Hey, I lust had to tell you guys that Yoyo lip gloss is really great.  It's shiny and it managed to keep my lips from chapping all night last night while I was stocking cases on third shift (no small order, let me tell you).  You guys should all go buy some. :-p

I wrote this to my friend quirkytizzy today after I got home and found my old journal back.  It's honestly how I feel.  MAybe you guys could help me decide whether to go back to my old journal or use this one and keep the old one simply as an archive...?  I'm not sure.  Either way, changes are in order.

Hello there. My old journal is back...but I'm not that person anymore. I don't know where to go, whether to use this new one or that old one, but I think I'll probably stick with the new one (as of right now that's my plan...maybe I'll just change the look of the malakijr one).

The thing that got to me the most was the insinuation that everyone who's survived rape reacts in the same way, like it's my duty to be offended by something and if I don't, I'm not supporting rape survivors. The Warmongers for Ignorance remove any context and any chance for reasonable dialogue and screaming in anger and sarcasm and shock value and cruel joking...things that were the catalyst for my healing. Until I stepped outside my bubble, I didn't watch the kinds of movies and shows that showed me that what happened to me was abuse and it was wrong. Until I watched movies like Hostel I didn't know how to react to what had happened to me or how to handle having a panic attack while I do something routine like watch a movie, until I watched Fight Club I didn't know I was slowly pretending to be someone I wasn't to the point where if I didn't integrate myself and admit who I really was I might be so torn that eventually I'd split myself in two, until I watched Judging Amy I didn't realize that masturbating is something abuse survivors do and it's not something I do because I'm a sinful evil person (not to mention the fact that I started it so young doesn't mean I'm evil, it's a normal way people cope with abuse).

I shit you not, I was so sheltered all my life I never knew most of these things. I had this horrific child and teenhood, and then I crawled into a fundamentalist bubble with well defined boundaries that clearly painted everything I did and loved as sinful, and I liked it that way because that's how I wanted to see myself. Honest and frank discussions, learning not to cringe or freak out at tasteless rape jokes, learning to start separating hugging and other forms of touching from sex...these kinds of things don't happen in a protected bubble. They happen when pop culture collides with real life, when angry violent music echoes loud enough to quiet the voices in my head, when violent movies spill enough blood to make me question my own desire for bloodshed and revenge, when books don't sugarcoat and step around subjects but when they use real language so I can gague how real people would speak and think on the subject...these things may not help everyone, but they were the only way I could begin to sort through the broken pieces of my past and glue them together into a suitable foundation for the future. And what WoF wants to do is remove any kind of offensive wording and any kind of image or idea that might be dangerous or wrong, which in turn removes any chance for me to vent the dangerous and wrong parts of my soul. So much of my healing has come through unconventional means, and to suddenly be labelled as wrong like I had so often in my life, to suddenly find myself inadequate...it shook me. I'm not just being melodramatic, it seriously pissed me off and hurt me very much. I expect people from the fundamentalist bubble not to "get it" when they see the real me. I expected better from Livejournal. Now that the "idiots have gotten away from the big red delete button" as one person put it and the smoke has cleared, I don't want to leave Livejournal. I never did. I just wanted my community back, because as broken as it is sometimes, it's real. And that's what makes it beautiful.

In order to keep myself from going insane with fury over the bullshit LJ has put us all through and the fact that my journal is STILL suspended, I'm going to compile my favorite icons from the various icon artists concerning the Strikethrough 2007 situation.  There might be some other relevant images here as well.  Just trying to stay sane here, people.  Much love.

                                                                       






And also, I love this post and have these same questions and sentiments regarding the situation:  http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html?thread=47739223#t47739223


And this: http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html?thread=47744599#t47744599

And this:  http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html?thread=47749463#t47749463

And this:  http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html?thread=47760727#t47760727

The comments on those last ones are hilarious.  And people make a lot of good points.  Thousands of good points won't get me my journal back, and even if it were unsuspended now I'd still be pissed about the whole situation, but these comments make it better.  A bit.

Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner *gets suspended for saying weiner*

Well, according to LJ news LJ blatheres on about how they want to protect children, and they're going to review the suspended journals and have the "wrongfully suspended" ones reinstated by 12 noon.  Well, it's almost 1 PM and no malakijr for me.  IT's still gone.  My question is, what the FUCK did they find when the supposedly "reviewed" my journal that indicated that it was still wrong and still needed to be suspended?  What did I do or say that indicates that I somehow support rape?  I didn't even TALK about Hostel 2, I SWEAR mom.  I didn't talk about rape, I sure as fuck didn't say rape was a good thing...what's going on here?  Why am I still suspended for what is clearly (and by their own admission) THEIR mistake?  Why is the figurehead of LJ/6A blathering on about how they hope to ear my trust and forgiveness when they're ignoring my appeals and emails and keeping my journal suspended for no reason when others are supposedly being reinstated?  And if it's just going to take them a long time, why did they even give us the 12 noon time if it's not going to happen by then?  I'm so pissed off by this.  I just sent them a highly immature and angry email (again) but it doesn't matter because they're ignoring all my emails anyway.  Since the abuse topic is locked, I'll post it for your reading pleasure here:

Dear Livejournal:

For all your eloquent ranting and raving and covering your asses in your recent news post, and promising you would reinstate journals that were wrongly suspended by 12 noon, you didn't follow through with my journal. I only had rape listed as an interest because when I joined an abuse survivor community, you provided a link allowing me to modify my interests to include those of the community I just joined. If you were planning all along to delete my journal because I included 'rape' in my interests and I'm a personal journal, not a support community, you should have indicated this somehow. But as it stands, you didn't indicate this or give me a cnahce to explain or even remove the interest, and you totally ignored the fact that I had other interests suck as "rape survivor" and "abuse survivor" that should have indicated that I wasn't promoting rape, and if nothing else you should have given me a chance to remove the word from my interests. This would still have been
  bullshit, because it's JUST A WORD not an action, and for you to say that the word rape should offend me as much as the crime that was done to me infuriates me. Nonetheless, I would have removed the word if you'd given me any indication that by having that word in my interests (that was only there because your system encouraged me to put it there when I joined a community) but you didn't do this. And thus I lost 5 years of carefully built community and friendship and support. I have put a lot of time and money into my livejournal over the years, and to have it taken away in one fell swoop like this with no chance for me to appeal or modify my interests sickens me. And to read the blathery news post saying Livejournal hopes I can forgive them and they can earn my trust again...that's a slap in the face. It's utter bullshit. I've introduced lots of friends to Livejournal. I've brought you so much money and business over the years. That seems to count for nothing, but
  it's a big part of why you aren't deserving of business, forgiveness, or trust. I hope you all rot in a hell of banned words and actions. No one deserves it more.

For more info on the Livejournal deletions and suspensions issue, check out these links.

http://acari.livejournal.com/299533.html

http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/267358.html


It bothers me that some people in these communities are defending Livejournal's actions by saying they only deleted journals that included fictional accounts of illegal activities such as rape or incest.  The problem is that it's not just fandom being targeted here. I'm a domestic violence advocate and my journal (and all 5 years I'd spent building my little online community) were suspended yesterday because among the other interests in my profile I listed "rape" (along with "preventing rape," "abuse survivor," etc.) and the ONLY reason that interest was in my profile to begin with is because among the abuse survivor communities I belong to there's a clickable link allowing members to modify their own personal interests to include those of the group so we can find each other in searches. If I'm going to have my account suspended for including the word "rape" in my user interests, then why does LiveJournal include the link allowing me to add the interest? There was NO warning and no chance for me to even think about having my entire 5 year journey deleted simply because of a word that was in my interests because a Livejournal link allowed me to add it. My repeated emails to livejournal and my phone calls to Six Apart have not been answered regarding this issue, and it IS a big deal and it DOES go beyond fandom. This is unfair to me, and it does mean that everyone should watch out for fear of having their journals suspended due to "accidents" like this.

Hey Livejournal!! I just talked about RAPE again!




And guess what else, Livejournal?

Once upon a time, I belonged to a group of abuse survivors.  They were an emo bunch, but we got along for the most part.  One day, one of the members of the group noticed a livejournal group called "Rapists unite" (is my journal going to be deleted for using the R word again?  One thing's for certain...no one knows).  The abuse survivor community got all emo and started posting asking everyone to complain to Livejournal and ask for the group to be removed.  Now, I browsed the community and I noticed a bunch of tasteless rape jokes (most of which I found pretty funny because I'm cool like that) but not much serious, except that there were members of the group who were under 16 and other members of the group posted messages telling each other to rape their girlfriends, etc.  I know they were being sarcastic and revelling in the shock value of these messages, and in a way I appreciated that because as a whole people are far too melodramatic about such things these days (and I get to decide what offends me, not you) but I didn't appreciate that they were violating the terms of service and getting away with it.  I also noticed that the members of the group as a whole were pretty arrogant and cocky and I wanted to knock them down a peg or two, so in the end, I decided to complain about the group not because everyone told me I should be offended, but because the group (even in jest) WAS solociting and encouraging illegal activity, and that violated Livejournal's terms of service.  So I complained and got a snotty stuck-up letter from Livejournal telling me that the group wasn't doing anything wrong, we had free speech, blah blah blah.  I was annoyed that the group got away with flouting the rules like that, but in a small way it made me feel safer, and I actually thought "Well, at least my journal will never be deleted for anything if these guys can get away with this."

...

Cut to a few weeks ago.  I happened to check up on the "Rapists Unite" community again and found that it had been deleted.  I thought it was weird, given Livejournal's stance earlier about the group, but I thought nothing of it and figured someone finally caught them clearly violating the terms of service.  I never thought I'd find myself in this position, I know that reading articles on the subject of rape and actually telling people to commit rape are two very different things, so I felt safe.

I don't feel safe anymore.  What's going to happen now?  With Hostel 2 coming out soon, can I even express an interest in "rape and revenge" flicks without worrying that someone will see this interest and delete me for it?  What if I'm interested in snuff films?  People STILL think these things are real, so my interest in them could be a liability if I mention it, especially wince livejournal said in their email that my journal may not be connected to any support or enocuragement of illegal activity, but it's safer for livejournal to delete me than to take that risk, and it's easier for them to avoid any warning and just suspend my account, which means years of my work is gone in an instant...and you could be next.

I shit you not, people, all I did was list "rape" as an interest in my journal's "User Interests" section.  I didn't say I was interested in "Commiting rape" or "Watching rape," though I've certainly watched enough films with rape scenes for people to make THAT argument if they so choose.  Will I get banned again for using the R word in this post?  If I decide to talk about how I like to cook with Canola Oil (AKA RAPE SEED OIL OMG!) will I be at risk?  I usually think slippery slope arguments are silly.  Just because one thing happens doesn't mean other worse things will happen, hysteria and paranoia and drama queenism aren't helpful, all that shit.  But if my years of work can be erased just because I used a word in my profile, we're past the hypotheticals and slipping and sliding down as I speak.  You know what?  I AM interested in rape.  I like reading about it, I like watching movies where it's depicted, I like watching filmmakers fail to capture the gravity of it, I tremble when they succeed.  I like hearing how it has affected people and comparing their experience to mine.  Whether people like hearing this or not, rape has affected me and changed my development and woven itself into who I am.  I am a different person because of what has happened to me in my past just like anyone else is because of their life experiences, and just because my particular life experience happens to be illegal and make you uncomfortable doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to explore it and discuss it.  Zero tolerance sounds good on paper but it knocks out any chance for gray areas or healing or coming together as humans and finding community  and growth in the dark world we live in, and whether people think I'm being melodramatic or not, I'm saddened that a community like livejournal that once believed so strongly in free speech has degenerated into what it is today, a mouthpiece for the conservative belief system that thinks if we don't talk about evil, it will cease to exist.  Well fuck that.  And fuck you, Livejournal. 

Well this is my dummy LJ.  It's kinda cool having a fresh start like this in life, but vastly uncool when I'm tied down and the "fresh start" is forced on me like...whoops, can't use that kind of terminology, it'll get me banned.

Anyway, this is Lillian, AKA <lj user=malakijr>, forcibly having all 4 years of her livejournal removed because of one word in my LJ interests.  I understand the need maybe to screen interests and keep LJ as a website free from liability, but they gave me no warning at all and no update and no indication that I would suddenly be in violation of the Terms of Service and face having my journal and all its entries deleted with no chance of appeal.  That's scary.  I put a lot of work into that journal, and I'm pissed that it's gone now and that I can't really get it back...I could use a slow-ass tool to download text-only entries month by month, but that would take FOREVER and all the comments would be gone and thus the community I spent years building...and that makes me sad.  Someone expressed on another site that it was resorting to rhetoric to say people are traumatized by this LJ witch hunt crap, but it IS traumatizing in a lot of ways, and I know from trauma, I don't use that word lightly.  I'm sitting here typing this for the first time worried that anything I say might be cause for deletion, and that's not right.  The point if "making the internet safe" is not to put people who've faced hideous abuse in further fear like this.  I hate this feeling.  I hate LJ for putting me through this...along with others.  It's not right.  No, it's not the same as what I went through as a kid and teen and adult, but you know what?  It's WRONG.  And there's not much I can do about it, and the helplessness hurts the most.  I'm not being Emo here, I'm being honest.  People say "free speech isn't absolute, your free speech can't interfere with my rights," but how did my use of "The R Word" in my interests interfere with someone else's free speech?  I didn't say I was interested in "commiting R" or "Watching R" just in the word itself.  By punishing me for using the word, LJ equates the word with the act itself, and that's total bullshit (if I can still say "bullshit" in my journal without getting it deleted).  Using the word is not the same as commiting or enocuraging the act, and to put the two on the same level...it's irresponsible and it takes away my right to use that word and deprive it of its power.  What the fuck were they thinking *gets deleted for saying fuck*

Seriously...not cool.