Otter's Rock

There's one big lie that rapists tell. Most of the other lies are just part of it. "Consent is complicated and confusing and there are a lot of gray areas." "She dressed/acted/talked like she wanted it." "She never said no; how was I supposed to know?" "She just regrets having sex." "We were both drunk and the alcohol muddied things." "He sure seemed like he was enjoying it." "I guess I just got caught up in the heat of the moment." "People do this all the time and only paranoid feminists call it rape."

The one big lie at the center of all these little lies is: "If you were in my place, you could have done the same."

Great article with an important point.  I collect links to articles like this so when conversations about rape and such come up on Facebook or wherever (as they do), I don't have to argue it myself I can point and go: here, this!

Books filled my house as a child.  So did science fiction and fantasy.  (Every year, regular as clockwork, my Dad read The Hobbit to me and my younger brother.)  So, naturally, I became a great reader.  I read a lot, and I read fast.  And, in elementary school, oh joy of joys, I discovered the public library, which was only two blocks away from my parents' business.  You can see where this is going, right?  I started devouring the books there.  But, you know, they had a strict limit on how many books you can check out at a time (only twenty!  the horror, the deprivation!), and I read fast and constantly, and YA books are usually pretty short.  So one day, the librarian (who knew me quite well by then) took me over to the adult (grown-up, not porn, get your minds out of the gutter) section of the library and showed me the science fiction section, particularly the Star Trek novels all on the same shelf.  I was probably just starting middle school, by that point; it's one of the clearest memories I have of childhood, that glorious moment when I saw all those books I had never read, and all of them so much bigger--i.e. more-to-read--than the YA and children's books.  It was awesome.

I started out with the Star Trek books, already being a fan of the series.  Once I'd read all of those, I started expanding.  And one of my first finds was Honor Harrington.  (The series as DRM-Free multiformat e-books)


I was in love. Here was a female character like me, with whom I could identify!  ( Why Honor Harrington is Awesome )

It matters when you are part of the audience.

I spent my childhood reading stories about kids who find various magical things and go on adventures, and also just about every children's book ever published in the UK. I couldn't imagine myself in those books - it was obvious that I was never going to find a magic amulet or a secret corridor or a sand fairy; our house didn't even have a basement - but I certainly knew they were written for me.

And then I became a teenager. I was still voraciously reading, and struggling to find the genre that fit me as well as my childhood reading had. I read everything I could find - hard SF to Anne Rice, Dorothy Sayers to Charlotte MacLeod. I also read an awful lot of stuff published before 1900. (My flirtations with plain fiction and romance novels didn't pan out. I'm just not that type of girl, apparently.)

I kept casting around, though. And I kept going back and secretly re-reading the books I'd loved as a kid. Partly that was because, okay, I read like I breathed, and there were only so many books in the world, and I couldn't afford to turn my back on old favorites. But partly that was because I missed something about those books, something I couldn't identify, something I described to myself as a feeling of safety.

When I found fan fiction, I realized what I was missing. I missed being part of the audience.

I know, I know: you read something, you are obviously part of the audience. But I'm talking about the imaginary audience, the audience in the author's head, the one the book is written for.

Go read the rest.

Gaaah!  I hate misogyny in fic!

People get upset when it gets pointed out that some slashers are misogynists.  I know that many (hopefully most) slashers aren't.

But, people?  When the only women in your fic are horrible, backstabbing, petty, immoral bitches?  If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a fucking misogynist duck.

This brought to you by the Atlantis fic I just read half of, in which Teyla never appeared and in which Keller got her revenge on McKay for breaking up with her by passing a note outing Sheppard to a homophobic Marine she knew to be mentally unstable because she'd altered his records so he could stay in Atlantis and owe her.  There were some warning signs, but when it all started coming together... gah.

(To console myself, I am using my Honor Harrington icon.  The world needs more heroines.)

Tonight some friends and I watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a 1971 Disney live-action film starring Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson.  It was a favorite of mine as a kid, and someone had the Special Extended Anniversary Edition DVD (where they added in a whole bunch of cut scenes and scene bits back in).

It's kind of cheesy, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I still liked it.  Also: it's very feminist.  It's Angela Lansbury as a heroic, dedicated, middle-aged single woman who saves the day and leads the troops into battle to drive the Nazis off, while David Tomlinson is the ditzy, plucky comic relief side-kick.  It's so totally a role-reversal from the stereotypical movie gender roles, and yet there's no snickering about it, no preaching, no false notes.  Both of them come off as real people, understandable people (if slightly exaggerated as befits a Disney movie).  Their roles in the film are natural outgrowths of who they are, and Angela Lansbury is definitely a woman and David Tolinson is a man and he's not threatened by her being a hero, he's inspired by it.  Also, there's a very low-key romance between the two of them, and when he chickens out and leaves, she's definitely disappointed ... but she sings a song about how she's chosen to be single because it means she doesn't have to spend her life worrying about other peoples' problems and gets on with her life.  And it's not false bravado, Lansbury plays it perfectly straight.  Also, the whole "middle aged romance"--they're neither of them spring chickens, they're not Romeo and Juliet, they're two relatively staid middle-aged people falling gently in love.  Not to mention, the special effects (of which there are many, both green-screen and wire work) are extremely good for the era, if occasionally slightly more psychedelic than one expects from Disney.

On the bad side, the shorter version is better.  They cut a lot out, and none of it was necessary to the movie.  The long version really drags.  The only thing I'd keep out of all the scenes and partial scenes that they added back in is the song Miss Price sings after Professor Brown leaves, and it's pretty short.

Also, I'm not quite sure about the exoticism of the Portobello Road dance sequence.  It's a very long dance sequence in the middle of the movie, set in London at a street market, that's mostly a variety of British soldiers and sailors on leave dancing with the locals.  There are different segments in different regional styles.  Most are from the British Isles, but they also have an Indian group and a Black group with steel drums do a segment apiece.  On the one hand, it's lifting up that the whities weren't the only ones fighting that war; on the other it's definitely got a vibe of "watch the exotic colored people dance!"

All in all, worth the rewatch.

Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime reading comments to cereta's post On rape and men (Oh yes, I'm going there).  In one comment thread, there was some talk about how men react when women start telling stories about assault and things that have been done to them, and how men sometimes don't like to listen and try to derail the conversation because it makes them feel uncomfortable, to which the response is "well, if you hear stories of assault and don't feel uncomfortable, there's something wrong with you."  Because being comfortable is a problem when it blinds you to the realities of those less privileged than you.

And today I am writing my sermon tomorrow, and find myself remembering a quote from Thomas Cahill: "The purpose of the Gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

There's been a lot of meta on LJ about feminism and related issues lately. synecdochic just wrote a very nice set of guidelines aimed at men who want to be good guys, who want to be supportive of feminism. It's not just what to do but why to do it and some things to keep in mind. It's well-written, concise, informative, and most important of all deals with the problem of privilege without coming across as an attack on the people who have privilege. And a lot of things she says are applicable to people with any privilege, male or female, so I think everyone should go read it.

Don't Be That Guy.

Disclaimer: As a middle-class 25-year-old white female from the Pacific Northwest currently in grad school, I've never really been in any situation where I felt threatened or belittled or ignored because of my gender. That kind of awareness simply isn't part of my default assumptions. But I know women for whom that is their life experience, and this is a good set of things to keep in mind.