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ladybusinessSidetracks 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.
➝ Cheryl Morgan gives more context to the proposed category to the Hugo ballot for YA novels. Having it laid out like this makes more sense. I am honestly not sure what side I fall on now. Thoughtful arguments! My nemesis!
➝ I really need to read some work by Junot Díaz. He's such a thoughtful person. In 'The Baseline Is, You Suck': Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women, he says:
The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck. The baseline is it takes so long for you to work those atrophied muscles—for you to get on parity with what women's representations of men are. For me, I always want to do better. I wish I had another 10 years to work those muscles so that I can write better women characters. I wring my hands because I know that as a dude, my privilege, my long-term deficiencies work against me in writing women, no matter how hard I try and how talented I am.➝ I love Ze Frank. :(
Shame is that secret belief that you are unfit, unworthy, even rotten. To me, shame is very different than guilt. Shame is "I am a bad person." and guilt is "I am a good person who has done bad things." And shame takes away one of the best qualities you have, namely, the courage to take responsibility for what you do and the courage to understand why you do act badly sometimes and where those impulses come from and the courage to do something about it. In guilt, there's hope. In shame, there's none.➝ Ana, have you heard about Zadie Smith's new book? My memories of White Teeth are vague and mostly all I remember is the class discussion of the beginning of the novel when it was me against every white student in the room (there were no PoC in the class) arguing that there was racism in the book because it was a book about people who weren't white and racism was part of their lives. I remember arguing with a girl about the fact that race issues defined the lives of the people we were reading about in complicated ways that deserved better than trying to assert that the white people in the novel were just socially awkward and then rattling on about how they're colorblind. My memories of reading that novel are complicated and tense. It was a junior undergraduate level British Literature class and these people were going on to be teachers and journalists and their engagement with race issues was to simply pretend they weren't there. Rural South; surprise.
Smith says in Same Streets, Different Lives In 'NW' London:
"I grew up reading a generation of American and English people like [Saul] Bellow, [John] Updike or [Martin] Amis. Everybody's neutral unless they're black — then you hear about it: the black man, the black woman, the black person. Of course, if you happen to be black the world doesn't look that way to you. I just wanted to try and create perhaps a sense of alienation and otherness in this person, the white reader, to remind them that they are not neutral to other people."➝ Crap People Say About Sexual Harassment by
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jimhines: "If you seriously can’t tell the difference between flirting and harassment, I strongly suggest you do neither until you’ve worked that out."➝ The Omniscient Breasts by Kate Elliott. This was fabulous. The male gaze/female gaze is pretty new to me. My first thorough introduction to it was the movie Drive. Aja wrote a post about it, Drive and the Male Gaze. My second experience with gaze came with Teen Wolf. The first season is very focused on sexualizing the men and not the women, but the second season it explodes, especially in regards to the opening. I wonder if there's any additional reading I could do? Suddenly pining for academic databases.
Anyway, Kate Elliott's post is great (why haven't I read her books yet? Good thing we decided to do that together, Jodie!). I especially like this: "Women also have to struggle against this pervasive idea that the male gaze is the most real and most authentic view of the "world." Women can view their own stories through the lens of a male gaze, or can feel most comfortable in stories that reinforce these norms."
➝ Last week during a fit of insomnia I may have watched 40 episode of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Now I'm obsessed. I've never read Pride and Prejudice (although I was given a copy) so needless to say it's moved up my reading list.
➝ Everything is different now., or, Corndogs, Reimagined.
➝ Song recommendation that I've had on repeat all week. Paper Route — You Kill Me.
➝ Laurie Penny reviews Naomi Wolf's new book Vagina and confirms all my fears:
Wolf's basic contention that female sexual pleasure is both important and undervalued is sound. It seems, however, to come packaged in a great deal of toe-curling, cod-scientific claptrap about how every woman's spiritual power is located between her legs and zooms up an "electric inward network extending from pelvis to brain". Claims that the vagina is "not only co-extensive with the female brain but also is part of the female soul" are frankly offensive to anyone who believes that the most politically important part of any woman's body is still, is always, her brain.Penny wrote a longer and even better piece on the subject at New Statesmen.
➝ And if I needed further convincing:
Wolf's book, however, is something else again. Yes, it does a bit of science, and a bit of cultural history too. But mostly, it doesn't need to, because Wolf has found a magic key. "The vagina and the brain," Wolf has discovered, are "essentially one network, or 'one whole system'", though at the moment, not a lot of people know this, apart from "scientists at the most advanced laboratories and clinics around the world". Taken together, this "profound brain-vagina connection" forms "a gateway to, and medium of, female self-knowledge and consciousness", mediating "creativity and transcendence". You thought Angier was laying it on a bit when she poeticised the vagina as "a pause between the declarative sentence of the outside world and the mutterings of the viscera"? Well, for Wolf it channels "a sensibility that feels very much like freedom". Or if that's too much to deal with, just look on it as "essentially part of the female soul".Essentialism and implicit transphobia: just what feminism needs. Sadly none of this is very surprising coming from Wolf :\
➝ Jodie, I have a feeling you'll be interested in this all-female Shakespeare production.
➝ Via
➝ I suspect that the online bookish world would be a much better place if authors cound actually enroll in Auntie Maureen Johnson's Internet School.
➝ I really, really like this essay by Ron Hogan on being a critic:
I've used a Northrop Frye line about literary criticism being evidence of "the history of taste" a few times over the years on this blog, and I'm invoking it again—the idea that what critics are telling us is beautiful language reflects "the vacillations of fashionable prejudice" more than it demonstrates any intrinsic literary merit. They're just subjective evaluations which, because they line up with a bunch of other subjective evaluations, get bundled together as a "tradition," or a "canon," or some such. I'd argue that this runs a bit deeper than Myers' formulation that "every judgment is a personal preference anyway," because that's only half the story. This relativism, if we want to call it that, leaves "social pleasantness" in the dust—because I'm not suggesting "it's all good," I'm suggesting it doesn't much matter whether any of it's good or bad, because the idea that any of it is "fiction that will really endure" is the real convention of social pleasantness. We can prop some of it up for decades, maybe even centuries, but eventually it's all going to fade into oblivion, and us with it.I have no doubt that many will read this as the kind of relativism that will bring about the downfall of civilization, but personally I see it as a healthy dose of humility. The paragraph after the one I quoted is excellent too. And the very last one.
➝ Jenny McPhee has some interesting things to say about the (imagined) woman reader and male anxiety, with a nod to Belinda Jack's book on the subject.
➝ Why, Ursula Le Guin, why?! The original piece this excellent takedown links to broke my heart in so many ways :( (via
➝ The A More Diverse Universe blog tour starts in a week. Sign-ups have now closed, but you can follow along and discover lots of exciting SF/F books by authors of colour.
➝ Finally, after enduring a frankly fucking terrifying harassment incident last week, I keep coming back to this post: spotting the question that even the most well-meaning men will often miss.
➝ N K Jemisin talks about whether discrimination reversals can work and how to write them well, in light of the recent 'Save the Pearls' fiasco. Anyone got any recommendations for good examples of this type of narrative?
➝ Clare Balding pledges to help women in sport at The Stylist, because: 'In Olympic years, the profile of women's sport rises dramatically but this time next year, I fear we will be back in the dark ages. It's time for Great Britain to wake up to women's sport and I pledge here and now to help that happen.'
I think every woman with an interest in sport in Britain should be worried about this after Gary Lineker's comments last year about the lack of women nominated for sportsperson of the year. Let's keep womens sport to the fore next year too. Oh and if anyone outside Britain doesn't know of our fab presenter Clare Balding, she is great and well worth following on Twitter.
➝ Wonder Woman seems like a pretty cool superheroine and I've been wanting to find an access point to her story that won't leave me confused because I've missed a lot of back story, so the Mary Sue's news that a young Wonder Woman show may possibly be in the works makes me excited.
➝ I have been deliberately ignoring all links about the Kristen Stewart/Rob Pattison break up. Confession; I cheated once. It was a stupid, mean mistake and while I'm not proud of what I did, enough time has passed where it's an incident in my life that I think was, if I'm honest, not really significant in the long run for any of the parties involved. That history leaves me with no interest in watching people's reaction to celebrity cheating scandals, because eh, people mess up in romantic situations and it's purely their business unlike other kinds of mistakes that public figures may make (defrauding customers, committing a crime, etc.). I'm not saying cheating isn't hurtful, or that someone shouldn't apologise to their partner, just...I don't think cheating should have ramifications for anything beyond your relationships with people actively connected to the relationship you chose to break apart. I know right, have I seen a newspaper lately?
So I was heartened to find Trampires: Why the Slut Shaming of Kristen Stewart Matters for Young Women', because it thoroughly picks over the precise problems with the continued focus on Stewart's infidelity. In this article Nico Lang talks about the hypocrisy of the Stewart shaming when we consider that the behaviour of other male celebrities like Chris Brown (abuser) and Ashton Kutcher (also cheated) seems to earn them no similar public flagellation. She places the shaming in the context of the current rhetorical attacks on women in America and shows how the tabloids refusal to leave off on this issue really matters to young women growing up in our current culture. Oh and she drops this depressing piece of news:
'In response to this public bullying, Kristen Stewart was dropped from the sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman, and rumors are that the follow-up will instead feature Chris Hemsworth in the lead. They're calling it The Huntsman. You know things have gotten bad when the studio doesn't just fire you from a film; they're so afraid of being associated with your scandal that they're firing your entire character.'I very much did not want this sequel, but if it has to happen I damn well want a lady in the main role, preferably K Stew.
➝ Ana is watching Veronica Mars!!! I should be satisfied and not try to continually lure her towards 'Revenge' against her will right? Oh hey, just by coincidence here are two great songs that I heard around. I forget where...
➝ Lurvalamode is watching Dr Who! I may be a conflicted fan right now, as I try to decide whether to watch the new series, but I will always be excited when someone new discovers The Dr.
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Date: 2012-09-16 08:23 pm (UTC)And Jodie, yes, you probably could convince me to watch it. We could trade media, that works, right? As long as you promise to explain it to me. >.> You know me and British classics.
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Date: 2012-09-16 04:31 pm (UTC)Also, vry awkward question: Did you mention at one time or another this summer that you were going to watch the Vampite Diaries season 3 DVD box set? I'm thinking I may have dreamed it. Which makes me sounds creepy, I know.
Ana: I read a couple of reviews about Vagina and they made me shudder. I am unfamiliar with Naomi Wolf but I gather I had better stay away? What about Ursula LeGuin? I think I cam across her name repeatedly on some fantasy rec lists. I am sad to see the comments she made though. So, how do you feel about her novels? Stay away from them, yes or no?
Renay: I watchged a few of the Lizzie Bennet diaries a few months ago and loved them. You've reminded me that I need to watch more. Also, I'm seconding Jodie's puppy-dog eyes.
As for race in White Teeth, I'd love to read more of your thoughts! I read the book early 2012 and remember feeling very divided on how race appeared in the book. Still not sure how I should feel about it, so I'd love to have some proper smart ideas to think with.
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Date: 2012-09-16 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 08:32 pm (UTC)Oh, White Teeth...I don't have the book or else I would pick it up and skim my notes. Also, I read it in 2010 so it's been...awhile. My problems weren't specifically with how race was portrayed but rather the casual racism the PoC lived with and sometimes even dealt with from people who were meant to be their very close friends. Because the novel spanned so much time, you got to watch how the parents dealt versus the kids, and how culture impacted it, too (the twins in particular were fascinating). I might be wrong but the race issues always seemed to impact the women worse than the men and leave them with less choice, trapped -- that's how it felt to me. But again, 2010. :) Ana also reviewed the novel and had more interesting things to say.
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Date: 2012-09-17 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 06:48 am (UTC)As for Wolf, I didn't get around to reading her for Feminist Classics last year, but from what I hear The Beauty Myth is good. I hope to get around to it some day, but it seems she's really gotten worse since then :\
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Date: 2012-09-18 02:07 pm (UTC)Oh and if you like Agnes Obel can you recommend me some other songs I might like? I would love that.