bofoddity

Today there was a Pride Parade in Helsinki (which I didn't directly participate this time, although I helped out as a volunteer), and during the parade the participants were attacked with pepper gas and smoke bombs. Apparently the people responsible were caught trying to hide the spray, but FUCKING HELL. A Finnish article here, and of course the first comment belongs to a whiner who feels it's awful that they had to sit in a streetcar decorated by rainbow flaqs.

Sonoma County CA separates elderly gay couple and sells their home. (Article doesn't seem to be available at the moment, but I re-posted the contents in this post.)

I also commented about this to rosehiptea in her post, and she pointed out that since gay marriages are illegal in California this could happen to a lot more people. Maybe even marriage isn't enough to prevent this kind of crap from happening, but maybe it would help if these kind of rights weren't taken away in the first place. Or if we didn't question the right to these rights at all. Wouldn't it be great if it was so?!

Will post the meme responses soon, but since I'm all about the unfunny...

( The Fails )

If anybody is wondering why #amazonfail matters so much, this article at AfterEllen sums it up. As for me, I can't put into words how much it hurts to see what comes when you type up 'homosexuality' in the search field.

Sorry if this feels like spam, but this is personal.

Books with homosexual characters are being excluded from Amazon's best seller lists. 'CAUSE HOMOSEXUALITY IS JUST SO PERVERSE AND ADULT YOU KNOW.

More here and here.

I swear, if I hear about gays having it easy one more time..

eta: A couple of more useful links:

#AmazonFail at Twitter.

A petition.

Transgender bios and non-fiction books about any non-standard sexuality are also being excluded.

So there has been more race fail going on (short summary: published authors wanked, coffeeandink was reasonable, published authors decided to punish her for that, more here). The main issue these people have now is that some bloggers prefer to use pseudonyms instead of their real names, because apparently wanting to protect your privacy is actually an act of cowardice. Or about making yourself a non-person, as one wanker seems to indicate:

Much has apparently been made of my posting her real name in my demand for an apology. But is was not a pseudonym that wrote the lie for which an apology is needed. It was a real live person who has a body and a name. And that is who needs to apologize.

(Full post here to be gawked at. It's special.)

Except who is actually being dehumanized here? The threats and demands for silence come from the big, known names, not from those who use pseudonyms; it's these people who use their influence in order to smear reputations of others and endanger them to harm. Look at that post I linked after the quote: who is making demands here? Who started the hostility again?

It's funny to watch these people demand responsibility from others while blissfully ignoring their own shit, only it's really not. It's not nice to see bullies get to be entitled, arrogant and threatening and get away with their behavior without even a slap on the wrist from their own community. It's not nice to see that these adults, these professionals actually take pride in getting to ignore concerns voiced by their fellow writers, readers and everybody else who aren't willing to tiptoe around them. Are they honestly incapable of seeing their own hatefulness? If they are, it would be nice to get to live in their bubble.

I don't have personal experience with anybody involved with this, but it's easy for me to see which side has decided to be a martyr. It's easy to be one when you have decided to be the one to call the shots, and that the other side is just a target.

A motion has been filed in order to invalidate the gay marriages that took place before Proposition 8 passed.

I tried to form coherent thought, but in the end it went down to this: There is no other reason for taking rights away from people who already legally used them than pure and simple bigotry. I can't believe this world right now.

I was going to do a nice, cheerful meme, but..

Last year there was a school shooting in Finland. Now there's been another.

Siis voi helvetti!