ladybusiness | Sidetracks - April 21, 2014

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ The 2014 Hugo Nominees were announced this weekend. Please excuse me while I preen over the anthology I'm in Speculative Fiction 2012 making the ballot under Best Related Work. Thanks to everyone who thought it was good work! I'm also super excited about SO MANY of the people I adore making the Fan Writer and Fanzine ballots and being recognized for their contributions. And thankfully, now that Abigail is nominated, I don't have to burn SF fandom to the ground. MY ONE THREAT PAID OFF. :D Plus, Ancillary Justice!

THIS IS THE BEST!

➝ Hugo reaction posts are hot and heavy. Stefan is rounding them up. Take kitten gifs, though.

➝ I've only just starting watching Farscape, so I'm sure later on this news will make me 150% happier, but Farscape Creator Confirms That a Movie Script is in the Works is exciting! I love the idea of more space adventures. I'm a sucker for space adventures.

➝ MORE SPACE ADVENTURES! Syfy orders 'The Expanse' series based on Leviathan Wakes. I ACCEPT YOUR OFFERING, SYFY. Although, I hope they aren't serious about the whole "Game of Thrones in space" thing….because how about no.

➝ Why Doing Awesome Work Means Making Yourself Vulnerable is targeted specifically at business, but I found it really useful for creative work, too:

Wherever perfectionism is driving, shame is riding shotgun. Perfectionism is not about healthy striving, which you see all the time in successful leaders, it's not about trying to set goals and being the best we can be, perfectionism is basically a cognitive behavioral process that says if I look perfect, work perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid shame, ridicule, and criticism. It's a defense mechanism.

➝ Via The Mary Sue, this Gendered Advertising Remixer is both hilarious, but also really startling. Ana, maybe you don't want to look at this one. I worry about your heart. >.>

➝ Speaking of gender essentialism, please everyone read Boys Read Girls by Ana, which is a wonderful deconstructive essay about inadvertently gendering reading material for children.

➝ A reminder that Child of Light, an awesome game with fantastic music and art design, comes out April 30th across multiple platforms and is only $15. :D

➝ I'd like to add my congratulations to Renay's to all the awesome people nominated for the Hugos this year. Like Kameron Hurley, I can't get over the fact that so many of the Best Fan Writer nominees are "outrageously, outspokenly feminist women" — and the same is of course true of Best Fanzine nominees Ana and Thea. This makes me so happy and gives me so much hope. (ETA: There are, however, valid reasons to be upset, and my attempt to focus on the hope-filled bits doesn't mean I think this is the One True approach everyone should be following.)

➝ Speaking of things that give me hope, even though things are far from being all roses and daisies when it comes to gender and reading, I wanted to highlight this photo gallery, which I included in my blog post Renay links to above. Can we stop pretending women are a special interest group while men are universal already?

➝ It's Not the 'Confidence Gap' – Here's What's Really Holding Women Back: this piece really resonated with me, even though I'd have been a bit more cautious to avoid essentialist traps by saying "leadership skills culturally coded as feminine/masculine" instead of "women's/men's leadership skills". There's nothing inherently masculine about being authoritative or individualistic, just like there's nothing inherently feminine about being "humble, nurturing, emotionally intelligent and collaborative."

I'm really, really tired of Lean In-type rhetoric and the way it often veers into outright victim-blaming. I also have a lot of feelings about the double bind women find themselves in. If they exhibit socially prestigious traits that we perceive as masculine, they're punished because they're straying from acceptable gendered behaviour; but at the same time, if women happen to behave in gender appropriate ways and are "humble, nurturing, emotionally intelligent and collaborative", we perceive them as "weak", treat them with contempt, and blame them for the structural sexism that holds them back.

➝ Aarti liked "The Raven Boys" :) YAY!!

➝ Stolen from Renay's Twitter feed. "Girl Meets World Cast Photo!!!

➝ Tricia Sullivan asks where the older female mentors are in 'Las madrinas, where are you?' :

Many of the older women I do know are tired. Some are embattled. I don’t see this in the same way with the men I know; could be my confirmation bias, of course.

➝ Please can everyone please go send hearts to this Anonymous Tumblr ask that Beth Revis received. 'the one person I told my idea to shot it down immediately and said it was a bad idea.' Why would anyone do this?

➝ In case you want an antidote to that post try these lovely photos from a lesbian wedding (one gorgeous lady looks like Emma Swan and the other looks like she's created a kickass retro Who look). It comes complete with 'there's hope for the world yet' commentary:

But here’s the thing I wanted to tell you. This post I made, to try to just share my little square of happiness with my little square of the internet, has literally tens of thousands of notes. Tens of thousands. I’ve gained hundreds of followers and my inbox runneth over. And not a single message I’ve received, not a single reblog that I have been able to find, has had anything to say but amazing, beautiful, kind words of congratulations. No bullying. No trolling. No inappropriate offers or lewd remarks. Out of tens of thousands.

That’s not something I’m used to. It’s not something anyone in the LGBTQ community is used to.

Do you even get how amazing you are? You, the denizens of Tumblr. Do you understand that? I am so exceedingly proud of you, you wacky kids. You are all such incredible people, with such kind and open hearts, and I wish I could hug each and every one of your necks.

So if you are having any sort of rough day, please know that there is this tiny lesbian couple in northeast America who likes you just a whole lot, okay? You’ve overwhelmed us.