Sidetracks - October 6, 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.

---

➝ rachelmanija wrote a short post, YA sf = Dystopia?, about a recent anthology, Diverse Energies. This is a dystopian anthology populated with non-white main characters, but she links to a blog post by one of the authors where he talks about how he was asked for "an action-oriented SF story with a teen protagonist who had some kind of diversity". rachelmanija outlines the issue what happens when that prompt is given to authors and they automatically write dystopia:

But in fact, not a single author read the prompt "action-oriented sf with a teen hero and diversity" and wrote a space opera, a story about teens meeting aliens, a non-horrific future world like Nnedi Okorafor's biotech wonderland, a story about mutant or psychic or uploaded or immortal or robot or alien teens, or anything that could not be very easily and accurately classified as a dystopia.

I also find this disheartening for a lot of (selfish) reasons: I think most dystopias as presented in YA aren't very interesting because they're a one dimensional representation of a three dimensional world, the romances that often take center stage worry me (you can have adventure through romance and romance and some adventure, but not mostly adventure and a tidbit of romance). The first point reminds me of an essay I read on metafandom so long ago and can't find anymore. I'll mangle it, but what I took away was that fanfic often works because you have a starting point and the nature of that starting point means you can take a certain amount of steps away and not lose the reader. Too many steps away from the initial premise of the original material and you start to get accusations of crack fic, OOC behavior, etc. I apply it to original fiction and how hard it is for me to make the "jump" from what I know and what the book is telling me. That's how I find most of the YA dystopias to be: they're taking leaps forward that I often can't find the logic to follow along with it as anything but Genre Writing 101 exercise. Their worlds feel flat and uninteresting, the dystopia an excuse for not engaging with a larger world context, and I fear that if the trend of dystopia-or-bust continues, they're only going to feel more flat and uninteresting. They'll also probably develop love quadrangles, because that's the type of luck I have.

➝ And now to make myself sound like (kind of, these are different things) an asshole: There's going to be a Wastelands 2! I really liked the first anthology and it introduced me to a lot of interesting authors. Recommendations are open until January 1, 2013.

➝ Strange Horizons is having their 2012 fund drive. :)

➝ An Open Letter to John Scalzi. Super interesting (Read the Comments).

➝ Some Thoughts on Shipping by fozmeadows I love how she has an idle thought and then breaks down into Shipping Theory. It's great. ♥

➝ Song recommendation! Final Fantasy VIII Piano Collection — Succession of Witches:

---

➝ A few weeks ago, I told you why I was wary of Naomi Wolf's Vagina; the other big feminist book of the season that's making me extremely suspicious is Hanna Rosin's The End of Men. Here are a few reasons why:

Contrary to the fears of some pundits, the ascent of women does not portend the end of men. It offers a new beginning for both. But women’s progress by itself is not a panacea for America’s inequities. The closer we get to achieving equality of opportunity between the sexes, the more clearly we can see that the next major obstacle to improving the well-being of most men and women is the growing socioeconomic inequality within each sex.

Yep: thinking of the progress towards gender equality as a zero sum game and ignoring intersectionality really doesn't help anyone.

Also:

It is perhaps to the credit of Rosin (and of her honesty) that if you did not know the title of the book you might very likely imagine that whole sections of it had been written to support precisely the opposite argument. One chapter, entitled "The Top", is a fairly standard discussion of how women still haven't made it there, or not at any rate to the very pinnacle. She does stress a few exceptions. "The job of Secretary of State has been virtually reserved for a woman," she insists (though I'm not sure that three out of the last eight really suggests female dominance). Or: "The number of female heads of state, although still small, has suddenly doubled in the last several years" (is that from four to eight, or five to ten?).

Three out of eight = female dominance: more on that kind of logic very soon here at Lady Business. *insert suspenseful music*

Lastly, here's a useful debunking of Rosin's claim that rape has all but disappeared.

➝ At Tor.com, Lisa Hager discusses Steampunk, Gender Identity and Sexuality. This post on the politics of fashion in steampunk makes a good companion read.

➝ Morgan Baden on Tori Amos and the feminist movement:

What most interested me about her interview with Tingen, though, is what she said about who she’s singing for these days. Not surprisingly, it’s not people like me—my political views have long been formed. No, she’s talking to the me I used to be when I first discovered Tori: "I’m not interested in the old farts... I’m after their teenage daughters. This is about rousing 18-year olds to wake up and make choices. I want them to realize what their future will be in 20 years time, unless they start voting for whom they truly want in power."

If I said things like "boom", I’d write that here. Because, well, BOOM. That’s what feminism does, today more than ever: it reminds women and men that there are very real consequences when there are anti-feminists, or even simply people who have never viewed the world through a feminist lens, in power. The movement right now, in an election year especially, is about highlighting which candidates, which parties, want to control women, our bodies, our choices, our futures, and let them make their own informed choices. And Tori gets that. And that is huge.

➝ Also relevant to a discussion of feminism as a label is this essay by the always amazing Roxane Gay, Bad Feminism:

Because I have so many deeply held opinions about gender equality, I feel a lot of pressure to live up to certain ideals. I am supposed to be a good feminist who is having it all, doing it all. Really, though, I’m a woman in her thirties, struggling to accept herself. For so long I told myself I was not this woman—utterly human and flawed. I worked overtime to be anything but this woman, and it was exhausting and unsustainable, and even harder than simply embracing who I am.

[...]

At some point, I got it into my head that a feminist was a certain kind of woman. I bought into grossly inaccurate myths about who feminists are—militant, perfect in their politics and person, man hating, humorless. I bought into these myths even though, intellectually, I know better. I’m not proud of this. I don’t want to buy into these myths anymore. I don’t want to cavalierly disavow feminism like far too many other women have done.

I also want to be myself. Bad feminism seems like the only way I can both embrace myself as a feminist and be myself.

No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am one. I cannot nor will not deny the importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but I also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a woman.

I am, therefore, a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.

➝ And on a somewhat related note, here's reason 43562 why I fucking love John Darnielle:

I identify as feminist because that's what the term was when I was first learning basic concepts of egalitarianism, about the women's movement. These are some heady questions you raise, and there's a sense in which they really aren't my questions to answer: I'm a dude! I think of feminism as everybody's struggle, because I think injustice affects everybody, but at the same time, I always feel like the last thing liberation movements need is a voice like mine policing the terminology; it's my place to hear what the people most affected by the imbalance of power have to say about what terms are useful. Having said all that, I struggle with the idea of tethering a word to what its historical uses have been. It would be hard for me to part ways with a word which to me has meant a good deal, and which I think has been important to many over the years. But that's just me! I go the way the movement goes, and as it rightly moves toward being genuinely inclusive, if people previously left out say "we need a new term," well, then those people's voices should be heard, in my opinion.

➝ Speaking of awesome male allies, The Rumpus interviews Junot Díaz:

By the end of the book he manages to do something he has never done before: confront the damage he has caused the woman he loves. He feels not only remorse but is also able to imagine how horrible that pain he caused must have been. He feels responsibility and compassion. All of this is only possible because he finally begins to see the women in his life as fully human. He finally gains, after much suffering, a true human imaginary. Something that for the average guy is very difficult to obtain, considering that most of us are socialized to never imagine women as fully human. Male privilege in all our societies predicated and facilitated by this very blind spot.

I so need to get my hands on his new book.

➝ This is such a great idea: "The Wikipedia profiles of women in technology and engineering will be updated at an "edit-a-thon" held at the Royal Society next month."

➝ Michael Muhammad Knight's The Innocence of White People is an excellent read.

➝ I've just discovered Riot Nrrd, a webcomic that describes itself as follows:

This is a webcomic is about being a nerd. Unlike many other comics and webcomics about being a nerd, this is a webcomic about being LGBT nerds, female nerds, nerds of color, disabled nerds, and other kinds of nerds that don’t get as much love. This is a webcomic about being a nerd who’s constantly facing down sexism, racism, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, classism, ableism, fat-hate, and other prejudices and -isms from their nerdery of choice. This webcomic was made by a frustrated nerd about frustrated nerds making comics.

Sounds like something I could really love.

➝ And I'll leave you with some music.: Allo Darlin' have recently released a video for my favourite track in their new album, Northern Lights. You can watch it below:

---

➝ An interesting interview with the editor of 'Islam and Science Fiction'.

➝ The Book Fair for Ballou is back at Guys Lit Wire. In case you haven't heard about this project before, Guys Lit Wire have been running book donation drives twice a year to gather books for the school library at Ballou High School, ever since their librarian Melissa Jackson put out a Youtube appeal for help. She, the students at the school and the contributors at Guys Lit Wire put together a big list of books that need buying. Then they open up a Powell's wish list so that anyone who wants to help can send specific books to the school.

➝ Jenny's review of 'Tell the Wolves I'm Home' made me want to get it NOW.

➝ Brenna Yovanoff's post 'Ugly' was so well timed for me. Although I have that bit of me that I'm never, ever satisfied with, I've spent the last year becoming as comfortable with my body as I've probably ever been. Like, I can now look at myself and think I'm looking good. Progress! The male world, sadly, does not agree with my assessment of my attractiveness. And it makes me feel super weird that I care about that, about the opinion guys who I would never be really interested in if they had been making advances before. So thanks Ms Yovanoff for providing support.

➝ Musings from the Sofa nails what I hate about working 9 -5.

➝ dovegreyreader made Clare Balding's 'My Animals and Other Family' sound so good. Have I managed to interest anyone in cheering for Clare Balding until the end of time yet?

➝ Maggie Steifvater bought a rally car :D :D :D So cool!

Comments

[nymeth]

I agree completely about the current crop of YA dystopia. It's too bad, because a subgenre of sci-fi that has the potential to be subversive is becoming tired and losing its power. Foz Meadow's post from a few months ago put it perfectly.

Also, thanks for the song ♥ I haven't listened to the FFVIII soundtrack in ages, but I love it so much.

HUGE OVERSIGHT

[renay]

How did I not know you knew about Final Fantasy VIII? DID I FORGET??

Re: HUGE OVERSIGHT

[nymeth]

I thought you knew it was one of my MOST FAVOURITE THINGS. I've posted about it before, I think, but probably not in a long while. But I remember reading your blog waaaaaay back in 2007 and how finding out it was one of your fandoms was one of the first things that made me go, "Sigh, if only she'd be my friend" ;)

MEMORY ACQUIRED

[renay]

NOW I REMEMBER,

We both did a lot of pining after each other in 2007! We took so long. XD

Thank goodness someone other than me ships the pirates!

[bookgazing]

Often in visual media(by no means always, but I can think of enough times to form a pattern) when it does turn out that a gay relationship is canonical there will be no talking about it at first either. Up until the first kiss or sex it will all be looks, accidental hand brushes and probably banter/growing friendship. I'm not really sure what that means in terms of Foz's theory. Maybe that we're not just trained to see friendships where people don't talk about their attraction as signals of romance, but that we're reading signals that are in media which actually has canonical gay pairings too? It just seems important to bring up the gay media context too, when talking about how romance and friendship signals currently interact, as well as how that may influence people's creation of slash pairings. Important, even if I can't quite figure out what it means.

Ignorance disclaimer!

[renay]

I haven't actually indulged in a lot of visual media of that type; maybe I am watching the wrong things or perhaps watching things not targeted at mainstream audiences. Can you give me some examples of what you mean?

Re: Ignorance disclaimer!

[bookgazing]

A lot of my examples come from British soaps which will mean nothing to you but anyway.... So the most recent Eastenders gay relationship came about when a character we thought was straight started hanging out with a gay character. They were friends, they laughed, they shared looks, then they were kissing. And that's a pattern that's repeated in a lot of soap gay relationships. Hollyoaks, The Bill, Neighbours (that one had a lesbian relationship which followed this pattern) all featured friendships which turned out to be romantic. There's a film called 'Beautiful Thing' which is both adorable and melancholic, which again follows the 'boys hanging out become friends, become romantic' pattern. And all of those are full of a kind of...idk, visual code that you come to recognise as you watch more and more of these relationships develop. I find that other programs use this code, for whatever reason, to show male friendship and so...shipping...

I would probably say that I think the reason you might not be seeing a lot of this is because it most often takes place in depictions of relationships were one partner is closeted. Or it takes place when such a relationship is being hidden from, then revealed to the audience for drammatic reasons, or just because the media creators are into secrets or something. Fanfic (or at least the bunch I've read) doesn't really deal in those kind of storylines, while the mainstream is in love with them.

Also how do you think some classics feed into this? I know you've read 'Dorian Gray', which is full of recognisable clues/suggestions that more than friendship is being described (I think significant blushes is the big clue in, in that book but it's been ages since I read it). And I can think of a few more that are more like 'significant looks', 'meaningful conversation' and although not many mainstream classic relationships become canon gay, these books are generally interpreted as displaying gay relationships that would have been if not for the times the author was writing. So does knowing a bit about the way classic writers wrote these relationships play into what makes for shipping signals?

Scattered thoughts!

[unjapanologist]

The first point reminds me of an essay I read on metafandom so long ago and can't find anymore. I'll mangle it, but what I took away was that fanfic often works because you have a starting point and the nature of that starting point means you can take a certain amount of steps away and not lose the reader. Too many steps away from the initial premise of the original material and you start to get accusations of crack fic, OOC behavior, etc.

Ooh, that sounds really interesting. Will you mention the essay here if it does turn up? I'd love to read it.

[renay]

I definitely will! I feel like I saved it on delicious in one of my accounts, but have since exported/archived that and never put it back up so it's in a scary archive of Internet Stuff Since 2000. If I find it I'll let you know. :)

[slhuang]

Hi! I'm the one who wrote the open letter to Mr. Scalzi. Just wanted to drop by and say thanks for the link; I've had a lot of incomers from it. :)

Been reading your archives—super interesting, and exactly the types of points I love reading about. Cheers!

[renay]

It was an interesting discussion to see unfold, definitely! It was nice of him to respond. I tend to subscribe to the "author is dead!!" school of literary criticism, but with tough topics like diversity and representation it's nice to know that authors are thinking about it actively and trying to get better. :)