hermionesviolin | Entries tagged with issues: representation

This past week, I literally saw one film a day for 1 week straight (except for Friday when I was gonna go see Selma at the Brattle but I had started fading before EOB, so I went home and slept for 13 hours instead).

I feel like by this time last year I was excited about a lot of potential Oscar nominees/Christmas releases -- Moana, Hidden Figures, I Am Not Your Negro, Star Wars: Rogue One, A United Kingdom -- but the films I'm looking forward to are further out in next year: Black Panther (Feb 16) and A Wrinkle in Time (Mar 9) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (Mar 23 -- I still need to watch the first one). And Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse (Miles Morales! finally!) Christmas 2018 (December 14?). [Edited to add: and after we all canceled JKR on account of her terrible statement about continuing to cast Johnny Depp,

thingswithwings RTed Elizabeth May's Tweet Anyway, apparently the next Fantastic Beasts movie comes out the same day as a movie called "Widows" and it's a fucking ALL WOMEN HEIST MOVIE written by Gillian Flynn and starring Viola Davis. YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU. That's Nov 16. And it's true that Ocean's Eight (the one with 8 women) is coming out on June 8. And apparently Deadpool 2 is out June 1 -- though I still need to watch the first one. And I might watch Ant-Man & The Wasp (July 6) and/or Aquaman (Dec 21). And okay, now that I've fallen into the rabbit hole of anticipated movies of 2018 lists, apparently On The Basis of Sex is a Ruth Bader Ginsberg biopic, as yet without a release date.]

Maybe I've just seen more of the Christmas-time movies earlier in the season this year? Maybe some of the trailers are barely out yet? (I only saw a trailer for The Post -- Dec 22 limited release, Jan 12 everywhere -- before The Shape of Water on Saturday.)

Anyway, my week in movies:

Tues = Stumped at Bright Lights (Emerson's free film screening series)
- documentary about a quad amputee
- bonus: he has a male partner and it's not About Being Gay at all
Wed = Coco with thedeadparrot (who Tweeted, "I found Coco extremely delightful even if all the plot points could be seen from about a mile away. Definitely worth staying up late on a weeknight for.")
- Remezcla has a round-up of Latinx film critics on this Day of the Dead film
- We were warned that it was preceded by a terrible 20-minute Frozen short ("Olaf's Frozen Adventure"), so we took our time getting there, but we ended up seeing I would estimate most of the short, and we didn't hate it (maybe because we hadn't seen Frozen?) though allofthefeelings later ReTumbled an article about how its inclusion of Jews is anachronistic because Jews weren't allowed in Norway at the time Frozen is set D:
Thurs = Tom of Finland at Bright Lights
- Boston premiere of the biopic about the gay erotic artist (who was also a WWII vet, I had not realized)
- content notes for war (including PTSD) and some homophobic violence (not super-graphic, but definitely present)
- Norway's submission to the Oscars this year
~~Fri = Selma at the Brattle (part of their In Our View: Films by African American Women, part of their A Year of Women in Cinema)~~
Sat = The Shape of Water with silverbluefic, thedeadparrot, and jjhunter -- would recommend, even better seeing it with fen (we were all reacting at the same time)
- at age six, Guillermo del Toro was overwhelmed by the beauty of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and was sad that the Creature and the woman don't end up together as they should have [for more on that, read this interview]
- content notes for some body horror, and a sort of accidental animal death as well as a little ~~canon compliant~~ historically accurate racism and homophobia (it's set in 1962)
Sun = Daughters of the Dust at the Brattle (part of their In Our View: Films by African American Women, part of their A Year of Women in Cinema)
- "At the dawn of the 20th century, a family in the Gullah community of coastal South Carolina -- former West African slaves who adopted many of their ancestors' Yoruba traditions" plan to move to the mainland, but not everyone wants to.
- I feel like I mostly heard about this 1991 film around #LemonadeSyllabus.
Mon = The Other Side of Hope at the Kendall with bironic
- Syrian refugee in Finland (Aki Kaurismäki)

After I saw The Shape of Water, I scrolled back through film Twitter for reviews (largely so I could RT them to encourage people to see the movie) and the Coolidge had Tweeted Slant Magazine's "The 25 Best Films of 2017." Dated Dec 8. I have a lot of feelings about doing retrospectives before the year is actually over. (I assume the writers have already seen advance screeners of stuff like The Post -- and their list is clearly all Srs Bznz, so I don't expect stuff like Star Wars: The Last Jedi [also not out yet] or Wonder Woman to have been in their running, but I was still a little peeved that The Shape of Water wasn't on their list.)

Also, okay, their list is Serious Business, but it does include Personal Shopper (KStew talks to ghosts) -- and Blade Runner 2049 makes their next 25 (I was pleased that Dunkirk was only ranked #46 -- I have not seen Dunkirk, but I saw ads for it so many times the beginning of this year, and ugh white dude WWII films).

I had heard of 13 of the films on their list (which is a higher percentage than it felt like as I was reading through) and of those, had seen 2 (I Am Not Your Negro and Get Out).

I guess the Golden Globe nominees are out this morning? And The Shape of Water has "a bajillion" nominations (to quote a colleague this morning, who was talking about the Critics' Choice Awards). Still bitter that Get Out was nominated as a fucking comedy.

Golden Globes

Best Motion Picture - Drama

Call Me By Your Name -- *shrug* white gay dudes (I finally actually saw an ad for it before The Other Side of Hope tonight; not to be confused God's Own Country, the gay British film with sheep, this is the gay Italian coming-of-age film)
Dunkirk -- ugh, as mentioned above, white dude WWII film (with bonus erasure of the Indian soldiers who fought at Dunkirk)
The Post -- I'm interested to see this (it's about the Washington Post publishing the Pentagon Papers -- timely film is timely; not about government secrets per se, but about the obligation of journalism to reveal the truth even in the face of political pressure -- with bonus female lead)
The Shape of Water -- YES
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri -- I would have been more excited about this film (which I haven't seen) about the failure of the legal system to pursue justice for victims if it had been about a black victim rather than a white victim and lo, a BuzzFeed article asks, "What happens when your resonant dark comedy about female anger is also a lousy one about racism?"

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Get Out -- YES
The Greatest Showman -- I had not even heard of this (P.T. Barnum)
I, Tonya -- I'm potentially interested to see this
Lady Bird -- I've heard good things about this but am not personally interested
The Disaster Artist -- blah, James Franco

Critics' Choice Awards

Best Picture

The Big Sick -- I saw this and enjoyed it, though I found it flawed and definitely understand why some people found it problematic
Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour -- another WWII film (Churchill)
Dunkirk
The Florida Project -- I'm interested to see this
Get Out
Lady Bird
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I just pulled the Best Picture noms, didn't try to list all the movies that got any nominations, but gabi‏ @harleivy on Twitter notes:

greta gerwig directed lady bird. 197 reviews. 99% on rotten tomatoes.

patty jenkins directed wonder woman. one of the biggest movies of the year. critical success as well.

yet the Golden Globes chose to nominate 5 men in their "Best Director" category instead. let it sink in.

:/

And (h/t Teen Vogue) @loudlysilent Tweeted, "ALL FIFTEEN of the #GoldenGlobes nominees for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, Drama, and TV Drama are white."

Edit the next day: Rotten Tomatoes Tweeted:

Patty Jenkins (#WonderWoman 92% 🍅)
Dee Rees (#Mudbound 97% 🍅)
Greta Gerwig (#LadyBird 99% 🍅)
Kathryn Bigelow (#Detroit 83% 🍅)

None were nominated for a #GoldenGlobe

The Golden Globes Have a Problem with Women Directors

The linked article also notes, "Ava DuVernay was the last woman to receive a Golden Globe nomination for best director in 2015. DuVernay is also one of only five women to be nominated in that category in the award ceremony’s 75-year history."

Last week I went to see The Breadwinner (animated film about an Afghani girl who disguises herself as a boy) with

bironic (partly because

finnglas had posted excited about it).

I had not realized that in addition to being produced by the white Irish woman who did The Book of Kells [Nora Twomey], the film was based on a book by a white Canadian woman [Deborah Ellis] and had a white Ukranian-Canadian woman [Anita Doron] as its other writer.

The voice actors all seem to have Middle Eastern names, and an Afghan women's choir does the song over the closing credits, but I was still somewhat uncomfortable with "White People telling a story of Oppressed Brown People."

I did some digging after I got home that night, and The Breadwinner seems to be part of a series of middle grade novels -- though the movie was based on the first book (which came out in September 2000).

The GoodReads blurb for the first book says, "A political activist whose first book for children, Looking for X. dealt with poverty in Toronto, [author Deborah] Ellis based The Breadwinner on the true-life stories of women in Afghan refugee camps."

A letter from the filmmaker says:

Deep within the threads of The Breadwinner are stories that give the film its heart—from personal stories such as cast members Kawa Ada and Noorin Gulamgaus families both fleeing war to try to find a new life to larger stories of conflict such as the role of the West in Afghan affairs, the proxy wars fought by Superpowers, and the prioritization of short-term goals at the expense of long term stability. Every story gave depth to the characters and a deep compassion to the form of the film.

bironic emailed me the NYT Critic’s Pick article noting, "The journalistic roots of the original book are reassuring. Still, this was the only snippet in a movie review that begins to look at the question I wondered about."

I did some more digging.

A Mary Sue article says:

Initially, I was concerned by the fact that this film was an adaptation of a white Canadian woman’s book…by a white Irish woman. However, while the source material wasn’t created by Afghan women, both Ellis when writing her books and Twomey when making her film did everything they could to incorporate the participation and perspectives of Afghan women.

When writing The Breadwinner (and subsequent books in the series), Ellis traveled to Pakistan to interview refugees at an Afghan refugee camp. It was there that she met a mother and daughter whose story she fictionalized through Parvana.

For the film, Twomey made sure to cast all-Asian/Arab folks for the voice cast, and the composers worked with Afghan musicians to make sure the film had Afghan input from every angle. The fact that Afghanistan’s first lady has spoken highly of the film makes me think that it manages to be as authentic as it can possibly be without having been written/created by an Afghan woman.

An interview with Anita Doron also reveals that they had a cultural consultant

As soon as I signed onto the project, I asked to attach Afghan artist and TED Fellow Aman Mojadidi to be a cultural consultant. Andrew and Anthony agreed immediately — they were deeply invested in making sure what we created would be as authentic and truthful as possible. Aman read various drafts of the script, and we had lengthy conversations about life in Afghanistan. I’d ask him questions like: “If I make Fattema and company stop closer to Kabul on their way to Mazar, is there a regular stop people take with roadside chai at about a day-and-a-half walking distance?” (Answer: “Yep — Salang Pass.”) He provided specificity and a sense of humor and understanding of the world, which was invaluable.

and she also just generally did a lot of research -- "I spent months and months researching and feeling and seeing Afghan poetry, stories, music, food, crafts, fabrics and so on."

***

The NYT article says:

Harsh disappointments befall the characters, and they are depicted frankly, but in a way that encourages young viewers to form an affinity with the characters rather than cringe at terror. The director, Nora Twomey, has a nuanced way with characterization and action, and the voice cast, led by Saara Chaudry of “Degrassi: The Next Generation,” is terrific. In its alternating of Parvana’s day-to-day struggle with the tale she tells herself, the movie doesn’t promote bromides about stories and storytelling transcending reality. Rather, it demonstrates that the way imagination refracts reality can provide not only solace but also real-world strategy. (emphasis mine)

***

One thing I was reflecting on after the film was how the father's story about their people being a people at the base of the Hindu Kush mountains who were attacked over and over again by invaders was so reminiscent of Marjane Satrapi's introduction to her graphic novel Persepolis (2002), even though Persepolis is about Persia/Iran and The Breadwinner is about Afghanistan. The two countries are right next to each other, and I wondered how far one had to go before a people's identity stopped being the nomads who were conquered and became the conquerors.

From the 2002 Introduction to Persepolis:

In the second millennium B.C., while the Elan nation was developing a civilization alongside Babylon, Indo-European invaders gave their name to the immense Iranian plateau where they settled. The word “Iran” was derived from “Ayryana Vaejo,” which means “the origin of the Aryans.” These people were semi-nomads whose descendants were the Medes and the Persians. The Medes founded the first Iranian nation in the seventh century B.C.; it was later destroyed by Cyrus the Great. He established what became one of the largest empires of the ancient world, the Persian Empire, in the sixth century B.C. Iran was referred to as Persia -- its Greek name -- until 1935 when Reza Shah, the father of the last Shah of Iran, asked everyone to call the country Iran.

Iran was rich. Because of its wealth and its geographic location, it invited attacks: From Alexander the Great, from its Arab neighbors to the west, from Turkish and Mongolian conquerors, Iran was often subject to foreign domination. Yet the Persian language and culture withstood these invasions. The invaders assimilated into this strong culture, and in some ways they became Iranians themselves.

I paged through a copy of the book The Breadwinner at a local bookstore, and it didn't have the story the father told (in the book he tells a somewhat different story) and I can't find it online, but I remember it used language like "Aryana" and had a series of conquerors (it used cut-paper animation to nice effect there -- having basically the same male figure on a horse, just with slightly different clothing etc. each time, representing various different conquerors).

I cannot deal with people talking about having lost weight as if it's an inherently good thing.

I wince every time someone colloquially says "you guys" or "lame."

Today was the second day in a row I had almost nothing to do at work. (I have a Project for tomorrow, though. \o/ ) I worked on my sermon and did a lot of blog reading/skimming -- esp. lots of disability blogs.

One of the things I read was "What We Talk About When We Talk About Language" (by meloukhia on FWD/Forward). I have posted about this before, but she says some really smart things I hadn't quite thought of in that way before but which really resonate for me.

when we talk about language, we don’t talk about what it used to mean, or what it is supposed to mean, or what you think it means. We talk about how society uses language, right now. [...]

One of the most common defenses I see of ableist language is “well, it doesn’t mean that anymore.”

So, my question is, what does it mean?

One of the things I like to do when I am illustrating why language is exclusionary is I plug in a commonly-known original meaning of the word in question into a sentence. Let’s take “lame,” which is generally taken to mean “has difficulty walking” or “limps,” although the original use was actually just “broken.”

So, if someone says “this television show is lame” and you turn the sentence into “this television show has difficulty walking,” it doesn’t really make sense, right? Just like when you say “this social activity which I am being forced to do by my parent is a homosexual man,” it doesn’t really make sense. And this should tell you something. It should tell you that the word you are using has an inherently pejorative meaning.

Which means, actually, you’re totally right when you say a word “doesn’t mean that anymore.” In fact, it’s gone from being a value neutral term used to describe a state of being to being a pejorative. A pejorative so universally accepted that you can expect users to understand exactly what you mean when you say it. When you say “this television show is lame” you mean it’s bad, not worth your time, boring, etc., and here’s the trick: People understand that meaning and they derive it from the word that you have used, because that word is universally accepted as objectively bad.

[...]

Using inclusionary language is actually fun. You get to explore the roots of words you use, you get to find new and exciting words to use, and you get to learn more about the structure of a language you speak every day. It constantly amazes me to see how quickly exclusionary terms trip to my tongue when I’m in a hurry, because they are so ingrained as appropriate pejoratives. I’m actually relishing the process of eradicating them from my spoken and written language, because I love words and language play.

And I loathe essentialism. I loathe “well, it’s a value neutral term.” No, it’s not. If it was value neutral, it would not be in use as a pejorative. I loathe “no one really means that anymore.” Yes, they do, because if they didn’t, they would use a different word. Just like no one calls a “train” an “iron horse” anymore.

It makes me cross when people make fun of the UCC's "God is still speaking (never place a period where God has placed a comma)." (And ironically, given my next point, my reaction is: "Don't you understand the kinds of Christian church they are reacting against?")

It REALLY bothers me when people talk about their progressive faith congregation as being a Speshul Unique Snowflake because it explicitly states that Communion is open to everyone or whatever. I know, I know, I should honor people's lived experiences and the fact that many people have been hurt by the church and so Church X is a really important healing, affirming, etc. experience for them. But srsly people, we are in the Boston area. There are progressive churches of every denomination. And there are things that some of them do better than your church. And my churches aren't perfect -- I am WELL aware of that -- and I WANT people to tell me what we're doing wrong, how we're failing to live in to the claims we make. If we are hurting people I want to KNOW so that we can stop that (or at least so we can warn people so they can try to keep themselves safe).

I have turned into that radical feminist who notices that we don't use any gendered language for the Triune God except for all the times we talk about Jesus -- which with a Reflection on the Gospel plus Communion is A Lot -- and the "Our Father," and thinks this is a Problem. I understood why that woman in the story that Marla tells found it so powerful to hear a Bible story told with no gendered pronouns, heard herself in that story for the first time.

After service was over I turned to Chris who was standing next to me and ranted to him. He knows how to receive my criticisms, which I appreciate. (I had really wanted to go up to the presider and say, "So, Communion really offended me. Would it be best for me to tell you why in person right now, in email, or not at all?" but it was probably better that I just told Chris and not him.)

I went to Transcriptions Open Mic but left after the open mic part (well, I stayed for the ~15-minute intermission chatting with people) because it takes me an hour to get home and I get up at 6am and I enjoy not operating on a sleep deficit ... and I wanted to blog.

Jeff was one of the people I talked to during the intermission, and we talked about personal growth and what's been going on in our lives and etc. and I talked about how I've been trying to critique in a more generous and kind and loving manner, and I referred to myself as a "bitch," like I do. Jeff said, "You're not a bitch; you just have a bitchy way of saying things; you actually have a big heart."

In other news, when I left work today the women's room at my end of the hall was occupied, so I decided, "Fuck this noise," and used the men's room. I mean, they're both single-stall bathrooms, so we could make the signs say "bathroom" or something and it wouldn't make a difference (and if I were more of a radical/activist I probably would).

I didn't go to the Harvard Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer Women's Lunch today -- both because I am antisocial and because I am overly committed to my job (I have a wicked "Just in case").

***

Yesterday afternoon, Jeff emailed the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance book group:

Hey everyone!

Greetings after such a long break! I think we've been apart for too long, and even though the trans day of remembrance vigil is friday, let's get together for our next installment of zen. Let's read at least the next two chapters and go from there. See ya then!

Jeff

Sent from my iPhone

Yeah, I winced. It took until tonight for me to email him back. I read (okay, mostly skimmed) a bunch of stuff today (see list below) about representation etc., and while I was on the phone with Ari I was thinking about what a position of privilege I'm in that I could even be debating whether to say anything.

sage_theory: This is why I don't watch Heroes anymore...
seeksadventure: [links] feminists and disabilities links
fox1013: If you're on Heroes, I GUARANTEE your Christmases will be white! Also male. JSYK.

In talking with Ari tonight, I realized that CWM hadn't announced anything about the TDoR vigil this Friday or any of the related events this week. I suspect this is because Tiffany was still recovering from being sick and also had a memorial service that same day and Marla and Sean were at Boston Common in case any students got arrested* and Jordan wasn't there and yeah. I still think it is a bit o' fail for us, though. Christ the King Sunday is next Sunday and now I am thinking about trying to combine the two in my sermon. (Full disclosure: I haven't looked at the lectionary readings yet.)

*College students are sleeping out to protest their dorms being powered by dirty electricity, and in Boston they're sleeping on Boston Common on Sunday nights and lobbying legislators Monday morning, and summons were handed out the previous Sunday.

coffeeandink posted a number of links, which I'm working my way through.

One is a talk given by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie.

At about minute-two (of a nearly twenty-minute talk) she says: "Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books, by their very nature, had to have foreigners in them. And had to be about things with which I personally could not identify."

I've heard stuff like this before (see my tags) but I don't think I've ever been quite so struck as I was in that moment.

She goes on to approach this idea about monolithic ideas ("a single story") about groups of people (the poor, Africans, Mexicans) from various angles.

When I started at the gym this morning, Pink's trapeze performance of "Sober" at Radio City Music Hall was just being introed. \o/

***

I'm having a conversation with a friend about the Book of Revelation, including a Shiva analogy, and I went to capitalize "Destruction" and "Rebirth" and I thought of the Endless and realized that all of the Endless are White. Admittedly, making them racially diverse would come with its own host of problems (tokenism, stereotyping, etc.), but it still makes me uncomfortable.

In my conversation about the Book of Revelation, I got into the OT/NT dichotomy, which I've come to really problematize in recent years, and how I now see the Bible as a record of a people's encounters with the Divine, mediated by their sociohistorical context, which reminds me of something

scrollgirl posted recently:

In March 2007, a reader left the comment: "Would you folks please stop putting the word 'Christian' in front of the name 'Ann Coulter' as an adjective? Those of us who actually do practice our religion would appreciate it."

My answer was no, I wouldn't stop. And my answer about distinguishing between "real" and "unreal" Christians, beyond noting that there are Christians who try to impose their beliefs on others and those who don't, is also no.

[...] Yes, I have personal opinions about how closely self-identified Christians of all stripes hew to their own religious text, but it's flatly not my place to kick someone out of the Christian community, even semantically.

And, truth be told, even if I did feel like it were my place, I wouldn't stop identifying as Christians people like, for example, Ann Coulter, anyway—because Christianity is about culture as much as it is scripture no matter on what part of the Christian spectrum one falls.

-from "On "Real" Christians and Christian Privilege" posted by Melissa McEwan on Shakesville

I clicked through and read the whole post before posting here, and she talks a lot about privilege, which I found really interesting.

I was catching up on Justine Larbalestier's blog and read her post "YA & Girls Playing Sport":

Back in early August, Doret Canon of the wonderful blog, The Happy Nappy Bookseller, wrote to thank me for linking to her and ”put in a request for a YA novel featuring girls playing sports. Any sport will do.” I misread her as asking for recommendations for such YA novels when she was in fact asking me to write ‘em. (What can I say August was kind of mental for me.) I was ashamed to discover that all I could think of was Catherine Murdock’s Dairy Queen series and my own How To Ditch Your Fairy. It transpired that Doret knows more about YA sports books than anyone else on the planet. We soon got to talking about books, sport, and YA about girls playing sport.

[...]

Justine: What do you think of the theory that girls who like sports don’t read? (I’ve had several girls write and tell me that they loved How To Ditch Your Fairy despite all the sport in it. On the other hand, I had another girl write and tell me she loved it because she’s a point guard. She comes from a family of basketball playing twins.) There does seem to be a conviction that girls have zero interest in sports books.

Doret: I haven’t heard that theory. Though I have heard that sports books featuring girls don’t sell. How can girls buy books they don’t know about. I always feel bad when a girl comes into the bookstore still in uniform mind you, searching for sports book and I have nothing to show them. It totally sucks. Also it sends an awful message to girls who play sports, that they must hunt down stories that reflect a big part of who they are. Let’s just hope that sports self esteem is working because under representation is bad for anyone’s psyche.

Justine: You said it. I can’t think of any girl sports books that have sold really well. I’m hoping that’s just ignorance on my part. Can you think of any really popular girl sports books?

Doret: No, you’re right there aren’t any sports books featuring girls that have sold really well. But, they haven’t been given a chance. It seems like such an obvious market and I don’t know why it’s being ignored. There are readers waiting and wanting and I am not just talking about the athletes. There are others like myself who simply enjoy and appreciate the games.

The bolding is mine. I was so struck by the phrasing because it so reminds me of conversations about lit with GLBTQ characters, characters of color.

Stories about who we are are so important. I remember during one of the rounds of Fail,

yuki_onna wrote (and I could have sworn I quoted it before, but I can't find it, so I'm quoting it now, though yes I know that not being able to find books about women playing sports is at a rather different level than what Cat is talking about):

Stories teach us how to survive. They tell us that our lives can be transcendent, that we can overcome almost anything, no matter how strange, that we can go into the black wood and come out again, that the witch can be burned up in her own oven, that we can find someone who fits a shoe, that the youngest, unloved child will find their way in the world, that those who suffer can become strong, can escape, can find their way into comfort and joy again. That there are secrets, and they are always worth discovering, that there are more and different creatures in the world than we can ever imagine, and not all want to eat us. Stories teach us how to win through, how to perservere, how to live.

As a child of abuse, fairy tales kept me going when I was a girl. Because Gretel could kill the witch, because Snow White could come back from death, because Rapunzel could live even in the desert--then, well, I could too. I could dry my tears and clean up the blood and keep living. This is what stories do. They say: you are worthy of the world, no less than these heroes.

And when we see story after story that has no one like us in it, a book entirely without women, a TV show where white people speak Chinese but there are no Asians visible, a movie set in California without Hispanics, image after image of a world where everyone is straight, and when we are told that it's no big deal, really, there is no race in future societies, that it's not anyone's fault if all the characters are white, that's just how they are, in the pure authorial mind, that we have no sense of humor, that we are ganging up on people because we speak our minds, this is what we hear:

You do not have a right to live. There are no stories for you, to teach you how to survive, because the world would prefer you didn't. You don't get to be human, to understand your suffering or move beyond it. In the perfect future society, you do not exist. We who are colorblind, genderblind, sexualityblind would prefer not to see you even now. In the world we make in our heads, you have been obliterated--even better, you never were. You are incapable of transcendance. You are not worthy of the most essential of human behavior. If you are lucky, we will let you into our stories, and you can learn to be a whore, or someone's mother, or someone's slave, or someone's prey. That is all you are, so pay attention: this is what we want to teach you to be.

This morning, one of our doctoral students mentioned that he works (worked?) with Harvard's Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, and he also mentioned the organization Harvard Men Against Rape. He said that when he mentions that he's a part of that org, people are all, "Oh, that's so great," and he's like, "Do you know any men who support rape?" I said, "Yeah, you don't get any liberal guilt cookies for that."

But it made me think of cereta's post. (And in digging up the link, I was reminded that inlovewithnight commented, "a societal problem like rape can't be changed as long as only half the population is working on it.")

And my second thought was of TLGN's post, where she says: Deadgirl, because as the tagline says, "you'll never have anything better" than getting the chance to repeatedly rape a restrained female zombie.

++

It also got me thinking about this post on Sociological Images (seen via Matthew Yglesias):

While in New Orleans (again) in July, I attended some of the festivities associated with Tale of the Cocktail. One of them was a cocktail expo with the theme “Seven Deadly Sins.” Sponsored by Cabana Cachaca rum, Lust was personified this way:

[image]

Presumably lust is not a feeling exclusive to straight men, yet the Lust booth featured only women dancing. Because of the primacy of the male gaze, what is believed to be sexy to straight men gets defined as “sexy” for everyone.

Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day by Anne Katherine

This wasn't particularly an epiphany book, but it did find it useful for articulating and reminding me of things I already kind of knew -- though by about halfway through I was less into it.

(I also feel like most/many situations aren't as clear-cut as the examples the author gives, but I recognize that they're intended to provide models.)

I really liked the idea about boundaries as being like cell membranes -- keeping some things out and letting some things in, in a healthy and balanced fashion.

I also really liked the idea that we should structure our lives based on what WE value, not on what other people think we should value.

I found the chapter on Making Amends helpful with its reminder to be really attentive to the harm you have done to the other person and making amends in kind.

One interesting thing: the author talks about nicknaming someone against their express wishes as a boundary violation.

( Read more... )

The last time I posted about Iran, I felt like I was way behind the curve (and I was ... though waiting before weighing in is my usual m.o.).

That was over a week ago, and I haven't seen much in recent days. Admittedly, anyone who's following Andrew Sullivan's liveblogging probably doesn't have any time to post anything of their own, and there have been plenty of other hot topics recently, and I haven't had the brain capacity to really synthesize a whole lot of substance myself so I'm not exactly in a position to criticize anyone else -- and yes I know people can be reading stuff and actively engaging with it and just not posting about it.

( stuff I have been reading over the past week or so )

[from yesterday] (I didn't get home until after midnight last night and didn't even turn on my computer.)

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( Iran election )

( Obama )

( Obama and LGBT stuff )

( MeMe Roth on GMA )

( Vision Quest episode of Walker, Texas Ranger )

( highway analogies for thought processing )

( Rest and Bread )

( joy sadhana )

Yesterday morning at the gym, I saw GMA's segment on Marianne Kirby and Gabrielle Gregg.

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Seen today via Dave Chen: Abercrombie and Fitch banishes girl with prosthetic arm to storeroom because she doesn't fit the "look policy"

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Yesterday, I was reading a rant about the way Zoe Saldana's skin gets described in fanfic, and in reading something about Zoe Saldana getting described as "light-skinned," I read something (though I can't find it now) that commented that up until recently, being a light-skinned black person meant being the product of a white man raping/coercing a black woman.

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Marianne Kirby takes issue with Purex's “As things get simpler, they get thinner. They get better.” ad campaign.

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I read Marianne Kirby's complaint about Bravo's Fashion Show (and an even better blogpost from mo pie on Big Fat Deal) and I remembered something I had seen from Virgina Postrel.

As it turns out, Shapely Prose had already seen Postrel's article.

Sarah: My most charitable read is that she’s distinguishing the average weight from the mean weight. Her argument, as I see it, is that it’s in the economic interests of the clothing companies to make clothes near the mean (rather than the average simply because that’s how they can maximize the number of people who can wear their clothes while minimizing what they spend on developing different sizes.

IOW, even though the “average” size may be a 14, that doesn’t mean that’s the single size (or range of a few sizes) that the greatest number of women can wear. There’s a big range of sizes above a 14, obviously — and those all affect the average size, but that doesn’t mean that any *one* (or two or three) of those plus sizes is common enough to pull in lots and lots of customers, at least to a brick-and-mortar store. So the sizes promising the greatest numbers of customers wouldn’t be the *average* size (or range of sizes), but the *mean* size, which (she claims) brick-and-mortar stores already do try and cater to.

Yes, Sarah, that was my read of it as well (and I wasn't actually going out of my way to be charitable). Shapely Prose links to Jezebel's response to the article, which makes some really good points.

Speaking of fashions for fat ladies, Gabrielle Gregg's YoungFatAndFabulous has lots of pretty pictures (interestingly, I read "Beth Ditto, fashion's Magical Fatty" and then saw Gabi's "Beth for Evans" and "Ditto" posts). Also, I love that the cover model for "Full-Figured Fashion Week" is a hott woman of color.

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Medical-related readings from today:

Problematizing the obesity=>diabetes stats.

A depressing story from "First, Do No Harm: Real Stories of Fat Prejudice in Health Care."

WLS may increase bone fractures

A small study by the Mayo clinic as reported on Forbes.com showed that one in five people they reviewed after weight loss surgery suffered a bone fracture within 7 years, on average, after having the surgery. The group showed nearly double the fracture rate in post-WLS patients as in other patients.
"We knew there was a dramatic and extensive bone turnover and loss of bone density after bariatric surgery," study senior author Dr. Jackie Clowes, a Mayo rheumatologist, said in a Mayo news release. "But we didn't know what that meant in terms of fractures."
You mean they really didn't realize that an extensive loss of bone density would lead to more fractures? Isn't that, you know, why osteoperosis is a concern in the first place, because the loss of bone density leads to increased fractures? They didn't realize that by putting people through radical surgery that reduced their ability to get proper nutrition might, you know, also prevent them from getting proper nutrition? Like Calcium and vitamin D? That makes for the strong bones? really? Never occurred to them?

oyceter posted: 2nd Asian Women Carnival: Intra/inter/transnationalities

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The Willow posted about the impending The Princess & The Frog movie and etc.

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gloss linked to something The Willow had said complaining about white people posting with RaceFail or Racism in the Subject Line but then going on to merely navel-gaze and self-congratulate.

mona commented:

Uh-huh. I've come to realize, after following and participating in many an internet or IRL argument, that the ego is hands down the most exhausting, obstructive entity in existence. How curious that it's so very preponderant among privileged POVs, but so rarely the reverse! It's almost as if some people are taught their voices are more important than others'! :O

I just wish, when playing at allyship, people's FIRST act was to sit and listen (and think! and deconstruct themselves! BASICALLY: What bell hooks said), before they tried to yell and scream and maintain their socially enforced positions as Most Important and Listened to Speaker at all costs. Trying to maintain privilege in this area truly obstructs even approaching unpacking it everywhere else, and yet somehow there's this privileged assumption that talking and posting and dripping privilege and ignorance all over the world is a great form of allyship, something that's going to help you, and the people around you, learn and grow and change! It all comes back to ego, I guess: I'll get more out of basically talking to myself, of talking over you and convincing myself that I'm saying something new and changing slowly but surely, than I will out of listening to you.

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coffeeandink pointed out that "science fiction fandom is not a special snowflake and media fandom is not the greatest place ever for racial discourse."

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delux_vivens wrote:

something i've seen repeatedly brought up on lj over the years are objections to the concept of 'safe space'.

and particuarly, the objections that somehow if there is a 'safe space' the people in it are somehow depriving themselves; of a commitment to intellectual rigor, of any opportunity for mental growth and development, of any sort of opportunity to learn from people that are different from them because, of course, safe space means that you squelch any and all dissenting opinions, about, well, everything.

I was under the impression people within a particular community can be a part of that community and have extreme disagreement, but also agree to disagree. Case in point: sex_and_race and interracial dating. I'm just sayin'. There's folks there who are married to white people, and those who refuse to ever even consider the possibility of ever letting a white person see them nekkid and most likely cut someone for suggesting it. Yet and still they manage to understand each other's position, no matter how much extremity people may feel about it.*

This is fascinating to me. because, really, participation in an online (or offline) community somehow means that I and others am devoting my life to the pursuit of avoidance of aaaaaaaaany exposure to anything else *but* that community? Somehow by doing that I can insulate myself from the larger world that as Hanifa Walidah** put it 'dont wish me right' and make it all just go away.

Uh huh.

This sure as hell doesn't make any sense to me, so i'm starting to wonder if this means something else.

So when brownfemipower asks this question: But isn’t that interesting how when women of color control the space, racist ignorance is not rewarded? I'm starting to think its about safe space as a challenge to power imbalance. I'm just saying.

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I was on

sparkymonster's LJ the other day, and in a WisCon writeup, she wrote, "I discovered Shapely Prose thinks rolling around in straight white cis privilege is AWESOME and was not amused."

isilya commented:

I would not have felt this fear if Kate had not set herself up as a platform, if she had simply admitted that Shapely Prose is a bunch of white girl friends with white girl voices, and that is how she likes it.

But it terrifies me that someone can be "committed to diversity" and yet choose someone who "feels like part of the family" or "someone who feels like they just fit in" or "someone they click with" instead.

A) I am going to make a hell of a lot of potential employers feel uncomfortable. I challenge the status quo, I am not what they are expecting. I am everything a white male doctor is not. It scares the fuck out of me that even white people who are educated about white privilege can still decide to rely on their "gut feeling" that they "click" with other white people and not even look any further.

B) What the fuck does diversity even mean if your primary criterion is "someone who feels like they are already part of the family". Does that mean someone who feels white?

It's easy to sketch an arc of causality from the Joseph story through to the revelation of the Torah at Sinai: Joseph had to be imprisoned so that he might rise up, he had to rise up so that the Israelites might come to Egypt, the Israelites had to come to Egypt in order to be enslaved -- in order to be freed by God's mighty hand and outstretched arm -- in order to wander in the desert -- in order to become ready for revelation. The story balances, each ill matched by a greater good, but if we stop and focus on any one piece the larger narrative recedes and the details can be overwhelming. Imagine the makat b'chorot pandemic, the screams and the wailing, the agonized fear. Did witnessing that suffering, even from behind our own closed (and bloodied) doors, harden our hearts in some indefinable way? Could that be part of why we had to wander forty years before we were ready to become new?

The custom of spilling drops of wine from our glasses as we describe these plagues during seder reminds us that when others suffer, our cup of joy can never be full.

-Velveteen Rabbi: Seeking compassion (Radical Torah repost)

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via coffeeandink, I read nextian's post "whose stories are they?", which talks about Jewish holy texts and Christian approaches thereto, which was a really powerful read for me a text-oriented practicing Christian. ( excerpt )

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From a comment thread on Jan. 26:
buddleia: Wow, it looks like we saw completely different debates.
annafdd: Apart from the irony, you know, this thing is spread so much around that it could well be.

The first posts everyone was reading were:
* Avalon's Willow: "Open Letter: To Elizabeth Bear"
* Elizabeth Bear: "Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver."
* Deepa D.: "I Didn't Dream of Dragons" [dreamwidth mirror]

Ambling Along the Aqueduct and rydra_wong are good sources of link lists.

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There was a post that mentioned how "colorblindness" (or something) is "unilateral" -- how it functions to make everyone like the (white) speaker. I haven't been able to find it since. Anyone know what I'm talking about and have a link?

***

( on what people mean, and don't mean, when they say you've said/done something racist )

Here's what I've been doing in the latest race imbroglio: shutting the hell up, reading, and trying to learn.

Here's why: the initial discussion immediately triggered my "BUT BUT BUT" response, which is usually a sign that I need to shut the hell up and try to learn, instead of flapping my yap.

Here's my question: when is that the right thing? When does it cross into reading as silence = assent? Because I'm sure it does, at some point. At what point does "I need to shut up and learn" turn into "...and I successfully avoided having to comment on the whole mess and possibly be embarrassed!"

-jacquez ("This is a tangent. And also, what I've learned so far.")

Also, Kita's "Commentary on commentary"

( attempts at various metaphors for what's been going on in this round )

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My ears perked up when I heard the woman say, "What about kids with pimples? They get picked on, too:" I'm always interested to hear people's arguments against gay, lesbian, and bisexual students' rights, particularly ones that have "Gay kids aren't the only ones that have it rough" at their core. Because we've all been fed this message that we shouldn't be crybabies and should just "suck, it up," we often aren't aware of how this translates into being shut off from the ability to feel pain in ourselves and in others---basically a lack of empathy.

-Jeff Perrotti in When the Drama Club is Not Enough: Lessons from the Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Students (p. 181)

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( on seeing race )

More readings:

Bernice Johnson Reagon's essay "Coalition Politics: Turning the Century"

From "Check my what?" On privilege and what we can do about it - by Andrea Rubenstein [tekanji]:

You Can Only Sympathize, Not Empathize

This is probably the hardest one for me, personally, to wrap my mind around because I'm all about drawing links between oppressions. But, no matter how strong the link is, the facts remain that no two oppressions are the same. And it's you, as the privileged party, who needs to be extra careful about when and how you draw links. While the intent may be to show solidarity, the result is all too often that you come off as defensive, trying to one-up the non-privileged groups and appropriate their oppression. This doesn't mean you shouldn't ever try to make connections, but rather that you should think about how the connections you're drawing will come off to others.

I have the RNC on in the background via C-SPAN. I totally should have done this for the DNC; it's so easy. (Though it does stop to buffer a lot, which is annoying.)

Thus far:

Dr. Elena Rios of the National Hispanic Medical Association talked about "universal health care that's affordable for everyone." Are you sure I'm not listening to the DNC?

Ruth Lopez Novodor -- a Republican who supported Hillary Clinton because the glass ceiling needs to be broken, but realized that this election needs to be about "choosing proven leaders." Also, stuff about supporting small business. And "change."

Christy Swanson (another person of color) - a Democrat (who used to support Obama) More about small business. Her business processes fry oil and uses the waste(?) to make biodisel fuel.

Michael Williams (African-American) - I missed most of this, but I did hear him say, "And protect God's creation." (Shots of the audience include a sign saying "Real Energy Independence" and a person with a hat saying "clean coal.")

Luis Fortuno, delegate from Puerto Rico

How many of the minor speakers at the DNC were people of color? I'm not saying this is necessarily representative of the Republican party as a whole, but it makes a good narrative for them.

Meg Whitman. McCain and Palin are "The REAL agents of change in this campaign." Also "energy independence." Tax incentives for health care. Simplify our "mind-numbing" tax code.

Okay, I'm grabbing some food now.

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9:15pm ET Fmr. Gov. Mitt Romney
10:05pm ET Fmr. Mayor Rudy Giuliani
10:35pm ET VP Candidate Gov. Sarah Palin

I was sightseeing in a non-English-speaking country (and staying in hostels, rather than say hotels which would have had tvs in the bedrooms), so I was even less up on Olympics stuff than I would have been otherwise (I don't expect I would have watched much of the Games, but I would have at least read the metro on the way to work and seen the tvs in the gym).

After I got back I read two articles -- Scotsman.com (from a commenter on one of mjules' entries) and TimesOnline.uk (from my dad) -- about sex and the Olympics . . . because I may not care much about sports, but sex is always a way to grab my attention :)

From page 2 of the latter:

Alyson Annan and Carole Thate: Two great international hockey players Alyson Annan (Australia) and Carole Thate (Netherlands) met in Sydney (2000). Their friendship led to a civil partnership in 2005 and they have recently had a son via donated sperm.

I later read NBC censors gay Olympic history ~~(Video update)~~ (4 UPDATES) by seanflynn. ( This got long. )

I also really liked this story about a guy Getting It about how crushing heteronormativity is.

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Oh, and Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi got married. My mom said she read something where Ellen talked about how she was saying "I do" all the time -- e.g., "Do you want pasta?" "I do." V. cute. [Edit: My mom points me here. Thanks, Mom!]

delux_vivens wrote:

So I think everyone should read saskaia's posts on the damage caused by pretendians and her shout out to cinnamon bearclaws.

My ibarw post for the day is one I wrote recently about women of color being told to 'stand together' with white feminists (yet again).

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veejane wrote:

I started a research project last summer, which I'm still working on, about the American West. Among other things I was trying to do was track down black men and women who went west -- when, how, where they ended up, what they did. It seemed to me, suddenly on reading a detail, that I'd never wondered, and never particularly learned, about the immigrants to the West who weren't white, especially in the early periods, before most western movies take place. So I went looking.

I've seen

scrollgirl's posts on fandom's treatment of the canonical racism of one character in Magnificent Seven, but I've never seen that show and only had a vague sense of when/where it was set, so it didn't contribute to a real consciousness on my part that yes, there were in fact people of African descent in the American frontier West.

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mycolorfulheart writes:

.:. If you ever want to get a good feel for where you fit in today's society, pay attention to the commercials you see. On television, on the street, on the radio, everywhere. You will see many ads that feature POC in a service position helping whites. Occasionally this dynamic is reversed, but usually only in a situation where the service job is a skilled job. For instance, a white doctor or lawyer helping a POC customer.

.::. Take a second look at your favorite book or movie. Who is the protagonist? Who is the enemy? Who is a 3 dimensional, relatable character and who is a 2 dimensional facade? Who is seen as scary? Who is innocent and pure? Who dies in a horrific manner? Who is dehumanized in some way? If there is a criminal, does (s)he follow the pattern of
'nonskilled crime' - mugging, other types of theft, having a band of colleagues which are kind of bumbling, POC
and,
'skilled crime' - committing thought out heists, a serial killer that is just so interesting, a child molester that had a horrible childhood himself, an individual (either by themselves or standing out from their colleagues), white
?

brown_betty, in commenting on a post by Charles Stross about the Bechdel Test, asks, "What is the last work you remember that had more than one character of colour talking to each other about something other than the (white) protagonist?"

( Tips to Avoid Being a White Knight (Or: Lessons I Have Learned as an Anti-Racist) )

( the n-dimensional privilege graph )

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fickle_goddess points out, "Quick, friendly tip to anyone out there thinking of writing a Character of Color: Don't constantly bring up their skin color for no reason except to prove it's a CoC."

From IBARW: Race and Racism in Fantasy Fiction (a PublishersWeekly.com blogpost by

rosefox):

While reading Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet (or rather, the first three volumes of it, since the fourth isn't out yet), I was struck by the presence of a character type I rarely see: the merchant who has made his home in a distant country and is respected reasonably well as a businessman even if he isn't fully fluent in the language and looks like a foreigner. In real life, I encounter hundreds of people like this. Why are they so unusual in epic/heroic/high fantasy? More often, you see unquestioned isolationism that leads very quickly to unquestioned suspicion, hatred, and violence between cultures. In order for that degree of strict cultural distance to be maintained, pretty much every fantasy country would have to be run like North Korea, and even then you would still get diplomatic missions and intermarriage and international students and smuggling and so forth. Instead you get theoretically relaxed, open societies where it just happens that none of those funny-looking people from the next kingdom over have ever even thought about coming across the border to, say, start a restaurant or an import/export business, or even to do a bit of shopping. There might still be suspicion, hatred, and violence, but at least it would have some degree of nuance, instead of being predicated on the wholly unlikely notion of happenstance separatism.

From Pirates of the Caribbean: The Tia Dalma conflict by

shadowfae:

I remember writer Erica Jong said, after doing research for her erotic pirate fiction Fanny Hackabout Jones, that she was surprised to learn just how integrated pirate "society" actually was. Many pirates participated in the enslavement of Africans, trafficking human beings along with spices, rum and other sugar-based exports from the British triangle trade. But others raided slave ships and, instead of just stealing the sugar-based exports for resale, also freed the enslaved Africans on board, welcoming them on their pirate ships as high ranking crewmen. Pirates were thieves ... but most history (and even fiction) never tells you that one of the reasons pirates were hated so much was because of their threat to slave cargo. The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy ignores this important point, too. Enslavement and the life of piracy were intricately connected.

( Towards an Intersectionality of Atheism and Race )

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Other links:

IBARW: Let's Not Talk About It - Being Black in Canada (by

troubleinchina)

Better than nothing: on the lowered expectations of a lifetime lived on media crumbs [IBARW3] (by

smillaraaq) about growing up American Indian in Hawai'i c.1972

american history is not always two-sided (by

nextian) some powerful stories

Nationwide is sort of on the side of African-Americans now, too [on TheHathorLegacy.com]

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Please tell me this isn't true:

Five year old Adriel Arocha is being blocked from attending school in a Houston-area school district.
The reason?
As an Apache, he has long hair that he has been growing in his Native cultural tradition that “violates” this school’s dress code rules.
-http://www.racialicious.com/2008/07/28/denied-kindergarten-for-being-native/

I seem to always forget that there are lyrics in between the first and last lines of this chorus.

Oh, my love, I have been betrayed
by the thoughts I think,
by the words I say
Oh, my love, I have been deceived
by the war raging inside of me.

What is up with my feeling queasy like every morning recently? Today I didn't eat anything until after I went to the gym -- at which point I (slowly) ate a blueberry bagel -- and yet I was still feeling queasy come lunchtime. (Last week it would go away by the time I'd walked to the T in the morning.) I got french fries and a banana for lunch -- and then bumped into Nicki, who wasn't feeling well either and was going to get fro-yo, which idea I decided to adopt as well.
Lack of sleep + emotional stress = ftw. (mjules said, "I hope everything turns out as okay as it can, and in the meantime I wish you peace." Exactly.) And no, I don't want to talk about it. I'll be fine, it's just a sucky situation which nothing can really be done about.

I'm not good at keeping secrets. I only share with people I trust are safe (and I don't think my trust has been misplaced yet), but that is not necessarily everyone else's expectation when they trust me with things. This is probably something I should work on.

In better news, Prof.B's MiddleEast trip seems to be fine. (Multiple cooks in the kitchen and all, so I worried that stuff had gotten dropped, but we seem okay.) And today wasn't wholly unproductive. (I did work stuff and also did my writeup of The Curiosity of Chance. I private-posted a placeholder entry last night, but it's public now that it's finished.)

I was up so so late last night. I would have crashed sooner tonight, but tonight was the HIMYM season finale (this week will likely be slow enough that I could easily watch it streaming online, but I like watching stuff right when it airs anyway).

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( gym )

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On CNN this morning, Ed Rollins, Republican strategist, said that Bush's talk about appeasement at the Knesset was a bad idea, and that Obama used it well -- pushed Hillary's WVa win off the front page. I hadn't thought of it that way before.
John Roberts asked him about Tom Davis' statements about the Republican party (link via jennyo), and he basically said he agreed. I'm so used to this sense of the Republican party as a dominant force, that it's sort of weird to hear major GOP people saying this stuff.

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the_red_shoes talked about "Wilde writing REALLY WEIRDLY about Jesus" and she then posted:

His miracles seem to me as exquisite as the coming of Spring, and quite as natural. I see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm of his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls in anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands forgot their pain: or that as he passed by on the highway of life people who had seen nothing of life's mysteries saw them clearly, and others who had been deaf to every voice but that of Pleasure heard for the first time the voice of Love and found it as "musical as is Apollo's lute": or that evil passions fled at his approach, and men whose dull imaginative lives had been but a mode of death rose as it were from the grave when he called them: or that when he taught on the hillside the multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and the cares of this world, and that to his friends who listened to him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full of the odour and sweetness of nard.

Is it bad that I'm really quite fond of that? (I've never read De Profundis, so all I'm saying is that I like that excerpt.)

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I have no real interest in seeing the Prince Caspian movie, though I've been reading other people's reviews of it (thus far, Sharon hated it, Mari and Carolyn loved it). I saw a review on friendsfriends (kben) which I enjoyed: ( Read more... )

I've been reading posts about Supernatural (a show I saw a minute or two of once and which fandom I only peripherally follow) recently -- the ones responding to

trollprincess' "Bitchwach" posts about the use of certain gendered insults in the three seasons of the show.
The argument that resonates with me most is the frustration that it's expected that this behavior is just "boys being boys."

cereta wrote:

I mean, seriously, is this it? Do we expect so little of men? This, by the way, is an area where I think men who get it should be really pissed off. God, if society expected nothing better of me than to be an overgrown kid who casually threw around derogatory words for people different from me, I'd be pissed off all the time. But seriously: are we never going to say, "No, this isn't acceptable. No, you don't get to behave like this and not get called on it. No, you shouldn't do this, and if you do it, I'm going to choose not to be around you."?

(

veejane talks about masculinity and social class. I hadn't seen people attributing the misogynistic language to the characters' working class background, but as I said, I'm not actually in this fandom at all, and it's definitely a connection I can easily plausibly see people making -- and honestly probably one I've fallen into myself in other contexts.)

Current Music: Greg Greenway: "I Have Been Betrayed" (Singing for the Landlord)

I did ~20+min in the weight room this morning.

At my dentist appointment today (filling), the dentist asked me, "Do you have insurance this week?" Ha ha.

I'm really blessed, though, that I can afford the expenses incurred by my by own slacking and whatever (my not having bothered to get dental insurance and then ending up needing a root canal, the last-minute nature of my flight bookings for Europe last summer, etc.).

Today,

jadelennox linked to this post about healthy privilege and etc.

I am always boggled when I read about people with CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) or similar, because I do not do well when I am tired, but I have the luxury of choosing to get more sleep. I am so slow-moving and low-functioning when I'm tired -- and I'm often not highly motivated to push through and accomplish stuff even when I'm at my best -- so I just can't fathom having to push through that feeling every single day, knowing I'm rarely if ever going to get a respite from that.

Last week, JadeLennox herself posted about assumptions that accessibility (software, etc.) isn't an issue for internal audiences.

***

I was actually going to do a quick writeup of group tonight (Luke 6:27-36, Love Your Enemies & Luke 6:37-38, Judge Not), but then I returned my brother's voicemail and we discussed my going out to visit him in CA, and now I should really go to bed because while it felt much like a Friday today, I do have to go to work tomorrow.

Current Music: mjules got "The Man Comes Around" in my head

I am so much more zen about a lack of structured plans than I was years ago (for which I largely credit Joe), and this weekend's trip was testing my zen, but really I was good. It didn't feel like a pseudo-birthday trip, but I enjoyed seeing people.

On my way up to Smith, I passed the art museum and was tempted to go see "Medea and Her Sisters: Leonard Baskin's Images of Women." I decided I wasn't in the mood for art-ing (plus I've gotten spoiled and don't actually wanna pay money, even though I know that's lame 'cause I should be supporting stuff I like and I certainly do have disposable income). I kind of regret this now 'cause looking at the exhibitions list there's also an Ansel Adams exhibit.

Allie and I made plans to hang out at Haymarket. I got there early 'cause I was hungry. My palate has expanded a lot since I left college (even since I first became a vegetarian -- something like 8 years ago) so I was bold and ordered Arroz a la Cubana -- black beans wither onions, garlic, spices; also: rice, banana, egg. Yeah, I could only finish about half the black beans. Much too flavorful. Oh well.

I go a Nine-One-One (strawberry, watermelon, etc.) smoothie which was yummy. [The next day I got an Above & Beyond which is strawberry and banana and stuff and peach juice, but the peach isn't overwhelming as I had worried it might be.]

Allie and I hung out for about 3½ hours. We talked fannish stuff, of course. Re: pairings, she said "You're much more adventurous than I," which is true, but makes me laugh because when we first met I was so mono-fannish and she was v. poly-fannish, so I still think of her as the fannish slut. (Emma and I had a similar conversation that night, as she tends to be OTP-ish, and I'm much more of a Fanfiction as Schroedinger's Cat person.)

She also explained Mina de Malfois to me (I'd seen mentions but never bothered to investigate) and now I understand why Ari's interested in it :)

I was glad I was able to stay overnight after all, 'cause with Emma's Saturday work schedule I didn't get to see her until almost 8, and the last bus departs at 8:40pm. So instead of getting a half hour with her, I got a solid 24 hours with her :)

We had dinner at Packard's, which is hardly a vegetarian haven, but I did get food -- mushroom caps with spinach and cheese, plus a giant basket of french fries (which the menu says are "slightly spicy" but which Emma told me aren't really, and I was v. pleased to find that she was right: they tasted like plain shoestring fries, which was exactly what I wanted). She got cow and a strawberry daiquiri. I got a Smirnoff Twisted Raspberry (the current Mike's ad campaign bothers me, so I don't wanna support them financially).

I was telling Emma how there was an "Advice I'd give to my 16-year-old self" meme going around not too long ago and how I really can't think of much for myself. I've made bad decisions, but not only did they all come out all right, but if I had somehow avoided making that decision would I have also somehow obtained the knowledge that I gained from the experience? Maybe I would tell myself to suck it up and take driver's ed anyway -- suffer through it with my friends and have less of the terror of driving that I do now. [For those just tuning in, I have never so much as sat in the driver's seat of a car.] But really, would I actually take any advice I would give myself (never mind the issue of knowing that something is a good idea but not being able to bring oneself to do it anyway)?

One of her roommates (Ali) got kittens: a male (grey, one month old, Wimsy) and a female (tabby, two weeks old, Wooster). We know I'm not really an animal person, right? These were so tiny and adorable, though. However, after a few minutes, I was like, "Yeah, you are full of energy and require attention (including making sure you stay out of trouble); much like small children, I am glad you are not in fact my problem."

We turned the lights out around midnight but stayed up talking, and I'm inclined to agree with Emma's estimation that we didn't actually go to sleep until about 3am. (karabair, she reads Cable&Deadpool.)

I actually woke up around 9am and thought about going to First Churches, but I felt gross ('cause unshowered) and would have had to leave a note for Emma or whatever, so I went back to sleep for a couple of hours. I did get a shower, though, for which I was grateful.

We went to Bruegger's and hung out with Cat and Laura some more. (We had seen them briefly the previous evening.)

( discussion of representation of female creators/roles in Western literary canon, sff, and film )

Emma did a decent job of selling me on Remington Steele, and one of these days I really am going to watch Casino Royale. Earlier, Sin City came up, and in surprise she asked, "Why haven't you watched Sin City yet?"

Oh, and she showed me the printout of her Senior Prophecy, and my face hurt from grinning reading it.

Over dinner Sunday night, Emma argued that humans (monkeys) are built to be meat-eaters 'cause we have pointy canine teeth and "predator eyes." (Predators have eyes on the front of their heads while prey have eyes on the sides of their heads.) The "predator eyes" thing was new to me. I am not sold on the canine teeth 'cause we really don't have the bodies to rip apart raw flesh, and as far as teeth go I feel like our mouths are dominated by our molars (herbivore grinding teeth). I've also heard that our long intestine is something found in herbivores -- that carnivores have shorter intestinal tracts. Okay, the Internet gives me arguments both pro-vegetarian and pro-omnivore. Honestly, I'm not deeply invested in the argument since for me it's primarily an ethical issue.

Emma talked a lot about her writing, and I feel like she's a writer and I'm really not. I get story ideas sometimes, but even leaving aside the fact that I completely lack the discipline to finish anything (or even the ideas to sustain much), interrogating texts is much more where I feel at home.

***

paper_crystals and

musesfool had birthdays on Sunday. Hope they were lovely.

Before class tonight, people kept saying it was hot out, which confused me, since it actually seemed fine to me [me who far prefers the cold]. (Oh, and I saw Cate and the bus stop, so we got to catch up.)

Edit: After class, Will and I were talking about preferred seasons, and he actually prefers the less-light of winter: (1) When he wakes up and it's dark out, he feels like he's on top of things, but when he wakes up and everything's already light and has been up for hours, he feels like he's already behind (2) In the winter, you can go to bed at 7pm if you want 'cause it's dark out so that feels legitimate, whereas in the summer it's constant going going 'cause it's always light out. /edit

The first half hour of class I felt like we learned more vocab than we had in like the past week's worth of classes, though that totally wasn't the case. But we were doing stuff like all the major colors (including brown, black, grey, pink) and the seasons.

Edit: Also: Next week is our last week of classes. How did that happen? I mean, it's good, 'cause I'm gonna be away for most of August (which, ack, is soon), but still, crazy. ('S only a 5-week class.) And yes, I need to sign up for fall class (which is only one day a week, but 10 weeks). /edit

Walking up Holland St. on the way home, a black woman said to me, "Wut dat?" At first I hadn't realized she was talking to me but she repeated it and I realized she was. I was holding a styrofoam container which had half of a portabello mushroom, spinach, and bleu cheese panini; with a side of lentil salad. So I just said, "Mah dinner."
     "Your dinner?" she replied, and we kinda laughed and kept walking (she was passing us going in the opposite direction). I said to Will later that I was used to getting hit on but not used to getting asked about my food like that. He said she liked my answer, though. I'm not entirely sure, personally. And I would actually be perfectly happy to give a street person food (not that she looked like a street person)

I came home to a piece of mail from Toni Morrison asking me to donate to the SPLC. A gift of a minimum amount will get your name on the Wall of Tolerance, and they actually already give you you the certificate saying your name will be added (along with a set of address labels, which is par for the course), and I totally thought of the section in Max and Deepak's book about sending a dollar out with each copy of a survey and how it makes people feel obligated and leads to a higher participation rate. Yes, I tried to remember what that was called. Apparently it is the FITD technique? (I had been thinking of that but thought this example was under a different category.) I'll have to check the book draft at work tomorrow, 'cause obviously I don't trust wikipedia as the ultimate authority.
     Edit: Okay, the book talks about it in a section on "token unilateral concessions." Yeah, the "free gift" example wikipedia talked about is more FITD than the certificate. Though the certificate isn't exactly a token unilateral concession (I would feel more comfortable arguing for address labels as such); though it does play into feelings of obligation. /edit

Heh. I went out into the kitchen to put my lentil salad into a resealable container and pour myself a glass of juice. OriginalRoomie was coming out of her room at just that moment (her room is right next to mine) and our subletter was also in the kitchen. Now, we can do go days without seeing each other period.
     He asked how we were, and we basically grunted. I asked her how her show was going, and she said fine.
     He said okay, he was going, and have a nice evening.
     She said, "And, scene."

She said, "I have two days off in a row. I finally have time to do stuff."
"Are you gonna spend half the time sleeping?" I asked.
"Yeah. And spend the other half cleaning. I may have to quarter it up to fit food in there, too."

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Elizabeth (the delinquent, ecumenical)

June 2025

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burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

when faced with my demons I clothe them and feed them

Entries tagged with issues: representation

[movies] I just shouldn't make any other plans for December

The Breadwinner [2017-11-29]

Things I have learned today/recently:

my facebook status: "is trying to be a better Ally."

"The danger of a single story"

"And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

(I also still have no physical-activity icon.)

men against rape, and other topics

Where to Draw the Line (Anne Katherine, 2000) [2009-08-08]

[Iran] Neda, interventionism, media, etc.

[Wednesday] "Happy Bunker Hill Day?" (to quote Amy's away message)

policing the body

RaceFail (boosting the signal)

RaceFail2009 (January edition) some highlights from what I've read thus far

[RNC] liveblogging

[2008 Olympics] teh gay

[IBARW] linkdump

"oh my love i have been betrayed -- by the war raging inside of me"

"in measured hundred weight and penny pound"

Northampton is nice.

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June 2025

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