I’m not afraid of heights.

Not really.

But.

Sometimes I get nervous when I’m standing next to cliffs, or on the roofs of buildings, or near windows, or on tall rocks, or after I’ve climbed onto the shoulders of a very tall person.

Not because I think I’m going to fall (except if it’s a very fidgety tall person), but because some part of me, some little itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me still doesn’t quite believe that I can’t fly.

And that itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me remembers being a kid and climbing up onto my dresser, and imagining really hard what it would feel like to go flying down the hall and out the door and past the dog and over the fish ponds and the creek and EVEN over the hill and the race car track. Maybe even to Australia.

And that itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me suspects, even though this is obviously not true, that the biggest reason I never actually managed to completely destroy the rules of physics was that I always put pillows on the floor for my inevitable fall. So of course I landed on them.

But I’m not really afraid of heights. I’m afraid of my lack of fear of heights and that that temptation to launch myself out into space will eventually just be too strong, but then on the other hand WHEN I’M DIVE-BOMBING PIGEONS I’LL BE THE ONE LAUGHING, ASSHOLES.

…

I think if you pretend that this is an extended metaphor for art or something, I sound less alarmingly unhinged.

Originally published at Everything I do is SO fucking amazing that sparks are going to shoot out of your eyes.. You can comment here or there.

This is my schedule for the upcoming Wiscon 36, taking place in TA-FREAKING-DA Madison, Wisconsin, May 25-28.

My programming doesn’t start until Saturday because my plane doesn’t get in until 5pm on Friday. Why am I missing almost the entire first day of Wiscon? I’m going to go see THE WALL again with my father the night before (Thursday). Yes, I have seen it before. Yes, I’m going to see it again. YOU CAN’T STOP ME.

Schedule:

Intersectionalism: It’s Not the Oppression Olympics  Sat, 4:00–5:15 pm
Ian K. Hagemann (moderator), Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Beth Plutchak, Julia Rios,  and Vanessa Vega
Many of us experience discrimination and oppression of many kinds, often concurrently. Blah blah solidarity blah blah. (Instead of introducing myself, I might instead engage in a well-meaning but probably stupid critique of the term “Oppression Olympics,” much to the excitement of all.)

Intersectionality in the Writing Workshop Environment Sat, 9:00–10:15 pm
Vylar Kaftan (moderator), Keffy R. M. Kehrli, and Ibi Zoboi
Intensive writing workshops can be incredible life-changing experiences. But what’s it like to attend them as a writer of color, a woman, a trans person, a queer person? Etc. (This is one of those where I was like OH HEY, I WAS GAY AT A WORKSHOP when I did the initial sign-ups, and now I’m like, oh, crap, can I talk about that for a whole hour?)

Outer Alliance: New Writings in LGBTQ SF/F/H   Sat, 10:30–11:45 pm
Julie Andrews, Therese Arkenberg, Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Catherine Lundoff, and Julia Rios
Readings from recent work featuring LGBTQ protagonists and themes. Outer Alliance is an organization created to combat homophobia in SF/F and to be awesome.(YOU’RE COMING TO OUR READING RIGHT? RIGHT?)

“But it’s not for girls!” Sun, 10:00–11:15 am
Caroline Pruett (moderator), Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Pat Murphy, Katherine Olson/Kayjayoh, and Jessica Plummer
Legitimate complaints about sexism in comics, video games, and other geeky media are often dismissed with the argument that they aren’t “for” women and girls—and since women don’t buy comic books and/or video games as much as men, they have no right to complain. (My presence on this panel should help to further confuse various con attendees as to what, exactly, my gender is or isn’t. I admit that I’m mostly showing up to mock the trend of needing to protect the sacred ballsacks of men everywhere by prefixing all words with MAN when it’s a dude using the item in question. It’s not a den, it’s a MANcave. Etc.)

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer & Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction Book-Party  Sun, 8:45 pm–Mon, 3:00 am
Keyan Bowes, Brit Mandelo, Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Ellen Kushner, and Delia Sherman.
This release party for the anthology Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction will include readings by contributors, plus tea and cookies. (It’s a party! PARTY.)

The SignOut (scheduled) Mon, 11:30 am–12:45 pm Capitol/Wisconsin
Includes a whole ton of other people, many of whom actually have published novels or collections, unlike me!

ALL OTHER TIMES: Shenanigans.

Originally published at Everything I do is SO fucking amazing that sparks are going to shoot out of your eyes.. You can comment here or there.

Wow, wow, wow. So it’s taken me so long to write about the stuff I did in March/early April that the first question is probably just — why even bother at this point? (Eh.)

In March I went to Rainforest Writers Village (Session 2) and Fogcon 2. Fogcon was unfortunately followed a week later by Norwescon 35. I learned my lesson as I dragged through Norwescon and subsequently spent the rest of April being an anti-social little troll. Or something. Never do cons two weekends in a row unless I can take the week in between off. (Yes, I’m a wimp.)

Fogcon was a fun convention, though the hotel construction was a bit of a bummer. However, the bartenders made my favorite kind of screwdriver — the sort that is only very faintly yellow-orange and makes your face go numb. I forgive hotel bar prices if the drink is 90% vodka.

I’m not sure how I feel about the panel lengths at Fogcon. I’m apparently rather used to conventions in which the panels are 45-50 minutes so even super interesting panels longer than that feel like they’re dragging a bit. Although, the Body Image 201 panel was a nice exception. It’s always good to end panels feeling like there’s more to say.

I’m sadly unsure of whether or not I’ll make it back to Fogcon, unfortunately. It’s just at a terrible time of year for me — there’s a six week run in late winter / early spring that covers 6-7 other events I’d like to possibly attend (many of which are local), as well as my birthday. I think I’ve spent my birthday at home twice in the past 15 years, and one of those was spent frantically vomiting up words for a cheap freelance assignment.

Norwescon also went well. I was pretty busy, especially on Friday. In addition to programming through the weekend, I gave four critiques as a pro for the Fairwood workshop.

It’s still weird to me to critique as a pro even though I also did so in 2011. While I technically meet the loose definition of what passes for professional in SF writing (SFWA member, sold some stories, burned through my Campbell eligibility), I don’t feel particularly advanced compared to the people I meet on the other side of the table.

The panels I was on went well enough, including the two I was most concerned about: Transphobia 101 — which is a gigantic topic, and LGBTQ speculative fiction — which I read and write of course, but I often don’t remember to keep a running tally of which books had which queer characters.

And, as last year, I was completely spoiled for my reading. Full room again, despite the fact that I was reading at 9:30pm and it was an unpublished story that really isn’t very genre-like at all, except if you look at the title and then squint extremely hard at the rest of it. And nobody walked out when I said it wasn’t going to be spec fic! Woo!

Despite being reasonably well received, I subjected the story to another round of revisions to cut out 600 more words. So now I’m fucking around, wondering if I want to mail it out or Get More Readers Who Know Stuff About Outside Of SF/F. Procrastination. Gotta love it.

Coming up, I’m going to Wiscon, the Locus Awards, and PAX. I might be at Foolscap or Orycon, BUT… for various reasons, I have to stop spending money on cons.

And, I love cons. Love, love, love, them. But… I have to finish this novel. And some short stories. As it is right now, I like being at cons, but I’ve been feeling more and more like a faker over the past two years of this productivity slump. Ugh. I even hate typing that.

If only I could get paid for Twitter. >_>

Originally published at Everything I do is SO fucking amazing that sparks are going to shoot out of your eyes.. You can comment here or there.

So.

Pretty much I’ve just gone and joined the WordPress club, mostly because I was tired of my main website being a pain in the ass to update and I like this whole “post scheduling” thing. Also, because I’m too cheap/broke to pay someone to design one for me. Have a webmaster? What, do you think I’m someone important or something?

Assuming everything works correctly, people will be able to read my posts on either Keffy.com or my livejournal and comment both places.

Basically, very little has changed. In fact, this post is primarily so that I can test settings.

o___o

Originally published at Everything I do is SO fucking amazing that sparks are going to shoot out of your eyes.. You can comment here or there.

So, I've got two conventions coming up in the next two weeks. I'm listing my schedules here, but not the other people on the panels or the full descriptions. THAT PART IS A SURPRISE. I'm looking forward to the conventions, especially now that I've switched back to the non-drowsy allergy medication after almost a month on the other. WHOO IT'S LIKE I HAVE ALL THIS (nervous) ENERGY.

If you'll be at the convention(s) and want to meet up, you can drop me a line in comments here or tweet at me. I have one of those ridiculous smart phones, so I check Twitter more than is strictly necessary (or probably even healthy.) Or I guess if you want to be all 1997 about it, you could send me an email.

Fogcon: March 30 - April 1

Friday 4:30 p.m.
Genre Balkanization

Saturday 10:30 a.m.
Reading! A block of THREE people.

Saturday 8:00 p.m.
Body Image 201


Norwescon: April 5-8

Friday 1 pm Cascade 7
Writing as a Business or an Art

Friday 3 pm Cascade 5
Transphobia: A Panel for Allies of Trangender Folk

Friday 6 pm Cascade 5
Queer Voices in SF/F

Friday 9 pm Cascade 3&4
Writer Beware

Saturday 7 pm Cascade 3&4
Marketing Your Short Stories

Saturday 9:30 pm Cascade 1
My reading!

I'm also doing a few critique sessions, one of which is on Friday. So I'm going to be kind of busy on Friday, but not so much on the other days. I mean, look at Saturday! I can sleep in until FIVE P.M.

I'm not on panels Thursday or Sunday, but I'll be around for some of each because I'm critiquing some people.

So, this Kony thing.

It has succeeded in raising awareness, which is good. I guess. But the biggest question I had after the whole video was how, exactly, putting up fliers in Seattle or New York or Chicago or bu-fu middle America = lasting peace in Uganda, DRC, or anywhere really. Invisible Children seems to operate in that college-student activism cloud where "I think there should be peace and I put up some posters = lasting effects on countries on the other side of the world where the people are in the middle of living their own lives."

Some links:

Furthermore, the crisis in northern Ugandan is not seen by its citizens as one that is the result of the LRA. Yes, you read that right. The conflict in the region is viewed as one wherein both the Government of Uganda and the LRA, as well as their regional supporters (primarily South Sudan and Khartoum, respectively) have perpetrated and benefited from nearly twenty-five years of systemic and structural violence and displacement.

and

Colonialism’s historical baggage matters, and the competition for voice-representation is, for all intents and purposes, a zero-sum game. Ugandan civil society participants, particularly the ones engaged in the non-Invisible Children-affiliated reconstruction, reconciliation, and post-conflict development work, are noticeably absent from Jason Russell’s narrative.

and

Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services, with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production.

and

White people only care about White people and the only way to save Black people is to get White people to care about them, so to save Black people we need to talk about White people.


I did watch the whole video. No, I was not previously aware of Kony's name. Yes, I would like news media to cover actual news, and for Americans to generally be more aware of, well, everything other than the Superbowl and whether or not Newt Gingrich passed gas on the campaign trail (we've got that covered).

I did not tweet the video forward because several aspects made me deeply uncomfortable.

I was uncomfortable with the narrative positioning of Invisible Children's founder as the savior figure VOWING! TO! DO! SOMETHING! (Except that this something appears to be nothing more than appealing to people already aware of the problem to side uncritically against the LRA, no matter what.)

I was uncomfortable how much of the video focused on the founder, his son, and his VOW! and how little it addressed what the people involved actually want.

I was uncomfortable with the way that people involved in the conflict - including victims - were reduced to soundbites in order to fit better into the narrative flow of the monologue.

I was uncomfortable with how almost uniformly white the people behind Invisible Children are. The video plays on the cultural idea of "let's all (us white Americans) go save those poor Africans." The positioning of white America as the savior of black Africa is super problematic.

I was uncomfortable with the militarized rhetoric. "We're building an army!" An army to do what?

I was uncomfortable with the "this video has an expiration date!" rhetoric. Really? As far as I know, Uganda, Sudan, DRC, etc will all still exist in 2013 regardless of whether or not we put up posters. The people there will still have their own problems to deal with and may still have Kony.

I was uncomfortable with the video's calls to give money and put up posters. Don't think! ACT! I would be a lot happier just saying "Well, but they raised awareness" if the organization seemed at all interested in facilitating discussion. But there's no "here's how to find out more," or "here's where you can read information about the area and what is currently being done." No, it's just JOIN! BUY AN ACTION KIT! GIVE US MONEY! PUT UP POSTERS! FEEL GOOD!

Does Joseph Kony suck? Yes. Do I want these conflicts to end? Yes. I'm just skeptical that more or less uninformed Americans wearing bracelets and calling twelve hand-picked senators to demand that they act on our feeeeeeeeelings is the best action. I'm sure the video was intended to make me uncomfortable. However, I suspect I was supposed to feel uncomfortable that terrible things are happening, not that I just got a 30 minute presentation about the white man's burden.

I just think foreign policy, especially when it comes to sending armed troops anywhere, requires more sophistication than a five year old pointing at a photograph and saying, "Stop him."

Some days I wake up and think, "You know, I really regret that I didn't actually get punched at that Moby show."

This is a photo of the sidewalk:



In other news, here's the stuff I have coming up:

Rainforest Writers Village: Mar. 7-11
FOGcon: Mar. 30-Apr.1
Norwescon: Apr.5-8
Wiscon: May 25-28

I am probably going to Orycon (Portland, OR) and Foolscap (Redmond? WA).

Skipping the biiiig cons. This is partly because I wanted to go to PAX this year, which is the same weekend as Worldcon. (Mostly a money decision - PAX will be a vacation I can walk to from my apartment, instead of flying to Chicago.) World Fantasy is out because of a combination of money concerns after FOGcon/Wiscon and because I think it's still illegal for me to dress like a dude and go through airline security in Canada or whatever.

Ta-freaking-da.

Oh, what the fuck. Forgive me, because I has a rant.

I mentioned this article on Twitter a few days ago but didn’t link to it directly because – not being familiar with Canadian newspapers – I thought it was just another Washington Times-esque disreputable shitmachine. Of course, then someone linked to another of their articles in a serious manner, and I realized that people might actually be taking this newspaper seriously, so here we go.

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What. The. Fuck. Is. This?

So, to everybody editing fucking newspapers, can I just say that if you’re going to get someone to write an opinion piece about a minority group, maybe pick someone who at least understands why calling that minority group “freakish” is seriously fucked up. Hey, Barbara – in the old days it would have been acceptable to call trans* people and our behavior “freakish” because in the old days it was also acceptable to refuse us essential medical attention, dehumanize us for shits and giggles, rape, maim, and kill us, or otherwise abuse us until we either died or conformed (and then died.)

Haha, oh wait, did I say "in the old days?" I meant last week.

I also admit to being honestly perplexed by how she can feign oppression by the Rules of Political Correctness. I wish that it WAS totally unacceptable to call us “freakish” since only assholes do that, but the fact that someone got paid to write an opinion piece for a fucking newspaper with our “freakishness” as the premise (again) suggests otherwise.

Of course, not only does Barbara have a seriously fucked view of trans people, she also fails at Research 101 and trots out the familiar bullshit arguments against transsexualism, including autogynephilia (which has pretty much no support except that transphobic psychologists like to use it as a way to pathologize trans women and deny them treatment) and reference to an article by known anti-trans* dickbag, Paul McHugh. Note! None of these things have been supported by, oh, the vast majority of scientific studies on the subject, but assholes like to bring them up as if they’re legitimate studies. Uh, no, they’re not. In fact, McHugh determined that trans women weren’t authentic because he didn’t find them attractive. He also decided that trans women should not be allowed to transition before doing any research and then, biased as all fuck, made up some fake psychology to support his prior decision. In my considered scientific opinion this is actually evidence that he is an asshole, rather than anything else.

So like, this would be WAY out of line in any newspaper piece about any trans person, but, dude, I don’t understand how McHugh’s bullshit would even apply when talking about a trans man. Yes, clearly female-to-male transsexuals change their sex due to a sexual attraction to themselves dressed as women… oh, wait. (Although, due to the fact that even openly hostile people are allowed to have opinions about trans* issues in the DSM-V, I think there’s going to be an equally made up condition going the opposite direction now. I feel so honored.)

I also want to point out that this is yet another person freaking the fuck out about trans men having babies.

I mean, if you think the general wailing by religious groups about gay couples having, adopting and raising children is harsh, it’s worse for trans parents. Once someone “gets a sex change” (oh, if only it was something you could just go get and be completely done with), they’re supposed to be entirely sterile. The reasoning ranges anywhere from panic (see: National Post article) to some fucked up desire to punish trans* people to eugenics. In Sweden, for example, trans people who seek to legally transition are STILL required to undergo forced sterilization and are ALSO banned from storing any sperm or eggs for future use.

Yes, I’m ranting about an opinion piece, but it fails so hard that I’ve barely even scratched the surface here. The National Post should be fucking embarrassed. (Incidentally, comments to the article have been shut off. I guess there were too many people debunking the shit-tastic pseudoscience for their liking. I suppose letters to the editor are in order.)

I guess I’d be more surprised about this if it wasn’t for the fact that, hey, if I forget to shave my face I’m not legally allowed to board a plane in Canada. Good job, Canada.

Oh no, oh NO, how am I still running across people bitching about how much it sucks to be single on Valentine's Day? Look, people, if you can't see that the saccharine sappy Hallmark bullshit sucks even if you ARE with someone, I can't help you. And if dating someone suddenly makes you go OH HEY! THESE STUPID DIAMOND COMMERCIALS ARE TOTALLY RIGHT AND NOT FUNDED BY A GIANT SCAM LUXURY, then RUN AWAY, THE LOVE IS MELTING YOUR BRAIN.

For me, Valentine's Day has always had one thing going against it. Even since way WAY back when I was in elementary school and we had to make pictures of hearts using various colors of construction paper. This is simply that primary color red + pink right next to each other is one of the few color combinations that makes me want to scream. That color combination is the visual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. It's hideous. HIDEOUS*, and people put it everywhere because it's romantic.

Personally, I enjoy being single on Valentine's Day. The one time I wasn't, the dude spent the whole day bitching about how much it sucks to be single. And I was like DUDE WE ARE NOT SINGLE, CAN WE AT LEAST STOP WHINING AND GET PHO. I mean, seriously.

At least the pho was tasty.

*Just because I like things that are impressively ugly does not mean I have no standards. It just means mine are better different.

On Wednesday, I got an acceptance from Escape Pod, and that was pretty cool. I announced it on Twitter, but was working from my phone, so making a post here wasn't really going to happen until later.

Of course, then Mur asked if she could do my story this week, and I was like, "Sweet."

So, I sold the audio reprint to Escape Pod, and it's already up here!

For once I'm not blogging because I haven't had the time, rather than because I have nothing to say. Aaahahaaa... weekend, I need you. For work.