Humanity, Lifestyle

Real Estate Agents: A Strange Breed

A few months ago, we took the plunge into the nightmarish Sydney property market. That meant spending a lot of time with real estate agents. Needless to say, we now own a small portion of a nice suburban home. Like, we probably own the laundry. At least part of it. Of course, the bank owns the rest and won’t let us forget it, drawing out a slightly horrifying sum from our accounts on the regular. There’s a few differences between renting and “owning”. If we break something, we have to fix it ourselves, for example. But if we want to knock out a wall, we definitely can. We tried that out. Liberating, to say the least.

via GIPHY

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Humanity, Life

Progress: The Gradual Betterment of Humankind

If you ever wade into the comments sections, you’ll know how easy it is to despair at the world.

An article on the gender pay gap will show you some people denying it even exists. A compilation of statistics about violence against women will have commentary ranging from the victim blamers to the what-about-men derailers. If you see a video about children and gender stereotyping, there will almost always be people complaining about the idea of gender neutrality. An article about racism will be peppered with remarks from those who think it isn’t an issue (or worse, those that embrace it). The same goes for anything online that is shared to do with sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism or any other form of human bigotry.

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Humanity, Opinion, Social Media

The Humans of Facebook Community Groups

Facebook Community Groups

I’ve been conducting an unofficial little survey on my personal profile about Facebook Community Groups. Your local area noticeboard style group on Facebook- is it a civilised, helpful group to trade recommendations and discuss what’s on in your area or is it a cesspit of bigotry and never-ending arguments? There’s always a bunch of “regular” people in them, the kind that avoid conflict or serious discussion and just want to find out what time the fireworks start at the Christmas Carols. They probably make up the majority of these groups but you’d hardly know they’re there. They aren’t the ones making all the noise!

via GIPHY

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Feminism, Humanity, Internet, Opinion

Thoughts About the Call-Out

Call Out: Blurred image of a band on a stage beyond a crowd in shadow. A mobile phone with facebook open is held in the bottom right corner.

INVISIBILIA: The Call-Out

I listened to this podcast, by Hanna Rosin and Alix Spiegel, recently and it made me think about the practice of calling people out. There’s also a transcription available here.

via GIPHY Rosin and Spiegel

If you just want a snapshot, it’s this:

A woman called Emily became heavily involved in the hardcore music scene. She loved the music, going to gigs, travelling with her best friend’s band and being part of the scene. But the hardcore scene was pretty male-dominated and she experienced firsthand things like sexual assault and the way the scene closed ranks around “good guys”. The expression was “good guy, backed hard”, so people making allegations against “good guys” weren’t believed. There was all kinds of sexism in the scene, including expressions like “no clit in the pit” meaning women weren’t welcome in the mosh. She eventually fronted her own band and used her platform to sing about feminist issues.

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