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olivia-erskine-grad701 · 2 years

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I still need to find information about colour theory so will add this on as I research further

In terms of the structure, I think I might put a series of work at the start of each chapter that relates to the specific subjects that are covered in the chapter, e.g. The Altarpieces + the caption about the series followed by the information about religion/spirituality, Primordial Chaos + caption followed by gender & sexuality and so on. - the altarpieces are the main pieces of the temple / most spiritually important while primordial chaos is the series that looks the most in depth at gender/gender binaries.

Introduction :

A female painter, a pioneer of abstract art, a spiritualist and a dedicated believer in the occult: Swedish artist Hilma af Klint was nothing if not before her time. To the outside world, she spent her life creating a series of unexciting portrait and landscape paintings which challenged neither her own talent, nor the academy, working out of a Stockholm studio next door to the Swedish Association of Painters. By night, however, she conducted séances as part of a secret assembly of five woman painters who named themselves 'The Five,' taking commissions from a spirit she named Amaliel, one of her so-called ‘High Masters’, and seeking oneness of the soul in the colour green. Perhaps most extraordinarily of all, Af Klint experimented in, and ultimately founded, the geometric and colourful abstraction that would be attributed to male founders Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich many years later.

Recognising that the world was not ready for her belief in the occult, she worked in complete isolation from the European avant garde, and included a clause in her will that stipulated that not a single item from her 1,000 piece estate be shown until 20 years after her death. She was correct in her estimation: although Af Klint wasn’t alone in her fascination with spiritualism – her male contemporaries, too, made work influenced by the occult – when her sprawling archive was offered to the Moderna Museet in 1970 it was dismissed as trivial. Her work was not to be shown publicly until 1986, and even now, never-before-seen pieces are going on display.

After almost 100 years of being overlooked by the establishment, Af Klint’s work was finally shown to the masses in 1986 – a tender and fluid, emotional and poignant code of colours, shapes, symbols and forms. Now The Paintings for the Temple comes to London in a new exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gallery. “Hilma Af Klint is a pioneer of abstract art and the earliest artist we have ever exhibited at the Serpentine,” Serpentine directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist say. The show includes a number of never-before-seen recently restored works, and forms an englightening and admiring homage to the late artist, whose work has been too long overlooked.

https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/8490/decoding-the-spiritual-symbolism-of-artist-hilma-af-klint

Religion & Spirituality:

Look at the paintings of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, and you will feel the power of her vision. Through vivid compositions of shapes and symbols, she presented philosophical and spiritual concepts in physical form on canvas—a visual manifestation of her thinking for us to see and reflect upon.

Af Klint’s unprecedented artistic expression was greatly inspired by her devotion to spiritualism, a movement popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s whose followers believed in our ability to communicate with otherworldly beings. Her involvement in spiritualism was not unusual among artists and others in the creative realm in Europe and America at the turn of the century. This was a period of massive change: With industrialization, people moved from the countryside to the towns, cutting off their social networks. Discoveries within the natural sciences, such as radio waves and X-rays, made people realize that there are aspects of our world that we cannot perceive with our five senses. In this atmosphere of upheaval and uncertainty, a variety of religious and philosophical movements took shape, as people from all levels of society were searching for something new to hold on to.

Af Klint, too, was a seeker—a serious and critical one. Throughout her lifetime, she took part in a number of different, yet often related, religious and philosophical movements, each of which had its own impact on her thinking and work. In 1879, at the age of 17, she participated in Spiritist séances, wherein participants attempted to make contact with the dead, and she became a member of the Spiritist Literature Association. The following year, her younger sister, Hermina, passed away, and af Klint tried to communicate with her deceased sibling. Soon after, the artist left the Spiritist movement, feeling it provided a mere shortcut for people to gain information that they were not yet ready to receive. The movement that af Klint soon joined, however, shaped her and her work for years to come: Theosophy.

Established in 1875 in New York by Helena Blavatsky together with Colonel H.S. Olcott, Theosophy was later headquartered in Adyar, south of Madras in India. According to the Theosophical movement, human beings have seven states of consciousness. The Theosophical movement believes in reincarnation, and maintains that the entire universe (from the atom to the galaxy) is a single unit—thus the “Macrocosmos” is equal with the “Microcosmos.” All of these concepts are expressed in af Klint’s abstract paintings.

In 1887, Blavatsky established the European Federation of the Theosophical Society in London, and the Federation was introduced in Sweden in 1889, when af Klint joined. The Theosophical Society, Adyar was also established in Sweden, in 1895, and af Klint joined that organization and was a member until 1915. She participated in the Theosophical World Congress held in Stockholm in June 1913.

Af Klint was also influenced by the Rosicrucians, a fact that is well recorded in her notebooks. Her abstract paintings are sprinkled with various Rosicrucian symbols, and she habitually wore a necklace with a plain silver cross, in the middle of which was engraved a rose within a circle.

In 1896, af Klint also joined the Edelweiss Society, a Swedish association with an ecumenical base established in 1890 by Huldine Beamish. Af Klint left that group a year later, feeling it did not give her the feedback she desired for her spiritual development. Instead, she and four other women who were members of the Edelweiss Society established their own spiritualist group called “The Five.”

The Five met regularly between 1896 and 1907. Each of their gatherings started with a prayer, meditation, and a sermon in front of an altar with a triangle and a cross with a central rose, a Rosicrucian symbol. They continued with analysis of a New Testament text, followed by a séance during which they made contact with spirits and spiritual leaders. The spirits were individually identified by names, while the spiritual leaders were simply referred to as “The High Ones.” The spiritual contacts were verbally expressed by the group’s medium, as well as by automatic scriptures and drawings. The Five recorded these sessions in a series of notebooks.

After The Five had met for several years, the spirits started making recurrent references to an important mission lying ahead. One spirit predicted the creation of future paintings, while another foresaw the building of a temple. He indicated that af Klint would be requested to make the necessary architectural drawings for this temple.

On January 1, 1906, a spirit that the group referred to as Amaliel gave af Klint a monumental task: She was to create the artwork for the temple’s interior—The Paintings for the Temple. “Amaliel offered me a work and I answered immediately Yes,” wrote af Klint in her notebooks. “This was the large work, that I was to perform in my life.” Af Klint went on to paint 111 paintings during the period from November 1906 to April 1908—one painting every fifth day.

In July 1908, soon after she had completed this remarkable time of creative productivity, af Klint met the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, then the leader of the Theosophical Society in Germany. Steiner is best remembered now for Anthroposophy, the movement that he initiated in 1913, when he broke away from the Theosophists, and the Waldorf system of education that he founded based on Anthroposophical thought. Af Klint sought Steiner’s response to her work, turning to him as one of the most prominent spiritual leaders of the time. However, Steiner did not understand the message of her work, and questioned her way of painting and her mediumistic role.

This was a great disappointment to af Klint, who at the time was exhausted in the wake of creating the first portion of The Paintings for the Temple. Steiner’s response to her paintings seems to have greatly affected the artist, as she ceased painting in abstract form until 1912. During the intervening four years, she cared for her mother, who was blind and in ill health. Af Klint also spent this time painting portraits and studying Western philosophers, and she read Blavatsky’s Theosophical two-volume work The Secret Doctrine, in which the author reconciles ancient Eastern wisdom with modern science. Af Klint finally resumed her artistic work, and in 1915 she completed The Paintings for the Temple, which constitute 193 paintings in all.

Despite Steiner’s reaction to her paintings, af Klint became a member of the Anthroposophical Society in 1920, and primarily studied Anthroposophical teachings for many years after 1922. She stepped away from her artistic creation for a time in 1921 and intensively studied Goethe’s Colour Theory, which Steiner had edited. In 1922 she resumed painting again, influenced by Goethe’s writing, in the “floating colors” style that was also espoused by Anthroposophy—a style she employed for the rest of her life. The Anthroposophical Society had established a center in Dornach, Switzerland, and she conducted research in their archives there with the aim of deciphering the message inherent in her works. She did not find what she sought, and in 1930, she finally broke with the Anthroposophical Society. From that time until her death in 1944, she never returned to Dornach.

Af Klint’s art was designed to convey transcendental messages to humanity. One may say that af Klint’s abstract paintings are firmly based on Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and Christianity—and also on concepts familiar from Buddhism, whose tenets were woven into the Theosophist teachings. While she was rooted in movements born out of the turbulent turn of the century, in many ways her practice speaks directly to the spiritual and philosophical perspectives of today.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Goethe%E2%80%99s+Colour+Theory%2C&oq=Goethe%E2%80%99s+Colour+Theory%2C&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l6.322j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Gender and Sexuality:

Clairvoyance is the ability to see beyond the immediate into another time and place, to the then and there. To see clearly is to see how things truly are. Tuning in to a frequency where it is safe to transmit messages, recognizing the meaning of a certain color in a certain back pocket, turning to dead generations to find others who share your secret: these are forms of extrasensory attention practiced by queer people.

I thought of queer clairvoyance amidst the rainbows of the Hilma af Klint show, closing soon at the Guggenheim. I wanted to drink the color, as if the dusty lavenders and burnt oranges could nourish me.

We spiraled up the exhibit, trying to put our finger on what made the art, to us, unquestionably queer. I had a vague memory of hearing that af Klint was a lesbian, but I couldn't place whether I had actually heard it or if it was simply a message received.

How would it shape our understanding of af Klint's art if the show made her queerness central to understanding her vision of the future?

In the months that the show has been up, I waited to see if anyone else would draw that connection between af Klint's sexuality and her vision of the future, and no one did. It felt like af Klint's queerness was a ghost in the show.

Calling af Klint queer is a delicate claim. We only have the usual signs to go by: never married, lived only with women, enjoyed intimate lifelong friendships with women, communed with other astral planes only with women. There are no salacious diaries or letters available, no rumors of her alleged lesbianism, as there are with the founder of Theosophy, Helena Blavatsky. When you research her, you either find no references to her sexuality at all, or you see her, here and there, claimed plainly as gay. Here she appears in the Lavender Review of lesbian poetry and art; here she is on the LGBT Daily Spotlight.

Af Klint's work as a Spiritualist medium, like queerness, was an attunement to signals others didn't pick up. And as with her queerness, her mysticism has been less of a critical preoccupation: too messy, too biographical, too woo.

How would it shape our understanding of af Klint's art if the show made her queerness central to understanding her vision of the future? Erasing her queerness is not merely a problem of representation, but a roadblock for interpreting her work. The critical reluctance to make any claims about what her art does or what kind of future she imagined has everything to do with ignoring the queer implications of her work.

Perhaps because the show is titled Paintings for the Future, critics have tended to defer to af Klint's vision for the future rather than making their own conjectures as to what kind of future, exactly, she envisioned. Peter Schjeldahl, for instance, writes in his New Yorker review, "I don't know what to do with or about it. Maybe some of our artists will. Meanwhile, looking seems a good start." Jillian Steinhauer offers that af Klint helps you "open yourself up to an unfamiliar and more expansive way of seeing the world." Roberta Smith observes that even if af Klint got "there" first in pioneering abstract art, her "'there' seems so radical, so unlike anything else going on at the time." Why is it so hard to put a finger on where "there" is, to name the kind of future she imagines? Why have so many reviews of her work amounted to nothing more than a marketable slogan: the future is female?

If you are attuned to a certain frequency, you can receive the kind of queer future af Klint envisions. But if you are too mired in the here and now as opposed to the then and there, you might not pick up what af Klint puts down. Not everyone is clairvoyant. If most critics have brushed aside her queerness along with the mystical implications of her work as speculative concerns, at best, then perhaps not everyone is spiritually commissioned to receive her messages.

For Hyperallergic, John Yau comes close to calling her queer when he compares her decision to withhold her work from the public until two decades after her death to Emily Dickinson's own reluctance to publish her poetry in her lifetime. Both have been treated by critics as unsexed recluses, in spite of their respectively intense relationships with women.

And as with Dickinson, critics have treated af Klint's vision of the future as hyper contemporary and yet impossibly distant, a horizon that we can see but not reach. It's a familiar kind of future for queer people who aspire towards a liberation that would mean a form of life so radically different it is almost unimaginable. Over the rainbow, somewhere.

It is as if she could only process a binary sexuality on the subatomic level, and call it chaos.

Af Klint's vision of the future is not one that reproduces more of the same. While her work does play with binaries, including the one that pairs up the masculine and feminine, her investment is in the alchemical union of opposites to create something new. She takes up a gendered sense of color — yellow for "male" and blue for "female," green for the harmony of the two — only to name her series of biomorphic forms Primordial Chaos. Her series of canvases struck me as a form of processing, of working through a complicated subject and examining it from every angle and distance. Diagramming, for af Klint, is a way of breaking down the world into its component parts and processing these parts to arrive at a new conclusion. It is as if she could only process a binary sexuality on the subatomic level, and call it chaos.

While male and female bodies may combine to create more male and female bodies, af Klint treats such biology with the eye of a diagrammer, not a sensualist. Contrast this nonsexed creation of life with her Eros Series: a gradation of pink and lavender, a fluid sensuality of shape and color. Reproductive and erotic are not synonymous in her book.

To appreciate af Klint's work is to disregard an art-historical narrative of direct lineage, of artist responding to artist. Instead of a vertical model of inheritance, her work suggests a horizontal model of community collaboration. She was interested in order and structure, but not necessarily hierarchy: "It was not the case that I was to blindly obey the High Lords of the Mysteries," she said, "but that I was to imagine that they were always standing by my side." Even her mediumship was horizontally organized.

Af Klint's vision of the future has deep roots in the past, as her Spiritualist practice suggests. To contact the dead, after all, is to communicate with lost elders, a queer project in itself. Perhaps this is why af Klint appears as a figure of fascination for Kristen Stewart's character, Maureen, in Olivier Assayas' film Personal Shopper. Maureen is a medium, too, and like the painter, seeks to contact a dead sibling but receives messages from a more ambiguous source. Maureen's queerness is notable only if you know what you're looking for — her tepidity with a male suitor, her Shane affect — but there is a direct line between her ability to commune with the unseen, the magnetism that pulls her towards af Klint, and the unspoken object of her sexuality.

Af Klint's work is a collaborative effort between women and the unseen world. Making her queerness explicit in the show would also allow her audience to understand why she was uninterested in being put in a mainstream lineage of artist begetting artist. Her decision not to show her work until twenty years after her death is a queer refusal of parenthood, favoring her lived community of both earthly and heavenly bodies.

As with queerness, the occult is a body of knowledge, welcoming only to those who wish to be initiated, that has in recent years been exploited by capitalism. If we do not discuss af Klint's lesbianism in line with her art, we forget that she and her Spiritualist collective were queer practitioners of the occult, not straight women dabbling in woo or influencers who use aesthetic as an adjective. Her contemporary queer audience, like the Spiritualists before her, can see what others can't and receive messages about the future from voices of the past.

https://www.papermag.com/hilma-af-klint-guggenheim-2635306186.html?rebelltitem=11#rebelltitem11

Paintings of the Temple

During a séance in the year 1906, a spirit called Amaliel allegedly commissioned Hilma af Klint to make paintings for the temple. The artist documented the assignment in her notebook and wrote that it was the largest work she was to perform in her life. This series of artworks, called The Paintings for the Temple, was created between 1906 and 1915. It features 193 paintings that are divided into various subgroups. The general idea of The Paintings for the Temple was to depict the monistic nature of the world. The works should represent that everything in the world is one.

The spiritual quality of the series is also apparent in Hilma af Klint’s description of its making: “The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.”

Primordial Chaos

The paintings of the group Primordial Chaos were the first of Hilma af Klint’s extensive series The Paintings for the Temple. They were also her first examples of abstract art. The group consists of 26 small paintings. They all depict the origins of the world and the Theosophical idea that everything was one at the beginning but was fragmented into dualistic forces. According to this theory, the purpose of life is to reunite the fragmented and polar forces.

The shape of a snail or spiral visible in some of the pictures of this group was used by af Klint to illustrate evolution or development. While the color blue represents the female in af Klint’s work, the color yellow illustrates masculinity. The use of these predominant colors can therefore be interpreted as the depiction of the two opposite forces, such as spirit and matter, or male and female. Hilma af Klint said that the group Primordial Chaos was created under the guidance of one of her spiritual leaders.

The Ten Largest

Instead of being guided by the high masters, like when working on her previous group Primordial Chaos, af Klint’s creative process became more independent during the making of The Ten Largest. She said: “It was not the case that I was to blindly obey the High Lords of the mysteries but that I was to imagine that they were always standing by my side.”

Paintings in the group The Ten Largest represent different stages of human life by illustrating childhood, youth, maturity, and old age. They also illustrate how we are connected to the universe. Hilma af Klint displayed different states of human consciousness and development by painting bright geometrical shapes. The artist explained the works in her notebook: “Ten paradisiacally beautiful paintings were to be executed; the paintings were to be in colors that would be educational and they would reveal my feelings to me in an economical way…. It was the meaning of the leaders to give the world a glimpse of the system of four parts in the life of man.”

Paintings in the group The Ten Largest show various symbols that are characteristic of af Klint’s art and her involvement with spiritual ideas. The number seven, for example, refers to the artist’s knowledge of Theosophical teachings and is a recurring theme in The Ten Largest. In this series, the symbol of the spiral or snail is a representation of the physical as well as the psychological human development. The almond shape that occurs when two circles intersect, like in the painting No. 2, Childhood, symbolizes a development resulting in completion and unity. The shape is a symbol from ancient times and is also called vesica piscis.

The Altar Pieces

The Altarpieces are the last works of Hilma af Klint’s series The Paintings for the Temple. This group consists of three large paintings and was supposed to be placed in the altar room of the temple. Af Klint described the architecture of the temple in one of her notebooks as a round building with three stories, a spiral staircase, and a four-story tower with the altar room at the end of the staircase. The artist also wrote that the temple would exude a certain power and calm. Choosing to place this group in such an important room in a temple shows the significance of her Altarpieces.

The meaning behind the Altarpieces can be found in the Theosophical theory of spiritual evolution, which is characterized by a movement running in two directions. While the triangle in No. 1 of the Altarpieces shows the ascension from the physical world to the spiritual realm, the painting with the triangle pointing downwards illustrates the descending from divinity to the material world. A wide golden circle in the last painting is an esoteric symbol of the universe.

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personalcoachingcenter · 3 years

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Research Paper: Language Matters

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/research-paper-language-matters/

Research Paper: Language Matters

Research Paper By Charlene Moynihan (Ability Coach, UNITED STATES)

Introduction

A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well. –Frederick Douglass

Diversity is inherent in everything we experience such as nature and its multitude of variance, and, people and their cultures. If we are to truly celebrate differences, we must begin by knowing and understanding those differences. As coaches, that knowing/understanding must begin with ourselves. As one who will work with those who have a relationship to a disability, I must have knowledge and awareness of disability culture.

Moreover, as an individual with a disability, I must understand what it is that makes me different than others if I am to truly approach this endeavor with a celebratory mindset.

ICA teaches us that

Culture exists in the minds of the individuals that have learned from other human beings what is acceptable in their interactions with other human beings. Culture allows us to communicate with one another in a language that we have learned and share in common. -International Coach Academy

With the understanding that coaching sessions are about the client and not the coach, how to promote my work to potential clients has much to do with who I am and how I present myself. I felt I needed to address the issue of how much of my personal experience to share in the promotional process since how I am perceived affects the assessment of a good fit between coach and client.

This brings up the dilemma that many potential clients will face, exactly what, when, and how much is appropriate to disclose when it comes to disability. As a person with an acquired disability, it was a question that I needed a comfortable answer to. If I can understand the process it takes to answer that question, I can recognize a similar struggle and the need to address it with my clients.

I looked to disability theory with a particular focus on the language used to speak about disability for some insight. The language we use communicates much about who we are, how we think, and what we believe. This paper will focus on the language used to speak of disability.

Let’s start with an explanation of the predominant models of disability theory.

Disability Theory

The Medical Model

The medical model of disability talks of it in terms of impairment, deficiency, and/or abnormality. It is something that exists within the body/the person and it is the person’s responsibility to learn how to deal with it. The medical field seeks to cure and/or treat the disability with therapies that are aimed at making the person function more “normally”. Most of the language used by the medical community to discuss/describe disability are negatives, suffering from, and afflicted with for example. These words communicate that disability is not something desirable and reflects an attitude of negativity in the way the non-medical community thinks about disability.

The Social Model

The social model sees disability as simply a part of who one is; no different than gender, race, or age. The problem of disability is viewed as one of interaction in a society that is often inaccessible and unaware of the severity of the struggles it presents. The social model seeks to fix these struggles through a change in society, through awareness and accessibility. The language used by the social model is person-centered as opposed to identity-centered, a “person with a disability” vs. a “disabled person” treating the disability as only a part of the whole. These phrases are far less negative.

These are the two major models of disability at play. They are far more complicated than I have related and the advantages and consequences of each warrant much consideration. Many interdisciplinary approaches to these models exist and are not dissimilar to those related to issues of sexual identity and race when it comes to disclosure and discrimination. But the brief descriptions demonstrate incredible differences in the way people think and speak about a disability.

The Research

For this paper, I will limit my discussion to that the language used to speak of disability and its impact on the members of the community. It is the language we use that reflects one’s understanding of disability. It is also the language others use that impacts a decision to disclose ones’ identity to the speaker or not. Comfort level and confidence in the speaker’s understanding are paramount. In this cancellation culture, what language does one choose when speaking about disability? How does one speak of disability in a way that communicates comfort and confidence? My research offered some insight into these questions. I was able to locate two papers addressing this issue that struck a note with me.

A lot of controversies exist around the use of the word disability. In #SaytheWord: A Disability Culture Commentary on the Erasure of “Disability” the authors say, “The literature indicates that despite the importance of language on attitudes toward disabled people, attempts to avoid the term ‘disability’ remain and may have unintended consequences.” -Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R. (2019). Some thought by removing the word disability and substituting things like “differently-abled” would remove some of the associated negativity in the same way that person-first language helps to minimize labeling and categorizing people by identity-first.

The concern is that the use of euphemisms can serve to reinforce the idea that disability is negative and can be indicative of bias or prejudiced thinking. Such euphemisms, like Photoshop, take something less appealing and make it more acceptable to the viewer; that the viewer may feel more comfortable/more pleased with the subject matter. This reluctance to use the word disabled is more about the needs of the non-disabled who have bias and/or prejudice thinking that underlies their discomfort, and, the disabled who fear being stigmatized; the primary reason reported for not disclosing a disability. Yet many are reclaiming the word disabled. It allows self-identity and serves to place them into a community that can protect against the stigma (and fear of) by “externalizing rather than internalizing disability prejudices.”Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R. (2019).

In “Disclosing Our Relationships to Disabilities: An Invitation for Disability Studies Scholars”, Joan O’TooleCorbet writes, “…we need to examine our reluctance to support public disclosure, open academic inquiries into public signifiers, encourage public disclosure, and use signifiers of one’s relationship to disability.” I found this a fascinating perspective. She writes about how disclosure is managed in the disability rights community. Corbet goes on to say that in this community, they are “expected to locate themselves about the lived disability experience.” One would say, for example, I am disabled, or, I am the parent of a disabled child, or, I am a non-disabled teacher of disabled adults. The reasoning behind this sort of disclosure is that it explains perspectives based on the nature of the relationship to disability that goes beyond the binary disabled or non-disabled identity. It respects that each relationship to disability has valuable information to be shared. Stating a relationship to disability is not the same as sharing specifics of the nature of one’s disability. That remains a personal decision. The rule of thumb is that you may state your relationship to disability but you must not speak to the experience of another as it presumes that you know the lived experience of another and you cannot. This understanding can be applied nicely in the coaching session.

Another positive here is that “Public disclosure of the relationship to disability increases the number of people discussing and identifying disability oppression.” Disclosing one’s relationship to disability provides community membership, support, and strategies to combat ableism. Ableism is to the disability community what white supremacy is to communities of a minority race. Stating one’s relationship to disability opens a space for productive discussion of disability-related issues and helps combat ableism.

Analysis

In any discussion of oppressed populations, it behooves one to understand the issues at play. I will be focusing the efforts of my transformational coaching practice on serving clients with acquired disabilities. We live in a world demanding political correctness and the cancellation of those who are not. Use of language that, either intentionally or not, communicates negativity towards any group/community and/or culture inhibits trusting relationships and has no place in coaching.

I have chosen to use the word disabled in my marketing/promotional materials. I will use it without the shame and negativity it carries for some. My intent will be clear. I will use it to identify membership within a supportive community. As one with a relatively invisible acquired disability, I know the isolation that comes with not speaking about disability. I want my potential clients to know that they need not feel the isolation that comes with keeping silent and that there is a way to speak of it without the need to disclose one’s diagnosis and specific limitations. That information is disclosed on a need-to-know basis and most simply don’t need to know. I want them to feel welcomed to experience membership in that community, that culture that offers support and advocacy if they so choose.

I will also speak in terms of my relationship to disability because of its ability to communicate differing perspectives on disability. I cannot share my lived experience by sharing a diagnosis. My relationship to disability is relevant to my clients because of its ability to communicate perspectives and open lines of communication on the subject of disability. Since I have identified people with an acquired disability and those with a similar relationship, it also explains my desire to expand services to family, caregivers, friends, and professionals working with my clients of choice.

I will share my relationship to disability as follows. As a child, I attended a summer camp for developmentally disabled children with my siblings (where my mother worked as a camp nurse). I grew up laughing and playing with children who were different but very much the same as me. I was a friend of disabled children. I worked in schools and residential homes for adults with multiple disabilities. I was non-disabled support professional. My father became disabled due to chronic illness. I was the daughter of a disabled man. I was diagnosed with a disabling condition when my children were young. I am a disabled person.

My child has a disabling condition. I am the disabled parent of a disabled adult. I have multiple friends with disabilities. I am a disabled friend of disabled adults. I ended my career as a Disability Claims Specialist at the Social Security Administration (S.S.A.). I conducted in-depth interviews to uncover and document the specific physical, psychological and cognitive phenomenon that results in meeting the legal definition of disability used by S.S.A.This gave me an intimate look into the lived experience of many disabled individuals. I am a disabled individual with intimate knowledge of both my own and the disabling conditions of others.

This communicates so much more than disclosing that I have Multiple Sclerosis. Do you feel the difference? Asking for and providing one’s relationship to disability provides relevant and useable information in discussions of disability. The provision of a diagnosis generally either suppresses conversation due to discomfort with the disclosure or leads to additional (and inappropriate in many situations) questions regarding the personal limitations of the disabled person. I would much rather enable a productive conversation than suppress or encourage inappropriate ones.

Conclusion

I change my thoughts, I change my world. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

We are taught at ICA to, “Be aware of personal strengths and weaknesses when it comes to one’s own Coaching Mindset.” ICF talks of “the criticality of a partnership between coach and client, and the importance of cultural, systemic and contextual awareness.” For these reasons, I undertook this study. My coaching mindset needed nurturing. If I am to be a focused partner with clients, I must feel confident that I have communicated, upfront, what is appropriate for my clients to know; that they can then decide if they want to develop a partnership with me.

Despite my years of work with individuals with disabilities, I needed to look at the bigger picture. My experience was job-related and focused on meeting their needs. More caregiver than a coach. My perspective needed to shift. I needed to understand how to speak of disability in a non-directive way. More importantly, I needed to understand how the language I use communicates my thoughts, values, and beliefs. I needed to understand the mindsets of others who participate in the discussion of disability. I needed to understand disability at a different level; one that addressed the need for cultural, systemic, and contextual awareness.

The journey has been well worth the time and energy. It is no longer my role to meet the physical and emotional needs of those with whom I work. I know in my heart that they are entitled to self-determination, just as I am, and I will support and empower them to pursue their goals no longer as a caregiver but a coach. I have learned much about the language used to speak of disability. I have also come to understand the intent behind my need to do this research. I have never spent much time thinking about nor identifying myself as a person with a disability. I needed to acknowledge myself as a member of the community and find a way to communicate that membership in a way that felt comfortable. In doing so, I have resolved my questions regarding how to communicate my thoughts, values, and beliefs by the language I will use to speak of disability with my clients and promote my business. First impressions matter and the language we use speaks volumes about who we are and what we value.

Sources:

Websites

Critical Disability Theory. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/win2019/entries/disability-critical/

Disability and Justice. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/disability-justice/.

Disclosing Our Relationships to Disabilities: An Invitation for Disability Studies Scholars. Corbett Joan O’Toole 1 (disabled) 2 Independent Researcher. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3708/3226.

Disability Studies Quarterly.Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Reviewed by Michael Davidson. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/160/160.

Medical Model of Disability versus Social Model of Disability. Living with Disability and Chronic Pain. https://canbc.org/blog/medical-model-of-disability-versus-social-model-of-disability/.

Disability Studies Quarterly. Un/covering: Making Disability Identity Legible. Heather Dawn Evans. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5556/4550.

Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R. (2019). #SaytheWord: A disability culture commentary on the erasure of “disability”. Rehabilitation Psychology, 64(2), 111–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/rep0000258.

https://docs.google.com.

Original source: https://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/research-papers/charlene-moynihan-language-matters/

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kirrtash · 4 years

Text

It’s only after their mother dies and they get in contact with the first, unfriendly, demons that Inuyasha finds out that the human’s obsession over fitting everyone in one gender it’s weird for them too. They have already learned to keep quiet about what they think about themselves. What their body is, and isn’t, to them, they don’t tell the humans in the castle. Inuyasha doesn’t even tell their mother.

It has been a few years since they stopped living in the castle, when they have again the occasion to meet an human, on a moonless night. That particular one, as every other, is immediately concerned with their appearance, assuming their gender without even letting them speak.

Inuyasha doesn’t feel particularly attached to one nor the other, on a good day doesn’t even think about it.

(On a bad day somebody just has to remind them, usually while trying to kill them, and aren’t they lucky?)

They don’t go near another human settling for years after that night. Those are safer than the forests and fields, at least when they are weak, but they don’t have it in themselves to deal with stupid humans and their stupid way of thinking.

In a way this hurts more than being half breed. Their mixed heritage is on plain sight for everyone to see, and there is no mistake to be made (with the exception of one night per month): one look at their ears and the story of their birth is on plain sight for everyone to deduce.

But the way humans expect them to adapt to their roles, to dance to this tune they don’t fit in, just after one look at their body, that’s worst. Humans and demons alike hate them for their blood, but both of them just ignore how they feel about their body. It’s just irrelevant.

So Inuyasha makes sure that it’s irrelevant for themselves too. In any case they don’t even have the words to explain it, so why bother? It’s not like they have someone to tell, and the most important thing right now it’s to survive.

They never get around telling Kikyo about this too. She barely accepted their mixed blood, Inuyasha is not sure she can take more. They don’t want to take the risk of another rejection. As for the sacrifice they are willing to face, it’s not that different from the other one they already accepted to make when she asked, just another part of their identity they will have to renounce to.

Kagome is strange. She doesn’t question them and the way they present themselves, doesn’t even seem to notice. The girl has bigger problems anyways, it’s her fault if them both are on this quest. But she always looks at them with a bit more intention when they slip, in the way they refer to themselves, when the hyper masculine terms they use out of habit, to comply with the image others have of them, to not raise questions, get stuck in their throat. She always notices.

She asks one night, when everyone else it’s sleeping. They have just met Sesshomaru again and Inuyasha is quite proud of their victory, even if in reality the bastard run away just before Tessaiga could break definitively. Inuyasha still counts it as victory.

“It’s something that I have noticed before, but why did he refer to you with neutral terms?”

The asshole has never had anything to say about their gender obviously, as it’s normal for a demon, but Inuyasha doesn’t really want to explain to her. They huff and try to dismiss the question with a vague gesture and a “whatever” but she just keeps waiting patiently, peering at them from under her eyelashes. They both know that the answer it’s not simple, and the question is bigger than it could look to a mere bystander.

Inuyasha takes a breath. She has been on their side for a while now, and they don’t want to lose her. But at the same time she has already told them how irrelevant their mixed blood is for her. No. Not irrelevant. A part of them. Just a part of who they are, as normal as their hands and eyes, something that makes them THEM. If she could accept that, then maybe, just maybe…

Inuyasha doesn’t know how to explain, but Kagome is patient. It’s like a flood. When dawn comes, and, how? When? She stops them, shakes Sango awake and quietly informs her that she and Inuyasha are going back to her time. She then calls for Inuyasha and they start walking away from the camp. As soon as they are out of ears’ reach, she resumes the conversation.

She looks among books and books in the public library. Inuyasha just stands aside, the hat flattening their ears, trying not to draw attention and not to be in her way. They didn’t even stop to her house to say hi to her family, she knew she didn’t have anything of what she was looking for there.

“There must be something! I have read a couple of things but I cannot remember where I found them again!” she looks possessed, and Inuyasha is not going to bother her.

She comes up with a few books and articles from magazines, and is eyeing critically the huge computer in the backroom, pondering if to search on that too, since the Higurashi family doesn’t have one.

Inuyasha is not really listening to her. They are scrolling through the written text, trying to make good use of what little reading abilities they have, and to interpret the futuristic language and culture. Their worldview is being thrown off right now.

If for demons gender (and now they know the difference between gender and sex, and gender expression too, isn’t that neat?) is inconsequential, humans 500 years in the future keep spending a lot of time thinking and talking about it. Still, the revelation is another one. Demons don’t care about gender, you can’t use it against them. Humans don’t care too, they know where they fit and it comes natural to them to abide the unwritten rules that concern the sociality. Despite this, here Inuyasha gets a glimpse of another world. These books give them a place, among others, give their struggle a name and a reason and companionship. They are not the only one. There are humans too, here, going through something that might, with a stretch of imagination, be considered similar to their experience.

Kagome takes some books back home, essays and narrative ones, and some vhs to see on the television. Her family is nowhere to be seen and they are back to her room. Inuyasha feels safe there, the day has already been a mess, and their head is still spinning. “I don’t know where to look for more, but we need to understand better, honestly Inuyasha, why didn’t you speak sooner?”

They know her temper is without fire, that she is just worried, but it hurts the same. She must see their look, the flattened ears, because she backtracks immediately. “I’m sorry, I can understand why, it was a stupid thing to say. It’s just… I want to help. I would like for you to tell to the others too, but it’s your call. I’m sure they will want to understand though. That’s why I need to find more…” she is off again, checking on the list she compiled while looking for materials, and Inuyasha watches her go in the direction of the stairs and the living room, still shell-shocked.

“I didn’t even ask you!” She seems to have realized something, her voice still audible from the other room “I’m so bad at this, I’m sorry! Which pronouns should I use?”

Inuyasha can’t help the laugh that escapes their lips, they don’t know what to answer. But they will find out. There are words out there for them, just waiting to be discovered. Their experience can be told, and damn them if they are not going to.

—

A disclaimer: I am a cisgender woman, so my knowledge and undersanding of genderqueer identities can only be a secondhand one. This to say that I hope that I have not offended anyone with this depiction of this identity, and if I have I am deeply sorry, since it was not my intention.

For something so short I really had trouble writing this. First my native language doesn’t have the option of singular them, and I never had any occasion for using it before, so I’m sorry if I made mistakes. Second, Inuyasha the character, in the anime, while referring to themselves, uses Ore, an highly masculine way of saying me, and I didn’t want ignore canon completely even if I played fast and lose with the timeline, since I don’t remember what happened when. Additionally, and I never looked into the language so I’m not sure, I suspect that there are A LOT of pronouns whit different nuances in the spectrum between masculine and feminine in the Japanese language. So I had to take in account three language shifts while writing this tiny little thing. I’d like to add that while il like to think that my personal knowledge on transgender and genderqueer identities is not that bad, I haven’t the faintest idea of what 199something Japan might knew about it, so I kept on the conservative side (considering they are still a really closed off country about LGBT+ issues, I feel that it’s the most realistic portrait)

I cannot help but think about Inuyasha and a nonbinary or genderqueer identity. Assuming that for demons gender is something much less regulated by social norms than for humans, and that because of their upbringing Inuyasha didn’t get to receive a positive and validating explanation of gender and sexuality by none of the two cultures, I suppose that (in the feudal era!) it would have created in them an even higher sense of isolation and oddness. That’s probably why I love the idea of Inuyasha going to the pride for the first time (first gay pride in Tokyo was in 1994…) and in general realize that they are not alone.

It is a deeply difficult and isolating situation, not having the words to describe, even to ourselves, our identity, and I am happy that the modern ways of connecting with each other are lessening this kind of isolation.

this was written for day 5 of @inuyashapridemonth2020

#inuyasha #inuyashapride2020 #my art #my writing #ops #I wrote something again #inuyasha pride month #nonbinary inuyasha

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chicagocityofclans · 4 years

Photo

Ethan Cleirigh → Jay Ryan → Warlock

→ Basic Information

Age: 763

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Straight

Powers: Panmnesia

Birthday: October 19th

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Religion: Buddhist

Mark: Cleirigh

Generation: 2nd

→ His Personality Ethan is somewhat of a loner and often keeps to himself. He is both intelligent and resourceful. He’s also a very rational individual, constantly analysing risks and the best course forward. After WWII, he withdrew into himself, becoming isolated from the world around him and self-loathing. He’s trying to be caring and compassionate to those in his life as he ages. He doesn't want to be his father's age and completely hate life or humans. His plans are always definite the moment he makes them until something makes him change them, and he frequently operates based on pictures of what he thinks ought to be.

When Ethan uses his power of Panmnesia, his darker PTSD side is more prominent, he is emotionally detached, even from those he is close to. His violent instincts are more discernible and make him more dangerous. With Panmnesia, Ethan can never forget and it plays a large role in who he is. He's often caught staring off in space; he remembers every heart ache as if it were seconds ago: every accident, every book and movie, everytime he walked in on a family member naked or in a compromised position. It drives his anxiety through the roof. All in all, he is still fighting for those who cannot and showing compassion, Ethan embodies intensity and warmth.

→ His Personal Facts

Occupation: Retired

Scars: A scar on the right side of his face, from his eye to his jawbone

Tattoos: None

Two Likes: Bodybuilding and Traditions

Two Dislikes: Avocados and Adulterers

Two Fears: Never Finding Love and Doppelgangers

Two Hobbies: Junk Food and People Watching

Three Positive Traits: Survivor, Hardworking, Elegant

Three Negative Traits: Brooding, Antisocial, Impartial

→ His Connections

Parent Names:

Ronan Cleirigh (Father): Ethan and Ronan have a regular father son bond. Ethan looks up to the side of his father most people do not get to see.

Willow Radium (Mother): Ethan doesn’t know or care about his birth mother.

Ishtar Cleirigh (Step Mother): Isa has been in his life since Ethan was 2 years old. She is his mother by all means. She helped raise him alongside his father.

Sibling Names:

Nathan Cleirigh (Brother): Ethan is sure Nathan is the way he is because of his mother and his inactive powers. When they were younger they were insparetable but as they grew Nathan turned away from their culture. Ethan believes Nathan wants to be human and thinks he’s better than the rest of them. Ethan is still on friendly terms with Nathan but it’s only because they’re brothers.

Judson Cleirigh (Brother): Ethan and Judson have a close relationship. His brother joined him on the battlefield more than once as a medic. Instead of learning from Ronan, Kaylor, Garrett or Roman, Ethan trusts Judson to teach him about potions.

Teyla Cleirigh (Sister): Ethan tries not to think of his parents conceiving Teyla or Altair but it still weird him out that he has siblings that are over 700 years younger than him. He is happy that he has an active role in her life.

Altair Cleirigh (Brother): Ethan tries not to think of his parents conceiving Teyla or Altair but it still weird him out that he has siblings that are over 700 years younger than him. He is happy that he has an active role in his life.

Children Names:

None

Romantic Connections:

Talia Cleirigh (Girlfriend): Ethan never thought he would commit but Talia is different and understands him. At first he did not trust her but she slowly gained his trust and his love.

Platonic Connections:

Roman Cleirigh (Uncle): Ronan forced him to move in with Roman and Talia after a few night terrors and PTSD moments. He was always closest to Roman but living with him has expanded their relationship. Ethan can now go as far as calling Roman his favorite Uncle.

Brighton ‘Bee’ Genesis (Uncle): Bee is Ethan’s uncle by marriage. Just like Judson, Uncle Bee joined him multiple times on the battlefields. Unlike his other Uncle Garrett and Aunt Kaylor, Ethan doesn’t mind having Bee around him.

Jin Asato (Friend): Jin, Asa and Ethan met at a Veterans ‘Outreach Program’. They were the only supernatural in the room and quickly bonded. Jin is one of the only people Ethan talks to outside of his family.

Asa Fields (Friend): Jin, Asa and Ethan met at a Veterans ‘Outreach Program’. They were the only supernatural in the room and quickly bonded. Asa is one of the only people Ethan talks to outside of his family.

Chiara Ricci (Friend): Ethan was romantically interested in Chiara for three seconds before she spoke. She reminded him of the tough female soldiers he had worked with before and they quickly became friends.

Hostile Connections:

Lawrence Cocci (Dislike): Lawrence threw a fireball at Ethan once. He claimed it was a mistake but the act alone was inexcusable.

Pets:

None

→ History Ethan was left as a baby on his father’s, Ronan, front porch just outside of what is now Sibiu, Romania. His mother, Willow, left him there having no idea that his father had abandoned the home and started down towards Greece. Ronan hadn’t deactivated his wards and was surprised to feel someone poking around his land. Ronan almost didn’t check because whoever or whatever it was quickly left but curiosity got the best of him. That’s when Ethan’s life really began. He started walking before he could crawl, no one around him crawled and he only mimicked what he saw. His first words were ‘Dada’ followed quickly by ‘damned humans’ and ‘sard! you change his nappies’. Ronan quickly narrowed Ethan's powers down to Panmnesia or Mnemokinesis and lectured him about swearing in public and in front of his aunt, Kaylor.

When Ethan first saw Ishtar, she shined brightly like an angel, and appeared out of nowhere. He learned that she was manipulating time and showed up right in the place he was looking. His two year old eyes couldn’t comprehend that it was just light bending and refracting around her body as she suddenly appeared. Ishtar became one of his favorite people that day. Ethan often found himself bored or learning about things that were way above his age, with panmnesia he could never forget what he read, he read faster than everyone else, he only needed to see something once and could easily repeat it. He excelled quickly with his powers, potions, charms, wards, spells and more. By the time Ethan reached his mid-200’s he was bored with life in general. That's when Ethan joined his first battle, the First Battle of St Albans and later on joined the war efforts of the Welsh Revolt. Ethan finally found something that kept his interest but also him on his toes.

Ethan had fought in many European individual battles but only two full wars; the Welsh Revolt and the First Italian War. It wasn’t until the Revolutionary War that Ethan stopped teleporting to Europe. He fought on both sides in the War of 1812, Mexican - American War, American Civil War and Spanish-American War. For World War I and World War II, Ethan chose a side and stuck to it. After returning from the Gulf War, Ethan became overwhelmed with the fast pace changes around him and rethinking his positions in the military. However, since then he has had multiple deployments overseas; frequenting Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait. Ethan had never joined for what he believed in or what he thought was right but only to help him pass time. When he wasn’t at war he was brushing up on new novels, discoveries and his magic. Ethan was always keeping busy and never noticed that he was developing a severe case of PTSD.

→ The Present Ethan was skeptical when his father kicked him out and forced him to consider staying with his uncle and his dream manipulator. He hated not being in his old room and sharing his space with Talia. But she never gave up and was constantly hounding him to let her help him. One day he listened to what she had to say as they shopped together for a Halloween mask for a masquerade ball thrown by Jia. His interest in her peaked and his hostility dampened. While it took almost a year for him to get to know her and fully trust her, Ethan is glad they're giving each other a try and finally making their relationship official.

Ethan has been retired for two weeks from the US Army Reserve. His family had a ‘small’ party for him last week but besides that Ethan has yet to leave the house again. He’s unsure what to do with himself or with his time. Usually between reenlisting, he would read, train his magic and learn new findings within their community, but every book he’s tried this decade has been trash. Ethan is sure that this time he will not be reenlisting in the future. He’s tried multiple times to go into a deep sleep for a few days or longer but he finds himself waking up fully rested after 8 or 12 hours of sleep. Between Talia, Roman, Ishtar, Ronan, Judson, Bee, Asa and Jin, Ethan is finally convinced he needs a hobby or job; the sooner the better.

#Ethan Cleirigh #Taken

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wosoenthusiast · 3 years

Text

Webinar: Celebrating LGBT+ Inclusion at Chelsea

I know this event was not recorded so here are some notes from the “Celebrating LGBT+ Inclusion at Chelsea” webinar. Please note: these are NOT direct quotes!! I didn’t start taking super detailed notes until a few minutes into the panel, sorry about that. And I did a quick read through but I apologize for any typos or grammatical errors.

The panel included Chris Gibbons (moderator), Pernille Harder, Sara Matthews, Graeme Le Saux, and Funke Awoderu

-----

Chris: introduced each panelist and talked a little about rainbow laces

Graeme: (general point: we’ve made a lot of progress in the last 5-10 years, especially since I retired. Sorry, I wasn’t taking as detailed notes right at first)

Funke: (general point: Authentic support is so important.)

Sara: Sport brings people together. Chelsea is a brand with international following and a huge platform. Zero tolerance policy for a long time, internal and external. Demonstrating by doing not just by saying. Want to understand their demographic, look at areas where they are less diverse and how to address that. Look at who works in football, show a different type of recruitment.

Chris: I was nervous about being an out gay man coming into working at the FA. I asked in my interview about whether it was an open environment for a gay man and got a very thorough answer about anti-discrimination policies. Has that developed?

Funke: Yes, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. Data tells us something. Use it well to inform you plans. Proud of the LGBTQ+ people in the FA and their contributions. Don’t want to put people in boxes so we are trying to build a progressive, diverse environment. Learn from others and people’s lived experiences. Listen to the stories people tell. We’re on the right road. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. And it needs to happen on the leadership level.

Chris: Welcome to Chelsea, Pernille. I want to understand your experience of culture in the women’s game- previous clubs, international, and now being new to Chelsea. Women’s game is known for being open. What are your thoughts/experiences?

Pernille: Women’s’ football has always been open about homosexuality. Locker room and fans are very open. In Denmark environment- I wasn’t out, not comfortable. No one else was homosexual. It’s important that you don’t feel alone. I felt a difference right away when I came to Sweden, it was so normalized. I felt I could be myself which is the most important thing.

Graeme: I agree so much. If you feel you’re isolated, it stops you being yourself and others being themselves too. Infrastructure and support and work being done outside the game holding football accountable. Learning from other environments that are further ahead in inclusivity. Pernille, I’m curious, do you think not being out in Denmark held you back?

Pernille: It might, I didn’t think about it at the time. [After coming out], I felt more calm and secure and like I could be 100% self. I felt more honest with myself. It feels better when you trust yourself and what you’re doing. It reflects when you play too.

Chris: Where does it come from? Fans, locker room, Chelsea? What creates a positive, inclusive environment?

P: All individuals are open minded. No one uses sexuality or religion in a negative way. Comes from teammates, staff, everything around you. [It’s important that] the highest leaders in the club are inclusive, affects everyone underneath and what values to act from.

Sara: Reading on stonewalls website 43% of LGBTQ+ people don’t feel welcome at public events (not sure about this stat), such a shame. Being at Kingsmeadow, wow, what a different number that would be. A great place to come enjoy sport and feel very welcome and be a positive perception change.

Chris: We have lots of women’s team fans with us. Go to Chelsea women’s games!! (Mentions Chelsea Pride group and a few other groups and initiatives.) Graeme, why is a group like this so important? Why did you want to be a patron?

Graeme: To get honest feedback from people, get perspectives. Groups of different communities and perspectives are so important. They are a signpost for people who don’t have the confidence or support around them in their own lives. Can help people get into watching football and know that it’s a safe space. Every space should be safe of course, which is the next chapter- people don’t have to work under and umbrella to feel safe and welcome. It’s all built on trust and openness. Willingness to admit you might not get everything right all the time.

Chris: Pernille, you haven’t had much chance to engage with fans at Kingsmeadow, but why do you think these groups are important?

P: It’s important to feel a part of something and not alone. Groups like that help with this. Yesterday, we finally had fans back, 700 I think. I can’t wait to get more. In women’s football, fans love football, they don’t care who you are- sexuality, skin color.

Chris: Funke mentioned before the diversity of LGBTQ+. Trans people still feel a lot of barriers in taking part in sport. In 2014, the FA published policy on trans participation. Do you think football is becoming more inclusive for trans people?

Funke: This is one area that the whole game needs to collaborate better. LGBTQ+ identities are all lumped together right now. Lots of differences in LGBTQ+ community that we’re not considering, more conversations around gender identity, inclusion, education- we need to do the work around the journey for LGB work and apply it to trans inclusion. Now more than ever. There’s so much toxicity and miseducation. If we’re true to ‘the game is for everybody’, we can’t leave trans community behind. To come out as trans is not an easy thing to do, LGB people can pass but trans people sometimes cannot. Educate ourselves, use that to inform policy

Chris: How does that reflect what clubs are doing?

Sara: On the subject of intersectionality- we have to be honest. The data we have today is very recent. People are reluctant to report honestly, there may be fear. From an employer of choice perspective and perception- it’s about fairness, change the stereotype (like who works in football). We’re talking about diversity and inclusion every day. Huge range of departments which means you can bring in a huge range of people with different skills and experiences. You can create a different culture for the organization. Starts at recruitment, put forward the culture of the organization. When she sits in interviews, people ask about DEI, sustainability, corporate social responsibility. People expect their organization to have a narrative and verbalize what they think and feel about discrimination. Chelsea has stepped forward and said zero tolerance but message needs to be confirmed internally. Much more to be done. Education and information- it was not too long ago when women weren’t prevalent in the workforce, but it’s changed. Change happens fast. Lots of new and different people entering the workforce. Listen to people with different perspectives and points of view. We can create a better employee environment by making it so no one is ‘the other’, which comes with diversity

Chris: People have seen news about fans booing when people kneel and other negative reaction and that’s what sticks. What more needs to be done to tackle culture of hate in the stands? ..... Pernille, do you hear much discriminatory language in the stands at women’s game? What’s your experience?

P: No, fan culture is very different in men’s and women’s football. Men’s football is so big so there are a lot of different football fans. It’s difficult to say what to do to change it. It’s important to do something and act. Responsibility of players and other fans- trying to create a different fan culture. Standing up when you hear something. Players need to be stubborn and must stand up for each other.

Chris: Do you think if there was abuse, the response form the women’s game would be robust and quick? More solidarity [than in men’s football]?

P: I don’t know because I haven’t experienced it. I guess so

Graeme: It’s great that you haven’t experienced that. That’s a really big plus.

Chris: Chelsea was the first club to introduce fan re-education (like if a fan was banned for certain language anti-Semitism, they’d have a chance to learn more about why that language was not acceptable). Player re-education exists. How do we get fans to understand this better?

Graeme: It’s important to understand context of where it’s coming from, help someone overcome prejudice by learning something new. Doesn’t send out the right message to just throw someone out. There are a lot of things we grow up with contribute to this ignorance, so figure out where it’s coming from. Set boundaries of what we will and won’t tolerate. Give people a chance to own up to their mistakes. I’ve made some big mistakes in my career and been punished. I was taught to be honest, deal with consequences, and move on. That might remove external pressure. Make transition a bit smoother [as football moves forward], bring more people along

Chris: Funke’s been involved with the Rainbow laces campaign since early days. What impact do you think it has on the pro and grassroots game?

Funke: Immeasurable impact. Every start of the campaign gets better and better with the amount of support. It connect with adult and youth football. People love what the campaign stands for and want to get behind it and support it. Normalizing the playing field, this is a great opportunity to demonstrate the values and culture of your club. Challenge: how to continue to innovate and be creative in conversations and take it to the next level. It continues to grow and grow. More and more, people are taking a personal stand and educating themselves. Campaign has been a success but we won’t rest on our laurels. We must continue.

Chris: I tell youth players about the rainbow laces campaign and they sort of roll their eyes because they learn about and talk about this in school (and with their peers). The culture moving forward will be much more inclusive with the next generation of players. Do you think this will happen in clubs? (I didn’t quite catch this question but I think this is what he asked)

Sara: Yes. People wanted to be associated and show support, bummer we aren’t working at Stamford bridge in person. The next generation is going to be so important. There’s a lot of hate, and standing up against all of is important. People do want to learn- the more you learn, the less afraid you are to ask questions. People are still afraid of offending sometimes too but we’re moving toward really celebrating difference.

Chris: (reads a submitted question out loud about how Pernille is a role model and inspired this person to come out and be themselves) Pernille, how does it feel to be a role model for LGBTQ+ people, not only in sport?

Pernille: It’s great to hear this question. When I was younger, I missed some role models who were homosexual. I try to live as if it’s nothing special. I’m just myself, not hiding anything. That means showing pictures with my girlfriend and just acting normally. I don’t want to do something that doesn’t feel genuine. A lot of people like that I’m just myself and not embarrassed [about being homosexual].

Chris: There are people out there that think you’re a role model too, Graeme. Do you have a sense of the importance of role models?

Graeme: Once you have a profile, you recognize responsibilities associated with that. Whether you like it or not, you become a role model. None of us set out to be a role model. If you take money from sponsors because they think you can sell the product, you should be happy to be a role model, comes with the territory. Some people are more suited to that so it’s important to not hold people to go beyond their comfort. I take great pride in my ability to support things I believe in. I support in public and private and I don’t share everything about myself in public. Stand up and support values and principles, even when it’s not related to me. I was very alone in experience of defending myself [from rumors of being gay] while supporting people around me. It’s a big challenge in many ways. I will always do what I do out of principle. With a profile, you can reach more people.

Chris: Another question for Sara and Funke- what is the club’s response to supporters who have troll comments on rainbow laces posts? Should the club work harder to block and remove those comments?

Sara: The club won’t be dissuaded from doing the right thing. Follow discrimination laws- we will support and take action. Block and report when they can on social media. We do see other people who are posting challenge those comments. Those are important parts, have to work with social media companies, it’s not just trolling in football. Social media companies have to help as well to help manage this

Funke: Any organization driven by principles and values, there will always be haters sharing their view. We take the same measures that Sara just said. Year to year, the ecosystem conversation, calling people out, challenging people back. We know those comments will come. Work with social media companies to have more coordinated effort to take things down. Threshold for football is higher compared to those organizations [social media companies], makes it challenging to take things down immediately

Chris: Graeme and Pernille, do you deal with trolls?

P: yes, there are a few. There will always be haters, especially when you speak up about your opinion. I mostly ignore them and focus on the positive. More positive than negative, positive people will comment on the negative which is amazing

G: yes, I do. I don’t like to give those people oxygen. As soon as you start engaging, you risk it escalating. Turn to social media companies for support too.

Chris: That’s the end of the hour, thanks all for your time! I’m so looking forward to where these conversations will go in the future.

#chelsea #pernille harder #LGBT+ inclusion #chelsea fc #graeme le saux #the fa

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deadcfnight · 4 years

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Did you see that? I could have sworn that I just spotted [ SUMMER BISHIL ] ducking into the shadows. Oh, it was just [ BRIAR PAUZIÉ ]. They’ve always been kind of odd. You know, I’ve heard rumors that they are actually a [ VAMPYRE ] and work as a [ NIGHTCRAWLER and DOCTOR ]. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but I do know that they are PROVOCATIVE & MAGNETIC, which is nice, but they also are INFLAMMATORY & HEDONISTIC when you piss them off.

BIRTH NAME. Fabrizia da Firenze USED NAME/S. Briar Pauzié, Bri AGE. internally: 625 — visually: 30s GENDER. Female, she/her SPECIES. Vampyre SEXUALITY. Anything’s worth trying once RELIGION. Atheist BIRTHPLACE. Florence, Italy HEIGHT. 5'5" PHYSIQUE. Slender but well toned, endowed with strength and grace LANGUAGE(S). Italian, Latin, English, Russian, French, German. CURRENT OCCUPATION. Doctor (& Clan’s Nightcrawler) MBTI. ESTJ-T / ESTJ-A, “The Executive” ENNEAGRAM. 98% Type 8: “The Challenger” — sees themselves as strong and powerful and seeks to stand up for what they believe in. 95% Type 6: “The Skeptic” — preoccupied with security, seeking safety, and liking to be prepared for problems JUNG. ESTJ VIRTUES. Quick-witted, provocative, proud, ambitious, cunning, magnetic, eloquent VICES. Inflammatory, hedonistic, cocky, pernicious, mercurial, wrathful, begrudging MORAL ALIGNMENT. Chaotic Neutral, day-to-day. Neutral Evil, under pressure TEMPERAMENT. Choleric

QUICK FACTS & HEADCANONS ❦ Dominates the night shift schedule at the hospital, much to everyone’s awe and relief.

❦ After participating in various Renaissance celebrations, throwing herself into international city nightlife, and an extensive 1920s partying stint, she doesn’t find any appeal in introducing foreign upper and downer substances into her system. Drinking is not a comfort habit she ever developed, having died before she was able to develop a fondness or crutch on such things.

❦ Similarly, she doesn’t find much enjoyment in music. Classical, she associates with her horrendous excuse of an uncle. Pop and bass heavy numbers are too stimulating. Atmospheric nature sounds or the hum of overlapping conversations soothes her best. The only genre exception, if one could call it that, would be bard compositions or medieval instrumentals, since she has positive memories of her time in England.

❦ Is indifferent towards the supernatural elements of the world. She tolerates each equally, though is most wary of fire wielding witches and young vampyres. The level of volatility she has encountered with the two manifestations left an unforgettably unfavourable impression upon her memory — she possesses no interest in re-hashing old wounds nor maturely turning the other cheek. In her mind, both are best avoided altogether lest irreversible mistakes be made.

❦ Has a tendency to use very dated phrases or insults that don’t always age well or translate into the zeitgeist’s vernacular.

❦ Irate at all times, simmering beneath the surface, but has grown so adapted to the perpetual persistence of the feeling she appears entirely placid at face value. A few lifetimes of trial and error and discipline has equipped her with the knowledge that it serves no one to betray the tumultuous nature of her inner workings through body language or unnecessarily drawing attention to herself. She’s well-aware nothing about her situation (past and present) can be changed by letting any impulsive immature desires run rampant. Only the sharpness of her tongue provides the occasional preview of her bitter and wrathful edges, to those paying close enough attention, exclusively reserved for the informal company (AKA the presence of any supernatural being).

❦ Whilst entirely professional in her workplace, she has her moments of despair if triggered by a sensitive circumstance. Usually it revolves around encountering children burdened with a terminal illness or catastrophic injury that cannot be helped, despite all modern medicine’s best efforts. When an innocent can’t be saved. Neglectful guardians/foster figures evidently just invested in the money aspect of fostering and not their child’s health are no better. To avoid unpacking her own personal baggage around such issues and the self-reflection required to adequately process her emotions into any other form but frustration, she has falls into an episode of madness. It’s almost as if she reverts to her 14th century deathbed’s self except empowered by mobility, wherein she’s nothing but mercurial, broody, and intolerant until the haze wears off and she resumes her regular routine. Usually she can anticipate the bad news/encounter before the flare begins and she can identity precisely when it is time to carefully isolate and distance herself from others.

❦ Is unaffected by the sight and scent of blood, proudly so. Additionally, she’s quite the purist when it comes to the blood she will consume, preferring to only engage with the healthiest or privileged of sources — usually someone rich, upper class, who can afford to lose a little energy now and then. Outside her practice, when it comes to feeding, alongside an aftercare dose of glamour, she still likes to politely siphon blood with the butterfly needles (a stash kept on her at all times). Doing so leaves minimal trace, rather than causing a puncture with her own teeth — it’s a chosen boundary, believing it separates her from ever stooping to savage animalistic urgency.

FULL BIOGRAPHY

Known by a multitude of names over her 625 years of “life”, once upon a time, Briar was known as Fabrizia. Born in the late 14th century Florence during the Italian renaissance, it was a time eventually celebrated for the many of the scientific, artistic and cultural advancements. However, in its early stages, there were more obstacles than rewards faced by lower class citizens. Both her parents were struggling artists, additionally her father taking on a job as a textile worker after she was born in order to keep their family afloat.

Fabrizia spent most of her childhood years in the shared studio of her parents. She was always naturally curious, growing up to mimicking their artistic gestures on canvas scraps. As stubborn as she was creative, often Fabrizia would stay up late into the night alongside their candlelit figures, awaiting the moment exhaustion finally caused their hands to tremble and officially announce bedtime. She was an adored daughter, inspiring both her mother and father to keep working hard despite the lack of immediate payoff. One day, they hoped to earn enough that slaving away all day would no longer be necessary. In the meantime, idyllic family life was put on hold.

When Fabrizia entered adolescence, she began to show signs of sickness. Modern medicine would have been able to identify it was unnaturally high exposure to the toxic fumes and particles let off by the compounds in her parents’ cheap yet vivid paints - no match against her weak constitution. Soon, her presence became too disruptive in the studio. The volume of her coughs, fidgeting, and whining of feverish discomfort made her a nuisance to paint alongside.

When it was gently yet adamantly advised she spend time outside with the neighbourhood children, Fabrizia threw the first of what would become a chain of tantrums. Her father, more stern and stronger than mother, took matters into his own hands and contacted his brother across the city - Fabrizia’s uncle, Lorenzo - a struggling composer at the time. The task of babysitting her was reluctantly taken on, but due to his craft being less sensitive than the focus of her parents’ skillset (plus the handsome sum put on offer each session despite her family’s poverty) made it an offer hard to refuse.

Lorenzo’s efforts of keeping her hidden inside to avoid local ridicule over her ill state did nothing to assist in the speed at which further symptoms manifested. Her parents knew they couldn’t yet afford to get her the treatment she needed, and neglected to address her increasing list of health problems in the hopes that she would grow out of them. An art sale was just around the corner that promised connections could be made that would be enough to sustain them for many years to come. Assuming she could hold on a little longer, trusting Lorenzo’ abilities as her primary guardian, they turned away from their daughter’s mysterious ailment to focus on their work.

Fabrizia’s teen years only ushered in further health deterioration, until her uncle - highly religious, adhering strictly to the belief that ‘God has a plan for everyone’ - could finally take no more and brought her to a strange decrepit church on the outskirts of town. Deeming her possessed by something unholy, she spent several months under the care of nun-like figures who laced anything that graced her lips with pernicious doses of arsenic; every ounce of water, broth, and handmade medicinal syrups.

Fabrizia returned home sicker, but in too frail a state to do much of anything. Bittersweetly, in the time she was absent, her parents had indeed successfully earned enough money to be able to further address her needs and swiftly admitted her to a hospital. They didn’t know it would be the last time they would see any real life in their daughter’s eyes. Words like “lunacy” and “hysteria” haunted the air around Fabrizia as much as the unfamiliar and identical series of masked faces. It was impossible to keep track of the time that passed there. Experiments which led to pain and numbness saturated her days, which turned to weeks, maybe months…

Fabrizia was returned to her family’s home, in an indefinite catatonic state until the one (un)fateful day her uncle paid a visit, bringing with him a “special” priest. She could only follow the mysterious man with her eyes, barely registering it as peculiar when he dipped out of sight by her neck. Her vitals had been checked countlessly over the years. However, it wasn’t the press of fingers that awaited her this time - but fangs.

Fabrizia died in 1425, re-emerging from the earth in a frenzy of confusion, lithe movement, and ability she had not experienced in years. Only the face of the so-called priest remained nearby, explaining to her what had happened and what was expected of her henceforth. The impulse to hurt him felt suddenly stifled by a confounding sense of loyalty. Instead, she channeled her energy into the unfortunate strangers passing nearby. Once her hunger was curbed, a good time later, she demanded to see her uncle - the cause of this shift. Cloaked by a new moon, she located her uncle at his Florence home. At first sight, he called her reanimation miraculous. She called him dead.

For a long while Fabrizia begged to be destroyed by her maker, tried to step into the sun, tried to break any law she knew of - but every time, an inner subconscious and unbreakable instinct to survive forbade her from proceeding beyond an irreversible point. Fabrizia felt only rage and resentment for her fate, her instinct to consume blood not aligned with her disinterest to continue walking upon earth. She developed the habit of starving herself until forced to feed in a blind frenzy - after each encounter, “waking” to behold the damage she had caused and realising she was no better than the selfish and cruel man who had sentenced her to this fate. In an effort to protect hurting any more innocents and curve her bloodlust, she began working at the Ospedale degli Innocenti where she bided her time taking care of abandoned and orphaned children, developing discipline. It was easier to resist and protect weaker bodies - less appealing in their malnourished state. Only their abusers received harm, if she could track them down in the span of a single evening.

Decades of service later, she finally plucked up the courage to seek out her family, only to learn that too long had past - time no longer meant what it used to - and not only had her lower class parents progressed in the world well enough to become aristocrats, but they had died 30 years earlier. Only distant family members remained, none of them recognising her with anything but fear and distrust.

In honour of the discovery, Fabrizia processed her mourning by changing her name to her mother’s - Beatrisia. Soon after, Beatrisia went on to explore the lively culture of England’s Renaissance. There she learned skills of metal smithing, carpentry, and ceramics. She found satisfaction in tasks which were long but with purpose, helping time not feel like the monotonous imprisonment it had become.

From England, she followed word of the witch hunts causing unrest in Sweden and Finland. What began as a morbid curiosity to witness the stupidity of mob mentality humans soon progressed into a deal of sorts. Beatrisia would locate convicted witches in small untraceable towns and ask if she could feed on and turn them, the following night letting them have revenge on those who wrongly outed them. Beatrisia found the bond created in the process of creating a progeny bewildering and nauseating, but - for better and worse - the newborns’ irresponsibility made them easy targets, insatiable desires for blood foolishly leading them away from the safe cover of their small countryside towns to city limits that quickly captured and killed them for good.

The loss of the vivid connection hurt, at first. But Beatrisia learned to dull the sensation, as she did with most feelings. Through the maker-fledgling connection, Beatrisia had a taste of the agony that occurred and refused to subject herself to the seemingly easy escape route. After enduring the pain of her human life, she would never again suffer in order to die - it would be on her own terms, and it would be done well.

The agreement to turn supposed criminals into vampyres served both Beatrisia’s disdain for witch-hunting and allowed enigmatic human women, wrongly deemed witches, to get revenge. However, upon one significant instance, there was no error in the town’s uproar. An authentic witch named Sigrid was on the verge of having her freedom literally burned at the stake. Sigrid ruled over the fire element; a wild and beautiful woman that clearly needed no saviour. Yet, Beatrisia was still inclined to give her the same offer - immortality and vampiric ability for the sake of revenge. Sigrid was unlike the others, she was powerful, cunning and accomplished. It was as if she’d seen Beatrisia coming. Sigrid introduced a new deal; what if she henceforth travelled with Beatrisia as her self-nominated blood bag, making herself useful. In exchange, she would help Beatrisia find legitimate witches, and truly free them.

Over time, the lines of their arrangement blurred - first through infatuation, then love. Beatrisia eventually refused to feed on Sigrid any longer, desiring a different sort of intimacy. The two swiftly became lovers, intertwined and unstoppable for several years until the bond was abruptly severed after an explosive argument when Sigrid’s freedom plans included mercilessly killing village children descendant from hunters and Beatrisia’s death wish were brought to light. Irreconcilable differences which saw Sigrid erupting into infuriated flames which Beatrisia could not halt, nor desired to prevent. Her first experience with romantic love was one furiously stripped away from her, watched turn from flesh and bone to ash. But Beatrisia learned to dull what being heartbroken felt like, as she did with all other feelings. Loneliness always suited her best.

Seeking distance from any companionship for the forceable future, Beatrisia changed her name to Katya and retreated to less hospitable conditions - Russia. Eventually she met a shy diamond jeweller named Jeremie; an expert at working with jewels, but unfamiliar to noble metals. He hired Katya as one of his subcontractors to metal work, during which time she learned how to work with and identify authentic versus counterfeit jewels. It grew to be a highly esteemed position, with commissions sought out from Russian Imperial court's jeweler. After Jeremie’s death, his old age not dawning on Katya until it was too late, the chief court jeweller’s disdain for having to collaborate roared its ugly head and cast Katya out to find work elsewhere.

Katya changed her name to Briar, letting the old version of her die alongside her cherished mentor. She stayed in St. Petersburg long enough to idly apprentice under a goldsmith within a jewellery store in a basement shop. There, she caught wind of the Russian nobility's Francophilia, associating France with luxury goods.

Always on the brink of an identity crisis, Katya used status elevation as an excuse to visit Paris to get an ear for the dialect amidst earning better wages. This pursuit of knowledge developed into making a hobby of further travelling and studying the languages of neighbouring European countries. She had all the time in the world.

With the rise of 1900s political issues, Briar hid in Swiss mountains for the illusion of peace. Getting involved with humans’ affairs had burned her before, after all. However, whilst keeping a low profile there she encountered a nomadic group of local vampires, hungrily anticipating a bloody aftermath would solve the world tensions. Much to Briar’s charging, it re-ignited her stubborn urge to protect the innocent or injured inhabitants of the world around her. Already believing her tolerance well-formed and stable, to truly test her limits, she signed up to be trained as a nurse. It was a vocation which led to a placement at the frontlines of WW1, no amount of infection or blood causing her to tremble. It gave her purpose, value, and - most importantly - distraction. Thus, after the war’s conclusion, she pursued becoming certified as a doctor.

Briar flew to America in the 1920s, indulgently partying and pleasure seeking like there was no tomorrow wherever she could as she bounced between borders until WW2 occurred and she leant her services once more. Keeping her senses immersed in the cacophony of iron and injury kept her focus off of the magnetic tug of The Yearning, until war passed and yearning was all she had left to listen to. She tried to ignore the feeling, fiercely independent before it occurred to her that the very place she was resisting may hold the pivotal answer she desperately sought - what if she could harness the power that seemingly teemed there and finally find a way to destroy herself, once and for all? Stranger things had happened in her “life”, after all.

Briar made her grand entry upon the territory of Roldche River in the 1980s, remaining untethered and impartially observant for a while before assimilating the the society developed there, earning a job with her medical credentials. The simultaneous task of protecting the region by dark proved useful in keeping aware of the activity that teemed amongst the town - no new face slipped past her. For each new arrival, she secretly wondered if they would be the one to help her sever her so far unshakable tie to earth.

#about.#some ✨bonus facts ✨for the helluvit.

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joie-university-rp · 4 years

Photo

Dear VITYA CRISTO,

It is with great pleasure we invite you admission to Joie University! Welcome to the Thunderclap family!

Congratulations, KEN! Please be sure to check the New Members’ Checklist and send in your character’s account within 24 hours from now. We cannot wait to see all that you will bring to this roleplay! We love you already!

OOC INFORMATION:

Name/Alias; pronouns: Ken, he/him

Age, Timezone: 22, PST

Activity, short explanation: New job so activity will be lower but I’m still here!!

Ships: Vitya/Anyone (Sexually), Vitya/Men (Romantically)

Anti-Ships: None.

Triggers: None!

Preferred photo for Character’s ID : https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1mfjly7Dgd4/maxresdefault.jpg

Anything else: My feet hurt from this new job. Also, if there are any typos, I’m sorry, I wrote this tired.

IC INFORMATION:

Full Name: Vitya Alexsi Cristo

FC: Bill Skarsgard

Age/Year at University: 19, Freshman

Birth date: November 18th, 2000.

Hometown: Vladivostok, Russia.

Gender/Pronouns: Male, he/him.

Sexuality: Pansexual

Major(s): Creative Arts - Illustration

Minor(s): Gemology

Housing request: Beiste Dorms, Room 226

Extracurriculars: Freerunning/Parkour Club, Esports Club, Gymnastics

Greek Life Affiliation: None.

CHARACTER PROFILE (TW; Depression, suicidal tendencies, under age sex/drinking):

Vitya Cristo has always been the baby of his family. It was not due to his age, or order in the births of his siblings, but more his health. It was discovered in his infancy he was born with a congenital heart defect. His skin was pale, he would lose his breath while feeding, and his hands and feet would swell up. His father, being a rich man in the pharmaceutical industry, wanted to fix his boy, but the medical professionals said the case was not severe enough for infant surgery. In fact, he should live a relatively normal life. His father did not see it that way. While his siblings would wander their large, mansion-like house in Vladivostok, Vitya was ordered to stay indoors. He was not allowed to play sports if not escorted, and was even monitored by a personal nanny to most of his schooling. He was isolated, unable to be a regular child because of his helicopter-like father.

Vitya’s mother was the light of his life. The woman had a fire in her, one that was freer and looser than her husband. She loved the man, of course, but disagreed with how protective he was of their son. On nights where he was away, she would sneak Vitya into the fields and courtyards and let him run around and be free. One of Vitya’s most prized memories is running through their lawn with the fireflies. He loved these moments with his mother and he learned to never take the good things for granted.

When Vitya started to enter his teen years, his father would take him to work more and more. Some days, his father would show him the labs and workers that were developing medicines, pills, and more. His father was introducing him into the business, with the obvious intent to pass it on to him. It was a cushiony job, with minimal risk, and little to no physical activity and enough money to set him up for life. It was clear was his father was trying his best to keep his son sheltered as he entered those rebellious years. It was also during this time that Vitya started displaying depressive symptoms, including self-destructive tendencies like playing with lighters and razor knives. In a hope to loosen the leash, Vitya’s mother convinced her husband to send him to school instead of teaching him at home. He, woefully, agreed.

When Vitya was sent away to an all-boys boarding school, the hope was he would become a fine young man, ready to inherit the family riches and pharmaceutical business. At first, he lived every day as if his father was there, as if his nanny still tended to him. It all changed when one night, his dorm mate woke him up to sneak out for the night and meet several other boys at the river nearby. It was near mid-terms, and the boys needed a break. Little Vitya could barely contain himself when he saw all the contraband they brought along. Booze, weed, satellite internet for porn, and hours to get through it all. That night, he partied like an actual teen for the first time in his life. He had his first kiss that night, his first blowjob, and later, at around five in the morning, his first partner. He dove into the deep-end, his sheltered soul yearning for the release and freedom all this brought him. And he reveled in it.

Vitya lived a double life from then on. During his time at home, he was the model son. Well-behaved, well-spoken. But at school, away from prying eyes, he was an absolute devil. Hours of drunken parties, bad habits like casual sex and smoking being his two favorites, and sometimes, getting into physical fights when his anger got out of hand. Vitya and his growing band of misfits found a way to bypass the school’s firewall, getting access to explicit content without hindrance. Vitya’s grades started to slip, but he didn’t care. He kept them up enough so his father would be satisfied, but that did not mean he was studying more. There was many-a-teacher he had dirt on, blackmailing his way to reasonable grades. He became a terror on the innocent boarding school almost overnight.

With his time at the school coming to an end, Vitya knew one thing for certain; there was no way he was going to be some CEO ass, dominating over people he would never bother to learn the name of. He still played the model son, faking his way into his father’s good graces, but each sideways glance to his mother told her what he really wanted; to get out. So, she did the impossible. Under the sleeping eyes of his nanny and father, his mother woke him up and snuck him outside, just like when he was a child. This time, though, she handed him a packed bag, keys to one of the cars, and a plane ticket, telling him to go. She may love her life of luxury and easy living, but she knew this was not the place for her baby. She only asked that Vitya keep an eye on his health, and use those American doctors for all their worth.

Vitya left that night and never looked back. He started out in New York, wandering to all the sites. He went to Pittsburg, New Orleans, Austin, Los Angeles; he went everywhere, explored everything, and fucked anything that gave him ‘the look’. Vitya would even set up in some motels and just let anyone in, if they had cash in hand and a bottle of booze. He got into some hairier situations, too, when those very customers would catch him clearing out their wallet. He had been cut off from his father’s fortunes when he discovered his actions, so he needed to make money somehow!

It was sheer luck when he applied as a foreign student at Joie University. He really just needed a place to stay, running out of motels to sell his ‘services’ out of. He knew he’d have to get an actual job at some point, selecting an easy degree to go after. He did enjoy drawing while growing up, and left his lovely rock collection in Russia, so illustration and gemology seemed a perfect fit. If only he could kick the Russian accent, then maybe he could fit in a bit better.

STUDENT CENSUS SURVEY:

(Please answer the following questions IN CHARACTER. Responses can be as long or short as you see fit!)

What made you want to attend Joie University?

It is a secure campus with a good curriculum. The housing seems nice and the students friendly enough. I am looking for a place to plan roots, to get started in life, and I want it to be here. There are loads of opportunities here and I want to find them.

What are at least 3 positive or neutral and at least 3 negative traits that you believe you possess?

I’m intelligent. Beyond the classroom. I am good at reading people, what they want or need from me, which helps me understand my task. I know what I want, so I am very direct and leave little room for misinterpretation. I also have a morbid curiosity that can get me into trouble. All of these combined makes me somewhat abrasive, but that is their loss. And I am not very personable. I’ll do what needs to be done of me, but ask if I want to watch a rom-com with some popcorn, and I’m going to have to say no.

Which of your traits do you value most?

My directness. If I know what I want, and it isn’t what someone else wants, then I know I need to look elsewhere. I’m not going to waste time, which is better for both involved.

How can that trait benefit the University (or its student body) as a whole?

Being Russian, I’m a cultural novelty that many haven’t seen before. The fact you Americans have to wait to twenty one to drink was a major newsflash for me, so now I have to wait three more years when I already was drinking back home. The more I learn about America, the more others can learn about the motherland, beyond what some media figurehead tells us.

What do you hope to gain from your experience at JU?

The obvious answer to this is a degree, but anther answer is possible dual citizenship. I hope through this, I will be able to travel between Russia and America with more than just a student visa. I truly believe I can call America home, if given the chance.

What is a quote or song lyric that describes you?

“Do you realize I’m the man and I’m in my prime? And it’s my time, I swear to God I won’t waste no time. You ain’t worth a dime, no, you ain’t worth a dime. Still on my mind, you’re still on my mind.” – ‘Let Me Know (I Wonder Why Freestyle)’ by Juice Wrld

#Accepted

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slaaneshfic · 5 years

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There is No Reason for you to Live. Part two: Excess

This is part of chapter I have written in the last two weeks, which uses the game Sticky Zeitgeist: Episode 2 Aperitif by Porpentine and Rook to draw out processes of art practice. I presented the beginning of the first part of this chapter at Beyond The Console: Gender and Narrative Games in London at the start of 2019. This is still very much a work in process, I’ve not even read this section back before posting it here. But I am very interested in the overlaps between Cixous’s figure of “woman”, “Becoming-Woman / Becoming-Girl” in Deleuze and Guattari, Bataille/Kristeva’s “Abjection” and “Johanna Hedva’s Sick Woman Theory” in regards art practice and trans* identity.

Part two: Excess “Small salvage is $5. Hear that sis, you’re $5. Nooooo” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018).

Excess is a concept which arises in many areas of George Batailles work which spans art, literature, politics, economics, anthropology and mysticism. The concept, or rather an aspect of it, is particularly near the surface and therefore easy for us to grasp here, in Bataille’s essay “The Notion of Expenditure” (Bataille, 1985). Bataille begins by stating that while “there is nothing that permits on to define what is useful to man” (Bataille, 1985). Classical utility can be understood as follows;

“On the one hand, this material utility is limited to acquisition (in practice, to production) and to the conservation of goods; on the other, it is limited to reproduction and to the conservation of human life” (Bataille, 1985).

In contrast to utility Bataille positions “pleasure”, which he argues society judges to be lesser than utility in the eyes of society and is therefore permissible as a “concession” (Bataille, 1985). However Bataille proposes that just as a young man’s desire to waste and destroy demonstrates that there is a need for this kind of pleasure even while this cannot be given a “utilitarian justification”, “human society can have, just as he does, an interest in considerable losses, in catastrophes” (Bataille, 1985). Bataille sets this up as the tension between the ideological authority and the real needs for “nonproductive expenditure” which are at times not even articulable through the language of that authority. As examples of unproductive expenditure Bataille offers the following list;

“Luxury, mourning, war, cults, the construction of sumptuary monuments, games, spectacles, arts, perverse sexual activity (i.e., deflected from genital finality)” (Bataille, 1985).

A handful of these examples are examined further, but Bataille argues that in each “the accent is placed on a loss that must be as great as possible in order for the activity to take on its true meaning” (Bataille, 1985). Just as Lyotard identified affect as the point of excess which marks art apart from other things, and Cixous defines her figure of woman in terms of an unending outpouring, Bataille has identified “the principle of loss” (Bataille, 1985) as essential to a range of activities including but spreading beyond art and literature. The excess in Lyotard as deployed by O’Sullivan is that which is beyond the system of accounting for art, namely affect. In Cixous the excess is the capacity of the artist-figure woman when enacting ecriture feminine, to operate beyond the system prescribed by power to the production of art. As Allan Stoekl notes in his introduction to the edited volume “George Bataille Visions of Excess Selected Writings, 1927 - 1939”, for Bataille “People create in order to expand, and if they retain things they have produced, it is only to allow themselves to continue living, and thus destroying” (Stoekl, 1985). Bataille’s nonproductive expenditure is what is being freed in Cixous’s process of Ecriture Feminine, and I would therefore further argue, is being deployed in Aperitif, an artwork which deals with excesses both offered and implied (and therefore to be created at the point of interface with audience). More than this though, Bataillian excesses appear within the world of the game which the characters, and by extension us as players occupy. I would like to explore how different kinds of excess appear in Aperitif, and how these fit with Bataille’s observations around class struggle and manner in which those in power retain control of non-productive expenditure, including the expenditure of other beings. Finally I will consider these excess as areas which clarify Aperitif as abstracted horror and Ecriture Feminine.

A point where waste is rendered visible in Aperitif, in The Laugh of The Medusa, and in the work of Bataille, in the act of masturbatation. The character Ever, from whose perspective we begin Aperitif is the sole player character in the episode of the “No World Dreamers: Sticky Zeitgeist” which precedes it, “Hyperslime” (Heartscape & Rook, 2017) [KEYWORD Link to Smeared into the Environment]. Ever’s story in Hyperslime begins with a scene of anal drug use and masturbation which is interupted by the call to attend work. In the following episode, Aperitif, we learn that this work is in fact community service after Ever “whacked off in public” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018). This detail of Ever’s life is exposed by Brava but in Ever’s interior monologue we learn that she herself does not fully understand why it occurred. Ever can only speculate on the reason for her doing something she identifies as harmful, and that the experience was like “watching through a window” after which she “blacked out” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018). As an aspect of Ever’s character masturbation points to her isolation and desire, and to her struggle with the unbearable tension of shame which she alludes to when considering that “maybe I just wanted what they thought about me to come true” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018). This enfolding of personal desire, the projection of being seen by another, the need to resolve an uncertainty, and the potential shame which runs through it is precisely how Cixous describes the struggle to produce Ecriture Feminine;

“[Y]ouv’e written a little, but in secret and it wasn’t good because you punished yourself for writing because it didn't go all the way; or because you wrote irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further but to attenuate the tension a bit, just to take the edge off” (Cixous, 1976).

Ever, who the artists attribute the title/archetype/role “The Loser”, seems perpetually to be trying to manage the tension of her desires, with the only temporary resolution occurring in some kind of overwhelming loss of self. The struggle for a creative process which Cixous describes is not something I can identify in Aperitif because it is very much embedded in the experience of the process of making, which I do not have access to. However, I would argue that Aperitif is open to being played in a manner which is analogous if not in a similar affective register to the tension and collapse cycles of Ever. We begin both Aperitif and its prequel controlling Ever, but prior to the narrative beginning and still within the context of the title menu the game instructs us that we can “hold escape until you black out” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018). On one hand this instruction is informing player-audience of the keypress which will allow them to exit the game. On the other hand, the use of the term “black out” echo’s Ever’s use of the same. When playing the game-artwork, I feel that the means of exiting has been embedded with an emotional resonance. Playing the game-artwork now has a resonance with Ever’s narrative, even outside of the points of play where I am controlling her character. The emotional content of the game is foregrounded, and the promise of the opportunity to in a manner, ‘lose consciousness’ as an escape from it invites/dares the audience-player to engage more with that content. We have permission to be a loser, to fail.

The concept of failure here is made complex when it is brought into the parameters of the game itself. It becomes an action. Ever berates herself for failure, but the artwork-game does not pass this judgement, and in aligning us with her and with failure, it invites us to not pass judgement either. Returning to Cixous, the other resonance of the allegory of masturbation to Ecriture Feminine is that the writer is given permission to write for themselves and for the act of writing to be self gratifying rather than requiring it before another. In “The “Onanism of Poetry”: walt whitman, rob halpern and the deconstruction of masturbation” the poet and lecturer Sam Ladkin notes the contradiction in the considered works “between masturbation as the failure of fecundity, spent energy without the returns of an investment” and something which has value in sowing “male seed across the typically female gendered earth” (Ladkin, 2015). In Ladkin’s work, the discourse around Onan, the poets being discussed, and the particular queer theory used tends toward the image and language of male homosexual desire but the author emphasises that beneith this the structure of “failed or suspended address” is not specific to a particualr “gendered identification fo desire” (Ladkin, 2015). In Cixous this contradiction between value and waste is articulated as fight to develop one’s own value system. To engage based upon the subjects desire, rather than exchange within an external economy which ascribes or denies a degree of value based on adherence to preexisting parameters. Ladkin explores the potential to “recuperate the wasteful excess of masturbation via the general economy of Bataille” yet in the author’s focus on the ejaculatory “economy of finitude” and the monetary economy of pornography, this avenue is effectively discounted and not further pursued (Ladkin, 2015). However I think there is a different dialectic at play in the systems of Bataille, and which are played out in the world of Aperitif as the struggle between the individual release of excess of the player characters, and the destructive forms of excess employed by power and authority, which render both landscape and those same player characters, as waste.

Bataille lays out his position that “Man is an effect of the surplus of energy: The extreme richness of his elevated activities must be principally defined as the dazzling liberation of an excess. The energy liberated in man flourishes and makes useless splendor endlessly visible” (Bataille, 2013). In Aperitif, this dazzling liberation of an excess is attempted by characters such as Brava, but it is always curtailed by the tyranny of an outer authority, the call to attend community service, the police. The motif of masturbation in Aperitif points to repeated denial of excess in the following of individual desire. As previously noted, character’s remain in a limbo of struggling survival, to “never perfectly live or die” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018). In this state the following of individual desire into the expression of excess is denied to everyone except those who can afford it, as Brava recalls;

“When the internet 3 was invented the economy of really extra fucked, most stores were automated. Except the usual dollhouse experiments ran by rich people who fantasized about running a restaurant or cupcake shack of some shit” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018). Bataille argues that “As the class that possesses the wealth -- having received with wealth the obligation of functional expenditure -- the modern bourgeoisie is characterized by the refusal in principle of that obligation” (Bataille, 1985). Bataille maps how earlier structures of social and material power would have led to the possessors of such power and wealth to express this through expenditure such as feasts, sacrifices and the construction of elaborate religious and cultural objects. In contrast to this, the logic of accumulation unders Capitalism leads to a “hatred of expenditure” (Bataille, 1985). In Aperitif this is demonstrated in the quote above from Brava showing that even with full automation, the bourgeois can only either imagine, or allow itself, a useless expenditure which takes the surface form of work by running a “cupcake shack” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018).

There is a second manner in which excess plays out through the agency of the authority in Aperitif and this is concerned with the rendering of subjects as objects, and then waste. Cultural theorist Sylvere Lotringer attempted to reexamine the concept of ‘Abjection’ in the work of Bataille, identifying a different trajectory from that subsequently developed by Kristeva in “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection” (Kristeva, 1984). Lotringer’s short essay “Les Miserables” (Lotringer, 1999) positions Bataille’s fragmentary addresses of abjection written in the early 1930s as specifically in response to the “only truly original political formation to have emerged since the end of WWI [...] fascism” (Lotringer, 1999). Lotringer notes that in “The Notion of Expenditure” Batialle deplores the manner in which the bourgeoisie attenuate the damage done and “ameliorate the lot of the workers” (Bataille, 1985) as “abysmal hypocrisy” (Lotringer, 1999); “The ultimate goal; of industrial masters, he asserted, wasn’t profit or accumulation, but the will to turn workers into pure refuse. Instead of extracting surplus value from the wretched population working in [the] factory, they enjoyed a surplus value of cruetly” (Lotringer, 1999).

The world of Aperitif presents a world in which authority has still not passed through its hypocrisy, but nevertheless continues to render the workers as waste. The company that employers Ever and the others to scavenge is represented by a character called “The Therapist”, which at least suggests a role of care, yet the job remains one of collecting scrap from a toxic environment which degrades and destroys their bodies (Heartscape & Rook, 2018). Lotringer’s published his essay Les Miserables in the edited book “More & Less” along with Bataille’s essay “Abjection and Miserable Forms” and interview with Kristeva titled “Fetishizing the Abject” (Bataille, 1999; Lotringer, 1999; Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). Both Lotringer’s essay, and the line of questioning in the interview are in part concerned with a bifurcation within Bataille’s concept of abjection, which has not been given as much attention in its rearticulation and development by Kristeva in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection and that works continued influence. Lotringer draws from Bataille a distinction between “The union of miserables reserved for subversion” and “wretched men rejected into negative abjection” (Lotringer, 1999).

The difference between the positive abjection which leads to action, solidarity, and perhaps martyrdom, and the negative abjection which leads simply to inertial, apathy, and alienation. The tension between these two forms of Abjection is something which appears throughout Aperitif, as its protagonists navigate a world of trash, see themselves to degrees become or be made trash, and navigate the threshold between agency and alienation. In his summary, makes the following statement about Abjection without differentiating between the positive or negative form;

“Abjection doesn't result from a dialectical operation- feeling abject when “abjectified” in someone else’s eyes, or reclaiming abjection as an identity feature- but precisely when dialectics breaks down. When it ceases to be experienced as an act of exclusion to become an autonomous condition, it is then, and only then, that abjection sets in” (Lotringer, 1999).

It is unclear in this text whether Lotringer is arguing that what he elsewhere describes as people “becoming things to themselves” (Lotringer, 1999) defines Abjection in both positive and negative forms, or whether he is arguing for the primacy of the negative form. It is possible to read this as Lotringer trying to shift the definition of Abject to the negative, and the interview with Kristeva that will be addressed shortly in some ways supports this view.

Returning to Goard’s text on the trans* body and the cyborg it is worth nothing the importance of the process by which either are rendered Abject is addressed, though with different terminology;

“The dream of a world without surplus, illegitimate bodies is not feasible without a society that relies on surplus” (Goard, 2017).

Goard makes steps toward a politics whereby “bodies-made-surplus” (or trans* people and others) are not redefined, rearticulated and included, but simply allowed to exist (Goard, 2017). The politics not of “defining but defending” (Goard, 2017). Goard’s position seems to cut across Lotringer, proposing the act of oneself making and being made a thing as still containing revolutionary agency. In Lotringer’s reading of Bataille’s Abjection, at least in its negative form, is a place without hope of agency, a kind of living death. However Goard does seem to offer a position which is neither that living death, nor the simple dialectical struggle of being labeled abject and owning this label. Goard’s proposal becomes about a surplus yes, but an undefinable surplus which crosses categories of gender, class, race, ability, and attempts to tactically use such categories whilst aiming to ultimately destroy them. Goard articulates this party with the statement that “we should be deeply skeptical of placing value on the acquisition of formal rights when they are used in the legitimation of a violent border regime” (Goard, 2017). At the same time, Goard refuses the dialectic of power vs resistance by pointing out that the tactic entering into established modes of identity such as the gender binary are important at times for safety and so should not exclude a person from solidarity toward a common project of gender abolition for example.

[Footnote: The acquisition of rights for one group used as a means to justify is articulated by post-colonial theorist Jasbir Puar as “Homonationalism” in the 2007 book “Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer times” and developed further in the text “" I Would Rather Be a Cyborg Than a Goddess": Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory” (Puar, 2007, 2012). In the latter text Puar focuses on expanding upon the form’s negotiation between Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of “intersectionality”, “analyses that foreground the mutually co-constitutive forces of race, class, sex, gender, and nation” and an assembalge model which identifies “ the “retrospective ordering” of identities such as “gender, race, and sexual orientation” which “back-form their reality” (Puar, 2012). Puar sees these too positions not as “oppositional but rather,[...] frictional (Puar, 2012).]

As has been indicated throughout this chapter, Aperitif frequently plays establishing categories, names, structures, or identities, and having things which are surplus to these, which disrupt with either a counter-order, or the refusal of any order. Characters in some places self-define their identity on an axis of the gender binary, whereas the the game leaves other identity markers not only unknown but unacknowledged. The game frames and withholds information through its limited graphics showing animal ears, and text which trails off to convey emotion through lack of definition. An implication through explicit and implied information is that all characters in Aperitif are “girls”. However this category is broken open so wide as to be more in line with Cixous use of woman as catagory abstracted from sex, gender, or identity. “Girl” can be a category if it is deployed in that way, or it can something less stable.

Something about the four protagonists in Aperitif that remains consistent, and is presented unambiguously, is that the society they inhabit does not value their existence. Throughout the narrative, each protagonist struggles with whether or not they themselves value their own own existence. Society is ordered in a way that each of the four girls needs to undertake a job which is extremely damaging to their physical and mental health. A common thread throughout their conversations and many interior monologues is the consideration of whether than can, or should, survive this. In the interview with Lotringer titled “Fetishizing The Abject”, Kristeva describes her development of the concept through researching “borderline” clinical states in psychoanalysis;

“Without going as far as psychotic persecution, without going as far as autistic withdrawal, [the patent] creates a sort of territory between the two, which he often inhabits with a feeling of unworthiness, of even deterioration, a sort of physical abjection if you like” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999).

It would be out of the remit of this research to follow further into these pathologies. However; the oscillation of internal states, struggle, exploded categories, the question of self worth and being made thing invites another text to placed alongside Aperitif and Abjection. “Sick Woman Theory” by writer and artist Johanna Hedva (Hedva, 2016) is an examination of the politics which intersect in the bodies of disabled people, and offers a figure of protest in the form of the Sick Woman. As Hedva states, “Sick Woman Theory is an insistence that most modes of political protest are internalized, lived, embodied, suffering, and no doubt invisible” (Hedva, 2016). Applying Sick Woman Theory to hypothetical borderline case described by Kristeva repositions them as a political agent;

“The Sick Woman is all of the “dysfunctional,” “dangerous” and “in danger,” “badly behaved,” “crazy,” “incurable,” “traumatized,” “disordered,” “diseased,” “chronic,” “uninsurable,” “wretched,” “undesirable” and altogether “dysfunctional” bodies belonging to women, people of color, poor, ill, neuro-atypical, differently abled, queer, trans, and genderfluid people, who have been historically pathologized, hospitalized, institutionalized, brutalized, rendered “unmanageable,” and therefore made culturally illegitimate and politically invisible” (Hedva, 2016).

As the quotation marks around medical terms indicate, Hedva’s Sick Woman Theory is a kind of tactical categorization in order to refute a larger number of categories. Sick Woman Theory reads Abjection not from the position of analyst, but “the person with autism whom the world is trying to “cure”” as well as a multitude of other positions whose comonolity is that they are disenfranchised, suffering, and abused (Hedva, 2016). From the former position, categories become the norm, and things which transgress them a deviation or disruption. From the latter position of the multitude, the transgression across categories is the norm. It is possible to read the category of “girl” in Aperitif as Sick Woman, just as both, like Cixous’s woman’s writing, serve to encapsulate a sea of difference with an act of refusal against categories.

As mentioned previously in this chapter, a focus of Lotringer’s interview with Kristeva is questioning whether Abjection can form an oppositional function to power. Lotringer is particularly concerned with what he sees a broad tendency or movement within art and culture which attempts to reclaim the process of being made Abject and instil it with emancipatory potential. When asked at one point on this Kristeva responds “I feel very ambiguous in relation to this movement [...] I don’t adhere to it, and at the same time I realize that, as a kind of strategy, it is opposed to some kind of intolerable conservatism, so it's hard to adhere to that” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). Kristeva’s concession is based in dialectic of Abjection against what must be imagined as a kind of totalitarian homogenous cultural sterility. Sick Woman Theory, is presented as “an identity and body” not against but in place of one of intolerable conservatism (Hedva, 2016). Hedva at point identifies this conservatism as the privileged existence, or “cruelly optimistic promise” (Hedva, 2016) of this existence, embodied by the;

“white, straight, healthy, neurotypical, upper and middle-class, cis- and able-bodied man who makes his home in a wealthy country, has never not had health insurance, and whose importance to society is everywhere recognized and made explicit by that society; whose importance and care dominates that society, at the expense of everyone else” (Hedva, 2016).

However, Kristeva seems to be describing an oppositional practice in line with what Lotringer describes as “reclaiming abjection as an identifying feature” (Lotringer, 1999). This Abjection is oppositional, it uses the definition given to it by what it opposes, and defines itself through that opposition. Sick Woman Theory instead repositions itself as the exclusion of what it can be seen to be opposing. Hedva argues that capitalism sets up binary between a default position of “wellness” and deviation from this in the form of “sickness”. To simply embody this deviant category of “sick” would be exactly the oppositional process of Abjection described by Lotringer and Kristeva. However, Hedva also argues that under capitalism “wellness” is positioned as a temporal norm, whilst “sickness” and therefore “care” is positioned as temporary. Hedva’s position can be seen as arguing that a broad encapsulation of vulnerabilities, oppressions, and suffering should be considered the norm. Crucially, care for oneself and for others, could and should follow as another norm. It can then be proposed that Sick Woman Theory, is not a struggle with another, but a reconfiguration of the context underneath both which shifts perspective. This reconfiguration is analogous to an operation I have elsewhere discussed as occurring within horror narratives, using the example of the film “Ringu” (Nakata, 2000). [LINK TO “FROLIC IN BRINE” performance SCREENPLAY]

Hedva’s call for the centering of their broad category of sickness, which includes not just sufferers of illness, but also victims of the violent enforcement of acceptable categories of gender, sexuality, class, etc. does find a direct parallel in Kristeva’s thought;

“These states, far from being simply pathological or exceptional, are perhaps endemic. And it is perhaps against this sort of structural uncertainty that inhabits us that religions are set in motion, at once to recognise them and to defend ourselves against them” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999).

I am wary of pursuing an argument regarding the subjectivities included within Hedva’s Sick Woman predating, and perhaps causing the social structures which their existence transgresses. Such an enquiry would move beyond the scope of this project, which is concerned with the practice of art.

In Fetishizing The Abject much of Lotringer’s direction of the interview focuses on ways in which further discourses, including art, have misincorporated Abjection following Kristeva’s popularisation of the term. While a number of art tendencies and specific exhibitions are critiqued, it is the speculation on what Abjection could do in art that is most relevant here. Both Lotringer and Kristeva agree that when something is placed in a gallery, it “becomes a new identity” and thus “fetishised” it joins other “[i]institutional objects” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). Regarding potential to move beyond this, Kristeva proposes that “verbal art, insofar as it eludes fetishization, and constantly raises doubt and questioning [...] lends itself better perhaps to exploring those states that I call states of abjection” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). I am skeptical about the claim that any art form including verbal art might elude fetishization, but the operation of constantly raising doubt and questioning resonates with other observations in this chapter, as well as this PhD project overall. Elsewhere I discussed a concept from my research which I call Incomplete Provocations [LINK TO TEXTS]. Also, the use of unreliable narrators occurs in the majority of what might be called the fiction elements of this project. Something which is important to note regarding at least my use of unreliable narrators is that there is a rarely deliberate deception on the part of the narrator. Deception would necessitate that the narrator knows more than the audience who learns only from that the narrator reveals, at least initially. The application I am more interested in, is the unreliable narrator as point of which by either being cognitively compromised or simply different, has another perspective on events. The ideological position implied through this is that there is no one narrative which could encapsulate the entire event and therefore resolve it. There is always doubt and questions, each of which solicit speculation from the audience. In Deleuze and Guattari’s “A Thousand Plateaus” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) the line that illustrates this non-deceptive unreliable narrator occurs at the start of the chapter “1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible…”. While beginning an account of a film, the authors offer the disclaimer, “My memory of it is not necessarily accurate” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The author’s uncertainty in their memory would fall within my description of the cognitively compromised unreliable narrator, and before even getting to the recounted film, doubts and questions are ready to be raised. These doubts and questions do not all have to be positioned in the gap between recollection and what was witnessed, though in this case we could look for differences between Deleuze and Guattari’s account, and the film itself. The other doubts and questions that I am interested in project not backwards in time to the witnessing but forwards. What is interesting to me is not what is lacking from the film in the recounting, but how the recounting is a process of addition which grows from the film even while it might leave out parts of that source material. In this way, the unreliable narrator offers a provocation not for a return to the stillness of certainty, but for the movement of more emerging possibilities. Kristeva proposes something similar in her proposal for future Abject art, which involves processes of “anamnesis on the one hand, and gaming on the other” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). In terms of amnesia Kristeva expands this as “a sort of eternal return, repetition, perlaboration, elaboration” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). Within Aperitif the process of amnesia enacted as the player returns to walking a path through the same environment with different characters, as well as through the game form which allows itself to be replayed.

[FOOTNOTE: For a radically different analysis of a comparable creative terrain to Kristeva’s Anamnesis see Mark Fisher’s “Ghosts of my life: writings on depression, hauntology and lost futures”. “This dyschronia, this temporal disjuncture, ought to feel uncanny, yet the predominance of what Reynolds calls ‘retro-mania’ means that it has lost any unheimlich charge: anachronism is now taken for granted” (Fisher, 2014).]

Kristeva follows Anamnesis with Gaming which involves “compositions, decompositions, recompositions” and is presented as a continuation of the “trajectory” as Anamnesis (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). Examples provided for this process involve the process of chance through rolling dice, and the “glossolalia in Artaud, or like Finegan’s Wake” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). This resonates with Aperitif on multiple levels. At the game level Aperitif, despite being fairly linear in form, composes, decomposes,and recomposes itself continually. From the position of the player audience, this is perhaps most clear as the game shifts its genre and method of play at points. At points the player controls characters which walk around an environment and interact with one another in the manner of a role playing game. At other points the game switches to the form of a medical simulator where the player but diagnose and repair a robotic character with a completely different mode of interaction from the role playing game sections. This medical simulation then decomposes further as the performing of a specific repair sakes the form of side scrolling “shoot ‘em up” as a game within a game within a game. What would however be more in keeping with what Kristeva is describing would be evidence that at some level the making of this artwork included a shift to a less consciously direct mode. The reference to dice alongside glossolalia leads me to conclude that Kristeva’s Gaming is about the movement between conscious decision making, and something else which destabilized it, before potentially returning to conscious decision making. This destabilisation could be through the cold probability of a dice roll, the path for the works creation decided by the resulting number. The inclusion of Finegan’s Wake and Artaud’s glossolalia suggests that the destabilisation does not have to be the surrender to chance. Destabilisation could include the shift to using or creating words based on their sound rather than meaning for example. Cultural theorist Michel De Certeau described glossolalia as “vocal vegetation” not an exceptional thing constrained to the devout and artists, but the “bodily noises, quotations of delinquent sounds, and fragments of others' voices [which] punctuate the order of sentences with breaks and surprise” (De Certeau, 1996). The language in Aperitif, particularly where it comes to building its world through this language feels full of moments of shifts to a destabilised mode. Swamp-Dot-Com is populated with things like “bombo cabbage bludbud”, “lichen mommy board” and “whackback” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018).

[FOOTNOTE: A methodological decision has been made not to include research drawn from Heartscape and Rook’s other work, in order to focus on how this can inform methods of art practice, rather than drawing out the tendencies of these specific artists. However, it is worth noting that the processes of Kristeva’s Gaming are evident throughout Heartscape’s individual art practice. Heartscape curated the 2018 exhibition at Apexart in New York, entitled “Dire Jank” (Apexart, 2019). Dire Jank included artist Tabitha Nikolai’s video game “Ineffable Glossolalia” (Nikolai, 2018) and “Divination Jam” which invited the audience to “use divination, randomization, etc to make your game. when you get stuck, instead of feeling like shit, let some arcane system decide for you! rolling a die, i ching, tarot, anything that invokes fate! many ancient systems have been digitized, or you can look for randomness in the world around you…” (Heartscape, 2018). Furthermore, Heartscape’s 2016 novel “Psycho Nymph Exile” both contains the same collapsing worldbuilding language as Aperitif, and features such processes within its plot. “The crystal gives them an allergic reaction to language. Each girl has a unique combination of trigger words. They sit on the floor in rows, mumbling under their breath, reading from dictionaries until they find their combination” (Heartscape, 2016).]

This play in language is subtle, but I believe it a shift away from the direct conveyance of meaning to sounds and the joy of what words written down can do.

An area the gap between Kristeva and Lotringer’s Abject Art, Hedva’s Sick Woman Theory, and Aperitif widens is with the issue of the abject and identity. Lotringer sees Abjection’s relation to Fascism which he stresses is its origin in Batialle’s text “displaced” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). He broadens this further with the claim that “politics has become the politics of the notion of identity” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). This broad position is agreed by Kristeva who replies “everything has been taken up by the “politically correct” which are in fact identity related claims” (Lotringer & Kristeva, 1999). It is this identity that Kristeva and Lotringer see in what they consider the problematic Oppositional Practice already outlined. I would like to argue though that their perceived problem with Abject identity would not apply to the way identity figures in Sick Woman Theory. Hedva sets out their position with clarity;

“The sick woman is an identity and body that can belong to anyone denied the privileged existence, or the cruelly optimistic promise of such an existence- of the white, straight, healthy, neurotypical, upper and middle class, cis and able-bodied man” (Hedva, 2016).

Sick Woman Theory is not a politics of sexual identity, but a broad identity which encapsulates sexual identity along with bodily, cognitive, and class differences. This is not the sidestepping of class struggle and opposition to fascism Lotringer in particular is concerned with in his observations about previous attempts at an Abject turn in art. Hedva creates an amorphous, fluid grouping, brings to the centre difference and care under the banner of the Sick Woman. Returning to The Laugh of The Medusa, Hedva’s project has strong resonances with Cixous’s; “If there is a “property of woman,” it is paradoxically her capacity to depreciate unselfishly: body without end, without appendage, without principal “parts.” If she is a whole, it’s a whole composed of parts that are wholes, not simple partial objects but a moving, limitlessly changing ensemble, a cosmos tirelessly traversed by Eros, an immense astral space not organised around any one sun thats any more of a star than the others” (Cixous, 1976).

Cixous frames this “property of woman” within a text which is concerned with the practice of making art, but this practice is part of process which includes woman putting herself “into the world and into history” (Cixous, 1976). Writing, is embedded in a politics of living. For Cixous’s woman to write only in the dominant mode of man’s writing, is to be restricted not only from writing herself (as Cixous would put it) but to enter into the world as a subject, as an agent. If we read Cixous’s woman not in terms of an essentialist category which might be attached to some biological marker, but as a class category, she readily aligns with Hedva’s Sick Woman. Cixoux’s contemporaries Deleuze and Guattari describe the process of “becoming-woman” which can be considered like the former’s woman but now not a class but a process (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). MacCormack gives a succinct explanation of Becoming-Woman, “Woman as minoritarian is defined by lack and failure so an element of woman - gesture, fluid libidinality - taken in or as part of the self will necessarily alter the self” (MacCormack, 2008). In Hedva’s text, the woman is named for the “subject position [that] represents the uncared for, the secondary, [...] the non-, the un-, the less-than” (Hedva, 2016).

Even when addressing cisgendered women, the call Cixous is making entails Becoming, which MacCormack describes as selecting “certain specificities and intensities of a thing and [dissipating] those intensities within our own molecularities to redistribute our selves” (MacCormack, 2008). Cixous calls us to redistribute into ourselves the intensity of fluid libinality which she calls the “unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love” (Cixous, 1976). This pull of desire and connectivity reads like an antithesis of Valerie Solanas’s description of “the male” as an “unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness” (Solanas, 1971).

[FOOTNOTE: For a trans* reading of gender in Solanas as creative process see writer Andrea Long Chu’s proposal that “Here, transition, like revolution, was recast in aesthetic terms, as if transsexual women decided to transition, not to “confirm” some kind of innate gender identity, but because being a man is stupid and boring.” (Long Chu, 2018).]

The Woman in Sick Woman Theory is similarly a source of creative desire, which Hedva explains through a description of some of their own symptoms;

“Because of these “disorders,” I have access to incredibly vivid emotions, flights of thought, and dreamscapes, to the feeling that my mind has been obliterated into stars, to the sensation that I have become nothingness, as well as to intense ecstasies, raptures, sorrows, and nightmarish hallucinations” (Hedva, 2016).

These descriptions form part of Hedva’s consideration of political agency of those, who for bodily, social, or other reasons cannot engage in the direct politics of public action. However the language, as with Solanas’s, is as concerned with emotion, affect, aesthetics, and creativity. Solanas’s Male is “incapable of empathizing” (Solanas, 1971) while “Sick Woman Theory asks you to stretch your empathy” (Hedva, 2016). Solanas’s manifesto is explicitly a response to the boredom society provocokes as it is dominated by the “psychically passive” figure of the Male (Solanas, 1971). Without exoticising and objectictifying illness, mental or otherwise, the subject of Sick Woman Theory is undoubtedly a creative force.

I hope that I have demonstrated that the world, characters, and player-audience experience of Aperitif have a resonance with theories of Abjection, and creative difference connected to a broad category of Woman. Aperitif is on one level, a video game about a group of runaway broken robots, and hybrid animal kids trying to improvise through wasteland failures, emergent tactics of living through giving and receiving care.

Throughout Aperitif, many things are left undefined, or only implied. Dialogues are full of the pointed absence of speech in ellipses. Delivery of information gives way to Gaming. Character’s themselves are unsure of what has happened, cannot remember, are too traumatised, or simply offer a conflicting view of events to one another. Finally the game itself, with its limited interface and graphics which hark back to games long before the turn of the millenium, makes clear that details are being withheld. With this in mind, the group of protagonists being self identified as, or implied to be “girls” rather than Women, can be understood through another Becoming proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, and explored further by MacCormack. Within the context of Becoming-Woman Deleuze and Guattari ask “What is a girl? What is a group of girls?” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). They consider Marcel Proust’s protagonist’s search for “fugitive beings” (Proust, 2010) and conclude that the Girl whether singular or in a pack, is “pure haecceity” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

[Mark Fisher defines Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of Haecceity as “non-subjective individuation. [...] the entity as event (and the event as entity)” (Fisher, 2018).]

MacCormack states that the Girl is the “larval woman”, but “It is not the girl who becomes a woman; it is becoming-woman that produces the universal girl [...] the girl is the becoming-woman of each sex, just as the child is the becoming-young of every age” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). For Deleuze and Guattari, Girl is the individuation of Becoming-Woman, not attached to any substance or function, or “age group, sex, order, or kingdom” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Girls in Aperitif are undefined, only self identified in one instance and they move “between orders, acts, ages, sexes; they produce n molecular sexes on the line of flight in relation to the dualism machines they cross right through” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). They speak in irony, silence, thoughts of sex and unspeakable past trauma and modify their bodies with drugs and used parts. They are elusive, arising moment to moment from encounters. MacCormack notes that the “less defined a term is within majoritarian culture the more larval the becoming and thus the move open to unique and unpredictable folding and unfolding the becoming” (MacCormack, 2008). Girls are capable of Abject art practices in the manner argued by Lotringer and Kristeva, slipping between dualisms, rather than in reactive opposition. As Deleuze and Guattari write, Girls “draw their strength neither from the molar status that subdues them nor from the organism and subjectivity they receive; they draw their strength from the becoming-molecular they cause to pass between sexes and ages” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). So it is no wonder that the Girls in Aperitif improvise in the wasteland of Swamp-Dot-Com. They are ungraspable in their identities, and forever on the way to something. They tell as much, even though for them the process might be traumatic, to “never perfectly live or die” (Heartscape & Rook, 2018).

#games #.theory #gender #play #waste #excess #porpentine #Deleuze #Kristeva

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pinehub · 5 years

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Team-ing with Potential

By Megan Schrader

For the modern professional, teamwork might come across as an empty buzzword. Working with others to reach a common goal sounds great in theory, but in the midst of the chaos of corporate functioning, this ideal can seem impractical or impossible. There is not always time to coordinate with your coworkers when you all have completely booked schedules. More authoritative leaders may contribute to diminished feelings of team unity by acting independently of their employee’s best interests. And sometimes, even when there is the time and support to work with those around you, a team can feel more like a hindrance than a support.

I am aware of these conceptions of teamwork that you may hold, and at times I have internalized these thoughts myself. Therefore, it is vital that we remind ourselves of the value of group effort going forth.

Nearly everyone is aware of what teamwork is—as its name suggests, teamwork is the process in which a group of individuals work together to reach a common goal. Successful teams are able to navigate physical, mental, and social barriers in order to achieve their goals. With strong cooperation and organization, a team is capable of accomplishing feats not possible for any one individual. With this potential for high achievement, it is no surprise that you hear about teamwork so often at work or in the media.

Successful Teamwork

Not all teams manage to achieve their goals, but there is much to be learned from considering those that do. Groups that succeed often share a number of traits and behaviors. For instance:

Organized teams where each member knows their task and function are more efficient. There is no question of who will be completing each part of the effort, reducing the chance of incomplete or redundant tasks. The work each teammate contributes is unique and vital to reaching the predetermined target.

Cooperative teams that support each other build better relationships. Team members are able to work with one another positively. Depending on the task, these members may be able to turn to one another for assistance with particularly challenging assignments.

Communicative teams are able to pass along thoughts and concerns. Each teammate is able and willing to share their personal insights. Every member has the opportunity to vocalize their personal thoughts on the task.

Accountable teams where members are noted on their effort encourage high quality results. Meaningful output is prioritized, as both excellent and sub-par work will be connected to those who created it. Members are less likely to succumb to social loafing.

Despite having been listed separately above, it is unrealistic to consider these characteristics in isolation and expect positive results. Traits such as organization, cooperation, communication, and accountability are immeasurably intertwined. To be missing one characteristic would inevitably decrease the likelihood of a team exhibiting the other three.

To understand this inter-connectivity, consider the concept of organization. A team can clearly assign roles to each member, keeping a record of who is acting which part, and consider themselves organized. But if this team cannot cooperate, assignments are unlikely to be completed in the ideal manner. There will be less concern for providing required materials or time to other members, and there could be decreased investment in the group work as a whole. If this same team cannot communicate, then pieces of the work are unlikely to form a coherent result. The finished project will accordingly be choppy, illogical, or contradictory at parts. And if each teammate is also unaccountable, these individuals will have diminished concern for how their individual assignment turns out—their work is lost amongst that of their teammates anyway, so they are free of blame for the disastrous final piece.

This inter-connectivity is in turn applicable to the other factors that we have discussed. Accountability begets trust, a powerful factor in positive communication and cooperation. Teams that cannot communicate with one another will struggle to cooperate with one another and assign tasks evenly. So while there is value to understanding the individual factors that contribute to good teamwork, ultimately these factors must be considered in conjunction if a team wishes to improve.

Teamwork in the Corporate World

As said before, collaboration can produce greater results than any individual is capable of achieving alone. Each member of a team has a unique perspective, and by discussing the best methods to meet a goal during brainstorming, creative new ideas can begin to form. Members can build off of each other’s thoughts and work. They can assign tasks to the most capable individuals. They can divide the workload to speed along the process. Teamwork can produce fantastic results.

Alternatively, if a team does not function well, the resulting work will be inadequate at best. Why do many employers then take this risk? Perhaps it is safer for employees to work independently. In isolation, accountability and organization is easy to maintain. Communication and cooperation become irrelevant. The success of each task is determined solely by each worker’s personal capabilities. There is a certain appeal to such an argument.

But there is a significant downside to taking such an approach to employee management. By collaborating with coworkers, working together through successes and failures, employees form a closer bond. They start to feel loyal to one another, and to the work that they do. By promoting a sense of community within a workspace, a company will find that its employees report having pride in their work and respect for their office. They will want to continue to contribute to the business, and in the face of outside opportunities, they are far more likely to think twice. When they are working independently of one another, employee loyalty and happiness is diminished.

The Science of Teamwork

Teamwork is intrinsic to human nature. Humans evolved as social creatures; your chances of survival and expansion are far greater as a group, and this fact was not lost on early Homo sapiens. We formed tribes and communities, and cities and countries. We began to group ourselves by a plethora of characteristics—gender, personality, race, religion, sexuality, and so on—and fought with each other to promote the success of our own “team” over others. Human beings are designed to work with those considered their teammates.

Yet the fact remains that not all teams work well together. Over the years, curious researchers have sought greater understanding of the dynamics of a team. One such researcher, Dr. Meredith Belbin, studied a number of teams in the 1970’s in an attempt to learn about group functioning. Through his work, Belbin identified nine different roles that members of a team usually fell into, defined by that member’s typical behavior and voice within the group. To briefly explain these roles:

Plants are innovators, who provide new, unexpected ideas about how to complete the task.

Resource Investigators are the individuals best at consulting with outside parties or researching external information.

Coordinators are delegators, skilled at assigning tasks to their teammates.

Shapers are the driving force of a team, and are focused primarily on achieving results.

Monitor Evaluators are thoughtful, rational individuals, known to thoroughly consider any potential action.

Implementers are procedural workers willing to work hard at any task.

Teamworkers are person-oriented and work to maintain order amongst a team.

Completer-Finishers are perfectionists that consistently produce high-quality work.

Specialists are experts, capable of teaching their teammates new skills and knowledge.

Belbin surmised from his lengthy investigation that the best teams—those that produced high-quality results through collaboration—were not those that favored any one role. Rather, successful teams were generally balanced in their role distribution. By combining such a variety of personalities and drives, teammates designed effective solutions, maintained group harmony, and kept each other focused. In this way, these teams were able to thrive under stressful situations and reap profits.

Promoting Teamwork

If you are struggling to work with teammates or are managing a team in conflict, it is important to consider the personalities of the individuals involved. It is possible that the team members are poorly balanced, or that an important role in the group has not been filled. If this is the primary issue that a team faces, then restructuring the group is essential for collaboration to occur.

In some cases, teammates will simply not get along. Pre-existing interpersonal conflict may impact the ability for two or more individuals to cooperate. Personal biases may leave members unwilling to compromise. Clashing personalities may lead to more arguing than creative thought. This is not to say that teamwork is impossible in this situations. If differences can be put aside and a relationship can be forged, there is still potential for this team to accomplish great things. It will simply require more attention than restructuring.

The best approach in this type of situation is to encourage bonding. The old adage that “opposites attract” rarely rings true in life; on the contrary, humans get along best with those closest to them. In other words, an individual is much more likely to get along with someone they are frequently exposed to, a person with shared experiences and familiar personality traits. Therefore, hosting group events where team members can talk and share is one of the best methods towards encouraging teamwork. Lighthearted activities requiring individuals to work together are a good way to promote cohesion in a low-stakes environment, and can provide a shared experience for vastly different personalities to connect over.

While it is the diversity of a team that nurtures new, sometimes unorthodox ideas, it is vital to remind a team that its members are not as different as they might believe. Common threads will bring a team closer together. If those threads have not appeared naturally, perhaps it is time to set some in place.

Team-ing with potential

Maybe teamwork is a bit of a buzzword in the modern day, but it is a buzzword with strong justification. Many of us struggle to work with others. It’s normal. Not all personalities mesh well, and not everyone you meet is destined to become your best friend. But when you need to work with someone that you don’t get on with, it is important to be aware of why teamwork is necessary and appreciate the unique perspective that this person brings. Maintain open communication, collaboration, and organization, and hold one another accountable for your actions, and even if you don’t become great friends, you can at the very least function as a great team.

And if you are an employer trying to decide whether a team structure will be optimal for your organization, I urge you to give it consideration. Employees that are able to work together are far more likely to be happy where they are, and are more likely to remain loyal to the community that you have provided them. Ultimately, a happy team is at the base of most any successful company.

Sources

Cherry, Kendra. (2018). “How Social Loafing Is Studied in Psychology.” Verywell Mind at https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-social-loafing-2795883.

Foley, Robert. (2009). “The evolution of society.” Philosophical Transactions of The Royal

Pine Hub at https://pine-hub.com/.

Salas, E. and Cannon-Bowers, J.A. “Teamwork and Team Training.” International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767014364.

Society at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26871597_The_evolution_of_society.

“The Nine Belbin Team Roles.” Belbin at https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/.

Ward, Deborah. (2013). “The Familiarity Principle of Attraction.” Psychology Today at https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/sense-and-sensitivity/201302/the-familiarity-principle-attraction.

About the Author

Megan Schrader is a writer and content creator for Pine Hub. She graduated with honours from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, receiving her BSc in Psychology in 2018. Megan has since emigrated to Ireland and settled in Dublin, where she enjoys discovering the local culture. She is passionate about writing, art, coffee and all things psychology.

#PineHub #coworking #teamwork #team #collaboration #startups #smes #entrepreneur #Dublin #freelancer

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factoronto · 5 years

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MEET THE FAC 2019 RESIDENCY ARTISTS: CLAUDIA PHARES

Can you expand on the concept of “voluntary isolation”? What does that mean to you in terms of your autobiography and how do you see it impacting other artists or people in your community?

I started to explore voluntary isolation in late 2015 as a result of experiencing a sense of loss of privacy, having become a parent. Which is not uncommon for new parents. I became obsessed with artists who explored voluntary isolation, nomadism and self-sufficiency such as the Israeli-French artist Absalon and the American artist Andrea Zittel. Inspired by their self-containing minimalist structures, I built a series of works I could inhabit and enact a sense of ‘escapism’. I cannot easily shake off the village.-Thoreau (2016), Self-Care (2017), Tent (2017) were the resulting works.

In my twenties, I spent several summers working for a reforestation company in Canada as a tree planter and later, as a head cook. Depending on the contract, we would travel to remote areas across Northern Ontario and Northern Alberta. We would set up camp and live in tents for up to six weeks. I always liked to travel and I loved the nomadic lifestyle of the job. The travel bug stuck with me. In my late twenties, I went back to university to study nursing and a year after I graduated, I decided to move to Australia to work as a nurse.

I believe that in order to feel happy about oneself and ultimately with others, we all need some time alone to reflect and to recentre. I realized it is not necessary to extract yourself from your immediate environment to achieve this. You can still disconnect/recenter while being in a public place. As much as aloneness is important, so is feeling connected with others. Becoming a parent can be extremely isolating and very intense. For me, a lot had to do also with a sense of loss of control. Furthermore, becoming a mother has been confronting for the major shift in roles and responsibilities and overall identity. There is a pressure exerted by Western culture to be a certain way as a mother which undermines a mother’s needs and desires. I believe motherhood still remains marginalized and undervalued in the eyes of patriarchy. In view of challenging how motherhood is perceived in our society, I used the voluntary isolation strategies of Absalon to highlight the invisibility of motherhood.

My body of work on voluntary isolation was acknowledging how common life-changing experiences such as motherhood can be isolating and how the social constructs surrounding motherhood can be unrealistic and potentially detrimental to the ones subjected to it.

“I cannot easily shake off the village” Performance Still, Thoreau, 2016

In terms of your social practice, do you find it creates lasting communities or it ephemeral? Is community building important to your workshops?

Since having become a single mother of two young children, I moved my practice from individualistic to a more socially engaged one. I wanted to reach out to other artists/parents in order to share and compare ways to maintain an art practice as an artist/parent. Voluntary isolation became less of a priority for me to explore out of necessity to survive and thrive.

There are lots of artists/parents who experience undesired isolation and who would benefit from being part of a community. In building a community would raise awareness on the recognition and validation of the artists’ other roles and responsibilities in our society and how those ultimately contribute to contemporary art.

I found that the projects that involved interacting with an audience had a lasting impact. I hosted two sun printing workshops where artists, who were also parents, were invited to attend with their children. Artists/parents not only bonded with their children while making art but also had the opportunity to make new connections with other like-minded individuals. During one sun printing workshop entitled How do we do it?, I orchestrated a roundtable discussion where the participants were invited to write a letter to oneself or to another artist/parent that could include tips, reflections, and/or words of encouragement on how they maintained their art practice while raising children. These handwritten notes were then printed on light-sensitive paper.

Through such participatory events, I am interested in developing a network of artists/parents who can support and empower each other in their everyday lives as artists/parents. Until one artist/parent finds their new rhythm navigating their roles and responsibilities as artist and parent, there will be multiple occasions where one will feel defeated, frustrated, and doubtful about maintaining their art practice while raising children.

Another event I have been organizing involves hosting a dinner where a small group of artists/parents would be invited to attend with their children if desired. I would cook and serve a meal, and then facilitate a discussion following these questions: How do you maintain your art and parenting practices? What have you found to be helpful or not helpful in doing so? This event would run like a performance similar to the dinners hosted by the international artist Rirkit Tiranavija in the 1990s in New York.

“Self-Care”, Preformance Still, 2017

What artists or authors are you looking at in terms of research into the patriarchal idea of motherhood? Are there any artists also working to deconstruct motherhood that inspire you?

In my research, I discovered Andrea O’Reilly, Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University. She is also the founder and director of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community. She coined the term “matricentric feminism” which is defined as mother-centred feminism which views motherhood to be socially and historically constructed. It challenges the assumption that maternity is natural to all women and that the work of mothering comes from instinct rather than intelligence and skills.

My ongoing research is framed by matricentric feminism. I view mothering as a discipline just as my art practice is; both disciplines involve work and thinking and are not mutually exclusive. Each role informs the other.

In terms of artists who have inspired me, the multidisciplinary artist Lise Haller Baggesen has been a great discovery in my practice after reading her book Mothernism. Part-fictional part-critical writing in the form of letters, various issues are explored surrounding motherhood, art, and politics which are all interconnected with disco trivia. I have been greatly inspired by this artist’s original approach in asserting the presence of the mother in the contemporary art world through her writing.

As I incorporated elements of trans/performance into my practice, I wanted to develop creative strategies to bridge the ‘private’ associated with motherhood into the public sphere. The multidisciplinary Canadian artist Laura Endecott is an artist whose work I found valuable in terms of performing motherhood using trans/performance. In her essay, Performing the Maternal in Public Space, she speaks about the idea of transference as key to her public performances as it enables discourse surrounding the invisibility of motherhood. Like Endecott, the American Mierle Laderman Ukeles is also concerned with overlooked tasks of motherhood‘s contribution to society. Ukeles’ seminal performance work Maintenance Art Works 1969-1980 achieved to shed some light on these concerns.

There are more artists who have successfully managed to explore motherhood beyond the private space and hopefully, more will follow.

“Tent” Performance Still, 2017

Follow Claudia: @Claudia Pharès on FB @claudiaphares on IG claudiaphares.com

#claudia phares #feminism #feministart #feministartists #feministartresidency #toronto #torontoart #torontoevents

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becomestorm · 5 years

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full name: lie nezha ren. gender + sexuality: masc. agender + demi. ethnicity + species: mistrali ( han chinese based ) + eastern dragon faunus. birthplace + birthdate: central mistral, in the mountains of kuroyuri village + [ redacted. ] guilty pleasures: telenovela, splurge spending on exotic / rare ingredients, splurge spending on sleep products ( soft blankets, sleep robes, pyjamas, pillows, etc. ), splurge spending on hair care products, reading awful literotica. phobias: mild eisoptrophobia ( specifically fear of their own reflection ) + scopophobia, claustrophobia ( specifically fear of suffocation ), loss of control / powerlessness, and loss of loved ones. what would they be infamous for ? headcanon wise, ren is the last surviving heir of the lie family, who were known for being ruthless, meticulous, intelligent, and cunning, but since ren was disconnected from the family when their parents eloped, it’s difficult to make the connection. what would they have gotten arrested for ? as of volume six, participating in stealing an atlesian air ship. ren did commit a series of petty crimes when they were growing up in the mistral underground with nora, including things like stealing, carrying suspicious substances ( as a courier service ), and conning ( which included things like using ren’s empathy semblance for reading poker matches, telling fortunes, and manipulating emotions intentionally as a form of hallucinogen ( ren hated this one most of all, but it did fetch them a lot of money. )) but, since ren and nora were children if they were ever caught they were let off easy, and by the time they were in their mid teens, they could fight well enough to collect grimm bounties. character you ship them with: for canon, jaune. i also like renorarc. all other ships are fair game. i have ships that are primarily just because of one person, like with yang for zero, mercury for rice, weiss for latte, but i don’t necessarily root for them without the added support of that partner. character most likely to murder them: ren’s a very lowkey target for any of the major villains, so i’m gonna put ‘no one’ here. favourite book genre: non-fiction, historical, biology + science texts, poetry anecdotes, some sci-fi novels. least favourite book cliché: love at first sight. talents + powers: ( talents ) dancing, cooking, calligraphy + ( powers ) martial arts, free running, weapon wielding, and emotional manipulation semblance. why someone might love them: i’m gonna be honest and say that i picked up ren after volume two primarily because he was almost a blank canvas. a really fuckin’ beautiful blank canvas, with a lot of potential, but still a blank canvas. i didn’t necessarily love them when i picked them up, and i’m not exactly sure what compelled me to write as them but god, i am so glad i did. so, if it was *me* listing off the reason why i like ren we would be here all day, but now that i’m thinking about it there aren’t ... a ton of reasons why someone might like ren on his own. there are superficial things ; his sarcastic, dry humour is amusing, he’s very pretty, he has a cool fighting style ( although it would be better if he could use aura attacks again thanks rt ) but i believe that most of ren’s appeal is in the relationships he’s making and in the way he’s learning to open up because of it. why someone might hate them: ok i’m gonna fuckin say it, but there are some aspects of ren that are just boring. i’m attributing that not to a lack of screen time but a lack of focus time, as well as a somewhat dwindled relevance to the plot. i’m not necessarily asking for more, but i’ve read gripes about volume four, and some of them i agree with ; ren’s backstory is boring. i see him falling into a similar vibe as volume one when ren was used as a tutorial character for aura attacks, except in this example, his backstory is a “case study” when it comes to the thousands of people who have lost their homes and loved ones to grimm, and most likely in a very very similar way too, considering it was covered by qrow in world of remnant. ren didn’t even get any character development in that volume, ren has never shown any consequential character flaws, and that would have been a prime time to show it. all the anger shown during the nuckelavee fight was circumstantial and one off, it didn’t necessarily change ren at all, it didn’t change his bonds with other characters at all. one could argue that the only point of change in his character was that he is now open to relying more on other people, but that’s the thing, ren has always been with nora so that’s not development. is anything volume four said more about their bonds with ruby and jaune, and reaffirmed everything we knew about nora and ren already. given the information we have now, ren is not special. when you look at the bare bones of nora and ren’s relevance they are only there to fill in the gaps of jaune and pyrrha’s team. this will probably change in the future, because i can’t possibly see how rt can make their roles smaller given that they’re in the main troupe. ren’s importance, story wise, is in his bonds. his intelligence + spiritual beliefs + observation skills + saboteur capabilities + level of semblance usefulness + the fact that ren’s dialogue in the last two volumes have been somewhat narrator-esque has been upping his level of importance ( and ! more ! crucially !! his differentiation from nora as a unit ! i cannot stress this enough but ren and nora’s tether to each other in earlier volumes prevented them from interacting one on one with other characters on screen ( ESPECIALLY PYRRHA ) ) but the change has been subtle, and most definitely not a main focus. i see that someone could hate / be indifferent to ren primarily because there just isn’t enough to love. the only gripe that i have ever seen about ren before is his apparent uselessness in battle ( which is why i’m so happy about their saboteur role in the sixth volume’s last fight. ) how they change: oh fuck, okay, so in that last point i did say that canon ren’s only major point of character development is learning to open up and possibly rely on other people across all six volumes, other than that i’ve got zilch. i’ve put some significant development into my ren and also increased the intensity of ren’s isolation and the repercussions of their semblance to make development a little easier for me to accomplish when it comes to developing bonds, but i don’t think i could encompass what my ren needed to go through prior to beacon without making this post a whole book.

tagged: @nuiruk ( thank you, kenzie ! ) tagging: hnnn just say i tagged you.

#hc.#ok there's actually a lot of me shitting on ren's character so #should i tag this #opinion #?

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fandomshatelgbtqpeople · 6 years

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Sitting in the backseat of my family’s Toyota SUV with my older brother and sister, I watched my mother apply her mascara in the passenger seat while my father quietly drove. I had always marveled at the way she could put on makeup in the car; at her practicality and glamour. But on that day, I noticed her typically steady hands were shaking. We were on our way to the doctor’s appointment that would change the course of my life as I — a chubby 12-year-old boy from Jersey — knew it.

My family and I sat motionlessly on pleather chairs in the waiting room. It was a strange gathering — I was the only kid who had an appointment, so I didn’t understand why my parents dragged the entire family to the doctor with me. My health seemed perfectly fine, save for the lump forming in the back of my throat.

“Your testicles were absent at your birth,” confessed my doctor in an examination room that reeked of off-brand Lysol. My stomach turned. I looked to my parents for confirmation: Is he serious? They sat in the corner, sad and small. My mother buried herself in my father’s shoulder, hiding her watery eyes and running mascara. The doctor told me that I would begin testosterone injections immediately in order to start puberty. As part of his “treatment plan,” he informed me that in a few years, at age 16, I would undergo plastic surgery to get prosthetic testicles surgically implanted in my empty scrotum. He reassured me that in time I’d look and feel like a normal man. I had no say in any of this.

I was devastated — pissed at my parents for keeping this a secret, and upset at my doctor for his clinical way of revealing the truth about my body, with no mention of how it would impact me psychologically or resources to help me adequately process this new information. In hindsight, the most shocking part of this appointment was that my doctor didn’t tell me that there were other people like me: people who are born with a reproductive and/or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definitions of female or male.

He didn’t tell me that I am intersex.

From that moment on, my body was constantly objectified and put on display by the medical community. I can’t count how many times I had to strip down to be examined by doctors. When I was 13, a doctor brought group of his medical students to my examination. Each one of them took pictures of my body without my consent.

Experiences like mine are common for intersex people around the world. Vulnerable and scared parents adamantly follow doctors’ orders to “normalize” our bodies with unnecessary surgeries — removing or adding to our natural anatomies and pumping us with “corrective” hormones without consulting us about how we identify or how we feel. They fail to understand that gender, sex, and sexuality occur on a spectrum. Furthermore, doctors perpetuate the false idea that ‘no one is like us,’ — that we are not normal — keeping us in cycles of shame and immense loneliness. In fact, 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 people are intersex — it’s as common as having naturally red hair. Statistically, it’s likely that there is someone in your own community who is intersex but is perhaps too scared to be public about their identity (and understandably so).

It wasn’t until last year, while doing research for my film Ponyboi — about an intersex Latinx runaway and sex worker — that I discovered the term intersex existed. In writing the film, I knew that I wanted the root cause of the abuse the main character experiences, as well as his resulting pain to stem from a lack of acceptance of his “abnormal” body. I had the sudden impulse to google my condition while writing, wondering if there was new information available online to inform my character. As fate would have it, I found a crucial part of who I am reflected back to me via the media: a BuzzFeed video featuring intersex activist Pidgeon talking about being intersex. Then, a Vogue article about supermodel Hanne Gaby Odiele coming out as intersex. Oh shit! I thought, reeling with excitement. This is not only something people are talking about openly, but something they proudly own as their identity! I felt a palpable surge of love and pride for my body for the first time.

Being an actor and filmmaker, I create confessionary art that celebrates secrets and exorcises shame; I make art that addresses the politics of personhood through narratives of my own personal conflicts. Before last year, only my family and close friends knew about my intersex condition. To me, it was a weird, medical abnormality that was separate from who I believed myself to be. However, publicly owning my intersex body has filled me with a new sense of activism and purpose.

As there is so little media representation of intersex people, Ponyboi — executive produced by Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson — will be the first narrative film directed by and starring an out intersex person in the history of cinema. I hope that the film will make great strides in promoting intersex visibility on an international scale, provide healing to intersex people who will see their own experiences reflected on screen, and also spread empathy towards intersex people within the LGBTQ+ community and beyond.

I’ve come to understand that since I cannot have biological children, the stories I share in my films and my art are the lineage I will pass on. My projects are my babies, so to speak. It is important to me that they find their way into the hearts of people — outsiders, misfits, queerdos — who feel isolated like I did growing up. No one should ever feel ashamed about the way they were born, and I’ve made it my mission to fix that.

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personalcoachingcenter · 3 years

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Research Paper: Language Matters

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/research-paper-language-matters/

Research Paper: Language Matters

Research Paper By Charlene Moynihan (Ability Coach, UNITED STATES)

Introduction

A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well. –Frederick Douglass

Moreover, as an individual with a disability, I must understand what it is that makes me different than others if I am to truly approach this endeavor with a celebratory mindset.

ICA teaches us that

Let’s start with an explanation of the predominant models of disability theory.

Disability Theory

The Medical Model

The Social Model

The Research

Analysis

Conclusion

I change my thoughts, I change my world. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Sources:

Websites

Critical Disability Theory. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/win2019/entries/disability-critical/

Disability and Justice. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/disability-justice/.

Disclosing Our Relationships to Disabilities: An Invitation for Disability Studies Scholars. Corbett Joan O’Toole 1 (disabled) 2 Independent Researcher. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3708/3226.

Disability Studies Quarterly.Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Reviewed by Michael Davidson. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/160/160.

Medical Model of Disability versus Social Model of Disability. Living with Disability and Chronic Pain. https://canbc.org/blog/medical-model-of-disability-versus-social-model-of-disability/.

Disability Studies Quarterly. Un/covering: Making Disability Identity Legible. Heather Dawn Evans. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5556/4550.

https://docs.google.com.

Original source: https://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/research-papers/charlene-moynihan-language-matters/

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