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Showing posts from July, 2018

The ability to hide in plain sight

One of the benefits of being a cis white male is that frequently, erasure and invisibility benefit me even when it's happening to me.  For example: I'm a white cis male. I have a beard and a reasonably deep voice. I don't think I've ever been misgendered. What I'm not  is straight; I've been bisexual for as long as I can remember, before I even knew it was a thing. But! I'm in a committed, monogamous relationship with a cis woman which from the outside looks like a straight couple. I also tend to prefer the word "queer" to any specific explicit definition in conversations, so sometimes others can make assumptions that don't necessarily follow. So when people look at my life, they don't see the queer parts. They see me as a white dude in a happy hetero marriage and that benefits me  because it means that I'm more likely to be seen as part of the 'in group' when dealing with things like bosses, money, taxes, etc. White straigh

So Here's The Thing: Mad Max (2015)

I have a Playstation, which means I have a Plastation Plus subscription, which means I get free games every month or so, some of them good, some of them... less so. And I was looking for something to distract me while not actually challenging my brain much (work is pretty busy), so since it was free, I decided to try out Mad Max. It's an "open world" style game, sort of, with driving and beating people up and sometimes blowing stuff up. Think of it as GTA IV meets Fallout; there's a ton and a half of DNA from "Rage" (2011). I broke my rule about scruffy white dudes, which honestly I shouldn't have, because it doesn't have any redeeming value as a game or as a commentary. At first, I was bored. And then I started to find upgrade items for the base I was operating out of, which meant I was actively participating in making the world around me a better place. OK, that's cool. And then... I moved to a new base, and suddenly I had to do all of the