Some links for you.

I don't know how cleansing this break was. A lot of it was me saying to myself, "ergh, I just don't care about the internet today." Which may sound like nothing, but "the internet" is the community in which I participate to make up for the fact that I have few friends in real life. So I did connect a bit more with them these past couple of weeks, and even made a few new ones. (It's fall, so there's new blood in the department. I'm pretty excited about that.) But I've just been feeling sort of apathetic and ungrounded. Clearly, all those folks who say the internet makes you less sociable and breaks up community are stupid. But I'm back! So let's get me out of this funk with a linkspam.

First, because I like starting with Doctor Who, I ran across this article at Overthinking It in which the author perfectly identifies why season 5 is just not doing it for me--a lack of thematic consistency. So ze re-writes the season to give that consistency, and it's actually pretty fucking amazing. It's also a long read, so bookmark it for later if you need to.

Another longish read about Doctor Who is the beginning of Ryan's fanfic, featuring the ginger Doctor. Yeah, you heard that right. "Leena and Red and Those Who Never Were." It's a million times better than every NuWho book I've ever read, which is a lot of them.

There were a number of fantastic posts about gaming, women, and sexism the last couple of weeks. It was kicked off by Pewter's "I Don't See Your Problem: Sexism, World of Warcraft, and Geekery" at The Mental Shaman. She also has a round-up of responses and related posts up at her blog. Related: "Ain't I a Gamer?" at the Border House and Quin's "Daughter of Zero Queens: Roleplaying as Resistance" (really recommended), as at the Border House.

Geek Feminism Blog also put up a post about "The Myth of White Male Geek Rationality" recently. It is, like, everything I've ever wanted to say to scientists, but with less swearing.

From Julian Abagond at Sociological Images, the perennial question I've heard in the gaming and anime worlds: "Why Do the Japanese Draw Themselves as White?" The answer: they don't. We only think we do because we assume white as default.

"In Defense of Being Crazy": Gayle talks about the importance of self-identification and language use in that process. (Full disclosure: I am actually a big fan of, and have a lot of respect for, both Gayle and s.e. smith from FWD.)

Sexist Beatdown is back! Amanda and Sady talk about Eminem, Rihanna, and domestic violence. Awesomeness, as it always does with them, ensues.

This lovely comic from Ampersand illustrates the sexism behind street harassment and the oft-repeated response that women should take it as a compliment:

I actually got catcalled on the street the other day. I was walking from my apartment to the corner store to get some cokes at about 9 or 9:30, and some dude called out, "Hey baby." (I couldn't see him, because our street is poorly lit. Presumably because there are no sidewalks.) I ignored him. "Hey sexy lady. Come over here!" I walked faster, and I was scared and pissed, because I immediately thought, maybe I should have brought Ryan with me. To walk 2 blocks. It was humiliating to think, even for a second. Fuck.

Via Sociological Images, this amazing video:

Transcript:

(A pretty thin woman in a yellow dress in from of a fake pink castle interior.)

If you find a man who's big and hairy and beastly and it seems like he wants to hurt you, buuut he's got a lot of money and a really big house, stick it out, you can change him.

(She does a little dance as the title "Advice for Young Girls From a Cartoon Princess" appears in chunky hot pink letter.)

Desire is when a man wants you so much that he's willing to yell at you and beat down your door and tell you if you don't eat with him, you don't eat at all. It also kinda means he wants you to be skinny.

There was once a really hot, successful man who was very goal-oriented and extremely popular who wanted to marry me, but I didn't feel like it was enough of a challenge. Never settle for something that doesn't feel like it's a challenge.

I don't like the term "beastiality;" it sounds...blegh. I like the term "interspeciality" because it sounds like "special."

Find a man who wants to imprison you with his love. The longer that you're trapped with the same person, it will start to feel like home. Stockholm!

You don't need to have fancy people friends. Things around your house can be your friends. Don't just sit on furniture--talk to it. Candlesticks are really good at love advice because they're French!

The key to love is to tolerate everything. Oh god...everything.

The lesson here is beauty is in the eye of the beholder--as long as the woman is good looking.

 Um, YOU'RE WELCOME. This was one of my favorite Disney movies growing up. (I used to have a Beauty and the Beast tent set up on my bed, that I slept in. Maybe this is why I'm claustrophobic.) So I love this video inordinately.

Linkspam for the ages: Miscellaneous feminism edition

Last linkspam!

First, a wonderful post from Fugitivus about what happens when you become a feminist and realize all your friends and acquaintances are sort of assholes. How does one deal with douchey friends, coworkers, etc. as a feminist?

For example, at my last job, my boss was sexist. He was sexist in a very chauvinistic sort of way – the kind of guy who makes the word “lady” sound like a blessed infirmity – and that was generally tolerable. It was tolerable because he didn’t make rape apologies, he didn’t actively bar women in the office from certain activities, and he didn’t bring it up every day. It was also tolerable because I was in a workplace that brooked little to no dissension, and I was at the target age for Doom Unemployment during a recession. I adjusted my expectations. I did not expect a workplace free of sexism. I did not expect to not be patted on the head, or treated as dumb sometimes. I did not expect fairness or an AfterSchool Special Moment. I did not expect that I had the strength or courage or conviction to make myself unemployed during a recession. I did not expect these things, and I stopped being a seething, boiling volcano of disappointment and rage every day. I found my current circumstances tolerable. Now I am in a new job. The culture here is very different. I can complain without retaliation. So I find myself saying things, to my higher-ups, like “I don’t think that’s fair; somebody could apply the same standard to you,” when one of them starts talking about what one celebrity wife or another deserves from her plainly abusive husband. I find keeping my mouth shut intolerable, because I expect to be given the freedom to open it. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to change my expectations to be able to tolerate some degree of abusiveness in my day-to-day life. But we don’t live in that perfect world – that’s why feminism exists as a concept, and why I identify as one – so in the meantime, I change my expectations when I need to survive.

A commenter pointed out that part of this post really resonates with my open letter to ForeverGeek:

This, to me, is comparable to people making personal decisions by “not choosing sides.” What is perceived to be a third option is, in effect, only one of the two options; it’s just masked in a way that feels ethically, morally, or vindictively better. If I have told you that one of your friends raped me, and you tell me you are not taking sides, you have taken a side. Your decision was to support me or not support me. There was no third option. “Not taking sides” is “I don’t support you,” dressed up like morality and the higher ground.

The moral of the post: look out for yourself. It's long, but worth it, though, so read it!

Next, AP Style Book fails big time.

From Feministing:

This explains why most of the mainstream media still uses the term "illegal immigrant." I find the term offensive and disrespectful, as do most immigration activists. People are not illegal, actions are. The advocate community uses the term "undocumented immigrant" which the Stylebook clearly disagrees with.

The worst is that AP clearly thinks it's being sensitive by ruling out "an illegal." Ugh.

Then, Amanda Hess at The Sexist talks about the (sigh) case of Olivia Mann in the context of expecting women to be the gatekeepers of sex and sexism.

Sure, we want high-profile women to be allies to other women—and it stings extra hard when sexism is perpetuated through their public personas, instead of exclusively by dudes. But behind one Olivia Munn is a producer instructing Munn to “take it off reeeeeeally slow,” and a network president “standing on a speaker in the back, leaning over to get pictures,” and a team of photographers vying to catch an unauthorized glimpse of Munn’s nipple, and a male co-host who insists that he “violate [her] from behind” despite her protestations, and a whole audience full of fanboys screaming at Munn to put her mouth on something. Behind her is an entire industry making sure this happens.

[...]

Another expectation making girls’ lives hard? The equally sexist demand that women take full responsibility for these sexist expectations by always refusing to fulfill them. By faulting Munn for “flaunting it”—instead of taking a look at the demand side of the Hot Girl equation—we’re not only accusing Munn of being a bad feminist, but also a poor gatekeeper of sexism. An entertainment industry that’s built on arousing men by wearing women down until they acquiesce? That, we take for granted. Women, who have little power in this structure, are nevertheless expected to keep the industry’s libido under control—just as they’re expected to hold off sex, keep a sufficient amount of clothes on so as not to tempt men, and never “put themselves in situations” where sexual assailants may strike.

Finally, Ampersand at Alas, A Blog! talks about the sexiness of consent and its relevance to sex education:

Okay, now let’s imagine that Alas University offers two sex-ed classes for first-year students. Class “A” teaches how to have sex based on Cathy’s principle — checking for consent during sex kills the moment. Class “B” teaches based on Clarisse’s principle — checking for consent helps keep sex hot. Randomly assign 50% of students to class “A,” and 50% to class “B.” Check back in a year and survey the students and their sexual partners.


I’d bet a lot of money that the folks in class “B” — and their partners — wind up having hotter, better sex lives.

There’s a myth that communicating about sex ruins sex; and that by emphasizing consent, feminists are in effect opposed to hot sex. I don’t think either myth is true.

I love the example she gives in the post. Sexy sexy.

[TRIGGER WARNING: The comments include some content that may be triggering for survivors of rape or assault. Please proceed with caution.]

Linkspam for the ages: The politics and ownership of bodies edition

My favorite from this week, Jessica Valenti writes about how people treat pregnant bodies like they're public:

•Stop touching my stomach without my permission. It’s presumptuous and it creeps me out. You wouldn’t touch a non-pregnant person’s belly without asking, so what makes you think it’s okay to just lay hands on mine? I know you probably mean well and are excited about the baby and all, but please just ask first. (Especially because there’s no socially acceptable way for me to tell you to stop without sounding like a killjoy.)

•Please don’t comment on how small or big I’m carrying for how far along I am. It’s weird enough having your body change in such dramatic ways without having strangers tell you that you’re not normal. (I’m talking to you, bra-store lady! Your skeptical frown after I told you I was 6 months and comment that I’m way too small was not helpful nor welcome. I’m nervous enough about shit as it is.)

Sing it, sister!

In the It's About Damn Time Category, South African runner Caster Semenya has finally been cleared to compete again after the debacle in which she was subject to a battery of gender tests. From Feministing:

I'm glad Caster will be allowed to compete once again, but this ruling by no means clears up the underlying issues at hand with gender based sports.

I've argued before that the gender binary is not as black and white as our society would make it seem. This point, in my opinion, is further elucidated when someone tries to "prove" gender. There are wide variations that exist, which poke holes at our attempts to simplify everyone into an either or category.

Lastly, Amanda at Pandagon discusses the archives of Larry Rivers, an artist who died in 2002. After his death, Rivers's work was acquired by NYU, but his daughter is asking the archive to turn over some pieces to be destroyed, because they depict the sexual abuse of her and her sister. From Tracy Clark-Flory via Pandagon:

Rivers [...] filmed his daughters, starting at the age of 11, every six months for five years, asking them “about their breasts and whether boys have started noticing them.” There are “close-up shots of one daughter’s genitals and detailed commentary by Mr. Rivers on the girls’ changing bodies.” In some scenes, his wife, Clarice Rivers, “appears with her daughters, displaying her own breasts and talking about them.” The clips were edited into a 45-minute-long film. He titled it “Growing.”

And instead of just handing the damn thing over, everyone is discussing whether the pieces are or are not Art. Which is fucking stupid, because child abuse is child abuse. From Pandagon:

NYU is wanting to hang on to these films in order to release them after the subjects pass away. That’s not enough.  Rivers abused his children, and NYU shouldn’t cooperate in the abuse, even in the name of art.  They should let Tamburlini destroy the videos if she wants.  After all, she was part of the making of them; they belong to her as much as they do her dead father.

Have a good week!

Linkspam for the ages: Geek edition

I have a ton of things for you to read! So I'm dividing them into topic-centered posts. Ignore the ones you don't care about, or all of them! It is your decision.

So, this week in geekdom! It was exciting! And infuriating!

While writing my open letter to ForeverGeek about the politics of objectifying women, I completely forgot about this obnoxious post that I bookmarked from them, in which one of their male writers gushes over a youtube video called "I Kissed a Nerd" (in the style of Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl"). What genius commentary does he offer about it?

What do you think? The singer isn’t quite as hot as Katy Perry, but she’s definitely catering to a whole new crowd who I’m sure would be more than willing to have her.

GROSS. Seriously, seriously gross. THIS is why women think geeks are disgusting, assholes. Because you think the only important thing about them is that they're hot enough for you to fuck, and because you openly talk about them like they're not people. This video is full of references to geek things, meaning this singer is probably a geek herself. Instead of celebrating the fact that geek men might be able to connect with this talented young lady because of their shared interests, ForeverGeek instead remarks, OMG HOT GIRL WILL HAVE SEX WITH ME. Ugh. Fuck you, ForeverGeek.

This was also a week of multiple ruminations at Geek Feminism on geek feminism and geek masculinity, my favorite topics! On geek masculinity, Restructure! argues that when male geeks reclaim masculinity, they do so at the expense of their fellow female geeks:

Most male geeks believe that they are subverting traditional masculinity by reclaiming and self-identifying with the term “geek”. For most male geeks, geek identity is defined partly as a rejection of the “jock” identity. According to the traditional high school male social hierarchy, jocks are high-status males and male geeks are low-status males; jocks are alpha males and male geeks are beta males; jocks are masculine and male geeks are “effeminate”. Thus, when a man proudly self-identifies as a “geek” in response, what he is doing is redefining what it is to be a man, redefining geek identity as masculine.

Typical male geeks argue that to be a geek is to be masculine by interpreting the scientific, mathematical, and technological achievements of overwhelmingly male persons as definitive proof that science, math, and technology are inherently male and define maleness. Such male geeks typically argue that there are innate differences between male and female brains that make success in science, math, and technology exclusive to men. Thus, arguments and studies that suggest otherwise are perceived as a direct attack on the masculinity and male identity of male geeks. According this male geek worldview, if women are equally capable in science, math, and technology, then male geeks lose their claim on masculinity and become low-status, beta, and “effeminate” males once again, because there would be nothing left to separate male geeks from women. Thus, male geeks—much more than non-geek men—tend to be emotionally and socially invested in maintaining the idea women’s brains are hardwired against understanding science, math, and technology to the same extent as men. [emphasis in original]

In this endeavor, male geeks who try to reclaim masculinity are, in part, trying to shore up their male privilege. Masculinity carries with it a certain amount of power and privilege, and that can only be accessed by male geeks if women aren't allowed to have it. In this equation, instead of physical power and sexual prowess (the hypermasculinity characteristic of the "jock"), male geeks try to claim intelligence as a masculine trait (insert all the jokes you've ever heard about jocks growing up to pump gas and nerds growing up to rule the world). But male geeks can only access male privilege by arguing that intelligence is a masculine trait. Instead of overturning the hierarchy that causes male geeks to suffer growing up (for not being hypermasculine), this strategy buttresses that power structure, and fucks women over big time. The solution, fellow geeks, is not to try and reclaim masculine power. It's to smash the system altogether.

Later, Mary at Geek Feminism ruminates on the reasons why one would practice geek feminism as opposed to mainstream feminism. As someone who does both, and who didn't grow up a geek, I found some of the reasons rather fascinating. For example:

Geeks believe themselves highly rational and independent of social influence.

Perhaps the FLOSSPOLS D16 report put this best (it was a report into gender in FLOSS, hence that specific terminology):

F/LOSS participants, as in most scientific cultures, view technology as an autonomous field, separate from people. This means that anything they interpret as ‘social’ is easily dismissed as ‘artificial’ social conditioning. Because this ‘conditioning’ is considered more or less arbitrary, in their view it is supposed to be easily cast aside by individuals choosing to ignore it… As a result participants largely do not believe that gender has anything to do with their own individual actions.

So it’s common for geeks, although hardly unique to them, to analyse sexism in terms of “I’m too smart for that” or “I was victimised [as a geek], and am therefore intimately acquainted with how bad it is and now incapable of perpetrating or benefiting from oppression of others.” But it’s part of the systemic geek feminist experience, to believe ourselves and others or at least other geeks as rational actors. Geeks then divide into believing themselves not sexist, or as rational sexists (“studies show that…” or “but it’s to my reproductive advantage to indiscriminately sexually approach women, the end.”).

This applies to geek women’s view of the world too, and means that many geek women come to feminism with some distrust of any analysis that gives social conditioning real power, and that if and when we do decide that it has it, we have to talk to a lot of people who don’t believe it.

Or:

Geek ciswomen may have struggled with aspects of their womanhood in light of their geekhood.

I’m making this point about cis experiences because all of the self-reporting I know of on this subject is by ciswomen, and I don’t want to imply that cis people’s experence of, essentially, being annoyed with their gender identity can be equated with the experiences or oppression of trans or genderqueer people. Trans and genderqueer people, if you’d like to discuss whether identifying as a geek influenced your relationship with your gender identity in comments, please do, or if you’d like a new thread opened up, I’ll get on it. (Special note to cismen: I realise that geek cismen have also often been victimised as less masculine and conforming men, but this thread isn’t about your experiences. See Restructure!’s recent post for why.)

Geek ciswomen often have a slightly complicated relationship with what it means to be a woman. It’s not an uncommon experience for us to have felt more comfortable socially with geek men than with non-geek women, and to have largely been friends with geek men at times. This is particularly true for many geek ciswomen when we are teenagers. It’s fairly common for geek ciswomen to remember a period of being actively misogynist, along the lines of: “I can see why men find women so bad, 99% of women are indeed trivial and annoying” or “I get treated in a sexist way, and it’s the fault of other women, for inviting sexist behaviour.” Ellen Spertus talked about this in an interview (note, I can’t tell how she is using the term “male-identified” for sure, but it seems to mean something like “sympathised with men and their complaints about women” rather than “was a man”):

… I was pretty male-identified and was somewhat misogynistic. Specifically, I thought that technical fields required more intelligence and effort than non-technical fields and that women’s underrepresentation meant that they were stupid and/or lazy. I no longer feel this way.

Geek ciswomen may also have been taught misogyny, along these lines: these are my people, my clever geek friends who welcome me! If they hate women, there’s must be a reason for it, something the women did!

It’s also common for geek women to have bought into geek hierarchies: we’ve talked about that several times on this blog in fact (Girl stuff in Free Software, Metagaming: Casual vs Hardcore, Women and geek prestige) and avoided things they thought were for women and therefore easy, boring, or at least likely full of female modes of socialising which geek ciswomen feel victimised by.

So geek ciswomen may come to feminism late and reluctantly. It’s an identity that very clearly sets a geek feminist apart from most geeks, and sometimes one’s current or former dear friends.

This is the big one for me, though, as someone who has not identified as a geek for as long as I've identified as a feminist:

Geek feminists are invested in geekdom

This is important. Geek feminists see ourselves (I think) as either wanting to improve existing geekdoms by acknowledging how oppression is perpetrated inside geekdom and trying to teaspoon it out, or to build new improved ones, or both. Geek communities and geek interests simply don’t appear “that important” to many people, feminists included. (See also Moff’s Law.) It is important by definition to geek feminists.

Of course the Internet and social justice activism are big places, and not everyone has to be active on the subject of geek feminism. But we are.

Seriously, though, just go read them all.

Next, did you hear about this Blizzard debacle? Probably! Because you are reading the geek edition! If not, here's the skinny: Blizzard, of World of Warcraft, thinks internet harassment is solved by forcing its users to post their real names on its forum. Genius, right? Here's the forum announcement:

Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature – http://www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.


The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it… the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before.

(If you want to read some blog posts on this issue, Just a Girl Lost in Azeroth has a great link list on the subject.) Then, after three days of being told they are douchey assholes, Blizzard partially retreated:

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Let's hope Blizzard never again sways to the idea that internet harassment is going to go away if they just make real names freely available. Fingers crossed.

Next, Wonder Woman! She recently underwent a costume change and back story reboot, which could have been good, but actually wasn't. From Jezebel:

This is modernity? Where are her red boots? What about modernization requires her trademark "W" emblem to fade into the background? How is covering her once rippling, now wimpy, muscles a nod to evolved images of womanhood?


I know what you're thinking: Shouldn't feminists be happy that Wonder Woman now looks more like a young woman freshly off a college campus, at once ready to go fight some bad guys in an alley or in a pay discrimination lawsuit? Haven't we been fighting for women role models with more clothing as well as more substance? She couldn't really fight evil in a bustier-is this not a feminist win?

No, not by a long shot. In fact, it feels like the sad loss of America's first truly feminist comic book heroine.

Ross at Laist points out that Wonder Woman's rebranding comes from a bunch of middle-aged white dudes:

Maybe I'm drunker than is normal for a weekday, and as a Babylon 5 fan this hurts me to say, but fuck you Straczynski. Just... fuck you. But before you saunter off to the bedroom to give yourself a well deserved fisting, why not stop to consider something: Would you ever refer to Batman's utility belt as "it can be accessorized... it's a Bruce Wayne look for the 21st century."? Yeah, I thought not. But great job shrinking it and pinking it, idiot. Meanwhile, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but I'm pretty sure there's a ton of women creating comics right now who might, and I'm just speculating here, have a hell of a lot more to add to a Greco-Roman myth-inspired Female Character with serious Feminist overtones than a couple of middle aged dudes. Right?  

Bah!

Last, but certainly not least, Doctor Who! So, Moffat isn't as queer-friendly as Davies. (Shocker!) On that subject, stirring_still writes up a comparison of heterosexual vs. queer moments in the 5th season. Meanwhile, svollga points out the fail in the comments of that discussion:

#It is a family show. Queers aren't allowed in a family show because they are enemies of family. Also, naughty queers.


# It's for children, not for teenagers as RTD's era was. Again, children should never see queers. They can get queer cooties. Right through the screen.

# Moffat isn't gay so he doesn't think about gay agenda when writing his stories. Minority stories are for the minorities to tell (to each other, probably) while privileged people enjoy their privilege to forget about the existence of said minorities.

# The story isn't about relationships, romance and/or love. So we can have blatantly heterosexual people all around flirting/in love/married/having families (not to mention heterosexual couple as the main characters and a wedding as a major plot point), and the story isn't about romance, but having any kind of queer representation makes it about romance.

# I watch for the story, not for romace/sexual situations. And queers can't be action characters, they are all about queer sexuality.

# Most foregrounded relationships in the series are between parents and children. And queers can't be parents. Never.

# Heterosexual relashionship aren't really in your face. But they are in background all the time, and did I mention heterosexual couple as main characters and a wedding?

# It is close to the ratio of straight/queer in real life. No, it's not, even if we take only quantity not quality (i.e. one short remark vs wedding storyline).

# I assume that River is bisexual/Eleven is asexual/character N is queer, so add it to your list. Can we please stop talking about subtext while discussing text? Subtext is in the eyes of the beholder. Those who want see it, those who don't - don't. Text is a slogan, a speech, a statement of existence. Queers were in the closet of subtext for too long. Thank you, but no.

# And my personal peeve: I'm bisexual, and I don't care whether there are queer storilines or not, because I make no difference between genders/don't look specifically for queer references. So you are okay with dating any gender but seeing only straight couples on screen? Well, I'm bi, and I'm not okay with it. Because I'm tired of feeling that one half of my sexual identity is forbidden while the other is supported by society, and that I have to choose sides. I want not to care about the gender of people kissing on my screen, but because nobody cares, not because I'm blind to the unequality and queer invisibility.

Grrr *shakes fist*

Grr, indeed.

Recommended reading for July 1st

A social history of Diet Coke, the drink of choice for many ladies.

FWD/Forward talks about Buffy in the beginning of season 2 as a treatment of depression:

This stings close to home for people who deal with real life depression, over loss in their lives, or any of the other reasons that mental illness comes crashing down or tries to suffocate us. Often, the people around us give up trying to support us, and withdraw, leaving us to lash out or sometimes give up.

Perhaps Joss didn’t fail as much as I first said.

Perhaps, in Buffy, he has attempted to personify the utter helplessness and angst that people in a deep depression sometimes feel. Perhaps, he has done a perfect job of showing what it feels like to not be able to yell out exactly what is going on inside, how it feels to have suffered what you have suffered because no one really can truly empathize, no one can truly feel your pain…

Perhaps.

If only defeating your demons was as simple as smashing a set of bones with a giant mallet.

The Angry Black Woman writes about the problematic race issues of the new The Last Airbender movie, and why you should skip it and see the movie instead:

And this is about them, those producers, casting directors and everybody who took a fucking property and ripped out the guts of what made it successful, what made it true, what made it unique, what made it so special to so many minorities; because they once again decided that only ablebodied, misogynist, het, cissexist white males deserve to see their culture being reflected and respected and validated in entertainment. The rest of us, women, racial and disabled and lgbtaqi minorities? We don’t matter. We are adjuncts to the great white male, and our stories? Don’t get to be told. And if by some rare chance our stories do get to be told? Able-bodied, het, cissexist White people (for the most part) are going to buy them, make movies out of them, and replace us with themselves, just to make it goddamn clear that only they matter in this universe and there will be very very few things that minorities of any type will get to have and hold and enjoy.

Yes Means Yes! combats the idea that bodily response is the same as consent:

Following that logic, anyone who can turn us on can do whatever they want to us. No feminist would make that claim about cis women, of course. No feminist would listen to the story of a cis woman who has been raped or molested and whose body has responded with arousal and say, “you were not raped because your body wanted it.” (Would the commenter argue for a different rule for trans women with cocks? I’m not assuming any measure of reasonableness or good faith with that asshole.)

We all know that people are not their bodies, right? Isn’t that an important general rule? Disabled people are not the limitations of their bodies and trans people are not the histories of their bodies or the anatomy of their bodies, right? Women who have uteruses and can reproduce are not their uteruses or their capacities to reproduce, right? Isn’t it always true that we are not our bodies? And when we die, we are gone, but our bodies will remain.

Shakesville blogs about human rights violations at the G20 protests. Trigger warning: the post includes descriptions of verbal abuse, threats of rape, and physical abuse against women.

Thus Spake Zuska reminds us that things are not that much better for women in academia as they were when she was an undergrad and grad student.

And some happy for the day, from Hark! A Vagrant:

Linkspam, the graphic edition

Picture time!

First, via Forever Geek, I discovered the artwork of Peter Callesen. I especially enjoyed his paper work, and I thought I'd share it with you!

Big Paper Castle

Erected Ruin

Erected Ruin

Erected Ruin, detail

Erected Ruin, detail

On the Other Side

On the Other Side, detail

Birds trying to escape their drawing

Birds trying to escape their drawing, detail

Next, via The Sexist, I found an online archive of the Punch cartoons drawn by John Leech. The "feminism" tag is by far the most entertaining. As Amanda says, "dude hated bloomers." Because they'll lead to women acting like men. Working outside the home! Leaving those poor, incapable men to struggle with the housework. Proposing for marriage! Asking men to dance! Condescending to their husbands (which is perfectly okay, apparently, if men do it to their wives)! A sample (click for larger):

From Pandagon: Thwarted sperm finally have an advocate. Amanda discovered anti-choice ecards for "men who’ve been violated by women just up and aborting without permission." Behold.

Unconvinced that these cards express the full range of the Fatherhood Forever Foundation's sentiment, Amanda made a few more appropriate cards of her own:

Finally, Geek Feminism points us to an experiment in which seventh graders were asked to draw and describe scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab:

Among girls (14 in total), 36% portrayed a female scientist in the “before” drawing, and 57% portrayed a female scientist in the “after” drawing.

Among boys (17 in total), 100% portrayed a male scientist in the “before” drawing, and 100% portrayed a male scientist in the “after” drawing.

It looks like a visit to Fermilab has no impact on boys’ gender stereotypes about scientists, but it has a strong impact on challenging girls’ gender stereotypes about scientists. For girls, there was a 58% increase in female scientist representation in their drawings; for boys, there was a 0% increase in female scientist representation in their drawings.

If boys grow up to be men, and empirical evidence has no effect on males’ gender stereotypes about scientists, how do we challenge males’ association of science with maleness?

See the drawings here.

Have a good weekend, folks!

Linkspam for June 18, the Geek Edition

I'm a bit behind on most of these, so sorry about that.

First up today is this fabulous post by Alisa Krasnostein talking about the invisibility of women in science fiction:

This discussion has never been about overt sexism or deliberate exclusion of women from publishing in science fiction. Ok, it has been in the distant past. But these days, when the supposed obstacles to women getting published and recognized in science fiction have been lifted, we remain often invisible and forgotten. These obstacles may once have included ideas like women couldn’t write “real science fiction” or that women didn’t write as well as men. These days, we argue that the lack of gender balance is a result of far more subtle and subconscious factors. And for me, those factors were at play and well evident in both the Mind Melds and in the lack of reflection by Sutter on his collection of SF “Giants”.

[...]

For me, the struggle is always how to explain that the issue at hand is not a deliberate act of sexism, but that a subconscious, unmeaning, unthinking act can be just as harmful. This is especially true when the product is one meant to make criticism and build canon – to say who is worth remembering, and therefore by exclusion, who is not. This may not have been the deliberate intent, yet it remains the final result. And without criticism pointing this out, especially to those who might never see it otherwise, we are destined to repetition.

As she points out in the comments, we need a new way to build canon that doesn't allow us to ignore important (which doesn't just mean famous!) female sci fi authors.

Next, Lore Sjöberg's hilarious The Nice Guy’s Guide to Realizing You’re Not That Nice:

There are any number of geek guys running around out there without the love and companionship that many people and all golden retrievers deserve. Sometimes these guys sit down and try to figure out why they’re living a life devoid of love, romance, sex and discussions about whose hair it is in the shower drain.

They undertake a deep self-assessment, questioning all their long-cherished beliefs about themselves, and this is what they conclude: They’re too nice. And that’s hilarious!

Guys, you’re not “too nice.” That’s like saying you can’t get seated at an L.A. restaurant because you’re too famous.

Avoid the comments, unless you're feeling particularly thick-skinned today.

Geek Studies has this to say about the (heartening) results of the PAX survey on its ban of booth babes:

What’s more, it’s worth noting again that the overwhelming majority of respondents on this survey happen to be men. I’d be curious to see the correlation between the gender of respondents and their answers, but that’s just the researcher in me talking. Even so, if every female respondent liked/loved the ban, and every respondent who disliked/hated the ban were male (which I highly doubt was the case, even before factoring in LGBT respondents), that would still mean that there are twice as many men who don’t want “booth babes” as there are men who do.

Think about that for a moment. Think back, for instance, to that article I linked the other day from Cracked, about 5 reasons it’s still not cool to admit you’re a gamer. Think about how much that piece focused on how the gaming industry tries to market to gamers as if we’re all sex-starved adolescent males.

This is not a safe assumption anymore, if it ever was. This is not just about appealing to a male audience vs. a female audience. This is about how people want to be marketed to, men and women alike.

Next, Border House calls out some advertising for assuming that the default "nerd" is male.

You know, I usually don’t feel the need to append my gender to any identities or titles I might claim. I’m a geek, a nerd, a writer, a gamer, a Witch. Not a lady-geek, a lady-nerd, a lady-writer, a lady-gamer, and a lady-Witch. So any ad that starts out by reminding me that I can’t just be a nerd, but must instead be a lady-nerd, distinct and different from “regular” nerds…yeah, if that’s how you’re going to approach me, I’m just really not. interested.

But I think we can have fun with this. Let’s play opposite day with it! We can talk about the “man-gamer” as if he is the rarest of endangered species, and giggle dismissively at the thought of the positively mythical “male programmer”. See? Default gender assumptions can be fun, when you’re on the privileged side of it! /snark

This isn't, of course, a particular geek/nerd problem, but a problem with the way that our culture sees men as people and women as women. Sociological Images has a number of posts up about this troubling phenomenon.

Speaking of sexism, Forever Geeks pisses me off fairly regularly by suggesting that the way that women can be geeks is by being sexy! (For geek men, of course.) Recently they highlighted Star Wars corsets. The writer of the post then gleefully quotes from the designer's website:

For aspiring Galactic oppressors we offer our Galactic Empire Corset Collection.


Keeping your empire in check is always a little easier if you’ve got everyone’s attention!

FEMINIST RAGE.

Lastly, via Pandagon, this lovely video about what the male fantasy of the fembot says about male attitudes towards women:  



While thinking about this video this morning, I realized that Joss Whedon seems to be professionally fascinated by the feminist implications of the fembot. There's the Buffybot from Buffy, the Mr. Universe's "love-bot" in Serenity, and, one could argue, Dollhouse is premised on the commercial demand for fembots.

Anyway, new and exciting post coming up soon! Cheers!

Recommended Reading for 5/13

I turned in my last seminar paper today! Let the fun times begin! My brain is a little empty, so I just have some links for you today. I'll get back to writing soon.

Attention feminist geeks! The Sexist lets us know that Portal, dubbed "the most subversive game ever," is available for free until May 24th. So hurry and get it!

Also from The Sexist, the follow up post to the xkcd color survey, concerning the sex/gender question from the survey:

We debated for a long time to find a wording of the question that would be answerable unambiguously by everyone, regardless of gender identification or any other issues. In response to a friend who was suggesting we were overcomplicating things, she said, “I *refuse* to word the question in a way that doesn’t have a good, clear answer available for transsexuals, intersex people, and people who already know they have chromosomal anomalies.” I felt the same way, and at the same time I didn’t want to assume everyone remembers what the hell chromosomes are. After hours of debate, everyone was happy with this:

Do you have a Y chromosome?
Don’t Know
Yes
No

If unsure, select “Yes” if you are physically male and “No” if you are physically female. If you have had SRS, please respond for your sex at birth. This question is relevant to the genetics of colorblindness. 

We didn’t add a question about gender identification, in part because I wasn’t really planning to do anything with the survey data beyond basic calibration and didn’t want to hassle people with more questions, and in part because gender is really complicated. We recently programmed Bucket, the IRC chat bot in #xkcd, to allow people set their gender so he can use pronouns for them. This ended up taking hundreds of lines of code, three pages of documentation, and six different sets of pronouns and variables, just to cover all the basic ways people in the channel with different gender identifications wanted to be referred to (even without invented pronouns like “xe”, which we vetoed). And that’s just to cover the pronouns. The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I’ve ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.

Okay, so I just realized that 3/4 of these links came from The Sexist. Anyway, Amanda outlines why Christopher Hitchens's defense of the French veil ban is, unsurprisingly, really fucking misogynistic:

In an essay condemning a cultural institution that prevents men from looking at the faces of women, Hitchens instead argues that men have an inalienable right to stare. Of course, Hitchens phrases this in gender-neutral terms—”My right to see your face is the beginning of it, as is your right to see mine”—that assumes social equivalence between the gazes of women and men. In fact, the gender-neutral approach fails to acknowledge the sexist cultural institutions that allow men to exert ownership over women’s bodies through their gaze—like street harassment and sexual objectification. When a guy passes a woman on the street and tells her to “smile, baby,” he’s asserting authority over her face, her feelings, and how she chooses to express them—or not. Those who would declare their “right” to look at women should first note the social context in which women’s faces are often examined.

Having just written an essay about the role of science and technology in our understandings about our bodies in the Victorian era, I found this article from The Guardian really interesting:

In a study at Barcelona University, men donned a virtual reality (VR) headset that allowed them to see and hear the world as a female character. When they looked down they could even see their new body and clothes.

The "body-swapping" effect was so convincing that the men's sense of self was transferred into the virtual woman, causing them to react reflexively to events in the virtual world in which they were immersed.

Men who took part in the experiment reported feeling as though they occupied the woman's body and even gasped and flinched when she was slapped by another character in the virtual world.

 
[...]
 
The study, which appears in the online science journal PLoS One, suggests that our minds have a very fluid picture of our bodies. The research is expected to shed light on the thorny neuroscientific puzzle of how our brain tells the difference between a part of our own body, and something else in the wider world.

Enjoy! I'll be back soon!

Recommended Reading

I promise I will go back to real posts soon. My last seminar essay is due Thursday, so hopefully I will get back to not dying of stress this weekend. Until then, read these fine folks!

Sqbr on Disability in Speculative Fiction: Monsters, Mutants and Muggles:

Fiction reflects social attitudes, and the social attitudes to disabled people tend to suck. Disabled people are presented as scary, pathetic, exotic, demanding, laughable, etc.


But some tropes are popular/unique to SF.

It's not all bad: speculative fiction allows for powerful allegory, and can also make very interesting explorations/extrapolations of future attitudes/experiences of disability.

National Journal Magazine asks, Do "Family Values" Weaken Families? (Hint: Yes.)

Can it be? One of the oddest paradoxes of modern cultural politics may at last be resolved.

The paradox is this: Cultural conservatives revel in condemning the loose moral values and louche lifestyles of "San Francisco liberals." But if you want to find two-parent families with stable marriages and coddled kids, your best bet is to bypass Sarah Palin country and go to Nancy Pelosi territory: the liberal, bicoastal, predominantly Democratic places that cultural conservatives love to hate.

Rebecca Traister over at Salon says, Screw Happiness:

When it comes to social science and economics, women lately seem especially prone to having the contentment thermometer thrust at them, and their temperature always seems to register at "dissatisfied." A study by University of Pennsylvania economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, as well as one by Princeton economist Alan Krueger, have shown a decline in female happiness in the years since the second wave, a trend that has been cheerily used as proof of exactly how unhappy increased social, sexual, professional and economic liberation has made American women. Even those who dare make claim to general life satisfaction are told not to get too comfortable; as Marcus Buckingham, the author of "Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently" gloomily warned any aberrantly chipper chicks in a piece last year, "as women get older they get sadder."


But really, how could they not, given the aggressive messages about happiness and how they must achieve it, and unhappiness and how they must avoid it that are foisted on them from every direction, making them feel like failures if they are not warbling and grinning their way through life?

[...]

You know what I think? It's all bullshit. Not just the trend stories and the self-help stuff, but the laser focus on happiness itself. I say this as someone who has grown steadily happier as I've aged, but I think I would have said it even more emphatically earlier in my life: I'm just not sure that "happiness" is supposed to be the stable human condition, and I think it's punishing that we're constantly being pushed to achieve it.

And filed under both hilarious and interesting, xkcd published the results of a color survey, broken down by gender:

Basically, women were slightly more liberal with the modifiers, but otherwise they generally agreed (and some of the differences may be sampling noise). The results were similar across the survey—men and women tended on average to call colors the same names.

So I was feeling pretty good about equality. Then I decided to calculate the ‘most masculine’ and ‘most feminine’ colors. I was looking for the color names most disproportionately popular among each group; that is, the names that the most women came up with compared to the fewest men (or vice versa).

Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among women:

1.Dusty Teal
2.Blush Pink
3.Dusty Lavender
4.Butter Yellow
5.Dusky Rose

Okay, pretty flowery, certainly. Kind of an incense-bomb-set-off-in-a-Bed-Bath-&-Beyond vibe. Well, let’s take a look at the other list.

Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men:

1.Penis
2.Gay
3.WTF
4.Dunno
5.Baige

I … that’s not my typo in #5—the only actual color in the list really is a misspelling of “beige”. And keep in mind, this is based on the number of unique people who answered the color, not the number of times they typed it. This isn’t just the effect of a couple spammers. In fact, this is after the spamfilter.

I weep for my gender.