Feminism in Fandom

Hey, tielan, I read this article and thought about you. The Tyranny of "Do it yourself!" Nothing you haven't said many times, but it's true and nice to know that other people experience the same things.

As discussions about representation in media continue to grow and gain traction around the Internets and through different corners of fandom, we start seeing a lot of repetition: the same unhelpful arguments being made again and again. One of the responses I see a lot, and that I find among the most tiresome, boils down to this: "Stop complaining that other people aren't making the media you want, and just do it yourself!"

I first encountered this response in media fandom, as a pushback against people who wanted to see more content for an unusual pairing, and/or more diversity in romantic pairings (more femslash, more pairings involving people of color, etc.). It was frustrating there, but it's even more pervasive in the wider SF/F fandom, and follows many of the same patterns. And although I don't want to say that this is the very worst response to calls for diversity -- there are a lot of contenders for that title -- it's certainly up there.

I think there are a few reasons that this response is so unhelpful:

And then I saw an article about how Even Mothra, Queen of the Kaiju, has to lean in sometimes, and it is frustrating but not surprising to learn that sexism/misogyny doesn't just affect human-shaped females, it affects even female-coded monsters. Ugh.

If your plan to escape patriarchy involved eating a lot of radiation or surgically grafting frightening animal parts to yourself, just remember: even female-coded flying monsters are expected to sacrifice themselves so men can grow and become more fully realized and achieve self-actualization.

Computer woes: syncing music to my new tablet

While I was in college, I ripped all my CDs to my computer and, using Windows Media Player, put them into playlists.  I like these playlists.  I have kept them curated and organized and constantly expanding for the last decade and a half.  Every music I have acquired since then has been added to these playlists.  Whatever devices I use to listen to music must be compatible with these playlists.  Up until now this was easy, because all I had to do was sync my mp3 player, and it worked.  (Yes, I still use my separate, dedicated mp3 player.  Yes, it's another device to carry.  But it has a very long battery life, so by using it I'm not draining my cellphone battery, which doesn't last as long.)  And when I finally got around to syncing my playlists to my phone, it just worked there too, in the default music app that was preloaded, unhelpfully called "Music," which I have not been able to find on the app store.

So I thought that syncing my playlists to my new tablet, it, too, would be no problem.  Ahahahaha.  No.  I have tried syncing multiple times.  I have tried many different apps.  I converted all my playlists from the default WMP format to the more-common m3u format.  I have tried both copying and pasting the files, and using Windows Media Player's sync feature.  But no matter what I try, the playlists either a) don't read the playlists, only the songs and albums, b) read the playlists, but can only seem to play one or two of them, or c) reads the playlists, can play one or two, and says it's playing the rest even when there is no sound coming out of the device.  I've checked forums, googled, nothing.

In the grand scheme of things this is not a huge deal, as I have both my mp3 player and my phone with all my music on them.  But it is FRUSTRATING.

For reference, in case it helps: the phone is a Samsung Galaxy S5, and the tablet is a Lenovo Tab A-10, and both are Android devices.  I have tried many players and can't remember them all, but I know I have tried both Google's Play Music and the other Music app that was preloaded on the device.

(By the way googling for apps with good playlist ability is useless, because what the reviewers gush about is the ability of the app to make playlists for you.  Which, okay, fine, if you trust the computer to make the right matches, no problem.  But there is no way the computer would be able to do anything half as good--for my personal tastes--as what I already have.  For example, one of my playlists is called "Folksy."  It contains some twangy country, some rockabilly old rock, some folk songs, some Gospel hymns, and a few other odds and ends including Rosemary Clooney's recording of This Ole House.  Now, a computer algorithm might get the rest of those ... but would it also pull in the Rosemary Clooney without also pulling in the rest of her songs which would be totally unsuitable for the "folksy" playlist?  I think not.)