, who type as quickly as they think, that could be a challenge, but seriously?  Who does it hurt?  Why is it such a big deal to just not be an asshat when someone asks you to do so?

( Cut for possible triggers and an incomplete list of incredibly offensive slurs that everyone should know not to use. Ever.  )And because I've been educating myself a bunch lately, here are a bunch of links that all say all of this a lot better than I just did.

101 Primer

sparkindarkness' entire journal.

Read all of that and then come back to discuss, if you wish, :).

ETA: Proof that not being an asshat is an ongoing battle: Weak is ableist.  Thank you to 51stcenturyfox  for letting me know, :).

ETA 2: My comment thread on the post that started all of this is here. 

ETA 3: Drama communities are probably not the best place to start, lol, but if it were not for them I never would have found most of this stuff out, which is why I mentioned them.  The best place to start is with the 101 Primer and go from there, :).

This post has now been edited because my essential message was being lost and I was doing more harm than good by defending my position on one phrase.  Most of the comments regarding that phrase have now been screened.  I'm not a PoC, so my feelings on that phrase don't matter whatsoever and continuing to argue about it only detracts from the essential point of what I was trying to say. 

I apologize for the drama.

For the record I am US-born, white, queer though I easily pass for both female and straight, and able-bodied.  I have no personal experience with physical, racial or ethnic discrimination and I apologize for speaking for those groups as if I were personally invested in those particular slurs not being used.

The areas in which I have personal experience and/or a personal investment include: feminism/sexim, sex work, body image/food, sexual freedom, BGLTQP rights/homophobia, bullying, child abuse, the US foster care system, the US health care system, PTSD, anxiety, depression and mental health.  

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's kind of funny that such a rabid atheist is saying the first part, but here's the thing:

"Muslim Terrorist" on Air Malta Plane Turns Out To Be Carribean Christian

When you say that one group is somehow scarier than another just because of the god they pray to (or what they look like or how they act), mistakes like this will happen, especially if you have the racist viewpoint that anyone who looks a certain way belongs to that faith. 

( Cut for length and futher discussion. )

This isn't rocket science.  It's shit that all of us have been told at one point or another and yet we keep spreading that same fear of anyone who isn't heteronormative, white and Christian.  

People suck. 

Seen on facebook today, the status of a friend of mine:

If you exclude people from your civil society, don't expect them to care much about its issues and/or pending demise...

All I could think was - THIS.  
( Cut for length and rage. )

I'm not going to beg heteronormative society for a place within it.  I'm happy living on the fringe if it means I don't have to hide who I am in the name of 'fitting in'.  And I can feel nearly-guilt-free Schadenfreude when discrimination and hypocrisy come back to bite the mainstream hard on its self-righteous ass.