I lived in terror, on the tenth of September 2001

Trigger warning for domestic and sexual violence

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I want to talk about terror, and terrorism, that is producing fear to get your results, the fear of violence, and the reality of violence to change behavior. Because I am talking about real life, there isn’t a clear narrative with a good ending.

It’s coming up to tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I could say a lot about the media storm around it, I could talk about how many people remember the date of terrorist attacks which didn’t kill westerns? But there is something closer I want to talk about, something here and now and burnt into my memory, still twisting my emitions around it.

On September 11 2001 I was staying at a friends house, my parents where interstate, but unlike many time when I had stayed at home alone I didn’t, I didn’t because I had recently ended a relationship with a man and I feared that if I stayed in that house he would break in (again) and rape me (again), and with no one around, I feared that wouldn’t be the end of it.

I know september 11 must be hell every year as loved ones morn those who they lost, when the family of firefighters and cleaners and resaeptionists wonder why there relitives where seen as a fair target for Americas sins. My father lost a friend, they where in new york for a conference, the deaths where cruel and senseless, but I flinch for another reason.

I remember being a child fearing for my life because I have left an abusive adult man. Because terrorism is booms and planes flying into buildings, it is also the terrorism small enough to fit into your bedroom, your heart, your cunt and your head.

My story remembers him plying a child who you know is self medicating with alcohol because he wanted sex, and getting sex, after I had begun vomiting.

Of gas lighting, a concept I knew 10 years before I knew the world, when he told me that I was misremembering everything that I should do what he said because I was crazy and my brain didn’t work.

Of silent, and screaming, or never being able to do anything right.

Of when I tried to put my foot down, to stop what I had known from the start was wrong, the threats, his cold dead voice in my room “I will show you what you have made me do” the sound of the ambulance as he was taken to hospital, the knowing, that I was so bad, that I had driven someone to attempt suicide.

So, on this anniversary I have a favor to ask, I want you to tell me that 15 year old that they are not guilty, I want you to tell them that even though they where sexuality active, it was not their fault, even thought they where depressive, it was not their fault. Even though they where precocious it was not their fault, even though they where self medicating with alcohol it was not their fault, because I need to hear it, because I don’t believe any one of those statements completely, I can’t truly believe that what that man did to me was his fault, because I wake up at night shaking with the terror of those memories. And when you have done that, please tell someone who is now 15, because I am sure everything that happened to me is still happening.

Quick hit: When doctors lie to their patients

It’s absolutely a diet for life but I don’t tell people that in the beginning. I say ‘this diet works amazingly well for weight loss, just get going and get started’ and we have kind of covert ways of introducing people to new foods so they change their food preferences during the process of weight loss. - Sue Roberts

This isn’t about diets, or maintenance, or whether intentional weight (IWL) lost is a good health strategy, this is about two words: Informed consent.

Informed consent needs to be the basis of medicine, unless you patient is unconscious and dying* you need to get their consent to act, patients aren’t doctors and they aren’t researchers so informed will often mean something along the lines of “sometimes things go wrong, and sometimes we might need to do more work to make it right, are you ok with that” or “We can do X, or we can do Y, here are the basis reasons why you might choose X over Y”

But lying to patients, not telling them information they need to make an informed choice about there health, when yo-yoing is probably worse than never dieting at all, when you might be risking peoples health, if they know they would not be able to keep up this diet. That is unconscionable, that is doing harm.

I was interested in the rest of her thoughts and would like to have read about it, unfortunately her science page contains no science, so I can’t report on that. I understand that she wants me to buy the book, but seriously, if there isn’t a single paper backing up your claims, then why should I trust your sciencey Factbricator(tm).

A brief look at pub med for the instinct diet, or the I diet I found nothing but I am happy to add linked if anyone can provide them, and would humbly suggest that Sue might add them to her webpage too.

*For example being brought in to accident and emergency after a car accident

 

Dating and effort

I am getting to the point where I am ok with my own shallowness.

I went on a date a couple of weeks back, guy seemed nice online but there really wasn’t a lot there in real life, he wasn’t psychically my type, he belitted my thesis* and well, he didn’t dress well. He really didn’t dress well, old faded conference shirt. I felt bad about thinking this, I mean who am to judge, am I any better than men who wont date any women who doesn’t go through hours of prep every day? Am I wronging judging guys who kink on a particular kind of high femme? But I am not talking about hours of prep I am talking about cute tshirt or a button up shirt, something anything that says, hey I am interested in you being interested in me, now logically, I mean he came out to meet me, so one should assume that he is interested, but, but …

 

I’ve talked to a number of friends about this and got a bunch of different answers.Some claimed that I was supporting false adversiting, that I was setting up to not be able to find people I liked because they will all look good for the first few dates, well I already assume that, perhaps unfairly, so to be frank I wonder what the guy who came to a first date in a worn out conference shirt will look  like in 6 months? Others suggested that it is part of being a femme, and that I while it is fine to be interested in how my partners look, I need to understand that not everyone will look like that, and be up front about what I like, and be willing to filter for those who get me hard.

Hat tip to ultra hedonist who got me thinking about this again, a bunch of things she said struck me as true.

But whether women tend to value looks less or only think or report that they do, I think it’s fair to say that many of us feel we aren’t supposed to be superficial. And I think there’s a broader cultural idea that caring ‘too much’ about looks means one is immature and shallow.

Exactly, I remember bitchy jones telling submissive men to try look hot [As a side note when searching for the link I misspelled objerctification and google suggested I change bitchy jones submissive men objectification to bitchy jones submissive men objectification, because one one objectifies men, there is no such thing as the female gaze right**?

It is tied up to gender roles and sexism and crap, it is about women(and those who are passed as women) who are meant to be nurturing and understanding and put there desires behind everyone else and you know what, fuck that noise.

Maybe its unfair but I am ok with saying, if you don’t make me hard, I ain’t going to fuck you, in fact I think I should work on being a damn bit pickier than that***, but it feels like a good place to start. Part of that, which sure is influenced by culture, based of current treads and everything fucking else is looking pretty, and no one I yet meet look there prettiest in a old faded conference shirt.

*do I even have to say not to do this? Really, my thesis was 9 months of pain and suffering, sleepless nights and panic.

**My gender studies course actually discussed this.

***That post pushed though all my protections and got to me, really got to me, and got offsprings, self-esteem stuck in my head for days It was all a bit too close.

All the goals

Ok, this is going to be hard.

I was at pycon last weekend, that I must say was not hard, nor was seeing the keynote by Audrey Roy, she spoke about diversity and open source communities, and I hope she wont mind me shortening her argument to “support diversity you selfish bastards” open source for most projects is a volunteer run, sure some core dev’s are paid, but many aren’t, and libraries, little side project, they are worked on by people in there spare time, helping out, throwing some support when they have time. We as open source advocates can not afford to lose half of our dev, which we will if we don’t support women in IT and open source, all good stuff, good positive worthwhile stuff.

Then there was Sunday morning, I got a message from a good friend of mine, his cousin had been murdered by her ex husband, I don’t know the details but it seems that the story falls into very well tread lines of violence.

I know leaving an abusive relationship can be more dangerous than staying I know domestic avoidance is hard, hard to deal with, hard to get people out of.

I also know that one of the reasons I fight for women in Tech, women in Math, women in everything is because it makes women human. because I believe that one of the most dangerous things one person can think of another is that they are other, outsiders, not like us.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it is a cure all for domestic violence, or any other kind of volience, but I wonder and I worry how much of an inpact “you can’t understand those bitches” battle of the sexes and all that shit has.

Next conference, or in 10 when I stand up and present my new killer app (TM) I hope and pray that maybe just maybe I will make women, and female bodied people more human, not the non understandable other, not a scary other, or a breathing blow up doll, but a person, with a life that starts before you, and might well continue after you, with non perfect test coverage and a laptop that crashed half way though my talk. An end in my own right. That is a valuable thing, even if we don’t get any more dev’s out of it.

When medical skeptics have more in common with Lord Monckton than evidence based medicine

You know, I seriously _was not_ setting out to be the anti skeptic skeptic or anything, but you know dismissing stuff that works and is evidence based medicine because it sounds like woo, or because you don’t approve of the diseases, symptoms and syndromes that it treats, seriously, when you ignore science because it doesn’t suit your agenda, well I would prefer the word for that wasn’t skeptic. While I think PZ is too strong dismissing the evidence he quotes an author saying

Mindful meditation may be relatively innocuous fluff

Where as I would call it evidence based treatment this is mostly about his commentors, not him, but I think he is writing in good faith. One commentor said

You miss one point. If one sees years and years of bad studies, without proper controls, small sample sizes, and self reporting, we are right to be skeptical. Do you have any studies, with thousands of subjects and non-self reporting for endpoints, and the proper controls in place, that show anything better than PLACEBO, the wonder drug? Then, and only then, can a real statement be made. You just sound like you are gullible with weak evidence.

Do you have any idea? Any idea at all how much thousands of people in a study cost? Do you understand that statistical significance? Can you suggest any non self reported end points for chronic pain or mental illness? (if anyone can, I am not an expert, feel free to jump in, I would be really interested in signs of pain or mental illness). Are you in fact suggesting that we throw everything we know about mental health care out, deregister all the psych drugs out there because OCD doesn’t cause a distinctive rash? At this point the bartender in my brain started taking the good bottles off the shelf.

I didn’t mind the original article that much, I think PZ raises some good points about the funding of non scientific organizations, and just because mindfulness meditation has some evidence doesn’t mean this group hasn’t just picked up the name without offering anything useful, and yes, the cost of a day session is really high which sets off my bulshit user alarm. However when it does come to the usefulness of mindfulness meditation for stress and mental illness. Some of the commentors have talked about claims suggesting that mindfulness lowers your risk of cancer and/or will fix everything, I want to be clear here, as far as I know these claims are totally unsupported by the evidence and should be stamped on whenever they turn up, exactly in the same way you would stamp on the same claims made about antibiotics.

You see, I am crazy, we could go into DSM IV diagnosis’s but for now lets stick to crazy. I have a very good doctor, she knows her stuff, but she is a big big hippy, she is really into green tea and long flowery skirts so when she suggested mindfulness meditation I quietly dismissed it, I was busy, when she brought it up again, I looked it up when I got home I was impressed enough that I thought I would try it, and I am glad I did. I know the research isn’t perfect, but it is good enough for me, given the low cost (around 20 dollars a bookstore) and low risk of harm I decided it was worth a go.

But this isn’t about me, it is about evidence, and it is about evidence in imperfect setting, you know what a statistician like me likes? A machine that goes bing with describable errors, when you get humans involved, actually humans who are really susceptible to placebo (both from hippies and pharmacological agents) who have good days and bad days it gets really hard to measure, and that is even with something that you can measure like blood pressure, when you get into really wacky stuff, stuff we can’t measure, like pain or mental illness well then your well past proof. If you want to trial a new painkiller, a new psych drug or know how effective meditation is as say an agent to avoid depression relapse you can’t avoid talking to actual people, and if the evidence for mindfulness isn’t good enough for you, I suggest you head to your local chemist and stop them selling NSAID’s

Vintage posts: This isn’t theory

Write

Your life depends on it.

My politics comes from a place of selfishness; people like me are dying for being like me, I am not special so I am also at risk.

It’s that simple, it isn’t academic, it isn’t about theory, it about surviving long enough to live, it is able making sure that when I have survived will be people I can stand next to, because enough freaks like me have survived. I am privilege bunny, I am probably safe, my skin is the right colour and my disabilities aren’t written on my visible skin, but you know I might put a rainbow sticker on my car

That might be enough.

Quick hit: Genocide and dispossession.

I live on Wurundjeri land, its just one of those things I know, been to many welcome to countries, like a good white liberal I talk about the history, I remember invasion day.

Out of interest a friend and I where looking up where the boundaries of the Wurundjeri nation where, I checked the Wikipedia site, but it wasn’t the edges of the boundaries that grabbed my attention.

There are less than 100 people alive today in that nation, I checked where the statistic came from, it must be wrong, it couldn’t really be less than a hundred right? The statistic comes from the head of the Wurundjeri Tribe Land and Compensation Cultural Heritage Council, if you had asked me to guess I would have said maybe 10,000. I wish there is some story I could draw, some greater truth but I can’t, I just can’t

Most of Victoria’s five and a half million people live on Wurundjeri land, privilege is being able to not know how close to the edge whole cultures live.