2008 election stuff

Due to various craziness in my life I've not been paying attention to blogs very much. It ended up at the bottom of my priority list. Honestly, I was getting pretty sick of the 2008 election campaigning and didn't have much to say anyhow.

To welcome my return to blogging I'm going to talk a bit about the stuff that has happened this week in the "race to November".

I have been planning on voting for Barack Obama for a long while now. I haven't been one of those electoral fangirl/fanboys about him, though, simply because I had other things to worry about. I think he's not perfect but an awesome candidate and after my first choice got nixed in the primaries I said "okay, Obama it is!". I liked the idea of Hilary Clinton running ... but liked her less than I liked Obama.

I've been pretty severely burned when I got too attached to a political candidate so I was kinda avoiding that, too.

This morning on NPR they played an excerpt from Obama's acceptance speech last night (couldn't watch it, no TV). I got choked up and started crying: just a wave of emotions of amazement, hope, "Oh my gods, this could work!" and just ... wow, so much potential for good and making things right!

I'd kinda shoved my idealism into the closet for a while, gave in to cynicism. It is startling to have it awakened so suddenly and strongly like that.

Meanwhile, McCain has chosen Sarah Palin for his VP. Let me go over the critical parts here:

Lifetime NRA member.

Pro-death penalty.

Against polar bears being listed as an endangered species (translation: doesn't believe in global warming).

Wants creationism to be taught in public schools.

Against gay marriage and queer rights.

Anti-choice

And that's just the stuff I gleaned from today's version of the Wikipedia article! That's not even digging up her voting record or anything.

'Nuff said, in my mind.

If McCain thinks Palin will steal Clinton's disgruntled supporters, he's ridiculous. Sure, a female vice or presidential candidate is an awesome thing. But it doesn't actually show progress if she is going to uphold the beliefs and politics that deny women equality.

I would hope that no Clinton supporter jumps ship to vote for McCain/Palin just based on Palin's gender. That's not feminism, that's not equality, that's not change or progress. That's voting for the status quo of women's subjugation in a skirt. Oh, excuse me, "pantsuit."

I think Hilary Clinton said it best: "No way. No how. No McCain."

"Emotional"

Headline that caught my eye today: Obama, emotional Clinton eye Super Tuesday

You know, all this stupid media-attention to the primaries is making me tired and irritable. What bugs me the most is how sexist most of the presentation of Hilary Clinton has been.

You know, the last time I checked there were more emotions than "teary" and yet that's the only thing that gets called emotional. Anger is an emotion, so is frustration, happiness, concern, joy, optimism, boredome, anxiety, sadness and excitement. All of the candidates are emotional right now, they're all showing emotion every single day of the week and during every speech or handshake.

A passionate speech is emotional, rallying supporters is emotional, getting interviewed is emotional.

Somehow, none of the things that male candidates do is emotional, but if Hilary Clinton gets teary-eyed, she's being emotional.

Watch out, voters! Women are emotional! We don't want some hysterical woman running the country! We want some stoic man who doesn't let his emotions show. Except, for, you know, when he gets excited about football scores or gleeful about winning a primary or frowning about going down in the polls.

It seems that apparently emotion is bad when women have them, but if men have emotions it's not even noticed.

Some Thoughts on recent political stuff

I'm getting really sick and tired of all these primaries.
I'm an impatient type and I know I don't like the majority of the candidates running (of either party) so I'm very bored of the primary process. I just want it to be November already so I can cast my vote for whoever the Democrats put forward (or do a write-in, I'm not sure).

I'm also getting really annoyed at all these various articles, and radio bits about "women voters". Yesterday on NPR they had two female political experts talking about how, omg, women don't all vote the same. wow, it just blew my mind. Who knew that all women don't think the same? *rolls eyes*

It just grates on me. When we talk about voting patterns there are a lot of variables. I just find it highly irritating that when talking about female voting patterns, everyone acts as if it were some strange thing that no one has ever seen before. There is this underlying feeling of "Women don't all vote alike? Alert the presses!"

However, for once, female voting patterns and women's issues are getting some air time. I guess that does go to show that Hilary Clinton being in the election is accomplishing something towards women's issues. The candidates have to actually consider women's issues in the race, they can't just ignore them. She is not my first choice of the candidates running (or not running) but the historical value of her candidacy is certainly awesome.

Of note, Barak Obama doesn't have a section of his website on women's issues, nor a section on queer issues. Come on, dude, if you can't even have some staffer write up a blurb for the website, if you cannot even throw together some token paragraph, that tells me that you don't consider those issues to be important. Well, feminism and gay rights are important to me so that's why you're not my first choice of the candidates, either.

Normal? Why would we want to be normal?

ick. I made grand promises to myself to update this blog more frequently and I fail utterly right out of the gate. Anyhow, here is a quick update-let.

The screenwriter for the movie Juno (which I talked about earlier), is a woman named Diablo Cody. Yep, that's a weird name. She made it up herself when she was starting a new phase in her life (personally, I think it is an awesome name). She's been a stripper, a book author and now a screenwriter. Not the most standard career path in life but I don't think that matters. Her first screenplay was amazing and I'm interested in seeing more of her work on the big screen. A lot of people enjoy her writing and quirky personality.

And then you have some people (TV hosts) who are asking her When she plans to be a normal woman and have kids.

A "normal" woman? Excuse me, people, but a) there is no such thing as normal and b) have kids? Did you even see her movie? I mean, for goodness sake, there is no normal. Even having kids isn't normal!

God, talk about condescending. I thought we were past the days when a woman writer wasn't allowed to have her own life.

No, apparently, she isn't "normal"; needs to get a normal name and a normal life and pop out some babies like a good housewife. Apparently it is perfectly normal to pester a female screenwriter like this but you don't seen talk show hosts asking male writers when they're going to settle down and have children.

*rolls eyes* Come on, people, women are human. We can, and want to, do more than just be baby incubators. Sometimes, yeah, we want kids but even having kids doesn't make one normal. I know some awesomely weird parents out there. Having children does not equal normal. What's so great about normal?

Normal is boring! Children or not, sometimes women want to do non-normal things or not. Sometimes we might even *gasp* write movies, and enjoy it.

Young Unwed Mothers

Over the holidays I got a chance to see Juno; which is an amazing movie about a 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant and her decision to carry it to term and give the baby to adoptive parents. It's a fun, quriky movie that has a lot of humorous parts but it also is very moving.

It's not a dramatic/traumatic look at the whole thing: in general Juno's family and friends are supportive. It's a look at the way relationships work and how pregnancy and motherhood factor in to that. At one point Juno's father asks her what she's been up to and she says "oh, just out dealing with things way beyond my maturity level." I think that's basically the theme of the movie: how one girl deals with something big, serious and unexpected and comes out on the other side as a stronger person.

It doesn't get in to the whole abortion/anti-abortion debate very much, other than the fact that Juno considers all her options and decides that what she wants is to have the child. As someone who is pro-choice, I consider this a good thing. The point about being pro-choice is that you want all the options available to women. If they choose abortion, that's great; if they chose childbirth, that's great, too. Both of those decisions are great precisely because they were what that individual woman decided on. It's her decision. Not mine, not yours, hers.

So, Juno is a fantastic movie. Very fun and a clever look at relationships and pregnancy. I very much recommend it.

This movie pick for New Year's Day was made a little bit more topical because a few days previous a relative of mine was complaining to some of us about how one of her young co-workers had gotten pregnant. I'm not sure of the woman's age, my relative didn't say other than a strong disapproval of someone "so young" getting pregnant out of wedlock. And there-in lies the kicker: the out-of-wedlock part. My relative was up in arms at this whole thing and was bad-mouthing the woman about how stupid the she was to get pregnant and how further stupid she was to actually plan to have the child. I don't find pregnancy out-of-wedlock to be the end of the world but I couldn't vocalize this to my relative. I asked if the father was at least sticking around and she said yes. I expressed my opinion that, that being the case, perhaps this wasn't the disaster she was making this woman's pregnancy out to be. I was met by a blank stare and then further ranting about the young woman's future being ruined.

I admit that I don't necessarily have mainstream views on a lot of issues related to women but I thought we'd gotten past some of the handwringing and pearl-clutching about women having children out of wedlock. I was kind of surprised to hear so much lamenting about that.

I can see where people are coming from when they say that someone is "too young" to get pregnant, but I completely fail to understand why people insist on shaming and blaming these young women for their choices. Yes, it would be ideal if every young person (male or female) knew about and used properly, birth control. Yes, there are better times in life than others during which to have children. However, the facts are that sex education in this country is woefully inadequate and most people are simply not taught how to avoid pregnancy. You cannot blame these "young unwed mothers" for getting pregnant because in most cases, they didn't really know how to avoid it. Do not bring up abstinence, I will laugh at you.

You also cannot blame these young women for choosing to have children. No, it may not be the ideal time for having a baby but for whatever reason, their decision was to carry it to term. You have to damn well respect that. Why? Because it's not shameful to bring a life into the world, it's not irresponsible to want to love a child, it's not wrong to stick to your own beliefs about when life begins.

Pregnancy isn't some badge of shame. I have met more people than I would like (pro-choicers and anti-choicers alike) who heap shame, anger and guilt on women who choose to have children in trying circumstances. We shouldn't be blaming these young women for their decision to have a child, we should honoring it!

In Juno, an ultrasound technician makes a disparaging comment about it being a good thing than Juno is giving the child up for adoption, with the implication that Juno would be an unfit mother. Juno's stepmother stands up for Juno and lectures the technician. She tells her that she should stick to her job description and keep her opinions to herself. That's how I feel, too.

We should be supporting youg unwed mothers, not judging them. If they're undecided, we need to present the options and give them honest assessments of the future (with the realization that they may not take our advice). If they're decided we need to either give them our support in making things easier for them, or get out of the way.

Motherhood isn't something disgusting and evil. It's not wrong to have a baby. Motherhood isn't something anyone, of any age, should be blamed for.

2008

I don't make many resolutions at the beginning of a year because those don't always lead to actual attainment of those goals.

However, one goal that I've been struggling to reach lately is to update this blog more regularly. So, that is #1 of my New Year's resolutions.

I've been kinda using this blog as a rant-space. Where I can vent about stupid sexist things that I encounter. Venting helps, but I think I want to go beyond just complaining. I'm going to try to post entries about positive things: examples of stuff gone right.

I'm also going to try to talk about more main-stream news issues, too. I'd been shying away from those because I think there are a lot of very good bloggers already covering those things. However, that doesn't necessarily mean I don't have thoughts on them. So maybe I'll post some of those thoughts.

Happy New Year!

Book Review: Pegasus in Flight

(Now, for an older sci-fi classic I'd not read before)

Pegasus in Flight by Anne McCaffrey is the first in a series about Talents. Talents are humans who have extraordinary powers like telekinesis, telepathy, precognition & etc.

Overall it was okay. Semi-predictable and the characters are kinda all cardboard cut-outs but, meh, it's okay as a quickie nothing-else-to-read book.

The characterization of women is a bit disturbing. There are a lot of female characters, a lack isn't the problem, and there is a variety represented as well: all kinds of occupations and backgrounds and demographics. That's not the problem, either. The problem is that all of the female characters (except for Tirla, I'll get to her in a moment) are portrayed at one point or another (some more often than others) as hysterical emotional beings that must be comforted or silenced by the men. The men never have moments of doubt or weakness, if they make a mistake they jump in to action. The women are the ones who swoon, wail, gasp and need comforting and physical support during frequent periods of emotional distress.

Even more disturbing, if the emotional distress of females is inconvenient to the males in the scene, the male Talents simply silence them with handy mental blocks or push them out of the room with their mental powers. The only times when Talent's abilities are used to bully or control people directly on a face-to-face basis, it is by the men, and it is always directed at women. Once, Peter, a young talent who is 14, uses his ability to physically remove a male from the room but this is the only time an ability is used to bully a male to this extent. Of course, Peter's motivation for doing so is to protect a woman (a woman who should, one expects, have been able to take care of the problem on her own if written by a different author).

Tirla doesn't fall prey to the emotional swoony-ness. She gets to keep her active, tomboy-ish behaviors the entire book. Well, sorta. As soon as she meets the other Talents she becomes more girly. Buying clothes at an unstoppable speed, dressing up in "inappropriate" clothing. It's just like Lyra; apparently, girl children are allowed to take on whatever gender role that pleases them, but as soon as they even get anywhere near puberty then, bam! Must conform to societal rules about what Girls Should Do.

One of the stranger bits in the book is the interaction between Rhyssa and David. Rhyssa is highly Talented, David has no Talent. An underlying subplot is their developing mutual affection and the slight stigma of a Talented marrying an unTalented. Of course, they talk a lot but it's all business. Their feelings towards each other are hinted at a bit but they don't have many personal scenes together to talk about this. Rhyssa is often bemoaning the fact that unTalented relationships are "unsuccessful" because the unTalented cannot read each other's minds. Indeed, she can't read David's and she laments that being unable to read his mind is stifling her ability to truly connect to him. I was flabbergasted. um… you don't need to be able to read minds to have a successful relationship! Maybe she should, you know, use this talking thing and then she could learn how he thinks without telepathy!

Even stranger, in their first moment alone together when they actually admit their feelings for each other, David asks her to marry him right on the spot (and she says yes). Wow. I mean, love at first sight and all, and this is a pulp novel. But, what? You've not even had one close one-on-one interaction with each other but already you know you want to marry each other? Also, whatever happened to being worried that you didn't know well enough what he was thinking? Wouldn't you want to, you know, talk first?! I'm not even going to get in to the weirdness in the epilogue in which David and everyone else except Rhyssa knows that she's pregnant before she does.

Also, the Sascha/Tirla love thing. Ew. Ew ew ew. Pedophilia = BAD. Anne McCaffrey tried to slip in some convenient little mention in the epilogue that he got a precognitive flash of he and Tirla getting married and having children. But, still, eeeeww! I don't care how you dress it up with precog messages of Twoo Wuv: a grown man (in his 30s?) lusting/loving after a twelve-year-old. That just squicked me out like crazy. ugh! How is it that the female characters in the book could be motherly towards Peter without falling in love but the only love and affection a male adult can have towards a female child cannot be just paternal, it has to be lust/love? Why couldn't Sascha just be the really awesome father/uncle figure that Tirla never had? Why did he have to fall in love/lust with her? What the hell?

Also, what did any of this have to do with a Pegasus anyways? I guess somewhere in there I completely missed the connection.

Anyhow, I'm definitely not reading the others in the series. And I'm pretty close to giving up on Anne McCaffrey altogether. Ho hum, life goes on, on to other books.

The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass

The Subtle Knife

Not too much to say about this one. I think I really did like The Golden Compass best out of all three in terms of plot, setting and characters. The Subtle Knife wasn't bad but Will, as a character, was less interesting to me than Lyra. I don't like impatient, bossy characters and that's what Will was. He was always angry and impatient with someone or something or himself and the plot didn't grab me as much.

Feminism-wise, eh, it was okay. The only new semi-major female character was Mary Malone whose expert scientific ability was overshadowed by her scatterbrained, oh-what-do-I-do-now handwringing. Kinda frustrating. Meanwhile, Lyra stopped being the stubbon fire-brand tomboy she was in the first book and became a mostly-passive little follower of Will.

I mean, she wasn't completely changed but enough that I missed the way she was in the first book. She stopped using the alethiometer entirely because of some vague concern that Will might object... even though she wasn't asking questions about him. It felt frustrating and out-of-character. It also felt lazy on Phillip Pullman's part: whoops, I gave the characters a thing that will foretell all the plot twists I was going to throw at them, damn, I need to think up some way to make them stop using it. I know that Book 2 was Will's story more than Lyra's but I guess I'd been hoping she wouldn't stop being a confident active character.

The Amber Spyglass

The third book felt strangely anticlimactic. The land of the dead was interesting and the whole concept of the dust and the windows was interesting... but the end of the book felt very anticlimactic.

Mary Malone in this book becomes a walking plot device more or less. Lyra regains a bit of her former pluck but not nearly enough. She morphs from the androgynous spitfire wonder child into the loving Eve.

I'm not really sure what to say other than that most of the female characters fell into two categories by the end of the trilogy: mothers or lovers/beloveds. Any female character in the book who meets Lyra or Will turns in to a doting, caring mother figure. Even the cold aloof witches, even the scientist, even the wasp/fairy (I can't remembe the name) woman, even Mrs. Coulter.

I would've liked it better if Mrs. Coulter had retained her natural disdain for Lyra, she didn't need to be redeemed. Female characters can be evil, female characters can be selfish, female characters don't all need to be perfect mothers. Even the harpies became nice at the end! Female characters don't need to be tamed, dammit. And Lyra and Mrs. Coulter became adoring, supportive partners to their respective beloveds. Which is fine and all, love is good. I just didn't want them to stop being all the strong, independent active things that made them distinct characters in the process.

"You got a deal!"

This morning I was browsing the Washington Post and happened to notice two paragraphs at the end of this article:

In an interview last week with ABC News, President Bush offered a few details of how his future son-in-law, Henry Hager, asked for Jenna Bush's hand in marriage. Hager approached Bush while on a visit to Camp David, saying he wanted to talk. Bush said that he knew what was up; he had already asked Jenna what she would do if Hager proposed, and she said she would accept enthusiastically.

"He came in and, and gave a very . . . adept presentation," Bush said, although he acknowledged he cut Hager off. "You got a deal," Bush said he told Hager, before his future son-in-law could get in all his "talking points."

I am just dumbfounded! "You got a deal"? That's what you say when you're selling used cars, or maybe cattle, not when you're talking about your daughter.

The whole concept of having to ask the woman's father if you can marry her squicks me out. I mean, she's not his property and it's not his decision, it's her decision. While it bugs me I can understand the desire to have good relations with your significant other's family, so I don't find it unacceptable that Henry Hager went to talk to Dubya about it. And, I guess, to Dubya's credit, he had asked Jenna about her feelings.

But, seriously, "You got a deal"? How disgusting! That unacceptable. While I have no love for Jenna Bush, she's still a person and doesn't deserve to be treated like property to be bought, sold or bargained for.

Tombstone

The novel I'm writing this month is a Western. I'm having a lot of fun with it. For my research I've been making a lot of trips to the library to go through books for all the little historical details. I've also been watching a lot of Western movies. *grin*

Tombstone is my favorite Western movie (thus far). And even if I find some better ones in this stack sitting next to my desk I'll still enjoy it.

However, every time I see the movie, I just get so mad at Wyatt Earp. He is busy mooning after the actress while his wife kills herself of an overdose of laudanum because of his neglect.

You're supposed to sympathize with good ol' Wyatt becuase he's the Good Guy and his wife is portrayed as a bitch. But every time I see the movie I can't help but see the wife as desperate, lonely and scared. She's trying to escape her unhappy life and Wyatt doesn't even try to help her; he just yells at her and lets her walk away while he pines after his actress.

The end is a glorified "yay everything is happy now!" chick-flick ending. You could almost miss the voice-over that just casually mentions that his wife dies. As if that was just an "oh, too bad" kinda thing instead something really very tragic. And how convenient, she leaves Tombstone and dies therefore Wyatt can have his happy ending with the actress.

argh. argh argh argh.

Brief thoughts on music

(I apologize in advance, my posts will be haphazard this month. I'm writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month and that is keeping me pretty busy.)

I was listening to the radio the other day and it occured to me that sometimes it's difficult to determine whether a given song is sexist, an example of a dysfunctional relationship, or both.

Some songs are blatantly anti-woman: treating us like we're objects or inferior. Some songs are just really big examples of dysfunctional relationships: relationships in which one or both of the people involved are in it for Completely Wrong Reasons (some of them even admit this). Some songs are both: the relationship is dysfunctional because the man thinks the woman is his property, or the woman thinks she has to follow traditional gender roles in order to keep the man she loves.

Ick. Ick, ick, ick. I understand that a lot of songs are about strong emotional impacts and dysfunctional relationships certainly bring out the angst. But, really, do we have to have so many songs equating "love" with sexism and passive-aggressiveness and selfishness?

Nikon Birding Catalog

Recently I attended a local birding festival. It wasn't huge but it did attract upwards of 1,000 people a day and lasted for two days. It was quite fun and I enjoyed myself immensely.

On the first day I attended a talk about Digiscoping and Birding Optics (for those who don't know, digiscoping is using one's digital camera to take pictures through a scope). The talk had an audience of maybe 25-30 people. Looking around the room I noticed that at least 75% of the people were female. The talk was given by a sales rep from Nikon and after the talk I wandered down to their booth to check out their scopes and pick up a catalog.

When I got home I browsed through the catalog a bit and something immediately jumped out at me that had nothing to do with the quality of their binoculars and scopes: there were no women in their catalog. None at all. This was their "Sports and Birding" catalog, very specific. Most of the birders I know are female, over half of the birding festival attendees were female (the audience composition of the Digiscoping talk was just one example) and yet the birding catalog had no women in it.

There were lots of men, though. Manly men! Trekking across prairies with huge pieces of camera and optics equipment across their shoulders. Climbing trees to band owls with huge birding scopes strapped to their backs. Paddling through marshes with a whole assortment of cameras, binoculars and scopes in their canoes. The catalog had profiles of three male birders and scientists about how they used Nikon optics and cameras in their work. Well, bully for them.

I guess Nikon doesn't think that birding is something women do. Or maybe Nikon just doesn't want to be associated with "feminine" things so it has decided to ignore all the female birders out there using their products. Maybe "birding" isn't manly enough so it has to be the sport and birding catalog and heaven forbid anyone be shown in their catalog just casually watching birds from a porch. Oh, no, birding is X-TREME! Birding takes you into danger, birding equipment has to be able to fight battles!

All the birds featured, as well, were raptors. No warblers, no seagulls and certainly not any of those teeny, poofy, non-manly little brown birds. Birding is dangerous, didn't you know? And therefore birding is done by Manly Men with their big, long birding scopes. *cough* Compensating, much? *cough*

The Golden Compass

Why, yes, I am a bit behind on reading Great Modern Classics of Fantasy (*rolls eyes*). I just did a very long road trip and because I hadn't gotten around to reading His Dark Materials yet I picked up the first and second books on CD.

I finished The Golden Compass the other day about an hour before the road trip was over. I haven't started the second yet (but I'll listen to it soon). I'm kinda glad I did read it because now I can see the movie and have a better perspective on things.

To me the book is not the stunning work of fantasy that everyone seems to say it is. I mean, I liked it but I wasn't bowled over by it. I did like some of the concepts (daemons, Dust, the neat steam-punk-ish atmosphere of the world) so I will read the other two books. However, it's not my favorite fantasy series.

Anyway, enough of the general stuff, I want to talk about feminism in the book!
(this will involve spoilers if you haven't read it yet)

I am not satisfied at all with the portrayal of women in The Golden Compass. The female characters are few and far between and have very limited roles. Men get to have a variety of positions and jobs and personalities but women are limited to only a few. At least thus far in the trilogy we seem to have two main types of human women, with Lyra in the middle as an androgynous child-innocent. Those two types are a) Unattractive Good Women and b) Attractive Evil Women. Non-humans (witches, bears and daemons) seem exempt from those roles but have their own sexist bits, as well.

Lyra, the main character, is female, but lives a very androgynous life. She is a tomboy through and through: fighting, climbing, playing outdoors, lying, spitting and cursing. While she becomes a bit more traditionally feminine later in the book it is mostly due to Mrs. Coulter's influence (who I will get to later). However, it is very strongly stressed throughout the book that Lyra has not yet hit puberty and this is critical for her abilities with the golden compass and her daemon's characteristics, and her innocence.

As the Chosen Child of this world's prophecy (due to Christian themes running through the trilogy) her position is as an innocent who has not yet been tainted, who is free from sin and sex and experience. This is very key to the plot. Personally, I don't think anyone's gender should really matter until they hit puberty and even after that not so much. So I don't object to Lyra being an androgynous character. However, it means that Lyra as a powerful, critical character to the plot isn't really seen in terms of being female. She is seen as an Extraordinary Child; all her normal activities and choices that aren't stereotypically female, and her above-normal powers are not seen as choices and desires that break the male/female mold, but rather as things inherent to her as the Chosen Child. The other female children she meets are very much girls while Lyra is only one by default. The book seems to be saying that girl children have to fit certain molds, except for Lyra but that's because she's Special, not because she's just being a normal child and ignoring traditional gender roles.

Meanwhile, the women of her world seem to fall into two categories: Frumpy Kind Women and Beautiful, Smart, Evil Women. Just for kicks let's compare what roles males have in Lyra's world with those that females have. Men can be: servants, cooks, polar explorers, boatmen, fishermen, scholars, clergy, doctors, politicians, aeronauts, warriors, consuls, Gyptian leaders, husbands and fathers. Women can be: servants, wives, mothers, nurses, scholars, gossips and polar explorers. This does not sound equal to me, and it's all based on traditional gender roles: that women either cannot or should not do things other than tend to children and the house. The female scholars are portrayed as unattractive and dowdy and Lyra thinks of them with disdain, as lesser scholars and as inferior humans; there is never any evidence that they actually have intelligent things to say. As for polar explorers, Mrs. Coulter is the only female one of those. So men can go hither and yon doing whatever while women have passive childcare/housecare-related roles.

The only truly active female character (and the one who is the most feminine, as well) is Mrs. Coulter. She is clever and ambitious (as if she is the only woman in the world with cleverness and ambition!) and beautiful (using her beauty and sex as a weapon to control people). All in all this presents the view that beautiful, smart women are conniving, evil and malicious. That they are dangerous exceptions to the female sex. That women should normally be kindly, moderately-attractive and passive. But watch out world! If women are beautiful and clever and active, they're evil temptresses bent on controlling you! How ridiculous! How insulting!

Also, there is the undercurrent to all this in which Mrs. Coulter is held up as an example of a woman who does not know her place in regards to her child. Mrs. Coulter is a Bad Mother which is a death sentence in this society. Lord Asrael was a pretty shoddy father (and then revealed to be as bad as Mrs. Coulter) and yet he is portrayed in a sympathetic fashion about his care for Lyra; with implications that he does care for her and love her. Mrs. Coulter on the other hand, is portrayed as greedy and wanting Lyra only as a doll or pet, to control her. In this patriarchal world, any paternal love is considered a bonus and shows extraordinary character in men, but any maternal love is considered basic and not extraordinary for a woman at all. When maternal love is absent in a woman it must be something as drastic as being a sadistic villain; it wouldn't have any other non-evil reason like perhaps just not really being all that maternal by nature.

Meanwhile, you have the non-humans: daemons, bears and witches.

I don't really have much to say about daemons other than the fact that it is interesting to note that humans have daemons of the opposite sex. Except for one noted case in The Golden Compass, same-sex daemons aren't mentioned. I'm wondering if a reason for the normal state of things, and the exception, will be revealed in the later books.

For bears, things are just as sexist. Well, no, they are more sexist than with human women. Male bears are seen as warriors and kings. Female bears are mentioned twice: as the evil bear king's harem and as the reason why Yorik Bearnason killed a rival. Female bears are seen only in terms of sex which is worse than the portrayal of human women; at least human women could be something other than sex objects. Female bears aren't even given much thought by the author beyond their use in furthering the species.

Witches are an odd example and one that I am curious to see how they are portrayed in the next few books. On the one hand they are portrayed as being wise, magical, strong and intelligent. On the other hand they are constantly shown to be non-human: ambivalent of human concerns, alien in nature, they cannot feel cold and they can see and feel other worlds. This is constantly reinforcing the idea that witches are Other, as in, not like Us. The fact that they are all women (and pretty much the only smart, competent, attractive women in the books' world) leads this line further in associating women in general as Other. Which isn't a good thing. Men are not the default and women are not a deviation from the norm. In real life, we are all human, men and women. The fact that the fantasy women in this world are all strange, alien non-humans is a bit disturbing.

So, onward into The Subtle Knife. I'll post more when I have finished it.

Dumbledore is Gay

In which JK Rowling proves that she is denser than lead: Dumbledore is Gay

Yes, my initial reaction was "yay! Finally a queer character in the Potterverse! An a non-evil and awesome character, too!". But when I read more of the article and thought about it beyond the initial reaction, I became more and more disappointed.

"Rowling said that if she had known that would be the response, she would have revealed her thoughts on Dumbledore earlier." Which, to me, seems really naïve and oblivious on her part. How could she not know that queer readers of her books were desperately searching each new book with the hope that one of the characters might be like them (and was greatly disappointed and upset when homosexuality was ignored completely)? How could she not know that at least 75%* of Harry Potter fanfic is either slash or femslash? How could she not realize that her fanbase was eager, willing and receptive to a gay character? What an absolute airhead!

I mean, I'm glad she's made this announcement, I'm glad we know about Dumbledore. But it seems rather disingenuous to put a gay character into your books after the fact. It almost doesn't really count because for all intents and purposes, anyone reading the HP books would never ever know about Dumbledore's sexuality. It's hard for Dumbledore to be a positive role-model for queer readers, or to make people realize that queer people aren't weird or evil if you cannot even tell that he's gay. I mean, what is the message of Dumbledore being gay in the books: that being in the closet is a-okay?

I've heard the argument (already!) that it wasn't important to the story what Dumbledore's sexuality was, straight or otherwise, so it's not a big deal that she didn't reveal his being gay in the actual text. Which is a big load of hooey. Let me put it this way: you could also say that it's not important in my life to walk around telling everyone I meet in the grocery store that I'm bisexual because it doesn't concern them and it's not important to the act of buying bread and milk. You could even say that it's not even important for me to tell my family that I'm bisexual, either, because I don't happen to be dating a woman right now. Except that it very much is important for bisexuals, lesbians and gays to be out about their sexualities; to their families, yes, and I'm not saying that everyone in the grocery store has to know but it is still important for queer people to act like they are instead of hiding in fear that anyone will know.**

So, yes, it is very important that Dumbledore is gay, even if it has no significance to the plot. It is important because queer people are not strange, evil, broken or weak, we are just like everyone else. We can be random people you see on the street or we can be headmasters of wizarding schools. I mean, really, after how much money and support she was getting the fans, she couldn't have outed Dumbledore in the later books?

I mean, it's nice now, but it doesn't feel like she really means it. If Dumbledore had been out in the books we'd have been happy and excited to have a gay character. Now it just feels like an afterthought, a token, a mere scrap thrown to her queer readers.

Does she not realize the power of words? Does she, even after all these books, all this fame, does she not realize what kind of influence books and authors have on people? Does she not realize that she has a responsibility to her readers? Words and books have power, they form ideas in people's minds and they cement and bolster ideas that are already formed. She is sending a message with her books, no matter how much she may think the story is merely about wizards and spells. She is sending a message and the message still is that queer people in her universe are marginalized and that there isn't anything wrong with that.

(She is also sending some negative, sexist messages about women, too, but that is several posts on its own and I'm working on those for later.)


* I am making this number up, feel free to correct me. But there is still a huge amount of fanfic out there that has gay, lesbian or bisexual characters, enough that she should've noticed.

** Being out as a lesbian, gay, bisexual or whatever is tricky business. I'd never tell someone who felt that being "out" would put them in danger to do so anyway. There are sometimes reasons to stay in the closet but if it is safe to do so, I feel that it is important to be yourself.

Women on the Discovery Channel?

Last night I was hanging out with some friends in a bar (a non sketchy one! Amazing!). We were playing pool and generally eating waaay too many nachos and cheese-sticks. There were several TVs in the bar; since I don't own a TV it was really distracting for me.

Whatever channel it was I couldn't tell, but it was some variant of the Discovery Channel (or some spin-off of the Discovery channel), the logo in the bottom corner said "HDTV Theater" though. There was no sound (at least, none that we could hear over the music playing over the speakers). Periodically there would be a big ad for the Discovery Channel's (and its spin-offs) new fall shows and new episodes of old shows. Lots of big lettering and exclamation points about "New This Fall!" etc, etc.

I wasn't paying particular attention to it the first few times but we were there for a while and the ad played every commercial break so after a while I really started to notice it. I started to notice that there weren't any women in the commercial, well, there were three. You saw them for maybe 2 seconds: in a photo-montage for some travel show there were three smiling Hindu women (included in the same series of photos as coral reefs, a Chinese statue and several monkeys). None of the shows who had their name plastered across the screen as "New!" or "New episodes!" had female hosts. And none of the footage in the commercial had any women.

Sure, one of the shows they highlighted was "Mythbusters" who I know has a few women on their staff but there wasn't any footage of them.

It bugs me additionally that the only bit of footage of women treats them as though they were just another foreign, strange thing like monkeys. Wow, those strange mysterious exotic species called "females". We need a middle-aged white guy with a camera to go to the deepest jungles to stare in amazement at all these bizarre creatures with hips and breasts and two X chromosomes.

So, basically, if their New! Fall! Season! commercial is any indication, the Discovery Channel(s) doesn't have any TV shows with women. It would be nice to give them the benefit of the doubt and say, well, there must be women somewhere. That'd be nice but maybe too generous.

Is it honestly that hard in this day and age to have TV shows that feature women? Is it that hard to have a TV show that is not about relationships or babies and yet still include women? Sure, we've got the Lifetime channel and WE and stuff, but women like science, machines, technology, travel and exploration, too. The Discovery Channel should realize that and include females on all their various shows and TV channels.

If I actually owned a TV and watched any of these shows regularly, I'd write in and complain. Also someone who would love to host my own nature/travel/exploration/science TV show, it doubly annoys me when there aren't any women on their TV shows.