Via Fannie:

"Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), a day dedicated "to memorializing those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice." 

Transgender women, particularly trans women of color, are disproportionately likely to be victims of violence and murder. In 2012, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs noted that 53% of all anti-LGBTQ hate crimes were committed against transgender women and that 73% of homicide victims were people of color."

As a society, we fail so very much on transgender issues.  Even most mainstream lesbian, gay, and queer groups and movements are very cis-dominated and -focused.

This is extremely unacceptable.  Trans people are people, dammit, and deserve so so so much better as a baseline of decency.  We've got to get way better at this, y'all.

on empathy, again

So this is old news, but I've been sitting on it for a while and figuring out what I have to say about it.

Some background: New York City has this stop-and-frisk policy, wherein police can target random people walking down the street and give them pat-downs, with no requirement for suspicious behavior or anything.  And whaddaya know, surprise surprise, those 'randomly' targeted for this tend to NOT be white men.  Who could've guessed?  So quite a few people are piping up to point out that this is not an okay situation, what with the enabling of racially targeted police harassment and all.

New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, had this to say, when defending the policy:

"If I had a son who was stopped, I might feel differently about it, but nevertheless..."

What we have here is a radical and blatant failing of empathy.  "Well, if I were personally affected by this issue I might care, but because of being a powerful white man I'm not, so whatevs." ???

He said this out loud.  

He knows.

He just fails to give a shit, because it doesn't actually impact his little self-bubble.

To care only about issues that affect himself, while claiming to represent a city (a city that, newsflash, contains people unlike him as well, in many different ways, because hey diversity), and implementing garbage policies that are questionable at best and then immediately abused for racial targeting, and to do nothing about that and further to not even see the problem with that?

If this man wasn't busy being actively harmful to his constituents (who are real people who really exist, by the way), I would feel sorry for him.  That's one hell of a limited existence you've got there, bub.

the power of ignorance

I've learned to avoid certain topics around my boss.

Politics.  Social issues.  Equality.  Really anything other than science or technology.

But occasionally I still feel compelled to try.  It seems to be an exercise in futility, but I have a really hard time believing that a fully-functional, intelligent, seemingly kind and decent human being can still have such glaringly consistent fail when it comes to thinking about any perspective other than his own.

It's a radical failure of empathy, and it's profoundly disheartening.  Like the time he took objection to my celebratory attitude over marriage equality wins, pointing out that if homosexual people can get married and adopt children, then those children will all grow up gay and then 'our' (!) population will decline into instability.  I mean really.  These thoughts can really exist in a real live human's brain?  I find that baffling.

Anyway, a while back I tried again.  I forget how the conversation started, but we wound up discussing how there are cultural pressures at work that devalue female people's accomplishments, intelligence, and capabilities while overvaluing appearance.  How this pressure results in forcing a ranking of priorities onto these people, and encourages emphasizing and working on appearance over other pursuits. How it's sad that 'performing pretty' is such a heavy-handed requirement, to the point that many female people neglect to develop other aspects of themselves because of focusing exclusively on appearance.  It's a little simplistic, but I thought it was a good conversation.  I did have to gently steer away from trajectories that would have wound up in 'dang shallow wimmens and their makeup, they ought to just knock that off' territory and stay focused on social effects and causes rather than individual blame, but it was pretty encouraging, overall.

At this point a coworker arrived, and noted my recent haircut.  I'd gotten another one over that weekend, because I like change and we all know how I feel about haircuts.   Boss-man then passive-aggressively opined that I cut my hair 'just to make him [my boss] mad.'

I really don't even.

After I was done gaping a bit in astonished silence, I calmly explained that no, I wasn't actually thinking about the effect my making choices about myself might have on my boss's preferences.  No, dude, you aren't the reason I do, well, anything that's unrelated to the performance of my job.  I wanted to add that it's conceited as fuck for him to blithely assert that he must be the center of my universe like that, but restrained myself.

While mentally preparing myself to launch into a conversation about how his policing of my appearance and attempting to apply pressure in how I had to present myself ties neatly into our immediate conversation about requirements placed on women, he dialed his sexist ignorance up to eleven.

'Well, I think women should all have long hair because it's pretty.'

What the everloving fuck?

Wait, let me say that a bit louder.

WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK???

When we'd JUST, not three minutes earlier, had a whole conversation about how judging people (especially women) for their appearance is really shitty?  How enforcing one's preferences onto another's body is unconscionable?  Now you're going to assert that your personal aesthetic preference necessarily MUST dictate the behavior of everyone ever?

I realized then that we must have been having entirely different conversations at each other.  I was thrilled to discuss how artificially enforced societal expectations lead to a stifling of individuality, and wouldn't it be awesome if we could move past that and let people be people, so they could be free to express themselves in whatever way felt authentic to them.  I think he wanted to talk about how women are silly for wearing makeup because he personally didn't understand or approve of it.

Maybe someday I'll be strong enough to shoulder through these situations.  Maybe someday I'll have the patience and steely resolve to get beyond my own flabbergasted injury, to continue speaking calmly to thoughtlessly judgmental bigots and have that conversation.

But in that moment, on that day, I couldn't do it.  I lapsed into stunned silence, and went back to work.

But my heart hurt.

damn it, George Takei

[Trigger warning for consent-ignoring rape apologia, slut-shaming, and racism]

I like George Takei a lot.  He leverages his fame to raise awareness of his causes such as gay rights and Japanese-American detainment.  I think he's done some work with autism too.  He's become something of an Internet icon for tolerance and awesomeness.  Good stuff.  Yay!

However, he's been having a lot of intersectionality fail of late.

So you may remember this, wherein George Takei, awesome human being and justice advocate and actor, posted a rather thoughtless meme that implied that strippers are bad people and/or the result of bad parenting.

Some of his followers pointed out how un-cool that was, and he apologized. That was cool, even if it didn't feel like he *quite* understood what was going on. But okay. Those who commented wanted him to know that we think so highly of him that we assume he'd like to know when he's hurting folks, and maybe that information will be acted upon. Learning is neat.

But... it hasn't stopped.  This tendency, though being keenly aware of the importance of the social justice issues by which he's personally affected, to thoughtlessly inflict harm on other oppressed categories of people.

Just in the last few days, we've had this:

And then this:

Not cool, Takei.  The first displays gross victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and callous disregard for the concept of consent all in one fell swoop.  The second... well.  Cute jokes about very real and terrifying people who terrorized and murdered people based on race with support of societal structures at large do not exist in a vacuum.  This really isn't all that hard.

I get it: intersectionality is hard.  Wearing blinders is easy.  Being aware of how your words serve to enforce oppression in a multi-dimensional kyriarchy takes work.  But George Takei, kick-ass gay rights activist, wants folks to do that work for his causes, while not bothering to do his own work to understand the issues that affect others.  I really wish he'd take a second and actually think about what he's saying, beyond whether it's a cute pun.  I'd hoped for better from someone I truly admire like George Takei.  A world full of institutionalized inequality and oppression is what social justice-aware folks confront on a daily basis, but this sort of drivel is somehow extra-disappointing and heartbreaking when it comes from supposed 'allies.'

Intersectionality is critically important.  We're all in this together.

In the immortal words of Flavia Dzodan, my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit. 

-----
Edited to add trigger warning because I should really remember to add those.

Merida

movie poster for Disney's 2012 movie Brave

So, Brave.  Pretty darn good Pixar/Disney/Pixney flick, about a Scottish princess who kicks ass, takes names, and gets herself both into and out of trouble quite effectively.  Like many out there, I greatly appreciate the trend of having the protagonists of the traditionally female-centered animated children's movies be a lot more active in their own lives.  Far from waiting around for the heroic prince to rescue her and make her life have meaning, Merida has her own shit going on and is quite busy, thank you very much.  She also doesn't lack for personality in the slightest. 

Overall, this is a fantastic direction.  Congratulations, Disney!

But.  

So it seems that the Disney entertainment megaconglomerate has a theme park ceremony for 'crowning' their princess characters, so that they are then Official Disney Princesses, and presumably are awarded their very own bag of Magical Princess Sparkles.  Then when little kids go to the parks, they can have tea with all the Princesses.  Okay, cool, fine, whatever.  But Disney decided that the young, spunky, kick-ass protagonist of their very successful and money-making movie wasn't... sexy enough.  So they did this to her:

Left: Merida.  Right: some unrecognizable skin-bleached chick with a sexy come-hither and improbable curves. 

I feel ways about this. 

1) That person is unrecognizable as Merida.  Isn't marketing all about recognizable brands?  WTF.

2) There was a whole plot point in the movie about her hating that dress.  THEY PUT HER IN THE HATE-DRESS.  Why?

3) Yes,  it's a fictional character, and not a real person who underwent a real makeover.  But the very act of Disney taking an extremely successful (as measured by making them many dollars) character and transforming her into an unrecognizable sex-kitten is a huge statement about priorities.  It's not like nobody's going to notice, and what message is being sent here?  That what's important is to be sexy and beautiful and have bleached skin and perfect hair and wear sexy clothing.  This is being marketed to children.  CHILDREN!  We finally get a genuine self-rescuing princess (which is itself a ginormous opportunity for Disney to get way cooler and send progressive messages about gender issues) who actually looks and acts like the young-teenager she's supposed to be instead of being inexplicably busty and grown-up sexy, and then they blatantly ignore the actual character in favor of entrenching the cultural your-worth-is-measured-solely-by-your-sexiness trope.  Fuck that.  And the horse it rode in on. 

4) They took away her bow.  HER BOW.  One of Merida's major characteristics is her kick-ass bow-shooting.  She's a super excellent archer, and has to defend herself and advance the plot with it a lot.  THEY TOOK AWAY HER BOW.  I am not okay with this. 

/deep breath

Okay.  So, when I was poking around for a picture of Merida to put at the top of this article, I first searched wikipedia for Merida, figuring that they'd have a canonical screencap that would be reasonable to use for analysis purposes.  Because, like, wikipedia tends to have that sort of super-basic stuff.  Instead, as the ONLY image on the page, I found this*: 

the parallel universe, sex-kitten Merida

There is not enough rage.  Really.  REALLY?  The only image you're going to show on THE WIKIPEDIA page for this character looks nothing like how she looks throughout the entire movie.  

From the talk page of said wikipedia entry: 

The article originally had a CG artwork of Merida's; it was recently replaced, without explanation, with her redesign for the Disney Princess franchise. I don't see why her design in something that can be regarded as a minor merchandise-driven spin-off should prevail over her look in the film itself. To give a random, extreme example, it would be like replacing Jack Sparrow by a picture of his LEGO minifigure. Brave was a computer-animated film, and I don't think a 2D image is representative of the character. Note my comment has nothing to do with the recent controversy around her redesign (I personnaly find the Disney Princess design more faithful than I was expecting). But I think the image should be changed.--Gray Catbird (talk) 21:27, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

So apparently the actual picture of Merida was just inexplicably replaced by the sex kitten.  Gray Catbird there makes very good points, to which I would add only about a metric fuckton of THIS IS NOT OKAY!!!!!

And in Even More Ridiculous Princess-Washing, we have the official Disney Princess Merida costume:

um... it's a dress

All I can say about this is that it looks like a sparkly dress.  If I saw a little kid wearing this, I'd wonder idly and maybe question as to whether it's supposed to be a fairy, a generic party dress, or that sleeping beauty princess whose name I can never remember. 

And it's not like I have a single thing against sparkly dresses.  I love shiny, sparkly, fun dress-up clothes.  Being girly is awesome sometimes.  But WTF does this dress have to do with Merida?  I... guess it's blue?  And thus kinda like the dress she hated?  Because all blue dresses are the same?  I genuinely don't understand what's going on here. 

Ooh, it has an action shot!

Hmm.  Okay, at least you get the signature Merida weaponry along with the dress.  I guess that makes some sense... it's not really something that Merida wore or would wear, but it's an example of being able to kick some ass even though you're wearing a sparkly dress, and I can totally see some gender assumption twisting potential in there.  I can get behind that.  I can be girly and still be a badass.

Oh... right.  Apparently it's an accessories-sold-separately kind of deal.  I still don't see how a generic dress can qualify as a Merida costume sans bow, but okay.  

I fully admit that I'm not inclined to spend hours thoroughly searching the Disney site, but while I can find ways to purchase the sandals and tiara shown on the kiddo, there liter-freaking-ally does not appear to be a toy bow anywhere on this site.  There is a random light-up magic wand, which I can think of no way to tie to anything in the movie.  It's not that I'm craving violent toys, as that's a whole different conversation.  But the bow is a critical part of who Merida is and what she does and what she stands for.  Leaving that out is meaningful.  

You can buy a sword, axe, and mace set, presumably to give to your boy-children so they can pretend to be Brave defenders of castles and go bear-hunting, while your girl-children sit around in boring sparkly dresses, learning to internalize the values of the patriarchy. 

*These statements about the wikipedia page were true as of May 21, 2013.  They may change in the future, and I sincerely hope they do. 

-----

Edit: Oh, that image on wikipedia?  Yeah, it has no revision history whatsoever, so it's impossible to revert it to the original CG one.  Disney sort of rewrote wiki history.  Goddammit, Disney. 

AUGH

[Content note for sexual assault, and rampant use of all-caps internet-yelling]

Last night on my drive home from work, NPR ran a story about sexual assault 'scandals' in the military.  Apparently in addition to the recent sexual assault prevention Air Force officer being arrested for (wait for it) sexual assault, a Fort Hood Army officer in charge of sexual assault prevention and victim counseling is now under investigation for (surprise surprise) sexual assault.

Man, that's a lot of sexual assault in one sentence. 

So.  I'm not even going to address the main story, other than to comment on how I am amazed that anyone can talk about this topic without screaming.  

THE VERY PEOPLE WE'RE TASKING WITH PREVENTING ASSAULT ARE COMMITTING THAT EXACT KIND OF ASSAULT, OFTEN AGAINST THE VICTIMS THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE HELPING.  

If there's a better exhibit of why this is a cultural problem that can't be fixed by little sound bytes and lip service, I don't know of it.  Anyway, my hat's off to Melissa Block for somehow managing to conduct this interview without exploding.  

What I want to talk about is this.  The interview addressed the sexual assault prevention training that the military is running, and ran a clip from a bystander-intervention-encouraging video.  Now, I'm all about pointing out to dudes that THEM PERSONALLY not raping anyone at the moment is not enough.  This is not an individual problem that would be fixed if only we could weed out those few 'bad apples.'  This is a systemic, cultural problem, and the predators are depending on the other dudes' silence in order to get away with (and get implicit approval for) their heinous actions.  YOUR SILENCE MATTERS.  Speak up!  Don't let people get away with this shit!  So let's see what the fancy sexual assault prevention campaign has come up with to convey that women are people and you should speak up because predators will interpret your silence as encouragement (and yes, people of all genders are victimized at times, but this piece seems to be pretty heteronormative so that's presumably the most relevant message at the moment.  One step at a time, I guess, as much as I hate that these steps are even necessary)!

Here's the transcript (emphasis mine, and I've changed the names from 'unidentified man' to something more appropriate):

Dudebro #1: Check out Chris. He's making a fool of himself. 

Dudebro #2: Dude, that girl's trying to leave and he keeps grabbing her. Man, that's all we need is to get put on lockdown again. 

Dudebro #1: Yeah.

AUGH.   

No!  That's not... I just... I hate everything.

CLEARLY the ONLY POSSIBLE reason to want to prevent BODILY ASSAULT is because it might inconvenience YOU.  Not, like, because you'd be PREVENTING A CRIME.  Because gosh darn it, those pesky people might punish the person COMMITTING A CRIME, and that might be annoying.  Consequences are so tiresome.

Or perhaps more realistically, the people making this video thought that would be the only reason that would be accessible to, and resonate with, the young military dudes at whom the training is targeted.  They're seriously saying that young men are so incredibly devoid of humanity and empathy that they're unable to see horrific victimization as horrific, and so it must be filtered through a little prism that casts it into terms their widdle bwains can comprehend.  Namely, that the fallout might be inconvenient and might get onto them a little.  Because someone somewhere DOES give a shit about the victim and the crime, presumably.  That person (whom I guess we must presume to be female) might even see the victim as an ACTUAL HUMAN BEING.  But that would be WAY too much to ask of your poor little military dudes.

What.  The.  Fuck.

To all you male and male-identified people, why are you not screaming about this?  That is some of the most fucking insulting shit I've seen in a while.  Presuming that you are literally incapable of caring about another person, so the only (or perhaps best) reason for speaking up against blatant predation is because it might be mildly inconvenient?  Now THIS is actual real-life misandry.  And this feminist, for one, is pissed as hell about it.  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, patriarchy.

Bourdain: a win and a fail

So, Anthony Bourdain.  Professional irreverent jackass, travel show host, chef.  Cool guy.  I read Kitchen Confidential a few years back at the urging of a good friend (hi!), and fell in love with his prose and attitude.  He's a New Yorker through and through, so is callous at times, but also tends to not take himself too seriously.  And as I learned from his travel show No Reservations (he has more shows now, but I've only watched NR so far), he's supremely devoted to being a respectful guest when in someone else's domain.  He eats whatever the people he's visiting bring to him, no matter how disgusting it might seem to our American sensibilities about food.  He does his darndest to be a good guest.

He's touring, and we got to see him last night.  Awesome opportunity.  He mostly talked about food and travel and his show, of course, but I have a few slightly tangential observations to note.  These were smallish moments in the show, but I want to talk about them.

1) During the question-and-answer portion of the show, a lady asked something along the lines of 'what do you think the role of women should be in the restaurant industry?'

First off, it's kind of a weird question to ask, in my opinion (isn't this 2013?).  BUT!  Tony surprised the hell out of me by providing what might be the best possible answer to that question.  His response (possibly slightly paraphrased because my memory ain't perfect)?

'What women should do?  I don't think that's a question I should be answering.  Anything that comes out of my mouth is going to be, let's face it, mansplaining.' 

Holy shit.  Holy shit.  This dude is self-aware enough to know that being in the food business for decades and being a famous chef still makes him unqualified on the general topic of 'what women should do,' even in his field.  He acknowledges that and is quite ready to say so.  And he even knows (and used in a public forum!!!) the word 'mansplaining.'

I don't know that I can quite convey how happy this makes me.  

So much squee.

2) Apparently a while back there was a big brouhahaha wherein Tony was pressed to tell who he thought was the worst celebrity chef.  He's always insulting people, especially famous people, so that's no real surprise (such as the whole Kwanzaa cake thing, which I actually found to be quite funny).  See the 'irreverent jackass' thing above.  His response was to name Paula Deen, because of her being the most 'dangerous' chef to America.  Because of cooking fatty food and thereby corrupting the moral fiber of the country, I guess.  Then he got to feel all sorry for himself because he subsequently got verbally attacked online a bunch by people sticking up for her and admonishing him for picking on a nice old lady and insulting Southern food.

Okay.  I have things to say about this.

He (correctly) pointed out that her cuisine isn't actually particularly Southern or traditional.  He pointed to her 'lady brunch burger,' which consists of a burger patty, fried egg, and bacon between donuts.

Okay, fine.   He also, naturally, had scare-tactic stats of the calories and fat content of the thing.  Then he criticized her for having Type 2 diabetes (um, okay), for waiting to tell the world about her disease (which is obviously everyone's business everywhere because, um, reasons), and then for partnering with a diabetes drug company for sponsorship and being open about things (she can't win).  These are all the same things that were said a bunch of times when the whole diabetes thing first came out.

And it's all bullshit.

Paula Deen owes no one an explanation of her personal health.  Full stop.  I don't care that she's a celebrity, and I don't care what her show is about.  Her health is her own business.

She had (has?  I don't actually watch television) a show about making delicious food that happened to be really dense and made with a lot of butter.  Shows have themes.  A chef's life is not necessarily a reflection of hir show (does that sweet genuis guy subsist entirely on cupcakes?  I doubt it).  I certainly wouldn't want a lady brunch burger every day; it's a silly oddity and ought to be treated as such.  If you actually think she eats this food all the time, I have a bridge to sell you.  And Tony?  Supposing that you can lecture a person on what her personal life must be like because of your Super Objective and Truth-Telling Perspective while refusing to listen to her words about her own lived experience is, I'm sorry Tony, 'splaining.  You know, that word you used so eloquently and appropriately to the question about women in food?  Yeah, that.

For more eloquent and kick-ass words about the Paula Deen affair, read this.  Ragen says it so much better than I could, and it's well worth a read.

Tony, you're wrong.  You're so wrong.  

Then it got worse.

He proceeded to wax poetical about the declining health of America, and how intervention is necessary.  I got more nervous as it became obvious what was about to happen.  He talked about McDonald's, of course, which I have no love for for a myriad of reasons.  And sure, he's gonna insult people and institutions.  Irreverent jackass.  Comedy.  I get it.  But he wasn't being funny, here.  He was being serious.  He's concerned about the health of the nation.  As exhibited by using this topic to segue into a rant about how people's fat asses can't get up off couches and are in his way on airplanes.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh.

One, stop conflating weight with health.  There are skinny people who are unhealthy and fat people who are healthy.  Some factors correlate weakly, but it's simply bad science to think you can make assumptions about health from a person's body size.  Some studies suggest that having more body fat might actually provide some protection from disease, and be a predictor of lower risks of mortality.  Health is complicated, and reducing it down to fat = unhealthy is profoundly disingenuous.

Bad food does not necessarily make you fat.  Tony, you yourself exemplify this.  You are quite open about your past, with its terrible health choices, and you seem to have always been a pretty scrawny dude.  This means there must be other factors.  It is usually not a choice to have a particular body size.  Know that friend (maybe you, Tony) who can eat anything and stay skinny?  Yeah, I guarantee there are corresponding folks who eat relatively little and healthily and stay fat.  Bodies are funny like that.  We all have weights at which we are personally healthiest, and those weights are different for different people.

A body size is not a diagnosis.  Of anything.  At all.  It is not a diagnosis of personal habits, level of activity, or any sort of disease.  Looking at a fat person tells you one piece of information.  That they're fat.  Obesity is not a disease, and even if it was, we'd be going about dealing with it in a profoundly terrible way.

If you want to talk about health, great!  Talk about actual health.  Poor nutrition and being sedentary do cause health problems, but they do that to people with all kinds of different body sizes.  Know what you're talking about and (crucially) what you're not talking about.

Two, good grief, man.  Did it never occur to you that you're talking about actual people here?  Actual people, who already endure ceaseless hatred, judgement, criticism, and bigotry because of their bodies. Just for existing.  Jumping straight (via 'common sense,' of course) from a criticism of shitty American food to being pissed off at a hypothetical fat person for being in your way when evacuating an airplane, or drawing the equivalence that fat = useless and sedentary is profoundly horrible of you.  There was a heavyset man sitting in front of me during your talk, and I could feel him kind of freeze and tense up at that.  And I absolutely 100% do not blame him for maybe feeling a little defensive when you were attacking him*.

Above, I said that fatness is not a good predictor of disease or death (science!).  Want to know what is a good predictor?  Being the victim of social stigma.  Yup.  It turns out that being preached at and judged and admonished for one's audacity to exist causes stress!  Funny, that.  So by mocking and judging a segment of society that has to put up with this shit every day of their lives (it's not like you can walk around without your body to avoid the stigma), the same people you probably think you're 'helping' or 'saving,' you are being part of that very problem.  You are contributing to the cultural pressure that tells fat people that they're worthless, that they're disgusting, that everyone except them knows what they need and what their lives are like.  That they have to exercise more (but don't actually do so in public because you'll be shamed for that), that they have to go on fad diets (as it turns out, dieting not only has never been shown to cause long-term weight loss in more than a tiny fraction of the population and is a really great predictor of weight gain but also is extremely detrimental to health --- you know, that health thing you're on about?), that being thin is more important than being fulfilled and pursuing things they think are awesome (and of course they couldn't possibly be good at things in their actual bodies), that they have to change their bodies before they can receive reasonable health care when they're injured or sick.  You are not criticizing people for their behaviors here.  You are criticizing their right to exist in their bodies, and layering even more abuse on top of a really shitty lifelong experience.  You might want to think about that.

I would have hoped that someone with the awareness and sensitivity to provide the best answer ever when questioned about women's place in his industry would have actually thought about these things or done a tiny bit of research instead of launching into a humiliation and judgement tirade that serves only to uphold a nationwide campaign to get people to hate themselves.

Stick to food, Tony.  It might be a good idea to lay off the moral preaching.



*Note: I do not presume to know what this fellow may have been thinking or feeling at the time; I am not him and do not know him.  I only have my observations of his body language and my knowledge of how I would probably feel in his place.