gaudior

My wife has interesting thoughts.

Fri, 08 May 2009 22:44:30 GMT

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?)

Re: cultural appropriation

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:26:15 GMT

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

Some Yuletide recs!

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:13:20 GMT

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

Fic rec?

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:36:13 GMT

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

Dear Internets

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:19:25 GMT

(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

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 21:27:20 GMT

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"

The Problem with Palin

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:58:34 GMT

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

Cool link about race!

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:35:59 GMT

So, the wise and thoughtful 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 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

On slash and feminism-- kinda sad.

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:26:59 GMT

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.

The story becomes one of a girl who has been stalked, raped, and tortured by a man since she was thirteen. He eventually kills her, and she, furious and vengeful, becomes a shinigami, a supernatural bureaucrat who works to prevent unnatural deaths and to guide the souls of the dead to the afterlife. This work means that she crosses paths with her murderer on a regular basis, and though she tries many times, she is never able to defeat him, or even keep him from torturing her and her partner. (This is where the series ends, and my fic starts.) After taking some time to recover from a particularly painful confrontation with him, she faces him again. This time, though, a (female) divine being tells her that she can't defeat him by fighting-- only by letting go of her anger, and accepting him for what he is. After some protest, she does so, embracing her rapist. This leads to him being released from his suffering. She's rewarded by getting to quit her job as a shinigami, and instead going to work for said divine being by helping people feel better.

(Oh, and did I mention she's an empath, and constantly being overtaken by other people's emotions and desires, to the point where she can barely recognize her own?)

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.

Sing a song of singing, take two.

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:53:00 GMT

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.

Minor rec and rant

Wed, 07 May 2008 13:32:55 GMT

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

So much internets!

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:17:58 GMT

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.

Thought on shrinkage and advice-giving

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:50:55 GMT

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

Feminist slash hunt!

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:25:46 GMT

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. For one, she suggested that slash makes explicit the homosocial bonds between men which are normally kept from being overtly sexual, and that it does this because women are buying into the idea that only men can be interesting and worthy of a relationship with each other. This is a point which needs a lot of thinking about.

Having thought about it, I agree that it's problematic that the majority of interesting characters in these genres are male, and I really appreciate shows with more strong, interesting, well-developed female characters**. But I'm not convinced that one should throw out the baby of all sf/fantasy/anime with the bathwater of sexism. At one point in the essay, Dissenter suggests that such authors as Tolkien and Joss Whedon*** have a "primary goal to bolster patriarchy and male supremacy in all its ugly forms." I disagree. Unfortunately, I think Tolkien wasn't even vaguely thinking about patriarchy and male supremacy, or their opposites. I think he was writing a story about war and loss and power and mortality, and that he was living too thoroughly in a male-dominated world to even notice that his treatment of gender might affect anything. And while I might wish that he'd been self-aware enough to question his culture's views on sex and gender, I don't believe that that invalidates what he did, which was to write a very good story. A lot of people disagree with me about a lot of things, and that doesn't make their fiction valueless. It means that I should be aware that Tolkien has views on gender with which I disagree, and that I see this as a flaw in the work, but it doesn't mean that he didn't do anything worthwhile.

And so one argument I can make to this charge that slash supports the idea that only men are fully human enough to have relationships with is that by making these men homosexual, slash undermines that idea of masculinity. Unless one assumes that penis=automatically abusive and evil, one must see most of the problems with the current state of affairs between the genders as being a result of a social construction. In which case, something which questions and breaks down that social construction is helpful. I would argue that slash portraying these characters as focusing on relationships, emotionally vulnerable, and not heterosexual, means that they cease to fit the patriarchal vision of "men." Instead, they are reconstructed as more multidimensional, and more fully human. I see this as a sometimes-unconscious action by women who are trying to rewrite the tropes, who are trying to claim and recreate something which has given them no space, and I see it as awesome.

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.

Shrinkage--quotes

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:33:36 GMT

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 will be one of the ones for "transference."

From In Confidence: Four Years of Therapy Roberta Isrealoff, 1990, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

"Concurrently, I understood that there were two therapists in the room with me-- Dr. Marks, who never judged me, who never reacted in ways I could have predicted but never let me down; and the person I was always on the verge of expecting Dr. Marks to become, a woman who did nothing but judge me and react to me in horribly predictable ways.

"Sometimes I would catch myself anticipating Dr. Marks's transformation. In the middle of a confession what I was saying would take on a much larger resonance, as if I had suddenly begun speaking through a megaphone, broadcasting backward in my life toward incidents long past. Both Dr. Marks and I would sit suspended as I tried to identify who I was really talking to. I felt at these moments like an archaeologist stumbling upon a mound that contained a wealth of relics-- "We found it!" Now all we have to do is sift through the trove piece by piece, first removing the layer of soil that hides the treasure's real worth."

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

On polyamory and the Oedipal phase

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:32:22 GMT

I totally need to write this article in a few years when I've had more experience and clients.

So, Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex often gets a bad rap, usually because people try to apply it literally (you're in love with your mother and want to kill your father. Yes, you.) rather than extracting the fairly universal baby out of the culturally-and-possibly-Freud-specific bathwater. However, the more universal underlying idea is, I think, a very good one.

Namely: infants experience their parents as being there only for them, to serve their needs. To an infant, the mother's nature is to be the source of milk, warmth, and attention. The infant has no understanding of the mother having her own mind, her own desires, or any relationship except with the infant. The same is true of the father, the grandparents, and any other care-takers.

However, at some point, the infant is brought face-to-face with the fact that the parents do have other relationships. The infant/toddler sees that sometimes, the parents pay attention to each other rather than to him/her. This is a very difficult and sometimes frightening realization, as it begins to bring home to the child the fact that the world does not revolve around him/her. S/he is not the center of the universe, and caring for him/her is not necessarily the top priority of everyone in it.

The good thing about this realization is that it prepares the toddler to gain a "theory of mind"-- the ability to understand that other people have their own consciousnesses, their own perceptions, and their own worldviews. Before the age of three or four, the average toddler does not understand that other people do not know everything s/he does. (A two-year old child who has been tricked into thinking a "candy bar" is fake will believe that, now that s/he knows that the candy isn't real, anyone else shown the same candy will also know it's fake-- s/he will not realize that other people could also be tricked as s/he was.) Upon developing a theory of mind, children become able to begin to see others as their own people, separate from themselves. They learn that others have other beliefs and ways of thinking, and they become able to learn empathy and to predict other people's motivations. (Some of them even grow up to be psychologists and spend all their time thinking about other's thoughts.)

So, overall, the Oedipal crisis-- realizing that our significant others have relationships with people other than us-- is a necessary and useful developmental step. But that doesn't mean it's not painful. Being the center of the universe is a position of ultimate power and security, and sometimes we really miss it. Having others care about us, as the most important person ever, is intoxicating, exhilirating, and completely necessary at that helpless stage of life.

So when, many years later, we find romantic love, there's something splendidly familiar about the exhilirating comfort of the fall. Romantic love feels wonderful for a lot of reasons, and I'm willing to believe that a number of them are related to the delighted nostalgia of again feeling utterly desired and adored; to the feeling that you can express your naked, Iddish (sexual) self without shame; to the total vulnerability and total trust that accompanies it. We're not able to completely return to an infant's unselfconsciousness, but romantic love takes us much closer than almost anything else we do as adults.

However, as I wrote a few months ago, true love doesn't stay on the level of infant infatuation, where the lover exists only to love us. Instead, it moves on to an understanding of the lover as his/her own person, with his/her own wishes and desires, very different from ours. This can be a difficult, but ultimately rewarding process-- it is, in its own way, a recreation and working through of the Oedipal crisis. Hopefully, though, this working through is much more satisfying than the first time through the crisis. The conclusion of working through as a child is to discover that others exist, at the same time as we are becoming stronger, less helpless, more capable of caring for ourselves. We learn that we're not the center of others' world at the same time as we learn that we don't need to be. When we work through it with our lovers, we're already strong and capable. But this time, we're able to feel deeply and truly loved by another real person. We realize that we can be loved, intensely and overwhelmingly, without needing to be the only important person in the universe.

Now... about polyamory.

I've seen polyamorous relationships go very well indeed, leading to deeply rewarding and satisfying shared lives. However, I've also seen them lead to a tremendous amount of drama. It's why I warn people to enter such relationships knowing that a great deal of work will be required to make them last without exploding.

I think that a major reason for this is that starting a polyamorous relationship is, inherently, a replication of the Oedipal crisis. This kind of relationship takes us from the world of two to the world of three, just like the realization that our parents love each other as well as they love us. Instead of the knowledge of the other parent entering into our relationship with a parent, we have another love entering into our relationship with our beloved. It forces us to realize that no matter how much our beloved adores us, s/he also has desires besides loving us.

And, like the first Oedipal crisis, this is terrifying. Even more so because having lost the infant-world-of-two for long, we rejoice to regain it in the lover, and the though tof losing it again is terrifying. The infantile Oedipal crisis tears us from the security of our own all-importance, and makes us question whether we will ever feel that secure, that loved, again.

Polyamory's second Oedipal crisis, as well, steals from us the illusion that we can have again the all-importance. However, polyamory provides one great advantage. Through it, we can see that the all-importance and the love are not necessarily inextricably linked. We see that we can be loved, truly and deeply, for everything we are, by someone who has his/her own mind and priorities. Even in the world of three, the world where others are real, the world of more-than-id-- even in such a world, we can still be loved.

Now, polyamory is hardly the only way to do this. As I mentioned before, this development is usually a natural consequence of loving well and truly for a long time; eventually, we start to see our beloved as the person s/he is, in addition to simply being our lover. I suspect that it also happens for people who are able to parent well, when both parents are able to accept that their co-parent loves the child for him/herself, not just as an extension of the parents. Polyamory is not necessarily the only or best way to work through again one's Oedipal crisis.

However, an advantage of polyamory is that it forces one to confront the issue. Two lovers might simply fall out of love, rather than working through it together. Two parents might drift apart, or might refuse to acknowledge the child's importance or separateness. However, while there are exceptions, polyamory seems to require people to face the Oedipal crisis head-on.

The disadvantage of this is that if everyone doesn't manage to work through, polyamory is explosive and painful, in a very primitive, visceral way. Even if people do manage it, the process of working through raises all of those feelings, and it's absolutely hellish. The last time we felt this way, we were at an age when tantrums and clinginess were normal and expected. Adults aren't supposed to feel this way; adults aren't supposed to act on those feelings. It sucks.

But the advantage of this is that a constellation who have truly worked through their issues will be very secure, both in their relationships and in themselves. They will know that they exist and matter, and that their lovers exist and matter. It's never a completed process-- the lovers will still have moments of selfishness, they'll still have infants inside crying for all the attention, but they'll also know that they can get their needs met without denying the needs of others. It's quite fun.

I don't think poly is for everyone. Some people's desires just don't run that way. Other people find it too threatening to be worthwhile-- maybe because their first Oedipal crisis was neither so hard that it cries out to be re-done, nor so easy that they feel sanguine about facing it again. But I think that it's really interesting howw it does work when it does. And I want to think about that some more.

To be continued, in a few years...

--R

The Great Uke-Off of '07, FINAL PART

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:15:08 GMT

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.

View Poll: #1113721

Thank you all for playing, it's been made of awesome!

--R

The Great Uke-Off of '07, part four

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:16:50 GMT

The Semi-Finals

So exciting! Voting is now closed-- please go to the FINAL ROUND!

View Poll: Round One: The Semes

View Poll: Round Two: the ukes

Does anyone else notice that most of the tops are non-anime, while most of the bottoms are anime? What's up with that?

--R

The Great Uke-Off of '07, part three

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:01:34 GMT

And on we go, to places more and more excellently brain-breaking.

GRIN.

View Poll: Part One: The Semes

View Poll: Part Two: the ukes

~~Cast your votes!~~ Voting is now closed, thanks! You know what to do!

The Great Uke-Off of '07, part two

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:50:26 GMT

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.

Round one

View Poll: Part One: The Semes

View Poll: Round Two: the ukes

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

The Great Uke-Off of '07

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:03:24 GMT

So, as a person in a same-sex relationship, I've always been amused/appalled by the insistence of slash and yaoi writers that one person in such a relationship must be the top in bed, at all times. It doesn't make sense. I know a very few people in relationships where this is usually the case, but even then it always seems so much more flexible than the writers make it out to be.

So, in order to deconstruct the idea a bit (as well as because I thought it would be fun last night at about 3am*) I am proposing the Great Uke-Off. (This is inspired by the Anime Emo Awards, which were just awesome.) Basically: I'm going to list frequently-slashed couples in all manner of fandoms (anime, live-action, books, etc), and ask you, o gentle readers, to vote on which member of the couple tops. Then in the next round, I'm going to pair all the resulting tops with each other, and ask you to vote on which member of each new pair tops (and pair all the resulting bottoms, ditto). And so on and so forth, until we have the Ultimate Uke and the, um, Supreme Seme. Or something along those lines.

You're welcome to only do the ones you know, or the ones you could even vaguely conceivably see as this being conceivable. You are also welcome to explain your logic in the comments, or make suggestions as to other pairs, or such.

View Poll: The Great Uke-Off of '07, Part one

Rejected fandoms: Hunter x Hunter (they're too young, even though ~~Killua totally tops, and Gon totally love it~~), ANY HOBBITS OF ANY KIND, Rousseau x Diderot (too obvious), Kira x Lacus (she totally tops. But she's all a girl and stuff.), Battlestar Galactica (So much het! Though I would totally argue that Starbuck tops Apollo.)

~~I shall post the next round tomorrow (Friday) at noonish.~~ Voting is now closed. Go vote on today's!

* Okay, yes, I did have a fever. And still do. But I'm sure that has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Really.

Dude... VACATION. How'd that happen?

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:30:21 GMT

I like it, tho. And in celebration, I shall do... well, not exactly a meme, but I ganked the idea from teenybuffalo: seven things I should like to NEVER SEE IN A WORK OF FICTION AGAIN.

1) Taking an otherwise undeveloped and neglected character and giving him/her a tremendous amount of character development immediately before killing him/her. So that we get to be all sad about a character death, and it gets to be all dramatic, without actually losing any of the main characters. This feels cheap to me. If you're going to develop someone, develop him/her-- and then keep him/her around so we get to see what happens next. If you're going to kill someone, make it real.

2) Obligatory romance. I like a good love story as much as the next rabid shoujo fan (i.e., quite a bit). But that means that I see love as something which is complicated and unpredictable, and each romance is unique. A "love interest" shoehorned into a plot which is really about something else loses all of the power of love, and doesn't really add much. (The converse of this is that I dearly love stories in which (straight) men and women are friends-- or in which queer characters of the same sex are. Love is awesome, as is sex-- but it isn't everything.)

3) A single gay character. Marvel comics are particularly guilty of this one: the story about a whole lot of straight people who have one (1) gay friend/team member/co-worker/etc... who is apparantly the only gay person in the universe. So there are some gay jokes, (which are okay because they have a gay character, doncha know) and maybe the gay character has Angst because s/he falls in love with a straight character... but s/he never does anything actually gay. Because there's no-one to do it with. So these characters do not date, have sex, have kids, or do anything else except give fashion advice and snark.

4) A "smart" character who appears to be a person of average intelligence who has swallowed a thesaurus. These are supposedly genius characters who don't actually do anything intelligent, who don't come up with intelligent plans or profound thoughts or clever jokes, but are "the smart guy." So they spend all their time in labs spouting incomprehensible technobabble, and they never say anything that doesn't have polysyllables. In X-Men, you can always tell that the writer's actually good because all of a sudden Beast becomes capable of using slang. Because, like, smart people do that, too. They just happen to be smart.

5) Monocultures. If you have an alien species, you had better give me a damn good reason for it if they all speak the same language, all have the same religion, all look alike racially, etc. It's like "the jungle planet,"-- planets are big, and they have multiple ecosystems. I would accept the answer that the planet is a hive mind, and so don't have different cultures because they never have enough distance separating them for such things to develop. But otherwise...no. If you don't have time to go into all the cultures, that's fine, but don't pretend they don't exist. (Star Trek, I'm looking at you.)

6) Female characters in historical settings who have modern sensibilities. I am a feminist, and proud to be one. But I know damn well that the way I'm a feminist is a product of my culture-- and particularly of birth-control technology and superior medicine and food-production techniques. In my culture it makes sense to have casual premarital sex, to treat anyone with a brain as equally able to do almost any kind of work, to value work done outside the home which brings in money more than work done inside the home which doesn't, etc. This just wasn't usually the case in pre-industrial times and places.

And the thing that people tend to miss is that this doesn't mean that most women resented it all the time. Because frankly, if it's 1300 Europe, everyone's life sucks, and everyone is stuck doing things that are difficult and unglamorous, and their best hope is heaven. I'm pretty sure that "women's work" was not seen as nearly as unimportant as people see it as being now-- because money was not, always, the major motivating force in people's lives. Survival was. Power and respect were not tied to work in exactly the same way they are now. In other words, not every single little girl wanted to run away and become a knight. I am eternally grateful to The Privilege of the Sword for the fact that the woman who learns swordfighting didn't want to-- she wanted to be a proper lady, becuase there was nothing wrong with that.

I realize that this makes it tricky if you just want to curl up with a nice fantasy novel that feels comfortable that you don't have to think about. But honestly.

7) Ignoring Christianity in settings where it's really, really present. I realize people worry about being banned. I realize that generic "gods" are easier to talk about than what you grew up with/what you grew up in opposition to. But sometimes you write American Gods, and you leave out Jesus almost entirely, and you spend an entire book talking about how Americans are so secular and this is no good country for gods, when in fact, it is an excellent country for one god, and he's won. And that's just lame.

...Hm. In looking over the list, it seems to mostly be annoyed at people for not thinking enough.

I'm cool with that.

--R

PS: VACATION!

Dan Savage is funny.

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 05:12:26 GMT

Now Rowling is being lauded by some ‘mos for her bravery—a gay character in Harry Potter! Who knew?! No one, of course, because Rowling didn’t see fit to mention Dumbledore’s sexuality in any of the seven HP books. Why not? Well, I guess Rowling couldn’t fit it in, seeing as she was working under such a strict word limits. Ahem.

And I rather agree. I mean, I can see how Harry really wasn't interested in Dumbledore's sexual orientation, and since he's the viewpoint character, even if Rowling had thought of Dumbledore as gay, Harry wouldn't care, and we wouldn't know. So, sure, fine, don't mention it. On the other hand, it's true that if Rowling had wanted to make a political statement that Queer People Are Okay, she needed to put it in the book.

What she did is, in my opinion, fanfic. I'm all in favor of fanfic. I'm willing to chalk this one up to that, and not think of it as much more significant than that. It's fan candy, really-- not substantial, but fun.

Maybe in her next book (which she says will not be fantasy, which I think is a good decision), she'll have queer characters. Maybe not. We'll have to see.

I am loving some of the icons lately, though. Grin.

--R

Not exactly YnM fic

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:48:12 GMT

This... is a sequel to my long Yami no Matsuei fic, Mercy of the Fallen. Except that this is not actually a good story. My beta-readers gave me useful suggestions as to how it could be made a good story, and I will totally use them at some point, but I just don't have the energy right now, because it involves a great deal of plot, which this just doesn't have. But I'm posting it anyway, because I kinda like it, and I think it's kind of a fun character sketch-- what do these characters look like eight years later?

Better

Years in the Bodhisattva’s service did not mean that Tsuzuki no longer cried. But now the feelings swept through him, deep and racking and then gone, like spring rains leaving behind a fresh sky. Now he mourned, and then finished mourning.

It was what he did on the day that Saki, finally old enough to reach the counters, slit his wrists with the kitchen knife.

Tsuzkuki and Hisoka were there almost as soon as it happened, but they didn’t do much besides be there. Oriya wrapped unnecessary bandages around his foster-son’s arms, applying them carefully, even though the wounds were fading from Saki’s left wrist before Oriya had finished wrapping the right. Saki sat still, face blank, unresisting. Oriya finished with the bandages and simply wrapped his arms around the boy, rocking him back and forth, just as he had when he first brought him home. Hisoka remembered the hours Oriya had spent then, holding the shrieking, terrified infant—singing, chanting, sometimes just talking, as Saki screamed, on and on and on. Until finally Saki had tired, quieted, willing to let himself be held and rest until he got his strength back enough to scream again. It had taken months, before the periods of rest were longer than the periods of screaming. Months after that until the screams confined themselves to his dreams and first hour after waking. Saki walked when he was three, spoke when he was four—well, but late. He had spent the first year of his life on terror, and it hadn’t left time for anything else.

Now… Hisoka and Tsuzuki stayed with Oriya until Saki slept again. “We’ll be back if you need us,” Tsuzuki said. “In a second. Less.”

“Or if I don’t?” Oriya asked, and the hint of humor in his voice reassured Hisoka. The sword-master had aged these past eight years, and just now he looked particularly grey. “We’ll be fine, shinigami. I’ll talk to his psychologist, we’ll change his medications. It’s just… these things happen.”

Tsuzuki nodded, not trying to put a better face on the situation than it deserved. “We’ll be back.”

“You always are,” Oriya said. “Take it easy.” Tsuzuki and Hisoka nodded, and disappeared.

At home on their bed, Tsuzuki sobbed in Hisoka’s arms, four of their dogs clustered around and nosing him worriedly. “I wanted it to be better for him,” Tsuzuki gasped. “Not worse.”

Than it was for you, Hisoka thought, the projected question met with affirmation so quickly it barely registered. “It’s hard,” he said aloud, reflecting the feeling—unfair, sad, gut-wrenchingly disappointing. He could usually tell his feelings from Tsuzuki’s these days, but not now, when they were so similar. He held his lover close, just to comfort him with his presence—I’m here. We’re together in this. I love you.

Presently, the tears slowed, enough for Tsuzuki to sit up and laugh at a dog, who had managed to wedge his entire body underneath Tsuzuki’s armpit and between the two of them, and was earnestly licking his chin. “Thank you, Shin-kun,” he said politely, too smilingly for the formality. “That’s very helpful.” The dog thumped his tail enthusiastically. Tsuzuki sighed, ruffling his ears. “Poor Saki-chan.”

Hisoka left his hands on Tsuzuki’s arms, his eyes on the clean white paper of the wall. “He does have it better, you know. He has us. And Oriya.”

“I had Ruka.”

Yes, and with that thought came, too complex for words, all of Hisoka’s feelings on the strengths and failings of Tsuzuki’s sister. Tsuzuki shrugged acknowledgement. “And a village that hated you. And no-one at all to tell you what you were.”

“You don’t think that’s his problem?” Knowing what he is?

“Being what he is, maybe, part of it. Not knowing.”

“Mm.” Tsuzuki stretched out on his back, all seven dogs (Yukiko, Yoko and Harry having come in from the garden) clambering around and on him, tails wagging. “Let’s go back tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Hisoka said. “That’ll give you enough time to get all the dog hair off the futon.” Tsuzuki shot him a wounded look, and Hisoka smirked, almost enough to laugh. Hisoka leaned over and stroked Tsuzuki’s hair, adding his own weight, so that Tsuzuki was covered completely with warmth. Tsuzuki just looked up at him and beamed.

They talked about it more, of course—with each other, at length, with Oriya, more tersely. Saki didn’t seem to want to talk. He spoke about other things, with his usual solemnity, but on this subject, he was silent.

That lasted for a few weeks, until Hisoka sat up at the office, shaken. Tsuzuki noticed it immediately. “What?”

“Oriya,” Hisoka said. “He’s worried… Saki’s crying.”

“What happened?” Tsuzuki was tense, ready to move in a second, but not until he knew what was going on. Their co-workers watched them, interested, ready to help at need.

Hisoka concentrated. “Nothing,” he said, slowly. “He just started crying.” He thought about it. “They’re okay, I think. But we should go by after work.”

Tsuzuki nodded, and returned his focus to the job in front of them, clean and certain.

After work, though, his focus was just as clearly on Saki. The boy greeted them at the door of Kou Kakou Rou with a hug for Tsuzuki and a bow for Hisoka, just like always. Hisoka studied him as he stood up. Saki’s purple eyes seemed brighter, less distant. Emotionally, he felt calmer—the deep, dragging despair lightened and dissipated. His face was clear, showing no sign of his earlier tears… although, Hisoka reflected, with his healing abilities, that wasn’t surprising. Still, there was something tremulous about the boy—and if he felt deeper, the fear was there again, creeping and relentless.

“Saki-chan,” Tsuzuki said, hefting the boy in his arms and setting him on a hip. Normally, he’d complain cheerfully about how heavy Saki was getting, and Saki would give his small smile. Not today, though. “Hisoka said you were sad, today?”

Saki shook his head solemnly. “I wasn’t sad. I was just crying.”

Tsuzuki ruffled his hair with a free hand. “What were you crying about?”

Saki studied Tsuzuki, and Hisoka was struck, yet again, by the parallels in their faces—Tsuzuki holding himself in miniature. The resemblance grew more and less pronounced as Saki grew older—more, as his baby face molded itself into Tsuzuki’s adult features, less, as Saki’s expressions became more mature and more clearly different from Tsuzuki’s smile. Saki fixed his hand around the lapel of Tsuzuki’s coat. “Let’s go inside.”

Oriya met them in the traditional bedroom he shared with Saki, the clean lines of the walls and wood floors disrupted by brightly colored toys and games. “Shinigami,” he greeted them tiredly. He looked at Hisoka and thought, clearly, take him? I need sleep… Hisoka nodded. Oriya ruffled Saki’s hair, saying “Take it easy, kiddo. Play with Tsuzuki and Hisoka for a while, all right? I’ll be down the hall.” Saki nodded, and Hisoka felt only a moment’s flutter of fear from him. Then he nestled into Tsuzuki’s arms, which tightened around him comfortingly. Oriya half-bowed his head and stepped out.

Tsuzuki sat down cross-legged, shifting Saki to settle in his lap. Saki played with the ends of the trenchcoat’s sash, folding them over each other in his hands. Hisoka knelt across from them. “You don’t feel sad,” Hisoka agreed. “It feels like today’s not so bad, that way.”

Saki nodded. “I feel better. Shouko-sensei says the new medicine is working.”

“That’s good,” Tsuzuki said encouragingly.

“Mm,” Saki said, “But now I can think better.”

There was fear in the words, and Tsuzuki glanced at Hisoka, puzzled, to confirm that he’d heard right. Hisoka nodded. “What did you think of?” Tsuzuki asked.

Saki’s hands worried the sash, his eyes dropping to watch them. His voice dropped to a whisper. “My brother.”

It had been a long time since Tsuzuki and Hisoka had feared Muraki. That wasn’t true for Saki. “What about him?” Tsuzuki asked.

Saki’s voice went even lower. “He could get me.”

Tsuzuki hugged him tightly. “Nope. He couldn’t.” He looked down at Saki in his lap. “Do you know why?” Saki shook his head. “I bet you do. Remember the story? What happened at the end?”

Saki twisted, facing away. “Kwannon took him away. And he died.”

“That’s right,” Tsuzuki said.

“But you died,” Saki said.

“True,” Tsuzuki said. “But we decided not to go on to a new life. Your brother did. So he’s gone.”

“But,” Saki said, clearly confident that his argument was irrefutable, “then he’s in a new life! So he got born again as a different person. So he’s in the world somewhere. And he could get me again!”

“He’d be younger than you,” Hisoka pointed out. “Less than seven.”

Saki shook his head. “He could still get me. He’s mean. ” He was trembling.

“Hey.” Tsuzuki snuggled Saki to himself again, and Hisoka felt the boy’s need for reassurance fighting a deep conviction that touch means hurt means pain. Tsuzuki felt the tension and ignored it, sitting perfectly still. “He won’t get you. Do you know why?” Saki shook his head fractionally. “Because you’ve got two senju* on your side.” Saki said nothing. “And if anyone ever tried to lay a finger on you, me and Hisoka would be there like that. We won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Saki thought about that for a moment. “But what if you were busy? With work?”

“Then one of us would take care of work, and the other one would come and help you.”

Saki shook his head. “But what if you were too far away? In another world or something?”

“Then we’d come as soon as we could,” Tsuzuki said. “And in the meantime, your dad would take care of you. You’ve seen him sparring with Hisoka, right? You know how strong he is.”

Saki shook his head. “He’s not as strong as you. My brother is stronger than him.”

“Not if it’s about you,” Tsuzuki said. “Love makes people stronger. Your dad could beat anyone, if it was to keep you safe.”

“No, he couldn’t,” Saki said. “What if they had magic? He doesn’t have any magic.”

“You do,” Tsuzuki said. “We put up wards all over your whole house. Remember? No-one can get in.”

“But what if I’m at school?”

“Then… then your teacher will look after you,” Tsuzuki said, but Hisoka could hear the doubt in his voice. Hisoka felt it, too. This wasn’t helping, he thought. Saki felt just as frightened, just as convinced that he wasn’t safe. It wouldn’t matter what they said—this wasn’t a simple desire for a hug and a reassurance that he was loved. It went deeper.

“No,” Saki said. “My teacher doesn’t have any magic at all. She couldn’t do anything. ”

“Well,” Tsuzuki started.

Saki didn’t let him interrupt. “And my brother would kill her. And my dad. Really fast. Faster than you can teleport. And then he’d get me!”

“No,” Tsuzuki said. “He wouldn’t. Honestly, Saki-chan. We will protect you.”

“No,” Saki said, starting to sob. “He’ll get me! He’ll get me! He will!”

“Saki,” Hisoka said.

Saki blinked up, startled out of his panic. Probably, Hisoka thought, he hadn’t heard Hisoka raise his voice in years—maybe not since their flame-filled rescue of him. Certainly never to him. Hisoka met Saki’s gaze. “Do you know what Kwannon-sama would say?”

Saki shook his head, wide-eyed. For all that senju and demons were a normal part of his life, Saki had never met their divine boss, and he was still in awe. Hisoka stood. “Come out to the garden, and I’ll tell you.”

Saki hesitated, obviously not wanting to leave Tsuzuki’s lap. Tsuzuki frowned, wondering at Hisoka—you sure? Hisoka nodded slightly, and Tsuzuki pushed Saki gently, urging him on. Slowly, still crying, Saki stood, leaning against Tsuzuki’s chest. Hisoka made no move to reassure him—just held out a hand. Hiccupping slightly, Saki took it.

Hisoka said nothing as he led the way to the garden. It was autumn in this part of Earth, and the maple leaves were falling over the garden, covering the stone path, the large rocks and raked pebbles in brilliant crimson. Hisoka sat down on a smooth stone, facing a taller one, where Saki sat, so that their faces were level. Hisoka gave him a moment for the sobs to slow. They did—this was strange enough to make Saki wary again.

“Do you trust us?” Hisoka asked.

Saki nodded, then stopped, confused. “Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

Saki looked away, picking up a leaf. “I know you would come to help me. But what if…” He hesitated, then went on when Hisoka made no move to interrupt him. “What if you couldn’t?”

“Then we couldn’t,” Hisoka said.

Saki stared at him, shocked, but somehow not entirely shocked. “He’d get me.”

“Yes,” Hisoka said. “Like he got you before. Or like he got me.” His voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “And then you’d get rescued, one way or another. Just like we were before.” He cocked his head, thoughtful. “What would that be like?”

Saki shook his head. “Bad, Soka! It would be terrible.”

“Yeah,” Hisoka said. “While he had you, it would be very bad. I remember. But what about when you were safe again?” Saki just stared at him. “Are you safe now?”

Saki wrapped his arms around himself. “No,” he said, whispering, horrified. “I’m not safe.”

“Why not?”

Saki glared at him, obviously tired of having to repeat this. “He could get me.”

“No,” Hisoka said. He moved forward, so that he was less than a foot away from the boy, holding his attention with his gaze. “I’m not asking about the future. Right now, Saki. Right this very instant.” He breathed slowly, his voice and feelings even, letting the boy’s fear run through him and away. “Is he hurting you right now? Is he here?”

Saki looked around. The garden was still, peaceful. A maple-leaf fell to land in the koi pond, sending out gentle ripples. “No… but he could!”

Hisoka slipped off the rock to kneel in front of him. “Give me your hands, Saki.” Slowly, the boy obeyed. “Is it all right if I change how you feel, to show you what I mean?”

“With empathy?” Saki asked, stumbling over the word. Hisoka nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Hisoka said. “Look around.” Saki glanced over his shoulder, worried. “What do you see?”

“Nothing,” Saki said.

“Nothing?” Hisoka said, careful not to sound amused—he remembered how much he’d hated adult condescension at this age. “I see red leaves… and white stones…”

“Oh,” Saki said. “The pond. And you. And the house.”

“Good,” Hisoka said. “What do you hear?”

Saki thought about it. “Um… the water-clock? And the cars outside. And that crow.”

“Mm,” Hisoka said. “And your breath.”

“You can’t hear breathing!”

“Try it.”

Saki sniffed, and opened his mouth to breathe out. “Okay. But only if you try hard.”

“Don’t try too hard,” Hisoka said. “Just breathe like always. But pay attention to it.” His voice was soft, calm. “Pay attention to everything—whatever you see, whatever you hear. Just notice it. There’s a lot to notice. Right?” Saki nodded, fascinated. Hisoka let the feelings build between them, and slowly, let his own calm overrule Saki’s fear. “Saki. You’re safe, now.” He felt the cool air on his face, Saki’s warm hands in his own. “You weren’t before. And maybe sometime later, you won’t be again.” The fear rose again, and Hisoka let it, lifted it from its roots, let it drift away. “But now, you’re here. With me. In this garden. With the leaves, and the crow, and the sky. You’re here, you’re now. Not then. Not there.” Saki’s wide purple eyes met his, and Hisoka gave him a half-smile. “Right here. Right now.” He let the feeling of safety expand—relaxed, eased. Safe. “Nothing is hurting you now. Is it?”

Saki shook his head, slowly. “Soka,” he said, “it was scary.”

“Yes,” Hisoka said. “It was.”

“I don’t want to be scared again.”

Hisoka shrugged. “You will be,” he said. “And then you’ll be safe again. That’s how it goes. But the fear won’t last forever.” He held Saki’s feelings, as gently and surely as he held his hands. “Nothing can. Not fear, not sadness—not hate. They all fade. They come and go.” He looked around, instilling it in Saki’s mind—the smell of burning leaves drifting on the breeze, the reflections of branches in the pond. “Are you safe, right now?”

Hesitantly, Saki nodded. “Yes.”

“Good,” Hisoka said. “Let’s go find Tsuzuki.”

Saki stood, picking up a leaf to bring inside. Hisoka followed, still feeling the moment’s calm. It won’t last, he thought. We’ll be back again, maybe next week. I’ll have to do it again, and again, and again.

But not right now.

Hisoka met Tsuzuki’s eyes as they came back in, ready to fill him in on everything. Tsuzuki just smiled, and turned to thank Saki for the leaf, bright as a flower. He’d gotten good at taking the pleasures of the moment. They all had, Hisoka thought.

Better. It wasn’t perfect. It would never be perfect.

But just now—it was good.

That would do.

End.

*Senju is a bit of a pun, as “senjuu” means “full time-worker”, but “senjukannon” means “thousand armed Kannon,” making Tsuzuki and Hisoka two of her thousand arms.

[IBARW] The “gotcha” game: How not to undermine your own anti-racism work.

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:11:38 GMT

Happy International Blog Against Racism Week!

So, I’m starting this with a caveat: the below is not meant to suggest that I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about race, try to educate, confront racism, etc. On the contrary—I’m incredibly glad people do, because it’s made a major change in my life. My first year of graduate school, one of my professors showed us some very unsettling films and had us read several assumption-questioning papers ("Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," etc.) It made me start to really question a lot of my beliefs about race, and it sent me to the internet, where I joined ap_racism and read and wrote a lot of essays (yay rachelmanija, oyceter, coffeeandink, and yhlee), and generally spent about two years thinking. The result of which is that I’m much clearer about my views, much more comfortable addressing and working with race in my fiction and my practice (very good thing when you work with clients of color), feel much less guilty and more empowered, and am enthusiastically working for equality.

All of which is why I was a little taken aback by what happened when, at a dinner party yesterday, the question of race came up. I mentioned the idea of differentiating between “prejudice” and “racism,” where racism = prejudice + power. What interested me was that while many people had interesting things to say, one of the reactions was not to react to the idea itself, but, “That sounds a lot like the kind of internet-wankery that people get into on livejournal.” I replied that yeah, I and a lot of my friends on livejournal do talk about race a lot, and someone else said that this was all well and good, but that often, it seemed to fall into the “gotcha-game”—where discussions of racism became, not discussions of racism, but people trying to catch each other doing something wrong.

Which is frustrating. Because yeah, many white people do feel very guilty and defensive about our privilege, our attitudes about race, etc, so there is a fair amount of defensiveness\. But on the other hand, it’s totally true. Some discussions about race really do feel like the discussants are just trying to “win” by proving the other person stupid.

The problem with this, and the way to prevent it, seems to be one of clarifying one’s goals before starting the conversation. I can see five different reasons why people discuss race, particularly online, and I think they’re all worthwhile… but when they get conflated, things go downhill fast.

As far as I can see, anti-racism activists write about and discuss race in order to:
1. Work out our own ideas, or vent feelings. I’ve written a number of essays in my own journal, and had a number of conversations because I was trying to figure things out, or relate issues specifically to myself. It’s true that, obviously, I wouldn’t be writing a livejournal entry if I didn’t want people to read it, but it’s not directed at anyone else specifically, or with any real purpose beyond personal satisfaction, relief and self-understanding.
2. Be politically active. This is when we have a specific action we want people to take: sign this petition, write to your congress-critters, boycott this product, etc. It’s directed and focused, and we’re using our writing to increase the number of people taking this kind of action. It’s not usually opening up a debate (that happens, because people will argue anything, but it’s not the point).
3. Keep ourselves safe. This is when someone has said something to us that we find hurtful or offensive. Particularly by commenting in our journals, sending us email, etc. In which case, I see little reason to treat it differently from other kinds of harassment—the thing to do is to answer it however we see fit, ignore it, delete it, ban the person, cut the person, report the person, etc. There’s also the form of keeping ourselves safe which involves not going places where we know we’ll get hurt—not reading the journals of people who say offensive things if we're not up for being offended, or, if they’re people we have a relationship with, letting them know that we were upset and we’d really appreciate it if, out of consideration for us personally, they would cut it out.
4. Look for people being stupid for our own entertainment. On the other hand, sometimes we go and read people being racist because we want to. I’m not sure why we do this—why we click on the link that we know leads to ass-hattery. Maybe we enjoy having something to feel angry about, maybe we want to know the depths people can sink to, maybe we just like bolstering our self-esteem by feeling smug about being more enlightened than other people—I don’t know. But sometimes we do this, and sometimes we write about it, and I think it’s not the healthiest thing in the world as a regular diet, but sometimes it’s okay-- when we keep in mind that that’s what we’re doing.

But the tricky thing, the big hang-up of all this, is that people will throw all of those under the general subject of 5. Educating. Which is problematic, because I think educating (or, to put it more respectfully, arguing the anti-racist position) is very worthwhile (it worked for me)—but only when it’s done well. As I see it, the purpose is to present anti-racist ideas to people as clearly and convincingly as possible. It has to be done smoothly, in such a way that it slips past defenses to present a point of view that people may not have thought of before, such that their first reaction is “Oh, interesting—I never thought of that before!” not, “Shut up! I am not!” The former lets the person think the idea over and decide whether or not s/he agrees with it—the latter cuts off that possibility before the conversation’s started.

And for that reason, I think that if we are truly trying to change people's minds, we have to be non-confrontational. We have to use I-statements (“I hate having to worry about getting hassled by the cops,” “I wish there were more people who looked like me on TV,” “I don’t want to get served first when there’s a person of color standing in front of me in line,”), and listen to what the other person is saying as non-judgmentally as possible, and above all, express that we disagree with his/her ideas, not that we think s/he is a bad person. In other words, communication skills—they don’t stop being useful just because the subject is important.

And it’s worth noting that we don’t need to do these things for any of the other four purposes. When we’re not trying to educate, there’s no earthly reason to stifle feelings or ranting at all (even though people often do get defensive around anger, particularly white people around the anger of people of color—the same thing about avoiding places that make you feel too uncomfortable to be applies here, too. If someone is going to get upset about me being angry in my own space, that’s his/her look-out). A lot of the time, we aren’t intending to convince anyone of anything, and it’s unreasonable to expect us to spend all our time being presentable. If we're in a conversation where we don't care about what the other person thinks, or don't see any chance of our changing his/her mind, then we can say whatever we want, and it doesn't matter how we say it (beyond our own standards of polite).

But when we are trying to convince, people aren’t going to listen if they feel more attacked than valued. It’s all about relationship, I think. If you care about someone, because you feel affection or respect or both for him/her, you’re more likely to listen to what s/he says. If you don’t feel either of those things, then you’ll listen if it’s interesting, but you have no particular impetus to agree. Therefore, if we really want to change someone’s mind, we need to do something to interest him/her or to make him/her like us or respect us. It helps to have a previous positive relationship—people’s minds are more often changed by friends than by strangers. But in either case, it won’t work to just tell people they’re wrong without giving them a reason to care what we say.

This is all a little discouraging, and it makes the idea in some ways less fun—it feels really good to really zing someone in an argument. But there’s a lot that needs to change in order to reach racial equality, and in the end, I’d rather win the war than the flame-war.

--R