Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

rantwoman, whose posts i always adore at lefty mailing list, has an interesting blog post that concludes with a bit about passing:

And what would be the reasonable accommodation here: as the world’s most irrepressible nephew would hear, “use your words.” Ask nicely. Listen carefully. Communicate, don’t just assume … because some of us spend too much time trying to pass.

I work with a fellah who is partially deaf and I noticed that he was doing this the other day. Too much effort spent at trying to pass. In fact, forever, I had no idea he was deaf. Thing is, things would have proceeded along much better had I known. Well, not that anything didn’t proceed along smoothly; rather, I just thought he was an obnoxious geeky anti-social asshole who nonetheless smiled a big ol’ happy smile as he passed my desk daily but then didn’t seem to answer me when I spoke to him otherwise.

I’d *shrug* and think, “take all kinds” since the world of programmers and developers is a world of obnoxious geeky totally weird and most anti-social assholes.

of course, the funny thing about that is: it is, to my experience, confined to the u.s., this stereotype. Male programmers from other countries such as India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Iran, Philippines, Japan, Korea are not obnoxious geeky totally weird anti-social assholes. Indeed, for the most part, my experience is that they are exceedingly gregarious. They like people, they want to hang out and socialize, they want to have lunch together, they will hang back in the coffee room, hoping to keep a conversation going about.. whatever.

I find that fascinating in so far as, in the u.s., we tend to have this stereotype about what IT people are like. But it cannot be anything particularly ingrained in so far as, supposedly being logical or supposedly (*rolls eyes*) having asperger’s tendencies, this makes them naturally inclined toward asociality. Clearly, this crap about a natural affinity with logical thinking, asperger’s tendencies, and skills at programming is a lot of hogwash. It is, rather, largely a cultural thing.

And I’m pretty sick of a handful of programmer/developer assholes of the male persuasion trying to excuse their assholery with their scoring out on some bullshit asperger’s spectrum quiz.

Anyway, because I love rantwoman ranting, and because I find it interesting that, in the world of multi-oppression identity blogging where it is sometimes cachet to be able to trot out a lot of identifications with alist of oppressions, that rarely have i heard discussions of passing among the disabled. there is talk about how it kind of sucks if you’re suffering from depression of ADD or ADHD, that people don’t recognize your disability, or about how you struggle with it because of the shame or the internalized shame. not terrible discussions, no.

but i had never heard it discussed in terms of the pros and cons of passing — in the way we might discuss the pros and cons of passing as hets when we’re not.

blah blah. sorry. mind’s not on writing and ranting much these days. not sure why. work is a little hectic and i’m recovering from a spill i took on my bike — nothing major — and of course reading a lot. but it seems like the evenings are filled with either errand-running or book reading or doing some sort of household activity and next thing I know it’s time to sleep and then time to get up and go to the gym and then to work and then home to run and errand and sit on the porch and enjoy the, so far, pleasant early summer and then it’s time to go to bed and sleep and…..

and as a consequence, the desire to write about what I’m reading, while there, isn’t compelling enough to make me even want to post barbs at the barb-ery and barb-erous lbo-talk mailing list.

and so, today, i’m going to get back on the bike and take a tour through my neighborhood celebration days for a hot, hot, hot, muggy afternoon of sidewalk sales, arts and crafts demos, and various better business association gimmicks designed to instill a sense of what we, in our small town, would have called something like the “Fireman’s Field Days….” ha

Only, here in Yuppieville, no one is going to be slinging back cheap genny screamers on tap and will, instead, be sipping merlot at the local Total Wine table under a tent in the parking lot, or sampling fare at one of the YuppieVille restaurants alongside fare supposedly representative of Peru, Brazil, Turkey, India, Thailand, Spain, Costa Rica.

Also, I agree with Chuckie’s advice to Brownfemipower, and man I wished I’d known she didn’t know. Traveling cheap necessitates a cheap ass cooler, a stash of ziploc bags, ice from the motel/hotel ice machine, and shopping at the local grocery store. Why buy a ten dollar sandwich when for $10 you can buy a week’s worth of bread and a couple of day’s worth of sliced meat and cheese. If you are so lucky to have kitchenette in said hotel, crack out the macaroni and pasta sauce or cook up a load of chicken breasts and keep it in the fridge. it’s boring, but it’s cheap, fast, and easy.

like me. *grin*