April 6, 2011 @ 12:35 p.m.
--I don't like any of the harassment any more than I ever did, but I'm becoming desensitized to it so that I can get through the day. In the process, it seems as though I have also, at times, been less sensitive to what might be hurtful to other people than I otherwise would be.
I don't think that code should stay around. I think that the idea of getting rid of it is good, and I'm sorry if my first attempts to do that were less than thoughtful.
I had noticed before yesterday that a lot of people and businesses in the overall picture have been going out of their way to avoid things that have become symbols of harassment, repression and murder. I appreciate that effort; I also want the people making that effort to be free of the hassle of doing it.
Gossip is one thing; politics are another. I think that most situations in which I would feel I have the right to continue to discuss things are the larger political and social issues, and for those, the concern for me is still "What is the result?" Will the people in Iran be freed? Will the people who believe that women deserve to be second class citizens and who have been trying to implement that into the world by making constant references about the gender of women to such an extent that it is dehumanizing stop that process of dehumanization and degradation? Will the equally horrific, if not more horrific, efforts to portray pedophilia as legitimate sexual activity stop?
I left voicemail messages at the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Times Argus last night; I had concerns about some of what I had written on my blog yesterday even before I logged out. I made every possible effort to explain what my thinking had been yesterday, to explain that I HAD worried about some of what I wrote, and to show that I meant no harm to anyone.
There's little to nothing in any of those newspapers that reflects any response to what I said to them last night other than spite and dishonesty. The continuing viciousness of those publications and others like them remains somewhat beyond my powers of comprehension. When I do feel that I have insight into that viciousness, I don't like what I understand of it. Among other things, it's unfair, and seemingly unrepentantly so.
L. Kochman April 6, 2011 @ 12:53 p.m.
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April 6, 2011 @ 1:31 p.m.
I've been getting severely abused at the shelter where I've been staying. Most of the men have been leaving me alone, but in the past few days, the other homeless women have become constantly hateful and degrading. There's literally nothing I can do or say that stops their verbal and psychological abuse. I've tried being nice to them, I've tried ignoring them; they really seem to think that even though I've never met them before, they have the right to verbally attack me, keep me from having even what passes for a normal existence in the shelter, and doing everything they can to make my life as uncomfortable as possible.
A couple of days ago, after I'd written about the homeless man who had threatened to "clean up the mess of the bedbugs," the other women in our room decided that they had found bedbugs in the room. They convinced the volunteer to make everyone in our room take all of the bedding off of our beds and put it plastic garbage bags outside, in the rain, along with I guess as many of our clothes as weren't too inconvenient for the women who had gone on the rampage to pack up and move outside.
When I asked, later that night, what the bedbugs had looked like, I was told "like little cockroaches." When I asked how many had been found, the answer was "2."
These women were already bullying another woman who was at the shelter when I got there; she has since left, and as is often the case in situations like that, she was much smarter and nicer than she knew she was.
What's happening at the shelter is the same as what I have seen in other situations since the harassment began; the people who tend to be the most abusive towards others to begin with are the ones who are the most interested in taking advantage of the fact that bullying and harassment have been getting endorsed by large forces in our society since last year.
As soon as I got into bed last night, even though they had been completely silently for hours before I went into the room, one woman after another started doing loud, fake, repetitive coughing. One would do it, and get no response from me; then another would start. After several minutes of it, and some repeat performances from individual inhabitants of the room, I went upstairs and knocked on the door where the volunteer sleeps overnight. He opened the door and immediately started yelling at me, saying that he needed to sleep. I said "I need to sleep, too; I'm the one who's homeless. If you don't want to help people, then you shouldn't work here."
He never stopped yelling at me. He blamed the entire thing on me, saying that the shelter manager had told him that the same thing had happened the night before.
He told me he was going to call the police and tell them that I was being disruptive; I ASKED him to call the police because I didn't feel safe there.
IO was l
--I don't like any of the harassment any more than I ever did, but I'm becoming desensitized to it so that I can get through the day. In the process, it seems as though I have also, at times, been less sensitive to what might be hurtful to other people than I otherwise would be.
I don't think that code should stay around. I think that the idea of getting rid of it is good, and I'm sorry if my first attempts to do that were less than thoughtful.
I had noticed before yesterday that a lot of people and businesses in the overall picture have been going out of their way to avoid things that have become symbols of harassment, repression and murder. I appreciate that effort; I also want the people making that effort to be free of the hassle of doing it.
Gossip is one thing; politics are another. I think that most situations in which I would feel I have the right to continue to discuss things are the larger political and social issues, and for those, the concern for me is still "What is the result?" Will the people in Iran be freed? Will the people who believe that women deserve to be second class citizens and who have been trying to implement that into the world by making constant references about the gender of women to such an extent that it is dehumanizing stop that process of dehumanization and degradation? Will the equally horrific, if not more horrific, efforts to portray pedophilia as legitimate sexual activity stop?
I left voicemail messages at the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Times Argus last night; I had concerns about some of what I had written on my blog yesterday even before I logged out. I made every possible effort to explain what my thinking had been yesterday, to explain that I HAD worried about some of what I wrote, and to show that I meant no harm to anyone.
There's little to nothing in any of those newspapers that reflects any response to what I said to them last night other than spite and dishonesty. The continuing viciousness of those publications and others like them remains somewhat beyond my powers of comprehension. When I do feel that I have insight into that viciousness, I don't like what I understand of it. Among other things, it's unfair, and seemingly unrepentantly so.
L. Kochman April 6, 2011 @ 12:53 p.m.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 6, 2011 @ 1:31 p.m.
I've been getting severely abused at the shelter where I've been staying. Most of the men have been leaving me alone, but in the past few days, the other homeless women have become constantly hateful and degrading. There's literally nothing I can do or say that stops their verbal and psychological abuse. I've tried being nice to them, I've tried ignoring them; they really seem to think that even though I've never met them before, they have the right to verbally attack me, keep me from having even what passes for a normal existence in the shelter, and doing everything they can to make my life as uncomfortable as possible.
A couple of days ago, after I'd written about the homeless man who had threatened to "clean up the mess of the bedbugs," the other women in our room decided that they had found bedbugs in the room. They convinced the volunteer to make everyone in our room take all of the bedding off of our beds and put it plastic garbage bags outside, in the rain, along with I guess as many of our clothes as weren't too inconvenient for the women who had gone on the rampage to pack up and move outside.
When I asked, later that night, what the bedbugs had looked like, I was told "like little cockroaches." When I asked how many had been found, the answer was "2."
These women were already bullying another woman who was at the shelter when I got there; she has since left, and as is often the case in situations like that, she was much smarter and nicer than she knew she was.
What's happening at the shelter is the same as what I have seen in other situations since the harassment began; the people who tend to be the most abusive towards others to begin with are the ones who are the most interested in taking advantage of the fact that bullying and harassment have been getting endorsed by large forces in our society since last year.
As soon as I got into bed last night, even though they had been completely silently for hours before I went into the room, one woman after another started doing loud, fake, repetitive coughing. One would do it, and get no response from me; then another would start. After several minutes of it, and some repeat performances from individual inhabitants of the room, I went upstairs and knocked on the door where the volunteer sleeps overnight. He opened the door and immediately started yelling at me, saying that he needed to sleep. I said "I need to sleep, too; I'm the one who's homeless. If you don't want to help people, then you shouldn't work here."
He never stopped yelling at me. He blamed the entire thing on me, saying that the shelter manager had told him that the same thing had happened the night before.
He told me he was going to call the police and tell them that I was being disruptive; I ASKED him to call the police because I didn't feel safe there.
IO was l