gaudior
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "gaudior" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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06:41 pm
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My wife has interesting thoughts.
About Patricia Wrede's new novel The Thirteenth Child.
But much more about the history of America, and First Nations people, and names, and emptiness. She's done that thing she does where she has a new and original thought and phrases it clearly and chillingly and eloquently. I love when she does that.
Go read!
--R
(My own thought on the book is that a book about an America which is not founded on generations of genocide could be fascinating in how it could point out the flaws in our own America, and how different our "white-washed" history is from one genuinely not built on bloodshed. But I am told that is not this book?)
Tags: links, public, race
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11:11 am
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Re: cultural appropriation
1. I am a white writer, about halfway through the first draft of a novel most of whose characters are people of color.
2. I could avoid all concern about cultural appropriation by making everyone in the novel white, but that actually wouldn't make any sense given my premise, and would contribute to the excessively large number of books out there that assume white as the norm. Plus, the characters say they're the races they are, and I've learned not to argue with these people.
3. (And this is the main point of the entry:) It will be an infinitely better book if ask for advice and beta-ing from people more familiar with other cultures than I am. Because they'll have really different perspectives, which will make my story much more true and relevant to the lives of actual people. Ditto if I do a bunch of research and think hard about my choices and work hard to be respectful. Because those all involve thinking in new ways, which will make the book more complex and interesting.
4. I will end up offending someone with my portrayal of something.
All right. That's settled, then.
Thoughts?
--R
Tags: public, race, writing
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09:05 am
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Some Yuletide recs!
I'm sure this is in no way a complete list, but this was a batch which seemed to go together: sweet and awesome "what happened after the movie ended" stories, with enough bite to be true to the original, but basically big happy awwww fics.
Nine Steps In A Circle from Little Miss Sunshine, mostly Dwayne, from Frank's POV, with bonus points for excellent use of the Nine Steps to Success.
untitled, from Bound. I used to worry about these characters, afterwards. Not so much. This fic makes me tear up every time I read it, from the joy and sensuality and just plain love. Is win.
Becoming a Lesbian: Megan Bloomfield's Guide for Cheerleaders from, as you might suspect, But I'm A Cheerleader
They are awesome! Read them!
(Oh, and this doesn't fit the theme, but I haven't seen this recc'ed anywhere yet, and Exchange is a damn fine piece of Tokyo Babylon ficcage, with the perfect amount of gore and disturbing and sweet and sweetly disturbing and well-done Subaru/Seishirouness all over the place.)
Yay, Yuletide!
--R
Reading: Agyar, Steven Brust; Maurice, E.M. Forster
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08:36 pm
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Fic rec?
Can anyone rec me any good fanfic at all about Zachary Gray, from Madeline L'engle's various books? Slash would be made of awesome, but I'll take what I can get.
Thank you!
--R
Tags: fandom, l'engle, public, slash
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12:52 pm
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Dear Internets
(Specifically the parts of the Internet currently arguing over whether African-American and Latino voters were the reason that Prop 8 passed in California):
These are Queer Black Pe o ple.
These are People in favor of Prop 8. Please note the demographics.
Also? These are the people who provided the most funding for the pro-Prop 8 campaign, and so are probably in large part responsible for its passage.
I am upset, disheartened and scared by the passage of this amendment. But I also have better things to do than get into blame-casting arguments with people who may well agree with me when there are hosts of people out there who have very clearly stated their opposition to my position, and intention to deny my marriage. It's just that they don't have livejournals, and aren't so easy to engage.
Could everyone please take about a tenth of the energy you're spending in flame wars and write an email to your Representative and Senators telling them how much gay marriage and the advancement of people of color means to you?
Okay. Thanks. Goodbye.
--R
Tags: politics, public, queer, race, rant
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04:26 pm
[Link] | Sick (cold) = pottering brainlessly around the internet when not sleeping = finding interesting links.
How to rate your psychotherapist
I have a few quibbles, but all in all, very good, and worth circulating.
--R
ETA: I'm amused by this, from McSweeney's:
My therapist goes to dinner"
Tags: humor, links, psychology, public
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01:33 pm
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The Problem with Palin
So, let me start off by saying that I do not want Sarah Palin to be the vice-president of the United States. I like gay marriage, the right to an abortion, useful sex education, undrilled Alaskan wildlife reserves, and polar bears. Palin does not appear to like these things; therefore, she does not represent me, and I will not vote for her (leaving aside that she's running with McCain, for whom I also do not intend to vote).
But the thing that unnerves me is the serious strain of misogyny I hear in people's criticisms of her. Especially since most of the people making these criticisms consider themselves feminist or liberal. I think that, if they were applied to a Democratic candidate, a number of these people would be the first to condemn as sexist the criticisms:
*that Palin is a working mother (this one unnerves me most because it was my initial reaction-- "How can you be vice-president with a new baby?" And what unnerves me is that it didn't occur to me until this morning in conversation with Thrud that hey, maybe Palin's husband stays home with the kids. Which is a perfectly reasonable supposition-- that a politician, or anyone with a very demanding job, probably has a spouse who does the bulk of the childcare. Todd Palin has already taken leaves of absence from work to avoid conflicts of interest with his wife's political career. The internet doesn't tell me much about who does the bulk of the childcare in the household-- but I noticed that my immediate reaction was to assume it was her, and so she could not do a good job as VEEP.)
*that Palin's daughter is having a child out of wedlock
Now, I realize that people's objections to these two factors is one of hypocrisy; Bristol Palin's pregnancy is held up as showing the flaws in abstinence-based education; the child-care question suggests that Palin is not truly as devoted to her family as her conservative supporters might want a woman to be. But that's not true of these criticisms:
*that Palin is physically attractive (i.e., won beauty pageants to pay for her college) and may be attractive to her running mate
*and, most problematically to me: that Palin was chosen to appeal to wavering women voters who are "too stupid/bitter/bitchy to know better than just to vote for the candidate with the vagina."
I don't have anything really profound to say about this. Just that... well, I voted for Obama, and I still support Obama, because I like him as a candidate and find him inspiring, while I found Clinton to be a politician like most other politicians. But I do think that the ways that people-- that liberal democratic "feminists"-- talk about her and about Palin make it very clear how astonishingly difficult it will be for a woman to be elected President. And it gives me a very clear idea of what I will have to help fight against when a female candidate in whom I believe runs for the job.
Feh.
--R
Tags: feminism/gender, politics, public, rant
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11:36 am
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Cool link about race!
So, the wise and thoughtful ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kmd has made an lj entry saying basically what I was trying to say last year, but much more clearly and persuasively. In her entry here, she talks about some of the extremely complicated emotions and power-dynamics going on, particularly for white allies, in anti-racism work. And about why bringing the snark is just not necessarily the most honest or effective way to get the work done.
kmd requests that if you have any general comments on the entry, you make them there, on her entry at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) debunkingwhite. (If you have things to say to me, personally, then commenting here is okay, but she'd really like to hear what you think.)
--R
Tags: links, race
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02:19 pm
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On slash and feminism-- kinda sad.
So I was talking to Lila about a conversation she'd been having with another friend of ours (let me know if you're comfortable with my citing you, other friend!) about slash fanfic. Said friend was saying that she finds it troubling for there to be this entire creative, complex, involved gift-economy by women for women... about men. This reminded me of the argument that women write slash between male characters because we can't see women as real people, and so have to exclude them from our stories.
This seemed worrisome, but also not quite true. Lila and I both write fully-developed, complex, protagonisty female characters in our original fiction (and, in fact, in fan-fiction). So, then, why do we both read so much slash? And why is my longest work, a novel-length fanfic, about two male characters?
The answer we came to was troubling, but in a different way. The reason we write slash about male characters is that the themes and ideas we examine in slash would be nigh unbearably painful if we wrote them with female characters. We would be unable to divorce them from the cultural baggage that issues of sexuality, power and consent carry, and it would be almost impossible to deconstruct them the way good slash does.
Let me demonstrate this by gender-switching Hisoka, the protagonist of my novel-length Yami no Matsuei fic, Mercy of the Fallen. ( Cut for spoilers. )
So I look at that summary, and that's... appalling. I'd gag if I had to read that story, and (I hope) tear my wrists off before I wrote it. That's a story about how a woman needs to be kind and gentle and nurturing-- because doing so is the only way she can deal with a man using his power against her. That's a story about how it's a woman's job to make a man who hurt her feel better. That's a story about how a woman should stop being so angry. Because otherwise, she's just being hysterical, and the universe is not kind to women who don't know their place. That's one of the most reactionary fucking things I've seen in a while.
But my fic isn't. At least, I don't think it is. There's a tendency to see ukes (bottoms, boys) in anime and manga as being girls in all but name, and I was very careful not to do that with Hisoka in this fic. He tops in bed, he uses "ore" (the very masculine pronoun),* he's assertive and aggressive and as unexpressive of emotion as he can be given the circumstances. I didn't think much about why that was important to me when I was writing it, I just thought that it made sense to write a male character as male.
That should have tipped me off, actually. Normally (i.e., in original work) I don't give a rat's ass as to whether my characters' genders conform to their sex, and I often enjoy it more when they don't. But in this fic, I made a very special point, to myself and in all the subtle ways I could in the text, of Hisoka being male, male, male, male.
I think I did that because I wanted to write a story about anger and power, but I didn't want the cultural baggage. I think that it's true that Hisoka's obsessive hatred of his murderer, in cannon, is toxic to him. I think it's true that for healing from abuse to happen, it's necessary to get past the point where the abuser is the most important person in the survivor's life, and the abuse the most important event. I think that anger is useful when it motivates us to take action to change a situation, and harmful when the situation can't be changed that way.
It's possible that I could have written a story addressing those ideas with a female protagonist. But I would have had to work so hard to make it clear what I wasn't saying. I would have had to be so clear that I was not saying all women's anger is wrong-- just this particular obsessive one. Because there have been so many people saying that a woman should never be angry. Hundreds of thousands of them, over centuries, and certainly any number of them to every one of my (mostly female) readers. The specifics of my story would, unless I'd worked very, very hard, have been lost in the generalization of the culture.
So I didn't write that story. Maybe I wasn't up for it then, maybe I wasn't a good enough writer yet, maybe I didn't have the energy. Maybe I just didn't want to have to do that much work to make it clear what I wasn't saying just for people to be able to read what I was.
I don't think this is the entire answer as to why women read and write slash. I do, though, think this is a significant part of it. So much of slash is about people in relationships being vulnerable, complicated issues of power and consent, different kinds of sex. Telling stories about men means that we can read and write about people facing these problems head-on, without an entire lifetime of having been trained to expect such problems to be their natural lot in life. As a result, a lot of slash says interesting, subtle things about these issues. A lot of it is not yet quite competent to clearly say those things, but is working its way in that direction. But all of it is doing so in a context in which a great deal of the cultural baggage around these issues has been thrown away by using (gay) male characters. Otherwise, the weight of that baggage could easily crush some of the subtler arguments and ideas.
None of this makes me happy. I would much rather live in a culture where women were not so usually victims of rape that it becomes squicky to write any story in which a woman's consent to sex is dubious. I would much rather live in a culture where women were not so often dominated that it becomes comical or edgy to write a story in which a man and a woman argue about who will penetrate whom. I would much rather live in a culture in which rape were not so common among women I know and care about that a well-written story about a woman being raped automatically becomes triggering and traumatic.
I don't live in that culture. And I find questions of dubious consent and domination, and the way they interact with character and relationship, fascinating. So I will work for that culture, in as many ways as I can. And in the meantime, I will read slash, and imagine a clearer world.
--R
* Or would, if I didn't eschew fangirl Japanese. But in my head he does.
Tags: commentsversation, fandom, feminism/gender, public, slash, writing
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02:41 pm
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Sing a song of singing, take two.
So, it occurs to me that when I posted about Sassafrass several days ago, it was meant to be as much advertisement as update. Not just, "yay, I'm in a group!" but also, "behold, dear readers, music that you probably want to listen to because it's awesome!" And I revised the entry to reflect that, but like, a day later, so people probably didn't see.
So, at the risk of re-posting: these songs are great. Really gorgeous philosophically complex lyrics, really gorgeous musically complex harmonies. I muchly recommend it if you like folk or filk or Renaissance music or a capella or any of the above. Although, as Levar Burton would say, you don't have to take my word for it-- there are samples of a lot of the songs on the website. Go listen!
Also, some of my most favorite lyrics:
From "Tumbling Away": I need a cause for what I am/I need the world to have a plan/I need for man to have a Maker, but still be free.
From "Daughter of Apocalypse": I see her dancing through the crowd, a succubus among the flock/As graceful as a corpse's shroud and beautiful as Ragnarok.
From "The Earth and the Water and the Wind": For a moment, it's there; a single point where (the past and the present and the wind) times here and times done and times still to come (the earth and the water and the wind)
From "The Enepet Folksong": Take your West as a lover, tire of her, take another-- when you are dying, mine is the soul you name.
From "Wild Angel": Through the forest comes a crying across the crocused floor
From "All the Time in the World": His presence turned the greys to gold and drizzle to diamond.
From "Ideo Gloria": (translated from the French) On this day, Hell shall ring/With the songs damned sing/Cursing God, distant King/Who refused to save us/To damnation gave us.
...and pretty much just the entirety of "Threadbare Dragon." Because yay.
Enjoy!
--R
Reading: still Possession, by A.S. Byatt. Still enjoying it, tho.
Tags: links, public, sassafrass
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09:21 am
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Minor rec and rant
So, I am deeply fond of Tales of MU, thank you weirdquark for pointing me at it lo these many months ago. It's a daily-updated serialized online novel about a half-demon and her friends' first semester at college. There's a tremendous amount of queer, kinky, poly sex, which is fun, as well as a pretty well-worked out magical system (the author seems to be having a great deal of fun with making a world almost exactly parallel to ours in most ways, but in which the basic laws of the universe actually make science unrealistic. She doesn't play as much as I might like with second-order consequences, because she's fairly bound by the parallels, but she also puts a good bit of thought into it, and that's fun). Interesting characters, very good character development (the gradual development of the golem's free will and sense of identity is really well done and made of awesome). The plot sprawls a bit, which I think has to do with it being posted as it's written, but overall, I'm hooked. (Also, she uses "non-human sentient species" in many ways as a metaphor for race-- but she also deals with racial differences among humans, and colonialism, and how race-relations among humans interact with the lives of non-human sentient species, and for that, she is made of win.)
The thing I don't like, though, is the comments thread. Because while the text itself strikes me as very awesome in regards to sex, gender, power, etc, the commentors come off, often enough, like frat-boys. And I am really sick of people calling the protagonist a "stupid slut," or hating the trans character or the very poly character while praising the monogamous straight white male to the skies. Because all of the major characters are, in my opinion, interestingly flawed, but also sympathetic. And it kind of sucks to see people reading about these people through lenses that they're not questioning. I mean, maybe they will question them a bit, after a while? But I'm not seeing it there. And it annoys me.
So: read the story. Skip the comments.
OMG my colloquium (dissertation defense) is TOMORROW OMG OMG OMG OMG GAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!
--R
Tags: fandom, links, oh internets no, public, reading, tomu
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10:53 am
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So much internets!
And so much of me should-be-writing-a-paper. But I wanted to repost a few things, mostly in reaction to the Open-Source Boob Project kerfluffle. For those who don't know about it, this all started when a guy named theferrett and a few of his friends had one of those cool moments that happen among friends sometimes, where you all let down your boundaries around physical intimacy and engage in a whole lot of mutual groping without any real sexual intent, just to enjoy each other's bodies. Which is, in my opinion, fine. The problem was that, being fans at a con, they said, "This is awesome! Let's get lots of other people to join in!" So they propositioned some random passers-by, who didn't object very loudly, and they decided they should make it a meme. They started wearing buttons announcing their participation in this "project," which basically said that anyone passing by could ask a person wearing the button whether the passerby could grope the button-wearer, without insult. There was a focus on breasts (see the name), but when asked, the people involved said that many types of touch were permitted, including grabbing guys' asses and chests (though not balls), by people of both sexes toward people of both sexes.
The major difficulty with this, in my opinion, is that it would have worked nicely in a culture which does not have a long tradition of violence against women, women's bodies being seen as property for the taking, women being pressured through a variety of means to see their bodies as property for the taking, and women's sole route to power of any kind being through the use and sale of their bodies. However, we don't live in a culture like that. And a lot of the discourse in the (1300 comment long!) thread was around theferrett and his friends saying, "No, I don't want to live in this kind of culture. So we don't! And you're all just being silly," and a lot of people saying "..." Only with lots more eloquence.
I recommend the comment thread, as it has a lot of interesting discussion, and only a few trolls.
Here, though, I'm posting two things. One is my comment, which is also up on theferrett's journal, but buried on the fifth page of comments, and I liked it, so I'm reproducing it here:
So, on the one hand, I'd disagree with people who are seeing theferrett and his friends as having done a Very Bad Thing. Everyone's descriptions make it sound like this was a genuine attempt, by a bunch of friends, to try for a moment to live in a world in which touch and sexuality don't have the baggage of fear and patriarchy that they carry in the rest of our lives. And that's a cool idea.
But there's something I've noticed in the entry and these comments which puts me firmly in the "the way this is being discussed is pretty damn objectifying" camp.
So, I don't know about anyone else, but my breasts are erogenous zones, chock-full of nerve endings. If someone is touching my breasts, one of two things is happening. Either a) I'm turned on, or b) I'm dissociating, trying hard not to be present and aware of the sensation and its impact on me. I don't have a trauma history, but I do have times (at the doctor, say) when I'm trying to be as unaware as possible of what's going on in my body, because it feels emotionally uncomfortable.
Now, a number of women have talked about being involved in this event, and, in the comments I've read so far, none of them have talked about feeling aroused. Instead, they say things like what zoethe said several threads upstream: "I felt empowered by the ability to say, 'Yes, I can choose to share my bounty with others.'" The focus is not on the women's physical sexual pleasure. It's on their pleasure at being able to have their bodies appreciated by someone else. ewin said it even more clearly: "I really dig on the idea of letting as many folks as possible appreciate these boobs before they droop, you know? They have a lot of pep left in them, and they're just SITTING there right now, doing nothing. It's a shame." That statement makes it sound like ewin doesn't see her breasts as being there for her pleasure except as someone else might enjoy them.
Now, I can see two possible reasons for this. One is that the women were sexually aroused by all of this, and didn't want to say so-- because that is embarrassing, intimate, and/or forbidden by the traditional view of women which forbids us from seeking sexual satisfaction for our own sake, not someone else's. But the other possible reason is that people actually weren't aroused, because they were dissociated from what they were experiencing physically, because they really were doing this only as breasts to be appreciated.
I wasn't there, so I don't know what it felt like from the inside. But I know that I'd feel a lot more comfortable with this idea if the women involved were saying "I enjoyed this because free petting feels really good!" rather than "I enjoyed this because it's nice to have my assets appreciated."
The other thing I want to re-post is, yes, a meme, but also a vow I'm taking seriously. And want it to spread. Because this is the point where talking on the internet turns into real action, that can cause real change.
The Open-Source Women-Backing-Each-Other-Up Campaign
Here's my pledge: if I see somebody groping you in public, and you're not moaning Yes! Yes! Yes!, I will break through your Somebody Else's Problem invisibility field and come over and ask if you're okay. If your situation looks dangerous enough I can't help on my own, I will call over friends or, if it's a situation in which I think the cops would be on your side, I will call the cops. If you're being harassed by a guy*, you can say so to me, even if you don't know me. I pledge I will distract him so you can get away, or I will tell him that he needs to leave, or whatever I can do to the best of my ability. I pledge that yes, actually, because you are a woman I will give you the benefit of the doubt. If you tell me that a guy just did something shitty to you I will not refuse to look at any evidence and tell you that I know him and he's a great guy and you must have been imagining things. I have great loyalty to my male friends but I will not allow that to blind me to the fact that none of us are saints and even my best friends can screw up and may need to be called on it. I pledge that I will walk you to your car if you don't feel safe walking alone at night, and then you can drive me to mine.
Yes, even at Wiscon. I pledge that even if I don't know you, if there is a creepy guy following you around, you can say so, and I will not say to you go hide in your room; I will say to him go find another party, or if necessary, go home. I will come with you if you need to talk to the con organizers. I will not make you feel like your right to control over your own body is not a big deal.
And I will do this whether or not I like you, or even know you. It's not about liking you. It's about the fact that we need to back each other up, and I will need you to do this for me some day.
--R
*Or a girl. Despite the statistics, men do not have a monopoly on sexual aggression.
Tags: fandom, feminism/gender, links, oh internets no, public, rant
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02:33 pm
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Thought on shrinkage and advice-giving
So advice-giving is one of the major temptations in my profession. Because these people come to you with problems, right, and they want help, and they're really sad/scared/etc, and you really want to fix it. And sometimes it seems really obvious that if they just did x, it would be better.
And while some shrinks will go ahead and recommend x, that's not my approach. Because the thing is, if x is really obvious, they've quite often already thought of it (or someone else has already recommended it), and there's a reason you don't know about that x wouldn't work. Sometimes that reason seems stupid or irrational or embarassing, and they don't want to tell it to you. Sometimes it's unconscious. Sometimes they just haven't gotten a chance to say it yet. But in any of these cases, your recommending x either means they argue with you, or they nod and smile and don't do it, or they agree with you that they really should, and then they beat themselves up for not doing it. None of which are productive.
So my usual approach is to not give advice. To ask questions and listen and empathize and give back my understanding of the problem, and let them come up with it on their own. If one solution seems really obvious, I might ask whether they've already thought of it, or ask questions that (if I think I can be subtle enough) lead gently in that direction. But those have to be non-rhetorical questions, questions to which I'm genuinely listening for the answer, and will change my mind if I hear something other than what I expect.
Because a lot of the time, when I really want to give advice, it's because there is no easy solution, and I want there to be. Sometimes, life really sucks, and there's nothing I or the client can do about it. Those are the times when I either have to sit with the sadness and fear of the situation-- or try vainly to find a way of controlling it by saying, "Do this, and it will fix it!" And then if the client doesn't take my advice, I can blame him or her for it, or (more likely for me) blame his or her disorders and issues and past pain. So I can feel like at least it's not my fault, and I have the illusion of control over the fact that sometimes, the universe really, uncontrollably sucks.
I'm getting better, I think, at not doing that. At sitting with the fact that sometimes, it just hurts, and there's no way out but through. At believing I'm useful even if I can't fix everything.
There are, however, times when my wanting to give advice feels very different-- and when I indulge it wholeheartedly. Those are when I'm fairly sure that the advice I have will not be something the person has heard before, or thought of him/herself. Sometimes it's strictly medical (although in the days of Google, those are less frequent). More often, it's social (why, yes, young White woman from the East Coast, you do have a culture. And it's one of the major things you're dealing with right now). I still tend to be cautious about it-- there are very few new ideas under the sun. But in those times, I can tell that I'm not trying to control my clients' pain by telling them what to do. Instead, I'm giving them new ideas, things that might expand their worldview. I don't know for sure that this will help them, and it certainly won't solve all their problems. But if I can give advice that gives someone something new to think about... well, it's fun, is all.
I like my job.
--R
Tags: psychology, public
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04:22 pm
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Feminist slash hunt!
So, a little while ago, teenybuffalo posted the following link. It leads to an essay arguing that slash is anti-feminist. I disliked the essay in general-- I found the author, Dissenter's, sarcasm obnoxious, and I was very unimpressed with her disabling all comments except from people with whom she agreed.* But I think that it did make a number of interesting arguments. ( cut for (relatively old) theory. )More importantly, I think that any generalization about slash and why people write it is just that-- a generalization. So exceptions can be found to it, because we're talking about human creativity, and that's all about exceptions. What Dissenter has pointed out, I feel, is not the flaws in slash, but the flaws inbad slash. She's right that, in badly-written slash, you do find a fair number of things like weepy "feminized" non-consenting bottoms, bitchy or nonexistant female characters, etc, and she's right that these things are problematic. But I think her mistake is in assuming that these are features of all slash.
So... I've come up with a rating system, based loosely on her essay, of "how feminist your slash is." Because I believe that we can find a whole lot of stories which subvert the patriarchy in all kinds of fun ways.****
So: The Feminist Slash-Rating Scale
Give the story one point each if:
*the pairing do not fall into easily-visible "top/bottom=masculine/feminine" roles. Especially if they don't have a clear top and bottom.
*the female characters are fully-developed, admirable and three-dimensional, not "vapid, stupid, cold, calculating, grasping, unfairly demanding, physically disgusting, and generally lacking in any desire at all except for an overwhelming need to get married and have children."
*the female characters have sex drives, and are in no way condemned for this
*the sex is chosen and enjoyed by both/all parties, not forced on the bottom by the top.
*the characters actually deal with homophobia or the other social consequences of homosexuality in their context
*the characters think deeply about what this relationship means for their sexual and/or gender identities.
*the primary pairing is femmeslash (and is about the characters as people, not just for lezbeyun pr0n).
*the characters are actually canonically gay.
*the original source was written by a woman.
*the author plays with the characters' gender(s) in an interesting way (i.e., doing something other than simply recreating a heterosexual relationship).
*the characters raise a child together (without one of them simply being rewritten to take on the traditional feminine/mother role).****
Two points if the author is consciously addressing and playing with any of the issues raised by the above.
My own fic, Mercy of the Fallen, only scores a 5 or 6, depending on your interpretation of cannon. I think askerian's Teamworkverse gets a 6. The Sith Academygets 10 points, muchly because it gets a number of two-pointers because of its parodic playing with genre. E.E. Beck's extremely brilliant Vorkosigan fics, A Deeper Season and What Passing Bells****** together score 8 without any playing with genre at all, just because it's that good.
...but I'm actually surprised to realize that the fics I like aren't scoring higher. Hm. Can anyone find something that scores a perfect 11, or better? Does such a fic exist? If not, can people find other fics that score high (or, conversely, explain to me ways that the scale's no good)?
Yay, feminism.
--R
* because, in her words, "Clearly I am not in agreement with those who think slash is radical/progressive/feminist. Clearly, those who do think slash is radical/progressive/feminist are not in agreement with me. Going around in endless circles about whether it is or it isn’t does not, in my book, constitute a constructive or informative discussion." I find her dismissal of the idea that anyone (including her) might have logical or persuasive arguments, and might have something to teach each other... problematic.
** New Battlestar Galactica this week! YAAAYYY!!! Starbuck and President Roslin and SQUEE!!!
***I cannot overemphasize how strongly I disagree with the idea that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not feminist.
****And besides, I'm almost done with my dissertation, and I want recs! Now!
****I'm not including two of Dissenter's criteria-- a slash pairing breaking up to marry women, and authors who defensively insist on their own heterosexuality and get very upset if anyone mistakes them for a lesbian-- because I've never seen them. I'm sure they exist, but not in the slash I read. Have other people seen these things?
*****I'd been planning to rec these anyway, because they are SO GOOD. Seriously, it felt like getting a new Vorkosigan book, and I've really been missing those. It's Miles/Gregor slash, but it works.
Tags: fandom, feminism/gender, links, public, writing
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11:25 am
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Shrinkage--quotes
At some point, I decided recently, I want to write a book entitled something like Psychoanalytic Concepts in Plain English. And it will explain all of these interesting ideas in human terms, words of one syllable, such that they stop being abstract and actually make sense.
One part of it, I think, will be to have lots of quoted passages-- from memoirs and fiction and such-- that demonstrate each concept.
( This one will be for 'transference.' )
It is possible someone has already written such a book. In which case, I hope someone points it out to me before I do too much work on this one. Grin.
--R
Tags: psychology, public, writing
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01:30 pm
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On polyamory and the Oedipal phase
I totally need to write this article in a few years when I've had more experience and clients.
( But who the hell will publish it? )
Tags: love&marriage, poly, psychology, public, self-referential links, sex/gender, splendid, writing
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01:11 pm
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The Great Uke-Off of '07, FINAL PART
And now, ladies and gentleman, we have come to the VERY LAST ROUND. Who shall triumph? Who shall fall?
And... who shall be the ultimate couple of absolute uke/seme-ness?
And how much fun would it be if they were to then switch?
Mua-ha.
( Vote! )
Thank you all for playing, it's been made of awesome!
--R
Tags: fandom, meme, public, slash
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01:10 pm
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The Great Uke-Off of '07, part four
The Semi-Finals
So exciting! Voting is now closed-- please go to the FINAL ROUND!
( Voting! )
Tags: fandom, public, slash
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11:49 am
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The Great Uke-Off of '07, part three
And on we go, to places more and more excellently brain-breaking.
GRIN.
( Now with 50% more disturbingly pretty! )
Cast your votes! Voting is now closed, thanks! You know what to do!
Tags: fandom, public, slash
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01:28 pm
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The Great Uke-Off of '07, part two
And now the fun begins.
For lo, in this round, I have paired all of the previous ukes with other ukes, and all the semes with other semes (with the addition of Riku x Sora from Kingdom Hearts, because I accidentally messed up the numbers). Because all of you bastards are completely unable to pick between Gojyo and Hakkai,* I put Hakkai as uke because Thrud says that's cannon (in Saiyuki Gaiden, currently unavailable in English).
So, see what you think. I encourage discussion of this, particularly with pairings in which people don't know one of the two characters, and have questions.
( Without further ado... ) Voting is now closed, thank you much! Go vote on today's!
I have to say, some of these pairings are just fun.
Grin.
*Quite correctly, in my opinion
Tags: commentsversation, fandom, public, slash, splendid
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