Sadness.

[metonomia]

I don't know that many people outside California - or even outside the Bay Area - know about the Johannes Mehserle trial.  I honestly don't know tons about it.  

But the bare facts are - last year on New Year's Eve, BART officer Mehserle shot and killed unarmed passenger Oscar Grant.  I do not know what caused him to do so, what the defense is, or any of the extenuating circumstances - actually, I just looked it up, and Mehserle says he accidentally fired his service weapon instead of his taser.  I do know that Mehserle is white, and Grant is black, and that Oakland is in utter uproar.  Tonight Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter - Oscar Grant's family wanted second-degree murder (and 'wanted' is a horrid word.  They want to not have to go through this.  They want for their son to not be dead.) - so he's going to jail for awhile.  

Riot police are out, stores are being broken into, and people are raging mad.

I...don't know what the point of this post is.  Mostly I'm just really really sad.  I know nothing near enough to offer judgement.  An innocent man is dead and a lot of people are deeply sad and deeply angry.  I'm mostly just praying that things will not escalate to a point where more people die.

Also I'm sad over feminism fail.  And not even feminism, because genderfail is a subject of humanity, not just feminists.  I'm sad that there is so much death and hurt and anger hanging over life, and that it has such an easy way of sucking us all into obsessing over it and arguing over it and thus extending the reach of the badness.

And now I'm going to go finish watching the LWW commentary because those kids are adorable and hilarious and happy.

Comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about the fandom feminist fail all morning as I run around trying to get the kids to camp, stayed up too late reading the thing going to the Big Court In The Sky today, responding to a client in the check out line and doing grocery shopping so that the spousal unit won't have to do it while I run off to an SPN con for the weekend. I think I may have to do a whole post of my own, but, if it is any consolation, if you ask, me, am I a feminist, the answer is hell yes. If you ask my sister in law, the stay at home Muslim immigrant wife and mom, are you a feminist, the answer would be, hell yes. If you asked my mentee who made principal last, who spends $200 on hair cuts, wears Jimmy Cho shoes, adores spa weekends and pretty things, and is really, really superb at what she does professionally, she'd say, hell yes. And the fandom women I know who adore slash and smut, who do not think Ginny Weasley is a slut, and yet also adore Sarah Palin, well, they would deny being feminists, but they defend vociferously their right to not be judged for their choices. Their deepest desire was to be a stay at home mom in a stable marriage with a nice husband, house, and life, and they don't have that. While I would wish that these women might better acknowledge that the ability to make those choices in the first place rests upon the work of feminists before them, I do not nag them about it. Their lives are hard enough as it is and they have had to be feminists out of necessity because the men in their lives have so badly screwed them. And this, I think is part of the answer, I hope. Most "real" women, the ones juggling home and kids and work and fandom or some combination of that do not romanticize rape and do not think a few kisses to a few boys is being a slut. They learned a lot of that the only way one can, by living it.

[metonomia.livejournal.com]

All I can say is one big resounding AMEN.