The Dreamwidth Journal of zdashamber

I volunteered for No on 8 tonight, doing phone banking... For those not keeping track, Prop 8 changes the constitution of California to ban same-sex marriage, whereas currently it's legal. There was a poll in early October showing the right-wing buttinskis winning, and the latest poll still has them winning, but it's only 48 to 45. So there is hope, but rather than sitting around hoping wingers stay home, it makes me feel a lot better to do something.

My personal sample size was 50 calls, of which there were 10 people who talked to me long enough to get a sense of where they were at, of which 5 were against and 5 were for. My big triumph was getting in touch with someone in San Jose who also wanted to volunteer... I just read _World War Z_ this weekend, so my thought was that recruiting another volunteer while volunteering was like being a zombie that sucessfully managed to bite someone. :)

( Details about what the phone banking was like )

Phone banking is not that scary. It fulfills that desire that we all have, to go down lists and cross things off and sort them. Action is fun.

Sending money is good, too, though, if you're out of state, or whatever... This really will help all of America, if California gets to keep being free. GLBTAI people will be able to escape to here, to any number of industries or climates. We have nearly 12% of Americans living here. We can be a great big honking example to ease the way for other states. Help us out, here. Even a little bit is cool.

scalzi posted cheerfully on his blog, the Whatever, about how his wife was awesome: she'd gone out for an evening at a bar with her friends, a drunk hit on her all night despite pointed ignoring and tellings-off, the drunk went to grab her, and she pinned him against a wall and made him apologize and slink off. Yay! Instapundit, the pretend-libertarian, noted the post, and then his wife Dr. Helen posts a OMG FEMALES ARE TEH OPPRESSORS response. A bunch of mouthbreathing knuckledraggers go over to the Whatever and leave indeterminate ultra-sexist comments. John Scalzi is like, "Why are the commentors of my friends the fake-libertarians such cretins?"

I've never in my life seen a situation where the phrase "You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas" is more apt. Why is it, John, that people who love smug poorly-argued sexist bullshit are themselves likely to produce smug poorly-argued sexist bullshit?

This all ties to a recent post of ginmar's:

"Are you sure?" is another way of invalidating a woman's ideas, of questioning her judgement, of changing the subject. How much of this second-guessing is part of women's daily lives, where they get people acting as if they're too stupid to think things through? Once you start noticing it, you can't stop, so my advice, is to notice it and keep noticing it---and then start calling people on it.

Notice how Dr. Helen says that only a man could possibly have learned when it was appropriate to apply violence to solve a problem?

“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.” - Dave Barry

Which recently went by in a column chock full o' amusing aphorisms written by that delightful fellow, Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle.

It's a pithy reversion of a very old thought that goes something like, "You can judge a man by how he treats those who are powerless against him."

Nod, nod, yes of course... Alright, let's hit a practical example. Iago and Cassio. They're peers, pretty much; certainly, there's no power relationship as clear-cut as boor/waiter. And yet, Cassio is powerless against Iago's assassination of his character. Lies told under a cloak of secrecy... Who can defend against that?

Thus, Iago gets to be known as "possibly the most heinous villain in Shakespeare."