Those of you who were at the WisCon 34 Class 201 panel might remember me talking about my experience of entering higher education. I said that whenever I thought about my experiences as someone without middle-class* economic and cultural capital, and the education I have had that has allowed me to pursue the life I wanted to live as a professional ( Read more... )

Tonight (the third night LA has been hopping with anti-prop-8 protesters), there was a rally in my neighbourhood.

( pictures )

Last US election, I was in the middle of the American grad school application process. US politics was one of my biggest reasons not to go; when I sat at my desk in the early morning watching the poll results roll in, I almost stopped the applications right there. Of course, I knew that the result would affect me no matter where I ended up spending ( Read more... )

Enough: the personal politics of resisting capitalismI've been thinking a lot about class, privilege, money and capitalism -- and how they intersect with geekishness and fandom, not to mention social justice -- lately. Writing a fair bit too, although nothing I'm ready to make public yet. The articles on this site are vital grist for my, and ( Read more... )

I am here, but I haven't been feeling much like posting. I'm looking after lunchmaker's dog, rereading the HP books, sorting out my new apartment and generally feeling extremely lazy ( Read more... )

I've spent a great deal of time today reading about LiveJournal's mass banning, in the wake of campaigning from a Christian Right anti-paedophile group. Accounts that listed "incest" and similar terms in their userinfo were reported to LiveJournal Abuse, and LJ suspended their accounts regardless of the content of the sites. Some paedophile and man ( Read more... )

The very very bad:

US Department Of Homeland Security wants to refuse visa waivers to British people of Pakistani descentI don't even have words for how completely and utterly fucked up that is. Not only racial profiling at airports, now they are actually trying to enforce explicit, unabashed, legislative racism on other countries' citizens? At ( Read more... )