Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Playing The Game

Forwarded from a friend who I deeply respect and admire (and think is super fun to boot), this post - on Whatever by John Scalzi (who I know I'm supposed to know but can't pull out of my brain's muddled files) - is a great way to think about and explain privilege. I'm thinking it is a perfect start into yet another conversation with my white son about what society/culture has handed him without implying that he is or has done something bad. Which usually leads to the accompanying Spiderman "with power comes responsibility" talk.

The part about "Gay Minority Female" almost made me spray coffee out my nose.

Click through on the first line to read the entire post. It is well worth your time.


I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not theirword. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.
So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?


Friday, May 4, 2012

Beautiful Modern Swan Dance - Charles "Lil Buck" Riley

*I* am in Vancouver all by myself!!!!  I can't remember the last time I actually took time just to myself.  Last night I had a lovely walk around this funny little neighborhood of Burnaby (it reminds me of Ballard 15 years ago before it got discovered, except with an international mix), ate some amazing pho and went to bed at 9:00.

The Neufeld Institute Conference is here this weekend.  I took the opportunity to come up a day early to rest and wade through my increasingly terrifying pile of things I've said I'd do that are not tracked or maintained in any way.  An hour reading through updates on Things software and refinements on their discussion boards of how to most effectively use the software, and I'm feeling a renewed sense of possibility and commitment.

Anyway, in the course of cleaning out things from my to-do email file, I came across this amazing dance clip forwarded by my housemate.  Hope you love it!