proof of life

It's spring, blah blab April cruel months blah blah. But here in SoCal, it's when the Renaissance Festival happens, which seems strange since I grew up with summer Ren Faires, but whatever. I do not miss the summer temperatures when one is laced into a leather bodice.

Here is proof that Nous and I are not, in fact, dead. Or even particularly sunburned, because a) sunscreen, duh, and b) hats!

It was opening weekend, which can be a little chaotic, but also the one cool day for the next five and, probably more important, since it's just the end of the first week of spring quarter (and my HS class is on spring break), there were no assignments requiring commentary over the weekend, so we went. I mean, we can't miss Faire. (I don't think I've missed a Faire since college days, when I used to work at one. That belt in the photo? From those days. And because it's peeling and basically disintegrating, this was its last Faire year.)

Anyway. It was not a year of big purchases, but I did find some fresh roasted coffee in a thoroughly appropriate blend. I AM deviant. And I am a witch* because that is what we call women who will not have it with the patriarchy, and who also might know a few things about herbs or spells or who make things or, you know, whatever. (Like knitting. That greenish bit beside the bag is a tea-cozy that looks like a bubbling-over cauldron from this pattern here.)

*Which is not to say I am a Wiccan--though I was, once, and I was deviant about that, too, which is why I'm not anymore.

Anyway, I will leave you with one more piece of photographic evidence of my witchery, because everyone knows all witches have black cats, and I have TWO.

Sometimes I need visible proof that they actually do like each other, and also just how much bigger Murdercat is than Tinycat, and how much she does not give a shit about that.

to be Faire

I need someone to explain to me why it is that I cannot go to a Renaissance Festival now, in my 40s, without getting eyed and oogled, when I was invisible as a 20-something. Maybe the sun? The heat? Too much alcohol on the part of the hitter? A couple of years ago, I think that's what happened. Drunk dude weaving all over the food court, decided he wanted to drape himself on me and babble about my beauty. I do not have a black belt in martial arts just to hold up my pants, and I deflected him (gently). When he came back around for another go, the Rat, who has many more degrees of black belt, and who is substantially taller, interposed herself, looking stern, and he toddled off.

Anyway, I don't think he was aware of much except there is a female over there and she is smaller than me and oh, I am about to fall down.

And he was an anomaly. One is not generally accosted by strangers, which puts Ren Faire on a slightly different plane than, say, everyday walking down the street in which accosting has always and ever been by strangers: hey baby, wolf whistle, little-girl-let-me-show-you-my-penis (truth).

But Faire, see. (Or Fair; much like the spelling of fairy, there is variation.) There's this thing about Faire, in case you've never been, this element of carnivale, of boundaries strained to breaking. There're some folks who try to be period, and then there are the people who are there to cosplay pirates or Doctor Who or their current D&D campaign or whatever. Mostly the cast is the former, and the dressing-up-public is the second. But point is, there's a lot of skin on display. Boobies, mostly, to the limits of legal. And, you know, great! Yay boobies (and whatever else).

Because of the high flesh factor of a ren faire , there is a corresponding bawdy factor. The sexual innuendo content of your average interaction with performers and cast (and even vendors) is pretty high. This is a ...feature, I guess, of Faire. Which is to say, I don't actually like that aspect overmuch, but without it (or when organizers attempt to suppress it) makes Faire seem childish instead of subversive.

I also realize I started off this post complaining about this very thing. Maybe I don't mind it happening, I mind it happening to me? Or I find it just... weird. Like, come on now. I mean look. Here.  This is a photo from 2015. I have a lot more ink on my right arm now, and less hair, but this is what we look like every year.  

I realize this is a strange, fine line I'm treading. Shit gets said in a Faire that I'd never think was okay in any other setting, ever. It's like we leave the norms at the door: this is how polite people behave. We don't wear corsets. We don't have shelves of cleavage, or people dressed as wenches, or belly dancers, or shirtless men in leather pants, in a general public setting.

Maybe it's consent. (I'm working through this as I write). You go to Faire, you know this sort of behavior's out there, you're...okay with it? Or at least, okay with it being around you. I definitely don't think you should have to interact with anyone's toadshit if you don't want to, and no one should touch you, like, ever. So not consent. Forewarning.

And maybe I, me, the 40-something woman, just want to be able to look at the hand-forged knives without having the shop owner, who is older than my father, trying to flatter me by telling me how sexy I am.  It's weird. Like, dude. Seriously. Stop.

I think maybe it's not about me at all. It's about Nous, and they assume he's the dude and so he's the one who's into weapons and so by complimenting his wife they are complimenting him...? I don't know.

When we go with the Rat and Shan, people stop Shan to take pictures of her--because she has this crazy hat covered with ostrich feathers, yes, but also because she's all curves and you can rest a dinner plate on the shelf of her cleavage. And I get that, but also just gods knock it off. And it is always, always the cis-het guys who do this. You don't see the dykes coming over and going oh, lady I do not know, can we photograph you and your boobies. The straight women and gay men don't swoop down on Nous and make admiring comments or ask for photographs.

Ugh. I don't know. I have loved Renaissance Festivals since I was a teenager. The Rat and I worked at the one in Colorado in college as street entertainment. It was cosplay before cosplay was much of a thing. It was this place where the Rat and I weren't the weirdest people in the room, hell, we weren't even in the top five. It was weirdly safe in a way a lot of our lives weren't at the time.

So maybe my willingness to tolerate and excuse the atmosphere is based in a romantic nostalgia. But even now--there's a certain defiance to the anything-goes attitude. No one apologizes for who they are, or what they look like, or any of the usual shaming weirdnesses. That's great! Let's keep that! The problem, though, is that the cis-het normative harassing bullshit falls into the same category of no shame, and I want it to. Like--y'all have had your time, okay? You still have it, outside the gate, every day. This is the place for the rest of us. Because you can't live out your fantasies and let the rest of us be safe to live ours at the same time.

two conversations

outside Whole Foods...

Colleague (whom I have not seen since January): You really cut your hair!

Me: Yep.

Colleague, to Nous: You have a fine looking girl there, Nous!

Me: ... ...

later, to the Rat:

Me: ...and the thing is, this is a guy who's, like, my age. And totally left-wing. I can't even.

The Rat: People get weird when navigating social niceties. Say shit they shouldn’t.

Me: This is a reason not to be social!

The Rat: Word.

making faces

I have avoided linking my photo to my name for as long as I've been on the internet. In the early days, that was a conceit, because the web was the 'Net from Gibson and we were all (in my corner of reality) half role-playing netrunners anyway. Then it became a matter of paranoia. Self-protection. I shot my electronic mouth off a lot more Back Then, was more willing to engage with asshats on the internet. But I sure didn't want them finding out who I was. Then avatars appeared (oh, livejournal) and one's picture was as much of a communication as one's words, and why the hell would I want to use my own face? When I shifted into Facebook, and for classroom websites, I made cartoon icons of myself, reckoning my students could see the real me every class, but the cartoon communicated something different--the viking-hero version for the Beowulf class, for instance--became a part of the teacher persona.

Now...I have this novel coming out, see, and there's author photos Out There attached to the name, and for the love of all that is good I am on Twitter (somewhere, a pig flies), so it seemed like it was time to make real faces. (Really, at the heart of it, is that I cut my hair and the style no longer matches the cartoon viking-me. I am that...whatever the word is. Particular? Obsessive? You pick.) So I broke out the camera on the laptop and sucked it up and took photos. There were filters! They were fun. And kind to fairly shitty lighting (leave my chair to take a better selfie? No way). And, vanity! Kind to the rest of everything, too. You don't stand in front of a classroom of 19 year olds if you're self-conscious or crippled by give-a-shit, but still, photos on the internet.

I updated my Facebook with one of the first crop (which lived very briefly here and on Twitter, too). And almost immediately, I got a couple of comments about how "very serious" I looked. And I thought wait now. What? The ONLY comment you can make about me is...I am not smiling? Why even comment at all about my expression? Like (or do not like; there is no ambivalence) and go on with your day. Why do I need to be face-policed?

When Nous posts some new version of himself, let me assure you that he is not smiling. He is the Anti-Smile. He is deliberately scowly. Does anyone ever comment on his expression? No. They comment on his hat, or his photo composition, or just say 'nice' or some version thereof. I did not expect nice, because the photos were crap (Nous is a good photographer. I am not. The end.)  Grant: I had no hat. I did have masks and paintings in the background because those are on the wall behind this chair, though I did not expect them to get comments, either. I thought I might get a where the hell did your hair go? or two, from the people who had seen it long, but that was about it.

But no. Where was my smile? Why was I not performing friendly for everyone?

Well, because.

We tell little girls to smile because it makes them pretty, which in turn sends the I am friendly/nonthreatening/approachable signal. I have made the fatal error of smiling at strangers before, only to get sucked into unwanted conversations or get followed around stores or hit on or harangued or whatever. So I learned, you know, not to do that.

Because I'm not that friendly, swear to the gods. I'm a cranky introvert who has no fucks to give about whether you think I'd be prettier if I smiled or whether my refusal to do so means I am a dyke and/or hate men. In my classroom, my office hours, my professional and personal interactions--I can and do smile, because I am happy to be there.

And that, ultimately, was the reason I took down the unsmiling me and replaced her with the sideways smirking me (and also because the light in my office was more conducive to photography).  I do want to be here (though I am still a little ambivalent about Twitter; but I'm ambivalent about Facebook, too). But damn, I kinda miss the days of icons and avatars.

Happy New Force Be With You

Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Let's talk.

I tried to watch cinematography more this time, and I did. But this post isn't about the framing or the ways in which JJ Abrams used light and dark to communicate about character to his audience. It's about the reason I actually like or dislike a movie, rather than critically appreciate it. It's about character.

The interwebs have many opinions about this film. I'm firmly in the camp of Loved It, somewhere behind The Empire Strikes Back and, after the second viewing, in a dead heat with Star Wars (ep. IV, which I stubbornly call the original because goddammit A New Hope). I think FA is maaaaybe a notch better, overall. Or even several notches. I'm only qualifying the maybe because, well, sentimental attachment. (I was five when I saw SW. I had feelings back then.) If I gather up my objectivity, then... yeah. Better.

Why?

The story's mostly the same. Hero's journey, blah blah, superweapon, blah blah, something Force-y and lightsabers and space battles and the good guys win! But. But.

It's about friendship. Rey's the protag and the hero, absolutely, but there's more of a sense of group effort, here. She needs Finn. More importantly, Finn needs her and his development comes about because of that need and the loyalty it engenders. Rey, for her part, doesn't throw a hissy-cow when she finds out Finn lied about his past or go on about oh, the betrayal! He becomes the person who does come back for her, and who will fight for her, and for whom she, too, will fight. I hope to see more growth and development of what I hope remains a friendship (I say, as if friendship is somehow inferior to romance. It's not. But friends first!).

And, well, the movie's about Rey. Savvy and capable, rather than feckless (and a little whiny. Sorry, Luke. You totally were). Confident. Capable. Brave. She's also seriously lucky with a lot of things (but that's part of being a hero: luck. Even Beowulf knew that).  She cries a fair bit, but she doesn't get all wobbly-lipped and trembly, which is a pet peeve of mine with young female protags. And she doesn't scream. She is also kind to things weaker than she is, like stray droids. She doesn't take the easy way and sell BB-8, or refuse to get involved in his business. YES, that's all light side stuff, but so what? The world could use a little more compassion and give-a-shit. She runs at trouble, instead of away from it. She doesn't need rescuing. No one makes a big deal about IT'S A GIRL. Everyone in the First Order calls her The Girl, but no one says oh, heavens. How can a GIRL be doing these things?

There's been some muttering that she's too capable, what with the piloting and the engineer/mechanic stuff and the so-many-languages and that Force business. To this, I merely shrug. Luke shot down a Death Star on the strength of his feelings, ffs. Rey bounces the Falcon off half of Jakku before she twigs to flying her right, and she uses her force on a) a stormtrooper (and Obi-Wan told us they had weak minds) and b) to resist Kylo Ren. (Which, yes. She's tough. He's...not. Reminds me of his uncle at that age. Cough.) She's no more capable than Luke was, back in the day. Or Harry Potter. Or a dozen boy heroes who manage, somehow, to kick ass despite being farmboys or neglected orphans or whatever else.

And then, Kylo Ren. Vader was super scary (I was five. Gimme a break.). But Ren is... relatable. (Dear gods, I hate that word. But it fits here.) He's not totally confident. He wants to be such a badass. But he's scared, too, that he'll fuck it all up. He's lonely. He gets frustrated. He's trying to measure up to something bigger than he is. He is, as Chuck Wendig has noted, vulnerable. He feels like a real person, which I think is more important sometimes for villains than for heroes. We want to be the hero, but we can see ourselves being the villain because we, too, have those issues. That weakness is in us. It's what we do with it that matters. And that's why Ren's the villain: because he's an asshole by choice. Because, you know... I don't think you should be able to come back from patricide. Even Luke didn't do that. Face Vader did not mean kill Vader. It meant settle your shit, kid, and become your own person. And Kylo Ren, well. We all know who he killed, and if that makes him his own person, because it was his choice...then I really wanna see Rey stomp him flat someday. Vader inspired fear, but fear is a reflex. Genuine dislike means there's an emotional reaction. I don't like Ren. I don't hate him yet, but the trilogy is young.

Leia was formative for me. Get that walking carpet out of my way and I thought I recognized your stench and mouthy and fierce and all that...so different from the Disney princesses of the day (this was, of course, long before Mulan). And without Leia, we couldn't've had Rey. But I'm so glad we do have her, and that we have Finn (a stormtrooper! The Rat and I have been wondering about them forever), and that we have a villain who we can really, genuinely despise.

So yes. Better than Star Wars.

A Spaceship of One's Own*

There persists a notion, among some self-elected spokesmen in the field, that the inclusion of women will--and in fact has--destroyed much of what is excellent in science fiction: the purity of ideas, the emphasis on science, the exhilarating space battles. Be that as it may, I can't help thinking, when I look at the shelves of great science fiction, that perhaps these objectors may have a point after all; for it is patently obvious that women could not, in fact, have imagined the future in literature as completely as men. Let us imagine, then, since facts carry little importance in this debate, that science fiction were written about women, with women serving as the focus and protagonist of such tales.

First consider the victim in this debate, the traditional science fiction hero (let us call him John, though James would equally suffice, or something of suitably English extraction as to be accessible and unthreatening to the reader). After overcoming whatever obstacles the plot offered--military school, jealous fellows, a physical deficiency cured with scientific miracles--John (or James) found himself aboard a spaceship, seeking new civilizations and expanding human horizons or saving Earth or encountering aliens or perhaps all of those things in a series of connected tales. He was a leader among his crew, respected for his prowess in one or another (or all) skills. He crushed the robot rebellion, defeated the physically unappealing aliens, conquered new planets, and attracted the admiration of his peers (and perhaps even his enemies). He was, sometimes, less important to the tale than the scientific imaginings underpinning it; then, John (or James) performed admirably as the vehicle through which the reader experiences those imaginings, as the clearest and simplest representative of Humanity to the audience. And of course, in the end, he triumphed (or perhaps failed spectacularly, as a lesson to everyone), leaving in the readers' minds a possible future, in which men are the prime actors and movers.

Meanwhile, our traditional protagonist's sister--let us call her Alice--finds herself wishing to travel in space. Being clever, or particularly intelligent, or even martially gifted, she follows the same path as her brother. The military academy accepts her, reluctantly, but forces her into roles which best suit her delicate sex. She might be a pilot, or a doctor, or perhaps a captain's personal assistant. When she arrives in space, she is pushed to the margins of major events, left holding the clipboard or taking shelter behind a competent man with a weapon. She will be an inspiration, or a distraction, or a feature of the landscape. She will witness the triumph, perhaps even participate in some small way in its achievement: by understanding a crucial line of alien language at a propitious moment, or throwing the hero his weapon before the tentacled alien strikes. And in the end, she will march bravely into that future on a path paved for her, as much an alien in that future as the tentacled corpses smoking in the John-James' wake, forever Othered in the name of maintaining the status quo.

Thus is science fiction saved.

But let Alice take John-James' place, let her take the lead, and the consequences might be dire. For let us imagine her attendance in the military institution, where she excels in her courses and proves herself as physically capable of wearing an environmental suit and wielding a firearm as her brother. Her skill earns her a place on a spaceship, where she rapidly rises to a position of importance whereby she can influence the plot. Instead of hovering at the edges of important conversations, offering a witticism or a suggestion to be dismissed on the way to the hero's own realizations, she is the primary voice. She listens to her crewmates, and considers their suggestions. Then she chooses the diplomatic route, and after long discussion with the tentacled aliens (facilitated by her linguistics expert, whom we shall call Mary), establishes a tentative cease-fire, and launches humanity into a new era. Or perhaps, Mary's best efforts notwithstanding, no accord is possible, and Alice dons her battle-suit and wades into war. Men and women follow and fight beside her, as do women; and the aliens are defeated. Perhaps Alice and Mary fall in love, along the way; or perhaps Alice mourns the loss of her friends in the battle. Or perhaps both. And so the future beckons.

This may be truth, or exaggeration: who can say, except those self-proclaimed spokesmen for an endangered genre? But I think it is not unreasonable, what they claim: for a woman permitted to write science fiction might expand the possibilities of the future into those in which the contemporary status quo are upended, or elided, or reversed utterly. She might imagine a place in which women may be actors in their own futures, flying spaceships about and getting into mischief, bringing lovers and children and sexual ambiguity aboard, shooting too soon or too late or not shooting at all; she might fall in love with the robot, or teach it to recite Shakespeare, or, like John-James, reduce its fledgling sentient aspirations to slag. She might do, well, anything, diluting the purity of an endeavor whose worth rests on unconscious intellectual privilege to which she is not entitled.

*with a fistbump to Virginia Woolf

tired

I had coffee yesterday with a brilliant young friend of mine. We met when she was a student in one of my writing classes--the argument and research class, the one I almost never teach because I find it difficult to teach political subjects without getting exhausted. Outrage with no outlet is bad for the soul. Anyway, K. and I were talking about her life, and she was describing one of her friends to me, a guy who had a 'friend with privileges,' and how that relationship had gone south because, essentially, the girl wouldn't put out one day when she was tired.

"Oh my god," K says. "I just. You know."

I raised both eyebrows. "What did you say?"

She winced. "I turned away from him. Disengaged. But I didn't say anything. Sometimes I just get so...so...tired, you know? Of having to educate all the time, speak up, all of that. It's exhausting."

Yes, yes I do know.

My hat is off to the people who do this day in, day out. The feminist bloggers. The female gamers. The women who engage, again and again, with the well-meaning men and the assholes and the "nice guys" and the self-righteous (and often defensive) beneficiaries of privilege. I just made the mistake of commenting on a Facebook post and caught a faceful of but my misogynist game isn't REALLY misogynist from some fanboys, complete with such clever responses as 'absurd' and 'what he said' and assorted ad hominems. All I did was link Scalzi's "Lowest Difficulty Setting" essay to 'em as an example of why a world-build in a patriarchal, inherently misogynistic single POV was not as complicated as, say, what Bioware attempts, and Bioware deserves some credit for that, even if the gameplay/hero/whatever the hell has some issues, in part because there are choices in making that hero--gender, race, class-- because, well, it does. It's more work. When my students try something challenging and don't succeed as neatly as the student who took the easy way out, you think that doesn't factor in?

Because this is the internet, the discussion has shifted position and turned somewhat personal. I have now engaged exactly four times, and that is exactly four times more than I should have. I am tired. I think we'd all do better with face to face and some beer for discussions like this. The anonymity is a bitch.

On the other hand, my friend K, with her friend...sometimes you're just tired, even if the person's sitting right there with you. Maybe the only solution is beer, or yoga, or Borderlands 2.

Maybe I'll just keep writing what I write, and let those characters--who are not allowed to be tired, because I say so--keep fighting the good fight. I'll be over here, with my stout and my Xbox.

breaking character

I've been a long time defender and fan of Pitch Black. I loved it when I first saw it, which, admittedly, was because Claudia Black was a cast member. I remember looking at the Riddick dude and thinking whoa, who is that guy? Dayum. It took me a while to connect Vin Diesel to Caparzo from Saving Private Ryan. Anyway, this is not a post about Vin Diesel and gibbering fangirlishness, mostly because a) I don't gibber and b) I left that fandom a long time ago because of Reasons, mostly involving the mental breakdown of several people because the Jack character was recast in Chronicles of Riddick.

There are spoilers. Just so you know.

What I liked, and still like, about Pitch Black was its ensemble nature. The characters--even the ones who die early--have arcs. Small moments--a line of dialog, a single action--serve to define personalities and motivations, which are then complicated and layered through other actions. There are some brilliant moments of cinematography, mirroring between Riddick and the monsters, that explore the liminality of what we define as monster. Of course, the worst monsters in Pitch Black are the two-legged human kind, and at the end, when one of those monsters survives, the viewer is left with the discomfort of our affinity for him. No matter how cool Riddick is, he's...well, not a nice guy.

But here's one thing he isn't: a sexist. He kills. He torments. He abandons. But he doesn't treat women as if they are, as a class, lesser than he is. He does not spare them, but neither does he single them out for predatory behavior; he goes for the weak. He just doesn't assume women equals weak by default. He also doesn't make the sexist cracks about women as fuckable objects, or threaten to rape, or boast about his own sexual prowess. That trait marks him as different from some of the male characters around him. In Chronicles, his pitiless egalitarianism continued. Weakness--which he would attempt to exploit, like any good predator--is a matter of character, not gender.

There are no character arcs in Riddick, although Riddick himself has indeed changed. He's become just like every other idealized male badass-hero. The writers attempted to undo some of the stupidity of Chronicles and get back to the gritty, dirty, ungrandiose world of Pitch Black. They failed. I won't discuss the rambling plot, or the predictability, or that the movie attempts to be the unholy lovechild of  Dancing with Wolves and Pitch Black. I could've overlooked all that, if Riddick had still been Riddick. Okay, fine! Have a pet. But don't be a big-mouthed, arrogant, boasting sexist whose major distinction from The Bad Guys is that he will wait to go "balls deep" in the only named female character (a lesbian) until she "asks him all sweet-like," instead of trying to rape her and getting his ass kicked. Riddick waits until she asks. That's how we know he's the good guy.

And here we have the problem. Dahl's a lesbian, and by the end, she's screwing Riddick (we presume). I've heard cries of homophobia. I think yeah, but only because the movie's so sexist it can't conceive of a lesbian. Most of the dialog around Dahl is riddled with crude comments about her sexual availability, including one outright assault. She's a merc, but she's clearly not in the same class as the men. Part of that dialog is used to mark the Bad Guys, because Bad Guys are assholes and sexist behavior is one of those easy markers...except Riddick gets into the game, too, and the only men who don't talk to Dahl like she's an inflatable doll are her boss (who ends up being the coolest character in the film) and the young guy whose bizarre devotion to God seems at odds with his professional choices.

Riddick is a movie for males stuck perpetually at 15, where a) tough women must be lesbians, and b) all lesbians can be cured of that particular problem with a good helping of manly member, because c) there really is no room for a world in which a woman isn't just a walking fuckhole, no matter her skills or capabilities. The trait that made Riddick unique, as a character, was his alienation from society, where that alienation served as a means of critique of how uncivil we really are to each other.  At one point in the movie, Riddick wonders what's happened to him, how he's lost his edge, is it because he's gotten civilized.

Yeah, Riddick. I think so. Now you're the same sexist asshole as everyone else.

bossy

Yoga-friend Anna and I  are bossy women. We've been called that all our lives. Her life is about 27 years longer than mine, so she's been annoyed by the practice much longer. Anyway, in light of Lean In and all the media yap about it, we ended up this week discussing how it is that a woman who asserts herself is called bossy and condemned for it, while a man who does the same is called, well, assertive, and everyone's just fine with that.

I think my first time being called bossy was by a teacher, when I was a little kid, maybe 6? for having an opinion and stating it. I was told to be more ladylike, to tone it down, to be quiet. Boys who behaved the exact same way were not called anything.

The lesson: Boys will be boys. Girls will be quiet.

That same school, a year later, punished me for protesting--loudly, and then physically--when a little boy my age would not leave me alone, to the point of poking and touching me, following me around, and generally being a creepy little stalker. He was a weird kid anyway. His attachment was unwelcome and unnerving. I was told--be nicer to him. He likes you.

The lesson: Boys have feelings. Girls have to accommodate them.

These lessons did not stick with me, in the sense that I never bought the basic unfairness of them. Oh, I learned to be quiet. Sometimes. I never did learn to back down. My own mother, generally much smarter than this, yelled at me in eighth grade because I decked a kid who slapped my butt. There were better ways to handle it, she said. I thought I'd used restraint, having just come through a mini-course (which 99% of the girls in my class attended) on self-defense, which involved knee-breaking and eye-gouging and which was taught by a big ex-Green Beret who collected many, many bruises in the course of the training. Butt-slapper only got thrown in a snow-drift. But I'd embarrassed my mother, behaving like that. (My father said, very quietly, that I'd done the right thing.)

The lesson: You can defend yourself against strangers, but if it's someone you know, you just take it.

That last lesson is a tougher one--not to learn, but not to learn. That's how acquaintance rapes happen. Acquaintance sexual assaults. Abuse. Creeper "friends" who get excused by your friends because "we know them."

Now how much worse is it with someone's family? A fine question. An academic question, until very recently. A dear friend of mine discovered a heretofore unknown older half-brother. Dear friend is an only, so this is a Big Deal. Dear friend is married to my best friend, The Rat, so this affects me because we spend major holidays with them, and New Brother is very likely to be there. They brought him down here a couple weeks ago to meet us.

I can't say I liked the man. He is frightfully insecure, and seems to be entirely artificial. He performs himself constantly. He wants to be liked. He is not above trying to steamroll you with you freakin' RAD he is (yes, he uses that word. FFS). How cool. How with it. Okay, okay. So he's a big golden retriever wrapped in manflesh. I like the attitude in a dog. Not so much in an adult. Less when the adult's been drinking. But whatever. I didn't hate him. I didn't have much opinion at all, except 'maybe when he's sober, and he's relaxed a little, he'll stop being a git.' Then we got to the parking lot and said our goodbyes.

Goodbyes involve hugging. From Dear Friend and The Rat, that's okay. I know them. They're family. New Brother is also clearly a touchy-feely guy. Ugh. Okay. Whatever. I've gotten used to hugs as the default greeting/goodbye from everyone, regardless of length or depth of acquaintance. I suck it up and hug him.

This is not a sweet little hug, this is a full body hug, the sort I would give The Rat, or Kman, or Nous. There's like 3 people in the world I would touch that way, ever. And he won't let go. And won't let go. And. Won't. Let. Go.

I was clearly Not Happy with this. I didn't kick or squirm, but I did my best to pull back, put a little distance between us. Nope. No hint taken. So after about 30 seconds, 25 too many, I tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Okay, that's enough," and extricated myself. That would've been sufficient to make me twitch, but then! Then he says something like: "I wondered how long that would take." And chuckled, like it was some big funny thing, that he'd gotten me to do something I found uncomfortable. Like he'd forced me out of my comfort zone, and that was cool. Like he was helping expand my horizons, dude, rad.

I am Cin's slow burning anger.

Okay, not so slow burning. I was pretty mad pretty quick. I told Dear Friend I wasn't happy. I told Best Friend. Nous already knew, of course. I resolved that, when next I met with New Brother, I would not allow the hello hug. Dear Friend and Best Friend agreed this was a good thing. "He needs to learn the rules of the tribe," said Dear Friend.

Ah yes. The tribe. That's the batch of us who hang together at T-day, Christmas, various other holidays and parties throughout the year. The ones who went to Dear Friend and The Rat's wedding. I've known these folks, friends acquired through The Rat, for about 8 years now. We've all got attitudes, quirks, issues, likes and dislikes. I wouldn't say we know each other super well, but we do know each other. We tease, and we tolerate, and we generally all get along--and when we don't, we squabble and then work it out, because we're in this for the long haul. You know. Tribe. Of which this guy is now a de facto member, by an accident of birth.

And so, at Dear Friend's birthday gathering this weekend, I pointedly did not let him hug me. "Nope," I said, when he leaned in. "You got your hug last time. You got like 6 months of hugs."

Now...how do you think he took that? Did he say, "gosh, did I bother you last time?" No. Did he laugh it off, and treat it as Cin's Hazing Me? No. He looked at me, at Dear Friend, at M. (who is Dear Friend's best friend, and one of my favorite people in the world, too), at Nous. Then M. cracked up and said, "OMG, I've missed you." Dear Friend laughed with her. The Rat only smiled.

New Brother was seriously offended. He sulked. He snapped at me whenever I spoke to him for the rest of the day. ("Where are you sitting?" "Aren't YOU up in everyone's business?") Maybe I was being bossy by asking. Hah. So I did what I usually do with people I don't like, and ignored him as much as possible. That was easy. M. and I just hung out most of the time, catching up.

And then I caught myself feeling bad... like, had I been embarrassing? Had I been...bossy? Had I behaved in a manner unbecoming because jeez, this is Dear Friend's New Brother, and that makes him someone I've got to accommodate, and hell with my feelings.

That of course was not the end of it. He lamented to The Rat, later, that he was just trying to be himself, he just wanted to be himself, and he felt like he'd spent the whole day being someone else. He also said he didn't want to come between her and her friends. (She laughed. I don't think he understood why.) But what he clearly did want is reassurance. He's done this before, with Dear Friend, when she disagreed with him--went around and tried to get another one of the tribe to agree with him. I thought that was shitty at the time, for Dear Friend's sake. I'm not a bit surprised he'd do that with me...I am a little surprised he'd try it with The Rat.

I feel a little bit like I'm back in elementary school, aggrieved because there's this boy being himself and I'm not allowed to defend myself or my space. No one has said that--quite the opposite--but that's how it feels. Like I'm wrong for refusing to smile and go along with it. That pisses me off, mostly at myself, for not having quite kicked the bullshit out of my system. Also at him,  for assuming that he should get to be him, but not understanding that I get to be me, and that might put a check on his privilege. Damn sure it's time he learned. But goddammit, do I have to be the one to teach him?

WoW. No. Not a Game.

I was initially reluctant to use the term War on Women. It sounded too much like a political catch-phrase, meant to drum up emotions and suppress logic. Also, it shorthands to WoW, which means something entirely different to me.

But then.

So by now you probably heard/read Rep. Todd Akin's comments about "legitimate rape." Now his fellow Republican conservative, Rep. Steve King (no relation to Stephen King, although the man speaks horror) claims that he's never heard of pregnancy resulting from incest or statutory rape, but he's willing to discuss it.

Funny. A bunch of OBGYNs did a study back in the 90s that showed "significant" numbers of women get pregnant from rape every year. Of course that looks suspiciously like science, so chances are Akin and King didn't bother to read--wait. Akin's on the House Science Committee. And last year he and King tried to define "forcible rape" for a bill. It's becoming clear that unless you fight like hell when someone rapes you, and come off bruised and bloody and maybe badly wounded, these assbags are not going to believe you were "legitimate." And maybe not even then, if you're one of that significant number who ends up pregnant, because your magic lady-bits didn't prevent the Hate Sperm from conception.

This isn't a war. It's a regression to the fucking Middle Ages.  

Maybe that makes it a little more World of Warcraft after all. Maybe those of us who didn't luck out on the lowest difficulty setting (thank you, John Scalzi) need to hurry up and level up. The Horde is on the way.

crushing creativity

I am a little tired...nay, a lot tired...of the manufactured angst over the whole Tomb Raider reboot. In a nutshell: an interview at Kotaku revealed how the audience would "want to protect" the new Lara, because men the players cannot possibly want to BE a woman action hero, and! as a bonus! the game was throwing in an attempted gang rape as backstory to humanize young Lara.

Chuck Wendig does a very nice take-and-breakdown of the whole business so I don't have to. Let me only say that if you require a gang rape and trauma to make your characters seem human to you, I think you should seek therapy.

I got involved in a protracted angst-fest on Facebook with a young man who insisted that nothing should ever be off limits to artists, nothing, not even RAPE as a backstory! Sob! And while I agree, in principle, with that idea--I do think that a male-written game exploiting rape as backstory for a female hero, when we never ever ever have male heroes raped as part of their backstory, suggests that rape's awesomeness as a storyline is limited to women. There's an appalling prevalence of rape in games (both video and tabletop) and geekdom already.  An examination of why that is might possibly reveal some attitudes that should be changed if we really want women to play--

But it's all about the aaaaaaart, said the Voice of Male Privilege. We should not censor artists by making topics taboo. It's not that there's sexism, it's just that no one ever writes rape scenarios for men.

But why might that be---? Oh, never mind. I am infinitely patient with students. I am not at all patient with idiots. I live with one deaf cat, so I know the futility of shouting at those who will not hear.

But here's the thing: no one said anything about censorship. No one said "you cannot write this thing, not ever!" It's not censorship if part of your target audience objects to what you're doing and throws a fit or writes mean blog posts or whatever. Offending people in the name of "Art" seems to be the new aesthetic, but the artists are not allowed to be offended in return. Art does not exempt you from criticism. Criticism is not censorship. But it is also not  political correctness if, because of protests or public opinion or audience outrage, a storyline or topic is declared off limits. That is the market at work, mes amis. If the audience does not want it, the producers will not produce it. Sometimes bad press is just bad.

But let's come back to Tomb Raider. 

Lemme quote from this article:

Why don't people project themselves onto Lara? Because "people" means males. Nobody (well, almost nobody) wants to be Lara Croft, not even women, because Lara is very much the subject of Male Gaze in her games, and who wants to open themselves up to that sort of scrutiny? Getting a bit deeper, while many women do want to be attractive to males, which is part of why women's magazines often take a Male Gaze perspective as well, they don't want to be only that. They don't want to be stared at all the time, by everyone. Lara is at no point "just a person."

Yep. And that's part of the problem. Which is why it's okay to subject her to sexual violence as part of an emotional hook for the (male) audience, and why no male heroes get the same treatment.

Look. Being asked to listen and consider the privilege underlying your artistic choices is not censorship. And it's not PC. It's a check on privilege, yes, and it might make things more difficult, since you might have to think about a) what you are doing and b) how it might affect an audience. But that's rhetoric. That's marketing. That's making a product for consumption. If you don't care how women feel, carry on! But if you do, then shut the fuck up and listen. Because what we're hearing right now, from you, is "why won't the bitches play the games we make for them?" 

something stinks here, and it ain't the zombie

I just don't get the fanfare for The Walking Dead. Okay, zombies, I am predisposed to like this show-nay, even love it!-and I...okay, don't is too mild a word.

Really don't. There.

The gender-roles thing is hard for me to deal with. I won't lie. The first dialog of the first season premiere set that tone unfortunately accurately. And this season...oy. I stopped watching halfway through the premiere, after the men decide that Andrea cannot have a gun because it makes them uncomfortable. She might, you know, kill herself or someething. Because she seems so suicidal, fighting off walkers with a screwdriver. My students persuaded me to try the shoow up again, halfway through the season.* It gets better, they said. It did, a little, for Andrea. But! Then there was the crap about Lori's pregnancy...her angst about abortion could have been a great storyline, but the "abortion pill" shit spouted by another woman was just silly. As is the All About Me crap with the guys---Darrel's a dick to Carol because he feels bad that her daughter died (what?) and Glen has to have some alone time because his love for Maggie is the reason he froze under fire (double what? Seriously? The hell?) I can't excuse that shit just because there's a hot dude with bare arms walking around. It's a little ironic that Sons of Anarchy--one of the most overtly masculine/male themes out there--deals with women, violence against them, sexism, with far more grace and nuance. Or maybe not, since Kurt whatisname wrote the show around his wife's character.

It isn't just the women, either. Everyone's characterization turns on stereotype. Development, not so much. More like a shift from one stereotype to another...shift, like the grinding of gears because the plot development clutch isn't all the way in. When there is a complex motivational opportunity--like Shane, Rick, and Lori--the writers go to the simplest, one-note solution. Jealousy outweighs friendship. Violence ensues. It really is all about the relationship among men, or, if you're a woman, the relationship with them. But yes. Rick is changing. Haven't seen a nice guy go badass/asshole before. Nope. Never. Wait. Yes, yes I have. 28 Days Later. Farscape. Sarah Connor Chronicles. Hell, Jax in Sons is always negotiating the facets of his character. Maybe if Rick had facets, he could do that too!

The cinematography is as manipulative. Cuts and angles designed to keep the viewer from seeing things--okay, a fine technique!--but then we are asked to believe that the characters, too, share that limited vision. Which is, presumably, how dozens of walkers can march up a road and get within a few yards before anyone sees them. Or how someone with a pair of dudes in collars and chains can magically appear behind Andrea, when Andrea's been looking around specifically for pursuit. One magic ninja in a hoodiee, I might buy. A magic ninja in a hoodie with two gimps on chains, not so much.

I will probably watch it next season anyway. I feel kinda obligated, given my course theme. I can always hope for improvement. Or a sense of humor. In that, it's as bad as BSG.

*To be fair: I'd've loved the show at their age, too, and forgiven its flaws assuming I even noticed. I don't rag on it in front of them, although I do hack on individual characters. We all think Carl needs a beatdown.

what's wrong with this picture?

Good lord, daydrinking. I should totally know better than to drink a "high alcohol" beer on a Luna bar at 2PM, but WTF EVER. There was pumpkin porter! and good company! and I have to spend tomorrow with student thesis statements!

So yeah. Daydrinking. Anyway.

You know that XKCD comic? The one that says there's people doing stupid things on the internet? And the little stick man gets all pissed off and can't let it go?

Yeah. Well. This isn't a stupid thing, what's got me all ticked--but it's a symptomatic thing. In short: this picture.

It makes me angry.

And more than it, the response to it makes me angry. I got into it, briefly, on Facebook, and I walked away before it got personal and angrier. And because Facebook isn't the place for argument, and because it wasn't my Facebook, and because the impetus behind the posting was, for the poster, rather personal. So okay. I get that. Fine. I was bulimic in high school. I get not finding validation in the media for my body type (which is, for the record, mesomorphic. I am muscular. Not gaunt. Not curvy). But I had, and have, friends on both sides of the fat/skinny divide, so siding with one and slamming the other was and is not an option.

Anyway. This is my space, and I'm still pissed off about this picture and its message and the women who are passing it around and liking it and who should all fucking know better. 

So tell me.

Why is the curvy woman more attractive than the skinny one? Seriously. Why? Because more women have hips? More women are curvy? More women have big breasts? Is this an argument by majority? More of us can attain the hips and butt and tits, so the other one is clearly the problem?

I don't get it. They're both women. We can't tell from the image if the thinner woman works out, is anorexic, is naturally gaunt, or what. We can only lay our value judgments on her, and then back up and pretend we're being feminist while doing so. If the thin one works out to be thin, she's Bad because she's conforming to society's expectations! She is? How do we know this? Maybe she likes to work out. Maybe she's naturally skinny. Maybe she catches shit from people all the time for having a small chest and bony hips. Maybe she tries like hell to gain weight and can't.  Maybe she really does work out 10 hours a day and eat three leaves of lettuce a day and drink only water and take speed to keep skinny because Hollywood tells her to so she can have her image posted on the internet  for people to make fun of and judge to get validation from strangers?
 
It doesn't matter. She has a body and she's living in it. Curvy women, fat women, skinny women, athletic women, transwomen--all have bodies. And we're all living in them. And we really, really don't need to be judged and policed by our own because... because... what? Society is currently favoring the thin over the fat? It's all bullshit, people. Shaming the skinny chick to validate the curvy one is no different than fat-shaming. And don't even bring up 'health' to me, okay? Health isn't measured by skinny or fat. You can't fucking tell from looking. Citing health as a reason for personal preference is concern trolling at best.

What the image, and the comments about it, come down to are personal aesthetics and an adolescent need to justify one's self by denigrating someone else. Seriously. We need to be the fuck over that shit by now.

In order to stick up for the curvy chick, we have to slam the skinny one. We have to decide that one of them is ugly, and one of them is not. That tells me we're still talking about attractiveness as some objective value, without discussing who decides what's attractive. In this case--you know what? It's the same fucking society. The one that deemed Marilyn beautiful is the same one that's decided the skinny woman is beautiful. It's called... wait for it... PATRIARCHY. It's MEN deciding which of our bodies is acceptable, and whose is not, and assigning us value based on that. So you know what? When we think we're being all rebelllious and valuing the curvy woman over the thin one, we're still playing their game. We're still buying into their power structure.

Shit. We don't need the patriarchy. We do it to ourselves.

He/She/It

 Once I had a discussion with a friend of mine about gender and sex. It went kinda like this:

"The first thing anyone sees is gender. All the rest comes after that--expectations, imaginings, everything."

"Hm. I don't know."

I tried to explain: we see a person, and we slot male/female. All judgments flow from there. We match clothing to secondary sexual characteristics. We match up voices and cadences and attitudes. We slot the person into imagined roles and qualities, based on what we've observed. We come up with words like tomboy and girlie man and slut and queer and pansy and butch. We say "pretty!" or "hot!" or whatever. When we talk to said person, we know whether to judge hir bad attitude "bitchy" or "dickly."

"Hm," my friend said again. "I don't know."

And at that point I gave up.

But no. Seriously. We (people, humans, those of us raised under patriarchy, I don't know if it's nature or nurture) get intensely uncomfortable if we don't know "what someone is." (The answer: a person. Full stop.) And we get twitchy if what we imagine doesn't match what we expect. Men are Y way. Women are X way. (ha! see what I did there?)

So then I see stories like this one about Andrej Pejic and how Barnes and Noble insisted that his image on a magazine cover be covered by opaque plastic because people might mistake him for a [nude] woman. And I think--well. A couple of things. One: Goddamn, he's beautiful. And I mean that in all senses. And then I think--why the fuck do we care? His name is Andrej, and we have topless men on the covers of magazines all the time. But of course the answer is obvious, right? He might be mistaken for a woman, and a young nude woman at that, and we can't have that. Because young nude women are, by US standards, indecent. They make us (as a society) uncomfortable in a way that half-naked men do not. But then, if we all knew the person was a she, not a he--that's a whole new batch of discomfort. This doesn't fit into our sex and gender roles! Cover it up!

Then there's the manufactured drama over Baby Storm, whose parents refuse to reveal hir sex. The child will be confused! the pearl-clutchers cry. The kid will be messed up! So explain to me, and use little words, how the kid will be messed up. Will s/he not know the proper behavior? Understand what colors s/he can wear? What fashions? If the hair should be long or short? Make-up? Because what I'm really seeing here is that people encountering the kid are upset, not the kid. They don't know how to respond to a child with no sexual cues. And they are going after the parents in all kinds of judgmentally bullshit ways, projecting their own freakout onto a little baby whose sex wouldn't be readily apparent anyway if it wasn't wearing the properly socially coded clothing.

And that's fucked up. Gods and little fish, that's fucked up.

And then I read this piece about pirates, princesses, and karate and thought--yeah. The author, Susan Schorn, says it better than I can. So I quote her here:

These kids don't find it at all unusual to put on a pirate outfit and then sit quietly at a table, gluing down sequins. They think nothing of hiking up their gowns and laying into a target like angry wallabies. It's all open to them right now, the whole big sex-and-gender-and-power puzzle is just one big fantasy, and they are free to try on any part of it they want.

Pretty soon, that will change. One set of ridiculous costumes will nudge the little girls toward one role, while another set of absurd uniforms will elbow the boys in the opposite direction. They'll move further and further apart, until the opposing camps of raging masculinity and bulging femininity are established, only meeting up at events like the UFC title fights, or, in more civilized dress, at royal weddings.

If I were a princess, I think, and I had a fairy godmother, and she granted me one wish, I'd wish that all of these kids, the boys and the girls, would find a way to hang onto their freedom. That they'd refuse be swayed by the big-screen TVs and the fashion columnists and the wait staff at the restaurants their parents bring them to, and carry on with their brilliant mash-ups of piracy, princesses, and punching bags. That all forms of power would seem equally plausible to them, and that all costumes would strike them as equally ridiculous,

I hope baby Storm has that fairy godmother. I hope the whole world gets one.

there is hope!

Last quarter, I had a few students who thought that feminism was Dead(tm) and No Longer Necessary(tm). No surprise, they were all men. They met opposition from the women in the class, and from a few of the guys, as well. A teaching moment! But not a comfortable one. My class is about horror and the zombie subgenre, not feminism, for a reason. But racism and feminism come up, so... sometimes we talk about it, in the context of the films and books we cover. Usually it's tangential and respectful. Not so last quarter! By the end, I was convinced that no, really, the world is going to shit because the teenagers are socially unaware and most of them are misogynists. Had one, in particular, who was flat out Mr. Hostile Work Environment, not because he was overtly threatening, but because he made it clear that he thought women were inferior, period and full stop, by nature, but they could sometimes be like men if they, you know, had personality. Awesome. So then I have to walk that line between Not Preaching* and making the class comfortable for everyone--which it isn't, if you're a woman and dealing with some asshat who thinks you're best if you shut up and listen to what HE has to say.

This quarter, through no prompting from me--they are talking about it on their own, and debating, and being hella more thoughtful than 'no such thing!' or 'women are just THIS WAY' or whatever. Nice. Should make discussions less...combative. And maybe I will drink less, too.

*Because we don't. I know that's the popular stereotype, that we left-leaning college instructors indoctrinate our students into the Terrible Left, but no. My rule in the classroom is Don't Be A Jerk. It applies to all of us.

in which i am branded a hater of men

I am tired of boy stories. I am tired of sons who must fulfill their fathers' destinies. I am tired of the Savior of Everyone being a boy. I am tired of that being the norm, and stories in which there are girls or women or, gasp, mothers as the influential figure being unusual. Okay, these are actually two different complaints. There's the Influential Parent Is The Father thing, and the Speshul Hero Is A Boy thing. Where are the mothers? John Connor has Sarah, and she's the one who makes him a badass, but how rare is that? Are there women who are made badass by their mothers?

But really, I am tired of boy stories. Why does the child in TRON have to be a son named Sam? Why not a daughter named Sam? Have we not seen a bazillion iterations of Boy Following Daddy's Footsteps? Even my favorite author ever is all about boy stories. The last women stories she wrote were back in the late 80s. Maaaaybe the early 90s. She wrote a sequel to a woman story recently, but that's a sequel. And now her new shared-world online story begins with... a boy story (grant it was one of her co-authors, but still). Knowing the other authors, a girl may appear at some point. But I am sad that the whole thing begins with... a boy. Again. And a dead mother. Again. And a daddy issue. AGAIN. And this is a shared world with three women writing it.

Nothing wrong with daddy issues or mommy issues or stories about boys or girls. But it's the same tired crap, over and over, too many times. I know there are exceptions. The point here is not oh, but there's a Sarah Connor or a Ripley or a Leelu or a True Grit out there. It's that you can name them pretty easily as exceptions.

I suppose part of it's audience. Okay, probably a lot of it. I know men who won't read novels by women who write male protagonist POVs. They have no such qualms with male writers and female POVs. Shocking. And like it or not, and I do not like it, SFF is male-oriented. The shelves are flooded lately with paranormal romances*, and we all know who those are for, but I don't take that as indication the genre is shifting toward women as audience or authorship.

I found Marion Zimmer Bradley and Darkover when I first seriously got into SFF. I was working my way across the library shelves, and the MZB was the first cover I thought looked cool, so I took it. And it was about women! Whoa. Then I found this novel by someone named Cherryh, and it was about a woman, too. Whoa again. I didn't realize at the time what a big deal that was to a 10 year old, but in retrospect, it had a huge impact on the kinds of stories I expected, and respected.

*I don't like, or read, paranormal romances as a general rule (confess a weakness for Stackhouse stuff, but that's because of Eric, because really, I have a weakness for Vikings and THAT is a whole 'nother can of wtf because it doesn't get much more boy story than that, unless you also go east and north and into the Finnish material, or you think Skadhi's the coolest thing ever, or c, both of the above). But I don't think the presence of a vampire, werewolf, ghost, spaceship, etc. makes something SFF, either.