random meanderings

Nichelle Nichols almost quit the show.

King encouraged her to stay.

Because she stayed, one day in 1966 a little girl turned on the TV, saw a commanding officer who looked like her, and went running through the house yelling "everybody come look, come look, there's a colored lady on TV and she ain't no maid!"

That little girl grew up to be Whoopi Goldberg.

Whoopi Goldberg found out Star Trek: TNG was struggling, and asked to be cast. She considered it an honor to follow in Nichols' footsteps, and as one of the It Girls of the time she knew her name would boost ratings.

Because she was cast, TNG remained on the air, continuing to push boundaries and cast minority actors and create minority characters.

BUT WAIT...

...there was another Black girl who saw Nichelle Nichols, and went on to be on Star Trek....

....which Whoopi arranged for her, because you don't just say "no we will not honor you on Star Trek actually, First Black Woman And Ballerina In Space Dr. Mae Jemison" unless you're an idiot.

Dr. Jemison was the first NASA astronaut to guest star on Star Trek, but she was far from the last.

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

apparently he (who through my drunken memory I remember only as Earl) liked some woman, and she told him that he wasn't cultured enough and needed to attend his first drag show (she also flaked on him)

Now I'm reasonably androgynous and was wearing makeup, a short leather skirt, and black heeled boots, but still when this guy came up to me when I was standing off alone and asked "So. Do you come here often?" with a very earnest expression, I thought. Surely not. This guy doesn't think I'm a straight woman does he????

Anyway I start talking with this guy and he has no idea what the fuck is going on but he is just a very kind and earnest dude and asked a lot of questions (while asking if it was alright if he asked those questions). I track down my husband and friends and I'm like y'all. We need to make sure that Earl has a Good Fucking Time tonight.

Man was completely out of his depth. At one point they put on a puppy auction to raise money for Pride, that started with a 6 ft drag queen in all her glory leading a leather pup out on a leash to the tune of that damned RSPCA "in the arms of the angels" song

We look at Earl. Nervous. He squints, laughs, and then goes "I was wondering why people were dressed like that!" He turned to me and asked "So they're like dogs?" And I said yeah pretty much. And he just chuckled and went "Yeah I thought so with the tails! Never seen this before!"

When the first drag king came out, Earl looked at me wide eyed and went "There's a dude version too?!" And I said yeah they're called drag kings. And he said, low, "Drag kings."

During one of the queens performances, he frowned, shook his head and told me, "Your legs are better than hers." in a tone that implied he thought there was some travesty taking place and I should also be getting paid

When he found out I was there with my husband (and that I am not a woman) he profusely apologized and said "I'm so sorry, it's dark in here and I thought you were a hot chick! I wouldn't have said nothing if I knew you had a husband, I'm so sorry about that."

When beemovie invited me to the dance floor with him later and I still had a drink in my hand, Earl said "Oh don't worry about that I can hold your drink, you get on out there and shake your ass with your husband!" Then before we left, Earl bought me drinks for "Putting up with me all night and answering everything. Y'all helped me have a great time tonight."

like. You gotta recognize there's going to people who have never had interacted outside of their of their own community. This includes you. And just because your community is familiar with all the right vocabulary and how to correctly say something, it doesn't mean they're actually going to support you. If someone like Earl shows up, confused and out of their depth but kind and curious and earnest, you gotta have patience and truck through the small things, so when he goes back to his friends and his coworkers and they snicker asking how the drag show was, he can genuinely talk about how included we tried to make him feel and that he had a great time

Sanitized language is a tool of oppression, always has been and always will be.

And yes, I get being pissed off by slurs. I do. But in the times we are living in right now, we really need to all pivot our priorities to safety.

"Earl" will talk to all his Busch drinking, tractor-pulling, gun toting, conservative voting friends about the nice and friendly and harmless trannies he met, and they will understand him.

They do not know what gender non-conforming, trans-femme/masc, demiboy, agender genderqueer bisexual lesbians are, and quite frankly, they do not need to.

Well, I said I was going to make this post. I also know that I'm going to get hate for this, and I'm just going to have to deal with it.

In December of 2019, I made a post that got a couple hundred notes, and it was talking about Jewish fear. I stand by what I wrote then, and I still think most goyim don't understand, but I want to talk about something else.

Anger is less palatable than fear. And yet they go hand in hand for me, for my family, for so much of our community. There is a tacit understanding here. "They will come for us, one day," we say. "They will come to kill us, as they always do. And we will fight." There is fear behind those sentiments, but also anger, because we know it is the truth and we know that we have little choice in the matter. We are taught that it happens in every generation, and that is because, demonstrably, it has.

But it's not polite to talk about it. I can't express it to people who don't know. Non-Jews won't understand, because this type of anger needs an object. It needs someone to be angry with. But you can't say that. Because you're not "allowed" be angry at those groups of people.

The Romans? They're gone. It's laughable to hold such anger at a group of people no longer around.

The multitude of Arab countries that expelled us or killed the remainder? Well, if I mention that, then I must be an Islamophobe.

What about Christians, who spent millennia ghettoizing us and making sure we could never own anything for very long? If I start expressing that anger, I might as well tie my own noose!

And don't forget that there is never a "right" time to talk about antisemitism. There's always something much more important to talk about. And they say that antisemitism isn't even really a big problem. They say "Jews are white" so we don't face discrimination. They conveniently forget that, not only are there Jews of Color, but even light-skinned European-looking Jews have never been considered "white" until fairly recently, and that recent change was only so it was easier to paint us as oppressors. So now that we're trying to talk about antisemitism on a national scale (I'm talking about the US because that is where I live) because there have been multiple incidents all around the country, people are trying to say that it's "Zionist propaganda."

Have any of you considered that, maybe, just maybe, we are also human beings who want to live in peace?

Their existence as ordinary civilians, ordinary human beings living ordinary lives has suddenly become a political act and they're expected to answer and account for every single crime, real or perceived, that their government and military commits, and if they don't flagellate themselves to a sufficient degree, they're "suspicious" or "untrustworthy."

Would this ever be expected en masse of Russian bloggers? Chinese? Turkish? American ones? Who breathtakingly arrogantly assume that the Western paradigm of oppressed/oppressor works for any situation anywhere in the world? Hell, I'm a Brit and if I was expected to answer for my government's crimes, I'd be doing nothing else for the rest of my damn life.

So, why is it most people have absolutely no problem separating ordinary civilians from their governments and militaries for every other nation on earth but hit a brick wall when it comes to Israel?

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

He helped develop the Vulcan salute based on what he saw certain people doing during services at his temple. The splayed fingers represent the Hebrew letter shin  ש‎, and the men (I don’t know if they are rabbis) do it with both hands. It represents a blessing.

In an interview, Nimoy mentioned how delighted he was that people the world over greeted each other with “the Vulcan salute,” because it meant “they were going out and blessing each other.” 

It's non-threatening. You not only can't hold a weapon in that hand, the position itself is awkward enough to be useless for combat. It's not something that easily switches to a punch or strike.

It doesn't involve touch contact - avoids both cultural barriers to touch and problems of disease or incompatible skin types. (Don't have to shake the hand of the volcano aliens.)

It's clearly deliberate, unlike some kinds of bowing. And it can be mirrored by a wide range of body types, even if they don't have "hands" or "fingers" - an octopus-being that holds up a tentacle in response would be recognized.

The words match the oldest excerpt of the Bible found by archeologists, on amulets in grave goods dating from before the big redaction project that actually produced the Bible in its written forms. (NB: Jewish amulets usually take the form of written text; this is even more true in the modern era.) There is a real sense in which this blessing predates Jewish religion as we usually understand it.

The translation is “May HaShem bless and keep you, may HaShem’s face shine on you and show you favor, may HaShem lift his face to you and give you peace.”