In a month of posting, day 8

I started this project a month ago, Dec 2nd, so a moment to reflect. I managed seven posts within the month and each one had some value. Some generated good discussion, some hit good chords with some people. If there's any consistent value to them, I think it's in what they made me think about. I'm still uncertain where I'm going with this and unwilling to try and force it into a shape. Let it grow organically.

Tell better stories about yourself.

Once upon a girlfriend ago, she remarked that the stories I told about myself weren't particularly good ones. They tended to highlight faults or flaws and I didn't end up well in many of them. She asked if I had any better stories to tell, where by "better" she meant stories that reflected on my better qualities. Of course I have such stories and I began to practice telling them. Now, more than 20 years later, these better stories are really the only ones I tell.

That's interesting. It means there are some stories I will likely never tell again. Some stories I'd intended to tell I may take to my grave untold. Is that fair? Am I lying by painting a one-sided picture of myself? In my stories I'm funny, perceptive, helpful, clever. Those are all true things about me but they're obviously not all the things about me. Is an edited (curated?) picture a true picture?

I think about this sometimes when I'm editing my photo shoots. If I crop someone out of a picture am I creating a lie by saying that person wasn't there? If I delete the only photo I have of someone at an event am I making a hole in reality?

I also have to bear in mind that we now understand memory is not a fixed thing - every time we remember we re-create and rewrite our memories. That's just a fact about how human brains work but it implies that we're always rewriting our memories with our present sensibilities. Was I actually the funny, perceptive, clever, helpful person in those stories or is that just the way I've rewritten them in my mind?

I know I get facts wrong in some of my stories - I've been able to check myself against independent sources and sometimes it's clear that I've got something wrong. For example, I remember that I first started using Napster in 2000 because Julie Kramer - at the time a radio DJ at WFNX - wouldn't play a particular song I called in to request. Usually she did play what I requested, so the time she refused stuck in my head. My coworkers then were all big into Napster and when they heard me complaining they told me how to find the song through the software so I could listen to it. I used to tell the story as being about one particular song until I found out that song wasn't released until 2001. Nowadays I'm pretty sure the song was the Hersh/Stipe duet "Your Ghost" but I've no idea if that's what it really was or if that's just how I've rewritten my memory to be consistent.

It will probably surprise few of you that one of my favorite movies is Rashomon, Kurosawa's masterpiece in which several characters tell their own (self-serving) versions of events all witnessed or were part of.

OK, so that's a thing, but it begs the question - does it matter? If I get trivial facts wrong in the story is that a big deal? Does it matter what the details are so much as what the story says about me and the other people in it? Am I still telling better stories about myself?

And I wonder, dear readers, if you hear me still telling bad stories about myself.

My Arisia schedule

The Internet Hate Train: Moving Past Gamergate - Sat 5:30 PM

I think I've firmed up what I want to say, but I need to know how the moderator wants things to go. I see they've added another male-sounding name; looking at his Twitter feed gives me some hope.

Poly 301: When the Sh*t Hits the Fan - Sat 7:00 PM (mod)

With Wifey. It will be interesting. I have some definite ideas here. I hope the audience come to participate - this is going to be a sharing panel, not a definitive-statements panel.

Photographing Costumes and Conventions - Sat 8:30 PM

This one has a great set of panelists I know, but somehow I didn't realize it was adjacent to the other two. That appears to be a change from previous. This means that cocktails in the bar would be later than I had planned and getting dinner would be tricky as hell. I might see if I can drop this one in favor of something else.

Games as Interactive Literature - Sun 4:00 PM (mod)

This is a rerun topic from last year, but with all new panelists so we should be able to focus on different things this time. This will rise or fall on the quality of the panelists, none of whom I know.

Poly Parenting - Mon 10:00 AM (mod)

Good people, great topic, absolutely suck-ass timing. Again. What is it with Arisia and the parenting panels? Ah well, someone's gotta hold the short stick and I guess we get it again.

This. Dear lord all of this

http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/on-nerd-entitlement-rebel-alliance-empire

I want to quote so much of this article because I think it hits many good points in very clear and accessible ways. Most notably for me, Laurie Penny has absolutely nailed why I am so frustrated trying to talk about privilege and sexism with my software development peers. All of them have stories of personal misery and reasons why they don't feel privileged. The sea of whiteness, maleness, able-ness, cis-ness that they swim in is invisible to them; all they see is their own suffering, which Ms. Penny agrees is valid and real.

Here, just have one moment of brilliance:

[V]ery real suffering does not cancel out male privilege, or make it somehow alright. Privilege doesn't mean you don't suffer [...] [I]magine what it's like to have all the problems you had and then putting up with structural misogyny on top of that. Or how about a triple whammy: you have to go through your entire school years again but this time you're a lonely nerd who also faces sexism and racism. This is why Silicon Valley is fucked up. Because it's built and run by some of the most privileged people in the world who are convinced that they are among the least. People whose received trauma makes them disinclined to listen to pleas from people whose trauma was compounded by structural oppression. People who don't want to hear that there is anyone more oppressed than them, who definitely don't want to hear that maybe women and people of colour had to go through the hell of nerd puberty as well, because they haven't recovered from their own appalling nerdolescence. People who definitely don’t want to hear that, smart as they are, there might be basic things about society that they haven’t understood, because they have been prevented from understanding by the very forces that caused them such pain as children.

That, gentle readers, is a raw truth that took me a long time to grok: sexism and patriarchy hurt me. Not just growing up but now, every day. (And not just when horrifying sexism comes out of my mouth or off my keyboard - I swim in these seas, too.)

In response to another entry, one of the people I game with pointed out that part of the reason I have such a hard time with Gamergate is that I see female gamers as part of my success story. Without my main tank (female gamer) and highest DPSer (female gamer) I'm not going to be as successful. I don't understand why other people don't see things this way: we succeed together and we are harmed together.