fox

- but of course for anyone with young daughters, I want to be sure you've seen this post

http://beatonna-tumblr-feed.dreamwidth.org/172661.html

featuring minimalist posters of women who changed science and the world. (About which Kate Beaton says "Lemme go back in time and put these on my wall when I was 10.")

i was so ... impressed
Crossposts: http://darthfox.livejournal.com/1394352.html

It pleases me that it is both (a) International Women's Day and (b) Tuesday, which is the night every week when the women's league curls at my club. :-) For International Women's Day, I will retell this story:

One of my college roommates, L, has three children - two girls and a boy. This new year's, I was visiting her family and we went one night to her parents' house, so that she and I could go to the hockey game with her dad and (mainly) so she could drive her folks to the airport early in the morning, where they were going to visit his mother, who was ill. L returned from the airport and went back to sleep, allowing her older daughter to sit in the bed with her and watch TV with headphones. The boy was still zonked out. So when the younger daughter (the middle child) woke up, I went to get her so she wouldn't wake the whole house calling for her grandmother, who was of course not there.

L's mother - a brilliant, formidable, tremendously professional woman - has an impressive collection of nutcrackers, which spend December lined up shoulder to shoulder across the top of the entertainment center. She's going to have to find someplace else to put them, soon; they're two deep at the edges and if she adds any more you won't be able to see them. Anyway, Middle Child J, who is three and a half, and I were sitting quietly in the living room, and talking about her sister and brother and Christmas presents and how she's not allowed to play with the nutcrackers, and then she looks at the nutcrackers for a minute and tilts her head to one side and says, "Where are all the girls?"

i was so ... sleepy
Crossposts: http://darthfox.livejournal.com/1236795.html

A ten-end curling game goes a lot faster when you're playing it than when you're observing it.
It's not so hard to play timely (so why is it so hard to play eight ends in two hours on a Tuesday?).
I really am very annoyed by (particularly older) men who think they know everything, especially when by extension they think (particularly younger) women can't possibly know anything.
Dunkin' Donuts blueberry white hot chocolate is delicious.

Now I am back home, where my bed is the most comfortable it has ever been, and the water in my shower is the hottest it has ever been, and I swear to god it will be spring soon. (It had better be.)

i was so ... okay
Crossposts: http://darthfox.livejournal.com/1231799.html

1. I was mistaken - my friend's parents have a relatively complete Robin Hood set, so there's definitely a Maid Marian nutcracker, and she feels sure there's a Guinevere as well. This is the converse (reverse? obverse? inverse?) of what I said yesterday, which doesn't matter one bit, but I did want to set the record straight. :-)

2. The gold-foil "extra dry" champagne is nicer than the silver-foil whatever-it-called-itself and much nicer than the Rosa Regale everyone else was drinking last night, dear god. We didn't get to the white-foil "deliciously sweet" nonsense; if we happen to do so tomorrow, I will have a tiny taste (for science), but confidently expect to grimace painfully. (This morning, everyone helped me polish off the medium-dry silver-foil stuff in pale orange mimosas.)

3. Speaking of nutcrackers, though, I can't stop thinking about this middle kid and her genuinely curious question. I mean. In the specific instance, a couple of dozen nutcrackers in which she can't spot more than one or two female characters is a pretty trivial example, right?, of course it is. But now I just want so badly for her not to stop thinking that way, because in my head she grows up to look at, forget nutcrackers, to look at - I don't know, the Supreme Court? (One in three at the moment, not bad, but still.) The Joint Chiefs of Staff? Presidents? (Of whatever - the United States, Fortune 500 companies, major universities, etc.) Major award winners in non-gender-marked categories of any juried competition ever? - and ask, "Where are all the girls?"

Where, indeed. ♥

i was so ... sleepy
Crossposts: http://darthfox.livejournal.com/1219025.html

1. Yuletide reveal: I wrote Proverbs 31:29, which is 3900 words in Anne of Green Gables on the prompt "Marilla Cuthbert; F/F". I didn't quite get there, per se, but then, neither did Marilla, so it all works out. This story supposes that what Marilla and John Blythe quarreled about all those years ago (remember?) was her friendship with Rachel Lynde. My recipient seems really to have liked it very much, and some other folks did, too, so I am pleased.

2. Happy new year, everyone! Here's to 2011 (oh my GOD) being better than 2010.

Tangentially, my friends and all their friends and family - maybe it's a Florida thing, I don't know - prefer their champagne disastrously sweet, and make the kinds of faces when they taste the dry stuff I asked for that I can feel on my own face when I taste the stuff they're drinking. The practical upshot of this is, I've got about a bottle and a half of champagne to finish between now and Sunday afternoon, and I've got to finish it on my own. Note to self: the Barefoot with the silver foil isn't bad, but it's just sort of medium-plain. Tomorrow, the gold foil, which calls itself extra-dry. We'll see.

3. We stayed last night at my friend's parents' place, having gone to the hockey game and so that she could drive them to the airport first thing this morning (as mere days ago their NYE plans were impacted by a minor family emergency). This morning, after she'd taken them and come back and gone back to bed, so while most of the house slept, I went and got the middle child when she woke up, and we sat and kept each other company in the living room for a while until everyone else was ready to get up. My friend's mother has an extensive collection of nutcrackers on display all across the tops of the shelves and the entertainment center and etc. in the living room. Kid says she hopes next time she comes over she'll be able to play with one. (me: "Does Grandma let you play with the nutcrackers?" her: "No.") And then she looks for several minutes at her grandmother's many, many nutcrackers, and then tilts her head and asks me, "Where are all the girls?"

Three and a half years old.

We were able to identify one nutcracker that was clearly a princess - my friend later advised me it was Guinevere, as her folks have a fairly complete set of Camelot nutcrackers - and another that might have been, but the angle was wrong to tell whether it had a beard or not. (My friend says there's definitely a Maid Marian up there somewhere.) "Maybe," I said, "next Christmas you can give Grandma a girl nutcracker for a Christmas present." There's no chance the kid will remember this tomorrow, much less next December, so I told my friend the story, and she concurred that this needs remembering and acting upon. (For the record, the mother would absolutely agree that women are underrepresented in her nutcracker pantheon, and probably that her grandbaby should be encouraged to speak up when she sees underrepresentation, as she did today. Go, grandbaby!)

There was also no chance she'd have been able to hold onto the word "nussknacker", alas. (In Yiddish it's "knacknissel". Even better! I'll teach it to all three of them some other time.)

i was so ... sleepy
Crossposts: http://darthfox.livejournal.com/1218566.html

I confess I had only heard of this thing from my former classmate on the Facebooks. And it was asked of me on LJ what this actually is and who organizes it and so on, and so now I read the following, courtesy of Uncle Wiki:

International Men's Day (IMD) is an annual international event celebrated on November 19. Inaugurated in 1999 in Trinidad and Tobago, the day and its events find support from individuals and groups supporting men's rights and other human rights issues in Australia, the Caribbean, North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the United Nations. Speaking on behalf of UNESCO, Director of Women and Culture of Peace Ingeborg Breines said of IMD, "This is an excellent idea and would give some gender balance." She added that UNESCO was looking forward to cooperating with IMD organizers.

The objectives of celebrating an International Men's Day include focusing on men's and boy's health, improving gender relations, promoting gender equality, and highlighting positive male role models. It is an occasion for men to highlight discrimination against them and to celebrate their achievements and contributions, in particular for their contributions to community, family, marriage, and child care.

(emphasis added.)

[deep breath] So okay.

men's rights - also known as human rights (which is also true of women's rights), the difference being that men qua men are not customarily deprived of their rights as a class. (Again: ask a woman. Or ask a gay person about straight rights. Or ask a Jewish person about Gentile rights. Or ask a black person about white rights. And then apologize.)
and would give some gender balance - gosh, I'm sorry, is the attention given in some parts of the world to making sure women are treated as the same kind of citizens as men imbalanced? Trust me, in the places where the need is greatest, you don't want to be sure men are treated as the same kind of citizens as women. See above re: rights.
focusing on men's and boy's [sic] health - not, in itself, a bad thing. Except, again, this is what most of the focus is on usually anyway. I don't have statistics at my fingertips, but it is a fact that many, many, many pharmaceutical companies (for example) don't take careful note of how their medications may have different and more dangerous side effects in women. To take one example. Or older people. Or, or, or. OR! Who would like to predict how long it will be before some government-funded study suggests that men don't need prostate cancer screening until ten years after they've been getting it all this time, and then only half as often? Mammograms save women's lives, but by all means, let's cut back on that.
improving gender relations - I'm all for it, of course, but I no longer have any confidence that what I mean by this is what the organizers of International Men's Day mean. I mean, as I said above, efforts to recognize that women and men are the same kinds of citizens. I suspect that they mean working to make men less misunderstood.
promoting gender equality - ditto.
highlighting positive male role models - This, right here, is a good thing. Especially if it's done for the benefit of the boys and young men who require such role models, rather than for the congratulation of the role models themselves. This item gives me reassurance ...
It is an occasion for men to highlight the discrimination against them - ... and then the very next sentence squashes that reassurance like a bug. Fuck off. FUCK. OFF.
celebrate their achievements and contributions - I invite you to look at lists of the following: Presidents of the United States. Nobel Prize winners. University professors. Fortune 500 CEOs. Writers, composers, painters, architects, and other creative people whose works young people study. Winners of the Oscar or the Tony for directing. I think you'll find that men's achievements and contributions have been celebrated since records began.
in particular for their contributions to community, family, marriage, and child care - as cereta often takes pains to point out (and did just yesterday, in fact; LJ|DW), not fucking up is not an achievement, nor is it a contribution. You don't get a pat on the back for contributing yourself to your community, your family, your marriage, or the care of your own child. This would be going exactly as far as the call of duty.

So, yeah, there is my assessment of the first two paragraphs of the description of International Men's Day. My reaction has not changed: that there is every day. Call me when it's White Middle-Class Straight Cisgendered Able-Bodied American Citizen With A Bank Balance Day. I'll make some cookies.

i was so ... annoyed

I learn from a grad school acquaintance on Facebook that today is evidently International Men's Day.

Stay tuned for International White Protestants' Day, International English Speakers' Day, and International Healthy and Able-Bodied Day.

i was so ... cynical

If and when Emma Thompson does remove her name from the "Free Polanski" petition, I'll know I was right not to give up hope on her in the first place.

I walked to my voice lesson today. I've been meaning to do this since I began with this voice teacher, because she's only a few (long, admittedly) blocks away, but it's always been too hot or raining or I've needed the car right after or whatever. So today I walked. I passed by a small crowd of people picketing in front of what I hadn't realized was the sort of building one picketed, but they seemed to think there was a purpose to their anti-choice flyers and prayers and whatnot. (I didn't make a complete survey, but I only observed one - older - woman, just by the way, and about half a dozen men.) They didn't get in my face or give me any trouble as I passed, but I still wished I'd crossed the street to avoid them. Then at the end of the block there was a guy singing some response-y chants.

I was cranky and out of sorts until a block and a half later when I passed by a neighborhood park, where there was a man in a yarmulke pushing a couple of kids on the swings. This didn't seem like the sort of Shabbes activity I've ever seen a yarmulke-wearing family get up to on a Saturday, but on a bit of unqualified reflection I thought enjoying the laughter of children might be the best celebration of the sabbath I'd ever heard of.

Sang pretty well at my lesson. I've got a physical habit I don't know how I picked up - I mean, I've got several, but this one in particular - where she asked me if anyone had taught me to release the back of my neck when I get to the highest notes. Apparently I sort of duck my head above about A flat. But it turns out this isn't so bad, because - and this is probably where I got the habit in the first place - it's better than lifting my chin. So there you go. A habit to break, but not something I'm hurting myself doing while I'm doing it. More importantly, my "ah" vowel needs a lot of work. Sigh. That's going to be a challenge.

Learn-to-Curl was good. Taught some people some stuff, and got at least two new club members out of it. Also pointed out, when the subject of the Bigspiel and its team requirements came up - at least one person with a year of experience or less, at least one person with three years of experience or less, at least one person with five years of experience or more, and at least one woman - that in fact it also requires at least one man. That is, it can't be four women with these differing experience levels; the teams have to be mixed. It is true that there are fewer women than men in our club, but someday the men in our club will understand that nevertheless the categories are not "curler" and "woman curler", for CHRIST'S sake.

Can't find new clothes to buy no matter where I go. But I did get some groceries (NB: I did not try to buy new clothes at the grocery store), and the cashier told me she'd just had another woman come through her line with a seatbelt bag. I pointed her at the website. :-) And then I came home and made my bed up tight with clean linens, but will do the laundry tomorrow when it's been longer since it rained.

i was so ... good

scene 1
wednesday, 19 october, ~2pm. outside in the quad. it is drizzling -- not enough to be called raining, but just enough for people to want to get out of it. the photographers have just completed the taking of the college photograph.
fox: [hops up from her chair in the front row, where she got to sit by virtue of being student president, and legs it over to the archway where she can get out of the rain]
others: [follow]
fox: [realizes that others from the front row are bringing their chairs with them, since the chairs have to be brought back inside, and she didn't grab hers; takes up one of the spare ones that wasn't used, instead, and proceeds toward the door]
emeritus fellow: [a few paces behind, carrying a chair] Oh, you shouldn't have to carry that, love. There's plenty of strong men about.
fox: [cheerfully] That's fine -- there are also plenty of strong women. [smiles, hurries indoors where it isn't raining]

scene 2
wednesday, 19 october, ~8pm. governing body dinner.
fox: [is seated between the master and the vice-master. across from the master is the emeritus fellow; across from fox is the dean of degrees; across from the vice-master is the new tutor for admissions. everyone but fox and the vice-master is pretty well sozzled.]
emeritus fellow: [laughing, to master] You should have seen this one this afternoon! Hauling chairs about the place -- I told her there were plenty of strong men about, and she said Yes, but there's also plenty of strong girls!
fox: I'm pretty sure what I said was that there were plenty of strong women.

scene 3
saturday, 22 october, ~midnight. college bar, having stayed out toasting a friend's graduation until the pub closed.
fox: [is at a table with Queen P, a professor on sabbatical, and a guest of the professor's. everyone, by now, is pickled almost beyond recognition.] ... And he says, to the master!, he says, he quotes me as saying Yes, but there's also plenty of strong girls! So I said I'm pretty sure what I said was that there were plenty of strong women, you know what I'm saying?
professor on sabbatical: [nodding his approval] Good for you.

i was so ... irritated

Usually, when the subject of pervasive (often subconscious) misogyny in fanfic (especially slash) comes up, I either (a) run and hide or (b) wind up playing devil's advocate, because -- well, because that's what I do.

It's not that I don't think there's misogyny. I totally agree that there is. And it's pervasive, though probably often subconscious. The tendency to squash female characters -- whether by casting them as helpless weaklings or as scheming bitches (or somewhere along the continuum), whether they have any relationship with the slash objects in the first place, whether the female characters themselves are canon or original -- it's everywhere. Or, I mean, it's everywhere I've looked. I don't play in a wide range of fandoms.

Where I tend to get snarled at is in maintaining the position that the squashing of ex-wives and -girlfriends is at least as much because they're exes as it is because they're women. Castigation of exes, male or female, deserving or not, is something people do. I think it's very, very likely that many slashers beat up on the male leads' female exes (or the exes' reputations) out of some sort of sympathy for the leads themselves. Carolyn Plummer (The Sentinel) and Stella Kowalski (due South) get a lot of this, though there's no canon evidence that Jim or Ray -- or anyone else, frankly -- dislikes either of them as much as some fans seem to. Samantha Wells (TS) and Alex Barnes (TS) and Victoria Metcalfe (DS) and Meg Thatcher (DS) get hit as well, but at least they all (to greater or lesser degrees [g]) present actual dangers to the leads in question. Lisa McCall (Sports Night) gets it in canon from Dan and Dana as well as from Casey. The trouble, really, is that there are no (well, damned few) female leads whose (the world being what it is) male exes can be similarly shredded. If we had them, though, I believe we'd do it -- if Megan Connor (TS), for example, whom people seem to like okay, had an ex, he'd be a no-good bum who hadn't deserved her. Right?

Of course -- and this is why it's just been devil's advocacy, because I do agree -- the thing of it really is that it hardly matters why female characters get it between the eyes in the court of fannish opinion. The point is that they do, and that there's so often so little use for it. Most stories need conflict, and most conflicts need some sort of antagonist, but girl-bashing without purpose is just as sloppy as use of other devices without purpose -- and it's worse, because no matter what the intention was, the perception is that it's a female character getting a drubbing.

Which brings me to the thing that got my thoughts churning in this direction. Family Portrait, by Journey.

( It's a year old, but in case you haven't read it ... )

i was so ... contemplative
70% how you look, 20% how you sound ... TV's on Mute. About to put in the next tape.

Profile

fox

May 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Entries tagged with issues that don't go away: feminism

especially for kouredios -

for international women's day

things i learned this weekend

today's three items

three items, in increasing order of importance.

international men's day, take 2

i would have thought that was every day.

via lanning

some thoughts

before i forget -- Scenes from Week 2

Everyone's favorite: misogyny in fan-fiction.

Profile

May 2025

Tags

Expand Cut Tags