#women being official the source content but to me he's a man with no preference :p

[ninkaku]

annoying conversations happening on twitter this week about dazai and his canonical whoreness .... very ableist delivery of people treating him like a tiny 22 yr old minor who clearly doesn't know what sex is and its getting weeeeeiirrrrd ...........

[diverse-writing]

Book Review: “Queer City” by Peter Ackroyd

Thanks to @kyliebean-editing​ for the review request! I have a list of books I’ve read recently here that I’m considering reviewing, so let me know if you’re looking for my thoughts on a specific book and I’ll be sure to give it a go!

2.5 ⭐/5

Hey all! I’m back with another book review and this time we’re taking a dip into nonfiction with Peter Ackroyd’s Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. Let’s dive right in.

The good: Peter Ackroyd is a hugely prolific writer and a historian clearly trained for digging through huge archives of history and his expertise shows. This particular volume--his 37th nonfiction book and 55th overall published work--provides a startlingly comprehensive timeline of London’s gay history, just as promised. Arguably, the book’s subtitle short sells the book’s content; Queer City actually rewinds the clock all the way back to the city’s origins as a Celtic town before it became Roman Londinium. From there, Ackroyd’s utilizes his extensive historical experience to trace proof of gay activity through the ages. From the high courts of medieval times to the monks of the Tudor era, the gaslit back alleys of Victorian London to the raging club scene of the 1980s--gay people have lived and even thrived in London for literal millennia, and Ackroyd has the receipts to back it up. If you need proof that homosexuality has been a staple of civilization since the Romans--and the homophobia has often recycled the same arguments for the same period of time--then look no further.

The mediocre: All that being said, Ackroyd’s “receipts” often tend towards the salacious, the scandalous, and often the explicit. It seems that legal edicts and court cases made up the foundation of his research, so us readers get to hear in full detail the punishments levied against historical queer individuals, from exile to the pillory to the gallows. Occasionally, Ackroyd dips into the written pornagraphic accounts of the time to describe salacious sexual encounters, which add little to the overarching narrative except proof that gay people do, in fact, have sex. Later down the historical record, once newspapers became more common, we also receive extensive account of the gossip pages of the day, complete with rants about the indecency of “buggery” and the moral decay of “the homosexual.” Throughout the book, ass puns and phallic wordplay run rampant, so much so that it occasionally feels like it’s only added for shock value.

While I’m not a professional historian, as a queer person I can’t help but feel that there must be more to the historical record than these beatings, back alley hookups, etc. In focus on the concrete evidence of gay activity--that is, gay sex and all the official documents surrounding the subject--it feels like Ackroyd neglects the emotional side of queerness in favor of the physical side. Even the queer poetry excerpts or diary entries of the time (which I’m nearly positive exist throughout the historical record, though once again I’m not a professional) sampled in this book are all focused on the physical act of sex. No queer person wants a pastel tinted, desexed version of our history--but we also don’t need to hear a dozen explicit accounts of gay park sex. Queer love and queer sex go hand in hand and to focus on one without the other is disingenuous, not to mention dangerous in promoting the idea that queer people are hypersexual and predatory. Admittedly, I do think the omission of queer love is an unintentional byproduct of Ackroyd’s fact-checking and editorial process. He may not have intended to leave out tenderness, but his intentional choice to focus on impersonal records--court cases, royal decrees, newspapers, etc.--rather than personal ones--diaries, poetry, art, etc.--meant that emotion was largely excluded anyway. 

The bad: Though Queer City does a good job of following queer history through the ages, Ackroyd fails to connect his cited historical examples with larger sociocultural movements of the time. He discusses queer coding in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales but not the larger (oft homoromantic/homoerotic) courtly love traditions that Chaucer drew on. He describes the cult followings around boy actors playing female parts in Elizabethan and Jacobian London but neglects to put those theaters and the public reaction to them within the context of the ongoing Renaissance. Similarly, Ackroyd omits explicit connections to the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Neoclassicism, free love, and countless other cultural movements that undoubtedly shaped both the social and legal responses to the queer community. This exclusion, unlike the exclusion of queer love, had to be intentional on Ackroyd’s part; it’s hugely unlikely that a historian with his bibliography accidentally forgot to mention the last millennium’s worth of Western civilization cultural movements. It’s a massive oversight that utterly fails to place London’s queer history within the context of wider history.

And finally, last but definitely not least, oh boy does Ackroyd have some learning to do when it comes to gender, gender presentation, and gender identity. From the very first chapter, it’s apparent that Ackroyd’s research and writing focused largely on MLM cisgender men, with WLW cisgender women as a far secondary priority. While there are chapters on chapters dedicated to detangling homosexual men’s dealings, homosexual women are often pushed to the fringes of London’s queer history. They receive paragraphs, here and there, and occasionally the closing sentence of a chapter, but overall they’re clearly downgraded to a secondary priority within Ackroyd’s historical narrative. Some of this can once again be blamed on the type of records Ackroyd uses; sex between women was never criminalized or discussed in the public sphere in the same way that sex between men was, so it was a less common topic in London’s courts and newspapers. (And, once again, I have the sneaking suspicion that turning to less traditional sources would’ve helped resolve this issue, though in part the omission can likely be pinned on Ackroyd’s demonstrable preference towards male history.)

Additionally, Ackroyd tends to treat crossdressing as undeniable proof of homosexuality. While it’s true that historically queer individuals found freedom or relief in dressing as the opposite sex, the latter didn’t necessarily equal the former. Additionally, if the crossdressing individual in question was female, dressing as a man was often a way for a woman to secure more freedoms than she would receive while wearing traditional feminine outfits. (Also, he tended to use “transvestite” over “crossdressing,” and while I tend to think of the latter as more preferred, the former may be more in use among queer studies circles or British slang). Though Ackroyd briefly acknowledges that women could and may have crossdressed to more easily navigate a misogynistic world, he nevertheless continually dredges out records of crossdressing women as concrete proof of historical sapphics.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room; in clearly identifying crossdressers as homosexuals, Ackroyd entirely overlooks the existence of transgender and nonbinary people in London’s historical record. This omission, arguably unlike the others, seems definitively intentional and malicious. In the entire book, I could probably count on one hand the number of times Ackroyd mentions the concept of gender identity, and I could use even fewer fingers for the number of times he does so respectfully and thoughtfully. Though he largely neglects to discuss transgender history as a subset of queer history, when he does bring up historical non-cisgender identities it’s often as a component of his salacious narratives rather than a vibrant and storied history all on its own. In the final chapter on modern gay London, Ackroyd’s casual dismissal of the concept of myriad gender identities felt dangerously close to modern day British “gender criticism,” which is likely more familiar to queer readers as TERFism masquerading under the guise of concern for women and gay rights (JK Rowling is a very public example of a textbook gender critical Brit, if you’re wondering). By the end of the book, Ackroyd’s skepticism of so-called “nontraditional gender identities” is so glaringly evident that he might as well proclaim it outright. 

The verdict:  For a book supposedly focused on queerness, the focus on male cisgender homosexuality is both disappointing and honestly not surprising. This book is a portrait of gay London, yes--but it’s also a portrait of Peter Ackroyd as a historian and a professional. It’s clear from early on that he’s writing from the perspective of an older white gay man (I think queer WOC know what I’m talking about when I say that that POV is very distinct, and his clear idolation of 1960s-1980s gay culture makes his age quite evident as well). As you progress through the book, his blindspot in regards to gender and gender politics become increasingly clear, as does his simultaneous obsession and criticism with transgender identities. Overall, Queer City is a clear example of how “nonfiction” doesn’t necessarily mean unvarnished truth--or at least not all of it--and how individual historian’s methods and biases bleed into their research. 

A dear London friend suggested Matt Houlbrook’s Queer London: Perils and Pleasures of the Sexual Metropolis as a more gender inclusive review of the famous city’s queer history. While I take a break from London for a bit, I would welcome any and all thoughts on either Queer City or Queer London, the latter which I fully intend to get to eventually so I can properly compare the two.

[sunsmitten]

     This is something that’s been bothering me lately and i feel the need to give my two cents. im starting to see homophobic comments abt gay ships on my dash and while the people saying them may not think it’s homophobic, it is. no one has to really read this, it’s just something i want to put out there. it’s my personal experience with a group of people that were very Straight Ship centered, heteronormative, and would frequently make the very same comments others are starting to make here: “gay ships are being shoved down my throat so now i hate gay shipping and want nothing to do with it” or you know, stuff along those lines. if two people rping two girls kissing or two boys kissing bothers you in any way, literally, in any way at all, it is homophobia. and here’s a good chunk of how shit like that grows and can become something very harmful;

when i very first started rping on tumblr i had made an oc ( both the oc and blog are looooong gone by now ) that wasn’t very attracted to women romantically or sexually. he didn’t define his sexuality, but throughout that blog i made it clear he wasn’t really into women.

i eventually made friends with this group of people who also rped on tumblr. in the beginning everything was fine, great and fun! but after some time they would make me feel bad for only putting my oc in a relationship with a man. in order for me to be included and not repeatedly discarded by them, i would actively have to put my oc in a ‘straight ship.’ and unfortunately, that’s what i did. i immediately noticed a difference with how they treated me when i finally shipped my guy oc with one of their girls oc’s, and i would have to repeatedly sit through them saying transphobic and homophobic comments abt other people’s ships and muses ( it was the transphobia in this community that made me leave in the first place ). they would constantly express their bitterness towards m/m and f/f shipping on the internet bc it was “more popular” than their m/f ships, and when i would try to explain how that wasn’t a good viewpoint to have, I would be ostracized, guilt tripped, and forced to apologize and ‘admit’ that i was wrong.

as i got older and more comfortable with my sexuality, i really only ever viewed/read content centered around m/m and f/f because like. im gay. and i wanna see gay shit, ya know? but that didn’t really fly with them. they’d would continuously make me feel guilty for this, call me misogynistic for liking m/m and f/f over m/f because to them being gay and wanting to see gay content makes me hate women, and i was called the big word itself. Heterophobic. 

one of the girls in particular, we’ll call her S, was very keen on telling me how awful of a person i was bc of my preference, how ‘straight shipping is oppressed’ on the internet and im only ‘feeding into the oppression.’ for 4 years she would manipulate me and make me feel guilty not only for the type of media i consumed, but for my sexuality in general. it got so bad to the point that i would have frequent panic attacks and i still got the throw up stain on my carpet to prove it ( i got one so bad bc of her i puked all over my bedroom floor and then fainted ). when i would try to reach out to the others abt what was happening behind the scenes, i’d either be ignored or my feelings were invalidated. to me, she was toxic, to everyone else, she was a wonderful friend. but that doesn’t excuse or make her treatment of me ok and it took along time for me to realize that. 

again, please keep in mind this went on for 4 years. this started when i was finally comfortable with myself and then to be thrown in and stuck in this situation bc i was too much of a coward to leave really fucks with a person. her distaste, hatefulness, and bitter attitude for gay people/characters/shipping was all taken out on me every week for 4 years. i’m doing my very best not over-dramatize this but yeah, it was every week for 4 years she would send me paragraphs of how terrible i was for just being me. how shitty i was as a person, how im a terrible friend, how the content i liked wasn’t fair to her, a straight person, that i was predatory for being a masculine identifying person looking at other guys, and how lucky i was to have a friend like her that tells me when i’m ‘in the wrong.’ 

near the end of last year she sent me another one of these multi-paragraph messages. at this point, i had finally become very aware how fucked up of a person she is and how i was never in the wrong through any of this like she originally made me believe. instead of agreeing with her and apologizing, a ended up snapping back. i told her how i felt, how she wasn’t being fair to me, and that i felt she was being very homophobic. admittedly, her response wasn’t at all like i had expected. She apologized, told me i had opened her eyes to some things and she’ll work on getting better. this made me happy! i thought that maybe we could continue our friendship without anymore of the BS. 

after that i took a good break from being online. i needed some time for myself and i needed to think some things over about my life. during this time, i realized how lax i was with S, how i let her and that whole friend group get away with so many things and i began to wonder if i should even go back. even after that talk i had with her, she was still very defensive against homosexual relationships and would get angry if someone expressed more interest in gay media than straight media. 

i was away for a good couple months, i was healing and rising above that bad mentality she forced on me. i logged out of all social media and messenger apps so there was no way her or anyone from that group could contact me. i hadn’t heard from her in months, until i received a letter in the mail. She wrote me a letter. A two paged letter. A LETTER. A REAL, WHOLE ASS LETTER. just so she can continue to try and tear me down. she started by telling me how much she missed me, a little starter paragraph kissing my ass until it, very abruptly, turned into the usual “youre shit, terrible, bad, you have no respect for me or anything i create, you hate me bc im a straight woman-” you get it. but this time i didn’t care! nothing she said in that letter got to me like it used to. the only thing that bothered me was her persistence to make me feel bad. she genuinely wanted to continue to hurt me. but with that time away and probably because i was so used to it by then, it didn’t faze me. 

i eventually went back to social media and kept my distance from that friend group. i still considered them my friends, bc when things were good, i had a lot of fun! and wanted to keep that in my life. But, I blocked S. I blocked her on everything so there’d be no way for her to contact me and if she wrote me another letter, i would simply rip it up. i made it clear i wanted to go our separate ways with no hard feelings, i didn’t talk to anyone abt what she had done. no mention whatsoever. i carried on my merry way bc i was moving past it. She did not. 

When she figured out i had blocked her, she threw a tantrum. she twisted my words and painted me as the villain by showing out of context screenshots of what i had sent in response to her second to last message ( the one before the letter ). she told the people i was still friends with that i abused her for years bc she was straight and put me on full blast on the internet. she did this because i blocked her.

it all happened in the time span of a second; i lost all my friends, i was blocked by everyone and not only called a piece of shit by her, but by everyone i still cared deeply about. i was forced to delete all my social media accounts so i wouldn’t continue to be put on blast. for a week i was upset bc really, who wouldn’t be? but after that week i realized that if these people i called my friends just took S’s word for it and were all so eager to tear me apart bc she said so, they were never my friends. they never cared about me so why should i care if im not with them anymore? it was a real eye opening moment and my dudes, im doing fucking great. im so much happier without them all in my life and i can finally do the shit i want. be gay and indulge on harmless gay content. 

so! to make the moral of the story clear. The people that are so butt hurt over gay shipping being more popular than straight shipping are people not to be trusted. it may seem unfair to lump them all into a category, and im not saying they’re all as toxic as S, but their mentality is homophobic. disliking anything gay bc it’s not straight, is homophobic. straight people are constantly represented in every source of media and if someone is bothered by the fact that gay people are indulging in gay shipping in the rpc, they are homophobic. there’s no way around it.

im still getting over S and all that she did. i know without her i wouldn't be as tough as i am now and unapologetic with what i like, but there’s a good part of me that wishes i never met her or that friend group. bc of her i struggle with my self esteem and my own internalized homophobia that only formed after i met her. i’ve come along way in the months after i officially cut myself off from them, but i know this is something that’s going to take some time. 

[meagan-marie]

Six Months at Riot Games

I’ve been up all night after reading Kotaku’s article on the company culture of Riot, and its effect on women in particular. Cecilia contacted me as a potential source, but I didn’t commit to providing my experience on the record because I was worried about the ramifications of speaking out. The discourse around this conversation and the reticence to believe the women who came forward has stunned me. I’ve been carrying around a heavy weight on my shoulders since 2014, and I feel it is finally time to let it go. I only lasted six months at Riot before resigning.

In 2014, I left a job I loved and colleagues I adored to take up a post at Riot Games in Dublin. One of their recruiters had reached out to me nearly a year prior, and while I was immensely happy at my current place of work, I had always wanted to work abroad at least once in my life. I was becoming addicted to League of Legends, Riot had a history of great community-centric initiatives, and I felt that if I turned down the opportunity, I would always ask myself, “What if?”

I was initially apprehensive, as I had been told firsthand that Riot could have a “bro” culture at times. So I did my research. I asked the recruiter directly about the mysterious “culture” of Riot, and why conforming to it was so important. I even messaged a handful of women ex-Rioters to ask about their experiences. They all confirmed that Riot could have a “frat party” type atmosphere at times, but didn’t relay stories of overt sexism or harassment.

I took the job in early 2014. I sold my car, packed up all my belongings in a shipping container, committed to a long-distance relationship with my partner, and sent my cats off for the mandatory 30 days of quarantine. I fully committed, expecting to work there for several years at the minimum.

Before I detail some of what I experienced at Riot, first, let me state the obvious. The behavior below is NOT indicative of all Riot employees. The large majority of Riot employees I’ve met have been lovely, and as evidenced above, there are many people who weren’t subject to sexist behavior and harassment. That being said, from my own experiences and that of many others speaking out this week, an unacceptable number of people – primarily, but not exclusively women – have been subject to inappropriate behavior at Riot for years. It is systemic to the company’s culture and needs to be addressed as such.  

I’ve outlined some of the most notable negative encounters with Riot staff below. These don’t account for the daily microaggressions and condescending remarks that are too numerous to detail. For transparency, being four years removed from Riot has not degraded my recollection of these events. I am drawing them directly from the eight-page resignation letter I sent to Riot in August of 2014.

Content-Warning: Sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language, as well as mentions of sexual assault.

At Riot, employees are encouraged to play League before/after work, or during lunch. My very first week at the Dublin office, I heard shouting from individuals playing together, calling each other “f*ggots” repeatedly. I was unnerved, but it was my first week and I didn’t know if this was a common occurrence. I didn’t say anything at that time. Eventually, the language would escalate to “n*gger”. No one flinched, and I realized it was considered the norm. Nearly the same thing happened my first day of meetings at the Riot LA office, where two men were loudly calling each other “c*cksuckers” right outside the office of the CEOs.

Soon I began to notice gendered language regularly being used among male Rioters to insult each other. Guys would tell each other “not to be such a girl” and call one another “p*ssies” quite regularly. They would casually refer to women as “b*tches” and say that “all women were crazy.” I also overheard a group discussing how a female professional made it far in the industry, suggesting she “sucked c*ck to get to the top.

My first month at Riot we had an opportunity to talk with one of the CEOs for an office-wide AMA. We were encouraged to submit questions anonymously. I submitted something that had bothered me for some time as a League player. I wondered why – other than the child characters and Yordles – nearly all the female champions had the exact same body type. The male champions were young, old, skinny, athletic, obese, handsome, monstrous, and more – they were unique and diverse. The most prevalent characteristic of female champions at the time was sex appeal. I wanted something more. I wanted to know when we would get a female equivalent of Gragas. 

The senior staff liked the question so much that they requested I ask it live, rather than anonymously. I was apprehensive at first because I was so new, but I also understood that this was an important opportunity to directly challenge someone in a position of power who could make a change. Unfortunately, the response boiled down to “giving the players what they want”, to which I rebutted that Riot was big enough to influence player perception of what characters are cool or fun to play. I was very disappointed by the response, which felt dismissive of the issue. (As a side note, I was happy to see Riot’s efforts to diversify their female champions these past few years.)

After the meeting, I realized I had put a target on my back with some of the men in the office. I didn’t even make it to my desk before a male colleague came up and told me that “women don’t want to play unattractive champions. They want to feel beautiful.” I was stunned. A woman behind us audibly laughed at the fact that he was informing us of our gender’s gaming preferences. A few male coworkers also asked why I would like to see an “unattractive” female champion, or a plus size female champion, because “no one wants to look at that.” These were several of dozens of conversations I would have on the matter.

Things only got worse the longer I stayed at Riot. I didn’t go out with colleagues after events because strip clubs seemed to be a common destination. Asking me what age I lost my virginity at was deemed appropriate conversation during a team dinner, and employees I didn’t know prodded into how my sex life worked in a long-distance relationship.

I felt out of place in my direct team as well. Our Jira sprints were named things like “thong.” I was the only woman on that particular team, and so a senior staff member named us the “Bros and Ho”.  I immediately tried to shut that down, but it was used for weeks regardless.

Rape became a punchline to jokes quite frequently, including one instance where an employee went on for several hours about how he was going to rape his male colleague, who was his hotel roommate. He was graphic in exactly how he was going to rape his roommate, who was a new hire, and it was obvious that the individual in question was extremely uncomfortable.

While on a team outing, the same senior staff member messaged a new employee’s girlfriend on Facebook asking if she was “DTF” - shorthand for “down to f*ck”. He thought it was a funny joke. The new staffer didn’t feel comfortable challenging him, even though his girlfriend was very uncomfortable and called to ask why she was being harassed by his boss.

Then came the final straw. At a work dinner, it came up that I thought I’d been paired in a hotel room with a male Rioter. It turned out to be a typo in the name, and, as was standard, I was paired with another woman. A senior staff member proceeded to repeatedly call me sexist for not being willing to room with a man I’d never met before. At first, I thought he was kidding, but he continued to make arguments to his point. I explained why I would be more comfortable sharing a room with another woman, and told him I wasn’t enjoying the conversation and would leave if I was continued to be called sexist. The conversation continued, with him eventually saying that my unwillingness to room with a man was the same as not hiring a woman due to her gender. I left the table in the middle of dinner, unwilling to take any more after six months of such behavior. I submitted my resignation shortly after.

My biggest concern with Riot – putting my own experiences behind me – is the inappropriate and sometimes predatory behavior that some staff exhibited towards fans. I frequently pushed back against comments and scenarios like these but found I was one of the few that would speak up. Rioters are often seen as celebrities with dedicated fans, and it is easy to abuse that power. 

I regularly witnessed lewd comments about women passing by at events, discussing their level of attractiveness, whether someone would sleep with them, and guessing if they were the age of consent.  

Several times I heard male employees bragging and sharing intimate details about hooking up with players at events, including a cosplayer we worked with in an official capacity. Several male colleagues even asked me to “hook them up” with cosplayers.

When I brought up the inappropriateness of a young League cosplayer having silly-string unexpectedly sprayed across her chest during a video piece by a third party – the gag being that he had ejaculated on her – I was told I was the “comedy police”.

I overheard at least a dozen employees comment on how cosplayers only make costumes for attention and ask “is this even considered a costume?” when a very famous cosplayer recreated a scantily-clad female champion. I showed them that she was one-to-one with the splash art. They begrudgingly conceded that it was an official outfit. This is obviously highly hypocritical.

At least three times Riot Dublin employees made inappropriate comments via work email about a female cosplayer’s breasts (one they regularly worked with).

While in LA, I had a week of very successful meetings with Rioters to help get a new cosplay initiative off the ground. In a recap meeting, I expressed how happy I was that we were creating such great programming for cosplayers. The senior most staff member responded with “Who wouldn’t want to work with cosplayers? Because Boobs.”

During one event, a first-time cosplayer came to our booth crying because someone had commented negatively on her weight in relation to the character. Another coworker and I consoled her for nearly 30 minutes, and she left, feeling much better. After she left, a fellow Rioter called her a “fatass” and asked why she would try to cosplay the character she chose. I was in shock but told him how inappropriate that was to say about our fans, especially those passionate enough to make and wear costumes. Cosplayers have also been called “tr*nnies” and “attention whores” by Riot employees at events.

In meetings, I was told that we shouldn’t put cosplayers on stage to play League live, because they are mostly women, and therefore not very good at the game.

Further examples of disrespect include when I argued that we shouldn’t let a cosplayer in blackface on our stage for a parade, keeping in mind that Riot is a global company. I was repeatedly called racist by my colleagues, who tried to convince me that it was an acceptable practice and I was overreacting.

This is not a comprehensive list. These were only the very specific examples I could draw from when I drafted my resignation letter at Riot. After word got out that I quit, I was contacted by several other women from the office, asking to meet. I was told more horror stories, discovering that some of them had been physically touched, cornered in shared vehicles, and faced professional retaliation for turning down advances. They asked for advice. I told them that they needed to speak up too.

The reason I didn’t share any of this before is because I felt trapped. I am not proud of myself for staying silent. After I quit, I was stranded in Ireland with my entire life in an apartment, no job, no car, and not even a cell phone, as it was immediately taken away from me once I resigned. I needed to get back to the United States somehow. Riot was my best bet, and I worried that if I didn’t agree to their mandates or went public with anything that I’d ruin my chance of getting home. After six months of near-daily misery, I was exhausted. I signed their agreements. I needed to get out. I recognize that I put myself at legal risk by disclosing my experience now. After years of regret and the thought that these practices could still be going on today, affecting countless others who also feel alone and outgunned by a company they were once excited to be a part of,  I am willing to take that risk. I want to work towards a better and more inclusive industry and show solidarity with the other women who have come forward.  

I left Riot feeling like a failure. I felt like I wasn’t tough enough to stick it out or make a positive change at the company.  I had been very public about my new adventure in Ireland, and all I could post about the return home was an agreed upon “culture fit issues’ statement to my social channels. Friends and followers could tell that something was wrong, but I couldn’t expand further.

To be clear, not everything from my time at Riot was negative. I became good friends with several of my co-workers and loved interacting with fans. Riot is a massive company that employs thousands of people. There are going to be women at the company who’ve never experienced sexism or harassment from their colleagues. I am very happy that they have found a safe working space with their particular branches or teams. That being said, these harassment-free experiences don’t invalidate the experiences of women like myself, and the dozens of others I personally met while working at Riot, who struggled with fair and respectful treatment on a daily basis.

The in-depth article on Kotaku and outpouring of other stories from both current and ex-Rioters finally gave me the courage to speak up, despite my concerns about professional or legal ramifications. I should have done this four years ago. I tried to facilitate change while working at Riot and after my departure. I’m hoping the groundswell of voices will now finally cause real, meaningful change within one of the most influential gaming companies in the world.

Two final notes:

To the many good eggs at Riot:  I’ve seen many of your posts. I understand your frustration if you have not been witness to this type of behavior, or experienced it yourself. That being said, you can support your company and the individuals who have come forward. Your anger shouldn’t be directed at the subjects of this abuse and maltreatment, but rather the individuals who perpetuated these acts in the first place. Please keep an eye out for your peers, and hold others accountable for their actions.

To young women hoping to work in gaming: Gaming can be a tough industry, but please don’t let conversations like this drive you away from pursuing your passion. The more we dissect and discuss these situations in a public forum, the more steps we take to making the industry a more inclusive place. As tough as gaming can be, it is equally welcoming and rewarding.

[whimsical-imagination-blog1]

WIP Chapter 1

Please bear with me as this is a first draft! Feedback is welcome!

On a hot summer evening, as the sun sank below the horizon and bathed the world in tones of orange and gold, a man and a woman stood at the border between kingdoms. Behind them, the forest was starting to come alive with the nighttime creatures. Ahead, the grassy hills led to the castle of the royal family, quiet and serene in the distance. 

The man was tall and golden-haired. Although he looked to be in his early 30s, he was decades older. He wore fine, yet unremarkable clothes and carried only a plain sword at his side - nothing to give away who he was or which family he belonged to. The woman was short and plain, wearing a homespun dress and her hair in a braid. She looked older than the man, and was in fact centuries older than he, though the only indication of her age could be found in her eyes. They fixed him with a stare as she presented him with the reason for their meeting.

The woman was silent as she handed over a basket to the man. He did not look at its contents. Without a word, he left the woman standing on the hill, heading into the golden fields, the basket carefully cradled in his arms. The woman watched him go, stony-faced and cold. When he was no longer visible on the horizon, she turned and entered the forest.

The man continued to walk until he reached the gates of the castle. Without a word, the guards allowed him to enter, not questioning what was in the basket. The man continued on into the castle and up the mighty grand staircase, entering the private quarters of the royal family. He set the basket down on a table in his bedchamber, his wife coming to look at what he’d brought. He peeled the blanket concealing its contents back from the top of the basket to reveal a newborn baby sleeping peacefully.

His wife looked first at the baby, then at him with cold, angry eyes. The baby had dark hair and tanned skin. She looked nothing like the fair woman staring at her, nothing like the High Elf father who watched her sleep. The princess made to leave the room, stopping at the door to look back at her husband.

“What have you done?”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seraphine Lateau sunned herself on the rooftop, only removing her arm from where it lay over her eyes every so often to take a swig from the jug of wine that sat next to her. Though she’d been on the rooftop since mid-morning and it was now nearly evening, she wasn’t drunk. No, thanks to her father’s High Elf blood running in her veins, the wine had only served to take the edge off, barely even making her feel slightly tipsy. Sera supposed that wasn’t a bad thing, although she was certainly in the mood to get drunk. If she’d shown up to the state dinner planned for the evening falling all over herself. Elante would’ve had her head. Perhaps worse, Nirya would’ve tried to make her feel guilty. She’d have failed, but the attempt would have resulted in a spectacular alar blow up, and that was the last thing any of them needed.

Nirya was an empath, and one with considerable gifts. When they were children, Nirya could control the emotions of whoever she looked at by making a face at them. Now, at nearly 30 years old, Nirya could read and control the emotions of everyone in the palace if she desired. Even the father the two girls shared wasn’t immune to Nirya’s manipulations. Only Sera could defend herself from Nirya’s powers. She’d discovered at a young age, much to Nirya’s never ending annoyance, that she could ignore the emotions Nirya wanted her to feel, although she was not able to shield her emotions from being read by her sister.

Their father, Ilkay, possessed only a fraction of Nirya’s gifts. It was just enough to keep discontent from spreading through the Mood Lands, as the Mood Princes before him had done for hundreds of centuries. Nirya, though, would be able to do more, or so their father claimed. With her power, she could keep every one of her subjects happy and subservient. If she so desired, she could even conquer other territories and use her power to ensure no bloodshed while doing so. She couldn’t bend the will of the people around her directly, but she could sway them by manipulating their emotions. Nirya herself had never admitted to Sera that she had those kinds of ambitions. To the best of Sera’s knowledge, Nirya intended to use her power only to keep her land peaceful and prosperous. 

The thought of a nation of blindly obedient subjects made Sera a bit queasy. Tomorrow, on her 30th birthday, Nirya would be officially crowned the Prince’s Heir, signaling to the world that she was ready to begin training with her father to take the throne when he eventually stepped down. She wouldn’t actually ascend to the throne for decades still, possibly not even for centuries, but she would become their father’s right hand, begin influencing his policies, making decisions, and generally preparing for the day when she’d rule the kingdom instead. Sera didn’t trust that her father’s ambitions wouldn’t be passed to Nirya, and that one day they might end up in not just a kingdom, but an empire. The coronation made Sera uneasy, not only for what it meant for the kingdom, but because Sera herself wasn’t sure what her place in it would be after tomorrow.

She took another deep drink from the jug at her side and shifted on the rooftop, her boots hanging over the edge. I she had her way, she’d spend the rest of her days doing exactly this. No responsibilities, no one looking after her every move, just days spent lazing in the sun and doing whatever brought her pleasure.

The source of some of that pleasure plopped down on the roof next to her, stealing the jug away and drinking the last few sips. Sera cracked open an eye and glared at the girl who stole her wine. 

“I wasn’t finished with that,” she grumbled.

Astayana grinned back at her, sweeping her curtain of shimmering red-gold hair over her shoulder. “How many of these have you had today, Sera? I’m sure you won’t miss a few drops.”

“Three. And if you had a state dinner to attend tonight, you might disagree.”

“I think all this sun is making you cranky,” Astayana said.

“Perhaps you could do something to cheer me up.” Sera rolled onto her side, propping her head up on a fist.

“We don’t have time for me to properly cheer you up. You’re due back at the palace and I have to get to work.” Astayana didn’t look in too much of a hurry to leave as she lifted her face to the sun, closing her eyes.

“I’d much rather come watch you dance than go back to the palace,” Sera sighed.

“That’s because you’re a lecher hiding behind a pretty face.”

Astayana worked in one of the city’s many dance halls, where patrons could come to see beautiful men and women perform exotic dances. Some of the less reputable halls allowed the anchors to sell other sexual services in addition to the private and public dances for which they were known. Astayana had worked in such a house for awhile, until she grew bored of the rich older patrons touching her body. She’d moved to a more upscale hall, and shortly thereafter, she’d met Sera, though Sera had been in such a drunken stupor that she barely remembered most of that night.

While it wasn’t uncommon for female patrons to frequent the dance halls, it was nearly unheard of for a High Elf to even set foot in the Red District. They preferred to keep their entertainment to their own depraved private parties. The High Elf parties were exclusive events, and rarely spoken of outside of those gated mansions where they occurred, except in speculation and rumor. 

Sera might not have the coloring of a High Elf, but her unnatural height and deep sapphire eyes, both of which she’d inherited from her father, marked her as something other than the faeries, lesser elves, and other creatures who usually watched Astayana dance. She’d picked Sera out of the crowd almost as soon as she’d arrived, drunkenly stumbling onto a plush velvet couch in the back of the hall. Astayana had a keen eye for the patrons who were high-spenders, and she’d spent most of the night prowling around Sera, both keeping an eye on the girl who was nearly too drunk to stand and earning more than she typically earned in a week in tips in the process. She hadn’t wanted to know what Sera had to drink that night, figuring it was either a special High Elf concoction designed to bypass their bodies’ high tolerance for liquor or she’d had more to drink than any High Elf ought to have. Sera had paid well more than was necessary for each of Astayana’s dances, so when she finally passed out on the velvet couch where she sat, Astayana had paid one of the hall’s bouncers to carry her back to her small apartment nearby, not trusting that the other dancers, patrons, or bouncers wouldn’t take advantage of the pretty girl’s state. The two had been fast friends ever since, and over the few years they’d known each other, they were prone to dabble in something more than friendship.

As if reading Sera’s mind, Astayana leaned over and gave her a deep kiss, her full lips pressing firmly to Sera’s own as she cupped the back of her head. Sera’s teeth grazed her lower lip as Astayana pulled back, playfully yanking one of the dark strands that had come loose from Sera’s braid. The corner of her mouth twitched upward.

“Better get going before we’re both late,” Astayana said. Sera glanced towards the spread of the palace that pierced the sky in the distance. They were visible from every point in the city, those cleaning, beautiful spires. Her home. Or at least, the place where she usually slept at night.

Sera groaned as she got to her feet, brushing the dust and dirt from the back of her brown leggings. Astayana stood up in a single graceful motion. Sera had inherited none of the High Elves’ unnatural grace and composure, unlike Astayana who practically glowed with it. She sighed and turned to where she’d climbed up onto the roof, Astayana trailing behind her. When her boots hit the dust of the street, she gave her friend a hug.

“I’ll come find you tomorrow night,” she said.

“If you’re still standing after the celebration is over,” Astayana said, a small smile on her pretty lips. She was right - after the ceremony tomorrow, there would be a great celebration, and Sera would likely be so drunk she wouldn’t remember her own name by the end. Most of the High Elves in attendance would be in a similar state.

The girls parted ways, Sera headed towards where the glistening spires of the palace stood in the center of the city. She didn’t bother with a hood to conceal her features as she stalked through the slums on the outskirts of the capitol. She no longer cared if Elante or her father knew where she’d been. No one would bother her in this section of the city. She’d spent enough coin there to have bought the loyalty of the merchants who traded in the market and had been in more than enough brawls to prove that she could handle herself amongst the more unsavory characters lurking nearby.

This was the true heart of the city, she thought as she meandered the dusty streets. Shops and stalls lined the sides, and people rushed in all directions, crowding the streets so thickly that it was a struggle to get anywhere in the middle of the day. Now, nearly time for the evening meal, the crowds had thinned some, making walking far more pleasant than it had been earlier that morning. Down alleyways, lesser elves and faeries had erected makeshift shelters. The stench of unwashed bodies mingled with the smell from the river, coating the area in a thick, unpleasant scent interrupted every so often by the smells of spices and other, more pleasant smells wafting out of some of the stores. 

This was not the High District that surrounded the palace, with its pristine cobblestone streets and carriages to carry the wealthy High Elves who dwelled there. There were no pretty gardens or washed stone houses lining the sidewalks, growing slowly larger and more grand the closer they got to the palace. No, this was indicative of the conditions in which the majority of the populations of the Moon Lands lived. In dirt and felt and squalor. This was where Nirya would have her work cut out for hr in keeping the people happy and peaceful when she finally took the throne. Nirya, like her parents, had never set foot here.

This was where Sera spent most of her time.  Ever since she’d discovered that Elante hated that she came to this part of the city, or really any part of the city that wasn’t the High District, she’d made a point to come here at least daily, knowing that her every move was being reported back to the Moon Prince’s wife. The first time she’d ventured into the Red District, Elante had dragged her before her father to explain herself. Daughters of princes shouldn’t be allowed to run around with the filth, she’d said, sneering at Sera. Even half-breeds like Sera. 

Sera had responded that if she was just a filthy half-breed like Elante thought, she’d fit right in down in the Red District. Elante had actually snarled at that, looking ready to pounce on Sera, but Ilkay had just dismissed them both, giving Sera a stern warning to behave herself and Elante a warning not to bring such trivial matters before him again. Sera’s father’s cold indifference towards everyone except Nirya wasn’t frequently a blessing, but Sera found herself quite happy with the situation as he reprimanded his wife in front of her. Elante had seethed with quiet rage for days afterward, and Sera had found herself banned from several rooms in the palace, including the dining room, for a week. She still thought it was worth it.

But beyond using the slums as a way to irritate Elante, Sera actually enjoyed the atmosphere. There were no simpering courtiers or back-handed compliments. Everyone was more genuine, and with the exception of the palace spies, there was no one who wanted to pry into her business for their own gain. The people worked for what they had and weren’t handed anything, and Sera thought it made them more genuine and likable than any person she’d ever met in the palace. 

Sera neared the Middle District, the band of houses and shops where most of the palace servants and craftsmen lived. The houses here were modest, the streets still unpaved and largely without carriages or horses, but it was clean and less crowded than the outer bands of the city. These were the homes of the working people, lesser elves and faeries who worked for the High Elves or who provided clothing, food, weapons and armor - goods that required a craft or training to create. They, too, were better people than those in the High District, but more prone to spying on each other and reporting back to whoever lined their pockets with information and the activities of the other High Elves. Sera didn’t trust many of them, but as long as they left her alone, she didn’t mind them either.

Her stomach churned, as it usually did, as she reached the High District, every step bringing her closer to the sprawling palace in the center of the city. She hated the pristine houses, the perfectly manicured gardens, the utter quiet of these streets, As she neared the palace gates, squinting against the low sun’s reflection off of the gold gilding and white marble of the palace, the gates swung open to admit her, the guards recognizing her even under the layer of dirt she wore.

She entered the palace through one of the servants entrances and used one of their staircase to get up to her rooms, trying to avoid dirtying the floors they’d no doubt spent all day scrubbing. Sera’s rooms consisted of a small bedroom just large enough for the bed, wardrobe, and vanity inside that faced the courtyard and a bathing room in the eastern wing of the palace. They were far smaller than any of the royal suites, but they suited her needs, and they were far enough away from the other members of her family that she wouldn’t have to worry about seeing Elante accidentally. 

Stripping off her clothes and leaving them in piles on the floor, Sera bathed quickly, scrubbing off the sweat and dirt from the day and washing her hair with her favorite lavender and cedar scented shampoo. It smelled like the forest, like the home she’d never known.

When she wa finished, Sera dressed in a simple olive green dress. It was the closest she’d get to dressing up for dinner, much to her sister’s dismay. The dress was fitted in the bust and waist and flowed loosely around her hips and legs to the floor. It was unadorned, no embroidery or beading, but pretty, and it flattered Sera’s fuller figure.

She used a puff of magic to dry her long hair, braiding it down her back. Sera didn’t have much magic, just enough to do the simplest things like heating a bath or drying her hair. She had the exceptional hearing and sight rof the Wood Elves, but beyond that, she wasn’t sure if she’d inherited any of their other magical gifts. She’d never been permitted to test her magical abilities beyond what a High Elf child would do, and when she’d discovered during those tests that she barely had any of the considerable powers of the High Elves, Elante had nearly fainted with joy. She had tried to use Sera’s lack of magic as an indication that she was not actually the daughter of the Moon Prince after all, but the eyes that Sera and her father shared were proof enough that Elante’s claims were quickly dismissed. 

Sera hurried down to the dining room, certain that she was already late for the dinner. She was indeed the last to arrive, she found as she flung open the doors to reveal a room full of nobility who stared at her. She met each of their gazes in turn, daring anyone to reprimand her as she crossed the room to kiss her father’s ring and take her place at Nirya’s side. Nirya merely gave her a tight smile as Sera sat at the high table, reaching for the loaf of crusty bread in front of her and ripping off a chunk.

“Good of you to finally join us, Seraphine,” Elante hissed from across the table. “One would almost think you didn’t care about Nirya’s coronation tomorrow for all the lack of decorum you’ve shown today.”

Sera shrugged. “One would be correct,” she said, her mouth full of the bread.

Elante’s eyes narrowed and she looked ready to bite Sera’s head off, but Nirya intervened.

“What do you intend to wear to the ceremony tomorrow, Sera?” she asked.

Sera shrugged again. “I don’t know. Whatever I have in my wardrobe, I suppose.”

“I have a dress that would be absolutely stunning on you,” Nirya said. “You’ll wear that.”

Sera gave her sister a sideways look. Gifts from Nirya, gifts from any of the High Elves, always came at a price. Elante, mercifully, had stopped paying attention to their conversation, her focus now on her husband and the minister to whom he now spoke. 

“Why?” Sera asked.

“Because tomorrow is my day, and I would like my sister to wear something nice,” Nirya said. A tendril of Nirya’s power poked at Sera’s mind. Not to harm or persuade, but to let her know that Nirya meant what she said. Sera batted it away as though it were a fly. 

“Fine,” she said after a long pause. Nirya smiled at her.

“Good. I’ll have the seamstress bring it to your rooms tomorrow morning so you can try it on.”

Nirya turned her attention toward the ministers sitting around them, and Sera turned hers toward the meal in front of them, content to ignore everyone else in the room for the rest of the evening. She gorged herself on the roasted meats and vegetables in front of her, and when her father clapped his hands for the desserts to be brought out, she served herself a heaping slice of lemon merengue, completely ignoring the look of distaste thrown her way by Elante.

That was one of the only perks of living in the palace, she thought. The food was exquisite. 

Sera ate until she was full to bursting, and then she sat back, surveying the room. Musicians had been brought in and the sounds of the lilting music filled the vast dining hall, weaving between the sounds of the courtiers talking. All of her father’s court was in attendance for such a big occasion. The various ministers who advised him on matters of foreign policy, trade agreements, commerce, military, and other matters clustered as close to him as they could get, open eyes and ears for anything that might grant them a foothold in the court. Her father’s close friends, most of them High Elf warriors from the time he’d spent in the military when he was younger, were also gathered, keeping a close eye on everyone who swarmed their prince. The warriors’ and ministers’ wives tended dutifully to Elante, who entertained them all with cool boredom, looking as though she’d rather be listening to the business Ilkay conducted.

Nirya played the part of the courtier well already, smiling and greeting as many of the ministers as she could. She flitted from group to group, chatting briefly but never staying with one person for too long. She spent the longest amount of time among the younger men who had been invited - unsurprising, given Elante’s recent pushing for her to find a husband. Nirya was a shameless flirt, and thoroughly enjoyed the attention lavished upon her. 

Sera made idle small talk with the few people who came to speak to her, mostly younger men who accompanied their fathers. They never had anything of interest to say, so they largely resorted to talking about the weather and whether the crops would fare well that year or what sorts of training they would undertake next in her father’s army or navy ranks. By and large, the court left her alone, no one wanting to be associated with the bastard daughter of their prince.

When Sera’s eyes drooped with exhaustion and the music became softer, she slipped from the great dining room and headed back to her rooms, pausing briefly to glance upwards at the moon, nearly full. She closed her eyes as the light illuminated her face, straining to see if she felt any of the innate power that sang to her father and her sister in her blood, but there was only silence, as though the moon itself had decided she was also not worthy of its power.

Sera opened her eyes again and entered her room, slamming the door shut behind her.

[chanoyu-to-wa]

Nampō Roku, Book 1 (8):  [Jōō's]¹ Kyōka Naming the Flowers Proscribed From Use in the Tearoom.

8) With respect to the flowers that should not be arranged in the hanaire, there is this [pair of] kyōka [狂歌]²:

                         hanaire ni irezaru hana ha chinchōge                              miyama-shikimi ni keitō-no-hana

                         [花入に入さる花ハちんちやうけ                              太山しきミにけいとうの花]³;

                         ominaeshi zakuro kōbone kinsenkwa                              senreikwa wo mo kirau nari-keri

                         [女郎花さくろかうほね金錢花                              せんれい花をも嫌也けり]⁴.

_________________________

◎ A sketch of Rikyū's famous arrangement of kōbone [河骨], Japanese spatterdock, suggesting that at least some of these flowers were in fact at least occasionally used for chabana.

¹In this episode, as it appears in the Nampō Roku, Jōō’s authorship of this pair of poems is not acknowledged*.  In this, it agrees with Rikyū’s entry in the Nambō-ate no densho [南坊宛の傳書] (which was written in 1574).  There are, however, several minor differences between the two versions (including the phrasing of the introductory statement, and the way some of the flower names are set down), implying that Sōkei may have written this memorandum down in his notebook from memory (without referring back to Rikyū’s densho)*.

    For the reader’s convenience, I will include the entirety of that entry here:

￮ Hanaire ni ire-mōsanu hana, yatsu hana-kata to te, aru-koto [花入に生申さぬ花、八ツ花かたとて、有事].

     Sunawachi, uta ni [則、歌ニ]†:

hanaire ni irezaru hana ha chinchōge miyama-shikibi, ketō-no-hana [花入ニイレサル花ハチンチヤウケミヤマシキビニケイトウの花]‡

ominaeshi zakuro kōbone kinsenkwa senreikwa wo mo kirai koso sure [ヲミナヘシサクロカウホネキンセンクハセンレイクハヲモキライコソスレ]**. ___________ *It is also possible that Tachibana Jitsuzan chose to “correct” Sōkei’s memorandum to reflect Edo period pronunciations.

    That Sōkei did not refer to the Nambō-ate no densho suggests that he was not writing at home, and so had no access to his papers.

    The most likely scenario is that he was inspired to these reminiscences of things he heard from Rikyū while going through the papers that Rikyū was eliminating from his archives as he was preparing to move his Sakai household from Ima-ichi-machi to Mozuno (which would put the date of Book One’s composition sometime between 1589 and 1590).  Due to his age, and the distance between the Shū-un-an and Mozuno, Sōkei was forced to resign his position as unofficial steward of Rikyū’s Sakai residence, and his melancholy (in addition to his leafing through the pages that Rikyū was sending to the kamikuzu-kai [紙屑買], the man who collected used paper for recycling) may have been what set him to ruminating over their shared past.

†This introductory statement means, “as for the flowers that should not be placed in the hanaire, there are these eight flowers, concerning which one should be advised.  This [matter] is [discussed] in the [following] poems:”

‡“Among the flowers proscribed from the hanaire — chinchōge [daphne], miyama-shikibi [mountain anise], and keitō-no-hana [the flower of the cockscomb].”

     While Rikyū wrote the name of the second flower as miyama-shikibi [ミヤマシキビ], the Nampō Roku gives it as miyama-shikimi [太山しきミ].  Both refer to the same flower, the mountain anise.

**“Ominaeshi [goldbaldrian], zakuro [pomegranate], kō-bone [Japanese spatterdock], kinsenkwa [marigold], and senreikwa [balsam] are also disagreeable to use.”

    In the names kinsenkwa and senreikwa, Rikyū’s written form of ku-wa [クハ] should be read kwa [クヮ], the pre-modern rendering of the sound of the kanji now pronounced ka [花 = カ].

    This is not obvious in the version that was included in the Nampō Roku because the names there employ the kanji, rather than representing the syllable phonetically.

²This pair of poems were written by Jōō, and, since this information was apparently little known, Rikyū quotes them in a number of his early densho*. 

    When including the poems here, it appears that Sōkei -- in his melancholy -- had forgotten their source†. __________ *Before Rikyū received an official position with Hideyoshi he seems to have preferred not to assert himself, contenting himself with proselytizing Jōō's teachings.

†In other words, he imagined that this was something Rikyū told him, forgetting that he had a written copy back in his home.

³Hanaire ni irezaru hana ha chinchōge miyama-shikimi ni keitō-no-hana [花入に入さる花ハちんちやうけ太山しきミにけいとうの花].

    “Among the flowers proscribed from the hanaire — daphne*, mountain anise†, and the flower of the cockscomb‡.” __________ *Jinchōge [沈丁花], daphne (Daphne odora).

    Daphne has overpoweringly sweet-scented flowers, much too strong for use in a room (especially the smaller rooms) with as limited airflow as the tearoom; furthermore, all parts of the plant are poisonous to humans, and to many domestic animals as well, hence its use would seem to be ill-omened.

†Miyama-shikimi [深山樒], mountain anise  (Illicium religiosum).

    This flower is, as its botanical name implies, commonly used as an altar decoration, and so its use in the tearoom is inappropriate.  Furthermore, it is used for temple decoration precisely because it remains “fresh” for a long time after being cut -- therefore defeating the purpose of the chabana, which is supposed to convey to the guests a feeling of impermanence.  The plant is also poisonous.

‡Keito-no-hana [鷄頭の花], cockscomb (Celosia argentea cv. cristata).

    The prohibition against cockscomb refers more specifically to the cultivar cristata (shown in the two photos on the right), and other varieties of the plant that produce dense, grotesquely convoluted flower heads that are reminiscent of the combs found on the domestic chickens raised in Japan at that time.

    Unnatural appearing things are always best left outside of the tearoom entirely.

⁴Ominaeshi zakuro kōbone kinsenkwa senreikwa wo mo kirau nari-keri [女郎花さくろかうほね金錢花せんれい花をも嫌也けり].

    “Goldbaldrian*, pomegranate†, Japanese spatterdock‡, marigold**, and balsam†† are also disagreeable.” __________ *Ominaeshi [女郞花], goldbaldrian (Patrinia scabiosaefolia).

    Goldbaldrian is often called the courtesan’s flower, and its reputation in Japanese literature is, if anything, even worse than this common name might suggest.

    In addition to which -- perhaps this was the reason for its association with sex in the first place -- the flower gives off a particularly bad smell (suggestive of menses, hence the classical associations between this flower and the sex-trade) when, after being moistened (as with the “dew” splashed on the flowers in the mizuya, just before they are taken out to the room and arranged as chabana), the moisture begins to dry.  (The smell, in this case, becomes apparent only about the time that the guests would be approaching the tokonoma to inspect it after returning from the naka-dachi -- or, perhaps even worse, just as the host is offering the bowl of koicha to the guests on a damp day.)

†Zakuro [柘榴], pomegranate (Punica granatum).

    In addition to being the flower of a fruit tree (the immature fruit being already present at the base of the flower), the plant is horribly susceptible to black spider mites.  And though these are rarely apparent upon casual inspection, the tree is usually badly infected.  These mites often make their presence known only after the plant has been arranged in the toko, by coming out, hanging webs, and falling onto the floor (or the heads of the guests when they bow to inspect the chabana) in the most noxious way imaginable.

‡Kōbone [河骨], Japanese spatterdock (Nuphar japonicum).

    Japanese spatterdock is a water plant with rich green, arrow-head shaped leaves (the young leaves being bilaterally curled up to the midrib), and lovely, single, yellow flowers in mid-summer (the whole giving an appropriately cool feeling just at the hottest time of the year).

    Unfortunately, the Japanese name means “river bones” (from the appearance of the rhizome — which is white or green-white and formed in horizontal sections which are jointed together, resembling the bones of the fingers of the human hand).

    The plant is also responsible for the clogging of boat canals, which may have put it further out of favor with the trade-dependent chajin of Sakai.

**Kinsenkwa [金盞花], marigold (Tagetes patula, below left, and T. tenuifolia, right).

    These flowers are included in this list of proscribed flowers for two reasons:  first, because both are commonly used in folk medicine to produce an antiseptic wash (and for which purpose — this and the fact that its strong smell seems to keep the place free of mosquitoes — these marigolds were originally cultivated in the kitchen garden); and, second, because the shared-name kinsenkwa, while it actually means “golden-saucer flower” (from its color and shape — the two closely related species historically grown in Japan are both single, with yellow to golden-orange flowers), sounds like “golden money flower” (kinsenkwa [金錢花]), which name is not appropriate to the tearoom since it suggests avarice.  (A sen [錢] was the smallest unit of currency in the pre-modern era, and so as such would hardly be coined out of gold; therefore the name also suggests avarice and greed, and perhaps even something akin to monetary fraud.)

††Senreikwa [仙蓼果], balsam (Impatiens balsamina).

    Balsam is a common garden flower in East Asia.

    In addition to which excessive familiarity (the seeds dehisce with some violence and so scatter widely throughout the grounds, and the following year it comes up all over the place – more like a weed than a beloved garden flower), the flowers, mashed to a pulp, were traditionally used by women to dye their palms and fingernails (there is a suggestion that, at least in earlier times, this behavior was considered provocative — perhaps being used by professional entertainers or prostitutes as a way to advertise their profession or entice customers).  It is not used in the tearoom both for these reasons, and because the flowers (and subsequent fruits) are usually hidden to a greater or lesser degree among the leaves rather than being presented cleanly on top.

    Furthermore, its other common name (in English), “touch-me-not,” alludes the fact that the fruits shatter easily (often with little or no provocation), ejecting their seeds for some distance — the danger being not that the guests will be hit (the seeds are much smaller than a grain of sand), but that the seeds, which are very small, may land on the usu-ita and make it look dirty, or else on the tatami in front of the toko and make it seem that there is grit under the guest’s hands or knees when he leans forward to inspect the arrangement.

    In either case, the effect would be reprehensible.

[ladystylestores]

Coronavirus, Seoul Mayor, Ava DuVernay: Your Friday Briefing

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good morning.

We’re covering coronavirus surges around the world as places reopen, a NASA scientist’s three-year ordeal in a Turkish prison, and Ava DuVernay on art and activism.

States that moved to reopen earlier, like Florida, Arizona and Texas, are driving the higher numbers. Hospitals across the South and West are being flooded with virus patients, forcing them to cancel elective surgeries and discharge patients early.

Tokyo recorded 224 new infections on Thursday, surpassing a record set in April. Most of Australia is now off-limits to people from the state of Victoria, as the country responded to an outbreak spreading through Melbourne. With virus cases soaring in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that the country had reopened parts of the economy too early.

Case study: The imposition of a second lockdown in late June in the English city of Leicester as those in other regions were returning to jobs and pubs — part of Boris Johnson’s “Whac-A-Mole” approach to the virus — has angered residents.

A different milestone: The intensive care unit at the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo, Italy had no Covid-19 cases for the first time in 137 days. The hospital commemorated the occasion on Wednesday with a moment of silence, followed by a round of applause.

Seoul mayor is found dead

The authorities in South Korea said on Friday that they had found the body of Mayor Park Won-soon in northern Seoul, hours after his daughter reported him missing.

His disappearance came days after a secretary in his office told the police that he had been sexually harassing her since 2017, several news outlets reported.

Mr. Park, 64, had left his daughter a “will-like” message, according to the Yonhap news agency. He had canceled his schedule for Thursday and called in sick to City Hall. No suicide note was found at the scene, a senior detective in Seoul said, but there was also no sign that he had been killed by someone else.

Context: The mayor of Seoul was considered the most powerful elected official in the country after the president. A prominent human rights lawyer who championed women’s rights, Mr. Park had often been named as a possible successor to President Moon Jae-in.

Three years in a Turkish prison

Days after a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016, Turkish police officers stopped Serkan Golge, an American NASA scientist, at the airport.

To his disbelief, they had received an anonymous tip that he worked for the C.I.A. and was part of the terrorist group accused of masterminding the plot.

It was four years before Mr. Golge ended a nightmare in which he was held in solitary confinement and became a bargaining chip in high-level disputes between the Turkish and American governments. He returned to Houston just last week.

“It is a very small room — it barely sees the sunlight, and the guards took me out only one hour a day,” he said of that confinement, in his first interview since returning home. “And I stayed in that room, in that small single cell, for three years.”

What happened: Mr. Golge was held in prisons, alongside military officers, judges and prosecutors, before moving to solitary confinement and facing charges of overthrowing the government and Constitution, which carried a life sentence. He was eventually convicted on a lesser charge and released from prison in May 2019.

Context: His experience is a rare defendant’s perspective into the Turkish judicial machine. Some 70,000 people have been accused in the Turkish courts in connection with the failed coup and many prefer to keep silent even once free.

If you have some time, this is worth it

29 short stories about this moment

As the coronavirus pandemic swept the world, The Times asked 29 authors to write new short stories inspired by the moment. As Rivka Galchen writes, “Reading stories in difficult times is a way to understand those times, and also a way to persevere through them.”

Read the original short stories, from authors like Leila Slimani, Margaret Atwood and Yiyun Li, this weekend.

Here’s what else is happening

Thailand: The cabinet approved a draft bill on Wednesday that would give same-sex unions many of the same benefits as those of heterosexual marriages. The bill, which needs Parliament’s approval, is a major step for one of the most open countries in the region for L.G.B.T.Q. people.

Russian death-for-hire plots: A Chechen man who claimed he had detailed the world of contract killing to the Austrian and Ukrainian authorities was shot near Vienna last weekend. He had said there was a price on his head.

Trump tax records: The Supreme Court has cleared the way for prosecutors in New York to see President Trump’s financial records, a stunning defeat for President Trump. But Congress cannot see them, at least for now, meaning they won’t be made public before the November election.

Melania statue: After a wooden statue of Melania Trump was burned near her hometown in Slovenia, the American artist who commissioned it wants to interview the arsonist as part of a new project.

Snapshot: Above, Cairo under lockdown. The coronavirus brought a much-needed deep cleanse to the city and stripped it of its grit, our correspondent writes. But without the noise, bustle and grind, was it really Cairo?

What we’re listening to: Behind the Bastards podcast. “I was enthralled,” writes Shaila Dewan, a criminal justice reporter, by the “mini-series on policing, including its roots in slave patrols and its embrace of the Klan.”

Now, a break from the news

We’re in a moment of upheaval — hundreds of thousands marching, a pandemic, an upcoming U.S. presidential election. What’s the role of storytelling in this moment?

The story has been told from one point of view for too long. And when we say story, I don’t just mean film or television. I mean the stories we embrace as part of the criminalization of Black people. Every time an officer writes a police report about an incident, they’re telling a story. Look at the case of Breonna Taylor and her police report. They had nothing on it; it said she had no injuries. That is a story of those officers saying, “Nothing to look at here, nothing happened.” But that’s not the story that happened, because if she could speak for herself, she would say, “I was shot in the dark on a no-knock warrant in my bed.”

This is a moment of grief and rage for so many. How can those emotions be translated into art?

The answer to your question for me personally was the creation of our Law Enforcement Accountability Project — LEAP — which uses art to hold police accountable.

It links to the idea that an artist and an activist are not so far apart. Whether you call yourself an activist or not, artists use their imagination to envision a world that does not exist and make it so. Activists use their imagination to envision a world that does not exist and make it so.

Many people in the United States are just beginning the fight for racial and social justice. You’ve been in this battle a long time. What’s your advice for sustaining the fight long term?

The battle is ongoing whether you keep it going or not. The question is how are you going to react to it? That’s up to everyone to decide for themselves.

But the battle is not by choice. I would rather not do any of it. I’d rather just make my films and go about my day. But if I don’t buy into the fight, then I don’t get to make my films.

That’s it for this briefing. Have an energizing and safe weekend.

— Isabella

Thank you To Melissa Clark for the recipe, and to Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the rest of the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S. • We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about why an early scientific report of symptom-free coronavirus cases went unheeded. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Climate activist Thunberg (five letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • “The 1619 Project” from The Times Magazine will be developed into a portfolio of films, television and other content in partnership with Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate.

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[marketingadvisorvietnam]

Dildos, vibrators, fleshlights - sex toy talk is no child’s play

Marketing Advisor đã viết bài trên http://www.ticvietnam.vn/dildos-vibrators-fleshlights-sex-toy-talk-is-no-childs-play/

Dildos, vibrators, fleshlights - sex toy talk is no child’s play

She thought she would have a heart attack.

She was absolutely unprepared for what just popped out of the closet on to her body.

A sex doll. There it was.

Direct, irrefutable evidence of her husband’s infidelity.

“She demanded a divorce,” said M.D. Nguyen Lan Hai, a theology lecturer, recalling what happened to one of her patients.

On the verge of losing his life partner, the husband confessed that before he met her, he’d bought this doll to satisfy his needs when he was single. He said he did not want to deal with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) from having casual sex with random girls or pay for sex services, Hai said.

The use of a sex toy being seen as a partner being unfaithful is an indicator of how these are being understood and misunderstood in Vietnam.

Hai is a prolific author well known for her psychological expertise in gender and sex education. She, and her work, have been featured in various newspaper columns as well as on TV shows.

The story that Lan Hai recounted also reflects the inhibitions of Vietnamese society as a whole about sexual openness. The society does not just accept that discretion is the better part of valor, but that discretion is the only valor there is.

So, in a milieu where even masturbation is sometimes treated as a perverted activity, mentioning the use of a sex doll, a fleshlight (artificial female sexual organ), etc. becomes unthinkable. That means getting someone to speak face-to-face using sex toys is a very difficult task.

An anonymous survey on sex toys usage attracted just 41 respondents and only 26 people went on to answer the questionnaire. Among these people, 14 said they have used sex toys. Half of the respondents had a positive outlook on sex toys and their buyers. They felt these were a healthy option. Two respondents thought sex toys were unhealthy. The rest did not care, one way or the other.

Of those who acknowledged buying sex toys, some had bought up to 10 times; most owned 1-3 items and the most favored toy was the vibrator.

An overwhelming number of survey participants preferred a real person over sex-stimulating devices (73 percent); their reason for buying the sex toys was a desire to explore more, sexually (55 percent), and spice things up with a partner (45 percent). Twenty percent said that they were too busy to find a sexual partner.

Irish man Greg, who taught English for more than 10 years in Vietnam, remembered a Vietnamese woman he used to date.

“She had a very high sex drive and one day she came to see me with a brand-new external vibrator, which we tried during our intimacy, but it felt rather distracting for me.

“Another date, who lived far away so we couldn’t meet very often, once shared that she regularly used a dildo at home, but when I suggested that she has it with her next time we meet, she was too shy to do so.”

Demand and supply

“My customers don’t really tell me how the toys work. They wouldn’t share with me their stories either. They are shy and that is because of Vietnam’s customs,” said Vu, who owns the G.D condoms brand in Ho Chi Minh City.

Even at a time of globalization and liberalization, there is discomfort, among a segment of the population and authorities, and some of them see it as “decadence.”

On the Vung Tau City administration’s website, an article published in Social Security section stated that Vietnam needs its “fine customs, or thuan phong my tuc” to uphold human ethics and social discipline. The entry criticized revealing clothing worn by young Vietnamese women as being against Vietnam’s fine customs. It advised the youth to reflect on this and preserve their traditions.

Such pushback has evidently had limited success.

The G.D brand has been in business for more than a decade. Its 10 branches are located in major HCMC districts. It has condoms and lubricants always in stock, while sex toys from the U.S. are ordered upon request.

Because “sex” is still a “sensitive” word, adult shops do not incorporate it in their signs. Condoms are now more commonplace after a sustained effort in the early nineties to promote their use as a response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, so stores do not get into trouble for displaying the word enlarged and bolded.

“The police said we cannot put the English word ‘sex’ in our shop sign. But the word condoms (in Vietnamese) is fine,” representatives from two other sex shops said.

S.K is a multi-chain brand present in four different cities in Vietnam, Hanoi, Saigon, Bien Hoa and Da Nang. Dildos, vibrators, stimulating condoms, performance enhancer liquid/gels, and bondage gear cram glass shelves in one of its branches.

The S.D Condom shop in HCMC also displays many sex-related items including dildos with diameters of 2.5 – 8cm, some larger than a human wrist. “My customers focus on the diameter of dildos, not the length,” the owner of this shop said.

S.D said no to underage buyers. It is rather easy to identify this group by looking at their appearance when they come to buy sex toys at the shop, the owner said. Delivery packages require recipients to show their ID cards. S.K also implements a similar policy.

Representatives from all three brands all were confident that their business was doing a good thing with a free-spirited understanding of sexual needs.

“There is nothing bad about sex toys. They simply meet people’s needs. The demand for these items increase every year,” said Phu, an S.K staff.

There is currently no law that says sex toys are illegal, but they cannot be advertised or displayed publicly.

Interestingly enough, Vietnamnet, a publication of the Ministry of Information and Communications, recently published a sponsored article which featured condoms, performance enhancers, and stimulating gel at the G.D store. Clicking on the website linked to the article showed a variety of sex toys for sale, including vagina massagers and vibrating dildos.

Unfair legal limbo?

According to law firm Viet Phong, sex toys are not a forbidden product on the market. However, businesses can still be fined if their products do not come with papers indicating their source and/or their images pollute/distort Vietnam’s culture, customs, and morality.

Because Vietnam has not regulated this item and the law does not explicitly declare it legal or illegal, not all exotic toys imported into Vietnam come with official custom documents.

The owner of the Golden Boy brand argued that sex toys were actually a healthy way to meet one’s needs, which protect users from potential STDs-infected sexual partners.

“Everyone knows beer and alcohol are not good for us. But advertisements of these products are rampant on TV. Why can’t something beneficial like condoms and helpful like sex toys be advertised on TV too?” he asked.

Motorbikes drive past a shop advertising condoms and sextoys in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by Sen

Sex toy morality

Vietnamese people, especially the youth, are increasingly cognizant of their sexuality and expressing it. The use of sex toys can be a symptom of this. But since no real public conversation has taken place in Vietnam about this, many people are still ambivalent and others have strong opinions.

For some people, sex toys can be a home wrecker. La Linh Nga, director of Research Center for Applied Psychology and Education in Hanoi, told VnExpress that some modern-minded Vietnamese husbands are open to the idea, but this is sometimes accompanied by sadness that they are unable to satisfy their wives on their own.

On the other hand, some Vietnamese husbands with a conservative mindset find it shocking that wives want to use sex toys. They judge such women to be “rotten” and want to have nothing to do with them.

“Vietnamese men look down on sex toys for women, they look down on that. I try to not rely on my sexual needs and slowly I will be able to keep my sexual appetites under control. I avoid adult toys,” commented Chinh Kien, a VnExpress reader.

Quoc, another reader, thought that people continuing to using sex toys will lead to women reproducing asexually and men becoming bisexual.

“Women are never content so family failures are because of them,” wrote Pem Pem, another VnExpress reader.

However, Le Thi Kim Dung, a gynecologist and obstetrician at Thai Ha Health Center in Hanoi, wrote on Giadinh.net that sex toys, if used smartly, are not only harmless but also help balance one’s life.

She told Vnexpress International that while society stigmatizes sex toys as pornographic, women have been inserting alternative objects into their vaginas for pleasure since ancient time, and kept this practice hidden.

Masturbating men have not had this problem, she noted.

She also cautioned that people wanting to use sex toys for personal pleasure could harm themselves by buying and using unregulated or low-quality products or improperly using them.

“We don’t really talk about the issue seriously in official meetings among doctors and the Ministry of Health. We do so through jokes. One time I joked about giving sex toys to soldiers working in distant islands as a present and people just laughed, but nothing happened,” the doctor told VnExpress International.

She said that Ministry of Health should deal with the issue and regulate sex toys so that there is quality control.

Sex toys were not born yesterday, said doctor Hai. Archeologists have found a 28,000-year-old stone phallus in caves near Ulm in Germany.

She said sex toys have gone through various stages of evolution and the late 19th century invention of plastic allowed them to be made with a material friendlier to the human body.

The important thing, she said, is that people equip themselves with knowledge of sex and gender related issues, and make a rational decision on whether or not sex toys are for them.

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[ellenlucasonlinedatingblog]

Enough with "Alleged" and Other Weasel Words

Living in 2017 means waking up to new reports about sexual assault and harassment committed by men in power on a near-daily basis. It’s amazing to see so many people coming forward to speak about what’s happened to them. It’s heartening that the response is often very supportive. We’re apparently (finally) ready to start having a serious conversation about these abuses.

But it also has me thinking a lot of thoughts about rape culture; not just as a person who thinks rape culture is awful, but as a journalist who reports on these issues. The media can be a double-edged sword. At times it brings the unseen to light and forces us to confront it, but at other times, it reinforces harmful social attitudes and norms. Sometimes that reinforcement is completely unconscious.

*Why do I say survivor/victim? Lots of people have different ways for thinking about sexual assault, and those frameworks help them explore what happened to them and how it interacts with society. Some people prefer to identify as victims, but other people prefer to say “survivor,” so I acknowledge both.

 You can probably think of some examples of reporting on crime that blame the victim, whether it’s stories about rapes that mention what the survivor/victim* was wearing, murders where someone’s history as a sex worker is brought up, or mentions of someone’s perceived attractiveness in an article about a horrible violation that person experienced. Rape, sexual harassment, and violence are about power and control, not sex, but sensationalized reporting on these issues can definitely suggest otherwise.

There’s another, more basic way in which the media perpetuates rape culture. You’ll probably spot it if you check out the front page of a newspaper or the landing page of a major news organization. It’s in the headlines you skim every day.

How many times have you seen something like this?

Teacher Had Sex with Schoolgirl, Victim Alleges

Accusations from Alleged Victims Mount Against Prominent Man

Woman Claims Comedian Made Explicit Sexual Remarks Backstage

Actor Claims He Was ‘Raped’ By Director in 1988

Woman Confronts Her Alleged Rapist

Had sex with — that very phrasing takes rape and sexual assault out of the picture, because they “had sex.” Alleged. Accused. Claims.

We call these “weasel words” or “hedges,” language that softens the content of a headline. In nations with very strict libel laws, like the UK, people say this is necessary to protect publications from lawsuits. In other countries, it may be spun as giving someone a fair say, for being stained with such a sensitive, awful crime could be damaging to someone’s reputation.

For a number of years, I spent a lot of time painstakingly explaining this to people.

“You see,” I would say, patronizingly, “the case hasn’t actually gone to trial, so they can’t call him a rapist.” Or: “We say ‘had sex with’ because the teacher hasn’t been convicted of rape, I know, it’s clumsy, but what are you going to do?”

I did it because that was what editors told me every time they wrote a headline (fun fact: most journalists do not write our own headlines) or tweaked the phrasing in an article. I did it because that was what I was taught, and in the United States, where ��innocent until proved guilty” is a national refrain (even though it’s only a standard we usually hold for white dudes with power), it felt “wrong” to do otherwise. It was repeated over and over again: Don’t condemn some poor innocent man to harassment or lost opportunities by describing him as a rapist without a conviction. So he’d become an “alleged” rapist, and his victim/survivor would be making a “claim,” and sexual assault turned into “had sex with.”

Because that’s how you do it, right?

But here’s the thing: Journalism is about accuracy, and my stance on this issue shifted radically the longer I worked in the field, and the longer I interacted with and came to better understand rape culture. It is possible to accurately report on sexual harassment and assault without using weasel words that cloud meaning or suggest victims are liars. The logic behind language like “alleged,” “accused,” and “claimed” is that they indicate that someone said another person committed a crime, but the matter hasn’t gone to trial, so we can’t say for sure.

There was another word in the last sentence there that people are strangely reluctant to use: “Said.” Which is a pretty value-neutral way of describing a situation. You’re reporting on what an actual human literally said. The article will provide more detail on what was said and the status of any investigation into what the person said.

What’s the difference between: “Student says she was raped by three classmates on field trip” and “Student alleges she was raped by three classmates on field trip”? Is it splitting hairs? I don’t think so.

Both headlines are accurate, but one centers the voice of the student, and one distances the student from the reporting and introduces a note of doubt. There’s nothing libel-inducing in “student says,” as it’s reporting the truth: The student said she was raped.

When it becomes “alleged” or “claims,” it sounds like maybe we don’t believe the student. It casts doubt on whether a crime occurred at all, let alone who might have committed it. It tells victims and survivors who speak out that they can’t be taken at their word. With a long history of treating people who report rape like liars, language that subtly casts doubt on what a person says also sets someone up for disbelief, harassment, and abuse. This kind of language establishes doubt as the status quo, rather than belief, and support.

At Deadspin, Diana Moskovitz recently made the case against “allegedly,” noting that crime reporting — which is what this is, sexual assault and harassment are crimes — is built around doubt, and when nothing is certain, you have to pick through your words carefully and consider their power. But, Moskovitz notes, journalists have biases, and these come through in their work as well as in the systemic patterns and norms of the industry – like the norm that says you have to put scare quotes around “rape” in a headline or stress that someone made an “accusation.”

Reporters treat each source differently based on how credible they think they are, or just how much power that person has to make the lives of reporters miserable if they make an error. So while the women speaking out against Weinstein are accusers who allege allegations, the district attorney who refused to prosecute Weinstein has his words treated as facts, like in this NBC New York headline.

Try it sometime: Skim over some articles and headlines and see how media organizations attribute the sources of information.

High profile people, major organizations, people in power, and official spokespeople are often given the benefit of a “said”: “The company said the data breach only affected a small number of customers.” “The actor’s representative said it was a consensual sexual relationship.” Weasel words start to show up when a journalist deliberately wants to cast doubt on a subject, often serving as a wink or a sly nod to the reader: “A White House spokesperson claimed the statement was taken out of context.”

Casting doubt on rape victims/survivors is so normalized that weasel words are built into how the media talks about their cases.

Think about it when you talk with friends: When you say: “my friend said polls closed early,” the implication is often “this is legit info.” What about when your friend “claims,” though. How does your interpretation of that statement change? Does it become “well, maybe the polls closed early, but maybe not, we really need more information to be sure”? Think about how these words are sometimes used as jokes and in sarcasm: “Allegedly she was going to finish her homework” or “she claims her dog ate her homework.”

We’re all tangled up in rape culture together here, which is why our choice of words and how we wield language matters. Why, as Moskovitz says, should people in power be given endless benefit of the doubt and a gentle treatment in the media, while the powerless who are speaking out are undermined in the headlines? How do you use language like “claim,” “allege,” “accuse,” and “said”?

Words mean things.

If you’ve been struck by the growing number of people speaking out, ask yourself how you can use your words as resistance. Maybe for you that’s: correcting people who use weasel words; writing letters to the paper when it employs them in headlines; encouraging friends to reframe the way they talk about sexual assault; leading a teach-in on more mindful phrasing; doing a find and replace in your essays and other writing for weasel words; and considering that the way people use language may tell you something about them.

For extra credit, think about flipping this language on its head to underscore how absurd it is: Try using weasel words to describe information that is clearly factually correct, and also pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, and see how people react. (“She claimed it rained yesterday.” “They allege they had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.”)

And when someone approaches you to say they’ve been sexually assaulted? Say: “I believe you” and “what can I do to support you?”

#metoo

words

journalism

talk

rape culture

abuse

assault

victim blaming

sexual

rape

survivor

support

blame

shame

do better

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New Post has been published on Webpostingpro

New Post has been published on https://webpostingpro.com/malaika-arora-burns-internet-with-her-latest-holiday-picture-from-maldives/

Malaika Arora burns internet with her latest holiday picture from Maldives

Mumbai: Actress Malaika Arora Khan on Tuesday shared an image from her Maldives circle of relatives holiday in which she can be visible acting a handstand at a seashore.

Whilst sharing the photograph, she captioned it

Getting more potent doing a handstand……A specific angle #strongnotskinny #strongmom..Thank u AMU Arora official for the %”. Malaika Arora Khan become in Maldives to have a good time first birthday of Phil Khan – son Arpita Khan and Ayush Sharma.

Phil Khan turned one on March 30 and to rejoice the occasion, entire ‘Khan’dan controlled time to be in Maldives, along with Salman Khan.

Following are a few greater photos she shared from her reliable Instagram handle:

Robert Burns Love Poem: “A Red, Red Rose

Robert Burns, a negative man, an educated man, and a ladies’ man, is the consultant of Scotland, similar to whiskey, haggis, bagpipes, and kilts. He lived a life shortened by way of rheumatic heart sickness, 1759-1796, however his existence journey thru poverty, casual training, disappointed love, nationalism, and literary and economic fulfillment can be recognized via all Scots and commonplace guys internationally. He has grown to be nearly a country wide image of all things Scottish. His lifestyles are like a love story with a glad ending.

The Poet, Robert Burns

Robert Burns’s own family raised seven youngsters on sparse, rented farmland on the west coast of Scotland. The family cottage still stands as a proud visitor attraction. The circle of relatives farm turned into now not successful and the family moved from farm to farm. lifestyles at the farm in western Scotland changed into harsh and Robert labored lengthy hours together with his father.

Burn’s father diagnosed the price of education and he managed to hire a nearby teacher to educate Robert.

He became a really vivid student, studying Shakespeare, contemporary poets, French, Latin, philosophy, politics, geography, theology, and mathematics. His father studies the Bible throughout the evenings around the cottage fireplace and Robert have become an expert on the Bible and a devout Church member.

Robert Burns wrote his first poem at age 15. The poem was referred to as “Handsome Nell” and turned into approximately his past love for a female named Nellie Blair. All through his life, Burns changed into a fascinating and witty guy, attracting the eye of numerous ladies. A dozen or extra women can be recognized as the foundation for various poems. Burns wrote many famous love poems, which includes “A Purple, Pink Rose” and “One Fond Kiss.”

Right here’s an excerpt from “Good-looking Nell.”

“O once I cherished a bonnie lass,

Aye, and I really like her still;

And while that virtue warms my breast,

I’ll love my Handsome Nell.”

Burns, in a later touch upon this poem, stated that he had “never had the least idea or inclination of turning poet till I got as soon as heartily in love, and then rhyme and song had been, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my coronary heart.”

The Turning Point

In 1786, at age 27, Robert Burns went thru a primary turning Factor in his lifestyles. He suffered a disappointing love affair with Jean Armour, who turned into pregnant with his twin sons. The local community and Armour’s father had been outraged through the affair and her father rejected Burns’s offer of marriage.

Dejected and depressed, Burns made plans to go away Scotland and sail to Jamaica within the West Indies. To finance the journey, Burns submitted a volume of his poetry for the guide.

The ebook of 612 copies in an easy, unbound extent become called “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,” additionally once in a while known as “The Kilmarnock Version.” The poems had been well received in Edinburgh by means of socialites who were enchanted through the poems and amazed that a negative farmer should write so properly.

So, in preference to making plans his getaway to a brand new world, Burns deliberate a ride to Edinburgh. His assured manner, ingratiating fashion, and his apparent wit and intelligence added Burns recognition and admiration. Quickly, the 2nd ebook of his work changed into done in Edinburgh.

The Growing popularity

All through his life in Edinburgh, Robert Burns met painter James Johnson, who planned a task to print all the folk���s songs in Scotland. This project enthralled Burns and embarked upon a journey Throughout Scotland to acquire as many folks songs as viable. Burns accrued over 300 songs and wrote some himself, consisting of “A Red, Purple Rose.”

Newspapers Vs Internet News

Once, it became difficult to imagine the morning without a newspaper. We wake up, drink a cup of espresso and examine newspapers so as to locate contemporary news inside us of a and around the sector. Today the world has modified. Each hour there may be news, Every minute something takes place. that allows you to get the modern day news, simply go to the net. And if you opt for, you may even get updates (the consequences of soccer video games, as an instance), at once to the cell telephone. And this, of the path, with none point out of tv news channels, which broadcast 24 hours an afternoon. So who really desires the newspapers and there’s nevertheless the future of this enterprise?

To begin with, many human beings read newspapers from the addiction.

Indeed, why, to alternate whatever? Why activate a computer or Tv, if the day after today morning we will discover a newspaper at the door. And if there was something peculiar sooner, we can probably listen approximately it on Television. The sensation of analyzing the newspaper like studying books, and it is rooted in lots of humans. you can examine throughout meals, in bed earlier than sleep, or maybe in the restroom. you can truly use the PC in these locations, however, it’s miles ways much less convenient.

Important newspapers around the world have already observed this problem a long time. They keep in mind that the news at the internet is the destiny. It must also be a part of this trend and this may assist especially to sell the newspaper. Who does now not achieve this, will be left behind. Developing new and popular website online with the exciting material is not destructive to the newspaper, but additionally, expands the sources of funding. Many of folks that put it on the market on the internet are not constantly marketed in the newspapers. Accordingly, a circle, wherein newspaper promotes the internet site and the internet site, brings new readers to the newspaper. Of route, the internet website which belongs newspaper has a splendid start line on the internet.

Records around the sector indicate that the range of readers of newspapers is falling Every yr,

And this is very reasonable. The more youthful technology does not have a natural enchantment to the paper, newspapers, and books and they may be greater drawn to the buttons and monitors. Therefore, it is clear that slowly, most of the price range of papers will flow on to the net. all through this transition period, they should preserve its excellent journalists, or their stage falls, and they will lose many readers.

Individually, I and my family have lengthy ceased to examine newspapers, and it came about as soon as I found out that all the information that I read there, I already knew from websites or Television. If the newspaper does not supply new information, so why buy it and spend precious time. Online information websites save time, lets you filter content material and make statistics retrieval at ease and efficient. I like websites that gather the ultra-modern news from unique sources. This manner you can get convenient and maximum reliable objective statistics.

The Perennial Nonprofit Question: To Send A Holiday Card Or Not To Send A Holiday Card

To send a vacation card or no longer send a vacation card, that is the question. Every year because 1991 I’ve wrestled with this question, no longer individually however professionally. My circle of relatives sends Christmas cards to family contributors, buddies, and some friends. This is now not a trouble–it’s a very good way to percentage information, carry first-class wishes, and in popular live in contact.

So what’s the problem professionally

Aren’t these same blessings to be had to a nonprofit business enterprise when it sends Christmas playing cards, or extra broadly, any type of vacation card to its elements? It depends.

If nonprofit corporations ship customized cards than I suppose they generate a positive go back on funding. In other words, if nonprofit organizations, no matter how many cards they pick to mail, insert a few individualized news, observe, call then it seems to me the cardboard is worth the attempt. Without this personalization, I am now not so positive.

Mass Mailed playing cards

Once I served for 17 years as a college president my name and title popped up on innumerable agencies’ V.I.P. Lists. Within the vernacular, I was, “someone.” due to the fact that I used to be reputedly taken into consideration worthy, or at the least, my role changed into considered important, my workplace received scores of playing cards: Christmas, however, sooner or later also Thanksgiving and on occasion birthday cards.

What I found fascinating turned into that surely all of those cards have been laptop generated.

My name became nowhere to be discovered apart from at the envelope label. No message pertinent to my relationship with the organization will be discovered internally. No news that connected in any way with who I was or maybe what the college was vis-à-vis the nonprofit sending the card. No real signature of the President of the nonprofit, even normally When I knew the man nonprofit govt in my view. Nothing.

[marketingadvisorvietnam]

Dildos, vibrators, fleshlights - sex toy talk is no child’s play

Marketing Advisor đã viết bài trên https://www.ticvietnam.vn/dildos-vibrators-fleshlights-sex-toy-talk-is-no-childs-play/

Dildos, vibrators, fleshlights - sex toy talk is no child’s play

She thought she would have a heart attack.

She was absolutely unprepared for what just popped out of the closet on to her body.

A sex doll. There it was.

Direct, irrefutable evidence of her husband’s infidelity.

“She demanded a divorce,” said M.D. Nguyen Lan Hai, a theology lecturer, recalling what happened to one of her patients.

On the verge of losing his life partner, the husband confessed that before he met her, he’d bought this doll to satisfy his needs when he was single. He said he did not want to deal with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) from having casual sex with random girls or pay for sex services, Hai said.

The use of a sex toy being seen as a partner being unfaithful is an indicator of how these are being understood and misunderstood in Vietnam.

Hai is a prolific author well known for her psychological expertise in gender and sex education. She, and her work, have been featured in various newspaper columns as well as on TV shows.

The story that Lan Hai recounted also reflects the inhibitions of Vietnamese society as a whole about sexual openness. The society does not just accept that discretion is the better part of valor, but that discretion is the only valor there is.

So, in a milieu where even masturbation is sometimes treated as a perverted activity, mentioning the use of a sex doll, a fleshlight (artificial female sexual organ), etc. becomes unthinkable. That means getting someone to speak face-to-face using sex toys is a very difficult task.

An anonymous survey on sex toys usage attracted just 41 respondents and only 26 people went on to answer the questionnaire. Among these people, 14 said they have used sex toys. Half of the respondents had a positive outlook on sex toys and their buyers. They felt these were a healthy option. Two respondents thought sex toys were unhealthy. The rest did not care, one way or the other.

Of those who acknowledged buying sex toys, some had bought up to 10 times; most owned 1-3 items and the most favored toy was the vibrator.

An overwhelming number of survey participants preferred a real person over sex-stimulating devices (73 percent); their reason for buying the sex toys was a desire to explore more, sexually (55 percent), and spice things up with a partner (45 percent). Twenty percent said that they were too busy to find a sexual partner.

Irish man Greg, who taught English for more than 10 years in Vietnam, remembered a Vietnamese woman he used to date.

“She had a very high sex drive and one day she came to see me with a brand-new external vibrator, which we tried during our intimacy, but it felt rather distracting for me.

“Another date, who lived far away so we couldn’t meet very often, once shared that she regularly used a dildo at home, but when I suggested that she has it with her next time we meet, she was too shy to do so.”

Demand and supply

“My customers don’t really tell me how the toys work. They wouldn’t share with me their stories either. They are shy and that is because of Vietnam’s customs,” said Vu, who owns the G.D condoms brand in Ho Chi Minh City.

Even at a time of globalization and liberalization, there is discomfort, among a segment of the population and authorities, and some of them see it as “decadence.”

On the Vung Tau City administration’s website, an article published in Social Security section stated that Vietnam needs its “fine customs, or thuan phong my tuc” to uphold human ethics and social discipline. The entry criticized revealing clothing worn by young Vietnamese women as being against Vietnam’s fine customs. It advised the youth to reflect on this and preserve their traditions.

Such pushback has evidently had limited success.

The G.D brand has been in business for more than a decade. Its 10 branches are located in major HCMC districts. It has condoms and lubricants always in stock, while sex toys from the U.S. are ordered upon request.

Because “sex” is still a “sensitive” word, adult shops do not incorporate it in their signs. Condoms are now more commonplace after a sustained effort in the early nineties to promote their use as a response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, so stores do not get into trouble for displaying the word enlarged and bolded.

“The police said we cannot put the English word ‘sex’ in our shop sign. But the word condoms (in Vietnamese) is fine,” representatives from two other sex shops said.

S.K is a multi-chain brand present in four different cities in Vietnam, Hanoi, Saigon, Bien Hoa and Da Nang. Dildos, vibrators, stimulating condoms, performance enhancer liquid/gels, and bondage gear cram glass shelves in one of its branches.

The S.D Condom shop in HCMC also displays many sex-related items including dildos with diameters of 2.5 – 8cm, some larger than a human wrist. “My customers focus on the diameter of dildos, not the length,” the owner of this shop said.

S.D said no to underage buyers. It is rather easy to identify this group by looking at their appearance when they come to buy sex toys at the shop, the owner said. Delivery packages require recipients to show their ID cards. S.K also implements a similar policy.

Representatives from all three brands all were confident that their business was doing a good thing with a free-spirited understanding of sexual needs.

“There is nothing bad about sex toys. They simply meet people’s needs. The demand for these items increase every year,” said Phu, an S.K staff.

There is currently no law that says sex toys are illegal, but they cannot be advertised or displayed publicly.

Interestingly enough, Vietnamnet, a publication of the Ministry of Information and Communications, recently published a sponsored article which featured condoms, performance enhancers, and stimulating gel at the G.D store. Clicking on the website linked to the article showed a variety of sex toys for sale, including vagina massagers and vibrating dildos.

Unfair legal limbo?

According to law firm Viet Phong, sex toys are not a forbidden product on the market. However, businesses can still be fined if their products do not come with papers indicating their source and/or their images pollute/distort Vietnam’s culture, customs, and morality.

Because Vietnam has not regulated this item and the law does not explicitly declare it legal or illegal, not all exotic toys imported into Vietnam come with official custom documents.

The owner of the Golden Boy brand argued that sex toys were actually a healthy way to meet one’s needs, which protect users from potential STDs-infected sexual partners.

“Everyone knows beer and alcohol are not good for us. But advertisements of these products are rampant on TV. Why can’t something beneficial like condoms and helpful like sex toys be advertised on TV too?” he asked.

Motorbikes drive past a shop advertising condoms and sextoys in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by Sen

Sex toy morality

Vietnamese people, especially the youth, are increasingly cognizant of their sexuality and expressing it. The use of sex toys can be a symptom of this. But since no real public conversation has taken place in Vietnam about this, many people are still ambivalent and others have strong opinions.

For some people, sex toys can be a home wrecker. La Linh Nga, director of Research Center for Applied Psychology and Education in Hanoi, told VnExpress that some modern-minded Vietnamese husbands are open to the idea, but this is sometimes accompanied by sadness that they are unable to satisfy their wives on their own.

On the other hand, some Vietnamese husbands with a conservative mindset find it shocking that wives want to use sex toys. They judge such women to be “rotten” and want to have nothing to do with them.

“Vietnamese men look down on sex toys for women, they look down on that. I try to not rely on my sexual needs and slowly I will be able to keep my sexual appetites under control. I avoid adult toys,” commented Chinh Kien, a VnExpress reader.

Quoc, another reader, thought that people continuing to using sex toys will lead to women reproducing asexually and men becoming bisexual.

“Women are never content so family failures are because of them,” wrote Pem Pem, another VnExpress reader.

However, Le Thi Kim Dung, a gynecologist and obstetrician at Thai Ha Health Center in Hanoi, wrote on Giadinh.net that sex toys, if used smartly, are not only harmless but also help balance one’s life.

She told Vnexpress International that while society stigmatizes sex toys as pornographic, women have been inserting alternative objects into their vaginas for pleasure since ancient time, and kept this practice hidden.

Masturbating men have not had this problem, she noted.

She also cautioned that people wanting to use sex toys for personal pleasure could harm themselves by buying and using unregulated or low-quality products or improperly using them.

“We don’t really talk about the issue seriously in official meetings among doctors and the Ministry of Health. We do so through jokes. One time I joked about giving sex toys to soldiers working in distant islands as a present and people just laughed, but nothing happened,” the doctor told VnExpress International.

She said that Ministry of Health should deal with the issue and regulate sex toys so that there is quality control.

Sex toys were not born yesterday, said doctor Hai. Archeologists have found a 28,000-year-old stone phallus in caves near Ulm in Germany.

She said sex toys have gone through various stages of evolution and the late 19th century invention of plastic allowed them to be made with a material friendlier to the human body.

The important thing, she said, is that people equip themselves with knowledge of sex and gender related issues, and make a rational decision on whether or not sex toys are for them.

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New Post has been published on Webpostingpro

New Post has been published on https://webpostingpro.com/malaika-arora-burns-internet-with-her-latest-holiday-picture-from-maldives/

Malaika Arora burns internet with her latest holiday picture from Maldives

Mumbai: Actress Malaika Arora Khan on Tuesday shared an image from her Maldives circle of relatives holiday in which she can be visible acting a handstand at a seashore.

Whilst sharing the photograph, she captioned it

Getting more potent doing a handstand……A specific angle #strongnotskinny #strongmom..Thank u AMU Arora official for the %”. Malaika Arora Khan become in Maldives to have a good time first birthday of Phil Khan – son Arpita Khan and Ayush Sharma.

Phil Khan turned one on March 30 and to rejoice the occasion, entire ‘Khan’dan controlled time to be in Maldives, along with Salman Khan.

Following are a few greater photos she shared from her reliable Instagram handle:

Robert Burns Love Poem: “A Red, Red Rose

Robert Burns, a negative man, an educated man, and a ladies’ man, is the consultant of Scotland, similar to whiskey, haggis, bagpipes, and kilts. He lived a life shortened by way of rheumatic heart sickness, 1759-1796, however his existence journey thru poverty, casual training, disappointed love, nationalism, and literary and economic fulfillment can be recognized via all Scots and commonplace guys internationally. He has grown to be nearly a country wide image of all things Scottish. His lifestyles are like a love story with a glad ending.

The Poet, Robert Burns

Robert Burns’s own family raised seven youngsters on sparse, rented farmland on the west coast of Scotland. The family cottage still stands as a proud visitor attraction. The circle of relatives farm turned into now not successful and the family moved from farm to farm. lifestyles at the farm in western Scotland changed into harsh and Robert labored lengthy hours together with his father.

Burn’s father diagnosed the price of education and he managed to hire a nearby teacher to educate Robert.

He became a really vivid student, studying Shakespeare, contemporary poets, French, Latin, philosophy, politics, geography, theology, and mathematics. His father studies the Bible throughout the evenings around the cottage fireplace and Robert have become an expert on the Bible and a devout Church member.

Robert Burns wrote his first poem at age 15. The poem was referred to as “Handsome Nell” and turned into approximately his past love for a female named Nellie Blair. All through his life, Burns changed into a fascinating and witty guy, attracting the eye of numerous ladies. A dozen or extra women can be recognized as the foundation for various poems. Burns wrote many famous love poems, which includes “A Purple, Pink Rose” and “One Fond Kiss.”

Right here’s an excerpt from “Good-looking Nell.”

“O once I cherished a bonnie lass,

Aye, and I really like her still;

And while that virtue warms my breast,

I’ll love my Handsome Nell.”

Burns, in a later touch upon this poem, stated that he had “never had the least idea or inclination of turning poet till I got as soon as heartily in love, and then rhyme and song had been, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my coronary heart.”

The Turning Point

In 1786, at age 27, Robert Burns went thru a primary turning Factor in his lifestyles. He suffered a disappointing love affair with Jean Armour, who turned into pregnant with his twin sons. The local community and Armour’s father had been outraged through the affair and her father rejected Burns’s offer of marriage.

Dejected and depressed, Burns made plans to go away Scotland and sail to Jamaica within the West Indies. To finance the journey, Burns submitted a volume of his poetry for the guide.

The ebook of 612 copies in an easy, unbound extent become called “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,” additionally once in a while known as “The Kilmarnock Version.” The poems had been well received in Edinburgh by means of socialites who were enchanted through the poems and amazed that a negative farmer should write so properly.

So, in preference to making plans his getaway to a brand new world, Burns deliberate a ride to Edinburgh. His assured manner, ingratiating fashion, and his apparent wit and intelligence added Burns recognition and admiration. Quickly, the 2nd ebook of his work changed into done in Edinburgh.

The Growing popularity

All through his life in Edinburgh, Robert Burns met painter James Johnson, who planned a task to print all the folk’s songs in Scotland. This project enthralled Burns and embarked upon a journey Throughout Scotland to acquire as many folks songs as viable. Burns accrued over 300 songs and wrote some himself, consisting of “A Red, Purple Rose.”

Newspapers Vs Internet News

Once, it became difficult to imagine the morning without a newspaper. We wake up, drink a cup of espresso and examine newspapers so as to locate contemporary news inside us of a and around the sector. Today the world has modified. Each hour there may be news, Every minute something takes place. that allows you to get the modern day news, simply go to the net. And if you opt for, you may even get updates (the consequences of soccer video games, as an instance), at once to the cell telephone. And this, of the path, with none point out of tv news channels, which broadcast 24 hours an afternoon. So who really desires the newspapers and there’s nevertheless the future of this enterprise?

To begin with, many human beings read newspapers from the addiction.

Indeed, why, to alternate whatever? Why activate a computer or Tv, if the day after today morning we will discover a newspaper at the door. And if there was something peculiar sooner, we can probably listen approximately it on Television. The sensation of analyzing the newspaper like studying books, and it is rooted in lots of humans. you can examine throughout meals, in bed earlier than sleep, or maybe in the restroom. you can truly use the PC in these locations, however, it’s miles ways much less convenient.

Important newspapers around the world have already observed this problem a long time. They keep in mind that the news at the internet is the destiny. It must also be a part of this trend and this may assist especially to sell the newspaper. Who does now not achieve this, will be left behind. Developing new and popular website online with the exciting material is not destructive to the newspaper, but additionally, expands the sources of funding. Many of folks that put it on the market on the internet are not constantly marketed in the newspapers. Accordingly, a circle, wherein newspaper promotes the internet site and the internet site, brings new readers to the newspaper. Of route, the internet website which belongs newspaper has a splendid start line on the internet.

Records around the sector indicate that the range of readers of newspapers is falling Every yr,

And this is very reasonable. The more youthful technology does not have a natural enchantment to the paper, newspapers, and books and they may be greater drawn to the buttons and monitors. Therefore, it is clear that slowly, most of the price range of papers will flow on to the net. all through this transition period, they should preserve its excellent journalists, or their stage falls, and they will lose many readers.

Individually, I and my family have lengthy ceased to examine newspapers, and it came about as soon as I found out that all the information that I read there, I already knew from websites or Television. If the newspaper does not supply new information, so why buy it and spend precious time. Online information websites save time, lets you filter content material and make statistics retrieval at ease and efficient. I like websites that gather the ultra-modern news from unique sources. This manner you can get convenient and maximum reliable objective statistics.

The Perennial Nonprofit Question: To Send A Holiday Card Or Not To Send A Holiday Card

To send a vacation card or no longer send a vacation card, that is the question. Every year because 1991 I’ve wrestled with this question, no longer individually however professionally. My circle of relatives sends Christmas cards to family contributors, buddies, and some friends. This is now not a trouble–it’s a very good way to percentage information, carry first-class wishes, and in popular live in contact.

So what’s the problem professionally

Aren’t these same blessings to be had to a nonprofit business enterprise when it sends Christmas playing cards, or extra broadly, any type of vacation card to its elements? It depends.

If nonprofit corporations ship customized cards than I suppose they generate a positive go back on funding. In other words, if nonprofit organizations, no matter how many cards they pick to mail, insert a few individualized news, observe, call then it seems to me the cardboard is worth the attempt. Without this personalization, I am now not so positive.

Mass Mailed playing cards

Once I served for 17 years as a college president my name and title popped up on innumerable agencies’ V.I.P. Lists. Within the vernacular, I was, “someone.” due to the fact that I used to be reputedly taken into consideration worthy, or at the least, my role changed into considered important, my workplace received scores of playing cards: Christmas, however, sooner or later also Thanksgiving and on occasion birthday cards.

What I found fascinating turned into that surely all of those cards have been laptop generated.

My name became nowhere to be discovered apart from at the envelope label. No message pertinent to my relationship with the organization will be discovered internally. No news that connected in any way with who I was or maybe what the college was vis-à-vis the nonprofit sending the card. No real signature of the President of the nonprofit, even normally When I knew the man nonprofit govt in my view. Nothing.