Hard to shame the shameless.

Do you guys know what slut shaming is? Short description, Put in the most simple terms, slut-shaming happens when a person “publicly or privately [insults] a woman because she expressed her sexuality in a way that does not conform with patriarchal expectations for women”.
The definition is from here: FAQ: What is “slut-shaming”?

(This is another "inside baseball" sort of post, in a way.)

On Wednesday, I posted a reply to a Facebook friend's status.
Her status was about the insanity of the current media cycle.
And my response to her was: "Unfortunately, our media is allowing itself to be lead by the deranged. After all Pam Geller is being taken seriously."

Not necessarily the most polite thing to say, but, well, that's me.
And then I went out and lived the rest of my day. I got home last night to see there were a some responses. I'm posting them here.

First there was this:

"But ST, maybe tuck your shirt in? No need for cleavage here, is there?"

My Facebook profile picture: my picture (My shirt doesn't tuck in.)
My FB friend replied to the person and told him that was unacceptable. And he responded with this:

"Well, then i take it back, but why do we say things like the narrative in this country is being driven by deranged and then we post comments with pictures of our breasts hanging out.....there is a disconnect here and i have written about it before...imagine if men sported man cleavage and went around with low trousers unzuipepd and their can i say this their balls and penis hanging out.... i mean, cleavage has gotten way out of hand.... privately sure, but on FB, there should be standards......i once met a thearpsit in CNn tv and here she was advising Larry King about rape issues and she had cleaveage on national TV all the way out....i wrote to her adn she threatenwed to sue me, the PHD .......there is a disconnect...if america is deranged like Pam Geller but Fb can show boobs out, then where is sanity...just askiing...if i am out of line her, do delete my posts, i won't mind,,,i udnerstand your feelings, but i am just speaking the truth......before we cast the first stone about deragned we should look at ourslevs. no....? but okay, delete my comments, i made my point. most do not care. that is why i left sick sick USA 20 years ago....but Lindsay, pay me no mind, i still love you,,,,and i will behave...."

spelling, everything unchanged. I simply added the bold.

He posted those two responses publicly and emailed me that last one, so I feel no compunction about posting them here. He also went into my few publicly available pictures and linked to one that was more "suitable". That one being the one in the upper left hand corner.
He also added me as a friend on FB. I've refused that one, by the way. I know, you're shocked.
See, here's the thing, I don't find anything at all shameful about that other picture. Are my considerable assets hanging out freely for everyone to see? Hardly! The shirt is cute, I had a brand new haircut and makeup counter makeover when I took the picture. I think it's a great picture.
I didn't respond to the man last night. Or today either, to tell you the truth. Last night I was too angry. In the morning, well, it was just too ridiculous. And I have a public forum of my own to respond, without having to clog up Facebook.

Wherein I talk about Twitter

(Sorry, I know this one is going to be very "inside baseball.")

I don't know if you're on twitter. I mean, I am, but I don't expect everyone to be. And this one is basically one that's been festering in my head for the past day.
Yesterday my tweet stream was filled with people tweeting their Twifficiency score. It didn't make me as crazy as it did some people. Turned out, it was a 17 year old, who had written the program to test a twitter feature. And that's actually really great. What he forgot to do was set it so that it didn't automatically tweet your score to all and sundry.
Or explain what the metric it was measuring. And that's what caught my attention.
What Twifficiency measures is

your "twitter efficiency" based on "how many people you follow, how many people follow you, how often you tweet and how many tweets you read."

That is from this article: Twifficiency, By James Cunningham: Better Than A College Diploma?.

What annoyed me over the course of the day was relatively well known people tweeting their score and then saying, "what, why is my percentage so low?" Well, here's the thing, one of the metrics twifficiency measured is how many people you follow, not just how many people follow you. And there are tons of people out there who are followed but don't follow back. And that's their prerogative. I'm honestly not saying that anyone has to follow me. I do fine.

See, here's what I believe. And it is only my belief. Twitter is supposed to be a conversation, not a one way street. When people follow me, I look at their stream and see if they tweet broadcast or if they actually engage. And if they engage with people, I'll follow back. That makes it fun for me.

Back to twifficiency. In the sake of full disclosure, I did check and see what mine is. I did it late in the day, when he'd tweaked the code so that it didn't automatically tweet it to everyone. My score was 44%. Which mean's "You have a good balance between Twitter and other things, this should serve you well." Okay. Sure. I tend to be pretty chatty on twitter. I reply to people who say things that interest me and I reply to people who tweet me. And I follow more people than follow me. Though I don't follow everyone who follows me. And I'm still under 50% efficient.
So for the people who have 3,000 or 30,000 or 3,000,000 followers and only follow a handful, well, that's why your score was 4%.
It's a conversation. Try it sometime. It's fun.

And I thought I was going to a lot of weddings before

Judge overturns Calif. gay marriage ban

This is a seriously happy day here. And I'm hearing that the ruling is pretty great reading as well. Judge Vaughn Walker, thank you.