#we have just ignore the the bad historic and criminal knowledge and that i just lied all the time

[thevalleyisjolly]

Semi-crack theory, but based on 1) the setting; 2) my love of the British murder mystery subgenre; and 3) wishful thinking, I’m convinced that the staff banded together and did it:

The means:

Who would be better placed to figure out the secret passageways and trick features of the house than the servants?  Historically, British aristocracy preferred to see as little of their servants as possible, there are whole hidden stairwells and passages built into those big houses just so that the lords and ladies never have to come across servants doing their business.

Likewise, who else is better placed to set up all this wiring than the servants themselves?  Tell the Squire that they need to get an electrician in because the lights are on the blink, use that as a cover for putting the wiring in place.  Theoretically the lord and/or lady of the house is supposed to be going over weekly accounts with the housekeeper...but they also don’t want to be bothered with mundane things.  If a trusted longtime servant tells them they need a repairperson in, are they really going to question it that much?

Alternatively, Squire Brockhollow himself set up the wiring for his own purposes, the servants just piggybacked on top of what he was doing.

I’m also thinking that if it weren’t for the murder victim (presumed to be the Squire) trying to gouge the shrapnel out of his chest, a death by electric current would resemble a sudden heart attack.  It’s only because the victim had Buckster’s knife on hand that there was such a bloody injury, unfortunately making the death look instantly suspicious.  If there hadn’t been a knife, a cursory look at the scene might conclude it was some kind of heart condition.  And if someone had looked closer and found the wiring, they’d hardly suspect someone like Mrs. Molesly to have set the whole thing up.

Objectively, Mrs. Molesly is the best person you want in the room when the murder happens.  She’s getting on years, is not very physically strong, has impaired vision and a medical condition, and character-wise is just such a sweetheart that you really wouldn’t suspect her of anything.  The only reason anyone did suspect her was because of the wound and her being the only person in the room.  If there hadn’t been a wound and she’d claimed it was a heart attack, you’d hardly suspect her of lying.  At most, even if foul play was suspected, people would just think she misinterpreted what she saw.

The police!  Gilfoyle claims to have called them after the Squire’s murder, and it takes them 12 hours to get here?  Even Mrs. McCabbage gets here before they do!  And then they arrive almost immediately after the second murder, the very incriminating murder that directly puts a non-staff member of the house in the frame, just in time to arrest him.

Also, wasn’t it Harding who gave Gangie all the instructions?  Sure, the Squire might have his own reasons for wanting the bodies, but who’s to say Harding couldn’t slip Gangie a few extra instructions of his own?

Mrs. Molesly is an absolutely sweetie, but she’s far too calm about finding out that Gangie’s a criminal.  I mean, good for her, end the stigma around people having criminal records, but everyone else in the house reacts so suspiciously to Gangie’s presence, especially after a murder, and Mrs. Molesly’s just chill?  Unless she already knows quite a few criminals in the staff, and does not consider it an issue (good for her!)

Also, everyone always ignores the staff in murder mysteries, mostly because the upper classes don’t even consider them important, and given that Brennan has to have some critique of capitalism and the class system somewhere, it seems thematically appropriate.

The motive:

If we take away Fletcher Cottonbottom and the ghosts and the smoke and mirrors, what do we really have here?  We have a dead badger who may or may not be the Squire, but who is certainly presumed to be.  We have another dead badger and a dead magpie, who may or may not be Lady Constance and her husband, but who are certainly presumed to be.  Three fairly competent members of the Brockhollow clan, possibly the most competent members of the Brockhollow family.  Lady Lucretia is distracted, Jeremy is shaky and certainly not the badger his father was.

Squire Brockhollow was certainly a cantankerous fellow who was up to something.  And he was willing to let Mrs. Molesly go just like that after so many years of service.  If the Squire treats his longtime housekeeper like that, who’s to say how he treats the rest of his staff normally?  Whose employment is really so secure with someone like Squire in charge?  With the Squire out of the way, and perhaps with Lady Constance and Dr. Magpie out of the way as well, Loam Hall is left with Lucretia and Jeremy, neither of whom are exactly the imposing figures that the Squire and Constance were.  Who really runs the house then?  The staff.

The red herrings:

Like a typical British murder mystery, there are multiple agents and motivations at work here.

Cottonbottom is definitely alive!  But he didn’t do the murder, he’s just taking advantage of the confusion to get one over Sylvester.

Honestly, would not be surprised if Cottonbottom arrived a while ago, figured out what was going on, was incredibly amused, and then realized the opportunity he had here to frame Sylvester.  After all, Sylvester has deduced and foiled every plot that he’s ever come up with...but what if he’s not the one coming up with the plot?  Sylvester can outwit a mastermind if he suspects there’s one present, but that also means he’s more likely to miss the forest for the trees.  Can’t see the bigger picture if you’re scrutinizing all the little details.

Squire Brockhollow definitely has some kind of plan going on as well.  Perhaps it’s even those plans which made him a target.  He could probably keep a secret from his family, but how much can he keep hidden from the servants that he relies on to keep everything in his life running smoothly?

Anyways, the Squire definitely had plans, and Hawkins was probably in on some of them.

Why kill the Squire at a big party with lots of guests?  Well, it widens the suspect pool.  If the Squire suddenly keeled over on any old day when it was just the servants and the family in the house, an investigator might focus more closely on each of them.  But at a party full of known enemies?  Who’s going to look at the butler or the maid, except to give them orders?

I’m just thinking about so many Agatha Christie novels where the killer arranges for a detective or specialist to be in a certain place at a certain time just so that they can witness something the killer wants them to or give the killer an alibi.  

The victim trying to remove the shrapnel made the death look instantly suspicious, but there’s always the possibility that someone would have investigated anyways, especially if the Squire didn’t have a history of bad health.  But a famous detective like Sylvester could probably figure out the wired desk, and wouldn’t that surely put the staff to the back of the suspect queue?  After all, who would suspect the servants of having any great electrical knowledge?  And of course, if Sylvester gets too close to the truth, they can always frame him.  After all, Sylvester is certainly not on good terms with the Squire.

TL;DR The staff (who’ve been here ~the whole time~) unionized to overthrow their employers.  *Sam Reich on Game Changer voice* Con-gratulations players, you’ve ~UNIONIZED~!

#dimension 20 #mice and murder #d20 spoilers #mice and murder spoilers #this is kind of messy and i'm sure i'm forgetting a dozen details that would disprove this #i think it was jack who posted a few weeks ago about mrs. molesly unionizing the staff #and 1) that's amazing and she absolutely should; but also 2) what if the staff actually unionized and killed the squire

[scarlettrose0]

This is an response to people who claim that abortion is an constitutional right.

“Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court rarely attract much public interest. One news cycle and a few op-eds are probably the norm for even the most important and sweeping decisions.

But one Supreme Court decision eclipses all others in the past century. Far from being forgotten, in the almost 50 years since Roe v. Wade announced that the “constitutional” right to privacy encompasses a woman’s decision to abort her child, including late-term abortions, its fame (or infamy) just keeps growing.

How Roe is Perceived

For many Americans, Roe is a symptom of and catalyst for a continuing decline in American culture and institutions. It represents a tragic failure of the government, an abdication of its duty to defend the vulnerable and innocent. The judicially-created regime permitting abortion on request throughout all nine months of pregnancy has eroded principles on which this nation was founded – the sanctity of life, the equal dignity of all, and impartial justice. Even the fundamental principle of self-government is shaken when unelected judges can overturn the will of the people expressed in the laws of 50 states – as evidenced by the nearly 500 bills affirming life that have been advanced just this year in state legislatures.[1] And how does one begin to assess the meaning and impact of destroying the lives of over 60 million children in the United States?

Many other Americans hold a very different view of Roe v. Wade. They see Roe as being immutable, permanent, and “settled law.” Abortion is, they argue, a constitutional right. End of discussion. In the decades after Roe, the abortion license has been elevated by some to the stature of “freedom of speech,” “trial by jury,” and other bedrock American principles.

It is not surprising that many people share this distorted view of Supreme Court precedent allowing late term abortions. For almost 50 years the abortion industry has refined and perfected this message. Advocates like Planned Parenthood’s former president, Gloria Feldt, proclaimed (with no apparent irony) that through Roe “women were guaranteed the basic human right to make their own childbearing choices – a right as intrinsic as the right to breathe and to walk, to work and to think, to speak our truths, to thrive, to learn, and to love.”[2]  What “love” has to do with paying an abortion provider to kill and dispose of your unborn child is anyone’s guess.

Protecting this “right” to late-term abortions has also become a lodestar for abortion advocates and the politicians who support their agenda. Any event or policy affecting a child before or near birth is minutely scrutinized for its potential to undermine Roe v. Wade. Anyone and anything that threatens the shaky “constitutionality” of Roe must be stopped. For example, state laws that punish violent attacks on unborn children and their mothers are ironically denounced by abortion advocates as schemes designed to chip away at the constitutional rights of women. Even expanding eligibility under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to provide prenatal care to children from conception onward is condemned as “a guerilla attack on abortion rights.”[3]

Allegiance to maintaining late-term abortions has become the sine qua nonfor presidential and even congressional aspirants of one political party. Pro-life Democrats on Capitol Hill are now about as common as unicorns. Fealty to abortion has become a litmus test used by many politicians in evaluating judicial nominees. Individuals who have received the American Bar Association’s highest recommendation based on their knowledge of law, their integrity and judicial temperament have been put through a “high-tech lynching” (as Justice Clarence Thomas described his confirmation hearings), personal smears (Justice Brett Kavanaugh), and attacks on one’s religious beliefs and practices (Justice Amy Coney Barrett). Who can forget Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s opposition to Justice Coney Barrett because “The [Catholic] dogma lives loudly within you…”?

Ignoring the fact that judges are supposed to be impartial and not prejudge cases that come before them, candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 unapologetically announced having a pro-abortion litmus test for judicial nominees. In the 2019-2020 campaign season, numerous Democratic presidential candidates abandoned all pretense of selecting future judges based on their legal knowledge, integrity, impartiality, temperament, etc. What really mattered was that the nominees would “honor the Constitution” and precedent like Roe.[4]

But are the Constitution and abortion case law really synonymous? This article addresses these questions and the widespread assumption that Roe deserves a measure of deference as a landmark of constitutional law (notwithstanding its immoral outcome). Legally speaking, Roe began the judicial intervention into abortion policy and led to the continuation of late-term abortions. Few decisions in the history of the Supreme Court have cried out so loudly for review, on both moral and legal grounds.

Who Says So?

Among the legal scholars who have roundly criticized the Court’s ruling in Roe as not being grounded in the U.S. Constitution are the following:

Six justices of the U.S. Supreme Court – unfortunately not simultaneously seated – Justices White, Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy[5] and O’Connor.[6]

Virtually every recognized constitutional scholar who has published a book or article on Roe – including many, like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, who support Roe’s outcome on other grounds (although he has switched grounds over the years).[7]

The late Constitutional law professor John Hart Ely (Yale, Harvard, and Stanford law schools) stated: Roe v. Wade “is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be”[8]; and

Edward Lazarus, a former law clerk to Roe’s author, Justice Harry Blackmun, who writes:

As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roeborders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose, as someone who believes such a right has grounding elsewhere in the Constitution instead of where Roe placed it, and as someone who loved Roe‘s author like a grandfather. …

What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent. … The proof of Roe’s failings comes not from the writings of those unsympathetic to women’s rights, but from the decision itself and the friends who have tried to sustain it. Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the … years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.[9]

Ten Legal Reasons to Reject Roe

1.    The Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade exceeded its constitutional authority.

Under the legal system established by the United States Constitution, the power to make laws is vested in Congress and retained by state legislatures. It is not the role of the Supreme Court to substitute the policy preferences of its members for those expressed in laws enacted by the people’s elected representatives. The role of the judiciary in constitutional review is to determine if the law being challenged infringes on a constitutionally protected right.

Justice O’Connor reiterates this principle, quoting Chief Justice Warren Burger:

Irrespective of what we may believe is wise or prudent policy in this difficult area, “the Constitution does not constitute us as ‘Platonic Guardians’ nor does it vest in this Court the authority to strike down laws because they do not meet our standards of desirable social policy, ‘wisdom,’ or ‘common sense.’”[10]

In Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, however, the Court struck down criminal laws of Texas and Georgia which outlawed certain abortions by finding that these laws (and those of the other 48 states) violated a “right of privacy” that “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Such a right is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution nor derivable from values embodied therein.

In his dissenting opinion in Doe v. Bolton, Justice Byron White, joined by Justice William Rehnquist, wrote:

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers … and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 states are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

2.    The Court misrepresents the history of abortion practice and attitudes toward abortion.

The apparent purpose of the Roe opinion’s long historical excursion is to create the impression that abortion had been widely practiced and unpunished until the appearance of restrictive laws in the prudishly Victorian 19th century. One example is adequate to show how distorted is Justice Harry Blackmun’s rendition of history. He must overcome a huge hurdle in the person of Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine,” and his famous Oath which guided medical ethics for over 2,000 years. The Oath provides in part: “I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.”[11] This enduring standard was followed until the Roe era and is reflected in Declarations of the World Medical Association through 1968: “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life, from the time of conception.…”[12] But Justice Blackmun dismisses this universal, unbroken ethical tradition as nothing more than the manifesto of a fringe Greek sect, the Pythagoreans, to which Hippocrates is alleged by someone to have belonged.

3.    The majority opinion in Roewrongly characterizes the common law of England regarding the status of abortion.

The Court’s strained analysis and its conclusion – “it now appears doubtful that abortion was ever firmly established as a common-law crime even with respect to the destruction of a quick fetus” – are rejected by many legal scholars.[13]

William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), an exhaustive and definitive discussion of English common law as it was adopted by the United States, shows that the lives of unborn children were valued and protected, even if their beginning point was still thought to be “quickening” rather than conception:

Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as the infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb … this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemeanor.[14]

Until well into the 19th century, it was assumed that a child’s life may not begin – and certainly could not be proven to have begun to satisfy criminal evidentiary standards – prior to the time his or her movements were felt by the mother (“quickening”), at approximately 16-18 weeks’ gestation. The Roe Court looks at the distinction in common law concerning abortions attempted before or after “quickening,” and wrongly infers that the law allowed women great latitude to abort their children in the early months of pregnancy. This is akin to claiming that people had a general right to spread computer viruses before laws were enacted criminalizing such acts.

4.    The Court distorts the purpose and legal weight of state criminal abortion statutes.

In the 19th century, in virtually every state and territory, laws were enacted to define abortion as a crime throughout pregnancy. They contained only narrow exceptions, generally permitting abortion only if needed to preserve the mother’s life. The primary reason for stricter abortion laws, according to their legislative histories, was to afford greater protection to unborn children. This reflected a heightened appreciation of prenatal life based on new medical knowledge. It is significant that the medical profession spearheaded efforts to afford greater protection to unborn lives than had been recognized under the common law’s archaic “quickening” distinction.

The existence of such laws, and their clear purpose of protecting the unborn, rebuts the Court’s claim that abortion has always been considered a liberty enjoyed by women. These laws show broad acceptance of the view that the life of an unborn child is valuable and should be protected unless the mother’s life is at risk. In that case, of course, both mother and child were likely to perish, given the primitive care then available for infants born prematurely.

How does the Court get around the impressive body of laws giving clear effect to the states’ interest in protecting unborn lives? It attempts to devalue them by ascribing a completely different purpose: the desire to protect the mother’s life and health from a risky surgical procedure. Applying the maxim “if the reason for a law has ceased to exist, the law no longer serves any purpose,” the Court declares that abortion is now “safer than childbirth.” Therefore, laws banning abortion have outlived their purpose. Incidentally, the “safer than childbirth” claim has been found to be unsupported due to a gross definitional distortion of “maternal mortality” and shoddy statistics on abortion-related deaths, explored in other articles.[15]

5.    A privacy right to decide to have an abortion has no foundation in the text or history of the Constitution.

Roe v. Wade locates a pregnant woman’s “constitutional” right of privacy to decide whether or not to abort her child either “in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty …, as we feel it is, or … in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people.”

The Court does not even make a pretense of examining the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment, to determine if it was meant to protect a privacy interest in abortion. Clearly it was not. The Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to create any new rights, but to secure to all persons, notably including freed slaves and their descendants, the rights and liberties already guaranteed by the Constitution.

Several rhetorical devices are used to mask this absence of constitutional grounding. The Court mentions several specifically enumerated rights which concern an aspect of privacy, for example, the Fourth Amendment’s “right of the people to be secure in their houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” However, the Court fails to connect these to the newly found “right” to abortion because no logical connection exists.

Justice Blackmun attempts to graft abortion onto the line of decisions recognizing privacy/liberty rights in the following spheres: marriage (Loving v. Virginia, striking down a state ban on interracial marriage); childrearing (Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, upholding parental decision-making regarding their children’s education); procreation (Skinner v. Oklahoma, finding unconstitutional a state law mandating sterilization of inmates found guilty of certain crimes); and contraceptive use by a married couple (Griswold v. Connecticut). Certainly, marriage and building and raising a family are fundamental aspects of human life that predate human laws and nations. They are implicit in the concept of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, although even these rights are subject to state limitation, such as laws against bigamy, incest, and child abuse and neglect.

But abortion does not fit neatly among these spheres of privacy. It negatesthem. Abortion is not akin to childrearing; it is child destruction.

A pregnant woman’s right to abort nullifies a man’s right to procreate upheld in “Skinner.” He is denied the right to have children; Roe permits him only the possibility of fathering a child, whom his mate can then have destroyed in utero without his knowledge or consent.

The fear of government intruding into the marital bedroom by searching for evidence of contraceptive use drove the Griswold Court to find a privacy right for couples to use contraception in the “penumbras, formed by emanations from” various guarantees in the Bill of Rights. But however closely abortion and contraception may be linked in purpose and effect, they are worlds apart in terms of privacy.

In addition, a “privacy right” large enough to encompass abortion could also be applied to virtually any conduct performed outside the public view, including child abuse, possession of child pornography, and use of illicit drugs.

The liberty interest to be protected from state regulation is never defined in Roe. Instead, the Court describes at some length the hardships some women face, not from pregnancy, but from raising children:

Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by childcare. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it.

By this reasoning, one might argue that Roe’s liberty encompasses ridding oneself of unwanted toddlers!

Ordinarily, the defense of rights requires us to forgo lethal methods and use means likely to create the least harm to others. We may not, for example, surround our house and yard with a high voltage fence to deter trespassers. This principle is upended in the abortion context. Adoption, for example, would effectively eliminate all the “hardships” of raising “unwanted” children by non-lethal means.

6.    Although it reads the Fourteenth Amendment extremely expansively to include a right of privacy to decide whether to abort a child, the Court in Roe adopts an unjustifiably narrow construction of the meaning of “persons” to exclude unborn children.

Much is made of the fact that “person” as used elsewhere in the Constitution does not refer to unborn children when, for example, discussing qualifications for public office or census-taking. That point proves nothing. The Supreme Court has held that corporations are “persons” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment,[16] and they are notcounted in the census, nor can a corporation grow up to be president.

The Roe Court also ignored the clear and uncontested biological evidence before them that individual human lives begin at conception: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” This is a question determined by science, not philosophers or theologians or politicians. But while seeming to sidestep the question, the Court in fact resolved the question at birth, by allowing abortion to be legal throughout pregnancy. In the same vein, the Court refers to the unborn child as only a “potential life” although, from the point of view of science, he or she is an actual life from the moment of his or her conception.

The Roe opinion states that a contrary finding on “personhood” (i.e., that an unborn child is a person) would produce the opposite result—presumably foreclosing the mother’s “privacy right” to an abortion. But one does not have to be a “person” in the full constitutional sense for a state to validly protect one’s life. Dogs can be protected from killing although they are not “persons.”[17] And under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), people are prosecuted, fined and jailed for acts that may harm creatures, such as sea turtles, that are not “persons” in the full constitutional sense. Sea turtles are protected not only after they are hatched, but even while in the egg. In fact, each sea turtle egg removed from its nest constitutes a separate violation under the ESA, (see penalty schedule) regardless of whether the sea turtle egg contained an embryo that was alive or “quick” or “viable” or even already deceased at the time of the taking.

7.    The Roe Court assumed the role of a legislature in establishing the trimester framework.

Roe holds that in the first trimester of pregnancy, the mother’s “privacy interest” in an abortion trumps state regulation. From the end of the first trimester to the child’s “viability” – which the Court presumed to be no earlier than 26 weeks – the state can regulate abortion practice only in ways reasonably related to advancing the mother’s health. In the final trimester, the state – in the interest of protecting the “potential life” of the child – can regulate and even proscribe abortion, except where necessary to preserve the mother’s “life or health.” Health (see point 8 below) is the exception that swallows the rule.

Pre-decision memoranda among members of the Roe Court acknowledged the serious flaw in establishing arbitrary, rigid time frames. Justice Blackmun himself admitted it was arbitrary.[18] A reply memorandum from Justice Potter Stewart stated:

One of my concerns with your opinion as presently written is … in its fixing of the end of the first trimester as the critical point for valid state action. … I wonder about the desirability of the dicta being quite so inflexibly “legislative.”

My present inclination would be to allow the States more latitude to make policy judgments.[19]

Geoffrey R. Stone, a law clerk to Justice Brennan when Roe was decided, has been quoted as saying: “Everyone in the Supreme Court, all the justices, all the law clerks knew it was ‘legislative’ or ‘arbitrary.’”[20]

Justices O’Connor, White, and Rehnquist denounced the arbitrary trimester framework in O’Connor’s dissenting opinion in Akron in 1982:

[There] is no justification in law or logic for the trimester framework adopted in Roeand employed by the Court today. … [That] framework is clearly an unworkable means of balancing the fundamental right and the compelling state interests that are indisputably implicated. The majority opinion of Justice Rehnquist in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services in 1989 states:

The key elements of the Roe framework – trimesters and viability – are not found in the text of the Constitution or in any place else one would expect to find a constitutional principle. … the result has been a web of legal rules that have become increasingly intricate, resembling a code of regulations rather than a body of constitutional doctrine. As Justice White has put it, the trimester framework has left this Court to serve as the country’s “ex officio medical board with powers to approve or disapprove medical and operative practices and standards throughout the United States.”

8.     What Roe gives, Doe takes away.

Many Americans believe that abortion is legal only in the first trimester (or first and second trimester). Many pollsters and media outlets continue to characterize Roe v. Wade as the case which “legalized abortions in the first three months after conception.”[21] While nearly all states have attempted to ban abortion at some point before full-term birth, their efforts have been largely symbolic due to Roe’s “health exception.” As noted above, under Roe, all state laws restricting abortion must contain a “health” exception. Health is defined in Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton, as including “all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.” This definition negates the state’s interest in protecting the child, and results in abortion on request throughout all nine months of pregnancy. The fact that the Court buries its improbably broad definition of health in the largely unread opinion in Doe v. Bolton makes it no less devastating.9. The Court describes the right to abortion as “fundamental.”

The Supreme Court has found certain rights fundamental. Expressed or implied in the Constitution, they are considered “deeply rooted in the history and traditions” of the American people or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” such as the free exercise of religion, the right to marry, the right to a fair trial, and equal protection under the law. A state law infringing on a fundamental right is reviewed under a rigorous “strict scrutiny” standard. In effect, there is a presumption against constitutionality. The Roe Court claims abortion is fundamental on the ground that it is lurking in the penumbras and emanations of the Bill of Rights or the Fourteenth Amendment, along with privacy rights like contraceptive use. It is ludicrous to claim abortion is deeply rooted in American history or traditions or that our governmental system of “ordered liberty” implicitly demands the right to destroy one’s child, but this was an effective way to foreclose state regulation of abortion. The strict scrutiny test was later abandoned in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

10.     Despite the rigid specificity of the trimester framework, the opinion gives little guidance to states concerning the permissible scope of abortion regulation.

Abortion decisions that followed Roe chronologically have not followed Roe jurisprudentially. Many decisions have five separate opinions filed, often with no more than three justices concurring on most points. Eight separate opinions were filed in Stenberg v. Carhart (which effectively nullified laws in over two dozen states banning partial-birth abortion).

The 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey could have resulted in Roe’s reversal. The Casey Joint Opinion (there being no majority opinion) comes close to conceding that Roe was wrongly decided:

We do not need to say whether each of us, had we been Members of the Court when the valuation of the state interest came before it as an original matter, would have concluded, as the Roe Court did, that its weight is insufficient to justify a ban on abortions prior to viability even when it is subject to certain exceptions. The matter is not before us in the first instance, and, coming as it does after nearly 20 years of litigation in Roe’s wake we are satisfied that the immediate question is not the soundness of Roe’s resolution of the issue, but the precedential force that must be accorded to its holding.

Instead they jettisoned Roe’s trimester framework and standard of legislative review, but kept Roe alive: Chief Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Casey, in which he is joined in part by Justices White, Scalia, and Thomas states:

Roe decided that a woman had a fundamental right to an abortion. The joint opinion rejects that view. Roe decided that abortion regulations were to be subjected to “strict scrutiny,” and could be justified only in the light of “compelling state interests.” The joint opinion rejects that view. … Roe analyzed abortion regulation under a rigid trimester framework, a framework that has guided this Court’s decision-making for 19 years. The joint opinion rejects that framework. …

Whatever the “central holding” of Roe that is left after the joint opinion finishe[d] … Roecontinues to exist, but only in the way a storefront on a western movie set exists: a mere façade to give the illusion of reality.

And later in that dissent:

Roe v. Wade stands as a sort of judicial Potemkin village, which may be pointed out to passers-by as a monument to the importance of adhering to precedent. But behind the façade, an entirely new method of analysis, without any roots in constitutional law, is imported to decide the constitutionality of state laws regulating abortion. Neither stare decisis nor “legitimacy” are truly served by such an effort.

Roe v. Wade must be reversed

Contrary to popular opinion or knowledge, decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court are “often” reversed.[22] Stare decisis (let the decision stand) does not prevent reversal when the constitutional interpretation of a prior ruling is later understood to be flawed. Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Caseynotes that the Court “has overruled in whole or part 34 of its previous constitutional decisions” in the preceding 21 years. It is the Court’s duty to reverse wrongly decided rulings. “Justices take an oath to uphold the Constitution — not the glosses of their predecessors.”[23]

The Casey plurality weighed the “integrity of the Court” (its reputation for being above political considerations) as more important than fidelity to the Constitution and, not incidentally, more important than the continuing destruction of now over 60 million children. Roe must be reversed to restore integrity to the Court, meaning to the Constitution, political rights to the people and their elected representatives, and most importantly, the right to life to children in the womb.

______________________________________________

A version of this article was originally published in the Respect Life Program (2003) of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Susan E. Wills, J.D., LL.M. is an associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

[1] Arina O. Grossu, “Overview of U.S Pro-Life Bills and Provisions Advanced and Laws Enacted from January to May 2021,” Charlotte Lozier Institute, June 8, 2021, https://lozierinstitute.org/overview-of-u-s-pro-life-bills-and-provisions-advanced-and-laws-enacted-from-january-to-may-2021-pro-life-banner-year-as-states-continue-to-reject-the-radical-abortion-agenda/.

[2] Address to the Planned Parenthood Political Academy, Washington, D.C., July 23, 2002.

[3] Bob Herbert, “Sneak Attack,” New York Times, Feb. 4, 2002, A23, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/04/opinion/sneak-attack.html.

[4] Max Greenwood, “2020 Dems Break Political Taboos by Endorsing Litmus Tests,” The Hill, May 22, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/444914-2020-dems-break-political-taboos-by-endorsing-litmus-tests.

[5] Webster v. Reproductive Health Svcs., 492 U.S. 490 (1989), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/492/490/.

[6] Dissenting opinions in Akron v. Akron Ctr. for Reprod. Health, 462 U.S. 416 (1983), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/462/416/, and Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747 (1986), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/476/74.

[7] See Dennis J. Horan, et al., Abortion and the Constitution (Washington, D.C., 1987), 57-88, and John T. Noonan, Jr., A Private Choice (New York 1979), 20-32, for overviews of the major scholarly criticism of Roe.

[8] John Hart Ely, “The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade,” Yale Law Review, vol. 82, no. 5 (1973), 947.

[9] Edward Lazarus, “The Lingering Problems of Roe v. Wade,” Oct. 03, 2002, https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/the-lingering-problems-with-roe-v-wade-and-why-the-recent-senate-hearings-on-michael-mcconnells-nomination-only-underlined-them.html.

[10] Akron v. Akron Ctr. for Reprod. Health, supra (O’Connor, J., dissenting), quoting Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 457 U.S 242 (1982) (Burger, C.J., dissenting).

[11] Hippocrates, “The Oath of Hippocrates,” Harvard Classics, vol. 38 (New York 2001), https://www.bartleby.com/38/1/1.html.

[12] Declaration of Geneva (1948), amended by the 22nd World Medical Assembly at Sydney, Australia, August 1968, https://www.wma.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Decl-of-Geneva-v1968-1.pdf.

[13] See, e.g., Robert M. Byrn, “An American Tragedy: The Supreme Court on Abortion,” Fordham Law Review, vol. 41, no. 4 (May 1973), 807-862, and Joseph W. Dellapenna, “The History of Abortion: Technology, Morality, and Law,” University of Pittsburgh Law Review, vol. 40, no. 3 (Spring 1979), 359-428.

[14] William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford 1765-1769), 125-126, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch1.asp.

[15] See Marmion, Patrick J., and Ingrid Skop, “Induced Abortion and Increased Risk of Maternal Mortality,” The Linacre Quarterly, vol, 87, no. 3 (2020), 302-210, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0024363920922687; James Studnicki, et al., “Improving Maternal Outcomes: Comprehensive Reporting for All Pregnancy Outcomes,” Open Journal of Preventative Medicine, vol. 7, no. 8 (2017), https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=78764&#abstract.

[16] “Under the designation of ‘person’ there is no doubt that a private corporation is included” in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Milling Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181 (1888).

[17] Ely, supra note 6.

[18] Memorandum to the Conference (Blackmun, J.), Nov. 21, 1972.

[19] Memorandum to the Conference (Stewart, J.), Dec. 14, 1972, reproduced in Bob Woodward, “The Abortion Papers,” The Washington Post, Jan. 22, 1989, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1989/01/22/the-abortion-papers/ce695bcc-a7f9-4b09-bd57-8d7efff37a46/.

[20] Woodward, supra.

[21] Michael J. New, “Americans Don’t Really Support Roe v. Wade,” LifeNews.com, May 21, 2021, https://www.lifenews.com/2021/05/21/americans-dont-really-support-roe-v-wade-which-allows-abortions-up-to-birth-heres-why/.

[22] Justice Brandeis said this in 1932. See Horan, et al., supra at 5.

[23] Horan, supra at 11.”

#roe v. wade #abortion #pregnancy #women’s rights #babies #unborn babies #reproductive rights #reproduction health #reproduction rights #prochoice #pro-choice #pro-life #prolife

[terfslying]

Extremist Traits & TERFs

 The traits are taken from (here), which is a list of extremist traits by Laird Wilcox. Most examples are from interactions with people on this blog, because I’ve got to limit myself to something.

Character Assassination

“Extremists often attack the character of an opponent rather than deal with the facts or issues raised. They will question motives, qualifications, past associations, alleged values, personality, looks, mental health, and so on as a diversion from the issues under consideration”

TERF Examples: Character attacks on Susie Green, of Mermaids UK, to attempt to imply that her motive for Mermaids UK is to force her own child to transition. & Claiming Mermaids UK was a significant part of forcing a young UK child to be trans, when in fact he was being abused by his mother and Mermaids UK only ever were contacted by phone by the mother, and were not otherwise involved in any way.

Name-Calling and Labelling

“Extremists are quick to resort to epithets (racist, subversive, pervert, hate monger, nut, crackpot, […] and so on) to label and condemn opponents in order to divert attention from their arguments and to discourage others from hearing them out. These epithets don’t have to be proved to be effective; the mere fact they have been said is often enough”

TERF Examples: "pedophile apologist”, “infertile, fat white loser”, “rapist” (all directed at me!)

Irresponsible Sweeping Generalisations

“Extremists tend to make sweeping claims or judgements on little or no evidence, and they have a tendency to confuse similarity with sameness […] they assume that because two (or more) things, events, or persons are alike in some respects, they must be alike in most respects.”

TERF Examples: “trans women are just men”; use of crimes by cis men to attempt to demonstrate trans criminality

Inadequate Proof For Assertions

“Extremists tend to be very fuzzy about what constitutes proofs, and they also tend to get caught up in logical fallacies […] they tend to project wished-for conclusions and to exaggerate the significance of information that confirms their beliefs while derogating or ignoring information that contradicts them.”

TERF Examples: “This research is reliable because I agree with it, and I don’t care that the authors have deliberately published politically motivated anti-gay propaganda studies before”

Advocacy of Double Standards

“Extremists generally tend to judge themselves or their interest groups in terms of their intentions, which they tend to view very generously, and others by their acts, which they tend to view very critically. They would like you accept their assertions on faith, but they demand proof of yours. They tend to engage in special pleading on behalf of themselves or their interests, usually because of some alleged special status, past circumstances, or present disadvantage.”

TERF Example: Refusal to criticise WoLF + Julia Beck’s association with the Heritage Foundation due to presumed good intentions

Tendency to View Their Opponents and Critics As Essentially Evil

“To the extremist, opponents hold opposing positions because they are bad people […] not merely because they simply disagree, see the matter differently, have competing interests, or are perhaps even mistaken.”

TERF Example: I deserve to “rot in hell” because I don’t agree with TERFs

Manichaean Worldview

“Extremists have a tendency to see the world in terms of absolutes of good and evil, for them or against them, with no middle ground or intermediate positions. All issues are ultimately moral issues of right and wrong, with the ‘right’ position coinciding with their interests.”

TERF Example: Willingness to use and spread sources from the alt-right with no regard for the source, since if it coincides with their interest, it’s ‘right’

Advocacy Of Censorship or Repression of Their Opponents or Critics

“They may include a very active campaign to keep opponents from media access [… or] actually lobby for legislation against speaking, writing, teaching, or instructive ‘subversive’ or forbidden information or opinions.”

TERF Example: Pressure to isolate young trans teens from media access

Tend to Identify Themselves In Terms Of Who Their Enemies Are

“[E]xtremists may become emotionally bound to their opponents, who are often competing extremists themselves. Because they tend to view their enemies as evil and powerful, they tend, perhaps subconsciously, to emulate them, adopting to same tactics to a certain degree.”

TERF Example: "TRA’s”, “libfems”, “transcult”; emulating anti-feminist tactics by joining groups like Hands Across The Aisle to directly partner with anti-abortion, anti-feminist conservatives and divide-and-conquer

Tendency towards argument by intimidation

“Extremists tend to frame their arguments in such a way as to intimidate others into accepting their premises and conclusions. […] They use a lot of moralising, pontificating, and tend to be very judgemental. This shrill, harsh rhetorical style allows them to keep their opponents and critics on the defensive, cuts off troublesome lines of argument, and allows them to define the perimeters of debate.”

TERF Example: Using the words “trans women” and “literal pedophiles and rapists” interchangeably in arguments

Use of Slogans, Buzzwords, and Thought-Stopping Cliches

“For many extremists, shortcuts in thinking and in reasoning matters out seem to be necessary in order to avoid or evade awareness of troublesome facts and compelling counter-arguments. Extremists generally behave in ways that reinforce their prejudices and alter their own consciousness in a manner that bolsters their false confidence and sense of self-righteousness.”

TERF Examples: “Peak trans”, “autogynephiles”, the bathroom & prison rapist tropes, to discredit trans women; “handmaids” and “libfems” to discredit cis women who disagree with them

Assumption of Moral or Other Superiority over Others

“Most obvious would be claims of general racial or ethnic superiority […] Less obvious are claims of ennoblement because of alleged victimhood,”

TERF Examples: Expanding real victimisation of women to include historically inaccurate concepts, such as ‘witch hunts were methods of controlling women’s knowledge’ to increase superiority; complete disownment of any moral responsibility for violence perpetrated or encouraged by TERFs

Doomsday Thinking

“Extremists often predict dire or catastrophic consequences from a situation or from failure to follow a specific course, and they tend to exhibit a kind of ‘crisis-mindedness’. It can be a Communist takeover, a Nazi revival, nuclear war, earthquakes (… etc. …) Whatever it is, it’s just around the corner unless we follow their program and listen to the special insight and wisdom, to which only the truly enlightened have access.”

TERF Example: Fair Play For Women’s unrealistic theory that if Gender Recognition Certificates were easier to get, women’s prisons would be flooded with trans sex offenders instantly.

Belief that it’s okay to do bad things in service of a good cause

“Extremists may deliberately lie, distort, misquote, slander, defame, or libel their opponents or critics, engage in censorship or repression, or undertake violence in “special cases”.”

TERF Example: Wetmeadow ‘distorting’ my post on the cotton ceiling to imply that I was saying same-sex attraction is a mental illness, to discredit me.

Emphasis on Emotional Response (and less on logical analysis and reasoning)

“Extremist have an unspoken reverence for propaganda, which they may call ‘education’ or ‘consciousness-raising’. Symbolism plays an exaggerated role in their thinking and they tend to think imprecisely and metamorphically.”

TERF Example: ‘consciousness-raising’ has a long history in extreme radfem spaces; in recent online spaces it’s more often called ‘peak trans’.

Hypersensitivity and Vigilance

“Extremists perceive hostile innuendo in even casual comments; imagine rejection and antagonism concealed in honest disagreement and dissent; […] Although few extremists are clinically paranoid, many of them adopt a paranoid style with its attendant hostility and distrust.”

TERF Example: Exposinglesphob’s entire blog

Problems Tolerating Ambiguity and Uncertainty

“[T]he ideologies and belief systems to which extremists tend to attach themselves often represent grasping for certainty in an uncertain world, or an attempt to achieve absolute security in an environment that is naturally unpredictable […] Extremists exhibit a kind of risk-aversiveness that compels them to engage in controlling and manipulative behaviour, both on a personal level and in a political context.”

TERF Example: “What do you mean, someone’s gender or sex might be ambiguous?? Woman is a biological term for adult human females, it’s simple”

Inclination towards “GroupThink”

“‘Groupthink’ involves a tendency to conform to group norms and to preserve solidarity and concurrence at the expense of distorting members’ observations of facts, conflicting evidence, and disquieting observations [… Extremists may] only talk with one another, read material that reflects their own views, and can be almost phobic about the ‘propaganda’ of the ‘other side’. The result is a deterioration in reality-testing, rationality, and moral judgement.”

TERF Example: Any source I give is bad, even if they’re genuinely trying to say that wikipedia is ‘good research’.

Tendency to Personalise Hostility

“Extremists often wish for the personal bad fortune of their ‘enemies’ and celebrate when it occurs.”

TERF Example: The fact that pretty much every person who isn’t a TERF and who discourses has been told to kill themselves.

Extremists often feel that the system is no good unless they win

“If public opinion turns against them, it was because of ‘brainwashing’. If their followers become disillusioned, it’s because of ‘sabotage’.”

TERF Example: Ex-terfs like myself either are just too dumb to understand radical feminism, or we never even existed in the first place.

#long post #the longest of posts #terfs n fascists #terfs behaving badly tag #tag for sources

[scullysexual]

titanic au | multichapter-au | au | multiple parts | historical au | msr | mature | ao3 | 9/13 | @today-in-fic​​ | 

For Mulder, a wealthy English-bred socialite who’s had everything given to him since birth, the Titanic is shipping him off to a prison, a life he no longer wishes for or wants. For Scully, an Irish stranger from the lower class, it offers a new life, a future she can truly envision in America. What if the universe put them on the same path to achieve those dreams at the cost of life?

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

- - -

Mulder’s head was swimming, his brain couldn’t comprehend the knowledge as he strides towards his room. Scully is quiet beside him but she is still shimmering with rage, with fear and concern.

Her brother is downstairs.

The realisation hits him like a ton of bricks. She should be down with him, making sure he’s okay, not running around with him.

He stops with a sudden halt, Scully crashes into him.

“Mulder…”

“Go downstairs, Scully,” he says, spinning to face her. “Go check on Charlie.”

She’s speechless for a second, maybe she’s only just remembering this to. He sees that she’s about to turn around, to do as he says, but stops herself, shaking her head.

“He’ll be fine, they’ve probably already started the evacuation process.”

Right, there’s procedure for this kind of thing. Word that they have hit an iceberg gets around quickly, every member of staff will know what’s happened and they’ll know how to get everyone to the top decks safely.

The two proceed with their journey, a steward hurriedly runs down the corridor, Mulder knows Scully an uneasy look.

The destination is reached soon enough. There’s no time for manners, no time for knocking on doors and waiting to be let in, it’s Mulder’s room after all.

It doesn’t surprise him to find it already unlocked and pushes it open. His family, and Krycek, turn to look at him.

“There you are. Hungry? You missed dinner after all,” Father says, his eyes widen when Scully appears from behind Mulder. “What is she doing here, Fox?”

Mulder dismisses his father. “We don’t have time for all that. The ship hit an iceberg, that’s what I’m here to tell you.”

“Yes, I heard. I didn’t think that was true. Anyway, there’s a matter that I need to discuss with you—”

“It is true,” Mulder says, interrupting. “We were there. We saw it happen.”

“It’s not bad, is it?” asks Phoebe. Mulder hears the genuine concern in her voice.

He looks to Scully, wondering what to say. Scully remains quiet and emotionless beside him.

He turns back to Phoebe, answering as honestly as he can. “We don’t know,” he says. “What we do know is that the lifeboats only have more for a thousand and something people. There’s a lot more than that on board, more than half will die.”

Entirely preoccupied with Phoebe’s expression, how she mulls this information over with what seems to be distress he wonders for a second if he hears his father right.

“Not the better half, at least.”

If Scully’s energy had dulled out during this conversation, it’s cranked right back up to a thousand at the throwaway comment.

“How can you say that?”

Phoebe gasps. “But they said it couldn’t sink!” She wanders from the bed to the vanity, sitting herself down into the chair by it.

“I’ll get more information,” says Krycek, edging away from the wall. “If the ship is about to flood, we best make sure we’re not on it when it happens.” He walks towards the door, brushing against Scully in the process.

“Right, all that aside I want to discuss a certain unwanted gift I received upon entering the room—”

“It’s gone!” Phoebe cries, cutting Bill off. Mulder has no time to jump from the first issue to the second.

“What is?” he asks.

“One of my perfume bottles.”

“Are you sure?” asks Mother.

“Yes, I had six laid out and there’s only five here.” Her head whirls towards Scully’s direction. “You took it,” she accuses.

Mulder turns to look at Scully, dumbstruck over this entire situation. The look on her face tells him that she is as much confused as he is, speechless.

“I…I didn’t take anything!”

“You did when Fox brought you in here to draw that disgusting portrait of you.”

Mulder turns back to his father. In his hands he holds a folded piece of paper. An act of recklessness, a display of rebellion and his father holds the evidence in his hands, just as they wanted.

“I didn’t take your stupid perfume,” argues Scully.

“The note that was left was a nice touch indeed. Now you can keep us both captive and who’s clever idea was it to write that?” asks Bill.

Mulder looks to Scully.

“I thought as much.” Bill heads over to the fireplace, throwing the drawing into the flames. Mulder watches the embers curl the paper. A masterpiece falling to pieces.

“Can somebody search her at least!” Phoebe exclaims.

There was too much to process; the ship might be sinking, his father knows about their tryst and Scully’s just been accused of stealing. His head hurts.

“I’ll get someone to fetch the master-at-arms,” Mother says, running over to the door.

“I haven’t taken anything, Phoebe,” Scully helplessly disputes. Mulder makes eye contact with her and gently shakes his head, it’s a losing battle.

“Turn out your pockets then,” Father instructs just as Mother re-enters, telling them that the master-at-arms was on his way.

Mulder watches as Scully fists her hands into her skirt pockets. Her eyes widen and Mulder’s stomach drops to the floor, knowing what she knows.

Slowly, Scully drags out a vital.

“I told you!” Phoebe screams. “I told you she had it!”

Scully is gobsmacked, shaking her head as she stares at the vital disbelief. “I didn’t put that in there.”

“So you’re saying it just magically appeared there?”

Mulder doesn’t know what to believe. He racks through his memories of earlier. Had there been any point where he’d left her alone? Only when she had gotten undressed but she was in the bedroom then. She was looking at the perfumes, seemed extremely interested in them, did she take it then? She could of…

“What seems to be the problem then?”

Mulder turns his head to see an older man standing in the doorway.

“There’s been a case of thieving going on,” Father explains. The man looks around the room before his eyes narrow on Scully, completely out of place in her plain peasant clothes.

“This one did it I take it?” the man asks. “Is that what she stole?” He motions to the bottle she still holds in her hands.

“According to my daughter-in-law, yes,” says Bill.

The man swipes the bottle out of Scully’s hands, handing it back to Phoebe.

“They always try,” the man says, taking out a pair of handcuffs and pulling Scully’s arms behind her back.

“They put it in there! That Krycek did when he walked past me.”

The man only laughs. “And the tales that this ship is currently filling up with water are true.” He turns to address Father then. “I’m sorry for your time wasted.” He begins to drag Scully towards the door. “You shan’t be seeing her again after this.”

“I didn’t take it, Mulder, I swear! They put it in there. You know they did!”

Mulder doesn’t know what happened. He didn’t see. He didn’t see her take it earlier and he didn’t see Krycek put anything into his pocket. He didn’t see.

Mulder stares at the floor, flabbergasted at the whole scenario. Father strays over to him, placing a hand upon his shoulder.

“I’m sorry it had to come out this way, Fox,” he says. “The ones we love always hurt us the most. You’re free of her now.”

Mulder says nothing, he just watches as Phoebe places the perfume bottle back in its place, a sly smile across her face.

  This was ridiculous.

The ship was currently filling up with water and all these people can care about is stupid perfume bottles.

It’s typical. Typical rich people and unable to get their priorities straight.

Scully should’ve known better.

And Mulder.

He knows she’s didn’t take anything, he was there for Christ’s sake and yet nothing, he did nothing to defend her.

She tries not to be hurt, to change that hurt into understanding maybe he was just as confused as she was.

Or maybe he believed she’d taken the bottle anyway.

Scully adjusts her wrists, the handcuffs cutting into her skin. Fury rushes through her when she eyes Krycek leaning against a door, a smug smile across his face. He knocked into her. He put the bottle in her pocket.

“They finally caught you, did they?”

Scully glares at him as she’s dragged into the office. “You put it in there,” she says to him.

Krycek just cocks his head slightly. “Did I?”

Scully’s pulled into the office. Through a doorway is a bedroom, in much of the same style as all third class accommodation. The office is plain; a desk, a pinboard, a cupboard full of different keys. A place for criminals of the minor offenses to be held until they dock. Or until they drown.

The master-of-arms briefly unlocks the bracelet, tugging Scully’s wrists up as he wraps the chain around a pipe then clips the cuff back around her wrists.

“I didn’t do it,” Scully says again. There’s no fight in her voice, no energy, she just wants someone to listen to her story, that’s all she wants.

But the man just ignores her.

“Now, you just stay nice and snug there, Miss Scully, we’ll sort this out later.”

Scully just rolls her eyes. There’s not going to be a later, does nobody understand that?

“Sir,” says a steward appearing from around the doorframe and out of breath. “There’s an issue in the third class. They need you.”

The master at arms eyes Scully with hesitation. She looks aimlessly back, her eyes flicking between the officer and Krycek.

“I can stay with her,” Krycek says. Scully looks away, annoyance flooding through her at the thought of Krycek being the person she’s about to spend her last hours with.

“I’ll be right back,” the master at arms says before he’s following the steward out of the office.

With one last attempt, Scully sighs, “I didn’t do it.”

The boy sits down at the desk, his feet immediately propped up and a gleefully smile across his face. He’s enjoying every second of this.

“I know,” he says. “But they all believe you did; the officers. Mulder.”

A twinge of pain pangs in Scully’s chests. No matter what excuses she came up for Mulder, the truth was clear; he didn’t believe her, and having it be outed aloud just solidifies it for her.

Scully stares out of the porthole, not that she can see anything but her own reflection. A tornado of emotions spin within her. She’s about to die, handcuffed to a pipe, on a ship she never asked to be on, being accused for a crime she didn’t commit.

She could kill Charlie for his stupid ideas.

Charlie…She wonders where he is. Did he feel the collision? Is he heading towards top deck?

There’s an issue in third class. Is Charlie apart of that issue?

Worry for her brother joins the already busy tornado of emotions.

“That picture…” Krycek says, and God, could he just shut up so she can die in peace, please? “Shame such a body’s going to be wasted.”

Scully doesn’t bother hiding her disgust; she hates him; his stupid face, his stupid grin, his stupid mouth always having something to say.

But then what he’s just said hits her. Her disgust melting away for a second, she turns to him.

“You believe the ship is going to sink?”

He shrugs. “You and Mulder seem to.”

“That’s because it is. In about an hour or so. Half the people with it.”

“Guess I should go upstairs then.” He’s up and out before Scully can call him back to free her. It’s no use, it’s what these people wanted after all, her away from Mulder- it’s just an added bonus that she dies.

With one last hopeless shake of the handcuffs, Scully allows her head to fall against the pipe, preparing herself for her fate.

 Mulder’s head is buzzing, absorbing everything that’s happened in the last hour. Had it really been an hour since he was running about the ship with Scully? It seems ages ago. Time seems to have stopped existing on here, days turning into years, minutes turning into hours. Is there going to be a moment where it all rushes together and there’s no time at all?

They make their way down the staircase. The main reception is flooded with almost all passengers from first class. Much to Mulder’s bewilderment the band still plays and people still drink and carry on as if their lives weren’t in possible danger.

“How long’s this going to last for?” one woman asks a steward clearly trying to hurry past and has no time for anyone’s stupid questions.

“Not long. Just a precaution,” the steward says before he’s hurrying along through the crowds.

“It’s the English and doing everything by the book,” Bill scorns, shaking his head.

“Go back to the rooms and turn the heaters on,” Mother says to her maids. “You know how cold those rooms get.”

Mulder watches with disgust as the maids do as their told and head back to the rooms.

Congratulations, Mother, you may have just killed them.

“And bring Tuppence her toy!” Phoebe shouts up to them.

In response to her name, the dog yaps happily. Mulder stares at it.

“You know, they don’t let dogs on the lifeboats? They take up room.”

Phoebe looks at him as if he’s just told her that she has to kill the mutt right there and then.

“Don’t be mean, Fox,” Father scolds.

Phoebe hugs Tuppence closer to her body. “She’s tiny. If we have to get on a lifeboat, she can sit on my knee.”

Mulder just shrugs a whatever and turns away to watch the other side of the room.

“I don’t think anyone knows what the hell’s going on around here,” a dark haired woman says from across the room. Mulder thinks her name is Reyes or something, they planned to have her at their table at some point.

Through the window, Mulder spies a gathering of people, an officer talking to them to preparations to lower the lifeboat.

“Come on,” he says, turning back to his family. “They’re starting to lower the boats.”

Mulder leads the way to outside, joining the formation of people. Around him he hears shouts of Women and children first! He watches as people begin boarding the boats; some calm, warming themselves with the knowledge that they’ll be back on the ship in no time, some children cry as their torn away from their fathers and one wife tries to drag her husband with her only to be pulled apart by one of the crewmen in the lifeboat.

There’s a sense of urgency that doesn’t go unnoticed by Mulder. Flares go off around him as boats begin their decent to the water. He knows what others don’t; the lifeboats aren’t returning, this is it.

Preparations for the next boat begin underway and Mulder pulls Phoebe forward, a sudden need to get her and his mother on one that goes beyond the need for their safety, there’s something else and he knows it begins with S.

“Right, come on now,” the officer instructs. The louder woman from before is the first to board, urging the less certain to join her.

Mulder nudges Phoebe forward.

“I don’t want to,” she says, her hand wrapping tighter around Mulder’s arm.

“You need to,” Mulder tells her, pushing her forward. Phoebe, however, fights back, stays rooted to her spot.

“No. I want to go back to my room.” She spins to face Mulder. “Take me back!” she demands.

Mulder can only laugh- at her stupidity, at her arrogance, he can just laugh.

“There’s going to be no room to go back to soon. You need to get on the boat, Phoebe.”

Still, Phoebe just looks at him like he’s spoken another language.

“No room to go back to?”

He tries not to let his annoyance seep through. Tries to be as gentle as he can with her, at least for this last time, then he never has to see her again.

Mulder’s made up his mind.

“Phoebe, the ship will sink. Look around you, look at the urgency. They don’t have time for you to decide whether you’re getting on the boat or not. There’s not enough lifeboats to do that with, you either get on one now or you don’t and you drown. They are your options.”

It’s a shock to the system for someone to speak to her so directly, to tell her the truth as gruesome or as hurtful as it may be and as she tries to process this information, she just looks constipated.

“Will the lifeboats be seated according to class?”

Mulder looks away from Phoebe to glare at his mother. He says nothing, just allows the anger to wash through his body. He turns back to Phoebe.

“Please, Phoebe,” he pleads. For Scully’s life, “Just get on the boat.”

Phoebe nods, turning back to the lifeboat. Mulder taps the officer.

“Let her keep the dog,” he says. The officer is about to argue, his mouth opens but is closing as quickly. He nods.

“Teena will take Tuppence,” says Reyes, reaching out her hand to Phoebe. “I’ll help you.”

Mulder watches as Phoebe and more after her is loaded onto the boat and the boat begins to be lowered down before he’s turning away, his destination in mind.

“Where are you going?” he hears his father call from behind him. A hand reaches out. “Fox? Fox!”

Immediately, Mulder shrugs it off. “Get off me!” he says, spinning to face the man he calls his father.

Bill looks at him shocked, before recovering, that cold demeanor returning.

“Where are you going?” Mulder says nothing, allowing his silence to be his answer.

“You’re going to her, aren’t you?” Bill asks and still Mulder says nothing. Bill laughs. “She stole from your wife and still you’re choosing her. I didn’t realise I’d raised a stupid little boy.”

His fists clenching, mind swilling, Mulder shouts, “She didn’t steal anything!” A few people nearby turn towards them. Mulder ignores them. Bill, however, was never blessed with that ability and looks around at the faces subconsciously.

“We both know it was Krycek who put it in there.”

Bill just smiles. “Yes, it was. Of course, not that that matters. Who are they going to believe? A wealthy first class man or a whore from third class?”

Immediately after the words are uttered spit is flying out of Mulder’s mouth and onto Bill’s face, just as Mulder’s third class whore taught him.

His father’s face swivels up in disgust as he wipes the saliva from his cheek.

“You two are a pair, aren’t you?”

“And we’re still better than you.”

With that, Mulder takes up, not sparring any more thoughts for his father. Phoebe’s on a boat so at least she’ll survive for the most part. His only concern now was Scully, of finding her and freeing her and apologising over and over again for being such an idiot.

#txf #titanic au #i write

[katherine-of-earth]

George Floyd was murdered. Many, many people of color have been murdered by police in recent decades. To call Mr. Floyd’s death anything other than murder is an obfuscation. There is a long history of interpreting the deaths of people of color to suit white sensibilities, but murder is still murder, regardless of how many facts are bent, how many circuitous arguments are voiced to interpret it in a more positive light. The murder of innocents is wrong and, in this country especially, is symptomatic of the institutionalization of racism.

“Racism” has become a bit of a catchphrase of the left. While the word itself is fairly self-explanatory, it is now mired in politics. This is not fundamentally bad, as there is no way for a discussion of racism in this country to remain apolitical. However, the political nature of this subject matter can lead to the rejection of these concepts based on their political affiliation alone, with no regard to their merit. For this reason, I ask the reader to momentarily set aside their political assumptions as I attempt to contextualize current events within a larger, historical framework, as perceived through an anthropological lens.

Firstly, “race” is a cultural construct, stemming from a long, misguided Western tradition. This tradition was highly typological in nature, seeking to classify and rank kinds of people based on physical characteristics. Invariably, the white race was placed at the top of the hierarchy, with all other races being below the white race. This supposed biological superiority was evidentially supported by the “fact” that the white race was the most intelligent, the most artistically inclined, the most culturally refined of all the races (this was the argument which was used to justify the enslavement of people of color and the invasion and genocide of the Americas and, startlingly, is still employed today to justify historical and current atrocities).

These assumptions, which were the original basis of racist and ethnocentric beliefs, are inherently unsound. Race is not biological. The physical characteristics upon which racial typologies were built are not discrete variables, but rather, continuous. This is to say that traits such as skin color do not fall easily within a small number of groups (for example, Johann Blumenbach’s five races). There is far more variation in human skin tone than that. Human variation in general is incredibly vast, a result of the incredibly adaptive nature of our species.

Secondly, Western (white) civilization is not superior to any other culture. The accomplishments of Western culture are certainly great, the Mona Lisa is beautiful and Beethoven’s Fifth is powerful, but the appreciation of these things is also shaped by our culture. For this reason, the artistic and intellectual accomplishments of one culture cannot rightfully be compared to those of another—the Indian musical scale is not the Western scale. To the Western ear, Indian music will sound strange, because aesthetic sensibilities are culturally shaped. Of course, the world has changed considerably since the time in which the original arguments were made. The world has become increasingly globalized, so cultural differences such as this are not as jarringly obvious as they would have been at the time. But that is a discussion for another time.

These false assumptions were used to justify slavery, which led to the development of more stereotypes and more prejudice. Unfortunately, the whole system of slavery became a vicious cycle, as inequality becomes embodied, which seems to support and perpetuate existing prejudice. This notion is complex, so I will attempt to unpack it via the use of examples. Under the terrible conditions of slavery, it was common for enslaved people to be denied sufficient nutrition and education and generally experience incredible amounts of both physical and psychological stress. The notion that such stress can result in physical changes to the human body is one of the key tenets of the field of bioarchaeology and, as such, has been very thoroughly investigated. One result of such stress is increased susceptibility to disease and increased morbidity. For enslaved persons, this may have been interpreted by slaveowners as evidence that enslaved people possessed weaker constitutions and could not survive outside of slavery. The result of the denial of a (Western) education to enslaved people meant that they were often ignorant of many seemingly basic skills (such as reading). This led to the perpetuation of the stereotype that enslaved people were stupid. On and on the cycle goes.

Many of the prejudices which arose before and during slavery were enshrined in Western culture. Although slavery ended in this country in the nineteenth century, the old prejudices live on. Inequality continues, and its impact on the bodies and lives of people of color is still very much being felt. It is felt in the knee of a white man on the neck of a black man, in the startling minority of people of color in academia, in the vague notion that because a neighborhood is predominately black, that it must be a bad neighborhood. Racism is institutionalized based on the vicious cycle which has continued since the days of slavery—it is not that laws are made for the explicit purpose of being racist, but they are made in such a way as the end result is overwhelmingly negative for people of color. The cops that murder innocent people because of the color of their skin did not wake up that morning and think to themselves “today I’m going to kill a black kid.” These people have loved ones and friends, they go to church on Sunday, they coach their kids’ teams, and yet they murdered innocent people who “just happen to be black.” How is this possible? The answer is the naturalization of stereotypes.

Most people no longer think that white people are just plain better than black people, after all, that’s racist! Racism is bad! I’m not a racist, because I’m not a bad person! However, racist sentiment has been enshrined in our culture for a very long time. Prejudice has become naturalized. As a white kid who grew up in the South, I learned to be afraid of black people, because “lots of them are thugs… not all of them, but a lot.” But in the same breath I would proudly declare that “I’m no racist! White people aren’t better than black people!” This kind of thinking was not at all uncommon when I was a child, and it is still very much present. Racism, to so many, is simply the notion that African Americans are bad because of the color of their skin. As I have discussed, however, racism is much, much more complicated than that. The prejudices which are based on observed reality (for example, that many African Americans in my home town were poor) feed into the vicious cycle. Poverty and crime are often linked, because of the limited options available to those in poverty (this is yet another topic for another more in-depth discussion). The idea that black folks in my home town were dangerous because of their poverty likely led to the continuation of their poverty, as the stereotype meant that it was harder for African Americans to find a job, which perpetuates their poverty (this is merely a simplified example… no official studies have been done on this in my hometown, to my knowledge).

The cops which murdered people of color were embedded in this culture. It was their expectation, their prejudice, that people of color are more likely to be criminals, to be dangerous, than white people, which led to their responses. What, for those cops, was one instant of culturally-conditioned response (be it fear, weakness, or the rush of power), ended a human life forever and sends out further cultural ripples. I see so many people calling the rioters and protesters thugs, decrying their violent reactions. They are human beings who are hurting and suffering and desperate for change. Calling them thugs is to gloss over their complaint and to perpetuate the cultural image of the black person as violent criminal. Is the destruction of private property wrong? Of course it is, but in this instance it is justified. People of color have been peacefully protesting for years, but they were ignored. Many people are still trying to protest peacefully, in spite of everything that is going on. But of course we fixate on the violence alone, without paying attention to the context and the rationale. The destruction is regrettable, but the loss of innocent life is a thousand times more regrettable.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security… In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.”

That was the opening salvo of the Declaration of Independence. The actions of the rioters are not socially acceptable, they are radical, they cause harm to the livelihoods of people, but they are justified—it is their right, it is their duty, to make their voices heard, to evince change for the preservation and betterment of their lives. They are following in the grand American tradition of dissent and, to be honest, they suffered a much longer “train of abuses and usurpations” than did the founding fathers. Again, the destruction of private property is regrettable, but the death of innocents and the cultural oppression of millions is far more regrettable.

Finally, I have seen many, many testimonies of people of color describing their fear of the police, of their fear of just existing in this culture which is so sneakily hostile to them. Many people are ready to disregard these testimonies, to say that they are not true or that these people are overreacting. That is an incredibly privileged position to hold as a white person. Of course your lived experience is nothing like that! Of course it seems to you like everything is fine, because you indirectly benefit from enshrined prejudice! For this reason, when people of color describe a lived experience which is so different from the white experience, we must LISTEN to them and BELIEVE them. These rioters are sending a message that something is very wrong in this country. It is the same message which peaceful protesters have been relaying for years. How many innocents must die before enough is enough? The rioters and protesters are saying NO MORE. Why don’t we listen? The only way to end the violence on both sides is for us to listen, to discuss, and, finally, to come to a solution together.

[lareinemarie]

Media’s Lack of Compassion Regarding Serial Murders of Black Women

Media's Lack of Coverage and General Society's Lack of Compassion Regarding Serial Murders of Black Women

"This thing is serious business, until we know women are safe in this community, we will be out here every year," - Activist Kathy Wray of the Imperial Women Coalition

"We all know, if these young women had been white, the whole town would have been shut down, until it was solved."- Commenter Mike at Abagond regarding the Henry Louis Wallace serial killings of 11 young Black women in Charlotte

"The police don’t care because these are black women… . It’s not like Lonnie killed no high-powered white folks.  We don’t mean nothing to them.  We’re black. What the @@@@. Just another @@@@@ dead.  The @@@@ should not have been out there on drugs.”

Pamela Brooks, in “Tales of the Grim Sleeper”

This year will be the 10th anniversary of the Imperial House Murders(Anthony Sowell), the 25th anniversary of Henry Louis Wallace(Taco Bell Strangler), and the 40th anniversary of the  Boston Murders.

This will be a year-long series on how mainstream media and society disregards the serial murders of Black women in America.  Eleven years ago, I wrote a blog post, Crimes Against Black Women:  Four Cases regarding the neglect of media and police coverage regarding murders of Black women by people of all races and ethnicities as well as the insensitivity of the general public.  I going to discuss the Anthony Sowell murders, along with the Grim Reaper, and of course, Henry Louis Wallace(a.k.a. Bad Henry).  There has been other serial murderers of Black women in the past and current centuries.  Such as Gary Heidnik who murdered several Black women in the Philadelphia area.  Benjamin Atkins in Detroit in 1991-1992 murders of 11 women.  East Cleveland killer Michael Madison.  Larry Bright killed eight Black women in the Peoria area back during 2004-2005.  The Gary Indiana killer back in 2012.  The still unsolved serial murder case in Rocky Mount, N.C. in 2009.  But my focus will be on the four cases at hand.  The  police  should have warned that a murderer in the community and to make sure community has an input in solving murders and to bring the perpetrators to justice.  How the media should have had more sensitivity to those who are marginalized.

There will be at least four parts to this subject.  Because this is repeatedly ignored by the general public, society and media. Professor Cheryl L Neely of Oakland(MI) Community College discussed this lack of attention and police indifference in her debut book, You're Dead, So What.  She discussed at length how media, law enforcement, and the general public indifference to Black female victims of homicide.  She give examples and comparison between the murder of Imette St. Guillen and Stepha Clark.  How the media and the police treatment of such women are base upon socioeconomic class and race.  

We all know that mainstream media often saturate missing and murdered women with stories about beautiful, middle class White and Latina female victims such as Chandra Levy, Mollie Tibbitts, Nixzmary Brown, Laci Peterson, Kate Steinle, etc. There's a label for the aforementioned victims, coined as  the "Missing Beautiful White Woman Syndrome."  They're also considered victims deserving of sympathy, compassion, and empathy. Sure, the pedestalization of White American women help solidify the idea of young, beautiful White women as worthy of remembrance. They, along with lighter-skinned non black women of Color are the standard of beauty in America today.   We Americans still refer to celebrity White women as American Sweethearts who captured the hearts of Americans and others worldwide.  They're considered as sweet, easy on the eyes, and personable.  Also, non black women and girls get the assumption of innocence regardless of circumstances.

In contrast, society have very little compassion for Black women victims of crime, let alone serial killers.  As a matter of fact, Black female victims are labeled in American society and media as being

"loose", "fast", "crackheads", "runaways", drug users, "sluts","whores", "thots", mentally unstable, "baby-making machines", and "welfare queens". Likewise, the mainstream American media and the general public tendency to label Black females as "street women", "Chickenheads","prostitutes",  "ghetto","junkies", "ratchet" and so on.  For a very long time, Black women academics long contended that the controlling images of Black women(Jezebel, Mammy, Sapphire, Welfare Queen, Crackheads, etc.) are employed to stigmatize an already marginalized group of women. The jezebel stereotype especially. That stereotype justified abuse of Black women by White and Black men since slavery.  Such abuse rarely invoke outrage from the public.  That needs to change.

Speaking of the Madonna/whore ideology. From historic times, society in general always label women as either good, chaste women, wives, mothers, nuns or they're loose women, prostitutes, and mistresses/courtesans.  Renaissance artists reflected societal views of women through the Madonna paintings by famous artists Lippi, Botticelli, Raphael, etc., or nude paintings such as the Venus of Urbino by Titian.  

In American society, the Madonna/whore ideology is strong, tinged with class and race components.  White and other non black women, especially East Asian women are considered the "sacred Madonna" while Black, Native American, and certain Latinas, especially the Caribbean Latinas are labeled as "bad women" deserving of their fate.  This view is far more widespread as the lack of coverage, the disparaging remarks in and out of cyberspace, and general indifference on the part of law enforcement to solve murders of Black women in America and Indigenous women in Canada.  

The Madonna/whore mythology were used in how the public reacted to murders of Black women, the Heidnik, the Larry Bright, Gary Ridgeway, the Sowell case and the Henry Louis Wallace cases in particular.

For example, the Cleveland convenience store owner showed sympathy to Anthony Sowell, whom he said in the Unseen interview that "he took out the garbage".  That's a blatantly hateful remark.  He saw the victims, living and dead, of Anthony Sowell as being "worthless" and "undeserving" to him. He labelled the victims as worthless drug addicted and prostitutes(which most weren't)

Again using the Madonna/whore ideology in connection to the slow reaction on the part of Charlotte police in connection with the Henry Louis Wallace serial murder case, a concerned young woman  named Angala Grooms in East Charlotte stated that the police did not care because they viewed the pretty young Black female murder victims of Henry Louis Wallace:  

"I feel like they wrote us all off as some fast little black girls who didn't really matter."

The Madonna/whore ideology strategy was used by the defense during the Henry Louis Wallace trial as well.  

In the December 2014 issue of Vanity Fair article covering the Grim Sleeper and how law enforcement turned a blind eye to the serial murder of Black women, Franklin’s son Christopher describes meeting L.A.P.D. officers who asked if they could shake his hand, aware that he was the son of the Grim Sleeper. Broomfield was dumbstruck by the revelation. “Christopher told me his father had a lot of fans in law enforcement. Some police officers actually admired Lonnie for ‘cleaning up the streets.’ That seemed, to me, too incredible—that a serial killer could be a person who was respected within certain sections of law enforcement

Unfortunately, those attitudes are widespread in society, seeing poor, Native American, Latina, and Black women as being of lesser value than other American women.  

There's a deeply troubling disparity in reporting the disappearance and homicides of female victims reflects racial inequality and institutionalized racism in the social structure.

Oftentimes when reporting, there's a considerable bias when it comes to Black American female murder victims.  The reporters always want probe into the backgrounds of such women, their sexual histories, criminal records, the neighborhoods where they reside, their work/education backgrounds, history of drug/alcohol addictions, and whom their associations were as if they had done something wrong to cause their demise.  

They were rarely described in the media as being attractive, beautiful, smart, intelligent, serious, wonderful wives, good mothers, or pretty.  Those descriptions are reserved for middle/upper class and/or famous non black victims.

With precious few exceptions, there are very few media outlets cover Black female homicide/serial murder victims with sympathy and compassion.  

The Cleveland victims of Anthony Sowell  received coverage and even some compassion from local newspaper journalists. Writer Steve Miller wrote a compassionate book focusing on the victims and their lives in the book, Nobody's Women:  The Crimes and Victims of Anthony Sowell. They didn't focus too much on the victims' drug/alcohol addictions, criminal records, poor family lives, etc.  Instead, they discuss about their lives before circumstances took them away.  Even the Grim Sleeper victims are rehabilitated by author Christine Pilasek in her book, The Grim Sleeper:  Lost Women of South L.A.  Of course, the beautiful victims of Henry Louis Wallace.  Although they didn't get much coverage outside of Charlotte, they were written sympathetically as well.  

Ten years ago, I wrote a blog post about violence against Black women.  I wrote this in an attempt to get America and the world to acknowledge the violence done to Black women in America.

So many people, lurkers, scholars, crime experts came to this website for knowledge and information.  However, I will discuss the various serial murders of Black women in full detail and to bring more awareness to the public.  Here's the link to my old blog post:

https://httpjournalsaolcomjenjer6steph.blogspot.com/2007/08/crimes-against-black-women-four-cases.html

This will be at least ten segments regarding media and societal disregard for Black women and girls who are victims of serial murder.  They're not in the media and the general society don't care in the least about them unless they're passing judgment regarding Black serial murder victims like the owner of a Cleveland convenience store featured in the 2016 documentary, Unseen.

Black women and girls were devalued both in life and death.  

That attitude needs to change.

In the year-long series, I will be discussing at length the Anthony Sowell murders and his victims, living and dead.  How the city of Cleveland neglected impoverished Pleasant Hill neighborhood, the failings of the police, the residents, and business owners in detecting the murders and the smell of death along with it, the fallout of the Sowell case, and of course, the survivors of  Sowell.  Their voices matter as well.

In the second series, I'll do a lengthy series on the victims of Henry Louis Wallace.  Third, the Grim Sleeper, and finally the 1979 Boston murders and how feminists and Black groups organized to bring awareness of the murders of Black women in Boston.

Here is the outline of the upcoming segments regarding serial killers of Black women:

I   Anthony Sowell:   The Imperial House Murders

     A.  The Victims and Survivors of Anthony Sowell

                   Deceased Victims

         1.  Tonia Carmichael

         2.  Tishana Culver

         3.  Leshonda Long

         4.  Crystal Dozier

         5.  Michelle Mason

         6.  Kim Y. Smith

         7.  Amelda Hunter

         8.  Nancy Cobbs

         9.  Diane Turner

       10.  Janice Webb

       11.  Telacia Fortson

         Survivors

                 1.  Latundra Billups

         2.  Vanessa Gay

         3.  Shawn Morris

         4.  Gladys Wade

         5.  Vernice Crutcher

         6.  Melvette Sockwell

   B.   Media Coverage and Trial

          1.  Trial

          2.  Witness testimonies

          3.  Testimonies from Survivors

          4.  Sentencing Phase

   C.   Legacies

         1.  Documentaries

              a.  Unseen

              b.  Vice's Right Red Hand:  The Cleveland Strangler

              c.   Investigation Discovery Killer Instinct

         2.  Books

              a.  Nobody's Women by Steve Miller

              b.  House of Horrors by Robert Sberna

         3.  Memorials

              a.  Proposed 11 Angels Memorial

         4.  The Victims' families' continued pain  

              a.  Lawsuit and subsequent settlement with the City of Cleveland

              b.  Lack of counseling for the victims' families

              c.   Survivors of Sowell and their perspectives

               5.  Activism

              a.  Kathy Wray of the Imperial Women

         6.  Podcasts

II  Henry Louis Wallace:  The Taco Bell Strangler, a.k.a Bad Henry

         A. The Victims and their lives

          1.  Tashonda Bethea

          2.  Sharon Lavette Nance

          3.  Caroline Love

          4.  Shawna Denise Hawk

          5.  Audrey Ann Spain

          6.  Valencia Michele Jumper

          7.  Michelle Denise Stinson

          8.  Vanessa Little Mack

          9.  Brandi June Henderson

        10.  Betty Jean Baucom

        11.  Debra Ann Slaughter

     B.  Media Coverage and Trial

           1.  Venue change and jury selection

           2.  Trial and Sentencing

     C.  Legacies and Memorials

           1.  Mothers of Murdered Offspring

                a.  Dee Sumpter-  Shawna Hawk's mother

                b.  Objectives of the organization

           2.  Documentaries and Movies

                a.  Investigation Discovery Bad Henry

                b.  Southern Fried Homicide:  Too Many Women

                       3.  Academic Case Studies

           4.  The Victims' families' legacies

                a.  Tribute To The Victims of Henry Louis Wallace

           5.  Memorials

                           6.  Podcasts

                       7.  Sheriff Gary McFadden

III  The Grim Sleeper Murders/South Side Murders in Los Angeles

                A.  Why so Long?

          B.   Police and Public Apathy

          C.   Victims

          D.   Arrest and fallout of the LAPD

                 a.  Labeling of victims:  NHI(no human involved)

                 b.  Troubling support of the serial murderer by the LAPD

          E.   Trial and Sentencing

          F.    Media and Academic Studies

                 1.  Book:  The Grim Sleeper: The Lost Women of South Central                          L.A.

                 2.  Only Good Victims Need Apply:  Tales of the Grim Sleeper

                    G.   Activism

                 1. Margaret Prescod

IV   The Boston Murders

                 A.  The media coverage of victims

                 1.  Criticism

                  B.  Feminists and Black community criticism of the handling of the                    murders

                 1.  Six Black Women:  Why Did They Die?

                      a.  Combahee River Collective

                           1.  Barbara Smith

[sweetpinkstylist]

waaasit a minute. youre an anti-anti?

[sigh] Yes. And I’d like to prelude this by saying that I am absolutely not up for arguing this right now, so I’ll just be blocking anyone who comes at me all hot and enraged. If you want to unfollow and block me for this, I literally could not care less. I guess calling me “an anti-anti” is a bit strong because I don’t care to participate in the “discourse”, but I am strongly against the anti community, and I do ship the wrong things and write bad stuff fanfiction.

I am very pro-freedom of fiction. Fiction is, and has always been, a tool to explore; to explore things we want but cannot have, to explore things we would never want but are curious about, to explore our interests and things that repulse us in equal measure. To excite or to comfort. And no one has the right to tell anyone else that what excites or comforts them is wrong.

I am supportive of the power of consent, and the knowledge that what makes something “moral” or “amoral” is violation of someone’s rights. And because fictional characters are not real people who exist, it is impossible to violate their consent, they cannot be harmed, the only rights that matter in terms of fiction are the audience’s rights to be allowed to consent or not to participating in the fiction, whether that’s allowing someone to not consent to watching a gorey movie or a movie with explicit sex, or allowing an informed adult to watch that same thing. An adult’s power to consent is what makes the difference between a rape fantasy and sexual assault, the difference between an act that all participants find fulfilling, pleasurable, and/or comforting and a criminal act that harms those involved. As I said, fictional characters cannot be harmed, therefore the only consent that matters or even can be given is that of the creator and audience.

It is the responsibility of teenagers to see something say “you must be 18+ to enter” or otherwise see an adult rating and to comply. Adults are allowed to make content for adults and post it publicly for other adults to enjoy, it is not their responsibility to make sure that no teenager or could possibly ever see it. Teenagers are old enough to understand “no”, and adults should not be held responsible if a teenager sees “no” and says “yes” anyway. Adults have no responsibility to teenagers they have no connection to on the internet beyond placing a warning to let them stay away from what is/may be inappropriate for them.

I am disgusted by the culture of blaming predators on fiction, the idea that it is a story’s fault that someone got hurt by someone else. I am a strong believer in holding people accountable for their actions, and for not holding an artist responsible for the actions of their audience. I know that fiction can impact us and our beliefs, I know that vulnerable individuals may be particularly susceptible to being swayed by fiction, but it is not the responsibility of artists to know how every member of their potential audience will react to their work and create accordingly. It is never a writer’s fault if someone read their story and decided to harm someone else. This is why we do not ban porn, violent video games, or slasher films. No one is at fault for a predator’s decision to harm someone other than the predator in question (and possibly law enforcement or people close to either party if they wilfully ignored warning signs, but that’s unrelated to this topic). It is never the victim’s fault for reading or watching the wrong thing that made them stay in a dangerous situation. I am disgusted by the idea of placing the blame anywhere other than right at the feet of the person or people who committed the act. A writer has no way to control how the audience reacts to their story, whether it’s a predatory fantasy or a relationship with normal and healthy conflicts. No one is to blame other than the predator.

I am anti-censorship because I know that, regardless of best intentions, censorship always targets the most vulnerable communities before it even touches the real problem. Historically, censorship always fails because the innocent weak get trampled while the powerful strong sneak past and continue to do harm.

And I am supportive of victims who find comfort, power, or healing in fiction. As long as the content is adequately tagged to warn of the content, I am supportive of their desire to find a community in which to share things that other people find harmful or repulsive. If the content is appropriately tagged, no one has any right to say that their right to enjoy fiction matters less than that of victims who find healing in more “appropriate” ways. I am repulsed by the rampant problem in anti culture of telling victims that they are a part of the problem or they deserved what they went through because of the fiction they create or consumed.

So, yes, I am an anti of the toxic, puritanical, and controlling anti culture.

#mod talk

[thesydneyfeminists]

Why Chronic Illness is a Feminist Issue

When people hear of conditions like Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, Endometriosis and Lupus, they are often only vaguely aware of what they are and almost always ignorant of how they affect individual sufferers. There are so many different illnesses out there and no one person can know of all of them.  But the above mentioned are in fact quite common, and I bet you know of someone who has at least one of these syndromes/diseases.

You might assume that, given their prevalence, a great deal of research and funding has gone into these illnesses, but the opposite is true. These conditions primarily affect women, and medicine was and still is a largely male-dominated field, from almost all-male animal studies to majority male human studies. The gatekeepers to the profession are also mostly men, meaning they are less likely to study illnesses that especially affect women. Indeed, non-life threatening illnesses dominated by female patients often lack funding and research and are poorly understood by GPs and specialists alike.

In Maya Dunsenbery’s new book, “Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed and Sick”, the historical reasons for this stark gender bias in research are laid out, along with the long-reaching consequences that affect women to this day.  While some progress has been made in recent decades to address the problem, serious issues remain, right from the preclinical start.  On the topic of animal models, she writes:

“The persistence of male animal models is especially troubling when it comes to conditions that are more common among women. As the authors of a 2009 review of the male bias in basic pain research concluded, given that women are disproportionately impacted by chronic pain disorders, ‘one could argue that preclinical research that excludes females is incomplete at best or invalid at worst’. Nevertheless, a 2005 study found that nearly 80% of animal pain studies published in recent years had used only males”.

The argument most often given for all-male models in rats and mice is that females have hormonal cycles that could muddy results. The same argument was used to exclude women from studies, and still is used to exclude menstruating or pregnant women. But think of how ridiculous that argument is.  If the problem is that the female physiology is different in that it’s affected by hormonal cycles, then isn’t it essential that we do all-female studies on a new drug or treatment?  Shouldn’t we investigate how a dose of medicine could have different effects on the female body than the male (we do this for alcohol) or how symptoms of say, a heart attack differ in men than they do for women?  I could go on and on with examples, but the fact remains that women are dying because sex-based differences are NOT being explored, because male is assumed to be the default.  You can’t have it both ways.

Dusenbery writes, “…if the results of the study do vary significantly due to fluctuations in ovarian hormones, that’s all the more reason females needs to be studied, no matter the cost”.

The reality is that right from the get-go, women are left behind in medical research and therefore treatment, and it’s even worse for women of colour and low-income women. There are also persistent attitudes towards women’s pain and suffering, stemming from long-held myths surrounding hysteria (now known as “conversion disorder”) and that women are just delicate beings who suffer more from imagined problems (the “it’s all in your head” argument has pernicious roots).  Women with Fibromyalgia and other similar ailments are often dismissed or given the wrong treatment.

In her piece, “Chronic Pain and the Denial of Care for Black Women,” Alexandra Moffett-Bateau writes, “In an article for the New York Times, Laurie Edwards, author of In the Kingdom of the Sick, argues that women are sent to therapists, instead of provided pain management, in large part because they are frequently assumed to be overly emotional and hysterical by emergency room doctors. When the patient is young, Black, and feminine-of-center, her assumed lack of believability is compounded by the intersection of her identities.”

 There are few, if any areas in life, that aren’t affected by sexism and discrimination. As a woman-identifying person navigating this world, you can’t be thinking about how the patriarchy is affecting every facet of your life – it’s too exhausting, and depressing, to continuously contemplate. But we DO need to think about how gender bias in medicine is affecting our healthcare. Women are falling through the cracks and many are dying as a result of this criminal lack of care and understanding. If the system doesn’t fail them and lead to their suffering or death, some simply give up after a long, fruitless journey, and take their own lives.

Chronic illnesses that primarily affect women are being underfunded and under researched and that needs to change, not just because it’s unjust, but because this bias against properly investigating and understanding women’s health conditions is something that negatively affects us all. As feminists, we need to advocate for better rules and policies governing the way medical studies are performed, analysed and taught.  Advocacy groups around the world have been fighting hard for better inclusion and representation of women and other groups within mainstream medical research, but they need public support in order to be successful.

“It’s important to remember the role that grassroots advocacy played in getting the knowledge gap on the radar to begin with, Pinn says. ‘It was advocacy by individual women, groups of women and then women in positions of power’ – within the biomedical community and Congress – ‘who really brought forward the concept of women’s health’. They challenged women’s exclusion from clinical research, demanded greater attention to neglected women’s conditions, and raised the concern that there may be important sex/gender differences that ‘hadn’t been considered important enough to study’”. [Doing Harm, pg 57].

While we have made progress over the decades, there is still a long way to go. So next time you see a fundraiser for a woman-dominated illness, please consider donating. Write to your representative about the importance of stronger rules that force medical institutions to include women and minority groups in their research. Support your local women’s health centre or advocacy group.  Get active and get out there. Without pressure from the people, things aren’t going to advance any further. It’s time to stop leaving women behind in healthcare.

 Tessa Barratt is the President of The Sydney Feminists. She is also a sufferer of Fibromyalgia, Myofascial Pain Syndrome and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Like most people with chronic pain, she is tired of the endless carousel of doctors and specialists who appear to know nothing about her illnesses, and is on a quest this year to advocate for better research in women’s health.

May 12th is International Fibromyalgia Awareness Day.

#chronic illness #spoonie #women's health #women's healthcare #gender bias #gender bias in medicine #gender bias in health research #sexism #feminism #Doing Harm #Maya Dusenbery #Fibromyalgia #Fibromyalgia Awareness Day #ME/CFS #healthcare studies on women

[byblacks]

By: El Jones

Abdoul Abdi’s sister Fatuma once told me that the reason she and Abdoul do not speak Somali is because when they would speak to each other in their language, the workers would put them on time out and isolate them in their rooms, accusing them of plotting together to escape.

It was like being in solitary confinement, Fatuma told me.

For the last few days, the news is filled almost hourly it seems, with new outrages to migrant children emerging from the U.S-Mexico border. Last night, images of “tender age facilities” filled the news, with reports of crying toddlers traumatized by separation from their families.

Caving to the bad publicity from these shocking images, Trump signed an executive order claiming to end the family separation policy - while allowing for families to be detained indefinitely. The Canadian government, however, appears to feel no shame as they argue for the deportation of Abdi.

“How Canada Welcomes Refugees” says a meme circulating on social media, showing border guards hugging children, juxtaposed with images of children in cages in the U.S. In Canada’s habitual self-congratulation about what a kinder, more compassionate nation we are. There is no space for images of Fatuma and Abdoul as children, isolated in rooms by child welfare workers. Their tears are an inconvenience to a national narrative that insists, always insists, that “it’s not like that here.”

READ: Canada aims to avoid detaining migrant children, but it happens

On Tuesday there was a federal hearing challenging the referral of Abdoul Abdi to a deportation hearing — a hearing that can only end in one result, the decision to deport him to Somalia. Abdoul Abdi’s lawyer Benjamin Perryman argues that this deportation is a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and contrary to international law binding Canada to provide special protections to non-citizen youth in care.

Amid the global outrage of the U.S’s violation of the rights of migrant children, lawyers for the Canadian government argued that Abdoul’s human rights, and that more broadly the rights of children, are not relevant and should not be heard. As Perryman pointed out, not one sentence of the submissions for the Minister mention charter rights, or indicate that they were even considered. I keep returning to this: our government argues that the rights of children are so irrelevant that they should not even be spoken about.

Just getting to a hearing where arguments about the rights of refugee children and youth in care can be heard in court in front of a judge is a landmark. Benjamin Perryman along with intervenors Nasha Nijhawan for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Jane Stewart for Justice for Children and Youth are confronting injustices that remain largely hidden in Canada, and that the government has fought every step of the way to avoid considering. In a country where migrants can be indefinitely detained, where deaths of migrants in custody go unremarked and without inquiry, and where we pay human traffickers to deport people to countries too dangerous for officials to enter, perhaps it is no surprise that our government would prefer there to be no hearing at all.

The most bizarre part of yesterday’s argument was the lawyer for the minister opening her arguments by telling us that “the theme for today’s arguments is the letter P.” P is for privilege — citizenship is a right not a privilege. It is for public safety. It is also for policy and parliament, and people, because after all everyone in the system are just people doing their best.

Imagine arguing the rights of children are irrelevant as you try to deport to a danger zone a former child refugee denied his rights by the state, and using a Sesame Street format to make your points. A children’s show.

But P is also for Perryman, who opened his arguments by clearly naming anti-Black racism. “This is what anti-Black racism looks like in this country,” he emphasized.

One major way anti-Black racism is maintained in Canada is by simply ignoring the presence of Black people. If there are no Black people here, then it follows that anti-Black racism cannot exist in Canada.

As Robyn Maynard traces in her book Policing Black Lives:

"Ironically, whites-only migration policies were also seen as ways to avoid the racism found south of the border. A major justification for the functional ban on Black migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to avoid the “Negro problem” that existed in the United States. Racism, this suggests, was represented as an American problem that was foreign to Canada. In a similar vein, a historical analysis of media and public opinion at the time found that Canadians were staunchly opposed to Black migration, yet refused to think this racist. It was believed, in fact, that racism could be avoided to the extent that Black people were kept out of the country entirely."

Canada’s aversion to keeping race-based statistics similarly functions to maintain the fiction of race not being a problem in Canada. In yesterday’s hearing, lawyers for the government rejected research from the social sciences demonstrating that children in care are more vulnerable, that they are highly likely to face “crossover” into the criminal justice system, that they are marginalized in educational attainment and employment, that they face instability, and that the trauma they experience as children and in the system has life long effects. These effects, research shows, are compounded for migrant children and for racialized children. These studies were rejected by the Minister’s lawyers, in part, because they are not “statistics” and are therefore not “facts.” Racism and marginalization, in their argument, do not exist, and even if they did exist, are not relevant, and either way, we shouldn’t talk about it.

And if you dismiss any evidence of discrimination, then you can also claim that it is not possible to know about discrimination even if it is happening. There is a deep hypocrisy at work here. On the one hand, the system appeals to authority. Child welfare workers are the experts on what is best for Black families. Canadian Border Services officials are the authorities on who should be deported. These systems should not be questioned, and certainly not accused of bias. To even hold the hearing is “unfair.”

At the same time, there are simultaneous claims to innocence. How could the adults at Department of Community Services know how to obtain citizenship? The delegate for the minister isn’t a lawyer or a judge, how can they be expected to understand Charter rights or apply them?

Keep in mind that while the minister’s delegate cannot possibly be expected to comprehend human rights in Canada (but yet is qualified to make decisions), Abdoul is “culpable” as a child for not understanding citizenship law and not actively seeking a citizenship lawyer as a minor child in care and advocating for his own citizenship — despite minors being unable until last year to apply for citizenship on their own behalf.

The only person guilty in this scheme is the Black child.

Keep in mind as well that the lawyers for the minister rejected all the social science research showing the effects of childhood trauma of children in care. I say keep this in mind because the government went on to argue that Abdoul’s lack of memory or knowledge about his family isn’t a sign of trauma, but rather evidence of him willfully lying to agents. When Abdoul didn’t even have a lawyer, he submitted that his mother was dead and that his father was missing and he didn’t know where he was. Later, he told agents that both of his parents were murdered.

Perhaps a child who spent the first six years of his life in refugee camps, who fled to Canada at age 6, and grew up in care separated from his family might understandably not know about or remember what happened to his parents. If the lawyers had read the research, maybe they would know that trauma affects the memory. But instead, they again blamed the refugee for not knowing, all while arguing that adults not knowing crucial parts of their job such as the charter of rights or the need to obtain citizenship for refugee children is insignificant.

In the hearing, we also learned that prohibited youth records were obtained and used by CBSA in reaching their first referral decision. These records are protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, and it is illegal to access them, never mind to reproduce and use them in the decision about his admissibility to Canada. Even when the first referral decision was overturned, they continued to use the youth records unredacted. It was only when Perryman complained that the records were even redacted. Perryman pointed out that redacted passages from the prohibited records are still being used in the government’s submissions and were repeated unredacted in other places.

The minister’s delegate also questioned Abdoul’s closeness to his family, and whether or not he has a relationship with his daughter. I am reminded of how, during enslavement, when Black families were separated it was imagined that Black parents felt no more pain than “pups being taken from a bitch.”

While denying the existence of anti-Black racism during the hearing, it was the Black refugee child who was imagined as somehow oppressing all these powerful systems. He was the one being “unfair”: how terrible of Abdoul to suggest that he was mistreated in the child welfare system, or that the immigration system reveals anti-Black bias. Truly, these are the real victims in this case.

This article originally appeared in The Halifax Examiner.

[kitsutoshi]

When you know better...do better.

With the new year about to start, I’m thinking about resolutions.  Things to change.  To quote Maya Angelou “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

But I’m having trouble with that.  A lot of the time I don’t do better.  

Of course I want to “be the change I want to see in the world.”  But I also don’t want to introduce myself with my pronouns, because it feels weird, and the phrase “I am too old for this” plays in my head.  I understand that there’s some kind of thing about plastic straws being awful, but I’ve not read the articles and haven’t turned down a straw yet.  I’m still struggling to understand cultural appropriation (at least grayer aspects of it) and while I’m not buying any “Hot Buddhist Monk” Halloween costumes, I find myself thinking “how much does this really matter?” when YES it matters.  I think most people would agree it’s worse to knowingly do bad things than to accidentally or unknowingly do them.  I like to think I’m a good person…but this is some bullshit.

And not just me, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who knows better but screws up anyway.  If that wasn’t true then there would be no Doritos.

Right now we’re watching the long-overdue tipping point with sexual harassment, thanks largely to the #MeToo movement.  We’re tossing flawed men out of positions of responsibility as if it’s going out of style. And we’re vilifying them.  In some cases, for mistakes made back when those actions were the norm.  In other cases it’s dick pics.  Men fighting the tide of history.  Men who knew better, or had no excuse not to, but who propositioned those teenaged girls, those women at work.  Men who knew better, but grabbed women’s butts anyway.

And when I look at history, it’s filled with people who seriously had to know better (slavery? really?) but who just kept doing wrong.  Even people “on the wrong side of history” who definitely knew better.

I think we can all relate to knowing better but doing worse.  So how do we weigh that?  How do we handle all of this?  

I’ve engaged in discussions this year about how to honor historical heroes who were also deeply flawed people “by modern standards.”  If we judge historical people by what we now generally agree is wrong (slave owners are a great example) then we lose the good with the bad.  Thomas Jefferson, American hero…and terrible person who surely knew it was wrong to own people.

We’re also losing the good they’ve done (anyone feel like binging the Cosby Show?).  We have to figure out what to do with the artistic works, awards, philanthropy, invention…everything.  

So should we toss the baby with the bathwater?  And how do we think about those folks, past and present?  How do we think about ourselves? What wrongs are enough to write a person off completely?

So here we are, headed inexorably into the next New Year.  I’m considering resolutions, I want to “do better.”  I have a list of things I now know (or maybe haver for a long while) and I want to behave better.  But what if I don’t?  This issue is personal.  I can’t think “yeah, that Thomas Jefferson guy…” or “Dammit Al Franken!” without also thinking “and you.”  I’m no different than any people who didn’t “do better.”

We know that some social ills will only be fixed by waiting for a generation or two to die.  Young people who are “woke” waiting for older racist/sexist/homophobe/etc bigots to just die off and take their crufty views and behaviors with them.  Because change is hard.  People know better all day long, and don’t do better.

So it’s hard.  But is that an excuse?  (spoiler: no, no it isn’t).

So what are some of the things people debate “overlooking?” because of “the times they lived in?”   Owning slaves.  Harassing behavior that might have been the norm but was never ok. There’s this idea that if something was common that we should just understand and give people a bye.    I’m not so sure.

When I use a microscope, what I can see is a whole lot of people who knew clearly, long before the Civil War, that slavery was wrong.  Otherwise the Underground Railroad would have been to nowhere.  I see a lot of HR seminars on harassment and hostile work environment, laughed off by guys who didn’t want to change.

When recycling became a thing, young people were all over it.  There are plenty of Baby Boomers who throw away water bottles every day.  There are young people who would carry an empty plastic bottle across the earth to recycle it.  And there are people in between, who recycle if it’s convenient.  Do we give a pass to the individual boomers who can’t find a blue bin with both hands and a map, because it’s a “function of the times?”

Where am I going with this?

My dearest hope is that humanity will continue to advance. That the future will bring more social evolution.  More cooperation, less competition.  More selfless behavior, less profiteering.  More live-and-let-live and less authoritarianism.  I’d like to think that humanity will eventually produce the Federation of Planets.  

The best example I can think of where a sea-change is coming but we’re not yet at a tipping point is eating meat.  It seems likely that in the future, people won’t eat meat from real animals anymore.  Lab-grown real meat may be a thing, or good sense will have prevailed and folks will eat vegan, or just flat-out overpopulation will make meat a thing of the past.  I eat meat.  I know better.  I have the means to eat well without meat, and I don’t.  I try to source my meat from local farms with high ethical standards.  But not always.  But someday there will be whole generations of people who wouldn’t even contemplate killing an animal to make a meal.  How will they look at us?

If you speak to any not-deranged human being and say “is torturing an animal ok?”  The answer is unequivocally no.  Absolutely no.  But we rationalize.  We do it for medical science.  We definitely do it for food.  We wear leather but not fur.  We eat pigs but not dogs.  Ugly animals don’t count.  

But those people will look back at us in bafflement and disgust.  If we did awesome things, maybe won a Nobel Prize, or twelve Olympic medals…they will still look at us as “meat eaters.”  

What I’m looking for is a litmus test.  I’m no pinnacle of human perfection, there’s a lot going on that needs fixing here.  And our ancestors were the same.  People who knew damned well and good that women should be able to vote, but who went along with the social order of abuse and oppression.  Nazis.  Slave owners.  War profiteers.  Pussy grabbers.  Casting-couch sleaze.

But many of those people (not the Nazis) did great things.  Art, literature, war heroism, writing Constitutions.  We want to know those things right?

What would I want for future folk to think of me?  Not that I’m likely to be remembered in a hundred years, but if some future schoolchild does look back at my life, what do I want for them to think?  What would Thomas Jefferson want for me (and us) to think of him?

These are some answers I would give (TJ will have to speak for himself):

1. If I’m making mistakes (and history suggests that we all do that) then I’d like to be forgiven those.  If I really think I’m doing a good thing, but later hindsight says “nope,” future people please give me a pass.  I offer the same to people in my rear-view mirror.

2. When I already know better…How would I like to be viewed for that? When I refuse a major change with measurable benefit to the world, in favor of personal convenience or preference.  I’m the modern equivalent of the “nice” slave owner who knows it’s wrong so he makes sure that his slaves have good housing and food.  I’m a “product of my time” where most people who can afford to will eat meat every day. So even though vegans exist and ethics matter, I eat meat. When I look forward and think of those future great-great-great-great grandchildren looking back at me, I can’t meet their eyes.  If they need to dismiss whatever good I’ve done out of disgust for the things I do knowingly wrongly, I can’t blame them for that.  I know better, but I don’t do better.  My hope is that the problem (be it meat or something else) solved itself when a few generations died off, maybe including me and mine.

3. But what if I didn’t know, but I reallllly should have?  What if I’d never watched any PETA videos, never read Temple Grandin’s book.  What if I grew up without knowing how food comes to fork?  Some forms of Christianity differentiate between a sin committed knowingly, and one committed without knowledge.  Purgatory was invented because it wasn’t fair to think of all of those non-Christian souls burning in hell just because they never even had the opportunity to be forgiven.  Modern criminal law differentiates some types of offenses based on intent.  But I don’t know how I feel about those historical people who thought they were “protecting” women by treating them as voteless property.  I know that I’ve been confronted with ideas that I just haven’t had time or inclination or energy to deal with.  For example, the concept of “implicit bias” didn’t really land in my consciousness until this year, even though I had heard of it years ago.  It didn’t hit me with enough impact to motivate any effort on my part until recently.  But I could have learned it at any time.  The information was available to me.   I guess I’m not that forgiving.  Willful ignorance isn’t an excuse to me.  Your mileage may differ.  I hold myself accountable for things I chose not to know, at least things it would have been easy to know.  There’s a scale.  I’m ok with future people thinking “she used STRAWS?!  But didn’t she see those headlines on Facebook?” I hope they’ll cut a little slack for a primitive progenitor if the information wasn’t readily available, but if it was looking me in the face, that’s on me.

I don’t know how Thomas Jefferson would feel about this.  Or Winston Churchill.  My best guess is that they would feel as I do.  A Golden Rule situation.  If I would want for my progeny to forgive me for something, maybe I should forgive the same things.

Applying those rules of thumb:  Sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace.  It’s never been ok. Women have taken men to HR or court over this crap since women have worked.  No one younger than 90 should be able to plead ignorance that work isn’t the place to get handsy or to talk about sex or to try to get a date with your subordinate. But men who knew better sure haven’t done better.  Many have, but many have not.  No one is getting a pass.

We fought a war in this country in which slavery was the primary or a collateral issue (depends on who you ask).  Plenty of people knew perfectly well that it was wrong…but many people who knew better did worse.  I vote no passes.

There are a lot of vegetarians and vegans around.  And people still make fun of them.  I think most of us know that’s really right-action and that our meat-eating isn’t.  I’ve also seen a lot of humor to the effect that vegans and vegetarians are on a high horse (riding, not eating) and shouldn’t look down at the rest of us. But I see two things there:

When you’ve seen better and done better, maybe it’s ok to express that there’s something others should wake up to.  Why would we NOT want that?  Lots of people go to church specifically to be reminded to do better.

Maybe when you’ve walked a lot of miles being made fun of for ethical uprightness, reminders come out less like “hey, there’s something to consider” and more like “wtf is wrong with you?”    

We should want that reminder.  We should want to wake up to what we’re doing wrong.  But when you’re around someone who you know is doing better, it feels like being judged. Which all of us hate.  We think of ourselves as good people, but we know we’re doing bad things, and people doing better just remind us of that.  We judge ourselves.  Then we thrash, to avoid those feelings.

It’s galling, isn’t it.  When you know you’re choosing worse, and someone else has chosen better?  We want to keep doing the thing we do, but we don’t like to think of ourselves as bad.  So we weasel and manage our cognitive dissonance.  From inventing religions that give us “absolution” so we can keep on sinning, to making fun of vegans to avoid the idea that they’re right.  We compound our wrongs with more wrongs.

Right now we have a society where people who do better are actively mocked by people who do worse.  “Social justice warrior” is somehow an insult (!!?).  It sounds like something that should be the highest possible praise.  Its as if the bullies all won, and decent people are getting shoved into lockers.  Only we’re all the bullies too, on one subject or another.

So “know better…do better” right?   There’s no pass for failure.  Of course it’s easier to do things when everyone else is doing them too.  But sometimes we’re the first generation to know better.  We still have to do it.  We may someday figure out how to handle the artistic, scientific, philosophical, and other goods created by slave-owners, harassers, abusers, profiteers, and others.  I hope we do.  I’m going to use the “what would future progeny think?” litmus test.  And if “they’d think I was scum of the earth,” that seems fair.  If I knowingly do something wrong, just because everyone else is doing it too, I shouldn’t get a pass. 

Here’s the main step I plan to take this year.  I’d like to confront my irritation.  My blind spots.  Find my cognitive dissonance.  I may not manage to do better in some respects (burgers) but I’m going to face that head one.  No pats on the back. Conscience turned up to 11.  No passes given to myself if that future society wouldn’t give me one.  When I know better, I will own it when I don’t do better.  The world needs that.

#knowbetterdobetter #progress #blindspot #resolutions

[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

Part 2: The Cross-generational Perspective

In which the influence of Cupid Hawthorne can be felt as early as junior-year history

Warning: contains a scene of murder (of a young person) more explicit than in the previous part, focused on in great detail - specifically, strangulation - and murder as a whole is discussed throughout. There’s also minor homophobia / historical gay denial from a forum poster, transphobia disguised as “it’s just a joke bruh” rhetoric, very mild NSFW implications in one paragraph, and a requisite Cuphead reference since Vidcund would have killed me if I didn’t work King Dice into this somehow.

Castor didn't start collecting trophies deliberately until the third kill. By then, they were more at ease with the monumental task they'd set themselves, and more certain of what He would expect of them. Besides, the higher the body count, the harder it is to tell the victims apart without a souvenir or five. A broken button here, a tie there... Every little helps.

The first and second are both embodied by the same thing – though the need for reminiscence there is more out of desire than duty.

Automatically, they reach for a side drawer on the desk, an old shawl wrapped in a plastic bag wrapped in their hand in seconds. It's how Moms used to store the old photo album at home (may still do, actually; they need to pay them a visit next weekend). But, if anything, the history book inside is even more precious and handled with greater care, each page the wing of a gossamer moth. To desecrate His face would be nothing short of sacrilege.

Their finger runs along His pale jaw, and they pretend the deep-set eyes widen slightly at the sight of them.

Soon, Cupid. I'm nearly there.

The eyes that will first see that face on the page belong not to the nonbinary person they will become, but a teenage girl who happens to carry the name and the penis she had at birth. Her identity is just one of the many things Castor has picked up over time, like pierced ears, the zits that turn her rounded face into a game of connect-the-dots, and a keen interest in aspects of academia that most of her peers refuse to touch.

That last one especially. She didn't get into AP History through luck alone, after all. And it's paid off – she's learned more about the 1920s and 30s in the month or so they've been covering it than anything she gleaned from comparing the differences between World Wars I and II. To a Sim who drinks knowledge like it's water, such a thing is invaluable.

No matter how grisly that knowledge is.

“--looking at the rise of gangsters, mobs, and other such criminals, and how that relates to what we've already studied,” says Mr Piper, breaking through her thoughts. Ah, today's one such 'grisly day', then. “It's no secret that Roaring Heights, even today, has something of a fearsome reputation; when we made our list of qualities a few weeks ago, 'bad crowd' was a term that came up a lot, as I'm sure you remember. The existence of these criminal syndicates was and still is a large factor in those bad crowds, both proverbial and literal.”

“Like the Hook?” shouts a voice (as best as he can with it cracking) from the back of the room. “Is the Hook a syndicate?”

“No, Elliot. And I thought we agreed we wouldn't bring that urban legend up in class again.”

Elliot groans, but he does stay quiet after, thank god. It's not even from the right decade... Weren't it still Sunshine Cove back then?

“I'm more referring to actual families with lengthy histories of illegal activity: the Reeves, the Dandys, and so on. But we're going to focus exclusively on the Hawthorne family today, since they are particularly notorious. Who here knows which crimes the Hawthornes are the most tightly associated with?”

Hands rise sporadically around the room. Sam Nguyen's was up right away, but she was born there, so she's known about everything in this module so far.

Tallying the results in his head, the teacher stops when he sees her own hand still down. “Castor, I'm surprised you don't know,” he remarks.

“I've heard 'em mentioned in passing, Sir; I've just never had a chance to look into it.”

He seems to accept that: “Okay then. Glenn? Any ideas?”

“Extortion tactics, Sir? That's what most mobs do.”

“No it ain't! Haven't you seen CSI? Mobs are about murder. Culling the good guys, making them sleep with the fishes, capiche?” Orchid slips into an attempt at an Italian accent towards the end, one that doesn't jive well with the usual Hollow twang in the slightest.

“Uh, they probably wouldn't talk like that if they're--”

“Don't they blackmail people too?”

“That's the same thing, Clover!”

“Not really; extortion's more about getting what you want, blackmail's about them getting what they don't--”

A sharp tap on the desk with a spare whiteboard duster brings the class to silence and order... very temporarily, since it's broken by the sound of Steve's text-to-speech system. (God, she's just imagined that with a bad Italian accent too...) “Does it depend on which member of the family you're looking at, Sir?”

“That's right, Steve. And so are the other three of you, in that sense. Different generations of Hawthornes have those three aspects covered at different ratios. But while extortion and blackmail were reportedly the roots of the family business, it traces back to the 1910s, beyond the scope of the decades we are looking at this term. It's the second aspect – the murder –” Mr Piper lets the word hang in the room for a short second – “that cast the blackest mark on both them and the town as a whole from the years 1920 to 1930. If you can all turn to Page 74 in 'A Roaring Heights History' for me?”

Ever on the ball, Castor joins the others in retrieving their copy from the bottom of her quite hefty backpack. Damn lack of foresight. The air's thick with the sound of pages turning, numbers counted, 74, 74... ah-ha, there it is. Chapter title on the left, picture on the right, captioned: 'Cupid Hawthorne, feigning grief'. She glances at it by chance --

-- and the very foundations of the Earth shift beneath her.

He's so... striking. So real, despite the medium; like a firework given form. His jaw is practically a V, set in a scream, his lips curling back to show near-perfect teeth. Hair – no, she can hardly call it hair, it's a mane, swept wherever the wind takes it. His nostrils flare, highlighting a nose prominent enough to warrant sculptures, monuments. Eyebrows slant heavy in the fierce expression, and the eyes underneath...! There are a million and one stories within those eyes, greyscale though they are, every imagined fleck of those distant polaroid irises a new memory, of anger, of family, death, blood, anguish...

For a wild moment, for a wild lifetime, she imagines that it's her he is looking at, that his gaze is fixed upon her alone, that she's the reason for this burst of passion within such a soul. His voice, abstract, unheard, repeats within as the name lingers on his mouth, Castor, Castor.

When the world turns again and the echo fades, she's left adrift between peace and unrest.

Looking up to the classroom again is like stepping out of a cinema into a rainy day: brighter than hoped, darker than expected. To her surprise, only two minutes have passed since, given the clock's hands. She looks back at the people behind her. Sam, Steve, even Elliot... His face looks up at them all from the paper, captured and reflected from multiple angles.

And yet none of them seem to see him. If they look, it's briefly, before returning to the text underneath. There's a rarity in their books, and they're choosing to ignore it? Wait, Sam's looked up too – confused – was she, too, caught in the--?

“Uh, Castor?” she whispers. “You okay? You look pale. Need to see the nurse?”

“Uh-? Y-no, it's okay. I'll be fine.”

Castor quickly turns back to the front, to the task at hand – if such a thing even exists. There's words beyond the caption, and the teacher drones on, but they all seem strange now, nonsensical. An emotional dyslexia.

Is she really the only one to feel it? The only one to see Cupid Hawthorne, emblazoned in history, and have a reaction so...

visceral?

The haze the history lesson left behind shields her from the rest of the school day, for better or worse; she's unceremoniously home before she realizes it. Mom One is working tonight, so only her jade-green mother is there to greet her. Dinner's brief, a bowl of mac and cheese and a slice of sheet cake from the local baker's, and then it's time for homework. In theory, anyway.

In practice, the first word she types into Google, on reflex, is “Hawthorne”. She makes no attempt to stop it after that. She does have a week for most of these pieces, and a reputation of being prepared to uphold...

Result after result pours onto the screen, and with it information and revelation. First, that out of all the people in the room that morning, Orchid had been closest to the truth. Matters of money and influence are barely mentioned, with some of the forum users she digs up not even knowing that the criminal activity went that deep. All talk is of the War of the Hawthornes: the players, the game, and even a fraction of the cause.

Crimedivi So turns out they used to run bachelorette challenges in the old days too?? They weren't c**** popular like now, but there were apparently enough of them that RQ ran one, and Cupid meddled in it by killing everyone off!! I mean, wtf???? Even if you don't like your family that's just low you know??????

Castor assumes the asterixes are due to the forum's format, rather than self-imposed (especially when the same poster later refers to it as a series of 'a**a**inations').

Allystelle205 I've heard about that too! That's why no one knows who Rose Quartz ended up marrying in the end, I think: she had to protect his identity to make sure Cupid couldn't track them and kill them again... :O

xxxgogetterx “his”? wasn't she pansexual? there wouldve been women in there too dumba**

Allystelle205 Dude, gay people didn't exist in the 1930s! They would have been killed for--

She scrolls past that hot mess quickly until she finds a mod post warning them that her sexuality's neither up for debate, nor the actual point... she thinks. It doesn't have his name in it, so she doesn't get all the details.

movethatpawawayfromyoursim Anyway, back on topic...... @crimedivi it wouldn't have been the first time Cupid killed off his own family. Pretty much everyone else in it are dead because of him after all – three in that car crash, one got shot, one got strangled. I forget which is which. After that level of evil, killing her suitors to get to her really isn't that much of a stretch

Crimedivi ik ik but until then no one else had to get killed OUTSIDE off the family right?? and think about it, there's NEVER been a bc since where this has happened, people dying cus they wanna get married!!!! its just a new layer of bad somehow yknow??? kinda makes me wanna be sick!!

SpeckleP Especially since Rose Quartz was like reeeeaaaally mentally ill. There's records out there of her being in an asylum once upon a time in Bridgeport I think it was. They say schizophrenia but I think it was more that Cupid had such a hold over her that she broke herself so he couldn't hurt her anymore or something like that? Imagine getting out of there only to lose even more people to him and not knowing why...

Crimedivi now I really AM gonna be sick thanks SpeckleP!!!!!!

She looks at her hands, poised on the keyboard, then over to her open book. He's still there in print, facing away from the gossip about his motives and deeds that splits the screen. Castor slants him towards her again, giving him another long look, waiting for... she doesn't know what. Another change? How can there be change, when he has already infected her mind so thoroughly? How can there be anger, revulsion, at such a sight? And yet it's so easy for others to feel, firmly in the corner of the family scorned...

The book goes back down. Maybe there's something to what Sam said, after all. Maybe Castor is sick – just in a very different way to little Crimedivi.

This notion doesn't bother her as much as she thought it would.

The topic staggers on for another few posts (including a very pointed remark about the healthcare system from AtheistKatherine33) before stalling. Perhaps another website will bring her more insight.

Searching more specifically for “Cupid” this time, it's not long before she's inundated with a wall of neon text that looks like it's from the era of GeoCities, if not somehow earlier. But it doesn't take long for her to convert it into something resembling legibility. It's broken up by a picture – not a copy. This one's captioned “most recent known photo”, but he's less clear here, a calmer face in a crowd of dots and stripes, caught only by a red circle. His arm is linked with that of a black man to his right, in... is she imagining it? Or is it a protective sense? A partner of some kind? That'd be odd, given the era, and yet... they're standing so...

For the first time in months, Castor's chest feels a dismal flickering that she recognizes as dysphoria. She winces. Not now, not... Reading, more reading. She sinks into the paragraphs on paragraphs, feeling the flames of that shrink under a much greater fire.

1914-1918: Records show that Cupid H served in the Roaring Heights branch of the Allied forces during the events of the first World War. Debates are thick on the ground as to how many casualties can be attributed to him in this time ...

Winter-Spring, 1920: After a meeting with a rival syndicate, Oleander, Dogwood and Gillyflower H are killed in a car crash. It later transpires that the crash was due to sabotage of the vehicle in question; despite denying it at first, Cupid would later admit to being the culprit ...

Summer, 1920: Cupid strangles Blush H, then goes on to shoot Bow H in a duel to the death. These are the first murders that he is known to have committed directly, without the use of war as an excuse or a car crash as a buffer. Reports persist, though unsubstantiated, that Cupid was crying during these acts ...

1925: After five years of being in charge of the family business, Cupid H goes into an unexplained exile, leaving the company with no head and no direction ...

1930: A further five years of absence end with a secret reappearance in Raspberry Hearts. Cupid infiltrates the bachelor challenge of his sister Rose Quartz H, using Grey Tundora as a proxy to eliminate all competition. By the time only he and the person who will marry her remain, Cupid reveals himself to her, and--

“Cassie?”

“Mm?” She jolts herself back into the room in time to see a body in the doorway. “Yeah, Mom?”

“Are you okay? I've called up to you four times.”

Oh crap... first too little time has passed, now apparently far too much. “Sorry, I've just been doin' a spot of reading up. I'm fine.”

Mom Two doesn't budge. “I hope you did some of your homework before--”

“Oh, this is homework... sorta. Extracurricular – y- nothing you’d understand,” she reassures a little too quickly for her own mouth.

“What of, hon? Anything in particular?”

Yeesh, what is this, the Inquisition? I'm keepin' him waiting... “Just stuff, Mom. School stuff? That's what extracurricular means. And if I don't get back to it soon it'll be extra-extracurricular, so if y’all could... y’know...?”

The face in the door twists, disconcerted, confused. “Are you sure you're okay? You're not normally so ornery. If there's anything wrong, you know you can tell me and Laverne, don't you?” That look, backed with the sadness under her words, brings mollified shame to Castor's cheeks.

“No, nuffin's wrong. Sorry, didn't mean to shout; s'been a heck of a day, is all. I'm okay, though, honestly,” she adds before more worry can spawn from that. “Promise.”

This, at least, seems placating enough, since her parent smiles again. “Promise promise?”

“Yup. And if I'm wrong, sic Mom One on me in the morning.”

“I will. Anyway, I'm near about past going, so I'm heading to bed. Don't stay up too long now, will you?”

“I won't,” says Castor, already acutely aware of how much of a lie that could turn out to be. “Night, Momma.”

“G'night, little spark.”

And thus Mom Two finally departs, leaving her child to dive back into research, first online then back to off, under the watching eyes of a man briefly seen.

It's little surprise that she sleeps late, book tucked under the pillow; yet, inexplicably, she still jolts awake just before sunrise. She dreamt mostly of Cupid. She couldn't help it. A man so mysterious, powerful, and – judging by the hand pressed between her legs – experienced could invade the dreams of anyone if he desired it. (The fact that he would be several years her senior doesn't cross her mind, addled with mingling red and white splatter stains as it is.)

She spends so much time scrutinizing the parts of the chapter she missed over breakfast that she clean forgets to make up her usual teapot-ponytails. The excess hair weighs more than usual at her nape, a pleasantly strange sensation; few comment on it when she gets into school. At this point, they tend to let her more unconventional fashion choices slide.

Well... most of them do. As morning drags her kicking and screaming into the sticky, perpetual hours of lunch period, an exception first seeded years ago is set to prove the rule.

“Hey, Cassie. What's a gal like you doing in the boy's bathroom?”

Ignore him. Just ignore him. Focus on freshening up.

“Helloooo? I said, what's a gal like you doin--”

“That ain't gonna work, Lemonlips. I'm in too bad a mood.” Focus, focus. Sweep 'cross the eyelid, left to right...

Merlot barks out a laugh that morphs into a gravelly hack halfway through, courtesy of the cigarette aflame in his pale-green hand. “Shit, you're always in a bad mood now. What the hell happened to your sense of humor, babe?” he drawls, lingering on the final word as though it in itself is an insult.

Nothing, your sense of humor just switched into makin' me the butt of every joke when you worked out I was trans, her mind snarls, fingers curling around the eyeshadow brush. But there's no sense in voicing that. She's explained it to him before, even before their friendship dissolved, and he's never gotten it. Out of ignorance or malice, she still doesn't know.

Thank Christ he was in none of her classes today. After the morning she's had – distracted by a roaring beauty, sidelined by a surprise pop quiz in her worst subject, caught passing a note to Floss in Biology – more of Merlot than is necessary would turn her into the very being in the photo.

“I'm only saying that with you saying you're a girl all the time and wearing your hair like a girl and putting on that f-” he stalls, apparently thinking better of it – “makeup like a girl, you oughta be in the bathroom with the other girls. Sue me for making a good point every once in a while.”

A swift wave of red across the other eye. She loves this color; it puts more emphasis on the contrast within her pupils and less on the zit that’s somehow appeared in her eyebrow, what the hell? “Last week I was in the girl's bathroom, and you kicked up a stink about that too. Made out like I was a predator, remember?”

“Jesus Christ, I was only jok--”

“Yeah, well, it weren't funny. It were sick.” On to the next shade in her kit, a deeper hue this time, reminiscent of roses and blood... She wonders how often Cupid saw this color in his line of work. “Besides, everywhere else is full up today, so I'm stuck in here with you--”

“Riiight, right, gotcha,” says her fellow Berry dismissively. “Can't stand the thought of them being prettier than you.”

“It's not--”

“Don't lie, it's always been like that.” He stubs out his smoke on the wall, leaving one of many little marks on the linoleum. “Envy's your Achilles heel, babe, your deadly sin. That's why you broke it off with me, that's why you decided you were a girl – cus you knew you could never match up to what I've got to offer if you just stayed a boy like I asked.”

Her teeth grit together... is she being particularly touchy today, or he particularly aggravating? “Lemonlips, you know for a fact that's not true. I--”

“Bullshit it's not!”

Pain erupts in ear and vision both – “Gyah!” – he's much closer and louder than before, and the alarm's made her jab the brush through her closed lids and into the actual eyeball. “Sunnuva... ” Owww, she thinks as she pulls it out, sending an ugly smear along her right cheekbone, that's gonna sting somethin' awful.

“Sorry. Y-you okay?” she hears beyond the ringing. “Didn't... fuck your face up, did I?” There's a tremble in the tone, an off-key one. Did that actually...? Blinking the injured eye rapidly, she cracks open the other, casts it at him – Adam's apple quivering, but a smile in the mouth and the...

Laughing. The son of a bitch is still laughing.

The brush falls to the floor. Her hand reaches immediately, instead, for her standard trusty watch enclosed in a trouser pocket. By all rights she ought to have done this the second he saw her, but she had to give him a chance, didn't she? Like she does every single... ugh. She prays this time will be quick. Calm and quick.

“Uh, w- what are you doing?” the idiot says, still trying to stifle his guffaws.

“You know what I'm doing,” she replies, evenly. “What's important is what you're doin'. Doing.”

“Oh please, you think I'm gonna fall for that again? I'm getting wise to your tricks, Cas-”

But she is wiser. “No tricks, Merlot. Think about what you're doing. Think about what you're saying. Think about how you're breathing. Think about that breath, caught in your chest. Let it out for me.” The rhythm to her words is coming naturally, as is the subtle swing of the watch, a distraction to the other's eye. Even in their early days, he was drawn to this. “Let the breath in. Let the breath out. Focus on that. The breath in, the breath out. Focus on the breath. Focus on my voice, focus on the watch. Let us fade, let us stay, stay where you can see us. Focus on the breath and the voice and the watch.”

“Yyou're...” The protest is stoppered; he's already slurring.

“Focus on the voice and the watch. On the voice, the watch. The voice. Only the voice. Let the voice guide you. Let me do the work. Focus on the voice. Ignore how your eyes droop. Ignore how your tongue feels heavy. Ignore how your bones slouch. Focus on the voice telling you this. Focus all of your being on the voice. Ignore your tiring. Focus on the voice. Focus... and sleep.”

And he's slack against the wall, dropping to the floor in a well-executed trance state.

There. Now maybe he can shut up. Castor retrieves the brush from the ground, repacks her makeup kit, slips it and the watch into her bag. She's still got a while before class begins again. She can grab a snack from the cafeteria, she decides. Fix her eyeshadow elsewhere, add some blush. Read some more about...

She pauses in front of the door.

On any other day – on the same day, in any other world – this pause would be brief. She would shake it off, swing open and out into the school as herself. The satisfaction of seeing him down for the count would be enough, enough to quell everything, the haunting of her dream, the reminder of what was and what's to come. That would be the end of it.

On this day, she turns back.

A slow approach to her former friend. A discarding of the backpack. A lowering onto bended knees to see him up close. His yellow buzzcut is coarse, a shaved pattern disappearing. The insectine lines across his face are slack in slumber. Long eyelashes rest upon cheeks.

This much is true – he was pretty to her, once upon a time. But there is greater beauty than her own to compare him to, now.

He's not wearing his usual scarf; it's a warm sort of day, so it doesn't call for it, she supposes. The uniform looks incomplete without it, though. Too small for his body, too wide for his neck. His neck. Exposed, thin. The lump of a voicebox within is less clear, hidden by its stretching out, its length. She looks more carefully – there's a vein, or perhaps another birthmark of the skin, crawling to his chin.

It occurs to her, looking at it, how fragile a neck can be. There's only skin and blood protecting the windpipe, and not even that much of it. Anything could sever it, whatever the sharpness. A knife. A pen. A hand. Two hands.

Those of a criminal. Those of a hypnotist.

--three in that car crash, one got shot, one got strangled--

The bathroom at once seems much wider and taller than before, swamping them both. A dizzy Castor looks at her fingers again – red with makeup, green with potential.

Could I-? Could I...?

--the first murders that he is known to have committed directly--

She finds herself reaching out, softly, towards the breathing vessel. Two fingers, a thumb. A pulse underneath. He doesn't stir; the trance must be deep. So very...

He wouldn't even notice. He wouldn't wake. He'd never wake again, would he? No more of those thinly-veiled jokes. No more memories, tainted. No one hurt by him ever again.

And the ocean within her head would stop crashing at the shores of the skull.

--Cupid strangles Blush H--

Left hand joins right. Both fasten, like a collar, around the sleeping Merlot's throat.

Solid ridges form under her touch, columns of muscle. Tighter; the drumbeat rises, a steady rhythm. Tighter; she feels it when he subconsciously swallows. A circle smaller by degrees, the more she squeezes, her grip steadying with each of her own inhales and exhales. Calm and quick.

Calm and quick. Don't get carried away. Don't waste this. Could never waste this. Is she hearing herself, or him, or Him? Who's pretending to be her? Is this pretension? Too many questions. Too much air in the body of this waste of space, his arrogant being, his brother. Flush it out, flush it all out. Let oxygen drip away.  

A quickening of the arteries – a fluttering, a stirring. Dammit. Merlot's coming out, he's aware, he's seeing the vice grip and the body attached to the grip and the eyes of red and green and blue that see him too. He tries to gulp in alarm, to shriek... it won't help. How can it help if he can't breathe to do it? He struggles underneath her, fails to back away, to press forward. His own limbs, ineffectual, reach up to grab hers, to pull her away from this most vital of tasks. A begging for mercy, when he offered her none. A chance to let go.

She presses harder.

He croaks, panics, claws at her haphazardly, barely scratching the surface, much less the spirit; they're limp before he knows it. He's kicking out now, but she isn't dislodged. He has no quarter in this battle, this war, this slaughter. Not anymore. Not now she can sense that nothing's passing through, nothing in, nothing out. Focus on the breath. Hah – focus on the lack of breath. Focus on the blood vessels bursting, tinting the whites of him. Focus on the single tear. Focus on the fear, the danger, the regret, rising, then falling, fading, fading away...

When her own trance lifts, her palms can no longer feel his heart.

Castor finds herself unable to move at first. Then, gradually, carefully, she peels away from him, shuffles back to get a better look at this: her destruction. The body is unchanged on the fundamental level; buzzcut, filled with lines, lashes thick. But it's only a shell. Merlot, as she knew him, as grew up with her, as turned on her, simply isn't there, a victim of his own cocoon.

...no, not of that. A victim of me, she thinks. Thinks again. Victim. Killed. Killed him. It's almost tuneful. I just killed him. I've literally just killed a man. Didn't even need a car to do it. Just hands. 

Wonder if anyone heard me doing it. ...wait, what if they did? What if they find his body? This is going to get out eventually. Lots of things do in this school. What if it does and they find out I did it? What if they see my fingerprints? What would Moms think? What would Mr Piper think? Floss, Sam, wh- what would...

What would He think?

The bag's been dislodged, somehow, in the scuffle. She pulls it back to her, as though in a dream. An errant streak of pink is on the front cover; she can clean that up later. What's important is Page 74, and the Cupid within. The restrained rage. The black and white look that's...

changed. Everything that was within before has coalesced into one emotion. She doesn't have to guess to know it's for her, or to know what it is.

Pride.

The world is suddenly and startlingly hot and cold and wet. She crushes the book to her chest, His picture flat against her heart by coincidence or design. At the same time, there's a smell of ichor and bone and fog, wrapping around her legs. The walls rumble motionlessly.

Of two things, Castor is certain in this moment. First: that Death has come to take the carcass, the damning evidence, of Merlot Lemonlips away. Second: that she will love Cupid Hawthorne for the rest of her limited existence.

#sims 3 #ts3 #writing #castor erkens #death/ #murder/ #strangulation/ #neck injury/ #choking/ #neck trauma/ #homophobia/ #transphobia/ #they who cannot be escaped

[fionaharnett]

Written by Frank Natter

Here is the speech I gave today Before I properly begin, I think it is also important to state that I am not here representing Grenfell United. I am a supporter of their campaign and I work with them to make their videos, but I am not a member of Grenfell United. I didn’t lose any family members in that fire, nor did I survive it. Grenfell United is composed, solely, of those people directly and profoundly (profundamente) effected by the fire, for obvious reasons. It was only by calendar errors that a member is not sat with me today. I am here as last year my friend Hannan showed the film I co-made. It was deeply moving to have the film translated into Spanish and to hear of its appreciation. It is an honour to be invited to speak this year. With that said, let me begin. I have a confession to make, I didn’t read up enough on you all before I came here. I therefore find myself in a place, where I find myself a kind of heretic (hereje). You see, I am not wedded to non-violence. In certain contexts, and in many historical moments, I will defend political violence - the Haitian revolution for example. Moreover, I have never found myself at home in Gandhian philosophy, his actions in South Africa, organising to be considered a class/caste/race above Africans racialised as black foretold (predicho) the hierarchies that would define the battle he had with the anti-caste (casta) resistance hero, Ambedkar. My appraisal of the Gandhi and his legacy cannot detach itself from the figures of resistance who preceded him, who used violence, nor from the violence of partition (dividir) that followed, tearing Pakistan from India and bringing about millions of deaths and the largest forced migration in human history. I come from a philosophy where you need both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to achieve justice, and I follow the logic that the necessary response to the assassination of MLK was the forming of the black panthers. I say this all, not to prod or poke to seek debate or fury, but to make proper sense of the position I hold at this moment in time, and to put in a context the poem that I will end this speech on. It would be disingenuous (insincero) any other way and I think frank and open discussion is what we all came for. With that said, despite my philosophical and political differences, I am here to represent a campaign - like that of Fateme’s - that is non-violent by necessity. Political violence was not an option for meaningful change in the wake of the state crime at Grenfell Tower, because of the state’s power and the vulnerability of the communities affected by the fire. For those who are not aware of what happened at Grenfell, allow me to explain. On the 14th June 2017, a fridge caught fire in a fourth floor flat in a social housing tower block with 24 floors. The fire spread to the external of the building. Within twenty minutes, the fire had spread to be uncontrollable. It engulfed (envuelto) the building. The fire service responded with a policy to contain the fire, “stay put.” Their advice was for people to stay in their homes. This ended up as a death sentence for many of the 71 people who perished that night, 72 if we add Pily Burton, who died due to health complications from the fire months later. The fire service were not prepared for the fire they faced on that night, an inferno that haunts in unimaginable ways those who witnessed it, fought it, lived through it or spoke to family members as they breathed their last breaths. The reason the fire service were not prepared was because deregulation has allowed for buildings to be covered/clad to buildings that some fire experts hold should not be allowed on dog kennels (residencia canina). The insulation and cladding that was on Grenfell was the equivalent of 30,000 litres of petrol. Margeret Thatcher began the process of deregulation (desregulación) that killed, but it was not solely her doing, the fatal change came from the ‘socialist’ New Labour. This was the outcome of what I will call the market state, what we generally call neo-liberalism. The power of finance capital over our lives has meant global corporations are in many ways more powerful and financially secure than our nation states, so they get to determine the policies and regulations that exist to preserve our lives. Grenfell was a sign of how bad things had become. The reason 30,000 litres of soldified petrol was clad to the homes of over 300 people at Grenfell Tower (and hundreds of thousands more across ‘Great’ Britain) was because companies like Arconic and Cellotex could tell the government and local authorities that their products were safe without lab testing, this is called ‘desktop studies’. They allow somebody like myself, with no scientific knowledge beyond the basics, to combine materials based upon reports that were not independently lab tested. Allowing corporations to regulate themselves put hundreds of thousands at risk of death across the UK and killed the family members of my friends and traumatised a community I love. Not only that, in the aftermath of the fire, in the words of our former prime minister Theresa May, there was a “failure of state.” The community of north Kensington, where the fire took place, were abandoned by the state and left to fend for themselves. Grenfell was the UK’s Katrina, it exposed the rot of our system. If you hear the names of the deceased read out, you will hear names from across the world. People who had come to Britain fleeing the war in Syria died in Grenfell. In Britain, despite not only 15% of the population being non-white, racialised groups are most likely to live on the top floors of tower blocks. No one from the highest floors at Grenfell survived. Grenfell was a crime that cut along race and class lines, in a very serious way, but it also transcended them. So since then, we have campaigned, we have fought, we have argued, we have screamed, we have cried, we have weeped and we have exhausted ourselves in the fight for a justice that seems so elusive. The reason justice is as elusive is because so many people are implicated in this crime. Central government were warned of the dangers; fires in the UK and abroad had warned of the issues, they were ignored. Calls were muted, messages were ignored. Government ministers in the previous administration were warned 21 times of the threat of Grenfell. They did nothing. Their names are Eric Pickles and Gavin Barwell. But they are not the only ones responsible for this. Arconic - the developer of the cladding - in its own brochure, said the cladding should not go beyond 10 metres. Grenfell was 67 metres tall. Their head of UK sales targeted the local authority (The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management organisation) for the sale of the materials. The local authority - the richest in London at the time - applied needly austerity (austeridad) measures to the redevelopment and it led to mass death. Criminal culpability (culpabilidad) is easy to establish here, the charge we have for such offences is manslaughter (homicidio involuntario). But as the rapper Lowkey put it, this shows in extreme fashion how neoliberalism kills people. It was deregulation that spread the fire from the outside and austerity within. You see the fire did not spread just from the outside but inside as well. The richest local authority in London, one of the richest spaces in Europe, did not even invest in proper fire doors. In 2008, we saw the logic of too big to fail applied. Bankers who crashed the economy and indirectly killed millions through the damages that spread like a tidal wave were too central to the system to face criminalisation. With Grenfell, the logic is the same. To pursue meaningful justice would, by its very nature, undermine the system as we know it. So these corporations and bodies - and the people who sit above them - are too big to fall. So what has been done? There have been many who have operated for those affected by the fire, but few have acted with. Again I will refer back to Fateme’s speech, with a slight rephrasing: everyone was speaking about Grenfell, very few were speaking with those most affected. Much of the early politics around Grenfell were problematic, and threatened social order. Political violence seemed a very real possibility in the immediate aftermath, because of the state’s failure and the nature of the intrusions coming into the community, in large part by the media. Much of the work undertaken has been to keep up resistance, without falling into violence, which would benefit the state. Grenfell United formed shortly after the fire, their first aim was humanitarian, it was to look after those most in need. The second phase was to sort things out, to get people rehoused, to extend support. Their third phase has been to campaign for fundamental change. They have successfully campaigned - again by necessity - for the government to adopt new regulations for buildings, which though limited and not by any means what was demanded, they have achieved. They have got hundreds of millions released by the government to assist local authorities to remove these materials from buildings. Yes, my government, despite the fire, had to have the survivors and bereaved campaign to remove this stuff. And they still haven’t done anything but the basics. The other day, almost two and half years since the fire, the government finally removed the cladding from a children’s hospital. Let that sink in for a minute. This stuff is on homes, hospitals, schools, student accommodation across my country, and much of the world. The majority of buildings covered with this stuff in 2017, before Grenfell, still are now. That is a crime unto itself, in my book. The government have used anti-terror laws to hide the extremity, but we all know who the terrorists are here. So what are my demands? 1) Housing is a human right 2) That housing must be fit for human habitation, it must be clean, it must be hooked up to utilities, and it must be regulated, people must live in places that do not kill them. 3) That standard for housing should be universal, housing regulations have to cut across borders, because no one in the world should have to face what happened at Grenfell, nor live in the conditions that we know exist across the third world, I have the recent fire in Bangladesh in mind and extend my deepest solidarity with those affected. 4) Those at a state level implicated in such crimes, and those in the board rooms, have to face the same justice as the rest of us, this is bound to my second demand. If you provide a home that kills, you face the same justice as if I give you a pill of cyanide (cianuro) and call it a sweet. Yet, in my country, this is not the case, and it is the sixth largest economy within the world. We are going further into the problems that caused this in the first place. Regulation is seen as anti-business, not pro-life. We are not alone here, this is the case now for the majority of the world’s population. It may not be fire safety, but corporations - aided and abetted by governments - are putting us at increasing risk of death. This makes me violent in my mind. I am not serene. I do not find compassion for those responsible in my head or heart. I am driven to stand up against these people, to tell them as loudly as I can that in my book they are criminals and I will keep saying their names. There are many more names I could say, but for the time being, we are still hoping that the British state will do its job and criminalise these people, so certain people will remain hidden, for now… Yet, the process of taking the steps, of walking, of collectivising for a common sense of justice is what we have done. We have walked two marathons as a collective since Grenfell by meeting silently and walking on the 14th of every month. Our silence has lasted the best part of a week, if you add it all up. And we will continue to do this, not because we think it will deliver justice, not because it is tactically astute (astuta), not because it hits the pockets/wallets/money of our oppressors, but because it is a way of us coming together, marking the date, taking stock and cementing the bonds in what promises to be a very long struggle for any sense of justice. With that all being said, I will end on a poem I wrote about the silent march. If any of you come to visit London and you are there on the 14th of the month, come and join us. Follow Grenfell United and Grenfell Silent Walk on social media for more information and to follow the campaign. We walk in silence out of respect. We walk in silence because we are mourning. We walk in silence because even if we didn’t know someone who died directly, someone who lost their world could be standing next to us. We walk in silence because words so often offend. We walk in silence because to speak is to vent and to vent is to rage. We walk in silence because if we spoke, our throats would burn. We walk in silence because otherwise our fists would quickly come to talk too. We walk in silence because our muted presence should scare those responsible. We walk in silence because we cannot say a word that the events of the 14th June don’t speak for us. We walk in silence because we carry the weight of history and the burden is easier in quiet. We walk in silence because it pains those who wish to speak for us. We walk in silence because if we even whispered about what justice looks like in totality, the streets would stir with revolt. We walk in silence because it is stealthy. We walk in silence because we are waiting to be done right by. The silence has an end point. The silence is not there to comfort the powerful, it is to soothe those living with hell. The silence speaks for itself. Respect what it says. Don’t speak over it.

Written by Frank Natter

#5IMAG001W #beyondtheframe

[axiolotl]

Raina, 87

Thank you Joel!!! I know it took me a while to do this, but I absolutely love Raina and I had to take some time to figure her and her whole situation out. 

>{Send me a prompt and a character!}

Title: Sometimes You Just Can’t Get Rid of a Drug Dealer

Description: Detective Raina Cornwell has had a really long day. She really just wants to get some dinner. But a drug dealer, a fish sandwich, and her commanding officer (who happens to be her dad) is going to make her day a lot longer.

Rating: Teen, for language. 

Read on Ao3, or below:

The second she smelled the fried fish, Raina was in its thrall, and nothing could stop her from getting a basket of Hesiat’s finest snack. After a long day of work and no chance to grab food, her stomach protested as she ran straight past the hole-in-the-wall fish joint as she chased down Frank Jung, the most prolific drug dealer in her district of Empyrea.

As her boots pounded on the pavement, she silently cursed Jung. She’d tailed him all day, following him to three different stops where he traded the most potent strain of ambrosia the planet had ever seen. Just when she had gotten close, a roving trader had tripped her and sprawled her across the street. The scene was enough to grab his notice, and the, “Sorry, Officer!” tipped him off enough to make him start running.

Along with his drug charges  he was resisting arrest and keeping her from a well-deserved crunchy, greasy dinner. Raina frowned and pushed herself even further forward, trying to make up lost ground as Jung’s figure grew further and further away on the boardwalk.

She could just shoot his leg and get the chase over with, but her infraction last month and a promise to her father kept her pistol securely in its holster. No, she would do this the old fashioned way — bodily assault.

Jung turned away from the boardwalk towards the city, the incline of the street slowing both of their paces.  They were both on par in terms of knowledge of the streets — he knew where he was going, how to try to lose her. But Jung was never a cop and a childhood hooligan, and clearly he had never tangled with her before.

Raina veered towards a building under construction, hopped right onto a hovering industrial lift, and aimed her holo-tool at the controls. A quick bypass she always had queued (useful for perp chases and the break room vending machine) gave her control, and she forced the platform to go up much faster than the manufacturers probably ever intended.

Once she reached the top, she hurtled onto the roof as building materials fell to the street below. As she spotted Jung still running on the main boulevard, she jumped from roof to roof of the tightly packed buildings of downtown, her legs following the same path that she’d been carving for years in high school. Building jumping was the most exciting thing you could do in Empyrea when she was a kid, before all the mining companies came and brought people and industry and tourists. The downtown was seen as historic now, the dense groups of buildings made to conserve energy seen as old fashioned as sprawling estates started dominating the colony.

Jung seemed to think he lost her, and he slowed to a jog, still looking over his shoulder as he moved. Yes, let your guard down Frankie, Raina thought evilly as she lunged over an alley, adrenaline rushing through her system as she saw the drop below her. She used to be told not to look down, but she always disobeyed, relishing the way her stomach dropped with fear. It was awesome.

Raina was on par with Jung now as he turned a corner onto a smaller side street, and she saw her chance: a thick cable hanging down from a store ahead. She made a leap that left her heart on the roof behind her, her hands just barely gripping onto the cable as she slid down. Her momentum pushed the cable far enough for her to land a couple of meters behind Jung, and before he could react, she did a roll to absorb the fall and tackled the drug dealer to the ground.

“What the fuck!” he yelled as she pinned him to the ground, forcefully taking his hands and cuffing them behind his back.

“Frank Jung, you are under arrest for three different charges of illegal drug trafficking,” Raina huffed out, her breath feeling much heavier now that she was no longer mobile. “And probably a lot more.”

“Fucking bitch,” he spit out against the pavement, squirming underneath her weight.

She started reciting his rights, standing up and hauling the smaller man next to her. He listened silently, his eyes angry, but his body clearly defeated from the long chase. Raina started leading him back towards the boardwalk — not as far away as it felt, though it always seemed like time stretched for longer when every moment counts. The walk after such an intense sprint felt good, and every breath relaxed her more as they made their way back to the beachside station.

The smells of the city reached her nose, now clear to her that the adrenaline rush created tunnel vision that only let her focus on her target.

Fried salbut wafted towards her and her stomach gurgled disgruntledly, her tunnel vision now focusing on dinner. She side-eyed Jung, who was now looking down and stomping along, clearly angry but compliant. She looked at the time on her holo-tool and, to hell with it, started making her way towards the source of her gluttonous desires.

A small shack of a restaurant sat squeezed between a real estate office and a thrift store, the Something Fishy! sign lighting up with garish colors, inviting locals and tourists alike to the temptation of their fried delicacies.

Raina stood outside, thinking for a second, and Jung looked between her and the storefront. “Why the hell are we here?”

“Because, Frankie,” Raina said, leading him to a thick pipe outside of the dirty windows of the restaurant. “I’ve been following you all day, and since you didn’t take a break, neither did I.”

“Fuck off,” he mumbled, but there’s no bite behind it. Raina tested the pipe by shoulder-checking it, and, satisfied, secured one half of the handcuffs to the pipe.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, standing tall over his hunched form. “And if you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll get you some fries.”

He spat on the ground as she walked away, and Raina gave him a pointed glare, made an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture with her fingers, and strolled into the store.

Every moment Raina had to wait on line, she felt like more and more of her soul was seeping out through every pore. She felt like her stomach was a hollow cavern that was caving in from lack of support, her very being imploding while she was waiting for her fish sandwich. Her eyes strayed outside the window every couple of moments, ensuring that Jung was still secured. He didn’t seem to be doing much, especially after she disabled his holo-tool.

Her order barely hit the counter when her number was called — she swiped it from the cashier’s hand, greedily stuffing a handful of fries into her mouth. She moaned probably a little too loudly, but did not shy away from the looks that the other patrons gave her — she only kept scarfing them down as she gathered her drink, condiments, napkins…

Suddenly, there was a commotion outside — someone was dragging Jung up by the collar. Raina rushed through the door, greasy paper bag in hand, a mush of fries still in her mouth as she yelled, “Hey!”

Her combative stature stopped the moment she saw that the figure standing over Jung was, in fact, the police chief of Empyrea.

“Detective,” Chief Davis Cornwell said, turning slowly towards her. “When, exactly, were you planning to bring Frank Jung into custody?”

Raina swallowed what was left of her fries and stood a little taller, feeling a little indignant. “He was in my custody. I was on my way back to the station. I just got a little…distracted.”

The chief raised an eyebrow. “Cornwell, I don’t care what happens — you catch a perp, you bring him straight back to the station. The arrest comes before anything,” Raina could probably recite the rest of his lecture from memory. “And your disrespect for the badge, and the people of this city by leaving a dangerous criminal unattended, is unappreciated.”

“And I apologize to the greater people of Empyrea,” she said, feeling indignant. “But should I not take care of my body so that I can greater serve them?”

“Raina, don’t give me lip.”

She continued, not heeding his warning. “I got Jung, he’s in my custody. I was going to the station, and everything was in control. I followed almost every rule in the book.”

“That’s enough,” he said, stomping up to her and swiping the bag of fast food out of her hand, and dunked it straight into a garbage can. “Your insubordination—”

“Hey! I was gonna eat that!” she almost growled, taking all of her will not to dig through the garbage to get her dinner back.

Fuming, he said, “Your insubordination will not be tolerated, nor will your ignorance of the law. That’s another infraction, Cornwell.” His face scrunched up in disapproval. “Have Jung back at headquarters within the hour, and then we’ll discuss the consequences of your actions.”

“But, Dad, I —”

“Within. The. Hour.”

Davis Cornwell turned away from his daughter, stalking back to his department hover craft, the anger radiating off of him in every step that he took.

Raina stood stiff, flexing her fingers in and out of fists as she tried to stop herself from punching the nearest wall. As far as she was concerned, she did the job — in a pretty kickass way, if she may add — she got the bad guy, she finished her two week investigation. The paperwork and formalities could come later. And the fact that her father couldn’t give one centimeter of flexibility for the best detective under his command, and especially his daughter, infuriated her to no end.

It was never enough for him. No matter what she did, who she caught, how far up the chain of command she got. It didn’t matter that she was the most prolific gymnast on the planet, or the best shooter on his squad. She would never be enough.

The fact that he disrespected her enough to throw out her food, reprimand her in front of a perp… Raina ran a hand roughly through her hair, deeply scratching her scalp, trying her best not to chase after her father’s craft and blow out the engine. She stared as he puttered away, hoping that he felt the laser beams of anger coming from her glare.

She heard a shift of movement next to her. “So, did you get me any fries?” Frank Jung said from his position on the ground, still handcuffed to the pipe.

Beside her anger, she gave a small laugh. “Fuck off, Frankie.”

#alyssa writes #frontier heroes #raina cornwell #i love my space lesbian detective with a flair for the dramatic and a loose interpretation of the rules

[chriswhitewolf]

In response to recent social issues. These are my views on how our country is reacting to social injustice, and how we need to change our actions in order to find solutions and end this pain. These words come from personal experience and my knowledge of psychology and problem solving methods that are known to work.

I am appalled by the actions of people in this country in these days. Extreme actions by both those supporting police and those opposing them are absolutely disgusting to watch. Let me explain.

The officers who have done such horrendous acts as to use excessive force and cause wrongful death deserve prosecution. They are acting immorally and illegally, and I can only hope that the more sensible protests can spur justice on.

But the extreme protestors, not to mention rioters, who are sweeping the country are equally disturbing. I have heard claims that all police are bad, that the system of law enforcement is a complete failure. The same people who have claimed these things are stating that one legal historical death of a black American by officers doesn't mean the rest of the deaths are okay. If this one instance of the police being right does not define all people of color in America, neither can the illegal acts of corrupt members of law enforcement define all officers as murders and racists.

Let me be clear here. I support police reform, and the idea that we as a country and a people need to do more to combat lingering racism. But I do not support the people who are using half-truths and limited facts to claim that every member of our law enforcement agencies is immoral or evil, nor do I support that we need to defund or disband law enforcement.

You complain that officers use excessive force and are not well trained in deescalation and non-violent tactics. Give them training. Give more funds to the agencies and get officers the training they need to be able to respond more appropriately, because defunding or disbanding will only cause more wrongful deaths.

If we remove funds from our police, they will have less training and fewer officers. So when a call comes in for an armed robber in a grocery store, there will be no officers who aren't already at another location with another crime. You are now risking the lives of every single person - regardless of gender, race, or age - because you demanded there be less funds to the police force. "Have social workers do some of it." Social workers are neither trained to do police work, nor willing. They have chosen their career as a social worker - despite the incredibly low pay in the field - because that is what they want to do with their lives. They did not, as police officers, choose to risk their lives to rush into active crime scenes to try and stop criminal acts. You are asking these already underpaid civil servants to do twice as much work - work they do not want to do - for the same, or at best mildly increased, pay. I won't even mention how many criminals and murderers will go on crime sprees should police and law enforcement agencies be completely eradicated.

I am not saying there are not flaws in our system of law enforcement, because there are. Of course there are, because our officers and supervisors are human. Humans make mistakes, often big ones, and do wrong or even evil things. But that is not the fault of all officers. It is the fault of the corrupt and overall despicable humans who find their way into the police force. We need to do something to help prevent more incidents like we have seen, to keep the corrupt and evil officers from maintaining their position on the force. But we cannot remove the system entirely, nor can we limit it, without causing even more wrongful death.

I also want to address an issue with supposed "justification" of the wrongful death of Americans such as George Floyd. The media is flooded with reports of Floyd's criminal history, and some claiming that bringing it up is an attempt to justify his wrongful death. In no way am I attempting, in the following sentences, to claim or affirm that Floyd deserved death or that his death was not horrendous and wrong. But we cannot go around claiming that Floyd was a saint, or an innocent person, because he wasn't. He should never have died on that pavement and with those officers, and I am rooting for the justice system to agree that these former policemen have committed the severest of crimes in causing his death. But I am appalled that our society would so quickly deny and alter the proven facts of his nature in an attempt to justify their belief. The belief of our needing change does not need such attempts, making them only serves to lessen support to our cause. Let's say what is true, rather than ignore or attempt to alter fact in favor of being completely right. George Floyd was a criminal, who was sentenced to jail time for crimes ranging from failure to identify to an officer, to drug possesion and distribution, to a single case of robbery with a deadly weapon. He did those things, and he served his time for them. He did enter a woman's home with a gun, pressed the barrel of the weapon to her abdomen, and searched her house and stole from her. That's a fact.

But that does not mean his death was not illegal and wrongful. It does not mean the men, the horrible, immoral men who caused his death were in any way correct in the actions they took. Both sides of this acted wrongly at some point. George Floyd refused to enter the car once handcuffed, effectively resisting arrest; and the former officers were illegally and excessively forceful. Neither side was fully in the right, but Floyd should not have died.

We see so often in the media the Black Lives Matter organizations name. I agree with a lot of what the movement stands for, and disagree with a good part of the more extreme views.

I still proclaim myself as being All Lives Matter. Just because I believe that people of color and black Americans are being treated wrongly does not mean I do not also advocate for the safety of all people, police included. Black lives matter. People of color's lives matter. Police lives matter. Civilian lives matter. We need to address the issues in our country without pitting ourselves against each other, and without putting the lives and livelyhoods of other Americans at risk. We don't need to agree all the time, we can have differing opinions, we should as humans and as individuals. Disagreeing does not mean fighting, nor does it mean that one side is completely right while the other is wrong.

It only means we are human and comes from different lives, backgrounds, and world views.

For too long we have distracted ourselves from solving the issues in our society by fighting against groups who don't completely agree with us.

An example of such distraction is the arguments of raising wages. It should not have been raise the wages of food service workers versus raise the wages of social workers. It should have been how can we as people and as Americans improve the lives of our fellows by increasing the money given to workers who are underpaid.

We have convinced ourselves that it is always Us vs. Them; it is not. There is no Us, and there is no Them. We are one species, one planet, and need to find a way to work together for mutual benefit despite our differences. We are all human, all people, and while none of us are the same we are all struggling through life. Improvement does not come by degrading or ignoring one group, but by working in tandem to help solve the issues that can be solved, and by helping our fellow men when they are in need and we are capable of reaching out.

No one is exempt from Life's struggles, we simply face different ones. Until we can accept that no one is free from pain and hardship, we will never progress past our current state. Understanding breeds compassion, and listening is the first step to understanding. Without holding compassion for our fellow men, and for their hardships and strife, we can never hope to improve the condition of our world. Action comes from a desire to change, and change happens with help from others. One person cannot change the world, not overnight. But one person speaking up for the right thing? One person inspiring someone else, who can inspire another? We create change from the bottom of our society up, and we do it as a common people. One person cannot change the world alone, but their attempts can bring an army of people who will stand with them and change the world together. When governments stand for the people, the changes we as communities make push upwards until the government has no more ability to ignore our cries for legislation.

Change also does not happen by setting vague goals far in the future. It does not come by saying we will do this next year, and in twenty years we will be changed. Because these goals are easily ignored or forgotten, and setting such vast and far-off landmarks and goals makes it too easy to retract your words when the goal is not met. Setting a goal for five years out only means that four years from now, when nothing has changed, you can easily and guiltlessly say "we will start again, and meet the goal in another five years from now."

Set a goal you can reach, one that starts with one action every day, and you will find the change you thought impossibly far off has come in only a short while. Setting goals you don't need to focus so intently on only serves to delay any change. Decide that this change needs to happen, and that you will help it to happen by your daily actions. Once you have decided that you will not stand for it any longer, that change is within reach.

Let us work together, as a common people, with a goal of creating a country - and a world - where no one need fear for their life or well-being because of their race, or religion, or gender. We are all human, and we cannot in good conscience watch idly by as our neighbors and fellow men suffer at the hands of injustice. We need to be united in our cause to make our homes, our cities, our countries, and our world safer for everyone.

As President Abraham Lincoln famously said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." This applies to us now, as we once again pit ourselves against on another with agitation and violence where we need to listen and discuss and find commonalities that allow for a United call for change. Lincoln said, in this same speech at the Illinois's Republican State Convention of 1858, "I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."

We are at a crisis point in our history, and our actions as Americans towards our fellow countrymen will be the determining factor in weather this house of our country will become one of justice and safety or one of violence and fear. We will, I believe, come to a point where, regardless of whether we fight for social justice or for police support, violence will battle nonviolence, and one will reign victorious. It is our choice as individuals whether we choose to follow in the footsteps of the famous Civil Rights Activist Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., Who risked his life and eventually died in peaceful protest that changed America, or if we choose to follow a path of violence and destruction that will surely give way to more fear among our people.

People respond to violence in kind, and such battles can only result in one side being victorious. Peace and calm discussion are the pathways that allow our arguments to be heard, and allow us to hear the view from the other side. Such discussion allows for a solution where both parties are satisfied with the end result, and peace can remain in the face of the changes we implement in our society.

Only through nonviolent methods can we hope to establish a system and find a solution that will not fall apart by challenges from those who feel unheard and unseen in the decision.

Will you choose to turn our country to violence and hatred, or to find solutions that leave us more united as a people?

[nakediconoclast]

Concern Regarding America

There are several concerns that I have regarding the future of America.

1) Guns.  A generic term that covers every weapon in the world.

2) Immigration.  Immigration really means migration.  There are two sub categories, both important to the American dream.

3) Education of our children.  Education at all levels.  Education makes it possible for the ignorant to become knowledgeable.

4) All other considerations stem from the first three.

1) Why is guns the first on my list?  Because without the means of self defense we a subject to unlimited violence by criminal idividuals, but, more importantly, by a criminal government.  

This country would not exist without guns.  Guns that were the equivalent of the enemy we faced.  Military style guns.  Guns were so important to the creation of the United States that the 13 states required the amending of the Constitution before they would agree to join into the union.

Guns have been a part of the American culture since long before the Revolutionary War.  We have used guns to protect ourselves from the Indians, the French, the British, the Spanish, the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese.  As a  matter of fact the japanese took special note of our guns, "They hide behind every blade of grass." (paraphrased)

According to the video "Innocense Betrayed", produced by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, over 170 million people around the world were killed by their own governments during the 20th century.  That includes the United States.  

In the United States police have killed nearly 3300 people in the last nine years. (Wikipedia)  The use of SWAT teams has exploded.  Local police departments are being militarized by the acquisition of military equipment.  Police are regularly exonerated for the murders of civilians.  Civil Asset Forfeiture garners billions of dollars.(1)(2)(3) Government agencies are being armed:  The IRS, SBA, VA, HHS, the dept. of Education:  67 non-military federal agencies have acquired rifles, handguns, shotguns and billions of rounds of ammunition, 1.48 billion dollars.(4) For what?

You know just how important guns are because the Obama administration facilitated the sale and delivery to Mexican Cartels just so that they could declare that American guns must be more tightly controlled.  Obama simply followed in the footsteps of George W. Bush.  "Gun Free Zones" were purposely set up to provide excuses for more gun control.  Our children are being taught the propaganda that guns were never supposed to be in the hands of civilians.          

Some claim that Americans protect themselves, with guns, from criminals over 2.5 millions times each year.  Others claim the number is "only" about 500,000 times each year.  Either way the numbers show that guns are important to the protection of the individual.

Guns are an integral part of civilian America.  They equalize the weak and the strong.  They make it possible for Americans to protect themselves, their families, their friends, their property from predators of all stripes.  With over 357 million guns, one trillion rounds of ammunition and nearly 100 million civilian gun owners America has the worlds largest civilian militia.

Let history be our teacher:  In the 19th and early 20th centuries Russia, under the Tzar, was armed with millions of firearms.  If it had not been for the duplicity of the Reds and the U.S.A. the civilians would probably still be armed.(5)

2) Immigration is second on my list only because we'll need guns to protect us from immigrants/migrants.

As of today, March 19, 2018, it is estimated, by the U.S. Census bureau, that the population of the U.S. is 327.38 million people (6).

The number of immigrants into the U.S. since 1965 is estimated to be 72 million(7), but does not count Illegals(8). That's nearly 25 percent of the current population.    

Immigration is being used by the U.S. government and Globalists to destroy the American culture.

NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and many other agreements and organizations have and are working to destroy the industrial capacity of America.  Americans have not seen an actual increase in wages since the 1970's.  Their real incomes have actually stagnated or gone down(9).

It's being reported that the U.S. is essentially at full employment and yet there are over 90 million Americans that have stopped seeking employment.  That means that there are about 100 million Americans (about 30%) currently being supported by the other 60%.  Our debt to the world is over 21 trillion dollars(10) and congress is planning on passing a budget of at least another 1 trillion dollars.

The government of the U.S. is spending its' way into oblivion.  Since 1913 and especially since Nixon decoupled the dollar from the gold standard Americans have not stopped using that credit card.

Immigration illegal and legal is a huge portion of that debt.  Immigration has stifled wage growth in America.  The H1B program and H2B program and every other government immigration program has reduced the standard of living for every American.  Mandatory hospital care, mandatory schooling, EBT, WICK, SNAP, Medicaid, high crime rates, voter fraud are turning America into a third world hell hole.  

The Drug War has been a shooting war since its' inception.  The War on Poverty is also becoming a shooting war.  

Against historical laws, rules and policy Islam is being allowed to establish a foot hold in the United States.  All one has to do is look at Sweden, Britain, Germany, Italy and many other European countries to see the squalor and crime that accompanies the invasion of people that have no desire to assimilate.  People that actually have declared their desire to destroy the countries that they have invaded.  

LaRaza has declared "Reconquista" for the Southwest U.S.  MS13 gangs have invaded nearly every large American city.  South Florida has become "Little Cuba".  Minnesota is degenerating into Somalia.  Even in states like Idaho which used to have a large Aryan population they are seeing influxes of moslems.  In fact the Catholice church and many other Christian churches are making money by locating moslems in every state of the United States(11)(12).

Throughout history war has been the result of immigration.  

3) Education in America

We must face it.  Education in America has sunk to the level of Third World nations.  Or, maybe, it would be better to say that socialists and communists have hijacked the minds of our children.  In either case American parents and grandparents are to blame.  We did not pay proper attention to filth, ignorance and lies expoused by public school teachers.  

My father used to say, “On the first day of school parents should require teachers to show up at school an hour early.  That parents should carry with them to school a 2 x 4.  When teachers enter the school the parents should whack the teachers up side the head with the 2 x 4 to get their attention.  Then the parents should make it clear that every day will be the same if it is found that the teachers teaching is less than satisfactory.”

My father’s suggestion remains with me every day.  His suggestion is on my mind every time that I go to vote on some fool tax proposed by the local school system.  Taxes that are approved by fool parents. For the life of me I cannot understand why parents and grandparents don’t see the corruption being passed on by the schools of America.

Personally I believe that ALL public schools should be closed down.  Parents should homeschool their children.  

In my opinion reading and writing the english language, using proper grammar, should be the foremost requirement of all Americans.  It should be taught that a dictionary is an indispensible part of every person’s knowledge.  

I think that the english language should be the only government approved language of the United States.  That’s not to say that other languages cannot be learned.  Indeed, I would encourage people to learn several languages.

Arithmetic, mathematics, algebra, geometry, calculous, bookkeeping, accounting and economics should be required.  Logic and logical fallacies and philosophy are a must.  Ancient history and governments; the rise and fall of governments, cultures, religions and religious beliefs; European, Asian, African and Middle Eastern histories and governments should be extensively covered from all sides.  

American history from long before the Americas were settled must be required.  American history and government, the why’s and wherefore, must be learned and discussed from every aspect, good and bad.

I believe that no person living in the United States should be a citizen without first passing a citizenship examine.  All persons would have to pass an exam that would cover all of the above plus several basic practical requirements.

The practical requirements would include firearms handling, care and shooting, first aid training, basic automotive maintenance, hunting skills, foraging and survival skills.  Other survival skills would be encouraged such as hand to hand combat and weapons creation skills.

I want to see every American independent.  Every American must be capable of surviving and thriving independent of others.    

    (1) https://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/03/civil-asset-forfeiture-7-things-you-should-know

(2) https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-24/civil-asset-forfeiture-is-the-opposite-of-innocent-until-proven-guilty

(3) https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-24/civil-asset-forfeiture-is-the-opposite-of-innocent-until-proven-guilty

(4) https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2017/10/20/why-are-federal-bureaucrats-buying-guns-and-ammo-158-million-spent-by-non-military-agencies/#47b9d5ef64a1

(5) http://www.stolinsky.com/wordpress/index.php/2018/03/19/advice-from-a-russian-never-give-up-your-guns/

(6) https://www.census.gov/popclock/world

(7) http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wave-brings-59-million-to-u-s-driving-population-growth-and-change-through-2065/

(8) http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/

(9) http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

(10) http://www.usdebtclock.org/

(11) http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/29/unholy-alliance-christian-charities-profit-1-billion-fed-program-resettle-refugees-40-percent-muslim/

(12) http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/04/05/catholic-group-calls-on-congress-to-support-refugee-resettlement/

[therewillbesparkles]

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