Titled, appropriately, "Earthsea in Clorox," or A Whitewashed Earthsea: How the Sci Fi Channel Wrecked My Books.
snip:
I had just seen Mr Halmi's miniseries Dreamkeeper with its stunning Native American cast, so I said to them in a phone conversation, hey, maybe Mr Halmi will cast some of those great actors in Earthsea! -- Oh, no, I was told -- Mr Halmi had found those people impossible to work with.
"Well," I said, "you do realise that almost everybody in Earthsea is 'those people,' or anyhow not white?"
I don't remember what their answer to that was -- it may have used that wonderful weasel word "colorblind" -- but it wasn't reassuring, because I do remember saying to my husband, oh, gee, I bet they're going to have a honky Ged.
Ah. How right she was.
They then sent me several versions of the script -- and told me that shooting had already begun. In other words, I had been absolutely cut out of the process.
I withdrew my offered pronunciation guide (so Ogion, which rhymes with bogy-on, is "Oh-jee-on" in the film.) Having looked over the script, I realised they had no understanding of what the two books are about, and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic MacMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence. (And "faith" -- according to Mr Halmi. Faith in what? Who knows? Who cares?)
Larry Landsman, who looks after the book end of things at Sci Fi and has been very kind, sent me an early CD of the film, so I saw it some weeks before it was aired.
There was nothing I could do about it at that point, and I said nothing negative in public. It seemed mean-spirited to bash the thing it before other people had a chance to see it. Anyhow, what's the use whining? Take the money and run, as whoever it is said. Someday, somebody would make a real Earthsea movie. . .
Any volunteers?
And here's why this matters:
I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does.
I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from colored readers who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in -- and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, who'd found nothing to read in fantasy and sf except the adventures of white people in a white world. Those letters have been a tremendous reward and true joy to me.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
And... Here's Leguin's Proper Response to Earthsea's Whitewash
But Aren't You Worried You Won't Grow Up to Be a Real Girl?
Here's an interview with Hilary Swank, who trained four and a half hours a day, six days a week, for three months to get into boxing shape for "Million Dollar Baby" - the latest troubled-woman-boxer-will-kick-your-ass-movie.
What bugs me about these interviews of ass-kicking heroines is this need the interviewer feels to remind the audience that it's so sad that these women aren't looked at as more "feminine" (if you want to hear a woman snap back at an interviewer about this bullshit, check out some Michelle Rodriguez interviews). There's lots of questions about what her husband thinks, and how her training affected her husband's view of her (instead of asking, you know, how the training affected her view of herself, her confidence, etc), cause lord knows all us women are supposed to be living for that Idealized Feminine Form that men are always talking about (see previous post that bitches about just this).
Apparently, some dipnut (casting director Felicia Fasano) said of Hilary (who's mostly played untraditional female roles) that she needed to "embrace her inner supermodel" and start taking on more traditional feminine accourtrements.
Hilary's response:
"I follow my gut because in the end that's all you have. I shied away from playing just 'the girl' roles because I didn't find them inspiring," she added. "I wanted to be taken seriously. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to push myself to the limit. I wanted to -- I want to -- do all that. That's where my passion lies, and it's not just playing the arm candy."
I think my response would have been a little less diplomatic. I think it would have come out something like:
"Fuck you, you fucktard."
Take Out All the Black People, & God. It'll Make it Less Controversial
So, Earthsea's got a token black guy in a world that's supposed to have a token white chick.
Oh well.
And now we have Pullman's work getting savaged, too. For fear of wingnuts.
Wingnuts. All twelve of them.
What the fuck is genre fiction supposed to be all about? Why write this crap, when it's just gonna get whitewashed and hacked up into regurgitated putty? What's the point?
God is cut from film of Dark Materials
By Sam Coates
THE Hollywood adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials, in which two children do battle with an evil, all-powerful church, is being rewritten to remove anti-religious overtones.
Chris Weitz, the director, has horrified fans by announcing that references to the church are likely to be banished in his film. Meanwhile the “Authority”, the weak God figure, will become “any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual”.
Like a Church that says having same-sex attractions, having sex outside of marriage, or reading certain books is EVIL?
Why I'm Not A Woman
Sometimes, I'm just sad.
Cristina translated a piece by Mircea Cărtărescu from Romanian to English called "A Few Reasons Why We Love Women," and then she posted her own response, "A Few Reasons Why We Love Men."
Now, before I start, please know this about me: I did find some of this very sweet. I'm a hopeless romantic. But when I read it, I looked at it again as a litany of all of the things I'm not, of all of things I'm supposed to be, and I came up lacking. This always happens when images of female beauty and "what being female is" are plopped in front of me by (usually male) writers, editors, designers, etc. Not that men don't get this too, but it's the reason written pieces like this bug me. It tells me what somebody wishes me to be. Something I'm not.
And Cristina did express worry that feminists would take it the wrong way:
Reading it as a Romanian, I was amused and nostalgic, and caught myself smiling wisely to myself several times. Then I couldn't help but wonder, could this be written in English, now? Or would it attract irate replies and burrowing frowns from aggravated feminist intellectuals all over the US?... I believe that the spirit of Cartarescu's text is not to be misconstrued as some patriarchal political statement, but rather as the quirky, tender voice of the writer-as-man. And as such, it's endearing and funny.
And yet, despite the swooning in the comments over at Cristina's place, I found the idea of dating a guy who thought these things really uncomfortable. What would happen when he woke up? When he realized I was just a person?
What I found interesting about both versions was the idealization of each gender, the emphasis on separateness, on difference, and the glorification of the "other." A lot of romance, and putting people on pedastels, is built around language like this.
I'm a little weird when it comes to sexual relationships, I've discovered. I tend to look for egalitarian, buddy-buddy relationships. Instead, a lot of guys I deal with look to make me into a child or a mother, when all I really want to do is hang out with somebody funny and interesting and respectful who treats me like a real person, not an idealized "other." I think that idealization is dangerous, particularly when you're with a guy who finally gives up the ghost and realizes you're a real person. Bad things can happen.
And I worry when I read about the reasons women are loved, and find that none of those reasons describe me.
I wonder what that makes me.
Which is exactly the sort of doubt the romance myths look to inspire.
I want to make new stories.
General Update - Here's What's Happening
So, my roomie is outta here for the holidays (not that it'll be all that different around the house - she and her SO have been connected at the hip for the last two weeks, so I haven't seen much of her. They're terribly cute), which means I'm going to be watching a lot of movies this weekend, so you'll likely be getting lots of me-pissed-off-at-movies posts in the near future. I'm also planning on sitting down and writing up a rant about Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy. Apologies to Anne in advance if she ever gets here through Google. It ain't gonna be pretty. I intend to bitch (I. Can't. Believe. I. Read. This. Book.).
It's also Holiday Blues time again, so I'll be doing some more how-did-this-year-go speculation/roundups (to remind myself that no, really, I've done OK this year), including favorite books and movies of the year, with commentary. And I'll also be speculating about what I've got to work on this year. My list is extraordinary: aim for the stars so you can hit the moon.
I'll be heading out on Wednesday to WA state for a nice, relaxing holiday in the sticks. I'm looking forward to silent nights (the only sound that of cows and coyotes - not a train to be heard for miles and miles), long dreary jogging routes, and hopefully a day trip to the beach. Blogging will be sporadic from the 23rd-29th, as my parents' place has a dial-up modem and only one working computer (my brother's mad machine).
If anyone wants to chat outside the comments, you can reach me at my usual "public" address: kameron_hurley AT hotmail.com - for those back in WA, I'll be sending you all let's-do-lunch invites soon. Hope to see you!
Health & Safety... Remember the Fat!
This morning I was forwarded an "all users" message from our health & safety department.
Was this a reminder about wearing a hard hat on construction sites, or properly lifting boxes by using your legs so you don't throw out your back? A lesson in ergonomics? Or perhaps it was just the usual holiday reminder to "drive safely" or "don't drink and drive and be safe" and all that?
No.
Oh, no no.
This year's Health & Safety information was about avoiding those holiday pounds!
Seriously!
Now, OK, they give sensible advice, and it's good advice for those of us who have traditionally spent most of the holidays binge eating (this is the first year I'm packing my jogging clothes with me for my week of home-for-the-holidays. I figure I can jog my brother's route), but you know... it says a hell of a lot about today's America when the Health & Safety department of a bazillion dollar international company finds it neccessary to remind everyone to watch what they eat over the holidays.
Unfortunatley, the only bit I can include here without violating my confidentiality agreement is the part they took from an ivillage article:
Drinking one beer every night adds 1,036 additional calories per week or 15 pounds to your stomach per year. No wonder they call it a beer belly. Three glasses of dry wine a week adds 318 calories, or an additional three miles on the treadmill just to walk off the extra calories. If you're watching your weight, try this advice:
· Don't drink alcohol on a regular basis.
· Remember that the calories from alcohol add up quickly, and they go straight to the fat in your abdomen.
· Most people eat high calorie snacks when they drink alcohol, a double whammy in terms of weight gain.
Yum. Beer! I think I still have four bottles of Negra Modelo - my beer of choice - over at my parents' place: Thanksgiving leftovers.
And you better bet I'm drinking beer at Christmas. Calories or no.
I think my worry about all this concern about food and calories is that it makes people obsessive about it. You start not being able to think about anything else. Your whole day revolves around what you're "allowed" to have... and now the workplace is getting on board.
I have such incredible mixed feelings because, honestly, I'd rather we had a fruit tray as the morning office treat instead of two dozen donuts, and I prefer whole wheat chicken wraps to pizza (yea... they brought in chicken wraps yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised), but.... but... I worry. I worry that we're all going to become food Nazis.
And I don't know how ethical it is to start telling people what they can and can't eat. The future of where all this Fear of Fat is going really worries me.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
A Day at the Movies
How about a show of hands from everyone who gives a shit that Alien's Ripley would be played by a 55-year-old woman?
Anyone?
Apparently, Hollywood's concerned about it. Um. Hello? Sigourney Weaver, dude, ass-kicking heroine extraordinaire. Not only do I not care if she *is* 55, I'd appreciate it if she *looked* 55 and went around kicking everybody's asses. Male actors do it all the time (Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, etc.). Get over it. I think she should start dating some 20-year-old hottie, just to make a point.
And, though my initial reaction to the idea of Hilary Swank playing a boxer was "eh" - I've seen enough stellar reviews of the latest gritty-female-boxer movie that I'm just going to have to go out and see it, if only so I can argue afterwards about how much cooler Michelle Rodriguez was in Girlfight.
Cheer Up Your Work Day!
Ah. Here's a neat-o gallery of my favorite work-day inspirational posters:
More at despair.com
And Now They're Just Sitting Around, TALKING
There's something immensely satisfying about finding a successful author who finds their characters sitting around doing the same sorts of frustrating things that mine do, instead of furthering the plot:
Dave McKean phoned me up today. I got unexpectedly testy when he commented on a couple of scenes in Mirrormask that were just two people talking, and on the problem of getting those scenes to have some kind of narrative drive. The reason I got testy was, as I eventually explained to him, because I've spent a day fighting with an uncooperative novel and every scene I wrote kept turning into two people having a conversation, and it was driving me nuts. It wasn't even that they were sitting around having interesting conversations. They were telling each other things the reader had already seen occur, and I felt powerless to stop them...
"You're not allowed to do that any more," said Dave. "Something else has to happen."
- Neil Gaiman's blog
It gives me hope.
Geek Girls
"Any female[...] has had to work ten times as hard as her male
counterpart to be accepted in their organization. She will be
more able, will react quicker, and will generally be much more
dangerous. Kill her first." -- Starr, "One Man's War," Preacher
That's the best quote ever.
A great article on Geeky girls as portrayed in comics, with some thoughts on Buffy. (via Alas, A Blog)
Bickering (again) About Women in Combat
Rox Populi points to this article about recommendations for the deployment of mixed-sex units alongside all-male units in the US military:
The Nov. 29 briefing to senior Army officers at the Pentagon, presented as part of the service's sweeping transformation of its 10 war-fighting divisions, advocates scrapping the military's ban on collocation — the deployment of mixed-sex noncombat units alongside all-male combat brigades....
So, basically, we're not talking about a huge change here, just another scaling back. The mixed-sex units are still "technically" non-combat, but they'll be deployed *alongside* all-male combat units. What this means is that there's a significantly greater chance that these mixed-sex units will see combat. In reality, women are seeing lots of combat in Iraq. It's a guerilla war. You can drive a truck and fire at and be fired upon. So it's just a technicality. It's just fudging with the language so that it makes it *look* like women aren't fighting and dying, at least, not at "the front."
Whatever the hell the "front" is in a guerilla war.
The debate's roots go back to 1994. [Brutal Woman note: oh, bullshit. This has been debated FOREVER. Don't make it like this is something NEW UNDER THE SUN]. Impressed with the performance of military women in Operation Desert Storm, the Clinton administration lifted long-standing bans on women in combat aircraft and ships.
But the new policy clearly stated that a prohibition would continue for ground units that participate in direct combat. The 1994 policy also said women would not serve "where units and positions are doctrinally required to physically collocate and remain with direct ground combat units that are closed to women."
I usually yawn when I read all this noise, because women have always fought, have always known violence, and have even been buried with their swords. What made me guffaw was the silly reason the Pentagon's still giving for not putting women into land combat units right now:
The Pentagon has said it maintains the ban because upper-body strength is needed for land combat and because polls show most female soldiers do not want the policy changed.
What a load of horseshit.
You know they didn't even have physical tests of strength for firefighters until women started wanting to become firefighters? You know the "reason" that's often given for not promoting more women into management positions at movie theatres is that women "can't" carry 70 lbs worth of movie reels? (yes, that's the sound of me snickering in the background...)
Women aren't in combat units because war is what makes men men. Glory and sacrifice and male bonding and all that. In times of dire seriousness, when an entire people is really threatened, women have always stepped up. They formed all-female tank units in Russia, and guerilla movements have always relied on women for 10-20% of their combat forces (sometimes more, when all the men are wiped out - all those Greek stories about Amazons aren't so fantastic when you read about how many men get moblized and slaughtered during wars. Who do you think's left to protect hearth and home?). After the "dire seriousness" was over, women were told that actually, no, even though they may have fought in a war, really, they actually *couldn't* fight because they weren't strong enough. Yes, yes, just a little doublethink here, bear with us, we're men of SCIENCE.
It's not a matter of strength or ability: the real heart of it is how men and women will deal with being in combat situations together. There's a deep fear that all the women will "end up pregnant" (like they just rolled over and BAM! they were magically pregnant, like women reproduce via parthenogenesis - see the overseas "pregnant nurses" scare during WWII), and a fear that men will throw themselves in front of women in order to save them even more than they'll throw themselves in front of each other to save their buddies... Saving women being a natural masculine instinct, after all. I mean, when they aren't ordered to kill women.
So, anyway, why should anybody really care about any of this?
Well, remember when I said that mostly, historically, women have only been really seriously recruited in times of dire need?
The Times reported last week on an internal May 10 briefing that portrayed the Army as in a bind. The briefing states the Army does not have enough male soldiers to fill the FSCs if they were to collocate with combat brigades and thus required to be men-only.
Let's not get all clap-happy about egalitarianism in the military. It's not about recognizing that women are people too. It's the same old story: we don't have enough men. Time to bring the women in. Watch them scale back the "rules" again. Then, after they're done, watch them bring back the "women are really better suited to being home, barefoot and pregnant" argument when women aren't "needed" anymore. Notice they won't start publishing studies about how terrible war is for men, how men shouldn't sign up because they'll suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome the rest of their lives and pick up a host of mental illnesses enroute from the war zone. No, no: war is good for men! And war is good for women.... so long as we need them there.
Anyway, lack of soldiery doesn't bode well for the US's interest in world domination.
I'm just saying.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Some Thoughts On People, With A Really Obvious Fantastical Genre Bias
Amanda's got some thoughts on the latest round of the "weak Y chromosome" story at NPR. And I've got some counter-thoughts.
I've heard people lamenting for awhile that the Y chromosome is "too small." Mostly, it's men who say this. I think this has something to do with the male preoccupation with size. Let's be honest: the Y chromosome doesn't need to be all that big. This is why I don't go in for the gloom and doom of the Y chromosome, though it does interest me in the fictional "what if" sense. But for now, the Y chromosome makes a female embryo male (yes, in addition to adding DNA to the mix, though never as much as the Xs carry, so really, getting rid of the Y would only take out the sex determiner and any mutations/traits specific to the Y). But really, all the Y actually has to do is determine sex and slap a few wild card genetics into the mix. Once it forms the male genitalia, the sex organs can take over and produce the testoserone that alters the XX template to an XY. Cut off the genitalia, and you'll get a tall, not-so-hairy-as-uncut-man man, likely with a little more fat and maybe some fat accumulations that look much like breasts in old age. The reason this happens is because the testicles produce the sex hormones that make men men. All the Y chromosome has to do is alter sex. The resulting organs take over and do the rest. The template is female.
So the Y won't go away until we get some mutations in the XX that teach the egg to divide on its own X amount of days after ovulation, or release two eggs that have to merge their genetic material in order to begin cell division. And that would be really inconvenient. Not because there wouldn't be any penises in the world, but because we'd have to think up new and different means of contraception. And it would increase the risk of mutation, just breeding with yourself all the time.
For the record, there would likely still be "sex" and "sexual behavior." Cause sex is very social, not just procreative. Obviously. But I thought I'd reiterate that. I've been reading too much from the wingnuts about how sex is all about procreation, which gets more and more ridiculous the more I hear it. If that was so... oh, nevermind. I've already ranted about that.
It's more that we want to know--what would people be like if there weren't two genders? Would we all suddenly lapse into a "true" version of ourselves once the idea of "man" or "woman" was stripped completely away?
The key phrasing, I think is "idea". Man and Woman are ideas that include both biological and social roles/functions. Women have gone around dressing and acting like men while still retaining their uteruses, and people treated them "like men." Were they men? Men go around dressing up like women and may even be called "she" by most people. Are they men, or women? What does that word mean? If we're using strict biology, we get into trouble again, cause are we talking about visible or working penises making the difference between men and women? Are barren women men? If women don't bear children, are they men? Can we call everybody a "man" until "he" bears a child? Why not? Why not call everybody "girl" until puberty? What's the point at which a penis is too small for a man to be a "real" man? (don't laugh. Hemaphrodites are still assigned sex based on how "big" the penis/clitoris appears to be, and whether or not it will be able to function for penetration, as we're still really stuck in the idea of sex=penile/vaginal penetration/engulfment, whatever).
So, if there were only uteruses and no penises, would sex roles disappear?
Or, being such wonderful social animals who love little boxes, would we just create new ones? Perhaps based on something else this time. The breadth of a woman's shoulders, her height, the color of her eyes, her hair. Maybe women who had higher testoserone levels and more body hair than average would be considered a gender all on their own, and anybody who wanted to be that gender would spend all their time and money trying to get bigger and taller and grow their hair out really long and buy questionable tonics to increase the amount of body hair they had.
Would we go around with four or five genders with their own social roles? Women with uteruses still have varying hormone levels, so you'd still get a range of butch/fem and all-the-gray-inbetween. As an aside: I do think that some of the posturing is a nature thing - I've always been able to sympathize with transvestites because I tried to imagine a world in which I wasn't allowed to wear pants and had to dress fem all the time, and I found the idea terrifying. I have a deep and abiding fear of the 50s. Dress me up too fem and I feel like I'm in drag. I've never felt so uncomfortable as I did going with a boyfriend to his junior prom and mincing around in a terribly expensive white poofy dress and heels and elaborate underwear and stockings and a mask of cosmetics. He in his tux, me in my poofy fairytale dress, he found the idea of the theatre terribly engaging. I tried very hard to respond in kind, but I felt big and awkward and uncomfortable, though I couldn't figure out why, at the time.
I spent most of the prom hiding in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror, and watching other girls fluttering around, thinking, "This is the way I'm supposed to look. Don't I clean up well? So what the hell's wrong with me? Why do I feel so weak and awkward and out-of-control?"
Hiding in the bathroom, I later learned, humiliated my date, who caught me and berated me as soon as I came out, "You left me out here with Joshua," he said, naming one of the dorkier guys in our friends' groups, a guy who'd asked me out at one point, and who I'd turned down because, well, he was boring. "You know how much I look like a loser, standing out here with him?"
My date then proceeded to go around showing me off to all of his friends, a bit like a prize heifer. It was one of those, "See! I have a girlfriend!" shows that I thought was mildly cute but troubling at the time, and looking back, I understand why it troubled me, and I'm pissed at myself for not allowing myself to be more troubled.
I spent a lot of time trying not to be troubled by things that bugged me. Among them, the fact that I'm really not comfortable with pointy shoes and makeup... and yet, I'm still mostly straight. How does that happen?
Well. It's called being human.
There's not a binary. And certainly not a strict sex/gender correlation. You can talk in averages and maybes, but not absolutes.
Why is it that in most versions of this intellectual exercise-cum-fantasy that men are the sex that suddenly disappears? I doubt it has much to do with the genetics of the X and Y chromosomes. My guess is that since the great bulk of the day-to-day work of exaggerating the differences between the sexes falls on the shoulders of women, then it's just natural... Since we do the work of being a Gender, we are the ones who have a vested interest in the idea of a world without gender, which means that the standard we strive not to be like would be what disappears.
Women are really interested in worlds without men because they want to know if women would beat up on each other as much as men beat up on women. I'm cynical, and I tend to think that yes, the stronger will beat up on the weaker, for one reason or another, once you amass a society that has to fight for resources (Leguin's The Dispossessed is an interesting what-if experiment that argues that scarcity of resources would actually aid in the continuation of an anarchic/communist society). Lots of people who've written female utopias/dystopias disagree with me. You don't often see utopia/dystopia fiction full of men because... well, I think men freak out reading about all-male utopias because of deep fears of homophobia. You don't get male utopias that don't include women (the only one I've seen is Bujold's Ethan of Athos, which is a Bujold-written-book [lackluster prose - NBL, Lois!], but really neat on ideas). In fact, male utopias would likely include harems and harems of fake women. Or, like the misogynistic slugfest of S&M, the Gor novels, they posit worlds where women get "put in their place" (author John Norman's Gor books argue that the natural condition of women is slavery. Seriously. It's got a "liberated" 1970s feminist transported to the slaveworld of Gor, where she's enlightened about what her natural condition really is, and she learns to like it. Really classic stuff).
What I always found depressing about most female utopias/dystopias is that the women always "lose." That is, the men tend to come in and change everything, or threaten to change everything (even Russ is guilty of this), as if there's a "natural" status quo when it comes to relations between the sexes.
And I don't buy that. I don't think most of the women making all-female societies believe that either, but we all bring the biases we've been raised with into our fiction. There's an astounding amount of misogyny that shows up in some of my stuff.
Anyway, I think the ideas above about how it's put on women's shoulders to be really different from men to create gender interesting, but it also forgets the big social push for men regarding masculinity, and what it is to be a "real man." You're far more likely to hear a boy being berated for "acting like a girl" than you will a girl for "acting like a boy." I think men are made men by being encouraged to be "not-women." Which is why the areas with the most rampant sexism are warfare and sports. These are the activities that have made "men" men since before we had skyscrapers, and suits and glass ceilings.
What I find most interesting about the latter, the "not-women" conception of masculinity, is the fact that, biologically, all eggs start out as female. And the groove that becomes the labia major sometimes doesn't fuse in men, meaning you start out being formed female, and the Y sends out signals to alter that (I'm going to be jumping up and down about this one for awhile, because I just finished reading Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body, and I learned all sorts of really fascinating stuff about the forming of biologic sex, which is just as iffy as I'd always thought). And women bear babies. You need a uterus to do that. Taking men out of the equation would be easier than taking out "women" - if you define a woman as a person who has a uterus.
So I think the tendency to think up worlds without men, in terms of biology, has more to do with interests in the very small biological difference between men and women - the sex determiner on the Y gene. So, what would be the easiest thing, biologically speaking, to get rid of and still have a human being?
The Y chromosome.
Without two sexes, there would be no humanity; it's like asking what we would be like without language or opposable thumbs or something else that makes us human.
I just about choked when I read this one. I'm coming at this from a biased perspective, of course: I write social science fiction, that is, I concentrate on making societies with fluid sex and sexual characteristics. I've written about neuter and hemophroditic societies. I've postulated worlds of women with several different genders, and being a writer of such, I've also read a ton of other writers who've worked with these ideas.
You could have eight sexes and still have humanity. Sure, it wouldn't be the one we see now (which is the allure of these thought-experiments - trying to figure out what would be really different), but it'd be humanity. A lot of my interest in writing SF/F is to find out what "humanity" still has once you strip everything else away. Change the gender roles, get rid of the gender, give them crazy settings, some organic tech, wars that never end, and what do you have left?
Well, you have what makes us human.
And I don't think what makes us human is the fact that we have two sexes.
We have to work with what we got. The inequality between the sexes isn't the natural consequence of the male/female binary, so intellectual exercises getting rid of it are limited in value. Oppression is what it is, and needs to be dealt with as is, and not as the consequence of the accident that "it takes two".
I do agree that feminists and progressives working toward a different (hopefully, better) society do need to work with what we/they've got. And that's two "pretend" sexes. And lots of pretend "races" and all the social bullshit that we've built up around differences in biology that are in fact so small as to be thought insignificant or dying out at the chromosomal level.
But I also think that examining the "what if"s give us a better understanding of the similarities among us. "What if" can shine a spotlight on some of our more absurd assumptions about what "really" makes somebody a "person," or a "man" or a "woman." If you can't get yourself to think about how things can be different, you could get caught in the trap of "well, it's always been this way. It will always be this way. There's no other way."
The reason I'm involved in writing what I write, and reading what I read, is because I see SF/F as having the possibility to show us something other than what we've got, to allow us to imagine a different society. If you can't dream it, how can you do it?
I'm reminded of a website my buddy Jenn forwarded to me a week or two before the election. Despite being all rah-rah hopeful for a Kerry win, I think that most of us, deep down, were having trouble imagining Bush allowing himself to lose. Jenn sent me a site called "Visualize Winning." It shows Kerry/Edwards winning, Kerry being inaugurated, Osama captured, the budget being balanced, and soldiers coming home.
The sad thing was that until then, I really didn't have any kind of conception of what a Kerry win would look like. I just couldn't visualize it.
Which may have been the problem.
So, all this hypothesizing, and dinking around with biology, and playing with the Y chromosome and thinking about societies where genders and sexes are different isn't counterproductive. In fact, it's what battling for a different society is all about.
If you can't even imagine a different place, how can you work toward getting there?
The Fighting Life, Jump Kicking, Etc.
Learned how to do a jump kick last night. Well, sorta. OK, I figured out how to do the basics of a jump kick last night. You know that winning move at the end of The Karate Kid that Danny uses to win the match? It's like that. Only, without the arms.
We had an odd number of people during the target training class, so I got paired with Sifu Katalin, which was cool and intimidating at the same time. My coordination is terrible, and it means that whenever we get something new to learn, I feel like it takes me twice as long as everyone else. In actual fact, this isn't true - I've progressed about the same as everybody else who started when I did, but it doesn't feel that way when I'm hopping around on the floor. Give me punching drills. I'm way better at those - of course, I was just as uncoordinated and hopeless at those, too, when I first started them. Anyway, Sifu Katalin seemed really confused that I could do a jump kick OK the first couple times, then switch to a left leg jump kick, get confused, hesitate, and botch it. I admit it confused me, too.
A lot of this had to do with the fact that I've spent the last six months learning that you kick with the leg you initially bring up off the ground. For a right jump kick, you step forward with your right leg, put your weight on your right leg, but you bring up your left leg as if you're going to do a left leg front kick, only you don't - you jump off the right leg, kick with your right leg, and land on your left.
Confused yet?
For what it's worth, I'm really bad at dancing, too.
It's the coolest kick ever, when you nail it. It's officially my favorite kick, but trying to wrap my uncoordinated brain around it was frustrating. I could do it two or three times in a row without a problem, then I started thinking about it, doubting myself, and tripping over my legs again. "Left? Right? Huh? But you always kick with the leg you bring up first!"
I felt the same way when I was learning how to do uppercuts. It was like, "The fuck? How do you move your body that way, and shift your weight that way? And you can hit them with an uppercut to the body that way?"
Now I understand the mechanics, even if the technique isn't perfect.
We did target training intercut with ten pushups and ten situps for 13 rounds. I didn't think much about this (because it's become the norm for this class - they switch out the class routines about once a month, for variety), until we lined up at the end and Sifu Katalin gave some encouragement to those newbies who were having trouble with the situps.
"We did ten situps, 13 rounds, that's 130 situps. Even if you only managed to do half of them, that's still 65 situps. So for those of you who felt like you were dying, don't be too hard on yourselves."
Now, I do 170 situps every morning as part of my free weights and stretching routine, but when she said that, I realized that not only had I done the situps (::yawn::) but I'd just done 130 *pushups.*
Not those pansy-ass push-ups, either, the kind you do on your knees, but real pushups. OK, yea, I could have bent my elbows more and improved my form, but dude, I did a 130 pushups. No, not all in a row. But dude, I did 130 pushups!
I wonder if I'm strong enough to do chin-ups now? I have awful memories of those terrible, terrible days in gym class when we'd have to face the chin-up bar, and it would be sweet-ass to see if I can do a couple now, instead of, you know, just sort of falling off the bar once they take the chair away.
Adulthood: spending all of your time trying to be stronger, smarter, better-looking and more intelligent than when you were a kid.
Which goes a long way toward explaining why people who were already strong, smart, and good-looking when they were kids end up being really boring adults. They don't have any reason to be better.
Monday, December 13, 2004
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.
