gryphonsegg

I made my decision about which doctoral program I want. I signed to accept the support offer and put that in the mail today. I've searched for apartments within a short drive of the campus, and I'm planning to talk to someone about one of the apartments of interest this weekend. This is really happening!

Okay, I leave early tomorrow morning, and my nerves are eating me alive right now! ARRRRGH! I have everything I need and a couple of things I don't need, but I can't stop worrying.

On the bright side, one of the things I got for the trip is the Wonder Woman+Batgirl+Supergirl tee shirt I gazed at wistfully months ago but couldn't find in my size then. Today, when I went out to buy socks, I found one in my size and on sale. There was also a discount on "super soft" socks with these cute little insects on them, so got a pair of those too. So I have normal clothes to wear to meet people who might offer me a job and me clothes to wear on the plane to make me feel better.

Ana Mardoll, who has written a series of posts analyzing C.S. Lewis's Narnia books and frequently getting all rage-smashy over their sexism, decided to add a post about the movie adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from a few years ago. She was bothered by what she perceives as extra sexism added to the movie, especially in how Susan, who was obviously not Lewis's favorite Pevensie sibling to begin with, comes off even worse in the movie than in the book. Anyway, I love this line from Ana's post because it so neatly sums up my own problems not only with that particular adaptation but with a lot of other adaptations too, plus SO VERY MANY discussions in fandom and a good many derivative and transformative works themselves:

It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that completely changing a brave character in order to be The Great Doubter of Temptressness is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.

Just change a key phrase or two and it applies to so many different situations:

It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't that completely changing a politically savvy character in order to be The Spoiled, Naive Girl Who Does Whatever Feels Good at the Moment, Regardless of Consequences is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.

It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that completely changing a clever, skilled, and powerful character in order to be The Representative of All Little Sisters Everywhere So That a Man Can Save Her To Make a Point and Not Even Because He Likes Her As an Individual is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.

It's like you get that telling girls that they have to get married and become mothers is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that insisting that a character who marries a partner you disapprove of and/or has more children than you think she should is a Completely Worthless Failure whose mistakes in her personal life erase everything else she has ever been or done is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.

This is going to be very useful to me because almost every time I check out a discussion of sexism or any other prejudice in fandom, I notice people complaining about potholes and suggesting the alternative of jumping off a cliff.

I've bought my plane tickets to go for interviews at a grad school in a couple of weeks. So, yeah, this is actually happening. I'm working on scheduling a visit to another university later. I've already been accepted by my preferred professor at the second university, but I want to check it out in person to make sure.

I was telling teacher about it this morning, and a student who heard me said, "I don't know what that is, but it seems to be very significant to you. I can tell from your voice that you are excited." <3

I think I'm going to have to put aside all my Telepathic Animal Companions + Gender Critique fic-scraps for a good, long while-- or maybe cut them into smaller pieces and recycle characters and scenes from disparate projects into something new that ties together the themes I was using them to approach from different angles. Today I had an inspiration that fits it all together.

( Cut for book blather )

. . . so I can link to the next time I feel pressed to explain why I'm a lot more cautious about het, especially explicit het, than I am about equally explicit slash or femslash. Well, there are several reasons for that, but this is a big one that I've had trouble articulating and/or simply been reluctant/embarrassed to articulate in the past. Basically, Flavia Dzodan in this post points out that current Western social norms construct heterosexual sex as something that women do for men and men do for themselves. Note: linked post and comments contain explicit verbal discussion of sex; no pics.

( cut for connecting that discussion to my own nerdy concerns )

I am typing this wearing my new and improved Joanna Mason bracelet!

( cut to spare those who don't like beads and/or who can't say that their favorite Hunger Games character is ALL THE FEMALE TRIBUTES )

I had another feminist click moment this morning, and it helped me articulate one of the things I find immensely frustrating about the recurring debates over female characters in fandom, especially the ones that center on labeling certain female characters as "feminine" or "girly-girls" and labeling others as "unfeminine," "rejecting or hiding their femininity," or "men with breasts." One of the baseline assumptions that both of the two most vocal sides of the debate start from is that a fixation on fashion and make-up is inherently feminine, girly, and womanly and that a female character who doesn't care about or take pleasure in playing with fashionable clothes, accessories, and cosmetics is more like a guy and more distanced from typical women and their concerns than a female character who does. And I just realized that I fundamentally disagree with that assumption.

Look at world history. There have been many, many times and places-- even within modern European history!-- in which men were just as fashion-conscious as women. There have been--and in some places still are--cultures in which both men and women use make-up and other cultures in which neither men nor women do that. There have even been times in the not-so-distant past when white Americans and Europeans considered wearing make-up improper for "good" women. There have been and still are some non-Western cultures in which it's the men who use cosmetics and elaborate clothes and accessories to attract attention to their appearance, while the women's traditional dress and grooming styles are more practical and low-key. The emergence of the current Western popular gender schema, in which women are highly ornamental and men are much less so or not at all, emerged along with certain shifts in economic structure and cultural values, including women's work being disappeared from public view so that married women were increasingly regarded as ornaments and economic drains to their husbands rather than household managers and economic assets, and fashion being considered less a luxury that upper class people enjoyed and more a waste of time that frivolous people enjoyed.

So the conversations I'm seeing now about whether certain characters don't get enough respect because they're feminine, where feminine is defined as highly focused on and invested in fashion and make-up, are really bugging me. I mean, I used to be uncomfortable with those kinds of conversations because I could see that both sides had some good points. But now it has become really clear to me that the very terms of debate are more full of problems than I had consciously recognized. In addition to the issues that are entirely about gender in and of itself, it also bothers me that these conversations completely erase the matters of class and poverty. All of this really settled for me while I was thinking about recent commentary on The Hunger Games, in which people asserted that the series is anti-femininity because it's about people who are too poor to pursue fashion as an end in itself rebelling against an oppressor class that revels in ever-changing fashions because they have the time and material resources to do so thanks to a sociopolitical structure that takes away resources produced by the former group. Supposedly, this valorizes the main character's so-called rejection of femininity (she was too busy keeping her little sister from starving to death to care about clothes and make-up) and disparages "girly things" (literally defined as "fashion and make-up") and the people who like them. Way to completely ignore all the themes, especially the entire issue of poverty and exploitation on which the whole story hangs.