Sidetracks - August 4, 2012

[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.

---

➝ Well, this last week has definitely been interesting. At $dayjob, we happen to work directly next to a Chick-Fil-A. The company I work for is ostensibly supportive of gender and sexual identity issues, but is in the South. One day this week I watched three co-workers flip out at each other because of differing opinions. One was a part of a protest against the company, the other two were defending Chick-Fil-A. They kept repeating "he can say what he wants! I disagree but he can say what he wants! We're not going to stop eating there or join a stupid protest!" over and over and over and over and my co-worker (who was going to the protest) kept getting more and more frustrated until I finally reminded the other two that Dan Cathy is absolutely allowed his right to free speech, but nothing guarantees him the right to be free from the consequences and criticism of that speech, which was the point they seemed to be missing.

I may have gotten a little rude, because they were being rude. It's one thing to believe someone can say what they want; it's another to defend them in such a way that the gay person right in front of you gets visibly upset and feels isolated and judged for being upset. My opinions on the entire debacle are summed up quite nicely by A Gay Chick-fil-A Employee Speaks Out:

When these preachers told their congregations to support Chick-fil-A by eating there today, no one called the restaurants and said "Hey, you may be flooded with customers. Thaw extra chicken." Not one of the employees in those congregations gave the restaurant a heads-up. That sort of consideration wasn’t even an afterthought. The ministers, and through them the congregants, didn’t think about the consequences of their actions, or who it might screw over. And it ended up screwing us rather thoroughly.

Now, who knows if that's true company-wide, but it's obviously true for this location. If you've ever worked any sort of food service...well, the news covered the swarm of people and the places who ran out of food. Appreciate the company and the right of their leaders to speak, but also appreciate the people working there. I heard so many complaints about how "slow" the service was from co-workers who went there that day that it makes me sick and sad.

Also, from The Daily Show, a quote from a clip they shared that was so over the top I couldn't resist sharing it: "If you like marriage equality and you're for marriage equality and you eat there that day you're a chicken-eating Judas."

I could have done without the "lol America is full of fatties!" meme, though, even though I thought his ending was (mostly) great.

➝ Sight is a short science fiction film created as a graduation project. Warnings for discussion of lack of consent and overt references to rape. I found it really interesting up until the end when I started getting really uncomfortable (and then skeeved out, which was the point), but haven't yet been able to put my problem into words. I forget where I found it, but the commentary there was definitely more focused on how, "wow, it will make you regret using apps! You'll think twice!" My feeling once I finished wasn't anywhere near that — it was definitely a "wow, I regret that even in the so-called future men are still preying on women using technology." I guess I don't feel like it was reconstructed at all; it was just: dudes preying on women with technology and that was the entire point: to creep people out with it and nothing more. I don't know. :(

➝ Scott Lynch has a new blog, Lynch Industries.

➝ The Fifty Shades Fiasco was a post I was pointed to last week. "Highlights" include:

• [...] these books are anything other than really atrociously awfully written porn without a shred of merit of any kind, and the fact that they can cause a so-called phenomenon is a poor indictment of our society.
• For the most part the consumption of porn is not wrong, but it is a little sad and lonely.
• If I ruled the world, I’d take the copies of Fifty Shades out of those womens’ hands, and try to give them some of their life back instead.

Yep.

➝ My friend KJ recommended a game a few days ago titled Cinders. It looks pretty cool. She also wrote some fic for it, that then got tweeted to the creator of them game and then retweeted. And the fourth wall came tumbling down. :) It's really cool that the creator seems very supportive of fandom, so I can't resist promoting the game a bit, if only to tempt you both with it. >.>

➝ Although already funded (they're working on another goal to get a theatrical release), the Fight For Space - Space Program & NASA Documentary Kickstarter project looks amazing. I totally want to see this!

➝ I am no big fan of Eat, Pray, Love, but I found this TED Talk by the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, interesting, specifically the beginning:

I am a writer. Writing books is my profession but it's more than that, of course. It is also my great lifelong love and fascination. And I don't expect that that's ever going to change. But, that said, something kind of peculiar has happened recently in my life and in my career, which has caused me to have to recalibrate my whole relationship with this work. And the peculiar thing is that I recently wrote this book, this memoir called "Eat, Pray, Love" which, decidedly unlike any of my previous books, went out in the world for some reason, and became this big, mega-sensation, international bestseller thing. The result of which is that everywhere I go now, people treat me like I'm doomed. Seriously — doomed, doomed! Like, they come up to me now, all worried, and they say, "Aren't you afraid — aren't you afraid you're never going to be able to top that? Aren't you afraid you're going to keep writing for your whole life and you're never again going to create a book that anybody in the world cares about at all, ever again?"

So that's reassuring, you know. But it would be worse, except for that I happen to remember that over 20 years ago, when I first started telling people — when I was a teenager — that I wanted to be a writer, I was met with this same kind of, sort of fear-based reaction. And people would say, "Aren't you afraid you're never going to have any success? Aren't you afraid the humiliation of rejection will kill you? Aren't you afraid that you're going to work your whole life at this craft and nothing's ever going to come of it and you're going to die on a scrap heap of broken dreams with your mouth filled with bitter ash of failure?" Like that, you know.

The answer — the short answer to all those questions is, "Yes." Yes, I'm afraid of all those things. And I always have been.

As writers of a book and media blog, this sounds familiar, doesn't it? >.>

---

➝ What if every Olympics event were photographed like beach volleyball? (Warning: this is a clear case of Don't Read The Comments™.)

➝ At Salon, Roxane Gay uses the Lehrer scandal as a point of departure to ask some very interesting questions about the system that coddles young male genius. She concludes,

That same system will help Lehrer find redemption. At some point in the future, not too long from now, there will be a book deal. Jonah Lehrer will flagellate himself publicly to our satisfaction, explaining the how and why of his deceptions and fabrications. His phone will start ringing again because he’ll still be an intelligent young man who fits the genius narrative so well. Slowly but surely, Lehrer is going to start climbing back toward grace and he’ll reach it because he’s part of a system that is too big to fail, that very much wants men like him to get back to grace.

It seems that it's already happening: apparently Lehrer is now a "fabulist", just like Dylan himself. I do wonder if someone who belonged to a different demographic would ever get this kind of reaction after being caught fabricating quotes in a non-fiction book.

➝ Author Kari Sperring on rape in fiction:

Let's be clear. Rape used this way: as a plot device, to excuse or prop up bad writing, lazy writing, poor characterisation, pandering to cultural discomfort — is damaging and inappropriate. It's playing into rape culture, it dehumanises and exploits.

However...

Let's be very clear. There is more than one way of writing about rape. And rape, however much we don't like it, is part of our daily cultural experience. It's real, it affects real people, men, women and children. It matters.

Calls for rape to be banished from fiction are no help whatsoever. When we remove rape from our writing, we silence women. When we say 'writing about this isn't helpful', we tell women that their experience must not be spoken of, must not be shared, must not be made public, must be discussed. When we banish rape from fiction, we banish female reality. When we banish rape from fiction, we silence women, tell them that what has happened, might happen to them is too shocking to mention, too shameful, too dirty and bad and wrong.

We uphold patriarchy. We uphold doctrines of shaming and blaming. We uphold male right to dominate public discourse. We uphold the status quo.

➝ At Tor.com, Shoshana Kessock writes about Brave and the Legacy of the Anti-Princess. Princess Week here at LB is so a thing that needs to happen.

➝ Sady Doyle, Susan J. Douglas, Katha Pollitt, Erin Matson and Jennifer Pozner discuss the future of feminism at In These Times.

➝ There's a long piece at The New Yorker about the lure of the fairy tale that made me miss the days when I'd rummage my university's library for any book I could find on fairy tale scholarship. I particularly like Joan Acocella's conclusion.

➝ I've just finished watching Firefly for the first time, so the Racebending post Frustrations of an Asian American Whedonite was very timely for me and helped me see things I wouldn't have picked up on on my own. I also like that the post is such a great example of how you can engage critically with something and clearly still be a passionate fan.

---

➝ People probably think I'm really down on the Olympics because I keep sharing criticism of the games here. I'm really not (see my Tumblr for evidence if you like). I love the sport. I love the cultural events. I just think it's really important to keep the criticisms in mind as well and to keep from making...eh, value judgements that obscure that perfectly valid criticism because the Olympics make us feel all warm inside. Go Team GB athletes, but also:

The parents of some athletes had trouble getting into events their children were competing at, due to ticketing confusion.

➝ I think everyone in Britain who went out for tickets has been disappointed to see quite so many empty seats at some of the Olympic venues. The Guardian explains why empty seats are a common problem at Olympics around the world. I say in a modern world with so much technology everyone involved really should be able to come up with some kind of contingency system for this kind of thing. The ticketing system for the games really has been the worst aspect of the whole thing in my opinion. And yes I know whatever kind of big event you run in the UK there are always people who think they could do better, but I work at a tiny software house and given enough cash and time I feel confident our programmers could have developed a decent ticketing system. In fact any competent programmers could easily have knocked something better together over four years.

➝ There may be some concerns over the living conditions of cleaners working at the games. I say may be because I've yet to see this confirmed by what I consider a credible mainstream news source and it's not popping up in the parts of the web news that I trust. I'm finding it hard to tell if other mainstream news sources are ignoring this issue and liberal net commentators aren't really aware of this story or if something else is going on (the first Google result for this story comes from The Daily Mail which sets off warning bells, but this story might still be perfectly true - any info appreciated).

➝ Now we can all watch an abordable story about the official Olympic and Paralympic mascots that was written by Michael Morpurgu:

I love how the mascots look like aliens this year.

➝ A lady called Ann Morgan is reading one book from each country in the world during Olympic year, which I think is a cool as project. If like me you are just nosey about list based projects you can follow along with what she's reading her blog.

➝ In a post that talks about the launch of his new company Kinetic Films which he hopes will 'add to the Asian American genre by consistently putting out quality films.' Dante Basco talks about the role of Asian American actors in the current film industry. I had no idea that Dante Basco who played Ruffio in 'Hook' was also the voice of Zuko in 'Avatar'! I'll be looking out for 'Hang Loose', the first film from Kinetic, when it becomes available to download in August.

I promise to be less focused on the Olympics soon :P