Because a lot of my recent involvement on DW and LJ has been the result of various FAIL controversies, most of the people I read are in Western or American media fandom while most of my fannish life has been in anime and Japanese video games.  I rarely read fanfiction for books or for tv shows and movies that aren't animated.  Harry Potter has been one exception, but I love the fandom a lot more than the original source.

My fandoms do not have enough fanfiction!  I read Fullmetal Alchemst almost exclusively now, and not much of it, because I just don't have the time I used to to sift through the junk.  Loveless is too good to have much fanfiction, really.  FMA should be, too, but it has the benefit of being a really, really huge fandom.  Weiss Kreuz, bless it, is just old now, as is Final Fantasy 8.  And Yami no Matsuei never had a large enough fandom to provide a lot of fan fiction.  Sukisho? Forget it!

Someone recently mentioned having a hard time finding non-kink, non-phobic fics about transgendered characters (I can't find the link now).  In my cis privilege, I hadn't really thought about that much before.   Seems like there are several anime characters who would led themselves well to being written as trans women or men.   I would love to see a fic with Watari from Yami no Matsuei as genuinely transgendered.  The subtext is certainly there in the manga.  There have been some other interpretations of his desire to create a sex changing potion, but I haven't ever seen a fic where that is taken seriously as a suggestion that Watari is trandgendered.  He is one of my favorite characters, and I wish I had the ability and knowledge to write that story.

This morning in a preview for a story on Michael Jackson, the NPR host asked(slightly paraphrased from memory) "is Black America embracing the singer who declared that 'it don't matter if you're black or white'?"

wut?

Of course, this is also the station where the host of Marketplace was joking about reports about an Australian dude who got in trouble for looking at naked women online, most of them apparently African. (I'm not very familiar with the story). The host joked about how we see that all the time in National Geographic, so maybe that's not a big deal. hur hur. African women are primitive! African women have no sense of privacy and are fair game for the white male gaze! HILARIOUS. Hey, Marketplace host: fuck you.

(Crossposted to Dreamwidth)
I'm finding I can't get too deeply involved in this, but there are some excellent posts and comments that deserve to be read and thought about.

What it has brought to my mind is Kyle Payne, the guy who self-identified as a radical feminist anti-porn activist, who counseled sexual assault victms and was later arrested for assaulting a young woman. he is an "anti-porn" man who self-identified as a radical feminist. A man who supposedly did and said the right things, who was vocally against sexual violence. And a man who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman and kept video to enjoy later.*

So fuck all of you who argue that we should give men the benefit of the doubt, or that we're just too hypersensitive, or that we are anti-male for being distrustful of men around us. Rapists don't wear labels. When women distrust men in general we are fucking justified. And when we actually say it, when women dare to tell the truth of their lives, we are trying to tell men/society something.

When they try to shut that down? They're making it perfectly clear that they don't give a shit about women's lives.

*My google-fu is limited at work and I can't remember his name at the moment, but I will update later.

[updated and edited with Kyle Payne's name]

Another transphobic hate crime in Memphis, TN. For what details there are, see Questioning Transphobia and The Curvature.

My thoughts are with Kelvin Denton*, her family and friends. I hope she survives and makes a full recovery.

Unfinished Lives has a little more information. The shooter is being charged with second degree murder, which means it was intentional but not premeditated.

The fucking news reports are all using male pronouns. Even seeing for themselves this level of hate never shakes them from perpetuating the kind of bigotry that leads to violence. WTF is wrong with people?


*As identified in reports of the crime. If this isn't her name, I will correct the post.

Dr. George Tiller was murdered today in an act of domestic terrorism against women's freedom.    I am angry as hell, and my sympathies are with his family, friends, coworkers, and those who volunteered at his clinic.  May the bastard who did this get what he deserves.

It's been a while since I could just enjoy a movie.  I am losing more and more of my ability to just relax and enjoy, and not analyze.  I've always been one to think about movies, and with my background as an English major and an almost-Sociology major I haven't exactly been the type to dismiss movies as not worth criticizing.  But as I learn more and become more active in educating myself on more issues, as I become more aware of a bigger pattern, the harder it is to overlook the tired tropes.

Maybe there really are fewer movies where the story and directing really outweighs the flaws.  But there are movies I would have enjoyed a couple years ago that now I am wary of even seeing: Star Trek, Wolverine.  I know there are many people who are socially aware, some who are activists, who recognize the weaknesses and problems in these movies who still enjoyed them.  There are other movies that have been recommended to me by feminist friends that I just couldn't get into.  

I'm not saying anyone who enjoys those movies is a worse feminist than me or anything.   Hell, right now I'm glad I have Underworld, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil because at least those star women in action roles!  It's an individual thing, and there are movies that for some reason I love even though they are terribly problematic, to say the least, and other feminists hate them.  It's just that the number of the movies I can actually enjoy seems to be shrinking, and I don't know if it's just me or if it's the kind of movies being made right now.

"It's okay to call a woman a bitch/cunt/whore/other misogynist slur if she IS one" is troll logic.  So is "it's okay to call a woman a bitch/cunt/whore/other misogynist slur if she deserves it."

If you use either of those arguments, I will personally tear off the "not-a-sexist" corner of your anti-bigotry membership card under the authority of the Feminazi Thought Police.  

with regards to the presence or absence of the native peoples of the American continents. If I see one more person defending her premise by saying BUT IT'S A WHAT IF! I might implode. I don't know if it's a "what if" with regards to the megafauna, but from what I've heard I somewhat doubt it.

I don't have any expert definitions or anything, but what people usually mean by a "what if" story is one that presents a change in what we know of our world or humanity and explores what that would look like.

From Patricia Wrede's own statements, she had a certain "feel" for the book in mind, and that feel was utterly familiar: the frontier story. She apparently wanted megafauna because they would be fun, not because she was posing a what if question to explore the effect of megafauna on 19th century America. Calling a story a "what if" story implies (and requires, IMO) that at least part of the purpose of the story is to try to answer the question. If the story doesn't do that it is a BAD "what if" story, and why the hell would anyone bother spending energy defending that?

Wrede's own statements prove that she didn't eliminate the presence of native peoples to explore what that would mean, what kind of world would result. And if you read it as a what if story, well then the answer the story provides is that they didn't really matter that much. And why the hell would anyone defend that?

Before anyone starts shouting about how we can't know that without READING THE BOOK ZOMG, please locate any comment by someone who has read the book that disputes the above with the actual text of the book. Otherwise, I call derailing.

It's pretty damn clear that the decision to completely eliminate all people who lived on the American continents before European arrival was one made out of convenience, and one she purpose fully did NOT want to affect the feel of her story. That's not a what if exercise.

Since Thirteenth Child was published by Scholastic, a blog post about a Scholastic published magazine especially caught my eye.

Via Sociological Images and Racialicious (two of my favorite blogs right now), two images of New York Times Upfront magazine covers. Scholastic publishes the magazine and their name appears prominantly at the bottom of the cover. It's also featured on the Scholastic website as a resource for teachers.

The first cover is for a story on the way families in different parts of the world buy and consume food products. The story, called "What We Eat," is by all reports a fascinating pictorial about how families around the world eat. The pictures are mostly of families surrounded by a week's worth of groceries.

However, on the cover and titled it "What They Eat," accompanied by a picture that Missives from Marx describes as "not one of the family photos, but is, instead, a photo apparently selected to elicit the maximum negative visceral response possible from American kids." (Click the link for the picture. It's a child who I believe is Asian about to chomp down into a whole, raw fish.) And I can't express the problem any better than zie did: "So the cover separates an “us” and a “them,” and shows the American high school students how gross and weird “they” are."

The second cover features a story about children around the world who are forced to engage in violent conflicts. The image (again, click the link above to see) is of an angry looking young black boy holding a big gun.

There is a pattern here of being expected to see people of color as other, as "them" not "us" and as objects of fear, disgust or pity.

We need another term for certain typs of female characters in TV and movies.  Books, too, probably.  There are these characters that I and a lot of people I know react to as Mary Sues, and they're often called Sues.  But they are obviously canon characters adn they aren't self-inserts.  They are usually written by men to be The Very Cool and Awesome Exceptional Woman Every Man Must Want.

Examples (YMMV of course):
Elizabeth Swann - Pirates of the Caribbean
Kate Austen - Lost


My impression of these two characters comes from the shows themselves and the commentaries where men go on and on about how very awesome they and the actresses are.  

They are annoying because they have a lot of the characteristics of a Sue: several men or the most important men in the story are inexplicably drawn to them; they are Exceptional Women - they are super cool because they aren't like, you know, MOST women, who are just stereotypes or suck or are not nearly as alluring; they have a new talent or ability for every new situation just in time! and yet they suck at things when the plot calls for them to be victims to boost the male ego; they are written as an ideal woman (not flawless, but the flaws are endearing).

These not-Sues feel like they are mostly written by men as what they think all girls and women want to be and they typically mix tomboy attributes with the ability to be feminine and unthreatening to the male status quo.  A lot of women can't stand these characters, and we are typically accused of jealousy or being overzealous slash fans who don't want a girl getting in the way of boysnogs.  But it is just annoying to be presented with the supposed "strong female character" who really is just another trope and just another projection of male fantasy.

So what do we call these characters?  Who else fits?

I've been reading and trying to catch up on the discussions of Patricia Wrede's new book.  Finally found a link to a comment by Wrede herself:

"The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem"

Shorter Wrede: I don't know how to handle racism so I just got rid of the PO(this particular)C.

The premise of the book fits neatly into our white, European entitlement.  We have inherited and perpetuated this mythos that says we deserve this land; we're entitled to this land, even moreso than the people who have lived here for thousands and thousands of years.  And now, yes, we've developed some liberal distaste for genocide but most of us are just not willing to come to grips with the idea that we would not be here if it weren't for one of the most egregious crimes against humanity in the history of humanity.  We just can't give up our cultural fondness for the "frontier," for the white folks exploring the wilderness.

For example, a reasponse in the journal I linked above: "And I'll admit that I'm not an archeaologist, nor do I do worldbuilding. And it is laziness, in that sense... but if she hadn't written stereotype A, or stereotype B, and had come up with plan C... then what? She gets lambasted for coming up with something else completely inaccurate at depecting indigenous American peoples?'

The truth is, without genocide and war against Native Americans, America cannot the playground of the Europeans.  Why is peaceful coexistance so difficult for white authors to imagine realistically?  Because it would require respecting the right of the indiginous people to their land and their way of life.  It means serious restrictions on how Europeans would be able to live on this continent.  In short, it would not be the modern American frontier myth.  And apparently for a lot of white people, racism and the erasure of Native Americans is preferable to giving up our Eurocentric stories that make us feel like special snowflakes.

I am on Dreamwidth, but not currently using it as such. I will probably eventually crosspost and all that fun stuff, but it takes me a while to figure out these new fangled thingies.

I have seen some of the complaints about fandom spreading out and different services making it hard to keep track of a fandom community. I completely sympathize with this feeling because it is very difficult for me to keep track of anything, much less remember to check several different places and keep up with people enough to actually feel like I'm part of any community. It's left me with a perpetual feeling that I'm just a fandom wanna-be.

And it's not just the community building that has to adjust to new technology and new services, it's any kind of consumption of the things that fandom produces. Namely, fanfiction. With every change it seems that a reliable source of varied fanfiction becomes harder to find, and weeding through the utter shit takes more time. I mean, sure, there was a lot of shit to wade through at fanfiction.net even in the best of rampant NC-17 times. But the centralized location was great because you could easily watch for newly posted fic, keep track of your favorite authors, and not have to go searching blindly.

Now I struggle with finding individual authors or communities in a lot of different places, often with searches that are 80% useless. I read a lot less fanfiction than I have in the past.

So I think these are some challenges for various fandoms. I'm very sympathetic with this, because it is often changes in the services we use that cause problems and shake up communities: fanfiction.net banning NC-17, the long history of LJ fails. At the same time, fandom becomes somewhat more difficult to participate in for some.

Jeff's A.D.D. Mind has recently had a couple guest posts about the Mythology of ADD. These posts by Betsy Davenport discuss the myths surrounding ADD, some of which are perpetuated by ADD'ers. The second myth she addresses is the idea that ADD'ers are smarter than other people. One aspect of this, as she points out, is the idea that “People with ADD have to take medications, just to get on in a world where the so-called ‘normal’ people have ridiculous hoops for us to jump through.”

I wanted to talk more about this because I want to be clear that in my previous post I was not suggesting that people with ADD or similar problems are disabled solely by the requirements of the world around us that caters to neurotypical* people. There are a wide range of experiences within ADD and even within inattentive type ADD. My point in my previous post was that regardless of how well or poorly we are able to get through life, the assumption that we must adapt to the ways other people think and function makes things ten times harder than they already were.

In no way does that mean that those of us with ADD would be perfectly fine without medication or assistance in some kind of ideal designed-by-adde'ers world. It's just that for me personally and probably for some others, it is the need to succeed in a hostile world that pushes me over the edge from problems I can deal with to frequent depression and anxiety.

*I am not completely sure I'm using this correctly and I've been trying to find more about the way the term is used. I know it has primarily been used by the autistic community, and I have the impression that it has been more widely adopted. I welcome discussion and correction of how to refer to people who don't have ADD in any way that doesn't involve the word "normal." I still have a lot to learn about these issues.

Today is Blog Against Disablism Day. Visit Diary of a Goldfish to find all the fantastic posts that will be published today.

I have a coworker who frequently says her daughter is lazy. The girl, I'll call her Sarah, recently turned 16 and has been getting very poor grades this year. Everyone knows she's capable of more, but she just doesn't do her schoolwork without a lot of pushing and external motivation. With the motivation to get her learner's permit and start driver's ed she's pulled her grades up considerably in a short period of time.

No doubt there are a lot of people who are lazy and just don't feel like doing any work. But every time she calls Sarah lazy my hackles raise and I want to scream because she has admitted previously that it is possible that Sarah has ADHD. My coworker's husband thinks he has ADHD and has been thinking of seeking treatment, and ADD tends to run in families. Knowing first hand how damaging it can be for a person with ADHD to be treated as just lazy and unmotivated, it is all I can do not to give my coworker an angry lecture. I struggled for many years thinking I was lazy and wondering why I couldn't do all the things I wanted to do. It caused depression and occasional suicidal thoughts. Research has shown that people with ADHD who go untreated are more at risk for drug abuse and other problems such as depression and anxiety.

The problem is not just misunderstanding or denial of ADHD (though that itself is a huge problem), but the belief that people without visible and/or measurable differences in ability think the same way as the majority of people and ahve teh same needs/motivations/capabilities as, say, neurotypical people. This kind of disablism functions similarly to other privilege: the experiences of the privileged are considered the norm everyone should be expected to live up to. Just as women are expected to simply adapt to institutions and social structures that evolved out of male privilege, those with ADHD are expected to be able to succeed in education and careers designed by and for people with "normal" abilities and ways of thinking. Those who don't are called lazy and irresponsible, or are blamed for not pulling their weight at work.

This all puts a lot of added pressure on people with ADHD to function in ways that are not natural to us and do not allow us to reach our full potential. We often have to struggle so much just to keep up with daily life in a world designed for people who function very differently that we have little energy left to take advantage of the things we tend to be especially good at.

This is where the gift vs curse debate comes in. There is a lot of emphasis on ADD as a "gift" from some groups and individuals while others consider it a "curse." The characteristics of ADHD vary from person to person, but I experience it as a curse largely because of external factors and realities. conforming to a world that experiences time in a way that I understand only on a philosophical level, being expected to have social networks at work to advance my career, being expected to understand social cues that go right over my head all make it that much harder to focus on getting things done because it aggrivates my anxiety.

Diablism comes into play when people don't recognize these challenges. I know that to many my symptoms sound like I'm just being whiney and I should just suck it up and deal with it like "everyone else." I struggled for a long time because I didn't know why I couldn't deal with it like "everyone else."

My point is, there is a certain degree to which a disability like ADHD makes one's life harder. And then there is the crushing weight of the burdens that come with living in a world where people with disabilities are expected to adapt to living the model life, and that is often the worse curse of the two.

I'm working on a blog post for BADD.  For once I am slightly ahead of the curve and have the post mostly written.  I just need to add in a few links.  I'll be crossposting it to my all-but-abandoned blog, Astraea's Scales.  First I wanted to do a more navel-gazing post about myself to give a little context.

Last summer I was diagnosed with ADHD.  Before she had brought up the possibility I had never even given it a thought.  But as I have become more educated about ADHD I realized how I have been struggling with it as long as I can remember, but only saw the depression and anxiety that might have actually been a result of untreated ADHD.  I found out how common it is for people to miss ADHD in girls because so often we don't act out the same way boys do.  And yet, untreated ADHD can be a risk factor for drug use, anxiety and depression. 

( cut for tl;dr )

I don't know whether to be amused or enraged.  I think both.  First, there is this provocative video of Dollhouse set to "It Depends on What You Pay" (trigger warning).  Angry Black Woman posted it and I agree with her comments about Dollhouse 100%.  She also linked to where the video was posted on Whedonesque.  The resulting comments are the sources of my amused anger.  It's funny because the contradictions, strawman arguments, and demonizing of those who dare to criticize Dollhouse are so blatant.  It's enraging because people are saying things like this: 

When will feminists stop defending everything Joss Whedon does?   Obviously not all of us are, but in general the feeling is that Whedon is so great for identifying as a feminist and so far ahead of the rest of mainstream tv & movies that he should not be doubted!   So I'm sure several of his feminist fans will have explanations for this statement when he accepted the Bradbury Award (via Hoyden's About Town, who has the video):

What’s this? How do I come to be in this room full of luminaries, when mere moments ago I was in Canada filming a film? Aha! I’ve fooled you! My image is being beamed to you through a wavematronic electron machine that causes you to see me although I am not here. That’s right - this is the future. This is one of the many future gadgets you will soon learn to enjoy. Haha!  So funny, Joss.  Original, too! Also, what is with the gross scene between FBI guy and Mellie in the last episode of Dollhouse? 

Future is my business, because I write Fictionalised Scientifics, or as the kids call it nowadays, Fi Sci. And right now, I’m very honoured to be - not physically, but spectrally - among so many people that I admire. Especially you [points], and you [points], and that hot chick over there - why are you even here? I would like to be with you physically, but I can’t, because I’m filming a movie that I feel certain will make you take this award back away from me. But if I could be there, I would probably say somthing exactly like what I’m saying now. Which is simply that there is no bigger influence on my writing really than Ray Bradbury. He is a forefather of us in so many ways. Nobody made Fi Sci more human, more exciting, the horror, the engagement - it stayed with me my whole life, before Stephen King, before Frank Herbert, before so many people I admire. Bradbury was the first. This award is something that I will genuinely treasure when I actually get to be near it physically. Thank you all. Now - I disappear.