Random raves

So, we liberal leftie types are supposed to tolerate difference, and accept individuality and yadda yadda. Well, I think we mostly do try. But after this Proposition 8 thing - and actually, I'm not a person who is interested in fighting for gay marriage, per se - it's time to point the finger and say that tolerating difference is fine up until the point that others start to impinge on our lives.

I hate what the LDS church is doing. I dislike the Mormon hierarchy and most of their doctrines. I think their interference in politics is dangerous, unethical and frankly revolting. There are plenty of people around who hate the Scientologists and what they do. Ok, they prey on vulnerable people, run questionable programmes, and try and scalp lots of money off the gullible. This is pretty much in common with plenty of religious/cult practice. As far as I know, however, they do not interfere in national politics, except to try and protect their tax-free status by maintaining they are a religion, and using copyright law to censor people.

I think the LDS, Catholic and Open Brethren (the latter, especially in the antipodes) churches are some of the more pernicious influences in the political landscape. They demand all the privileges of their status as religious bodies, while using their special influence on people's lives to attempt to direct their political choices. While demanding those legal privileges, they do their best to avoid any areas of the law of the land (taxes, anti-discrimination legislation, etc) that don't suit them, because, really, they only answer to a superior Law (the one that they invented).

They have a dangerous ethos that is like the Bush/Monroe Doctrine of ethics - we feel threatened, so we will invade your privacy and your rights, and we will do our best to create law that supports our particular line of moral judgement. It disgusts me and angers me.

I know people who are Catholic, and Mormon, and even a former Open Brethren. Most of them are decent people who say "live and let live", even if they don't precisely approve of my lifestyle. That's fine. I don't need their approval, I need their non-interference (where my life doesn't impact on theirs). What I don't understand is how such decent people can support institutions that go out of their way to interfere in my life. I don't know how they can revere the individuals who run these institutions and who make the decisions to invade my domain.

I know some of their members are "fighting from within" to achieve change (and look at the changes in the Anglican church over these last 30 years) - but now, in the present, regarding that vast majority in such institutions who support their political aims, tithe, attend services and cheer the hatred, and who then go along to the ballot box, just as their pastor has told them, and vote to take away our rights... right now, they disgust me. I don't ask for their acceptance, support or love. I want to live my life. I would love to be tolerant and say that I will be happy to let them live theirs. But when a prime focus of these churches, the Catholic, the Mormon, the Brethren, and many others, seems to be to deny me the right to live my life, then, I'm afraid, my tolerance for the quirks of others, and my tolerance of their living their lives at the expense of mine, disappears without a trace.

There are some words by Oliver Wendell Holmes that these churches could do to remember (in non-gendered language):

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.

If we swap "fist" with "unmandated political influence", and "nose" with "life", the analogy is obvious. In sum, butt the fuck out, and I will accord the same courtesy in return.

This is the original - and still the best - test. I thought I'd do it again because of the upcoming NZ elections. I'll be voting Green for my party vote, and I'll see what the candidates look like for my "electorate" (you get two votes in NZ - one for the party you support, and one for the candidate of the electorate in which you live. My electorate for the purposes of overseas voting is the one I last lived in.)

( Political compass )
No surprises, nor much change, just my usual anarchistic tendencies (although leaning away from "free market" economic policies - maybe after the (r)evolution!) And, hey, I'm still propping up the System by actually voting. It's just depressing how all the political leaders in the world are firmly in the Right-Authoritarian quadrant (well, except for Mugabe and his policy of  "nationalising" the land for his bully-boys).

If I was in the UK, I'd be voting Lib Dems with trepidation (since they don't have any proportional voting system over there, ack!), although I think New Labour are possibly worse than the Conservatives at present (or maybe not - the Tories would have been even more disgusting over their "anti-terrorism measures", I'm sure). Here I'd vote Green as well (yes, yes, I'm thinking about Aussie citizenship, mainly so I can vote), in the main, now that I essentially understand the preferential voting system. I wouldn't have the faintest clue who I'd vote for in the US, since there is little difference to discern in Terrible Two's policies, and the third parties are a joke. Given the fact the Republicans are currently run by a bunch of religious nutcases and Big Business, and the Dems social policies are marginally better, and maybe Big Business hasn't paid them quite so much money, it might have to be the Dems. God.

Indexed hits it on the button again (I don't know whether the card is directly referencing it, but I think the timing is auspicious if not).

Elliot Spitzer has been Urban Dictionary'd already.

[Do I care he frequented prostitutes? No. Is it any business of ours - other than wondering about his probity if he was lying to his wife - how his marriage is constructed? No. Could it happen to a better class of hypocrite, though? No, indeed.]

You're doing lots of good things at the moment - apologising to Aborigines, dismantling the stupid industrial relations laws, admitting that certain ministers have too much power. I appreciate it, I really do.

But, for the love of god, can you stop employing the term "working families" when you want to get all inclusive-languagey on us? I work. I don't have a family (ie. children), and I never will. I'm also old-fashioned enough to dislike the term "family" when used to refer to (generally married) childless couples. Plenty of people, who work and pay taxes, are single. Plenty of people, who are contributing members of society, are unable to work, for various reasons. Some of those (*koff*) layabouts aren't in "families" either.

So can we stop using the stupid bloody term? It's not inclusive, actually. Even if it did apply to me (and everyone else), it sounds as patronising as fuck. It's just as bad as the previous lot talking about "middle Australia", and that's saying something.

Thank fuck for the result.

The ALP are far from perfect, but at least it won't be more of the same horror that's been perpetuated here for the last decade. Fingers crossed for the future.

I've started a wee blog on the garden that saluqi and I have put in at her and faxon's house. We started the garden last year, but since I need something to track what worked (beans! potatoes!) and what didn't work (corn! beetroot!), I thought a blog would do the trick.

You can share my fascination for compost, and the highs and lows of cauliflowers refusing to develop heads (when they haven't been totally devoured by caterpillars). We'll get some piccies up there too, especially now there's stuff growing in most of the wee plots (it's a very small garden - just 1.2 x 3 metres).

On the silliness front, I just needed to share Lily Tomlin's informercial on vibrators: (deadpan) Well, doesn't it kill romance, you say. And I say, whut doesn't.



And I had a whole burble (l/j ated it) on the hotness (attractive, intelligent, musical, powerful, freckles, cute smile) of Condoleezza Rice, and why it's so wrong. It seems that my hot-woman-with-dyke-potential-dar is going strong, given recent rumours. I also like the article for pointing out it's the powerful women in politics who get the lavender herring thrown at them, whatever the truth might be.

After my wee bitch session the other day about Radio Man at work, I started thinking about the ways in which we balance our working selves and our outside-of-work selves. Obviously, there are plenty of people who can gaily head off to work and not feel like there is a tension between the two - you fit into the work culture just as much as everyone else does in the organisation. Others don't give a toss about it - they work in a job where it doesn't matter at all how you present yourself (ie. it's shit work); or, they have unassailable self-confidence; or, it's a very tolerant working environment. Others can be in stealth mode - they can "pass" and choose what parts of their non-work selves they want to reveal. Others, like me, can't pass if they tried.

There have been a few occasions where I felt no tension at all about fitting in - my first serious job, which was at a women's printing company, and two universities. The nice thing about universities in general is that they hire people around the world (well, at least in the three countries I've lived in) who would ordinarily find it difficult to get work that suited their skills.

Obviously, everyone needs to compromise to some degree to fit into a working environment. I'm a left-wing mouthy feminist child-free dyke foreigner, but to fit in with my relatively conservative, Australian, small-town orientated (Canberra is a small town), male techie colleagues in a quasi-government enterprise run by not-quite-dead white men, there is a limit to how much of the iconoclastic routine I can pull off without isolating myself. I had a job for seven years where I had backed myself into that corner, at least from a management point of view, and I can tell you it's a very awkward place to be in. Also, one of the effects of having gone to way too many schools as a kid is my sensitivity to that feeling of being out on a limb by myself, with no allies. I can't work like that.

Essentially my career has comprised of a pretty finely-judged balancing routine. I often go at things like a bull in a china shop... where there is no risk to me. Being out of work, or being put into a miserable situation workwise is not a risk I am willing to accept. Yes, everyone at work knows that I'm a left-wing mouthy feminist of questionable sexuality. However, I am not isolated by my peers because I choose which battles to fight. I have men trying to piss in my professional corner on what seems to be a monthly  basis, one way or another, and I very very very strongly defend my professional realm.

Do I run around saying "I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it?" No. Do I say to certain individuals' faces, "Look, I realise you're a middle-aged honky engineering-orientated married-with-kids male, but could you get rid of some of your more stupid assumptions"? No. Do I tell them off when they start with the racist jokes in front of me? Yes. Do I tell them not to forward me any of those stupid "battle of the sexes" emails, even if, according to at least one colleague, I should like them because they're "putting down men"? Of course I tell them not to. Do I tell them to keep their filthy mitts out of my servers because I am the Technical Authority for the mail system, in just the same way that one guy is the TA for the comms network, and I require the same amount of control over what happens on my systems? Of course I do, because that is language they understand.

I wouldn't be where I am without being assertive, and assertive about being perceived as good at my job. But I very carefully choose the areas I'm assertive in. All I want from my colleagues is professional respect, and their personal backing in the work we carry out together. Getting that personal backing can be a tricky thing to achieve, given the fact the only things I have in common with them are shared language (thank god) and profession. I have no interest in talking with them about cars, kids, crappy music, "the wife", or sports. I do not trust my colleagues to validate all aspects of myself, and by throwing too much of my non-conformity into their faces, I risk professional isolation and disrespect. And once that happens, you might as well quit, because you ain't going nowhere careerwise.

If I want to feel personally validated and have a bitch session about the cluelessness of certain individuals from the perspective of having my own personal reference points understood (you know, the queer, butch, feminist thing), I rely on my loved ones and friends to there for me. And thank god for L/J for providing some of those functions of cultural community which I'd find difficult to track down here otherwise (although I'm starting to).

It's also interesting how many differences one can cope with at once. I found London pretty difficult to take, because I had horrendous culture shock, and no support network. The fact that London has an extremely diverse population was a help. Things also improved once I had a girlfriend or two and started working in one of the aforementioned tolerant environments - I suspect they would have been even more bearable if I'd had this as an outlet as well. Canberra has the advantage of being more similar to my own culture, to a degree, and it certainly isn't really really conservative either, just small-town-like... but I don't feel anywhere near as secure here as I do at home. Again, though, there is the balancing act between expressing more parts of myself and avoiding risk.

I'd be interested to hear what other people find of risk to themselves professionally or in living with whatever dominant community they find themselves in, and how they mitigate or deal with those risks. Also, what do you reveal so that your core values aren't totally run over in the working environment. I don't put up with racist, sexist or homophobic remarks, but it's easy enough coming from someone as "identifiable" as I am... although I'm still amazed at how much I'm expected to nod along at quasi-racist remarks in what is ostensibly a middle-class environment. People who are more stealth in their presentation must choose how much mental whiplash to give to someone who assumes they share a certain conventional value set - much can be done without being self-revealing, but does it plant "seeds of suspicion"? Avoiding such situations is generally best, but some people just need to be hit over the head with the inappropriateness of their statements - people might bitch about "PC", but at least these days you can use that as a clobbering stick without having to necessarily compromise yourself with some wanker who would attempt to use any personal information.

This Indexed card cracked me up - excellent timing. Trouble is, it doesn't quite encompass what happens when it's the tech support that's sick. Hee!

For any New Zealanders who might be labouring under any illusions of the merits of an across-the-board tax cut versus the Kiwisaver scheme that will be tying in employer contributions for your retirement savings, No Right Turn might have some interesting material for you to look at (including the big stonking graph right in the middle).

As for New Zealand employers who are bleating about the 4% contributions, get a grip. That 3% drop in company tax you've just been given more than pays for it (since Kiwisaver won't be compulsory, not all employees will opt-in), especially given the fact that NZ has one of the simplest tax regimes of any country in the world. FFS, you could be here in Australia, with the joys of company tax (can't get away from that), payroll tax, 9% super contributions and capital gains tax. I've got some bridge-building plans around here that I'm sure could come in handy...

(work still crap; this is displacement activity)

Forbes have released their latest billionaire lists today, with the lovely news that the number of billionaires in the world has increased by 20% in the last year, up to nearly 1000. Gates is at the top with $56 billion, then Warren Buffet with $52 billion.

Even if one accepts the capitalist wank that money is the sole motivation for us to work/produce, at these sums it must surely become meaningless. You can't spend the money in your lifetime. You can't cash most of the assets in because doing so would destabilise the stock market, or the economy of where you live. You get people like Gates with their noblesse oblige of giving a small proportion away, under circumstances that would have a voting population up in arms if their government were to use similar criteria for doling it out. But apparently the money you pay in taxes is more "public" than the money you pay to buy goods with a small part of value, and a great part of profit to line these individuals' pockets. WTFevah.

I totally understand that money can be seen as a symbol of one's success (once you get over the subsistence, carrying out projects, and getting fancy stuff for fun aims). But do these people forget the symbolic part and truly believe that the money represents their worth? Or, if not, why do they insist on continuing to make these ridiculous sums? 

Brin and Page from Google paid themselves $1 again last year, and I know they give some of their dosh away. But they're both very comfortable on their $16 billion each, I'm sure. In sum, what is the point? Sure, people like challenge, and their work, and winning. Does money really represent these things to these people? When will enough be enough?

I'm not even going to get into the actual amounts, and about many people could be set for life if that money were more evenly distributed, and how vile the whole setup is. I'm just wondering what the benefit is for those at the top of the money pile.