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sciatrix...because while I have very little interest in owning a purebred cat, I like looking at them sometimes. And purebred Maine Coons are eldritch motherfuckers, which is always fun to look at.
This is how I stumbled across this Metatron Eyes cattery, which holy shit looks like one of the nicest, most ethically put together catteries I've ever seen. Damn. If I wanted a purebred cat, this is the sort of place I'd want to buy it from and support. I mean, in practice I have a strong preference for mildly special-needs cats with extremely strong personalities, and it's just straight up easier to find that sort of thing by going through rescue, and we have such a massive feral problem worldwide that sourcing random-bred cats isn't hard. But it's nice to know that if people are going to be breeding cats, there are people out there working to do it with as much attention to quality of life in their animals as possible.
(As I was writing this, Arthur Dent stomped up, crawled into my lap, and immediately started purring himself to sleep. Aw.)
I was having an interesting Twitter conversation about the weird cultural projections that different regions of the US put on dogs this morning, including a guess that a dog from rural Georgia might have some blackmouth cur in her (quite possible!) and some regional discussion of what people expect out of dog manners, so this is quite a nice bookend for my day. I've been thinking about how dog culture in the US might change as dogs in need of homes become less and less common (as they already are in many areas), especially as spay/neuter culture penetrates the US South, and how racism and classism inform rescue culture and the way different breeds and types of dogs are often promoted. (Especially with respect to pit bulls. It is impossible to understand the cultural trajectory of pit bulls in the US without understanding the racial associations and aspects of the dogs, and it's uncomfortably interesting watching the ways that different groups try to promote the breed for adoption by, well, presenting them as middle class white person dogs too.
People get pretty weird about it.
Disclaimer because it's a loaded topic: my opinions on pit bulls are:
a) they are dogs,
b) all dogs are perfectly capable of doing horrific damage to a human, if they are so behaviorally inclined,
c) there's a lot of really dumb myths out there about pit bulls specifically,
d) pits do tend towards dog aggression no matter what you do, and "it's not the breed it's how you raise them!" is a somewhat dangerous oversimplification,
e) that said "pit bull" is an enormous and extremely heterogeneous population that contains a wide variety of temperaments, body types, energy levels, drive levels, etc etc as well as at least five breeds of dog, some of them extremely popular in the US,
f) shelter workers are notoriously awful at breed identification and everyone is awful at identifying mixes,
g) that there are a lot of really fucked up expectations in North America regarding dog behavior and opportunities for socialization, and breed based legislation is a way less effective way to minimize dog bites than public education and dangerous dog laws.
I am currently taking a long break from MeFi after I, uh, got hit pretty hard in the exclusion trauma side of things in a thread about wlw. Again. So it's nice to have DW to come back to and natter in, and the hell with everything else for a bit.
This is how I stumbled across this Metatron Eyes cattery, which holy shit looks like one of the nicest, most ethically put together catteries I've ever seen. Damn. If I wanted a purebred cat, this is the sort of place I'd want to buy it from and support. I mean, in practice I have a strong preference for mildly special-needs cats with extremely strong personalities, and it's just straight up easier to find that sort of thing by going through rescue, and we have such a massive feral problem worldwide that sourcing random-bred cats isn't hard. But it's nice to know that if people are going to be breeding cats, there are people out there working to do it with as much attention to quality of life in their animals as possible.
(As I was writing this, Arthur Dent stomped up, crawled into my lap, and immediately started purring himself to sleep. Aw.)
I was having an interesting Twitter conversation about the weird cultural projections that different regions of the US put on dogs this morning, including a guess that a dog from rural Georgia might have some blackmouth cur in her (quite possible!) and some regional discussion of what people expect out of dog manners, so this is quite a nice bookend for my day. I've been thinking about how dog culture in the US might change as dogs in need of homes become less and less common (as they already are in many areas), especially as spay/neuter culture penetrates the US South, and how racism and classism inform rescue culture and the way different breeds and types of dogs are often promoted. (Especially with respect to pit bulls. It is impossible to understand the cultural trajectory of pit bulls in the US without understanding the racial associations and aspects of the dogs, and it's uncomfortably interesting watching the ways that different groups try to promote the breed for adoption by, well, presenting them as middle class white person dogs too.
People get pretty weird about it.
Disclaimer because it's a loaded topic: my opinions on pit bulls are:
a) they are dogs,
b) all dogs are perfectly capable of doing horrific damage to a human, if they are so behaviorally inclined,
c) there's a lot of really dumb myths out there about pit bulls specifically,
d) pits do tend towards dog aggression no matter what you do, and "it's not the breed it's how you raise them!" is a somewhat dangerous oversimplification,
e) that said "pit bull" is an enormous and extremely heterogeneous population that contains a wide variety of temperaments, body types, energy levels, drive levels, etc etc as well as at least five breeds of dog, some of them extremely popular in the US,
f) shelter workers are notoriously awful at breed identification and everyone is awful at identifying mixes,
g) that there are a lot of really fucked up expectations in North America regarding dog behavior and opportunities for socialization, and breed based legislation is a way less effective way to minimize dog bites than public education and dangerous dog laws.
I am currently taking a long break from MeFi after I, uh, got hit pretty hard in the exclusion trauma side of things in a thread about wlw. Again. So it's nice to have DW to come back to and natter in, and the hell with everything else for a bit.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-13 02:35 pm (UTC)Thank you for this comment, by the way. It's hard for me to... let's say give up, when it feels like someone is explicitly trying to reach for inclusivity but implicitly refusing to meet me in the middle, for a whole bunch of reasons. Having someone external look at the situation and back me up is really grounding, especially when I'm floundering and not trusting my own perceptions.
I feel like that discussion is a really great example of the reasons that many non-lesbian wlw tend to pause and consider lesbians with mistrust, which tends to be self reinforcing and encourage more exclusionary ideas to solidify within lesbian culture. I have absolutely no idea what to do about it, and there are way too many people in that discussion who don't have the lived experience to pick up the dog whistles on that conversation to figure out what is happening and why.
I'm pulling myself out of the site right now because part of me feels like I don't have the right to be shaky and hyperfocused on the dynamic and unable to emotionally regulate if I'm not doing anything to fix this specific thing, or if I'm not advocating to be heard despite the grim experience that says it's not likely to happen here.
The cracks at the split attraction model and the characterization of that model as toxic are really making me feel unsafe, because they are signaling: ah. I'm right. You really don't respect me except insofar as I pretend to be lesbian enough for you. And if I try to talk about my actual perspectives and opinions, you will tell me I'm really not welcome, that I'm a traitor or something.
But this is mostly manifesting as biphobia, and I don't have quite the right rhetorical background to come in swinging on that front, and my "hey I'm not straight passing" tactic isn't working either... and at the end of the day, it's going to be toxic and holding an open discussion about it is not going to change anything to make the space better.
I just.
Ahaha, it's really hard giving myself room to be as upset as I am without throwing myself back on the middle of the whole thing over and over and over again.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 12:47 am (UTC)I'd noticed that you seemed to be acting compulsively, and were caught in a whirlpool you needed to be pulled out of.
part of me feels like I don't have the right to be shaky and hyperfocused on the dynamic and unable to emotionally regulate if I'm not doing anything to fix this specific thing
Well, it did not look to me like the thing you were doing to fix it was working, nor did it look to me like a thing that would ever work, so your doing it more and harder (and as above, compulsively) doesn't really seem to me to be something you should feel obligated to do.
There may be ways to engage that are more satisfying to you, in that they stand up for your perspective, say. But what you've been doing is not that. The urge you feel to do that specific thing is not getting you closer to that, and is not actually serving any morally principled felt urgency to stand up for what is right.
The cracks at the split attraction model and the characterization of that model as toxic are really making me feel unsafe, because they are signaling: ah. I'm right. You really don't respect me except insofar as I pretend to be lesbian enough for you.
There is no amount of pretending to be a lesbian what will be enough for her to respect you. :)
And if I try to talk about my actual perspectives and opinions, you will tell me I'm really not welcome, that I'm a traitor or something.
She will tell you that you're not a lesbian. Which in her head is correct because she – and she's not the only lesbian to do so – has defined "lesbian" to be something other than just a woman who is exclusively attracted to women. She's got this whole construct in her head about how being a Lesbian is completely transformative of your whole personality in a way which means anybody who doesn't share in that personality transformation isn't really a Lesbian. No matter whom they boff or snuggle.
at the end of the day, it's going to be toxic and holding an open discussion about it is not going to change anything to make the space better
Yeah, the thing that gets me is why you are trying the open discussion approach here. If some dude were being misogynist and "just asking questions" about women's compentence in science, you wouldn't try to engage in "open discussion" with him, you'd drop an umpteen page formally argued riot act on his head explaining, with foot notes, why he is full of shit. And we know this because you did.
I mean, is the problem here that because it's Metafilter, you're not in a position to flame these people as they so richly deserve?