2004 Roundup

Because I wasn't invited to today's meeting. I have mixed feelings. That aside... here's a yearly round-up questionairre via Vandermeer:

1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?

Took up martial arts and boxing, started a blog, got a story published in Strange Horizons, got the most "this is a great story that I can't publish" personal rejection letters ever. Went to Wiscon.

2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I joined an MA school and *tried* to sell my book. Those were the big ones. I also got hired as a "real" employee at my job. This has probably been my first year as a "real" adult with a "real" job and extracurricular activities that are moving forward.

Next year, I need to finish and sell Jihad. And I want 3 short fiction sales. Also, I plan on dropping back the last two sizes to get me back to my Alaska fighting shape. This means bike riding more, and more boxing sparring, which I've been lax on.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes! My buddy Patrick and his wife Karin are now raising up Little G.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No. But somebody's going to jail. Anyway, the holidays aren't over yet.

5. What countries did you visit?

Does Wisconsin count? Also went to Vegas, which is also very like another country. Oh. And I saw Indiana, where the Bush voters live.

Seriously another country.

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?

Traveling money and time. And a more out-going personality. Can I get one of those in my stocking?

7. What dates from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Election day, cause it sucked. The week I was sick with laryngitis, a sinus infection, and an ear infection just after Wiscon, because I spent the entire time psyching myself up to start kickboxing. And the day of my buddy Stephanie's wedding was truly awesome: one of those weddings that proves to the cynical (like me) that there really is such a thing as a gloriously happy wedding day that isn't marred by unwanted pregnancy, unhappy brides, bickering bridesmaids, spastic or drunk family members, or vindictive, back-stabbing friends.

Probably one of the few times in my life where I've been at a gathering of people that was really, truly happy.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Six months of mixed martial arts training. It's made a huge difference

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not selling a book or a story, or getting an agent. Three sales last year: nothing this year, though the SH story showed up in February, they bought it last December.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Yea. Aforementioned week confined to bed due to a series of illnesses that all piled on at once.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My tablet PC.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Pretty much everyone's. A bunch of my Clarion buddies had great things happen. Greg sold a story to Sci Fiction, Patrick sold a couple stories to Amazing Stories, Julian got accepted to Oxford, Jenn got her Master's certificate, Inez just landed a great job, and back home, my buddy Stephanie got married.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

My sister's still running after a loser guy. The same loser guy.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Books. Student loans. Martial arts school fee.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Finishing the big rewrite of book one of the fantasy saga.

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?

The Secret Machines "Nowhere Again."

17. Compared to this time last year, you are:

Stronger, denser, more self-confident, slightly better read. Also, much better at popcap.com games.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

More writing. More MA classes. Wish I would have started French. Wish I could get that Planned Parenthood volunteer app. to load correctly. Wish I made more money. Wish I'd paid off more of my student loans.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Less angsting about stupid things, like height, weight, and dating. Should have spent less time playing popcap.com games at work.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I'll be going back to WA state for a week so I can clean my parents' house.

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?

Oh, at least two or three times.

23. How many one-night stands?

::snicker:: For an SF girl, I sure am a prude about casual sex.

24. What was your favorite TV program?

There's actual shows on TV? Well, the one I've seen the most of is Lost.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

No. The same people who were blowhards last year are blowhards this year.

26. What was the best book you read?

Ack. I'm always reading The Hours (I just keep it by my bed, and when I get to the end, I just start over). But this year's favorite discoveries were Balzac, Vandermeer, Bishop, and Joanna Russ's nonfiction, particularly On Strike Against God and What Are We Fighting For?.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

The Secret Machines.

28. What did you want and get?

A job that pays my bills, and some happiness, however fleeting.

29. What did you want and not get?

Agent/book contract, you know, the usual.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

Well, favorites that I *saw* this year: Run Lola Run, followed closely by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I did absolutely nothing for my birthday. I think I bought some food or something. My roommate wrapped up two books and gave them to me. I got quite teary-eyed about it, because I hadn't gotten her anything for her birthday. I turned 24 this year.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Sex?

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?

Hats. Particularly, newsboy caps. And coats. Boys' coats and striped scarves. Also, boots with good square heels.

34. What kept you sane?

The usual. Writing. This year, that included blog writing.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Kate is the best. As always. But I did officially fall in love with Paul Bettany this year.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

The election sucked ass. The erosion of women's rights continues to trouble me.

37. Who did you miss?

My buddy Stephanie, back in WA state, and my buddy Julian, now rowing his heart out at Oxford while writing a Ph.D. dissertation.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Sifu Katalin & the Amazons.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:

Here's this year's: there are often long stretches of downtime on the road to where you're going. You know, those long stretches of highway between New York and LA, or the shitty stretches of nowheresville between Seattle and Chicago - but those distances, those driving times, are neccessary to get to where you need to go.

2004 has been a shitty stretch of midwestern highway, with road stops along the way like Toledo's Tallest Tree & Billy Bob's Lint Museum, intercut by signposts that say stuff like "Civilization: 2000 miles," and the car has mostly run pretty good, but it overheated once (luckily, I keep a couple gallons of water in the back), and got a couple of flats (ever since my roadtrip to Skagway, I keep two spares in the trunk), and there was the odd problem with something hanging off the engine that was resolved by tying a couple of choice parts back together with a shoelace before I got to stop off at the shop and get it fixed proper, and I didn't stop for any hitchhikers along the way, but I felt bad about it. I'm now consulting a really confusing map somewhere in the Salt Flats of Utah on my way to the ocean, and yea, I'm stronger and more confident, and I'm getting better rejection slips, but I can't see the ocean yet, likely because I'm just not ready to see it yet. Likely because I need to pick up a few hitchhikers and learn how to play the harmonica and trade in the car for a motorcycle, but I switched from fast-food to granola bars sometime back, and I've got better shoes and a good pair of sunglasses, and there's nothing so cool as arriving at the seashore on a sweet-ass motorcycle, wearing a floppy newsboy cap as my striped scarf streams behind me, and maybe that's the whole point.

There's a place I want to be. This is the road I'm taking to get there.

I don't mind that it's a long road. It just means I'll be a more interesting person by the time I get there.

Remix

A Perfect Circle has a remix of Lennon's "Imagine" (and, uh... check out the very familiar propaganda posters they've got scrolling over their front page. I laughed and laughed)

I'm usually not a fan of remixes, but I've had this one on repeat all day.

Makin' the Crazy

One of my favorite studies on caloric restriction and the effects of dieting on appetite, metabolism, and brain function is actually 50 years old. Ancel Benjamin Keys, PhD., did a groundbreaking study about the effects of a restricted calorie diet on healthy men during a 6-month period.

I'm very, very thankful that he did this study on men, cause you can bet that if it'd been a bunch of women consuming 1600 calories a day (which, these days, is considered a pretty liberal "diet"), the amount of freak-out hysteria he found would have been attributed to the fact that his patients were women.

Check it out:

Young male volunteers, all carefully selected for being especially psychologically and socially well-adjusted, good-humored, motivated, active and healthy, were put on diets meant to mimic what starving Europeans were enduring, of about 1,600 calorie/day -- but which included lots of fresh vegetables, complex carbohydrates and lean meats. The calories were more than many weight loss diets prescribe and precisely what's considered "conservative" treatment for obesity today. What they were actually studying, of course, was dieting -- our bodies can't tell the difference if they're being starved voluntarily or involuntarily! Dr. Keys and colleagues then painstakingly chronicled how the men did during the 6 months of dieting and for up to a year afterwards, scientifically defining "the starvation syndrome."

As the men lost weight, their physical endurance dropped by half, their strength about 10%, and their reflexes became sluggish -- with the men initially the most fit showing the greatest deterioration, according to Keys. The men's resting metabolic rates declined by 40%, their heart volume shrank about 20%, their pulses slowed and their body temperatures dropped. They complained of feeling cold, tired and hungry; having trouble concentrating; of impaired judgment and comprehension; dizzy spells; visual disturbances; ringing in their ears; tingling and numbing of their extremities; stomach aches, body aches and headaches; trouble sleeping; hair thinning; and their skin growing dry and thin. Their sexual function and testes size were reduced and they lost all interest in sex. They had every physical indication of accelerated aging.

But the psychological changes that were brought on by dieting, even among these robust men with only moderate calorie restrictions, were profound. So much so that Keys called it "semistarvation neurosis." The men became nervous, anxious, apathetic, withdrawn, impatient, self-critical with distorted body images and even feeling overweight, moody, emotional and depressed. A few even mutilated themselves, one chopping off three fingers in stress. ­They lost their ambition and feelings of adequacy, and their cultural and academic interests narrowed. They neglected their appearance, became loners and their social and family relationships suffered. They lost their senses of humor, love and compassion. Instead, they became obsessed with food, thinking, talking and reading about it constantly; developed weird eating rituals; began hoarding things; consumed vast amounts of coffee and tea; and chewed gum incessantly (as many as 40 packages a day). Binge eating episodes also became a problem as some of the men were unable to continue to restrict their eating.

So... the dieting industry keeps itself in business by encouraging the binge/purge cycle of starvation. And dieting men and women are more likely to be weak(er) and more hysterical than average.

Excellent. We'll be less likely to make informed political decisions. Old White Rich Guys must love this.

WTF `04, indeed.

Why Women Appear to Be Crazy - Just Like Everyone Tells Us We Should Be!

Amanda regularly takes "advice" columns directed toward women and their hetero dating habits to task. If you're not following these (particularly if you're a guy), you should.

With advice like this, it's no wonder a lot of guys keep telling me that they find women really confusing (I've never found myself very confusing) and women feel so confused. Look at all these mixed messages about women's "proper" social behavior and then tell me how anybody connects with anyone else anymore:

To sum up: To make a man love you, come on strong and then ignore him so he wonders if he did something wrong. When you do consent to go out on a date with him, wait with an expectant look on your face for favors while declining to do anything nice for him yourself. Then stare at him lovingly like he was the last man on Earth. What kind of man could resist? Well, besides the ones who are too smart to hang out with crazy people.

Shit, throw out that Cosmo. Don't read dating advice at MSN. You'll become one of those people hovering over the telephone every night. I was channel flipping last week and found the authors of He's Just Not That Into You fielding questions from Oprah's audience. One woman stood up and said she was a lawyer, and that for the first couple of dates she had with a guy, she tried really hard not to mention it, and if she was online dating, her friends told her not to put that she had any post graduate work, "Just put college or some college," her friends told her. "Otherwise, no guy is going to go out with you."

I wanted to throw something at the TV. All the time and money and hard work and cramming sessions, and we're reduced to this: lying about how smart we can get some lame underachiever into bed. As if that were really difficult. Can't we all just act like nice people, and hang out with other nice people, and be nice and respectful and have fun learning from each other and spending time together?

Ah, yes. But "we're all just looking for respectful affection from a healthy, intelligent partner(s) who isn't boring" doesn't sell magazines. I keep forgetting.

Margaret Sanger & Radical Feminism & Silencing History & All That Jazz

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966)

Stumbled across this, and it reminded me of a couple of my posts: "On Merit. And Sex. Of Course" and "More On Why Power is All About Women." Just to reiterate, once again, that there's nothing new under the sun.

Just keep saying the same damn things, over and over and over again, until we reach critical mass. Or something:

THE MOST far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against sex servitude. The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood. Beside this force, the elaborate international programmes of modern statesmen are weak and superficial. Diplomats may formulate leagues of nations and nations may pledge their utmost strength to maintain them, statesmen may dream of reconstructing the world out of alliances, hegemonies and spheres of influence, but woman, continuing to produce explosive populations, will convert these pledges into the proverbial scraps of paper; or she may, by controlling birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a voluntary, intelligent function, and remake the world. When the world is thus remade, it will exceed the dream of statesman, reformer and revolutionist.

Her whole book, Woman and the New Race (1920) is online here.

Revenge of the Media

No. I'm not watching Earthsea tonight, in all it's whitewashed glory. Author Nalo Hopkinson and Leguin each rant about it. Remind me never to sell the rights to anything I've written that's really close to my heart. I'll end up screaming at the television (apparently, according to the director, it's a "multicultural" adventure because there are British and American actors in it hahaha hahaaha).

Speaking of moving pictures, the trailer for War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise is out. In true conservative SF fashion, all of "mankind" and "men" and "man" are in trouble, according to the voice-over. I always wonder what all the women are doing when the men are out getting slaughtered. Oh, yes, that's right. That's how I got interested in my research topics.... try watching Cold Mountain instead. There are actually people in that movie. For an urban guerilla movie, check out Guerrila, which looks cool.

Nicola Griffith has an excellent, excellent essay called "Alien in Her Own Tongue" about the frustration with the proliferation of "he"s in the media. This article really resonated with me, and helped me figure out what was bothering me about all the he-man language. I haven't backed down in my defense of neutral pronouns since.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to plug some books I haven't read but know will be good because... because... I just do. I had to cancel my recent amazon.com order due to money constraints, but on it was Catherynne Valente's book The Labyrinth, which you can order at a slight discount from Nightshade Books . Also, Vandermeer & Friends (& Co. & Conspirators? et. al? it's actually edited by Jason Erik Lundberg) also have a new book out, a quirky mix of fiction and recipes which looks like a lot of fun - check out Scattered, Covered, Smothered.

Big Dogs in Town

The Big Dogs from corporate are in town today, so it's been a bit of a "busy" (this is a relative term) morning, prepping some stuff for Blaine, my boss. I've got a few hours before their plane shows up, but they'll be here all week, so things could be busy with meetings I'm invited to... or not. I really never know. Just a head's up.

We're doing a bunch of heavy restructuring, as we've just signed a nationwide contract. My boss has moved from Senior Project Manager to VP Business Development since I've been here, and the VP of Wireless North America - let's call him Mosh - wants to put me back more firmly into the wireless team and ease up on my "support" function for my boss, because really, Blaine doesn't use me all that much, and I'd be way better as a Project Support Manager better melded with the corporate wireless team. This also means that when I'm ready to move in a year and a half, it'll be easier to switch offices. I wouldn't mind working at corporate. They're out of Colorado.

So I'll be meeting - let's call him Piper - the Senior Project Manager (wireless) for North America today, who'll be my new boss. Yellow's also going to be moving up in the world - they're giving him Project Manager North America for this project, so we'll both be reporting to Piper.

On the phone, Mosh made it sound like this was a Big Promotion for me (we'll likely be hiring on other people to take over some of my prior duties - you know, back when I *had* duties, six months ago), and he wanted to sit down and talk to me about my "career."

You better bet I'll be asking for a crapload more money. Especially if they give me my own support staff.

Muwahhaa haha aha

More later. Linkdump coming up.

Writing Today.

Yes, seriously. Really. I mean it.

I'm going to go and find plots for four short stories that've got lots of character and setting and not much else.

That's pretty much always the story of my stories.

In the mean time, check out the blogroll, rail against the idiots, snicker about power to the people with MoveOn, and just generally go out there and have a great time.

See you all on Monday.

Remixing War Propaganda For the War On Terror

I'm a sucker for war propaganda: my master's work looked at propaganda aimed at the recruitment of women in the ranks of the African National Congress (as violent fighters & activists - otherwise known as "the recruitment of terrorists") in South Africa during the 80s, and I got to page through lots of goodies.

So, I have a special fondness for these beautiful remixes.

Here's a great site that's remixed WWII propaganda for today's War on Terror.

Frickin' brilliant.

Tapping Out

"Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world."
- Dave Barry

"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."
- Isaac Asimov

John Rickards Is My Secret Boyfriend

Because I haven't been keeping up with Jon Stewart.

Here, John presents "a step-by-step demonstration of what editing a book at 3am looks like from the writer's own eyes."

It is absolutely, inarguably accurate.

Fat: More Handwaving

A roundup of thoughts on The Obesity Panic, stolen from BigFatBlog:

Commentary from Nick Gillespie: Thus the United States turns from nation building abroad to nation bodybuilding at home. In a world beset by terrorism, poverty, and malnutrition, who could have imagined that being fat would become the subject not simply of the derision and scorn it has long inspired but a political topic every bit as heartburn-inducing as a Tabasco-flavored Slim Jim?... The United States is the most tolerant nation on the planet -- as long as you look good in a tight pair of Levi’s. So when exactly did freedom become just another word for 10 pounds left to lose?

And, oh, the fucktards! Here's a weight loss surgery clinic comparing fat to cancer, and speading doom, gloom, and fear to the masses! Check out their truly horrific television ads.

Here's a piece examining the role of fat in reality television: On reality television, fat people are the new gay people. Earlier this year, Fox was forced to cancel two gay-themed reality shows, the short-lived Playing It Straight and the never-aired Seriously Dude, I'm Gay, due to protests from advocacy groups and general viewer indifference. These shows, which I discussed in a Slate article at the time, exploited cultural fears about homosexuality by making gay men the "wild card" in traditional reality-show competitions. To their credit, audiences responded with a shrug. But the evil forces that plot new reality shows have now turned their attention to a new sideshow attraction: the overweight.

And, for the record, here's what a 5'9 180 lb woman looks like. According to America's BMI, she's bordering on obese - you know, like me.

Damn, we're scary.

I suppose that's the real issue, though, isn't it?

Actually, the "Average American Woman" is a Size 14, But That's Not the Point, My American Harem Ladies

I just about flipped when I found this:

Fatima Mernissi and the Size 6 Harem

It was during my unsuccessful attempt to buy a cotton skirt in an American department store that I was told my hips were too large to fit into a size 6. That distressing experience made me realize how the image of beauty in the West can hurt and humiliate a woman as much as the veil does when enforced by the state police in extremist nations such as Iran, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia. Yes, that day I stumbled onto one of the keys to the enigma of passive beauty in Western harem fantasies. The elegant saleslady in the American store looked at me without moving from her desk and said that she had no skirt my size. "In this whole big store, there is no skirt for me?" I said. "You are joking." I felt very suspicious and thought that she just might be too tired to help me. I could understand that. But then the saleswoman added a condescending judgment, which sounded to me like Imam fatwa. It left no room for discussion:

"You are too big!" she said.

"I am too big compared to what?" I asked, looking at her intently, because I realized that I was facing a critical cultural gap here.

"Compared to a size 6," came the saleslady's reply.

[...]

"And who says that everyone must be a size 6?" I joked to the saleslady that day, deliberately neglecting to mention size 4, which is the size of my 12-year-old niece.

At that point, the saleslady suddenly gave me and anxious look. "The norm is everywhere, my dear," she said. "It's all over, in the magazines, on television, in the ads. You can't escape it. There is Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Gianna Versace, Giorgio Armani, Mario Valentino, Salvatore Ferragamo, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, Christian Lacroix, and Jean-Paul Gaultier. Big department stores go by the norm." She paused and then concluded, "If they sold size 14 or 16, which is probably what you need, they would go bankrupt." [Kameron note: Like Old Navy and Eddie Bauer??]

[...]

Yes, I thought as I wandered off, I have finally found the answer to my harem enigma. Unlike the Muslim man, who uses space to establish male domination by excluding women from the public arena, the Western man manipulates time and light. He declares that in order to be beautiful, a woman must look fourteen years old. If she dares to look fifty, or worse, sixty, she is beyond the pale. By putting the spotlight on the female child and framing her as the ideal of beauty, he condemns the mature woman to invisibility. In fact, the modern Western man enforces Immanuel Kant's nineteenth-century theories: To be beautiful, women have to appear childish and brainless. When a woman looks mature and self-assertive, or allows her hips to expand, she is condemned as ugly. Thus, the walls of the European harem separate youthful beauty from ugly maturity.

These Western attitudes, I thought, are even more dangerous and cunning than the Muslim ones because the weapon used against women is time. Time is less visible, more fluid than space. The Western man uses images and spotlights to freeze female beauty within an idealized childhood, and forces women to perceive aging—that normal unfolding of years—as a shameful devaluation. "Here I am, transformed into a dinosaur," I caught myself saying aloud as I went up and down the rows of skirt in the store, hoping to prove the saleslady wrong—to no avail. This Western time-defined veil is even crazier than the space-defined one enforced by the Ayatollahs.

[...]

Women enter power games with so much of their energy deflected to their physical appearance that one hesitates to say that the playing field is level. "A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty," explains Wolf. It is "an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one."

Research, she contends, "confirmed what most women know too well—that concern with weight leads to a 'virtual collapse of self-esteem and sense of effectiveness' and that . . . 'prolonged and periodic caloric restriction' resulted in a distinctive personality whose traits are passivity, anxiety, and emotionality."

Similarly, Bourdieu, who focuses more on how this myth hammers its inscriptions onto the flesh itself, recognizes that constantly reminding women of their physical appearances destabilizes them emotionally because it reduces them to exhibited objects. "By confining women to the status of symbolical objects to be seen and perceives by the other, masculine domination . . . puts women in a state of constant physical insecurity. . . . They have to strive ceaselessly to be engaging, attractive, and available." Being frozen into the passive position of an object whose very existence depends on the eyes of its beholder turns the educated modern Western women into a harem slave.

Read the whole thing here .

There's also a fantastic book called The Body Project that looks at the history of women's obsession with their bodies. Essentially, she argues, we've merely gone from using external devices to control women's shapes (corsets, elaborate skirting and hooping), to using external devices (the 1920s saw the corset going out of fashion, and dieting or "reducing" really coming into its own): you can chalk up plastic surgery here, too. Many women who get breast implants don't "have" to wear a bra anymore. Their breasts are now hard and high enough that they don't jiggle much at all. Same goes for obsessions over flat abs - we used to wear corsets for tummy control and the illusion of a bust. Not having corsets doesn't neccessarily make women any more liberated in regards to their bodies. Sure, you've got less restricted movement, but if you're starving yourself to look thinner, you've hardly got more energy to move around.

And, perhaps more importantly, as Fatima says, "To deprive me of food is definitely to deprive me of my thinking capabilities."
Fascinating stuff.

Good vs. Evil (the same old story)

What Christian Fundamentalists tell us is Evil about Muslim Fundamentalists:

- They hate liberated women and all that symbolizes them. They hate it when women compete with men in the workplace, when they decide when or whether they will bear children, when they show the independence of getting abortions. They hate changes in laws that previously gave men more power over women.

- They hate the wide range of sexual orientations and lifestyles that have always characterized human societies. They hate homosexuality.

-They hate individual freedoms that allow people to stray from the rigid sort of truth they want to constrain all people. They hate individual rights that let others slough off their simple certainties.

What Christian Fundamentalists hate:

-They hate liberated women who don't follow orders, who get abortions when they want them, who threaten or laugh at some men's arrogant pretensions to rule them.

-They hate the wide range of sexual orientations that have always characterized human societies. They would force the country to conform to a fantasy image of two married heterosexual parents where the husband works and the wife stays home with the children even when that describes fewer than 25 percent of current American families.

-They hate individual freedoms that let people stray from the one simple set of truths they want imposed on all in our country. Robertson has been on record for a long time saying that democracy isn't a fit form of government unless it is run by his kind of fundamentalist Christians.

I would laugh, and laugh, if only more people actually saw the irony.

more here
(thanks to Jenn for all the morning links. I'm feeling lazy today)

Sexing & Stuff

ActivistGradGirl has a great series of posts up about sex, gender, and sexuality here, here and here. Some really great thoughts on the gender binary we get banged on the head with. I think my biggest surprise regarding aguments for gay marriage was that nobody played these two big cards:

1) If you're going to say marriage is only between a man and a woman, you're going to have to define man and woman. And you're going to have to be really strict about it. So that women who are "visibly" women but who have XY chromosomes shouldn't be allowed to marry men who have XY chromosomes, and what about those who've had their sex surgically altered, whether in infancy (hemaphrodites, the most famous famous/visible here in America being Jamie Lee Curtis), or in adulthood? Man/Woman biology isn't an exact science.

2) Not allowing same-sex marriage is sexist. Period. If I was born a man, I would be able to marry a woman, but because I'm a woman, I can only marry a man.

THIS IS A HUGE ONE.

Hello! Obvious sexism here, people!

Anyway, she's got some good thoughts on what makes up sex and sexuality (throw out the illusion of the gender binary! Blah!). Check it out.

Bowing Out

More writing work today. See you all tomorrow.

"The mind I love must still have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two (real snakes), a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of - and paths threaded with those little flowers planted by the mind."
- Katherine Mansfield



"Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once."
-Isaac Asimov

Buddy-buddy Boys

There's a professor who's done a study about the origins and use of the word "dude": the interesting part?

Kiesling says in the fall edition of American Speech that the word derives its power from something he calls cool solidarity -- an effortless kinship that's not too intimate.

Cool solidarity is especially important to young men who are under social pressure to be close with other young men, but not enough to be suspected as gay.

And:

Anecdotally, men were the predominant users of the word, but women sometimes call each other dudes.

Less frequently, men will call women dudes and vice versa. But that comes with some rules, according to self-reporting from students in a 2002 language and gender class included in the paper.

"Men report that they use dude with women with whom they are close friends, but not with women with whom they are intimate," according to the study.

Huh. Not sure if I'd go with the universal "all guys" thing there.

Why I Fight

So, yesterday I was doing my daily lunchtime walk at the Wildlife Preserve across the street from where I work. This is a low-crime suburb area (I have a long train commute out of Chicago), so I don't carry much trepidation with me. But yesterday I passed a questionable character - you know, you just get that "uh-oh, psycho" feeling and put your guard up a bit as you pass.

Nothing new. It's called being a woman.

But this time, as I passed him, I flipped through defense moves. Got my elbow strike to the face ready, focused attention on my gut, where - if you do it right - you should actually feel the force of your strike. Elbow to the face, turn, right cross, clamp your hands around the back of the head, knee strike to the face, front kick to the groin, and if he's willing to fuck with you after that, he's a serious pyscho, so you should probably run. If he tries to tackle you, jab out his eyes. I also know a couple of ground moves, should things progress to that point.

But, no. I wasn't attacked; the liklihood of that happening around here is pretty nil. But I realized I had my confidence back.

I haven't been jogging in two months, because it's dark by the time I get home now, and though crime rates around where I live are average, I've grown up with that Woman's Fear.

You know it: those raped, mutilated, murdered female joggers. The stories we all get bombarded with so we stay at home, or don't go out alone, the ones that tell us we better get ourselves an escort.

It's always female joggers.

The entire reason I started fighting was because I was really sick of being afraid. Somebody like me, who does a lot of traveling and spends a lot of time on her own, can't afford to sit around her flat all night being afraid. Granted, in South Africa, a lot of this fear was warranted, and I don't know that I'd push my luck there again even with some more self-confidence, but Uptown Chicago is another matter entirely.

So I went jogging last night, my usual route to the lakefront, under the suprisingly well-lit tunnel that goes under Lakeshore Drive, and onto the not-so-greatly-lit jogging path at Lakeshore Park.

There weren't a lot of women there at 6:30 at night.

There was some trepidation at the lack of light along the pathway, but I'd made sure not to wear my headphones, so I could hear pretty well, and I was still my usual vigilant self.

And, of course, I went jogging and came home and did just fine.

I could have been jogging like this for two months, of course, but you know... it sucks to be a woman. It really fucking sucks, to grow up with these stories, to know that yes, it's statistically unlikely that anything will happen to me (more women are attacked by people they know than strangers), but damn, I've been fed so much fear, had it so ground into me. Sure, I'd wander good areas of cities by myself, and backpack major cities by myself, but jogging at the park in the dark? Oh, how cliche that episode of America's Most Wanted would be!

I needed to feel like I knew what to do if something happened. I didn't want to feel like prey. Even if I'm full of crap, and not a super ninja or anything like that, I needed to feel that I had the strength and at least a little of the knowledge about what to do if something happened, however unlikely it might be.

I don't think you really realize how much you internalize all the social bullshit that actually controls you. When I was 19, I finally started framing questions about my doubts for doing what I wanted to do this way: "If I was a guy, would I do it?" If the answer was yes, I did it.

Because you know what it felt like to me, going jogging at Lakeshore Park in the dark, alone?

It felt like freedom.

More On Why Power is All About The Women

Here's a great compilation from the Mahablog of all the bits and pieces we've been throwing around the last couple weeks (divorce and teenage birth rates in red vs. blue states, the education of women, etc) and some sly commentary to boot.

And, Enjoy

OK, I'm back to working on some writing projects. Unless something really pisses me off again, I'll see you all tomorrow.

"We Americans, we're a simple people... but piss us off, and we'll bomb your cities."
- Robin Williams, "Good Morning Vietnam"

"We've got a generation now who were born with semi-equality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache cases and our three-piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle." - Erma Bombeck

"War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with."
- Lois McMaster Bujold, "The Vor Game", 1990

"I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves." - Mary Wollstonecraft

"Things can be really different."
- Joanna Russ

In the Old Town Tonight.

And... here's the fire in the Chicago Loop that was blocking traffic last night as I tried to get home from kickboxing. I'd never seen so many firetrucks and so many diverted taxi cabs in one place before.

This is the second highrise fire they've had in the year I've been here (that one also diverted me on the way home, this time by blocking the pedestrian tunnel between the red and blue train lines, as the building on fire was just above that section of tunnel). In both cases, neither building was outfitted with sprinklers. In the first case, this and some locked stairways resulted in needless deaths.

What is this, 1900?

Contraception Museum

Contraception Museum opens (via boingboing).

In Ohio, of all places.

They've also got a flash presentation of "Obstetric Literature and the Changing Character of Childbirth." If the coils don't make you cringe...

And I snickered when I read the intro to their collection: "Birthing is a normal, yet extraordinary event that has been with us from time immemorial."

I love that they felt they needed to remind readers that birth is "normal" and that women have been doing said birthing "from time immemorial."

We've overmedicalized birth so much that I think people forget this.

Real Men Doing Real Science

I don't care if people write conservative SF, but when they start trying to make a "movement" out of a masturbatory molehill, and start writing up frickin "manifestos" I get really frickin' irked.

You need a manifesto in order to write fiction? Shit, why didn't anyone ever tell me sooner! I better start writing my pet interests into a manifesto, so I can never alter those interests again as I increase my breadth and range of interests as I get older and wiser. Only emotionless heroines! Only bisexuality! Only stories about war! No men allowed!

Now there's a great way to castrate my writing.

It's like watching somebody jumping up and down in a crowded room going, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm hot! I'm hot!" for about 15 mintues before the bullshit factor sets in, and you realize they're actually screaming without any clothes on.

I feel the old sniff of elitism: REAL SCIENCE vs. THOSE CRAZY SWORD & SOCIOLOGY BUG-TECH FREAKSHOWS.

We must get back to Real Science! Real Men Doing Real Science!

REAL MEN (science) vs. FEM FICTION (not "real" science)

Don't think there's not an undercurrent of that there, too. A lot of SF is already terribly conservative. We don't need to put more constraints on tech and social mores to make it more so. Really.

I'm hoping these guys will peter out soon enough.

The discussion's here.

Oh, Canada

This is an old joke, actually. The first Euro trip I did was with a bunch of kids from our high school theatre, and we teamed up with a group of rowdy Canadians for much of the trip, meaning we shared transport and rooms with them.

And let me tell you, everything you suspect about Canadians getting treated better than Americans overseas (expecially in France) is true. The Brits and Canadians, in fact, like to put patches of their country's flags on their backpacks, just to make *sure* they aren't mistaken for Americans.

Try finding an American flag on a backpack.

So the big joke among us theatre kids at our toga party in Rome was that next time, we'd slap a Canadian flag patch on our backpacks and go, "Eh?" a lot.

I need to try it during next year's trip to Glasgow.

More on the Fighting Life

Had a good MA class tonight. 2 min kicking techniques, 1 minute jump roping, repeat for 45 minutes. Great fun, actually. I had a good partner.

Also, always inspiring, Ray is now 6 months pregnant, and still jumping, kicking, punching and just basically kicking ass.

It's totally cool.

I've been hard on myself, as I didn't go to class Thanksgiving week due to a little holiday hysteria and traveling to visit my folks, and last week, I suffered from insomnia on Monday and zonked into bed Wednesday instead of going to class, meaning I only got in the Monday and Saturday and not the Wednesday.

For some reason, I always expect that if I miss a week of class, I'm going to revert to incompetent weakness.

In fact, I end up coming to class and surprising myself.

My arms continue to get buffer-looking. I think I'm starting to condense again. I cut my calorie count during the week again because, I mean really, I have a frickin' desk job.

Weekends, however, are another matter. I'm not a frickin' prude, afterall.

Some Gleeful War Nostalgia

More proof that war-obsessed children will become war-obsessed adults. If not, perhaps, in the way that you'd think.

I stumbled across the site Yo Joe, which is an awesome database of GI Joe figures from 1982-2004, complete with pics and accessories.

I was a gleeful 80s child, who combined My Little Pony play with GI Joes. Because, c'mon, GI is the perfect action figure to pair with My Little Pony. And they even had female GI Joes.

Turns out, there were a few more female GI Joes than I knew about. Which pisses me off, cause I only knew about 3, and could only ever find two of them:

Scarlett came out with the original `82 batch, which I think is cool - I mean, c'mon, a decent female fighter with an OK name in the first batch! My cousin had a Scarlett, so I usually got to play her (in addition to the plethora of male characters). `83 gave us Cover Girl (never heard of her), which I actually find to be one of the funnier female code names. She was packaged with a tank. Gotta love that. She was followed by Baroness (Cobra intelligence) in `84, who I'd totally fogotten. She was followed by the kick-ass Lady Jaye . I was crazy about getting a Lady Jaye, but every Christmas I searched through the stacks at the toy stores, I never found her. Zarana - who I'd never even heard of until I trolled through the site - came out in `86. And finally, my favorite female GI Joe of all time, Jinx, came out in `87. I think I liked her the most because she was the most easily available at the toy stores. If you were willing to spend twenty minutes going through the huge stacks of GI Joes at Toys R Us, you could usually find her. I know, because I was really depressed when I lost her the first time, and elated when I managed to - miraculously, it seemed - find another one to replace her.

I think these female figures also pleased me because, well... they actually wore sensible clothes.

It makes me wonder: did they not stock the female characters because they really weren't popular, or did they not stock them because of the women-and-war-are-evil crap and they got some upset parent letters about it?

I'd be curious to know...

Your Axis of Evil (TM) Roundup

Your Axis of Evil (TM) Roundup.

If you care.

Via The Talking Dog.

Why I Keep Rewriting

via Moorish Girl:

Apparently, there were some significant edits to the screenplay of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

And, oh, thank goodness for those revisions:

It starts with an "OLD WOMAN" visiting a publishing house with a manuscript in hand. It's fifty years from now, so who knows? Maybe people won't need to write agents or editors queries by then. I still found the scene supremely silly. Her book is called "ETERNAL SUNSHINE...". The old woman is Mary, who continues working for Lacuna, even though in the movie version it appears she's done with them for good.

Also in the original script, Clementine is "zaftig," obsessed with Stephen Dixon, and goes into Lacuna to get her memories of Joel barrish erased 15 times over 50 years, because they keep re-meeting over and over.

I will make a note, however: why is it that when screenwriters think "zaftig" they hire Kate Winslet?

I guess because the alternative is "thin" which means "starving." And, let's be honest: Kate's been rapidly shrinking the last couple years, trying to get back into acting after the birth of her children.

Please, please: I'm so tired of looking at hungry women in movies. Don't force Kate to be hungry, too. I adore her just the way she is.

Call for Subs

There's a call for subs for anyone interested in writing pieces about experience, acceptence, and all things in-between from fat women for a new book called Phat Girls in Search of a Pretty World. So far as I know, there's no cut-off BMI for what exactly constitutes a "fat" girl. If you're a woman who identifies as a fat girl (I realize that I will, no matter my weight. I think it's become ingrained in me) and have some good stories about acceptance/experience, give it a shot. I'm sure I'll be sending something Jill's way.

On Romance

I don't know when I first saw the movie Romancing the Stone, but as it came out in `84 and I was born in `80, I was probably pretty young, as it ended up in our VHS collection at some point, after being rented at least a couple of times.

To sum up, Kathleen Turner plays frumpy-but-successful romance author Joan Wilder. Her sister is kidnapped in Columbia, and frumpy-writer goes off to deliver a treasure map to her sister's captors, and gets caught up in a proper romance adventure in Columbia, complete with smugglers, buried treasure, guerilla fighters, and shotgun-wielding male love interest.

It's the sort of movie that makes you want to be a writer.

I've seen it a bazillion times. I got it on DVD when I first went off to college and had a computer with DVD player. I wanted to be that kind of writer. I wanted to have those kinds of adventures.

When I tried to explain to everyone how I got out to Ft. Hare in Alice, South Africa for one of my research trips out of Durban, I said, "I flew into East London, which has, like, an airport with one gate. Then I took a taxi to the informal taxi ranks, and I got into this bus like... Well, you know that scene in Romancing the Stone when Kathleen Turner gets into the wrong bus to Cartagena? It was sort of like that. Only they're jerry-rigged, dilapidated vans that seat about 16 people all squashed together with their luggage and children, and all the drivers are really crazy. Then I switched at the ranks in King William's Town, which is like a dusty hole in the ground, and then I went out to Alice in another packed mini-bus. But it was more arid than Columbia. And there were more cows."

Last night, I printed out the 795 manuscript pages of book one (AGAIN). This morning, I boxed them up to tote in to work to do more line edits. I was running late.

I pulled on my black pea coat and scarf, turned off the lights around by desk with its sticky-notes and quotes and pictures and piles of manuscripts and pages scattered all over, pulled on my backpack, frowned at my hair in the mirror, and tucked my boxed manuscipt under my arm. I trudged out into a drizzly Chicago day, and as I locked the outside door, I got this huge grin on my face.

Because I remembered that opening in Romancing the Stone, when the frantic author is running late, and she pulls on her coat, tucks her huge boxed manuscript under her arm, frowns at her frumpiness in the mirror, and heads out into New York to meet her editor.

Now, if only I was going to meet an editor...

And I realized how far I'd come from that backwater, dead-end life I was fixing for myself just after highschool.

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about fantasy fiction, and the benefits of movies and stories that inspire us to be better people. I was watching The Princess Bride for the thousandth time last night, and realized that though fantasy certainly can be escapist (which is generally considered "bad," and the female heroines still need work) what it really does is give us hope.

It tells us that the good guys can win, that being honorable is always the right thing, that true lover conquers all, and people are basically good.

I love classic fantasy stories, though I've gotten tired of all of the gender assumptions, which is why I write what I write - I'm writing high fantasy with more fluid gender dynamics - because fantasy fiction does give me hope. I want to believe that people can be better, that I can be better, that there are people who will take a bullet for each other, who'll fight for something they believe in, who will take their lives and make something of it.

In the end, Joan Wilder's adventures in Columbia give her greater confidence in herself and her sexuality (she goes from frumpy to sexy merely by letting down her hair and putting on make-up, which always makes me laugh, but I'll let it go - this is fantasy, after all). We get this in the last scene she's got, walking down the street shrugging off the harrassment of street vendors, smiling and looking fabulous after just having sold yet another book.

I think fantasy can certainly be a bad thing: Vandermeer addresses this when discussing America's increasing fantastic delusions (or, warped imagination) - but stories and fantasy give us something else, too, which is why books and media are so heavily censored:

Stories can show us other ways to live. It won't be just like the movies: you'll be scared, and hysterical, weak or strong, and you'll still be in the same skin no matter where you are. I want to write those kinds of stories. I want to tell everybody, especially women: there's another way to live, if you wish it.

Are there limits? Sure.

But not as many as you'd think.

Somedays, it all seems impossible.

And then there's days like today, when I wake up and go: "Holy shit, look what I did."

Those are the best days.

More Thoughts on Dating

Ah. The "He's Just Not Into You" craze.

Once again, Amanda's already been on this, and here's the Salon article that takes the "He's just not that into you" book to task, but I wanted to throw in my 2 cents about the dating bullshit.

Now, I've already discussed why I haven't dated since Alaska - and continue to choose not to - but I want to explore this one again, because, really, here this book goes again arguing against female agency, like every time we go out with a guy, we *really* want him to call back.

Not so. Not so at all.

But then, when asked, one of the co-authors of HJNTIY did say that if they'd written a book geared toward convincing pouty-mouthed men "She's just not that into you," they would have sold about 8 copies.

Why are women buying this book? Why did people know women would buy this book?

I've been the one to finally answer the third frantic e-mail from a guy I'd been on two dates with, and felt obligated to tell him, gently, that I just really wasn't all that into him, and could you just stop e-mailing me? I managed another two dates with a guy who was horribly, horribly boring, and at the end of the second date, we both said, "Yea, I'll call/e-mail you," and neither of us did (and oh, let me tell you, the relief when he didn't call/e-mail was truly great). Then I survived another 3 or 4 dates (one of which was a 3-day, chaste roadtrip in which when didn't touch each other like, once - needless to say, this was the last date) with yet another boring, sexually uninteresting guy (though, as said, I got a cool roadtrip to Skagway out of it). At the end of the third "date" we both said, "See you around," and offered only polite "hellos" when we ran into each other in the dorm hall. And finally, I had a brief affair with a guy I was very obviously pursuing as a college boyfriend, who turned me down because... well, he had a girlfriend, and she was the marrying sort. And I'm not. I didn't really angst about it too much. I sure as hell wasn't going to marry him.

See. I have this belief that women aren't stupid. Ha ha.

Cause you know, I've also been on "friendly" "dates" (or pseudo-talk lunch/dinner "dates" that I really, really, wanted to be "dates") with guys who were obviously not sexually interested in me in any way and just wanted me around as the token "smart girl friend" (read: token fat girl, token brunette, etc. Basically, not socially fem enough to show off to your friends, but great to talk to about smart person things) I know exactly who these guys are. Jockish, too-pretty, vain, usually major sports fans. I'm not the sort of woman they can introduce to their friends. I won't wear makeup or dress fem, and I'll talk about foreign policy and women's rights instead of smiling, faking interest in baseball, and looking for other SOs to talk to about dieting.

It just wouldn't go over well.

I remember going out with an old friend from gradeschool who I'd run into at the local movie theatre. I'd been hot on this guy since I was 10 years old. He was even more attractive now that we were college-age: 6'1, blond, blue-eyed, played sports, the whole jock-ish shebang, only now with more brains (yay!), as he switched majors from computer engineering to English, and when I met him, I found that he was now wearing glasses, too (oohhhh so sexy).

And you know, I'm not a stupid woman.

It was blaringly obvious that he was just catching up with an old "friend." I knew this. This didn't stop lots of daydreaming, but I curbed my urge to call him after the second lunch "date" because I knew that if he wanted to spend more time with me, he would. And I knew he didn't. I'm not delusional.

There's another guy I'm twitter-pated about who would, yes, probably date me if I was about 50lbs thinner and didn't have a graduate degree. Am I lustful? Of course. Do I really expect to ever date this guy? No. And if he really wanted to date me, would I really want to date him? No. Cause why the fuck would I want to date somebody who was nice to me for a month and then started telling me what to eat and how to dress?

I don't think women are stupid. I think you can tell if you're in a mutually-crazy relationship. I think it's usually pretty obvious; and I think it's even more obvious if you're *not* crazy-wild about somebody, or they're *not* crazy-wild about you.

So, that's one guy I wasn't really into, two mutual "gosh, we're really not into each other"s, two "I'm nuts about this guy and it's obvious he could give a crap about me"s and one "you're not the marrying type" polite turn-down. And this doesn't count all the guys I've turned down for first dates outright because I found them boring or passionless.

Hardly does this a hysterical-woman-standing-by-the-phone make.

I was in the locker room at my MA school and overheard a couple of the Amazons engaging in this conversation:

Boxing Woman: Yea, I think I'm going to be taking that job in South Carolina. It's a great opportunity, and they're paying me a shitload of money.

Jujitsu Woman: What about that guy you're dating, what's his name?

Boxing Woman: Oh, I broke up with him.

Jujitsu Woman: What? But I thought things were going OK.

Boxing Woman: He just said something really stupid, and I thought, if he's going to say something that stupid at this point in the relationship, it's just not worth it.

Jujitsu Woman: It must have been really stupid.

Boxing Woman (sounding bored): Yea. It was really stupid. And he kept calling me all weekend and leaving messages. Called at 7, called at 10, called at 2, called me again Sunday...

Jujitsu Woman: (laughter)

Have I mentioned how much I love my MA school?

Please don't feed on this bullshit. There are lots of women who don't hang around by the phone. Women get job promotions, take boxing classes, and move to South Carolina and etc. None of which involve an SO. I promise. And if you find an SO who's compatible with these things, you'll probably know it. Have some faith in yourself.

Please stop buying these books. It makes us all look frickin' hysterical.

Women & War

Thank you, Amanda, for finding this news article about the 2,000 year old skeleton of a female warrior in Iran:

DNA tests on the 2,000-year-old bones of a sword-wielding Iranian warrior have revealed the broad-framed skeleton belonged to woman, an archaeologist working in the northwestern city of Tabriz said on Saturday.

and, ha ha --

Hambastegi said other ancient tombs believed to belong to women warriors have been unearthed close to the Caspian Sea.

Yea. There has. So let's teach it in school. Let's remind men and women that everybody's capable of being what they want to be, uterus or not.

Fucktards.

I felt ripped off when I started doing my graduate work and realized that, in fact, women had always gone to war, had always participated in war, in fact, war couldn't function without women - and it pissed me off that public schools still feed us the hunter-gatherer men always go out and hunt and women stay home sitting on their asses with a couple kids at their breasts patriarchal "ideal" of the 50s. The great "but women are biologically only suited to..." but "men just can't help beating crap out of stuff because it's biologically..."

Oh, stuff it.

Don't tell me I'm weak. Don't tell me I can't, because "women have never done that," "women don't," and "women shouldn't."

Such bullshit.

Goddammit, this really pisses me off all over again. I'm going to go have a glass of wine. See you tomorrow.

Fucktards.

Hello Hello

A big welcome to all of those visitors streaming in from the LJ feminist & misc. friend forums, and a big thanks to Ann for sending them my way... My hit count tripled yesterday.

Great to have you here.

Drug `Em Up

It should surprise no one that I come from a family of tall, strong, crazy, hysterical, intelligent, passionate, big-hipped women.

Mostly, we've just been told we're crazy and hysterical. The rest, we had to figure out on our own.

I had a great-grandmother who was a smoking, drinking, philandering type who'd give money to bums who showed up on her doorstep. My other great-grandmother was Grande Dame and ruled by virtue of her mean wit and insatiable appetite. I've got a grandmother who survived occupied France during World War II and hopped over to America with a GI, expecting a Place of Plenty, and finding a heapload of disappoint that she used to channel all of her energy into raising five children on a shoe-string budget and throwing plates at her husband with things got particularly bad. I've got another grandmother who told her drinking, controlling husband to fuck off for several reasons - among them the fact that he wouldn't let her go back to school to become a teacher. She was named Woman of the Year in Vancouver a couple years ago, has swum the Columbia River, was part of a rowing team, and has worked for some ridiculous amount of non-profit agencies benefiting children. My mother's the one I heard about most of my feminist books from - even if they were only in sight while gathering dust on the bookshelf in the dining room. She got herself an MBA and a VP of HR position at a $40M company before she was 40.

There are more, many more ass-kicking women in my family. Mostly, of course, they've been told they're crazy. Mostly, unfortunately, by the men in their lives.

My dad and my sister loved to tease me in my teens, because I look so much like my mom. "Mom's crazy," they said, "you're going to be just like her."

It wasn't until I was 19 or so that I realized that, you know, really, being like my mom really wouldn't be all that bad.

But women trying to raise children and have high-powered jobs and live up to their full potential are generally just regarded as nuts. There's a reason for this, of course: as a woman, not only are you expected to raise perfect children and have a clean house and get everybody to soccer practice, but you're supposed to have a successful, money-gathering, fulfilling career, too. And if you don't find doing all of this totally fulfilling and happy all the time, there must be something wrong with you.

Better drug you up.

Women in particular have been drugged up to "cure" melancholy forever, particularly with the advent of the scientifically "diagnosed" case of hysteria.

Luckily, doctor types don't generally diagnose women with hysteria anymore. Instead, we're just really depressed.

According the latest numbers, 49% of women take at least one perscription drug. Unfortunately, there isn't a breakdown as to how many of these are anti-depressents. Since we live in a capitalist society, drugged-up men are rapidly coming up just behind women, at 39%. Again, no breakdown as to how many are anti-depressents and how many are heart medication/cholesterol medication, though I'd make a broad, educated guess that says most of the men's drugs are heart medication or viagra, and most of the women's are anti-depressents.

Cause if you ain't happy, there must be something wrong with you.

Now, I'm cool with people diagnosed with severe depression and particularly those diagnosed with being bipolar being on medication, if they so choose. Depression sucks.

But I view depression more often as a symptom, not a disease. Just like I think gastric bypass surgery is a stupid "cure" for obesity when in fact, many people put on weight for many different reasons, and gaining weight is often a symptom of something else, I think that depression should be met with alterations in your lifestyle before you drug it up.

I come from a family of crazy women, and it's crazy women like those in my family who are the first ones prescribed anti-depressents. Even my younger sister has gotten up onto this bandwagon. Cause if you're depressed, it's not your life that's screwed up, it's you.

It's the message smart women have been getting forever: there's not something wrong with the system. There's something wrong with you.

When half the female population has to be drugged up in order for the system to function, I don't call that a good system.

I've learned to deal with depression by examining what's going on in my life: what I'm eating, how much I'm exercising, first of all. Then how much I'm moving towards the goals I have: how much I'm writing, how well I'm spending my reading time, my social time. Do I feel like I'm spinning my wheels? Do I feel like I'm not living the right kind of life, that I'm not living up to my potential?

90% of the time, making alterations in one or more of those areas and taking control of my life instead of playing the victim ["Oh, I *have* to stay at this job I hate/have to stay with this person I hate/have to put up with this stuff I hate"]will get me back on track.

The other 10% of the time, I take a tylenol PM and go to bed.

Sleeping lets my brain mull over what it is I'm chewing on, and I can get up the next day and go, "OK, here's what I'm feeling, here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'd like to do."

And then you do it.

I have a deep fear that when women go to their doctors and say, "I'm depressed. I love my husband and I love my children, but I just feel really unfilled in my life," the doctors respond by writing up a perscription for a happy pill, no questions asked.

Nobody says, "What would you really like to be doing? Do you feel guilty sometimes that you'd rather be doing that than doing your husband's laundry? Can he do it himself while you take a class in International Politics at the community college? Can your kids make their own lunch in the morning so you can teach yourself Arabic before work?"

I worry that we turn to drugs too quickly. I worry that complacency is stifling our potential.

On Merit. And Sex. Of Course.

So, it bugged Amanda and Echidne, too, which I find quite funny, because when I hopped over to Kos's place and read his justification for the lack of PC diversity among his guestbloggers, something in me went, "Huh?" too. Amanda explored the issue further, I think, in this post about the democratic party's seeming reluctance to forward a progressive agenda for women.

Kos's comment actually read a lot like the backlash against affirmative action. I would love it if we lived in a world where merit alone really decided whose voices we hear, but as Amanda and Echidne pointed out, we don't live there. Bringing in a voice that comes at issues from a new and different perspective (non-white, non-male, non-Christian) is a merit in itself.

Now, I'm not going to harp on Kos, because blogs are, of neccessity, very personal endeavors, and you have a right to run them the way you want to: but if you're looking to put forward voices for progressive change and you take out women - those bold, powerful women and minorities whose campaigns for equal rights shook up this country so enourmously and so quickly in the 60s and 70s, then you're missing a whole lot of shit. You're missing the whole point. You're not looking to change the world, you're just looking to change your own place in it. And when you're on top, you'll switch sides and go conservative, because you've altered the system so that you and your white male buddies are in charge, instead of rich guys like Bush and his buddies.

Shuffling around old white men within the same power heirarchy isn't getting any of us anywhere. It's got the dollar dropping, healthcare sucking wind, social security going out the window, and a backlash against women's rights that's been steadily getting worse (in some circles) since the 80s.

Because what are we really talking about, when we talk about these "huge issues" "dividing" the country? Sure, the war in Iraq is huge. The war on terrorism is huge. But creating Big Bad Enemies is supposed to unite a country, not divide it.

The issues that were put up front to handwave people away from the war are the two big issues that people in the US are now most passionate about, and clawing at each other about: abortion/reproductive rights and homosexuality.

Let's get that straight (ha), once and for all. The attacks on freedoms have to do with women. Yes, yes, terrorism is a big issue, and racism, and I don't want to forget those - but reproductive rights and attacking homosexuality and preaching Back to Bible Basics is about controlling women.

Gay men are scary because the conception of "gay men" in red-staters heads likely brings to mind anal sex (whether or not said men engage in anal sex), and the gender binary says that means one of them's gotta be passive, one of them's gotta be the woman. Which means any man can be passive. Any man can be the woman. And in a society whose fear and disgust for women is shared by many women who spent their childhoods believing they could grow up to be "real" people, this is a terrible revelation.

And there's nothing scarier to people who love to argue biological and/or Bible determinism than two women who not only can support themselves, raise children together, and provide one another emotional support, but don't need men around for sex either, cause they're quite fulfilled all on their own.

That's some scary shit.

And, scarier than that: women who can decide to have children or not. Women who decide, therefore, whether or not a man has children.

That's why people are angry about abortion. That's why the father's rights freak-outs are freaking out.

Women control fertility. Children don't come out of thin air. They're created OF a woman's body: her blood, the food she eats, the air she breathes. That's what makes a baby. A woman. Men submit a string of DNA, which triggers a chemical reaction inside of the egg, and the egg begins to divide itself. An egg is cells. Dividing cells attach to the wall of the uterus. Attaches back to the woman. And it's women's bodies that take over from there. Life depends on women. Life is women.

Get over it.

This pisses people off. It's always pissed people off.

If the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, then the people who control women control the world.

That's why controlling women is a major part of pretty much all major religions. That's why women should be quiet in church, and obey their husbands, and not fall in love with women.

And yea, this world doesn't benefit all men. There are lots of geeky guys who don't want to be violent, and hurt people, and be mean to women, and play sports, and rule the world. There are a lot of guys who really do want to just have friends, and love people. In fact, I think most people are like that, male or female. If we let sex be more social and less romantic-kill-me-I'm-dying-you-must-marry-me-cause-I'm-lonely/pregnant/can't do my own laundry, then I think we'd be getting back to what the hell sex is really about in the first place. There's a reason women's clitorises are outside of the vagina, and a reason 70-80% of women don't have orgasims with penetrative sex alone.

Sex isn't all about procreation.

::gasp::

The biological "facts" about men and women like to ignore the clitoris, and the fact that men can get off just fine without a vagina.

Sex is about keeping people together, forming social connections, it's about showing affection. And when women are allowed to control their sexuality, when they decide that no, maybe, they'll live in a house of women and raise children, or a house with some guy friends and some girlfriends, or a house by themselves, they have the power to cut men out of the affection loop, and eventually, the children loop, if they so choose.

This is real power. And women are raised to believe their bodies are wacky, abberant, dirty, disgusting, bloody, awful, fat things.

The bodies that could rule the world.

We're told we don't have merit. We don't have voices, because if we were really all that good, obviously, someone would have noticed us. If we were quieter, prettier, if we preached violent foreign policy, men would like us, and if we parrotted their own views back at them, we'd be allowed to talk.

We would talk about what they wanted to talk about: We'd stop talking so much about those silly bloody uteruses that are so obviously so bloody fucking unimportant that the women carrying said uteruses have been the targets of rage, hatred, and Biblical control for most of recorded history.

In fact, women's issues are so completely frivolous that men don't even talk about them, except to harp about how women being able to take care of themselves and kiss each other is biologically abberant because it leaves men out, and how women should be forced to carry around a man's strand of DNA until her body creates a child with it because "killing" a man's DNA is so much more awful than forcing women into slavery for said DNA.

Yes, we've been over this before. Women bloggers aren't read because in addition to screaming at the world and talking about healthcare and politics, they talk about their uteruses, and talking about uteruses doesn't interest men.

In fact, it doesn't interest anyone at all.

That's why entire religions, social mores, and scientific theories have been built up to control them.

Women have no merit at all.

I don't know why I didn't see it sooner: being a woman, and all.

Good Morning, Chiklits

"I get incredibly close to my characters. When I'm in full-on writing mode it's the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before falling asleep at night. Sometimes when I wake up in the night I wish someone at Microsoft would invent something that allows you to write on the dark."

- David Mitchell

And... Catherynne Justifies Herself

An interview with Catherynne M. Valente, author of The Labyrinth.

Why should readers pick up your book as opposed to, say, just about anybody else's book?

Because my book is so much cheaper than LSD, and nearly twice as legal. You are required to brave up to 60% fewer dark alleys and abandoned factories to obtain my book, and the seediness of the pushers involved in your transaction has been reduced by 67%. The FDA has recently determined that Product #423789A, “my book,” causes 1/3 less side-effects than LSD, and actually has nutritional value as a fiber-rich foodstuff. No other book on the market provides such an attractive alternative to spinal-fluid altering drugs as my book.


Assume your book has been filed under "Ages 8 to 12" in the children's section, perhaps by mistake, perhaps not. How horrified do you imagine a child would be after reading your book, and why? How many years of therapy would the child take to recover from the experience?

The lovable scamp in question would very likely immediately begin spurting blood from her adorable little eyeballs, and become suddenly incapable of communicating except in Silver-Age Latin. Electro-shock therapy would only succeed in advancing her as far as Carolingian Latin, at which point the lisping cherub would be beyond hope. Only repeated doses of high-proof alcohol will return her to a normal state. Sadly, this therapy must be continued throughout the Dickensian rascal’s lifetime.

Also, it will turn her gay.

I love writers.

Questions for Straight White People

The Guardian has some questions up that are often posed to non-white, non-Christian and/or non-straight interviewees: now it's time to turn the tables -

Do you think of yourself as white or American or both?

Ummm...

Does it worry you that you got your job just because of your race?

Yes.

Where are you from?

The west coast.

No, but really?

Cow country.

Since this is where you live, don't you think you should try and integrate with other races more?

Yes.

Is your first loyalty to your God, or to your country?

Do I only get two choices?

Is it true what they say about white guys?

I don't know: I'm often the one saying it.

Given the genocide, slavery and colonialism unleashed in the name of Christianity over the last two centuries, do you feel your religion is compatible with democracy?

No.

I don't mind white people, but if they want to live here then why shouldn't they have to fit in with our traditions?

You mean non-white people have traditions?

Shouldn't the police be doing more to tackle white-on-white crime?

I'm stealing Nick's answer: The police is white-on-white crime! Also white-on-black crime.

Given the objectification of women in your culture and the rise in teenage pregnancies, don't you think it's time to ban young girls wearing make up?

No, but I think it's high time we got rid of abstinence-only education.

What do you make of the tribal conflict in Ukraine?

Yay!

Don't you feel that this politically correct belief that we have to respect white people's feelings has stifled honest discussion and debate?

Yes.

Isn't it a shame that white people cannot pick more responsible leaders?

Oh, hell yes.

Don't you ever worry about being pigeonholed as a white person?

Oh, sure.

Why aren't you doing more to check the rise in Christian fundamentalism?

That's a really, really good question.

Who are your community leaders?

There's a community?

Why should we balance our belief in human rights with our tolerance for Christians?

Christians are people too.

What do white people think about Jews?

Non-white Jews?

How would you define "white" style?

Boring?

Why do you write about white people all the time?

Ha. Gotcha. 2/3rds of all the people I write about are non-white. Ha.

Don't you find that limiting?

No.

What are you doing for your people?

I have people? Like an army, or something?

Have you seen what the Bible says about women?

Yes. Have you noticed I'm not religious?

Don't take this personally, but why are white men so aggressive?

It's a penis thing.

Now the Olympics are over, can we finally admit that white people are genetically equipped to excel in archery and rowing?

ARRRRRGGHHHGHGGHGGGgggg

What is it with white people and homophobia?

You tell me.

You know what white women are like, don't you?

Gosh, I hope so. They're kinda like people, I think. With blood and guts and everything.

I understand that as a white person you come at this from a particular place, but can't you try to look at it objectively for a moment?

Is this code for "you should read the Bible more"?

When did you first realize you were straight?

??????

Why do you people have such a chip on your shoulder?

Feminists, or white people? The first because we're pissed off, the second because nobody ever tries to make us think we don't rule the world, and they don't ask us questions like this.

Don't get offended, I was only asking.

Watch Your Books.

"Where one begins by burning books
One will end up burning people."

-Heinrich Heine

Thoughts on Beauty

Something to think about -

A cool excerpt from the prize winning book Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body. I'm definately picking this one up:

"... Each image of a beautiful face or perfectly turned limb is not really about the subject that it appears to be, but rather what it is not.

"It is about the imperfections that are absent: the machine errors that arise from the vicissitudes of the womb, childhood, maturity and old age ...

"When we see someone who appears to have avoided them, however fleetingly, we pause to look with amazed delight. Beauty, Stendhal says, is only the promise of happiness. Perhaps. But it is equally the recollection of sorrow".

via Moorish Girl

China, China, China

In the movie Master and Commander, one of the boys working on becoming an officer is told by Paul Bettany, ship's doctor and amateur naturalist, that he has a knack for naturalism.

And the kid says: "You don't suppose I could be a sort of Fighting Naturalist, do you?"

China Mieville is a sort of Fighting SF Author.

"I always had a paranoia about someone pulling my earrings out and tearing my ears, so I always wore them with clasps that undo when pulled. Then about three years ago, this man ripped my earrings out during a political argument. Half of me was thinking, 'What the hell are you doing?', the other half, 'Result!'"

I mean, aside from the fiction, which is wholly weird and a fun romp, you've got an author personae like this:

"My first big crush was Purity Brown, the very cool human sidekick to Nemesis the Warlock in 2000 AD comics. She was a feisty kickass heroine dressed in apocalypse chic, leather, straps and guns."

and this:

"Being called 'the sexiest man in politics' when I ran for parliament for the Socialist Alliance was a pretty lovely cross to bear. But who's the big competition? Paddy Ashdown?"

Just read the whole column. It's great.

Did I mention that the fiction's not bad, either?

Some Thoughts on Fake Feminism

So, I sat down and watched the summer special-effects movie, The Day After Tomorrow. What can I say, I have a thing for Jake Gyllenhaal of Donnie Darko fame.

Being me, there's a little part of my brain attuned to the gender dynamics of the movies I'm watching. I watch them for their own sake, sure, and if they're popcorn thrillers, I let a lot slide, but I tuck the information away for later speculation.

In the case of tDAT, you've got a Scifi channel Battlestar Gallactica attempt at feminism, which is basically this: We've Got Female Characters in This Movie! One of them's a doctor! One's a Smart Asian who Works for NASA! And There's a Smart Girl member of the decathalon team! See how great and hardworking we are, how much we've done toward including women in our show? See! See!

And on the surface you go, oh, look, female characters.

Then you're reminded of why the female characters are there.

The female doctor stays behind to comfort a dying child. She's later "rescued" by helpful men in snow plows, showing that if you just keep up your faith in men and do your duty protecting a dying child, you, too, will be rescued by men.

The Smart Asian woman is almost a gender-neutral role, except that one of the science team members makes eyes at her, so we know that he's got "something to fight for." She has about three lines, and when The Boys go out to save some kids stranded in NY, she, of course, stays behind.

And the decathalon girl... dear god in heaven. She's a sweetheart actress and all, but she has about eight lines, and very little personality. She seems to exist merely for plot reasons: so that Jake Gyllenhaal will join the decathalon team in order to get close to her, and then brave an ice storm and some totally unneccessary and really silly looking computer generated wolves in order to get some antibiotics for her to "save" her from septic shock. Which, of course, he does (to be fair, she does get kudos for being able to speak French, and staying behind to help... um, a woman and some children from drowning in a car).

Here's what I want:

The female doctor stays behind to help a hot 30-year-old-guy dying from cancer, not a kid, and when told an ambulance isn't coming, she bundles up and goes out into the cold, finds an ambulance, hotwires it, expertly drives it around snowy obstacles, loads the guy in the back, and drives to safety. She is welcomed as a hero at the base camp, and quickly takes over the medical ward from an incompetent male doctor.

The Smart Asian actually has a personality. And instead of making eyes back at the scientist guy, she turns out to have just lost her female lover in the storm in New York, she, too, has Something To Fight For. When the guys try and leave without her, she says, "No, my lover would have wanted me to go. Besides, I've got better endurance than the rest of you, and I biked around New York for six years. I know the place better than any of you." She'll then go, and instead of one of the guys dying, she'll figure out a Smart Asian way of saving him. Also, her lover will end up being alive, and they'll have a really emotional reunion.

And Miss Female Decathalon with also actually have a personality that exists outside of Jake's conception of who he wants her to be. She'll tell Jake he's damn hot, and there won't be any of this back-and-forth with the dumb-ass loser rich kid, cause she's smart and sexy and knows what she wants, and she wants Jake. She'll save him from a bus accident or something, to prove it. Upon saving the French-speaking woman, she'll take charge of her own health, and point out her wound to everyone so they'll know right away that she's in bad shape. She'll be the one to come up with the idea that there's medicine on the ship, which she and Jake will then go and get. There can be some steamy sex action after she's been treated for septic shock. Or whatever. Then, when he's attacked by wolves for trying to save her from them, she can toss him over her shoulders and haul him back into the library.

That would a sweet-ass movie.

The Big Gay Media

I jumped over to Atrios' place and was troubled by this little post about Anderson Cooper and CNN's apparent reluctance to air the matter of his sexuality on prime-time news.

Whoa, buddy, hold on:

His sexuality is nobody's damn business.

Who I take to bed is nobody's damn business.

The forced "outing" of celebrities and media people really bugs me.

Now, I do take exception to this. People who go and vote on laws that deny me or my friends rights because of who we want to take to bed, or start to encroach on what I'm "allowed" to do in bed had better be the sorts of people who do nothing but hetero missionary style sex after dark - and don't cry every morning because they feel like there's something missing from their lives.

If they're not happy heteros, I wanna know why the fuck they're trying to force their happy hetero missionary married sex on me. If it doesn't work for them, why the fuck are they pushing it? Cause God said so? God also said slavery and incest are OK. Don't go throwing your book at me and burning everything by Michael Cunningham. Illusions of compulsorary hetero-ness need to be smashed out. If the guys who make the laws aren't even 100% grade A straight, (whatever the hell that is) they better not be making laws on who me and my buddies are allowed to be attracted to.

But here's my deal: who I'm fucking or not fucking ain't nobody's business if I'm not making laws about it.

Shows like Queer Eye are cool because they show "real" gay guys on TV who aren't dying of AIDS. Women like Ellen Degeneres are great because they're like, "Yea, I'm gay, and I do all this other stuff too. Get over it." But you know what, if Jodie Foster wants to be like, "She's my friend, fuck off, it's not your business," and Kevin Spacey is like, "I'm a reclusive bachelor, fuck off," then it's really not my business anymore than it's my business whether or not George Clooney hires high-class hookers.

Who Anderson Cooper takes to bed isn't my business. Sure, it would be great for more people to go, "Ha, yea, I'm not totally straight either. Not many people are 100% grade A straight. Get over it." because it would tear down some of the heteo-insanity myth, but at the end of the day, I can't demand that everybody talk about their fucking sexuality all the time. If you don't think that effects you, think again: cause that'll lead right on to interrogating men and women who aren't attracted to the "right" kinds of men and women, and women like me who also like little geeky guys are going to be required to talk about it all the time and justify it (as if I don't feel enough pressure to do that already).

Do we need more "public" figures to "out" themselves to help bust down the hetero myth? Oh, sure, it'd be great. But you can't force it. You can't require it. You can't ask people about it all the time. One of the reasons I mentioned my occasional attraction to women was to help bust down this myth, as it occurs to me a lot that I spend a great deal of time here talking about hot guys, and spreading my own version of the hetero myth - and I've chosen to share because this is a public space. But I can't be *required* to do that. If, like Ellen, somebody is brave enough to go ahead and share their private life in the public eye in order to help break down the absolute hetero myth, good for them.

But Anderson Cooper's a news guy. He does news. What, exactly, does his sexuality have to do with his chosen profession?

I suppose that as questions of sexuality become even more visible and more political, this is going to be an even bigger deal: who's got a same-sex partner, who's had a same-sex love affair. You can't just do a 50's "knowing wink" anymore (of course, the reason you could only do a "knowing wink" then is cause you'd get yourself thrown in jail as a communist). For some reason, if you're in a same-sex relationship, it's like you're required to scream it from the rooftops.

In a society where Britney Spears is dry-humping anything that moves and male singers display women in their music videos in the same way they display cars, we've really gotta have a dialogue about sex.

But you can't force it. And you especially can't force it on somebody just cause they're gay. Screaming heteros aren't forced to explain and justify their sexuality and how it affects their ability to be news anchors.

Nobody else should be forced to either.

Sex is personal. And sexuality is wide and varied and fun.

I don't think a news guy's sexuality is anybody's business: CNN's or mine.

And... We're Out

Writing today. I'm sure I'll find something hysterical to rant about tomorrow. Like this.

See you then.

In the mean time, here's some calming breathing space: