November 1, 2010 @ 1:04 pm.
--Vermont Politics
--Other
--What Is Harassment and What Isn't? (The Recession)
--Vermont Politics
I've been looking up candidates for the smaller offices in Vermont, and it seems to me that for the most part, the only people who have taken the time and trouble to make themselves obviously visible on the Internet are the candidates for the major parties who are most likely to be in the closest competition with each other, leading to a win.
Somebody is going to get elected to these other offices, and their presence or lack of presence will have an impact on what happens in Vermont. The biggest races aren't the only ones that have an effect on the present and future of people who live here.
--Other
When I first started writing on the Internet, it was something that I didn't want to have to take seriously. It was an uncomfortable transition for me to decide that I had to take it more seriously than I had been doing, and I still struggle with it sometimes.
Because I didn't take it seriously for a long time, I think that most people who have been following what I write online for the past 2 years probably have no sense of what I try to be like in a professional setting.
I understand the importance of making a distinction between what is professional and what is personal. In some businesses, the line is less apparent to outside observers than it is in other businesses, but that doesn't make it less of a real line.
November 1, 2010 @ 2:47 p.m.
--What Is Harassment and What Isn't?
I think that my notice yesterday regarding stalkers must have worked, because last night and today when I went to UVM to use the library, nobody hassled me.
Something else happened, which I think I should talk about.
First of all, I sought out a quiet corner to use a computer, and within 15 minutes, there was a veritable swarm of young men in the vicinity. That's what happens when famous people pay attention to you; for a while, you get more attention from people who aren't famous than you otherwise would. The times when I said last year that the pictures of me that I had shown online happened to be 2 especially good pictures, I was telling the truth, and everyone who has seen me up close knows that I'm telling the truth. I wish that everyone who hasn't seen me up close would now take my word for it; I've been going to that library since I was 16, which is when there was still some discussion of whether or not I might do some modelling, and at no time in my life have I ever gotten the kind of attention that I got today. (I was wearing a full set of clothes in those pictures, by the way; jeans, shirt and a sweater. The only other picture of me that's ever been online was what became the fodder for all of the "recession" jokes. I had taken a picture of my teeth to show what the psychiatric medication I had taken when I was younger had done to my mouth; it wasn't meant to be a pretty picture. The media/celebrity harassers have been making "recession" jokes since I put that picture up in June of this year, and the government took up that joke along with the other jokes in the middle of the summer. I've explained more than once in the past few months what the purpose of my putting that picture online was; I didn't try to make that picture look good, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd do it just the same way.)
Second, one of the young men sat at the computer next to me, and we started talking after maybe 30 minutes. It was a short conversation, and soon after that I left the library.
It was only when I was almost home that I realized that I had talked to this guy about how I always felt bad when I had to use one of the public access computers next to people who were there who were obviously homeless, because I know that homeless people in Burlington don't have enough support and a lot of them don't get to take showers as much as they would if the homeless services here were better.
I know that as soon as I publish this paragraph, everyone who's been reading my writing online for the past year is going to start yelling; can't be helped.
I have two things to say about it:
1) The homeless services in Burlington and probably in all of Vermont are indescribably inadequate for the need that's here. I have no idea how people who have no coping skills and who can't negotiate their living situations survive; I think that they must stay in horribly abusive situations because THERE IS NOWHERE TO GO, and even if you can get in someplace like COTS, COTS is small, cramped, and mean. I'm using the word mean here in that sense of the word that is associated with something being "demeaning."
That being said, it seems to me that COTS isn't as bad as some of the other completely inadequate, dangerous, dirty places that people find to stay.
There IS NO adequate support system in Burlington for people who are in a housing crisis. Maybe the lack of a decent system in that regard is a deliberate tactic on the part of city planners to try to keep chronically homeless people from circulating through Vermont on their way to places where the homeless population is more adequately served. If so, that's unfair to people who end up homeless through mistakes or bad luck and who don't want to be homeless and are capable of living on their own if they don't continue to be in a daily crisis situation once they are homeless.
2) I really was thinking about homeless people when I said what I said to that guy. I've said more than once since the harassment of me started that I'm not interested in policing people to make them think, talk and act in a certain way. Some relevant questions to determine whether or not you're harassing someone are:
"Are you trying to humiliate the person? Are you going out of your way to say things that you don't have to say that you know are upsetting to that person, and are you doing it to upset him or her? Has the person told you how he or she feels about what you're doing, and have you persisted even though the person has told you more than once how he or she feels about what you're doing? Do you feel happy when you see that you've managed to make that person feel hurt or angry? Do you think it's funny when you see that you've made that person feel hurt or angry? Are you doing it to impress other people, who also seem to enjoy it when the person exhibits signs of pain, sadness or anger? How much time do you spend thinking of things to do, say or exhibit that you think might upset the person? Is it a lot of time? How much time do you spend on other things?"
Copyright L. Kochman November 1, 2010