Hey, guess who loves graffiti, feminism, and democratic uprising?
That's right, it's me!
And apparently these very cool ladies in Egypt!
That's right, it's me!
And apparently these very cool ladies in Egypt!
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Monday, January 7, 2013
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
The Brief, Horrific Lives of Mantis Men
So I recently read Kij Johnson's Mantis Wives. It has a lot in common with her previous nebula winning story Ponies, and to a lesser but still real extent with her OTHER nebula winning story Spar, in that it takes a human relationship we take for granted, makes it alien, and spins out the pathological elements until they're fabulous and grotesque and really gut-punchy.
So, I recommend you read Mantis Wives for yourself, but the gist of it is that even though mantis women realize they don't NEED to kill their husbands, they're locked into their roles and they can't figure out a different way to live.
I quite like it, but it is, by necessity of what it is, largely composed of needlessly cruel torture of boy mantises. That's really kind of the point.
Now there's a fellow down in the comments who seems to be kind of a reactionary jerkface, but I've always maintained that being an jerkface doesn't mean your point is not worth entertaining intellectually.
To what extent are we- am I as a reader- more comfortable with this story because the violence is happening exclusively to men? It's something I've talked about before, and something that continues to worry me.
For all that dudes are disproportionately the people doing violence, they're also disproportionately the victims, and I defy someone to argue that we're not socially conditioned to feel it is less of a tragedy when violence is done to a man (the theory being, of course, that this is not only his natural sphere, but he's big enough and strong enough to stop other people from hurting him; and if he wasn't, he should have been.) I think there's a certain extent to which we sort of view all men as soldiers, and all women and children as civilians- it's part of a totally paternalisitic system that gets used to justify why men ought to have authority over said interchangeable category of women and children who in this line of thinking depend on them for protection and provision; but at the same time it's a system that doesn't have a lot of sympathy to spare for the man who does not end up being the alpha. We're given to believe that fighting and death are ennobling to men in the same way beauty and passive mystique are the ideals for womanhood.
I don't think it does anybody any favors, and it spins off into this idea that it's more wrong to hit a woman. (When a man beats his wife, he's a monster; when a woman beats her husband, it's comedy).
Ish.
There's certainly fiction I've read that demonizes the ladies, to the extent that violence (often sexual or specifically humiliating) befalling them (though usually not at the hands of the actual protagonist) is the cathartic release at the end of the story. Bitch got what was coming to her. Or the not explicitly stated but still pervasive implication that men are predators and women are always prey. Sometimes it's slowly, lovingly rendered. Sometimes it's a joke. But it's a powerless woman having terrible things happen to her, and the gist you get from the story is that you're supposed to enjoy it, even if it's just in the way you enjoy horrific stuff, with a little extra garnish of lady misery. Frank Miller's my go-to top of my head example for this, but there are some horror stories I can point to as well, and we've all seen the splashes and teasers at the front where that attractive girl with the bright red lipstick gets killed so we'll be entranced in the mystery. She might just be one of a dozen victims, but her- the one with the lipstick- she's the one we watch it happen to, over and over again.
I guess we can argue that maybe that's supposed to arouse people's protective instincts, but her skirt is so short, and her lipstick is so red, and the camera focuses so hard on her lips, her hips, and her tits, that I really don't think protection is the instinct they're going for.
And I'm not going to lie, there's fiction that demonizes men. Books, stories, movies, where the whole lot of them are lazy, rude, beer swilling abusers and rapists who think they own the world because they have the upper body strength to throw a punch at a lady's face; whereas the women will be, at least in contrast, developed people with real motivations (though these often arise out of their victimhood at the hands of dudes). And in this vein of fiction (often touted as female empowering) these straw men get what's coming to them, and usually the women get validation and sympathy from a group of right-thinking people who help them hide bodies or reduce their sentences after a teary confession of all the facts. Or they drive off a cliff because death is better than going back to their husbands.
I think in a similar way to the way you imagine creepy dudes picturing that blonde getting stabbed in the alleyway as all the girls who turned them down for sexytimes, there's a group of people who actually will always be satisfied by straight up revenge stories where a blameless lady victim cuts off reproductively important bits of the cartoon man who wronged her.
I think there are people who will say the violence against women as entertainment is not an issue (google sexism and video games if you don't believe me), but I think they're an atavistic minority. I think we're much quieter than we should be about the ease with which we accept violence against men as normal, natural, and even righteous.
Think for a minute- how many female characters have you seen charge into a hail of gunfire, or hold the pass while her friends get away, so that she can die a "good and noble" death? Why do we accept so easily that this is a good thing for men to do? How many times has a gun or sword fight come to a screeching halt because a woman died, after they had just killed nine or ten men without blinking?
I don't think we necessarily think of men's lives as worth less, but we're very willing to accept them being beaten, shot, and killed, without it being something we get upset over.
How weird is that?
(Very little of this actually applies to Mantis Wives specifically, since the story kind of plays around with a power-norm flip, and the violence reads as unnecessary and pathological, at least to me. I don't get a feeling of glee at their suffering out of it, though she does seem to enjoy writing description (I think that's more just language play). I do think, though, that this story would not have worked AS well for me if it were male stand-ins doing violence to females, and that's something that worries me a little, but I think the subversion of the norm in this case helps examine it. That's a technique that can go very wrong in unskilled hands, though).
So, I recommend you read Mantis Wives for yourself, but the gist of it is that even though mantis women realize they don't NEED to kill their husbands, they're locked into their roles and they can't figure out a different way to live.
I quite like it, but it is, by necessity of what it is, largely composed of needlessly cruel torture of boy mantises. That's really kind of the point.
Now there's a fellow down in the comments who seems to be kind of a reactionary jerkface, but I've always maintained that being an jerkface doesn't mean your point is not worth entertaining intellectually.
To what extent are we- am I as a reader- more comfortable with this story because the violence is happening exclusively to men? It's something I've talked about before, and something that continues to worry me.
For all that dudes are disproportionately the people doing violence, they're also disproportionately the victims, and I defy someone to argue that we're not socially conditioned to feel it is less of a tragedy when violence is done to a man (the theory being, of course, that this is not only his natural sphere, but he's big enough and strong enough to stop other people from hurting him; and if he wasn't, he should have been.) I think there's a certain extent to which we sort of view all men as soldiers, and all women and children as civilians- it's part of a totally paternalisitic system that gets used to justify why men ought to have authority over said interchangeable category of women and children who in this line of thinking depend on them for protection and provision; but at the same time it's a system that doesn't have a lot of sympathy to spare for the man who does not end up being the alpha. We're given to believe that fighting and death are ennobling to men in the same way beauty and passive mystique are the ideals for womanhood.
I don't think it does anybody any favors, and it spins off into this idea that it's more wrong to hit a woman. (When a man beats his wife, he's a monster; when a woman beats her husband, it's comedy).
Ish.
There's certainly fiction I've read that demonizes the ladies, to the extent that violence (often sexual or specifically humiliating) befalling them (though usually not at the hands of the actual protagonist) is the cathartic release at the end of the story. Bitch got what was coming to her. Or the not explicitly stated but still pervasive implication that men are predators and women are always prey. Sometimes it's slowly, lovingly rendered. Sometimes it's a joke. But it's a powerless woman having terrible things happen to her, and the gist you get from the story is that you're supposed to enjoy it, even if it's just in the way you enjoy horrific stuff, with a little extra garnish of lady misery. Frank Miller's my go-to top of my head example for this, but there are some horror stories I can point to as well, and we've all seen the splashes and teasers at the front where that attractive girl with the bright red lipstick gets killed so we'll be entranced in the mystery. She might just be one of a dozen victims, but her- the one with the lipstick- she's the one we watch it happen to, over and over again.
I guess we can argue that maybe that's supposed to arouse people's protective instincts, but her skirt is so short, and her lipstick is so red, and the camera focuses so hard on her lips, her hips, and her tits, that I really don't think protection is the instinct they're going for.
And I'm not going to lie, there's fiction that demonizes men. Books, stories, movies, where the whole lot of them are lazy, rude, beer swilling abusers and rapists who think they own the world because they have the upper body strength to throw a punch at a lady's face; whereas the women will be, at least in contrast, developed people with real motivations (though these often arise out of their victimhood at the hands of dudes). And in this vein of fiction (often touted as female empowering) these straw men get what's coming to them, and usually the women get validation and sympathy from a group of right-thinking people who help them hide bodies or reduce their sentences after a teary confession of all the facts. Or they drive off a cliff because death is better than going back to their husbands.
I think in a similar way to the way you imagine creepy dudes picturing that blonde getting stabbed in the alleyway as all the girls who turned them down for sexytimes, there's a group of people who actually will always be satisfied by straight up revenge stories where a blameless lady victim cuts off reproductively important bits of the cartoon man who wronged her.
I think there are people who will say the violence against women as entertainment is not an issue (google sexism and video games if you don't believe me), but I think they're an atavistic minority. I think we're much quieter than we should be about the ease with which we accept violence against men as normal, natural, and even righteous.
Think for a minute- how many female characters have you seen charge into a hail of gunfire, or hold the pass while her friends get away, so that she can die a "good and noble" death? Why do we accept so easily that this is a good thing for men to do? How many times has a gun or sword fight come to a screeching halt because a woman died, after they had just killed nine or ten men without blinking?
I don't think we necessarily think of men's lives as worth less, but we're very willing to accept them being beaten, shot, and killed, without it being something we get upset over.
How weird is that?
(Very little of this actually applies to Mantis Wives specifically, since the story kind of plays around with a power-norm flip, and the violence reads as unnecessary and pathological, at least to me. I don't get a feeling of glee at their suffering out of it, though she does seem to enjoy writing description (I think that's more just language play). I do think, though, that this story would not have worked AS well for me if it were male stand-ins doing violence to females, and that's something that worries me a little, but I think the subversion of the norm in this case helps examine it. That's a technique that can go very wrong in unskilled hands, though).
Monday, July 9, 2012
Pretty Strong
Sarah Robles is an Olympic super heavyweight weight lifter. On her blog, she talks about athleticism, celebrity, and body shape. She's got a very interesting take on things.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Racist Books and Your Little Ones
This article is mostly middle class (presumably white) liberal hand wringing, I'll admit, but it's got an excellent point at its core, which is the question of "how much is it right to shield your children from the ugly parts of the world?" And after that the question of "how do you explain things when you do decide to explain?"
I know when I was growing up, my parents erred on the side of keeping my childhood a happy, safe place as much as they could. I actually remember the first time I heard about the Holocaust from friends, which should show you how old I was. I didn't believe it was real, because 1. it made no sense and 2. I couldn't believe there was something that big out there and I hadn't heard about it.
My personal experience is that not having more direct contact with these issues allowed me to hold on to some ultimately racist assumptions (like how blonde white women (like me) are the most universally desired thing in the world) way past the point where that was reasonable. Stuff someone told me when I was a kid and not very good at critical thinking, and which I then carried around without questioning because I was not often exposed to things that forced me to question it. It's a large part of the reason I seek out racial equality blogs nowadays and read as much as I can.
(This is not at all a slam against my parents. They're wonderful people who tried their best and, I think, did very well, and to their credit, whenever they caught me doing or saying something unacceptable, they'd sit me down and tell me no, that's not okay).
Stuff is coming up now with my nephews. We sat my younger one down recently and had a talk about 9/11 because it was the 10th anniversary and it was something they were discussing in school. My stepsister, whose parents had been less sheltering, showed him video footage and we talked about who did this and why. Or how the older one was running around enthusiastically and incorrectly quoting Madagascar in a way that made us all cringe.
I love these kids. They're wonderful little people, and I hate to break their hearts with how ugly things can sometimes be.
But that's really how you grow up, isn't it?
I know when I was growing up, my parents erred on the side of keeping my childhood a happy, safe place as much as they could. I actually remember the first time I heard about the Holocaust from friends, which should show you how old I was. I didn't believe it was real, because 1. it made no sense and 2. I couldn't believe there was something that big out there and I hadn't heard about it.
My personal experience is that not having more direct contact with these issues allowed me to hold on to some ultimately racist assumptions (like how blonde white women (like me) are the most universally desired thing in the world) way past the point where that was reasonable. Stuff someone told me when I was a kid and not very good at critical thinking, and which I then carried around without questioning because I was not often exposed to things that forced me to question it. It's a large part of the reason I seek out racial equality blogs nowadays and read as much as I can.
(This is not at all a slam against my parents. They're wonderful people who tried their best and, I think, did very well, and to their credit, whenever they caught me doing or saying something unacceptable, they'd sit me down and tell me no, that's not okay).
Stuff is coming up now with my nephews. We sat my younger one down recently and had a talk about 9/11 because it was the 10th anniversary and it was something they were discussing in school. My stepsister, whose parents had been less sheltering, showed him video footage and we talked about who did this and why. Or how the older one was running around enthusiastically and incorrectly quoting Madagascar in a way that made us all cringe.
I love these kids. They're wonderful little people, and I hate to break their hearts with how ugly things can sometimes be.
But that's really how you grow up, isn't it?
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
I'm Not a Gamer
Every now and again, someone will link me to an article about another time where someone has complained about sexism either in video games or the gaming industry and the response has been at best to dismiss them. More often that they get swamped with hate mail and rape threats. I had been discussing one of these articles with a good friend and I said something to the effect of, yeah, I'd just come to accept that the video game industry and culture is hostile to me and doesn't want me as a customer (probably more accurate to say that the steps they would have to take make me feel welcome would alienate more of their current base than it would bring in in terms of myself and people like me). I know some perfectly lovely gamer gentlemen, but generally speaking, I'm okay with just writing the larger industry/culture off as a place I would not enjoy, and, if I ever doubt that instinct, it just takes one internet comment thread to convince me I probably did right.
But that did get me thinking about the things I won't cut ties with. Certainly science fiction has some atavistic little trolls lurking in its communities. And comic books seem to be in a race to the bottom in terms of drawing women as soft-core pornography. Is it a question of prevalence? Is it just that I can point to creators and creations within those other avenues that have been not only wonderful but friendly to me as a reader? Am I still okay with comics because for every Frank Miller and Dave Sim, there's also a Neil Gaiman and a Gail Simone (dreamy sigh! Gail Simone)?
What's our responsibility as consumers? As creators? At what point is it okay to just pack up and head for greener pastures and at what point is it morally imperative to say "no, this is mine as well, and I will not allow you to ruin it"?
EDIT 6/15:
You know, that all said, I've also been reading several things recently where people throughout the industry- not just the ladies- are stepping up and going "woah there, let's not just dismiss these complaints out of hand, and let's conduct ourselves like decent human beings". I apologize to anyone I offended or slandered with too broad strokes.
EDIT 6/15:
You know, that all said, I've also been reading several things recently where people throughout the industry- not just the ladies- are stepping up and going "woah there, let's not just dismiss these complaints out of hand, and let's conduct ourselves like decent human beings". I apologize to anyone I offended or slandered with too broad strokes.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
The Economics of Anarchy
Well, not really, but it's some thoughts about economics from a different perspective.
Friday, May 25, 2012
World SF Blog
Check out the World SF Blog! They do science fiction from around the world. Plus sometimes they post fiction.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Men's Fiction
Esquire announced its intent to publish straight to e-book anthologies of "Men's Fiction", and I am cautiously optimistic.
I'm actually really for publishing "Men's Fiction" and labeling it as such. The editor hopes for stories "dealing with passages in a man’s life that seem common," which I think is a fantastic thing to do. Let's talk about boys being expected to fight. Let's talk about the draft. Let's talk about fatherhood. Let's talk about not knowing for sure if a sexual partner's offspring is also yours. Let's talk about the expectation of being the breadwinner, or the directionless feeling when that's no longer expected and one doesn't know exactly what is. Let's talk about being expected to be physically strong in the way women are expected to be physically beautiful. Let's talk about the intersections of masculinity and race in our society. All of these are valuable and important and potentially great stories that are generally pretty specific to men.
I think one fantastic thing about directing attention to the idea that there is specifically masculine fiction is that it helps put wedge between masculine fiction and general fiction being masculine by default. I like the idea of there being a gender continuum with delineated poles and a broad neutral ground in the middle where the subject isn't anything gender-particular, but rather the human condition. Not "women's fiction and general fiction", but "women's fiction, general fiction, and men's fiction".
I am, of course, also leery, because often when people say "men's (anything)" they mean either straight up pornography, or a sort of he-man woman hater's club business that tends to be pretty distasteful. But I'm optimistic that's not where this is going.
EDIT: Aaaand it's been pointed out to me Esquire has a long history of excellent fiction. Here's the highlights of the Esquire collected anthology 1993:
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Ernest Hemingway; "The Death of Justina" by John Cheever; "Towel Season" by Ron Carlson; "Parker's Back" by Flannery O'Connor; "Adult World I" and "Adult World II" by David Foster Wallace; "Neighbors" by Raymond Carver; "Fleur" by Louise Erdrich; "A Man in the Way" by F. Scott Fitzgerald; "In the Men's Room of the Sixteenth Century" by Don DeLillo; "Rock Springs" by Richard Ford; "The Remobilization of Jacob Horner" by John Barth; and "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien.
That's a really boss line up and I'd love to see them carry on in that tradition.
I'm actually really for publishing "Men's Fiction" and labeling it as such. The editor hopes for stories "dealing with passages in a man’s life that seem common," which I think is a fantastic thing to do. Let's talk about boys being expected to fight. Let's talk about the draft. Let's talk about fatherhood. Let's talk about not knowing for sure if a sexual partner's offspring is also yours. Let's talk about the expectation of being the breadwinner, or the directionless feeling when that's no longer expected and one doesn't know exactly what is. Let's talk about being expected to be physically strong in the way women are expected to be physically beautiful. Let's talk about the intersections of masculinity and race in our society. All of these are valuable and important and potentially great stories that are generally pretty specific to men.
I think one fantastic thing about directing attention to the idea that there is specifically masculine fiction is that it helps put wedge between masculine fiction and general fiction being masculine by default. I like the idea of there being a gender continuum with delineated poles and a broad neutral ground in the middle where the subject isn't anything gender-particular, but rather the human condition. Not "women's fiction and general fiction", but "women's fiction, general fiction, and men's fiction".
I am, of course, also leery, because often when people say "men's (anything)" they mean either straight up pornography, or a sort of he-man woman hater's club business that tends to be pretty distasteful. But I'm optimistic that's not where this is going.
EDIT: Aaaand it's been pointed out to me Esquire has a long history of excellent fiction. Here's the highlights of the Esquire collected anthology 1993:
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Ernest Hemingway; "The Death of Justina" by John Cheever; "Towel Season" by Ron Carlson; "Parker's Back" by Flannery O'Connor; "Adult World I" and "Adult World II" by David Foster Wallace; "Neighbors" by Raymond Carver; "Fleur" by Louise Erdrich; "A Man in the Way" by F. Scott Fitzgerald; "In the Men's Room of the Sixteenth Century" by Don DeLillo; "Rock Springs" by Richard Ford; "The Remobilization of Jacob Horner" by John Barth; and "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien.
That's a really boss line up and I'd love to see them carry on in that tradition.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Non-Western Science Fiction Roundtable, Again
A separate take on the question, this time by non-westerners.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
A Tale of Two Stupid Commercials
I watch some of the fine programming content Comedy Central makes available through their web page, which unfortunately means I see the same small set of commercials over and over again, ad nauseum (see what I did there?).
There's the regular stuff, happy pastel singing laundry detergent, horrible snide neighbors lording their smart phones over people, a kid who loves bacon so much he marries it (which ends with "you may now eat the bride" and a sickening wet chomp that is the stuff of nightmares). But there was one in particular that bothered me.
The ad follows a handsome, scruffy young man on the prowl for fresh lady-meat, but every time he comes close to one of his victims, flakes of head skin swarm from his rakishly unkempt mop like a swarm of cylon fighters, and the girl's face slow-motion freezes in a look of unnameable, lovecraftian horror before she vaporizes in a puff of cgi dust, leaving her discarded clothes. The young man looks sad to have missed an opportunity for sex, but doesn't seem particularly weighed down by the guilt of constantly annihilating strangers with the mere presence of his weaponized dandruff. He then goes home and shampoos with the advertised brand, and, miraculously three different girls appear (I think they're implied to be the same girls, but I don't think they are) without those pesky clothes that were left behind. They proceed to paw insatiably at his head, with that vacant, slightly bite-y look models wear on the covers of both Cosmo and GQ. "Don't lose girls to dandruff" the sophisticatedly accented lady announcer reminds you, in case you missed the message.
I know, intellectually, that the intended message of this commercial is "buy our dandruff shampoo!" and not "women who do not want to sleep with you functionally may as well not exist." But I went out of my way to be somewhere else when the unskippable ad came on. This one commercial is probably responsible for more clean dishes in my apartment than any two other factors combined.
So then a new ad came into rotation. "Don't you wish you could just make some things disappear?" a young woman in club wear asks, as a rat-like man with an open-to-the-sternum disco shirt seems to sniff at her from behind. She flashes him a disgusted look and he pops in a familiar cgi dust effect that sets her hair swishing playfully at the camera. She then walks toward us with swinging hips as she enumerates the virtues of the particular tampon she's trying to sell us. Across the room, a nonthreatiningly normal looking boy is being chatted up by two women you don't really see well before our off-screen heroine presumably splatters them out of existence with the sheer, horrible force of the obliteration power this new tampon has granted her. She then skips up and begins a happy conversation we can only assume he's smiling and nodding along to out of fear for not only his life, but his very physical existence.
This ad is also stupid, but it doesn't bother me.
And I got to wondering if that makes me a hypocrite. I mean, I like to think I'd also be bothered if the god-murderess of the second commercial were going up to dudes and trying to engage them in tampon conversation, only to vaporize them horribly when they told her they just wanted to be friends. Tampon girl is malicious in a way dandruff boy isn't. Sure, her first murder could be argued to be defensive, or at least provoked, but all those girls were doing was standing next to a boy whose attention she wanted. They didn't deserve to die. Dandruff boy just wanders through a hellscape of unintended casualties (though he's either incredibly callous or really bad at pattern recognition to keep at it). Maybe I'd be upset if the dudes in the second commercial were as objectified as the ladies in the first. Dandruff boy's new shampoo lands him a silent, lustful harem and the implied promise of sex with at least two more women than we assume he has penises; while all tampon girl seems to want is a chance to talk to her boy of choice. These dudes don't have time for much development, but they do at least get "creepy potential date rapist" and "cute but normal boy", while the lady's characters are "sexy, horrified club girl", "sexy, horrified librarian", and "sexy, horrified gym girl", all of which dissolve away into "indistinct, hair-crazed sex-vixen". But those two other girls in the tampon commercial get about the same, and the second ad gives no indication that they will ever be rescued from the icy void of non-existence, not even for group sex with a previously unacceptable stranger.
I don't think I'm having this reaction because deep down I think it's more okay for girls to vaporize boys (and other girls) than for boys to vaporize girls.
But I do have to admit a large part of it probably has to do with the fact that the first ad is, to a certain extent, about me but not for me (girls will totally sex up a guy with a non-flakey head!), while the second ad is, to about the same extent, both about and for me (girls, tampons will make all your life's travails conveniently vanish!). I wonder if there are gentlemen out there, similarly given to pointless analysis, who rankle at the idea of a tampon-powered psychic serial killer cornering them after she brutally dispatches all the other perfectly nice girls. The boy in the commercial doesn't seem to mind, but then again, neither do the bitey towel girls in the shower-seraglio foursome.
I can't get over the feeling that the disparate responses I have to these two ads are meaningful. Telling. It's possible I think this because it's very late at night, I admit, but still.
It probably doesn't bear thinking about.
But I'm going to anyway.
There's the regular stuff, happy pastel singing laundry detergent, horrible snide neighbors lording their smart phones over people, a kid who loves bacon so much he marries it (which ends with "you may now eat the bride" and a sickening wet chomp that is the stuff of nightmares). But there was one in particular that bothered me.
The ad follows a handsome, scruffy young man on the prowl for fresh lady-meat, but every time he comes close to one of his victims, flakes of head skin swarm from his rakishly unkempt mop like a swarm of cylon fighters, and the girl's face slow-motion freezes in a look of unnameable, lovecraftian horror before she vaporizes in a puff of cgi dust, leaving her discarded clothes. The young man looks sad to have missed an opportunity for sex, but doesn't seem particularly weighed down by the guilt of constantly annihilating strangers with the mere presence of his weaponized dandruff. He then goes home and shampoos with the advertised brand, and, miraculously three different girls appear (I think they're implied to be the same girls, but I don't think they are) without those pesky clothes that were left behind. They proceed to paw insatiably at his head, with that vacant, slightly bite-y look models wear on the covers of both Cosmo and GQ. "Don't lose girls to dandruff" the sophisticatedly accented lady announcer reminds you, in case you missed the message.
I know, intellectually, that the intended message of this commercial is "buy our dandruff shampoo!" and not "women who do not want to sleep with you functionally may as well not exist." But I went out of my way to be somewhere else when the unskippable ad came on. This one commercial is probably responsible for more clean dishes in my apartment than any two other factors combined.
So then a new ad came into rotation. "Don't you wish you could just make some things disappear?" a young woman in club wear asks, as a rat-like man with an open-to-the-sternum disco shirt seems to sniff at her from behind. She flashes him a disgusted look and he pops in a familiar cgi dust effect that sets her hair swishing playfully at the camera. She then walks toward us with swinging hips as she enumerates the virtues of the particular tampon she's trying to sell us. Across the room, a nonthreatiningly normal looking boy is being chatted up by two women you don't really see well before our off-screen heroine presumably splatters them out of existence with the sheer, horrible force of the obliteration power this new tampon has granted her. She then skips up and begins a happy conversation we can only assume he's smiling and nodding along to out of fear for not only his life, but his very physical existence.
This ad is also stupid, but it doesn't bother me.
And I got to wondering if that makes me a hypocrite. I mean, I like to think I'd also be bothered if the god-murderess of the second commercial were going up to dudes and trying to engage them in tampon conversation, only to vaporize them horribly when they told her they just wanted to be friends. Tampon girl is malicious in a way dandruff boy isn't. Sure, her first murder could be argued to be defensive, or at least provoked, but all those girls were doing was standing next to a boy whose attention she wanted. They didn't deserve to die. Dandruff boy just wanders through a hellscape of unintended casualties (though he's either incredibly callous or really bad at pattern recognition to keep at it). Maybe I'd be upset if the dudes in the second commercial were as objectified as the ladies in the first. Dandruff boy's new shampoo lands him a silent, lustful harem and the implied promise of sex with at least two more women than we assume he has penises; while all tampon girl seems to want is a chance to talk to her boy of choice. These dudes don't have time for much development, but they do at least get "creepy potential date rapist" and "cute but normal boy", while the lady's characters are "sexy, horrified club girl", "sexy, horrified librarian", and "sexy, horrified gym girl", all of which dissolve away into "indistinct, hair-crazed sex-vixen". But those two other girls in the tampon commercial get about the same, and the second ad gives no indication that they will ever be rescued from the icy void of non-existence, not even for group sex with a previously unacceptable stranger.
I don't think I'm having this reaction because deep down I think it's more okay for girls to vaporize boys (and other girls) than for boys to vaporize girls.
But I do have to admit a large part of it probably has to do with the fact that the first ad is, to a certain extent, about me but not for me (girls will totally sex up a guy with a non-flakey head!), while the second ad is, to about the same extent, both about and for me (girls, tampons will make all your life's travails conveniently vanish!). I wonder if there are gentlemen out there, similarly given to pointless analysis, who rankle at the idea of a tampon-powered psychic serial killer cornering them after she brutally dispatches all the other perfectly nice girls. The boy in the commercial doesn't seem to mind, but then again, neither do the bitey towel girls in the shower-seraglio foursome.
I can't get over the feeling that the disparate responses I have to these two ads are meaningful. Telling. It's possible I think this because it's very late at night, I admit, but still.
It probably doesn't bear thinking about.
But I'm going to anyway.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Non-Western Science Fiction Roundtable
Locus Magazine Roundtable of folk talking about non-Western Science Fiction. It goes deconstructionist pretty fast, but I think it's worth reading and thinking about. Ends a little abruptly though.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Less Tits and Ass
Yes, yes, it's more ladies in comic books stuff. Artists work to redraw comic book vixens as people with spines and internal organs. They don't really look less hot, just more human.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Advice On Loving Things You're Embarrassed By
I actually started and then abandoned a post similar to this article, talking about how much I really enjoy the Conan mythos, but completely understand and respect how a great many other people would not. You know, what with all the racism.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Why Don't You Just Sex It Up a Little?
So I was speaking to an older gentleman I know who also writes, and he was lamenting the fact that he had never been particularly good at networking- something he felt had cost him in his potential writing career. We got into talking a bit about conventions and meeting people, and he expressed the opinion that I had a bit of an advantage as a young, attractive woman.
Maybe, I said, but I really don't want to use that.
Grow up, he said, everyone does on some level, and it's not as if you would pick your nose in public, or deliberately spray when you talked, just because you felt like it gave you an unfair advantage over people who did.
From there we got into a discussion about the fact that because of some bad experiences (though certainly not as bad as it's gotten for some other people) I'm hesitant to put even flirtation, never mind actual sex, on the table. I don't want any more stalkers outside my door in the middle of the night leaving me phone messages that they know I'm home because they can hear me moving in my dark apartment and why won't I pick up the phone? I don't really want to get grabbed any more because my jeans were tight or my shirt was too low. I don't want any more perfectly nice guys who think we're going to be together forever because I smiled too wide or I laughed at their jokes. The last one's almost the worst, because they really are perfectly nice guys, who aren't doing anything wrong, really. Most times it's just a miscommunication. I've been on the other side of that and I feel terrible turning them down (admittedly, occasionally when you turn a perfectly nice guy down, he'll start with the passive aggressive recrimination, or even outright meanness and then I feel a little better about the whole thing, or at least about the choice, because he wasn't so perfectly nice after all).
So, you know, carry a jacket you can button closed over a low top, don't let people buy you drinks or dinner, take a step back and hope they don't close the gap, shut down conversations and escape them if they start drifting in that direction, that sort of stuff (because I don't really drink, I'll often just pick up someone's discarded bottle and carry it around with me, so that no one thinks I'm too much of a wet blanket, and if someone asks if I want a drink I can wave around my bottle as if I'm still working on one). One falls into patterns of being around folk.
I don't want to give the impression that I don't like people, or I'm afraid of people generally, or I don't try to be fun, maybe even a little flirty sometimes, and for what it's worth I like sex and don't feel obligated to pretend I don't, but I feel pretty cognizant most of the time that it's very easy to get backed into a corner where either someone expects something from you physically or you're some kind of horrible tease (and before you the reading audience write in to say that's horrible, or that's not true, or that shouldn't be true, yes, yes, I know and I agree with you, but there's a very wide gulf between theory and practice, and I don't live in a hypothetical world.)
What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that flirting and giggling and dangling my body out like bacon on a string might indeed snag me some additional contact stuff, but it's perilous on so many levels, not the least of which is being tarred with the professional reputation of having either teased or outright slept my way into work- or even if I myself manage to get out not-at-fault in that scenario, having work dismissed as "oh, they just bought her story because they thought she was cute." Part of what I love about writing is that until I go to a convention, what I look like never enters into it. I have a feminine name, but for all anyone actually knows I could be 90 years old and 500 pounds. I don't have to post a picture on my blog if I don't want to, and I honestly don't think anyone cares about the physical body attached to a random name in the slush pile. It's beautiful and liberating.
And then there's the perhaps more lasting interpersonal level where people I could have been friends with become frustrated would-be boyfriends, and I lose out on a friend because the threat of sex came into it. I would so much rather just be one of the boys in possession of an incidental vagina. I want to be nice. I want to be your friend. I want to be your peer. I want to laugh at your jokes because they're funny. I want to hang out in a group full of mutual respect with people who love the same things I do. I really, really, really want this, and anything else in my professional life, not to be about sex.
Because making it about sex makes it a no-win situation.
Maybe, I said, but I really don't want to use that.
Grow up, he said, everyone does on some level, and it's not as if you would pick your nose in public, or deliberately spray when you talked, just because you felt like it gave you an unfair advantage over people who did.
From there we got into a discussion about the fact that because of some bad experiences (though certainly not as bad as it's gotten for some other people) I'm hesitant to put even flirtation, never mind actual sex, on the table. I don't want any more stalkers outside my door in the middle of the night leaving me phone messages that they know I'm home because they can hear me moving in my dark apartment and why won't I pick up the phone? I don't really want to get grabbed any more because my jeans were tight or my shirt was too low. I don't want any more perfectly nice guys who think we're going to be together forever because I smiled too wide or I laughed at their jokes. The last one's almost the worst, because they really are perfectly nice guys, who aren't doing anything wrong, really. Most times it's just a miscommunication. I've been on the other side of that and I feel terrible turning them down (admittedly, occasionally when you turn a perfectly nice guy down, he'll start with the passive aggressive recrimination, or even outright meanness and then I feel a little better about the whole thing, or at least about the choice, because he wasn't so perfectly nice after all).
So, you know, carry a jacket you can button closed over a low top, don't let people buy you drinks or dinner, take a step back and hope they don't close the gap, shut down conversations and escape them if they start drifting in that direction, that sort of stuff (because I don't really drink, I'll often just pick up someone's discarded bottle and carry it around with me, so that no one thinks I'm too much of a wet blanket, and if someone asks if I want a drink I can wave around my bottle as if I'm still working on one). One falls into patterns of being around folk.
I don't want to give the impression that I don't like people, or I'm afraid of people generally, or I don't try to be fun, maybe even a little flirty sometimes, and for what it's worth I like sex and don't feel obligated to pretend I don't, but I feel pretty cognizant most of the time that it's very easy to get backed into a corner where either someone expects something from you physically or you're some kind of horrible tease (and before you the reading audience write in to say that's horrible, or that's not true, or that shouldn't be true, yes, yes, I know and I agree with you, but there's a very wide gulf between theory and practice, and I don't live in a hypothetical world.)
What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that flirting and giggling and dangling my body out like bacon on a string might indeed snag me some additional contact stuff, but it's perilous on so many levels, not the least of which is being tarred with the professional reputation of having either teased or outright slept my way into work- or even if I myself manage to get out not-at-fault in that scenario, having work dismissed as "oh, they just bought her story because they thought she was cute." Part of what I love about writing is that until I go to a convention, what I look like never enters into it. I have a feminine name, but for all anyone actually knows I could be 90 years old and 500 pounds. I don't have to post a picture on my blog if I don't want to, and I honestly don't think anyone cares about the physical body attached to a random name in the slush pile. It's beautiful and liberating.
And then there's the perhaps more lasting interpersonal level where people I could have been friends with become frustrated would-be boyfriends, and I lose out on a friend because the threat of sex came into it. I would so much rather just be one of the boys in possession of an incidental vagina. I want to be nice. I want to be your friend. I want to be your peer. I want to laugh at your jokes because they're funny. I want to hang out in a group full of mutual respect with people who love the same things I do. I really, really, really want this, and anything else in my professional life, not to be about sex.
Because making it about sex makes it a no-win situation.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Putting a Man on the Crescent Moon
Islamscifi.com is your stop for Islam and Islam related discussions in science fiction!
Monday, March 26, 2012
.....Just Wow
So... apparently there is a contingent of Hunger Games fans who are upset that black actors were cast for the roles of.... black characters.
I know I've mentioned whitewashed cover art around here, and I probably said something about how annoyed I was with the casting on The Last Airbender (the Avatar series was one of my favorites, specifically because they did such fabulous Asian culture based stuff... so it was very weird when the only named characters who were any type of Asian (and then clearly not the type of Asian they'd been in the series) were the villains, and then only because the white Disney pop star boy backed out. I actually really got into it with a friend of mine over this, which was terribly weird to me, because I really just assumed they would also assume a character named Toph Bei Fong was, you know, from some sort of Chinese or Korean extraction. Not quite so, apparently.)
Aaaaanyway. Here is a bunch of angry tweets from people very upset to see that characters they apparently thought were just tanned white folk portrayed by black actors.
In the words of one superfan: "when I found out Rue was black, her death wasn't as sad".
Friday, March 16, 2012
Body Type, Clothing, Beauty, and Posing
I feel like I actually bang this drum quite a bit, possibly to the point where I'm annoying, but damnit, I really like comics, and the constant soft-core porn drawing of female characters bugs me. So this is a pretty good run down of the problem, with pictures.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
The Reverse Bechdel
Okay, so, you may or may not have heard of the Bechdel Test, which first appeared as a joke in Alison Bechdel's "Dykes to Watch Out For". A movie passes the Bechdel Test if all of the following happen.
- There are two or more named female characters
- Who at some point talk to each other
- About something other than a man
This has become a pretty popular measure amongst feminists and media critics because it's easily quantifiable, and when you think about it, it's stunning how many movies don't pass. Now it's no guarantee that a movie is good, or even a good portrayal of women if it does pass, nor is the reverse true if it fails. However, I think there's a lot to be taken from the measure in terms of the presence, importance, and agency assigned to female characters.
That said, not everybody agrees. The counter argument is that a movie is a tight form without a lot of room for superfluous information (which is fair and true), and all the characters who are not main characters will suffer for it in terms of characterization. That's where the Reverse Bechdel comes in. I polled my friends and acquaintances for movies that do not pass a reverse of the rules above, that is:
- at least two named male characters
- who talk to each other at some point
- about something other than a woman.
If the movie is about a woman and her relationships, will men occupy the same ancillary role? Will they have agency, interests, and relationships outside of their orbit around the main female character?
I figure it's the kind of question I can answer late at night if I come home and am too tired from work to write.
Here's our list of potentially reverse bechdel failing movies so far (please feel free to add in the comments if you have any more):
- Amelie
- Antonia's Line
- Beaches
- Bridesmaids
- Bridges of Madison County
- Boys on the Side
- Calendar Girls
- Coraline
- The Craft
- Death Becomes Her
- Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood
- Driving Miss Daisy
- First Wives' Club
- For the Boys
- Fried Green Tomatoes
- Ginger Snaps
- Heathers
- Heartburn
- Julie and Julia
- League of Their Own
- Mean Girls
- Princess Mononoke
- The Ring
- Rose
- She-Devil
- Steel Magnolias
- Spirited Away
- Stepmom
- Sucker Punch
- Teeth
- Thelma and Louise
- Underworld
- Wall-E
- The Women
- Working Girl
We'll see how it shakes out.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Project Unbreakable
This is more rape stuff, just so you know.
I got pointed at Project Unbreakable recently, which is an art project for people who have been raped to talk about their experiences. Most of it is men and women holding up signs with quotes from their rapists on them. It's really powerful stuff, and hopefully this helps get the word out to someone who needs it.
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