Sidetracks - Episode VIII

[helloladies]

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.

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➝ At Scientific American, Kate Clancy writes about how Menstruation is just blood and tissue you ended up not using. Many thanks to Debi and her husband Rich for this link.

➝ You don't have to know: A National Coming Out Day post by the always amazing Hanne Blank about how people's identities don't always neatly fit into a pre-made label - and that's perfectly okay.

➝ Rebecca Watson writes about all the online abuse and harassment she's received ever since the elevator incident this past summer. I should add that in the months since I saved this link, several other women have spoken up about misogynistic harassment on the Internet. These posts or articles were all incredibly brave, horrifying, and eye-opening. Hopefully the discussions that followed were the first few steps towards positive change.

➝ For Jodie: Laura Miller reviews Roland Emmerich’s “Anonymous”.

➝ Lisa Wade at Sociological Images on why she's not married. I like that she added a few points about privilege, as I do realise that being able to make this choice is one. As for everything else: what she said.

➝ One teacher’s approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom.

➝ Beyond Marie Curie: History’s Most Under-Appreciated Female Inventors. Can I haz biographies of them all?

➝ The F Word reviews Laura Marling's latest album, A Creature I Don't Know. Hooray for awesome ladies in the incredibly male-dominated world of indie music.

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My section is off-puttingly long — stop producing so much interesting stuff, Internet.

➝ Fighting is Magic. The My Little Pony reboot Friendship is Magic has been turned into a fighter game. The comment that this game is 'fulfilling brony dreams' seems to suggest that Renay was spot on when she reminded us that often 'there can only be emotion porn if there's also violence and explosions to cancel out the fact that dudes might have emotions'. It sounds cool and I would play it, but I kind of wish ponies fighting each other hadn't come quite so quickly into a fandom that looks so female, but has so many male fans.

➝ Douglas Rushkoff calls lie on media sources that characterised the Occupy Wall Street protestors as a confused group of people who have no right to protest in ''Think Occupy Wall Street is a phase? You don't get it.':

'Are they ready to articulate exactly what that problem is and how to address it? No, not yet. But neither are Congress or the president who, in thrall to corporate America and Wall Street, respectively, have consistently failed to engage in anything resembling a conversation as cogent as the many I witnessed as I strolled by Occupy Wall Street's many teach-ins this morning.'

I feel like this article also has a lot to say about the confusion expressed over the riots that recently took place in Britain. So many terrible things happened during the riots, but it feels dishonest whenever someone says they don't understand why these riots happened, or why anyone would claim that there are serious problems in England. Ewan McGregor recently talked about how embarrassing it was to see people at home rioting against nothing when other countries were experiencing protest events like the Arab Spring. And I just thought, 'Really, is it so hard to admit that the systems that govern our country must be a little bit screwed up for this to happen? People don't just mass riot.' This article gives us the tools to understand the ways dominant authorities characterise movements that disrupt their control, in order to minimise the legitimate reasons behind these events.

➝ There's now a blog dedicated to reading Printz award nominees called Someday My Printz Will Come. It is a dull blogger who doesn't enjoy a good pun.

➝ Phoebe North, an emerging Who geek, has written some great critical posts about the women in the current series, firstly 'The Woman Who Waited' about a defining episode for the current companion Amy Pond. I couldn't quite bring myself to watch this episode after reading this post. Despite feeling that Amy Pond should be one of the best companions yet and adoring the way she's been set up as a non-romantic companion who would still smooch the Doctor if asked I agree with a lot of the points made about Pond's characterisation.

Her second post 'Why River Song is Still My Girl' is much more positive. You can feel the fan love for River Song, the only recurring, independently time travelling female character in the program and it's fantastic. I think this is a great example of a fan finding logical ways to see a character differently than the creators. Although I'm still so disappointed in the creative team behind 'Dr Who' for shaping the final episode as they did (there's a particular line I'll never forgive) reading an alternate view was really interesting.

➝ [Content Notice: link leads to page with continuous animation.] Jenny asked A Question About the Bechdel Test and got lots of responses, which makes me happy. I love book bloggers who are interested in debating feminist theory.

➝ When will I have shoved Brenna Yovanoff's journal in your faces enough for you to read 'The Replacement' do you think? ;) 'The Scary Stupid Day' is a post in her continued examination of young Brenna's high school life. It put me all on edge and sent a crazy feeling of electricity through me.

➝ Tanita Davis has been directed to the useful Horn article about fat prejudice in YA. In all of a size she reflects on how her character Lainey relates to some fat stereotypes and what she's learned from this article. It's an interesting read for me, as I read 'A la Carte' and thought Davis did a good job of marking out that Lainey's obsessions with weight, carbs and exercise were not healthy, through her mother's comments. However, once Davis points out places where Lainey is allowed to fit unquestioningly into stereotypes surrounding fat (for example, eating cheesecake when she was depressed) I could see the link between 'A la Carte' and fat prejudice more clearly. Such openness from an author is very happy making.

➝ You say a lady discovered hydrogen? I both loved learning this and hate learning that it is widely unknown.

➝ 'Bitten by the Female Gaze' is a really interesting look at Twilight from a Twilight sceptic, which asks if maybe Edward's androgyny is part of what makes women go wild for the films. The article ties in with my interests because in thinking about women's response to androgyny. Personally I don't think Robert Pattison's Edward is even close to androgynous (he is vampire James Dean after all), but I liked the thoughtful look into female gaze films and agree with a lot of the examples of female androgynous character (Shane!).

➝ Aja makes me want to see 'Drive' with her post 'Hot Pink Human Being'. Usually someone like Gosling wouldn't really be my cup of tea, but car movies make everyone seem hotter to me.

➝ And Sarah Rees Brennan makes me want to see the new 'Teen Wolf' series something desperate with her smart parody.

➝ Jessica from Read, React, Review finds that creating a definition for sex is harder than she thought and explains why in 'Are We Having Sex Yet?'

➝ Brenna Yovanoff made a super creepy cake.

➝ Jezebel's article 'Do Guys' Friendships Need Some Fixing' (found via MWF Seeking BFF) would make me want to hug a lonely dude if that weren't so creepy and bound to back fire.

➝ Rookie Magazine explains the benefits and drawbacks of having a Teen Witch BFF. I always wanted to be Sabrina's best friend, but which witch would you pick?

➝ 'Love Triangles: When the Best Choice is None' wonders if maybe some of our best loved female characters would be better off alone. I do think the main reason used to explain why a romantic pairing isn't always a satisfying ending is off and veering into Give a Nice Guy a Chance territory, but the idea that women can find satisfying story resolutions by choosing themselves is legendary.

➝ Tor gathers together some sensible advice about how to write a kick ass YA heroinefrom three leading authors. I usually cringe when I read 'how to' articles on this subject, but this one makes room for all kinds of heroines without attempting to name one kind as the only true feminist type.

➝ 'Despite impressive results at university, British women continue to lose out on seniority and wage equality in the workplace, according to a new report' *sigh*

➝ And The Atlantic has a breakdown of income disparity between women and men in the creative class. *double sigh*

➝ A little old news now, but I couldn't resist signal boosting the clever response to a gross article about literary writers who dip their toes in genre. Charlie Jane Anders takes Glen Duncan down.

➝ Eve Edwards, from The History Girls debunks 10 common historical misconceptions and hits out at the 'Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare' theory. I've got to admit I did think Vikings had horns on their helmets though — oops.

➝ And as part of their month focusing on cross dressing Katherine Langrish looks at the unfortunate side effects of Trying to be George from Enid Blyton's Famous Five books:

'The trouble with these stories — and with Enid Blyton's George — was that they fostered in my mind and that of my friend the unconscious belief that to be adventurous or lead an interesting life, girls had to resemble boys.'

➝ Something pretty and gothic to finish with. What we have here is a failure to communicate reveals a couple of sketches of a work in progress Sarah Bone.

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➝ Ana often talks about ladies and how they are portrayed in media and the more I learn from her, the more I start to see how ladies being trapped into such strict roles start to impact men, too. Very often in my reading I come across people saying what I believe to be a stone cold truth about sexism and stereotypical gender roles: it hurts men, too. NPR ran an article, Congratulations, Television! You Are Even Worse At Masculinity Than Femininity. I liked the point made about how the men on television bear little or no resemblance to men I know in my life, which has always been true. I disagree, however, with this:

Right at this moment, I'm more comfortable with what scripted television thinks being a woman means than I am with what scripted television thinks being a man means.

I side-eyed this claim pretty hard. But then again, I think sitcoms are vile machinations of pure evil and created to do nothing but aim balls of fiery goo at embarrassment squicks. I still feel that even though men are suffering from the crush of gender roles, they're still more likely to get interesting, developed character arcs and richer character development than their female counterparts in different types of media.


➝ When we started Lady Business, we discussed frankly how were were going to approach sources with very problematic content that we still love. Ana reminded me that if we didn't both experience and love sources with problematic content, then we would be missing out and also probably read or watch three or four things a year. I stumbled across How to be a fan of problematic things with the very apt line, "Liking problematic things doesn’t make you an asshole."


➝ In 2012, I am doing a project where I look at the gender breakdown of reviews on a handful of science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction blogs from 2011. I've been collecting other data points to support my initial hypothesis that I made before I started gathering (men largely talk about men, women talk about both), and the best once I've found so far is The erasure of women writers in sf & fantasy by coffeeandink. It's one general analysis, but it's backing up all the data I'm collecting perfectly.

I am not suggesting that the participants are consciously sexist or intend to suppress or erase the existence of women writers. I am saying that this conversation follows a typical social pattern in which (a) men talk more than women in mixed company; (b) men promote male writers significantly more than they promote women writers; (c) the criteria which determine value or worth inherently favor men's contributions over women's, which are deemed trivial or inapplicable; (d) women's contributions to the critical or cultural canon are systematically devalued, forgotten, or erased.

I will definitely be quoting this when I publish the review data for 2011. While I drink heavily from my vodka-filled Big Gulp cup.


➝ In December, chaosraven sucked me into a show called Teen Wolf where the majority of the budget goes to the Waxing Division. This show is not perfect or even pretending to be feminist (besides a nod to the Female Gaze in the objectification department): it doesn't pass Bechdel, the show is predicated on fridging a lady, female characters are interesting but fall into the same tired worn trenches of female characters before them, are severely under-utilized or ignored only be brought out later in dubious presentations that scream cliché. These are all things I've come to expect from dramatic television, but even with these flaws, I loved the hell out of this show. Sequential Tart wrote a nice essay, Five Reasons: MTV's Teen Wolf that outline the strength of the drama (with extreme amounts of spoilers for the entire series and the finale). I have a lot of hopes for the female characters in the next season.


➝ So they're finally moving forward with making a movie for Ender's Game. As always with Orson Scott Card, I am torn. I have a lot of nostalgia for Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, some of the only science fiction titles my high school library had that I read and reread. They're super problematic, of course, but they were a gateway. I have a lot of feelings about financially supporting any type of Card's work. The realization of a dream, this film. I'll be over here sobbing into my hands from severe emotional conflict.


➝ I have not seen 30 Minutes of Less at all. However, I do love Jesse Eisenberg's face and he's always so serious and calm and self-deprecating and because of this, unintentionally hilarious. Part of the press for the movie paired Jesse, Aziz Ansari and a magazine together and Jesse loses his shit. If I ever just need to laugh I just go watch Jesse laugh. Everyone needs Aziz Ansari in their lives.


➝ A quote I have lived by this year re: writing is this: "The sinking nausea we feel when we think of our own writing isn't really because we suck. It's that we're afraid of not being able to become better." weatherfront said this in an entry in January 2011 and it has stayed with me through this entire year. It, as well as:

It's not so important if people dislike your writing (you can be a good writer, despite that). It's not so important if you're a bad writer (you can be a good person, despite that).

has fueled much of the writing I've done this year: how I approach it, how I take part in it, how I critique my own work and how I live with it once it's done. There's a lot of good advice there I plan on continuing to take.


➝ Kat Howard on Putting Women in the Story: I loved this post. I want to quote the whole thing, but I will control myself.

"Why aren’t there any men in your story?" Because so often, there aren’t any women in stories, and no one notices that. Or when they do, and they ask, they are supposed to accept a facile answer like "It was a novel about war" and smile and nod understandingly, as if war or great works of literature were solely about men. I refuse to accept this as reality—it is an appalling erasure in works of mimetic fiction, and doubly so in works of speculative fiction.

➝ I loved the Sherlock reboot on BBC. It was fantastic and three episodes were not enough at all, especially since the sheen of racism over the second was super gross. I know most of my friends are big fans, but we haven't talked about the treatment of the ladies much yet. However, Sexism in Sherlock does and it's very illuminating.


➝ Yes, There Are Black People in Your Hunger Games: The Strange Case of Rue & Cinna was legit the most depressing thing I have read written after 1990 this year (my American Indian class wins the award for before 1990). I didn't like this book (although I have a feeling the movie will improve upon the book, as owlmoose pointed out to me that Collins is a television writer) but holy crap. It was unreal to read some of those comments. Unreal. Someone linked to Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story which this whole incident underlines.


➝ I am mostly sharing this because I love the character designs for this film! Brave fanart featuring Merida looking awesome. I am so excited about this movie and disappointed I have to wait so long; I want it in my eyes right now.

Comments

[bookgazing]

Re Sherlock link: One day I'm going to go off on a Moffat of doom rant and y'all will have to hold me back (Off on a tangent: Seriously how did he and Russel T Davis gain such a huge British media making monopoly without anyone noticing? 9/10 new and old projects involve them and even though I love their vaguely similar, goofy styles it is just a little bit freaky - is anyone else just really tired of the same directors making all the things right now? If I see another Spielberg or Jackson project come out I may fall down) but yesterday I saw this: http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/193768.html and was reminded that once upon a time he had y'know fond feelings for female characters. What has happened since then...no idea.

[renay]

I think creation goes through phases where certain directors and writers in film and television often garner attention because they're attached to certain popular projects or they're just cruising on a wave of recognition and getting more and more chances to take part in additional projects. A year ago I couldn't turn around on the Internet without hearing about Neil Gaiman, but that's died off a little. Now it's Moffat and Nolan and Ritchie I can't seem to escape the mention of because they're everywhere. What I find interesting about this is that behind the scenes, it's almost always men. I don't remember when I've ever seen this happen with a female director.

Moffat's quote in that essay horrified me and really, sort of made me glad that Doctor Who mashes my humiliation trigger and ensures I can't watch it.

I like how you're assuming we'd ever hold you back from going on a rant. Jodie, have you met us? XD

In this same vein, this video with a bunch of dude directors may be of horrifying interest to you. Take copious amounts of alcohol.

[bookgazing]

I've seen that video before and hrrrm...I mean obviously Steve McQueen's focus on black directors is way important, but it's interesting how fast the discussion shifts from being about female directors (and as far I remember never returns to that subject). Also interesting how black here seems to be default associated with 'male', like there's no discussion about how small the percentage of black and female directors is (again as far as I remember). I read a great article about that automatic association of black, with male somewhere, have to see if I can find it... And they all get so defensive when asked to name a female director who has made a film in the past year - firing off names like if they can name one (I think they get to three in the end right?) then they'll have proved that there's no problem there.

I don't see Ritchie around that much, probably because the rest of his films aren't my kind of thing and so I don't go places where he'll be talked about so much. Nolan though, man Nolan is everywhere! And Peter Jackson is another one. I guess as the BBC makes more cuts Moffat's control will only deepen, as he makes guarenteed winners. I agree that this trending almost always happens with male creators and I'd like to see what becomes of female creators who have produced series that got a lot of attention this year, like The Hour (although that sadly just wasn't my cup of tea at all). Maybe in YA there are some female writers who seem to turn up on many projects, but film and tv do seem really dominated by the same 10 or so male creators.

[renay]

Yeah, the discussion switch is alarming, but what was morning alarming to me was the complete silence from the part of the white men after the moderator pointed out the women they were mentioning didn't actually answer his question (and I agree with your point like they thought naming any proved they thought everything was peachy). One of them even said something to the effect of "not going into that". It was just a white male wall of UTTER SILENCE.

[renay]

Oh, I also read the beginning of SRB's summary of Teen Wolf. I am really not impressed. If writing a parody means taking an interesting female character and boiling her down to a tired stereotype in order to write a snappy, "clever" parody and then chiding her to "be better than this", I am pretty sure someone missed the point. Really, what the actual fuck.

[bookgazing]

I guess I read it as a comment on bad female character creation, but I mainlined it as soon as I heard 'lacrosse playing werewolf' and would have to watch the program, then reread to evaluate how I feel about it. Thanks for pointing out the better than this comment, because, ouch. I know I am all over shirtless werewolf dudes and that was a big reason why I wanted to see this program, but as soon as I heard 'lady with a cross bow' my need for it went up to signing up for updates on the UK dvd edition status.

[renay]

I am uncertain. I'm not going to argue that Teen Wolf is feminist at all (seriously, at one point Scott says when Allison protects him, "we'll pick up my masculinity on the way back") and it also kind of struggles with dead mom syndrome. Allison is a great character who struggles with her own personal strength in interesting ways, and I would be SUPER interested to discuss how they write her as the girlfriend. The comment SRB made about Lydia bothered me because I feel that even though they're characterizing Lydia one way, it does a discredit to write her (and the actress portraying her, who does a great job with the material she's given) off just because she happens to inhabit some particular stereotype. It's the no wrong way to be a girl argument, if that makes sense? Unless SRB meant it in a different way (i.e. don't use people) but if so, they did not come through. I know there's some worth to shorthand for parody, but it's really easy to slip when you get deep into it.

We don't even have DVDs here yet. But I have the files! WE WILL GET THEM TO YOU, please tell me you have a CD drive.

[bookgazing]

That makes sense, just surprises me because she is so Team Caroline when it comes to VD and Caroline is a walking cheerleader stereotype who develops more depth along the way. But like you say if she meant something different and it didn't come through, then the parody got buried in short hand troubles and that's all the reader has, so...

I have a cd drive and I'm excited :D

[snowynight]

Re: A Question About the Bechdel Test link. It has animation that can't be turned off and triggers a friend's chronic vertigo. I'd appreciate id a warning is added for it.

[renay]

Thank you for the notice! I apologize about your friend and the triggering; I'll add the warning. :)

this is Phoebe

[(Anonymous)]

(there's a particular line I'll never forgive)

Was it "you embarrass me"? Because that one still hurts my heart, on multiple levels (in terms of feeling sympathy for River as a character and in terms of feeling squicked that someone wrote that. ugh.)

<3 Thanks for including me here. Now to go luxuriate in these wonderful links.

Re: this is Phoebe

[bookgazing]

Gah I haaaaaaaaate that bit too! Worst end of series in a long time, worse that super indulgent Tennant death.

For me it was the lines, just before the title music. 'Who did this?' 'A woman.' because having watched A LOT of Moffat productions now I feel like I can just see the little creative cogs turning in the teams heads. "How shocking that a woman could pull off such a thing, the viewers will be so titilatted by this unexpected competance and villiany, linked with a female character. Oh and lets not forget what a nice link back to the innate badness of women this will make if we omit her name and make it more general." F U, she has a NAME and the DR knows it!

Fine, fine River Song wouldn't mean anything to the other characters if he'd used her name, but it's like...just imagine if he'd answered 'A man'. It wouldn't have worked in the same way at all for the characters, or the audience. I know that's not exactly Moffat's fault, but he takes advantage societal flaws for drammatic purposes (that he obviously thinks makes his drama more edgy or something) without once attempting to subvert them and that sucks.

I really want to know what you thought of this years Christmas ep btw if you've seen it and have time to chat. I saw some analysis that claims it as feminist (hurray for mothers, they are so strong) and I think that's a really exciting reading. I find myself really bogged down in creator context at the moment to really embrace that, but still v interesting.

PS I got The Sarah Jane adventures for Christmas and am waaaaay excited for a female focused Dr Who production.

[nymeth]

Love the Kat Howard post! Also How to be a fan of problematic things. And speaking of that, like we were saying on Twitter, the Sherlock article is so depressingly true.

Jodie: please rant away!

[bookgazing]

Oh see my reply to Phoebe's comment above where the rant just wouldn't stay in ;)

[myfriendamy]

Interesting article about TV being bad at masculinity, of course I don't watch any of the shows referenced at all.

But....while they might not have a woman made-over and called "a real woman" there's plenty of storylines that would indicate a woman can't be happy until she's attractive to men. And having female actors that aren't conventionally gorgeous to begin with is much less likely than male actors...they don't have to look good unless they are on the CW it seems. ;)

But it's definitely a really good point and something that bothers me as well when I see it. I'd have to think about the shows I watch and if they feed into this.

[nymeth]

This is all true. And there's also my favourite trend ever (eyeroll), which is putting a pair of glasses on a gorgeous woman and pretending she's now some sort of ugly ducking. Yeah, we're all totally convinced.

[bookgazing]

Do you know who Blossom is? Anyway, not important, classic 80s tv, but anyway the actress who played her is this lady: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayim_Bialik . I won't get into she probably doesn't fit a modern casting directors beauty type because argggghh, but we can all agree that looking at her as women who exist in the real world she looks like a stunner, right?

Ok, so in The Big Bang Theory they made her a regular looking girl called Amy Farrah Fowler. And yes they did so by slapping some glasses on her, but they also went further and made her genuinely regular looking, instead of playing to that whole 'no, no, she's not pretty, we put GLASSES on her. Guys don't make passes...' thing. Add to that two geeeeorgeous ladies who play alongside her, who both wear glasses, that the program indicates as super sexy hot from the start and ding, ding somebody sort of gets it.

I say sort of because, eh although Amy's character starts out great, there are some complicating factors that come up, like Amy is the only one of the girls who doesn't get romance/sex. At the begining of her characterisation that is totally fine, because it seems like she's not interested in pursuing sex. Unfortunately as the program goes on the writers make her more of the running desperate + average looking joke.

[bookgazing]

'I won't get into she probably doesn't fit a modern casting directors beauty type because argggghh, but we can all agree that looking at her as women who exist in the real world she looks like a stunner, right?'

Sigh, this sentence should ahve a why in between 'into' and 'she'.

[bookgazing]

Gah, final comment AND I realised that TBBT is one of the few shows where guys don't have to become 'real' men in order to 'win' at life. The characters have their share of insecurities around men they perceive as more manly and for a long time Leonard (huge, huge, adorable geek) watches as Penny goes out with totally traditionally manly guys (who without fail are jerks), but they stick to their geekiness and good things happen (as well as terrible ones, because this is a comedy). And yet the program also manages to avoid that 'I'm a good guy, just because I'm not traditionally manly' thing, as well (which I know this article isn't talking about, but I get carried away).

[nymeth]

Is this the show you and Iris were going to review together? Because I want that post :P

[bookgazing]

It is, hopefully we'll put something together about the ladies in this program. I feel like I have to slap huge warning signs on any discussion about it (in fact I'm pretty sure we're both going to spend a lot of time going 'yes, but' and trying to wedge in bits about how good this show is with non-traditional male characterisation), because it has issues, but it's also really great, funny and one of the programs I have been excited to watch several series of.