Cotton Wool

What a cyborg wants is to work perfectly. To simulate pleasure perfectly. To not cry at dinner,

forget to call back. To keep her skin clear. To keep the sheets clean. To reply-all when asked.

To get up at a reasonable hour. To stop smoking, or at least get it down to something reasonable.

To not worry her friends by worrying about her weight. To not be so afraid.

To not pick at her face. To have a face you can really trust.

To have the face of a pretty American, who makes you smile back when she says,

Right this way, sir. Or who makes you drool

when she says, yes sir

I like it sir. What a cyborg wants is to be clean.

Reasonable. To wash her hair a few times a week. To not kill the plants. To stop trying to leave her friends

before they can leave her. To smile and mean it. To believe in heaven. To believe the humans

when they say they love her. To not want sometimes to watch them cry. To not want so badly

to be touched, badly enough to slice herself open, to trap a man in a corner,

FOR LARRY WALTERS, WHO DREAMED SINCE HE WAS A CHILD OF USING BALLOONS TO FLY; WHO IN 1982 SPEND FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS OF HIS TRUCK-DRIVING DELIVERYMAN SALARY TO BUY SUPPLIES, INCLUDING ONE LAWN CHAIR, FORTY-TWO BALLOONS, AND A HELIUM TANK, WHICH HE USED TO INFLATE THE BALLOONS, ARRANGING THEM IN A RING AROUND THE LAWN CHAIR, A STURDY ALUMINUM TYPE FROM SEARS, IN WHICH HE LAUNCHED HIMSELF ALONG WITH HIS PELLET GUN AND WATER JUGS A THOUSAND FEET A MINUTE INTO THE CALIFORNIA SKY, WITH THE GOAL OF CLEARING THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS TO REACH THE MOJAVE; WHO AGAINST ALL ODDS FLEW, FROM A BACKYARD IN SAN PEDRO TO LONG BEACH, AN IMPERFECT MAN ON AN IMPERFECT FLIGHT PATH, WHO BROUGHT HIS CAMERA BUT DIDN’T USE IT; WHO, UPON HIS ARREST BY THE LONG BEACH POLICE, WAS QUOTED AS SAYING A MAN CAN’T JUST SIT AROUND…..

FUCK YES LARRY YOU DID IT BABY

Wonder Woman schools a dictator.

Summer Clouds    -     Tom Thomson 1916

Canadian 1877-1917 

I am very tired right now. I’m fine. I appreciate all the supportive messages I’ve been getting, deeply. But I am tired. 

I’m tired of explaining the central thesis of my argument, which is that Bruenig is a ringleader for harassment. I get it: The idea that someone could get fired for insensitive or flippant things they say on Twitter is concerning. It concerns me – I post rude things all the time. But the question I’m most often being asked, or the point I’m being made to prove, is that Bruenig “bears responsibility for his followers.” 

Breunig says mean things to and about people, he casts people as morally bankrupt and “enemies,” but that’s not real “harassment” – and any “real harassment” that follows isn’t his responsibility. That is the line I’m hearing. That is the line Bruenig’s friends are currently publishing to excuse his actions. 

It does have some bearing in truth. I can tell really aggressive people in my feed to calm it down, and I can publicly request that no-one use me as a pretext to commit harassment, and I have, but some of them will persist in being aggressive with people, or trying to use me as a way to start Twitter fights. I tend to just block those people, so that they can’t have the illusion of my approval any more. I can take reasonable steps, but can’t control their actions. 

The problem with Bruenig, however, is not “failing to control people’s actions,” or even a failure to take reasonable steps. It’s a specific pattern of directing, legitimizing, and even incentivizing dangerous harassment. This is the part people keep saying they don’t understand or believe – and not all of them are saying it in bad faith. So this is what I’m going to try to lay out here. 

Trust me; I would not be contacting people, publicly casting this person as dangerous, connecting them to acts of sexual, gendered or racial aggression, endangering my career, or endangering my safety, if I were not very, very convinced, after extensive research, that it were true. 

I don’t give a lot of content warnings, but some of what I’m about to quote is violent, or sexually aggressive, in ways I’ve had trouble un-hearing. So if you have trouble with that, feel free not to read.