More on Microaggressions

Some work from the University of California on the subject of microaggressions crossed my browser this morning.  It made for an interesting read, in that I now know that a microaggression is, "the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership."

How big a committee wrote that one?  And who do they define as a, "marginalized group?"

Sounds too straight white male think to me. Here are some examples that amplify it and my thoughts:

Themes	Microaggression Examples	Message	My Comment
Alien in One’s Own Land: When Asian Americans, Latino Americans and others who look different or are named differently from the dominant culture are assumed to be foreign-born	“Where are you from or where were you born?”	You are not a true American.	If someone asks me this question, I only have one response. “Texas.” Deep down inside I want to be a REAL Texan, and ask, “And what country are YOU from?” but I can control myself and my point was made in one word.
	“You speak English very well.”		DUH. It’s my first language.
	Continuing to mispronounce the names of students after students have corrected the person time and time again. Not willing to listen closely and learn the pronunciation of a non-English based name.	Your ethnic/racial identity makes you exotic.	Sorry, UC, although I like being referred to as, “exotic,” you got this one wrong, wrong, wrong. I’ve endured this one, and the person doing it comes across to me as an ignoramus at best.
Myth of Meritocracy Statements which assert that race or gender does not play a role in life successes, for example in issues like faculty demographics.	“America is the land of opportunity.” “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough	People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race. The playing field is even so if women cannot make it, the problem is with them. People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.	Look, we all know it’s not what you know. It’s who you know. Let’s just drop the pretense.
Sexist/Heterosexist Language Terms that exclude or degrade women and LGBT persons	Being forced to choose Male or Female when completing basic forms	LGBT categories are not recognized	Another binary that makes no sense. Please don’t complain when I ask that in the selections you include are, “Don’t know / not sure,” “Other (Please specify,)” and “Decline to state.”
	Two options for relationship status: married or single.	LGBT partnerships are invisible.	As a widower, I go, “Huh,” when faced with this binary.
Traditional Gender Role Prejudicing and Stereotyping Occurs when expectations of traditional roles or stereotypes are conveyed.	Labeling an assertive female committee chair/dean as a “b____,” while describing a male counterpart as a “forceful leader.”	Women are out of line when they are aggressive.	OK, being aggressive and being assertive are two different things. And when it comes to jerks, let’s use gender neutral terms such as the one with eight letters beginning with a and ending with e.

With that said, the complete paper can be found here.  And I just used HTML coding skills to get around a Blogger limitation.  Hooray!

On a lighter note, hope your Easter went well.  

Mixed Pre Easter Bag

Well, it's Holy Saturday.

I'm going to call it good news that I have discovered a new sexual hard limit of mine.  No way in hell am I going to remotely participate in activity involving learning more about Victoria's Secret.  It never was my thing in the first place, but now that I have had an encounter with a guy who dug it, I don't want to do it again.  What made this round too strange was he got off on listening to a recording that used phrases like, "you are a filthy faggot, whose only purpose is to have your man pussy penetrated."

In one word, "EEEEEEW!"

It gets worse.  This session was a three way involving someone who I was dating.  This jerk decided, with a little help, to make sure I was drummed out of the picture.  Let's just say, the whole situation got messy and in the end, I was crying, I hit the ceiling of the Grantville Trolley Station (and if you have been in it, you would know that is no mean feat."  And the whole thing really upset me.

Soooo, the time came to make an attempt to cheer myself up.  First round was when I dug up the Hawaiian shirts in my locker that Rick and I purchased to go to a funeral.  This particular one was for a friend of Rick's late mother who knew his family well.  The guest of honor specifically requested that the mourning party wear Hawaiian shirts to the event.  I really enjoyed meeting the family of the guest of honor as well as truly appreciating why we switch place cards at gatherings.  A friend of Rick's mom basically spoke with me and put him on a pedestal for all the things he did for his mom when he visited San Diego.  I relayed that to Rick.

The next day an archaeological dig into my locker revealed shirts Rick bought but never wore. It was also the day of a despedida for a bar, and Rick's grand nephew asked if I could be a gratuitous piece of arm candy and go with him.  I wore one of the shirts, attended the despedida and hand a great time.  I was out until 4 AM.  I also SWEAR the young man is out to fix me up with someone and is evaluating candidates from his date pool.  This means if you see me out on a date in Tijuana with an awfully young man, you know what happened.

As you know, I made a decision last July to split my time and figure out where to go from that point this July.  I have decided to keep splitting my time for another year, and decide what to do  next April.  We shall see how that plays out.

More to come.

What I Pass On

I finally got through the latest installment of Alumni Doing Better than You, also known as my undergraduate school's alumni magazine.

I noted that two professors I really liked taking a class from had passed away.  One was an art history professor who was a great abstract painter as well.  The other was a computer science professor who was proud of his long time association with Texas A&M University.

I used him extensively when I taught job seekers how people can check backgrounds informally.   One of the characters in my bag of tricks was Super Aggie - this professor's love for A&M amped up big time.  I had this person driving a car that was color to sample Texas A&M Maroon (there is such a color) with white pinstripes.  The plate number was, "GIG EM."  Did I mention that on casual Fridays, this person wore a T Shirt that said, "Keep College Station Normal?"

That said, I used this character with access to the Alumni Directory to look up to see if someone actually did graduate from A&M.  The reason why the person checked the directory was becase Super Aggie did not run into the person searched for at the friendly, neighborhood Aggie Muster.

And that is probably just one of many ways that professor's legacy lives on.