Recs?

So, weirdly, I'm going to come out to my fellow blog writers before anyone else: I think I might be bisexual. Which, you might argue, is no big deal. True, it's not. The problem is, bisexuality is often seen as being 'greedy' and not 'being able to make up your mind'. Equally, there is a certain invisibility within the GLBT movement. (It could be worse; trans people have barely any representation or level of recognition ever). So blah. This wasn't meant to be one of those personal posts; just long, hard days with no pay has left me feeling a bit tired, and my friend LJ is being a pain in the backside so I can't handily nab any articles from that there corner. So instead, my dears, this is going to become another rec post. If there are any suggestions that you may have with regards to books/films/music/tv shows that deal specifically with the issue of bisexuality, please 'holla at me' in the comments. It'd be interesting to watch/read/learn more from a perspective that is never considered in mainstream media (which is mostly heteronormative, but occasionally we get some good guy on guy action. Except, um...where's the lesbian love?)

I hope that you guys have a relaxing, fabulous weekend XD

Single Gender Entertainment: Why I Think It Sucks

I’m never going to read Kim. I’ve probably already read most of the Sherlock Holmes stuff I’m going to read in my lifetime, and I’ve read about one novel and maybe two short stories. I can’t really see myself ever getting turned on to Michael Chabon’s works. What do these have in common? They’re books where all or almost all the main characters are men. Often, the men are white, and cis, and straight, and clever, and occasionally they’re well-off. As such they just don’t interest me very much, as I’ve already discussed.

Before I go further, two things for the record. First, I’m never going to read The Language of Bees, either. Nor The Help. I don’t like books about only women, either. They are also boring. Second, I know this is a weakness of mine. Kim is probably an awesome book. (It is according to my mom, anyway, who has read basically everything ever and should know.) I’m defending my viewpoint here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know that I’m missing out. I’m totally missing out. Someday, when the missing out becomes more important than the stuff I’m about to go into here, I may correct this weakness. Meantime, I’ll tell you what is keeping me here.

I talked before about how I don’t like entertainment with not enough wrinkles in it. Specifically I was talking about when the protagonist is given artificial conflict in the plot, because all the natural sources of conflict have been removed. I think that perhaps the most valuable source of conflict and potential growth is male-female interaction. Not because there isn’t any conflict in groups of one gender. (I’ll let everyone ever stop laughing at the idea that single-gender groups are good for avoiding conflict. It’s okay folks. Have some water.)

What’s actually the issue is that men and women have different ways of dealing with conflict within their own gender groups. For example: my father and I had a conversation not long ago where I brought up backhanded compliments, as in: “People who are good at it can make an insult sound like a compliment.” My dad expressed total befuddlement.

I’ve no doubt that if presented with some examples, my dad would catch on quickly, and remember some incidents where he’d seen this, or recognize it in future, or whatever. But the very fact that it was on some level news to him – even if he’d just never heard it expressed in those terms – shows something to me. Now a lot of guys (especially of my generation) wouldn’t have needed an explanation. But I think it’s fair to say that only a tiny percentage of girls and women wouldn’t understand that.

Flipping the idea – I understand intellectually being so angry at someone that you deal with it by taking a swing at them. Whatever, I playfully whack my friends with pillows when they say mean things about fictional characters (as ONE OF THEM CAN ATTEST, ahem). But that’s different. I will stop a conversation, I will lose trust or faith in an individual, I will imagine saying cutting things when I’m angry, but physical violence with the intent to do harm scares me.

Those are two very broad, very stereotypical, very cis examples of men and women handling problems differently. I was going for quick and dirty to help me illustrate a point. Now, thinking in terms of fiction. When all your heroes and your villains are of one gender, they all have in many ways the same approach towards conflict. At least, they have some of the same groundwork and assumptions. They usually have the same definition of “winning.” They assert dominance in similar ways.

Even when that sort of thing isn’t explicitly stated, or acknowledged by the author, I often feel it in the back of these kinds books. Having both male and female (and in rarer cases, trans and queer and asexual and hermaphroditic) characters means that you tend to have people operating under different assumptions, ‘way off in the back. You tend to be able to tackle more. It tends to be closer to how I deal with life.

So there’s the logical side, which I just pretty much pulled out of my ass. You know what really gets on my nerves? In Guy Books, Our Heroes look at each other and just Get It, How Hard It Is to Be a Man. (Only men can really understand that, you know.) If it’s an older book (and often with newer ones too) it doesn’t seem to occur to the characters or the author that women have understandable wants and needs.

In Lady Books, Our Heroines spend a crapton of time bitching about being girls, or else nodding about how Only Women Understand some particular thing. This time, men are there to move the women around, and the women are there to react to it.

Fuck all that shit. People is people, we affect each other, and dismissing a gender as sort of unwitting cosmic marble players is bullshit, and a cop-out. Adults who live in the world and fight crime or are international spies or interact with other human beings ever should really have gotten over that element by now.

And when we can start getting more genderqueer folks in, that’s when things will really pick up.

I will now happily debate any and all examples put forth in the comments; I have managed to refrain from bringing up several billion examples only because I’m not entirely convinced by my own logic.

So, I've been away for a while. Apologies for this; getting settled into a new job kind of took the front of my mind, and everything else took the backseat.
Havign said that, thanks to Kenneth Tong, I am probably going to escape back. I don't even have the emotional energy to explain to those who don't know what has happened, so I suggest you Google 'Kenneth Tong managed anorexia'.
Maybe try thinking before you speak, because then women and men all over won't have to sit, crying, reorganising their triggered minds as they try to fight this very fatal disease. Fucking anorexia is not a suggestion for anything, ok? Please educate yourself.
That's all folks. I will maybe try and write another post on this, being much more articulate about the matter, especially as I have been AWOL recently. But for now, please (and I trust you guys anyway, but it has to be said): eating disorders affect peoples' lives. They can kill, or they can permantly scar you mentally. They are not a joke, nor should they ever be used as a super special social experiment. Bear these things in mind.

Maverick TV: Breaking the Rules yet Upholding the Status Quo

Who was it that said he didn't have time to write a short letter so his correspondent would end up getting a long one? Well, today, it is me. I am already late on this post, and it's been percolating as a post since before this blog was even a thought of a blog. And I've found a way to overexplain what I mean in every single paragraph. And being late, and tired, I am going to take the easy way out and put a jump in, instead of editing.

You know him. Well, you don’t personally know him. You know of him. You’ve totally seen him. He’s the star of your favorite movie or television show. He’s also the star of your mom’s favorite television show, and most likely your little brother’s, too. You’d probably be sleeping with him right now, except for the fact that he doesn’t actually exist. He’s the maverick!

“Maverick” is defined (on dictionary.com) in three ways. It’s an unbranded calf in the southwestern US. It’s a particular kind of cruise missile. And it’s “a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates.” In this case, I’m talking about that as relates to entertainment, specifically television, because “the Maverick” has become a stock character. Not just a stock character either: he’s become a stock star. He’s Gregory House on House. He’s the Doctor on Doctor Who. He’s Richard Castle on Castle, Cal Lightman on Lie to Me, Nate Ford on Leverage, Patrick Jane on The Mentalist, Mal Reynolds on Firefly, Fox Mulder on The X-Files, Geoffrey Tennant on Slings and Arrows, Jimmy McNulty on The Wire. Trust me, you’ve seen him.  (He’s not new, either. You’ve met him before as Sherlock Holmes, d’Artagnan, Robin Hood.)

In which Paul Krugman continues to be my hero

He is a clear-sighted man. That is all.

White Guy Entertainment

Mmmph. Remind me never to take a break again. I put off trying to formulate this post by exercising. Things are dire.

Anyway. 

So, way back around Thanksgiving, I went to see the Harry Potter movie.  And as is (I am told) typical, there were several trailers on top of it. And the trailers set me thinking about some stuff that's been brewing in my mind for awhile, namely, the gorgeously annoying simplicity of white-guy entertainment.

About half the trailers I saw had the same basic premise. Young (but not too young), handsome, athletic, straight, cisgendered, White Guy Protagonist is a slacker. His father is rich, but perhaps disgusted with said son, on account of son spending all his time partying and screwing sorority girls. Something Happens, maybe to father, maybe to son himself, but son – our YHSWG -- is forced to shape up. (Son is usually forced to shape up on account of something really terrible happening, like getting superpowers.) Son learns responsibility, saves pretty girls, earns father’s (and occasionally Supportive Girlfriend’s) love, finally fulfilling his potential. Green Lantern is, I think, the Platonic form of this. Tron: Legacy and Green Hornet have some of the same elements.

There’s nothing wrong with this basic story. Many, many people can sympathize with struggling to live up to one’s full potential, when it is easier not to. (I think I had a boyfriend in college who carried this particular cross. But facetiousness aside, I do get it, and it is compelling, learning to grow up.)

But look. It’s a very – straightforward problem. Not particularly complicated. Some would argue there’s beauty in its simplicity, but it’s been told rather often at this point.  YHSWG has no conflicting potentials to decide between. His potential and his destiny align nicely. The road may be difficult, but he earns everyone’s approval, including his own, through his journey. It's difficult to grow up for whatever reason, but the rewards are immediate and compelling. He has the ability to grow up, he only needed the impetus. People are tripping all over themselves to upgrade his status. 

Let me back away for a second, and generalize. In terms of pure storytelling, what you've done is: set up a protagonist. Give the protagonist a problem. (So far so good.) Then you've simplified the problem in several different ways, thus lowering your own stakes. First of all, solving the problem will generate approval for the protagonist. Secondly, the protagonist has the ability to solve this problem, and everyone around him knows it. This problem is in fact the way to unlock the protagonist's True Potential.  And it doesn't hit him too early, either: the protagonist hits this problem and gets ready to solve it when he's already over eighteen (and sometimes, he's older than thirty) -- which makes these stories about needing to grow up even more frustrating.

 Because the writer has thus taken all the real stakes away, he or she (but usually he) needs to add some artificial conflict. Superpowers! Computer-generated somethingorother! Secret identity hijinks! A dad who may not approve immediately and will instead turn out to be evil, thus freeing the hero from needing to take into account his opinion!

In real life – and real, interesting entertainment -- , when you’re not (necessarily) a YHSWG (who is also able-bodied, intelligent, emotionally stable, rich, and lucky) – when any one of these elements is missing – suddenly solving your problems not so much a matter of living up to your potential and earning approval. Suddenly it’s about fighting yourself, in the form of your own body, or your own mind. Or fighting others’ perceptions thereof. You have limitless potential in a particular field, but when you pursue it, instead of earning approval, you earn curiosity, disgust, contempt, confusion – because someone of your gender, or your sexual orientation, or your race just shouldn’t be interested in that sort of thing! Or you have a physical disability, or a mental illness – and you have to work three times as hard as everyone else to break even, and instead of approval, people wonder why you’re not doing more.

That’s not to say that YHSWGs do not have real problems. I mean, I've heard it can be very stressful when you're secretly a superhero but your love interest thinks you're a shmoe. 

Facetiousness aside, I’m not trying to belittle anyone’s problems. Problems are part of the universal human condition. Every problem can be generalized into a certain number of basic conflicts. Telling the same stories over and over again is what we do, to try to understand our problems, to try to help each other solve them.

But isn’t the must-grow-up problem, the must-reach-my-potential problem more interesting if you add a couple of wrinkles to it? What if you have young gay white guy? What if you have young straight poor white guy? What if you have older, gay, rich, black woman? What if you have a twelve-year-old Asian transgendered person with depression? They can all face the same problem, the problem of having to reach their potential through growing up and taking responsibility. Hell, as far as I’m concerned, let them all do it through the same mechanism: the acquisition of unexpected superpowers. They could join up and fight crime!

Because the way that problems really stay interesting (at least to my mind) is when you see permutations of them. When you see someone trying a solution that should work, but doesn't. When the resolution is actually in doubt. When the protagonist doesn't have everything stacked in their favor, and then proceed to whine about it (Peter Parker, I'm looking at you!). 

Ideologically, I see all the unacknowledged privilege in movies like this, and it drives me mad. I have ideological reasons for hating Judd Apatow movies, for example. 

But my overwhelming point here is the idea of stakes. There are all kinds of ways to make something "high-stakes" -- to make someone want to watch or listen, because it's IMPORTANT. And one way is to make it be about HAVING TO SAVE THE GODDAMN WORLD. And another way is really finding out about yourself, or someone else, or having some really deep emotional growth happen. And that kind is quieter, and less flashy, but no less interesting, although it has a bad (read: feminine) rep. 

But now we have these movies that are trying to combine the two kinds of high stakes, and they tend to combine them by doing one kind well and one kind really, really badly. And my EPIC POINT (which I have spent this whole thing circling around) is that a YHSetc.WG accepting his responsibilities? Is doing the second part WRONG.

Thankfully, we have Buffy, which (for awhile at least) did both sides really actually very well!

Fish outta water

Hey hey, apologies for lack of postings - I've been up and down in terms of moods, and just all over in terms of life.

I was discussing my lack of posting with Acadian a bit ago, and one of the things we talked about - er, I babbled on about, rather, - is why I haven't been posting much.

You all should be very flattered - I often find myself intimidated to post here. You all are posting about news articles and issues that I don't even know about until I read your very posts. It feels a bit like bringing an inner-tube to the deep end of the pool: I just want to "say shit" and babble on about more personal stuff (it's just where my brain is) while the rest of yous are being all "articulate" and "posing valid interesting feminist questions"... and I know that it's not a requirement to post the thought-provoking essay-esque posts that you all do, but ... see above metaphor about inner-tube in deep end.

*sigh*

This year has very much been the year of me. I have taken up a LOT of my energy. My moods have been terrifying. I spent 6 months (no, REALLY!) on BC pills that had me crashing every-other week. I spent the next two months futzing with BC before I crashed enough to go off them completely. The last four months I've been cycling off and on. Between that, trying to get an apartment set up, and still working 40-hrs-a-week at my job being a big ol' adult and running things.... Basically, when people ask me what I've been doing, what I actually should be saying is "I've been babysitting myself the ENTIRE TIME and I'm fucking exhausted!"

Anyways, since I've been watching after myself, I find my musings very me-focused. (like hey, right now) and that leaves me with less posting about "very neat things" and more posting about "me me me".... which feels very shallow and whiny. Between this fact and that whole "I don't have polished writing" thing (which I posted about awhile ago, but can't find again), I find myself shy about posting here.

ANYWAYS- I was chatting to Acadian about this, and I felt like I wanted to share it with the class, because I dislike the fact that I've dropped off the face of the blog.

Synecdoche, shenpa, and other difficult words

"Synecdoche" usually applies to a single thing taken to represent a larger class of things. I'm going to stretch that definition a bit. We all know that celebrities and other public figures come to represent much more than just another person who happens to have an exceptional talent or two. We start to associate them with positive or negative traits or attitudes. We can even invest them with representation of aspects of our own personalities and our most deeply-held beliefs. We get invested in their perfection. We idolize them. They become objects, representing things much bigger than they are as individuals.

And then they let us down, by proving that they are not representations, but people. And that sets the hook of shenpa, defined here as the thing that fuels our knee-jerk responses, the goad that drives us along well-worn paths of anger, fear, and hopelessness.

The Assange mess is the latest enactment of these two difficult concepts colliding and feeding each other.  Public figures carry so much of our needs and dreams, that a threat to one of them can feel like a threat to our selves. And if the offense committed by a hero is large enough, wrong enough, frightening enough, we can turn instead on the accusers--a last-ditch attempt to deny the cracks in the shell of our heroes, who contain our beliefs, pieces of our selves.

Sady Doyle of TigerBeatdown found a way to take her anger and emotional triggers and convert them to meaningful action. #Mooreandme made her and its other supporters targets of the anger of the betrayed. But she stayed with it. She stayed awake through fear and anger and desperation. She didn't hide what she was doing and why, and as she faced first stonewalling, then contempt in return, she continued to examine not only the actions of those she was facing, but her own assumptions and reactions.

"And then he came down."

Sometimes the trap is sprung and we escape it anyway. Some days it works.

More About What I Said I Didn't Want to Talk About

The one part of the Assange affair that I keep coming back to is the idea that what he is accused of is sort of "bizarrely rape" because "Swedish laws are so strict and weird."

"That wouldn't be rape anywhere else," argue (some of) his supporters. "Not in America or the U.K. or Australia. The Swedes are just messed up about sex."

To clarify: I'm talking about the allegations that Assange's accuser said she didn't want to have sex unless a condom was used, and that he then penetrated her without one; and that he penetrated her while she was asleep.

It is true that Sweden has more specific laws on this topic than other countries do. That doesn't mean they're wrong, however.

I've been thinking about this, and it all came up again because of the Naomi Wolf/Jaclyn Friedman debate, which I haven't had a chance to read all the way through (I'm sort of putting it off, to tell you the truth).

And then Thomas, over at Yes Means Yes, said it way better.

Sex being okay under certain conditions and not under other conditions -- that's normal. That's acceptable. That's why you can decide to break up with someone -- they used to be meeting conditions that they are now no longer meeting! So you can choose to stop sleeping with them! Until/unless they meet those conditions again! (Or you can decide that you never will, because they never will.)

All human interaction, really, is about setting conditions. Sometimes, you are very close with someone, or have a long history, or close ties, and your conditions are minimal, and basic. (You still have them, though, yes, you do. Even if they're just, I will interact with this person as long as they are not violently stabbing me while I do it.) Other times, you have specific relationships that are formed for specific periods, specific reasons, and with specific goals and specific sacrifices in mind. And when someone else isn't meeting those goals, or making those sacrifices, and forces you to do things that were not in your criteria -- that's a boundary violation. That's unacceptable. And when they violate specifically stated boundaries around sex -- that's rape.

Anyway. That is what I have to say about that.

In future-blogging news, I finally found the outlines for some essays I want to write about entertainment, and what I think about it, and how other people, who do it for a living, could do it better. So I believe that January will be my Entertainment Month, as in, I will try to write four semi-serious, sort-of-thought-out essays in a row on media and entertainment. So stay tuned for that. Over the next couple of weeks my blogging may be sporadic, as I have holiday commitments.

May your own holidays be cheery and bright and less stressful than you hope.

Tony Porter is fabulous

Sorry about the lateness of this; thought I'd sorted it to post on Friday but clearly not. (I was otherwise engaged with family drama)

It's not the best of all posts, but it really makes me happy to watch this. After the ragefulness of the last couple of weeks, this guy gets it. He gets it in an articulate way that everyone can respond to!

Tony Porter: A call to men

Don't know that these things embed, but go ahead and click!