Writing a woman as a man?

[Nukelavee]

Date - Look up Futurism and Divisionism, pretty certain Balla was playing with some of those concepts.

Terra - "lesbian" porn is one of those things I tend to gloss over, doesn't appeal to me. But...in case it got buried in there...why are they using male psuedonymns?

omg i butchered that word. my nap wasn't long enough.

[TerraPrime]

No idea, but I have 2 guesses.

One, there's a general trend of women writing with male pseudonyms in general.

Second, they may feel that a "man" writing about male-male sexuality might receive more credibility than if the author is known to be a female. I mean, I would find a pornographic film directed and acted out by lesbians to be more credible as a reflection of lesbian desires and behaviors (as compared to say, as sexual stimulation aide for straight men) than if it were directed by heterosexual man.

[Shryke]

No idea, but I have 2 guesses.

One, there's a general trend of women writing with male pseudonyms in general.

Second, they may feel that a "man" writing about male-male sexuality might receive more credibility than if the author is known to be a female. I mean, I would find a pornographic film directed and acted out by lesbians to be more credible as a reflection of lesbian desires and behaviors (as compared to say, as sexual stimulation aide for straight men) than if it were directed by heterosexual man.

Probably lends some air of authenticity. It's not a woman writing out some sort of fantasy (in the same way lesbian porn is nothing but a male fantasy of what lesbianism is like) but a man talking about things only men would know about 2 sparkly gay were-vampires fucking.

[Lyanna Stark]

Right, but is Memoirs of a Geisha sexist (even inadvertently) because it's about whores?

And if not, it's because, as you say, that's what the book is about. The characters are whores for a purpose. And if characters in another work are also whores and also for a purpose, can that book then be sexist (even inadvertently)?

Which purposes make something sexist and which don't? Or is it about something else besides the purpose behind those characters being whores? (like, the whole "happy whores" thing for instance)

And I would say PoN is very much about sex.

No idea about MoaG, haven't read it.

What I can say though is that opinions will vary on whether the whores are believable and reasonable, or whether they are not. Generally, if whores are inserted into the story in much larger proportions than what we normally find in the world around us, it needs an explanation. For instance, I am certain there are books out there featuring prostitutes that come across as less sexist than Robert Jordan, who made a society where women are the top dog. Only, he SAYS they are the top dog, but it doesn't feel that way. His society is largely faux medieval and women have no more value than men, so the mixed messages are strong and it just comes across as "men went mad so we took the second best thing and look how shite they are", sort of thing. I'm sure this is unintentional and have no opnion whether or not Mr Jordan was a sexist. What I do know was that he failed in conveying how women ruling changed society.

"Sexist" does not necessarily mean "lots of whores" or "sex slaves", it can be perspective, treatment of characters, lack of female characters, heavy application of the male gaze, girlfriend in the fridge madonna/slut stereotypes etc. I'm sure almost everyone here has read a novel and seen a score of movies where we roll our eyes at silly damsels in distress or female characters only inserted as eye candy (and who may or may not be stuffed in the fridge a bit later to create fuel for the hero's Rightful Anger).

Due to this, it's going to be really difficult to say "A book about whores is going to be sexist" since we can't know before we read it. The purpose has less to do with it than presentation. Case in point: Jordan, who managed to totally mess up a supposedly matriarchal society. I don't think he has a whore in sight either. Bakker clearly tries to say something about oppression and what have you, which is a good thought, but again the presentation is off, and even though his intentions and purpose are different, he ends up in the same boat as Jordan on this. And they are far from alone in there, I bet. Hell, I even levelled a complaint at my extremely gender sensitive House God Mieville on his Horde of Whores in IC.

Probably lends some air of authenticity. It's not a woman writing out some sort of fantasy (in the same way lesbian porn is nothing but a male fantasy of what lesbianism is like) but a man talking about things only men would know about 2 sparkly gay were-vampires fucking.

Yes, I think this is spot on. Especially since in reality, it really often is a (straight) woman writing out some sort of fantasy. Often about Draco Malfy in leather turned emo sparkly vampire as one of the participants.

(I have no idea how smut slash fic written by a straight woman differs from ones written by a gay man. Never really delved deep enough into this to spot any difference, or more correctly, never read something I knew was written by a gay man. I always assume the default for slash fic is a female writer.)

[mormont]

Indeed. And I'm sure you could articulate why they are both just as significant, but you felt it was just far too obvious to bother.

I'm sorry, I assumed from your post that we were all being facetious and thus not bothering to make a solid argument.

You, after all, were the one implying that the lack of a convincing portrayal of female characters was just another thing that someone might not like about a book, a personal preference not in any real sense more important than a lack of vampires. It may be obvious why this is so, but it rather escapes me, I'm afraid.

[Nukelavee]

Terra - I may need to go back to re-read the article (and there's no way I'm claiming it's a meaningful or accurate one, btw), but it left me with the impression that these aren't fanfic, but actual published books, ala Harlequin Romance.

If that's the case, then it brings up the contrast between how we (here) address how men write females, and how we look at women writing men. Now, having not read any (gay porn interests me less than hetero, honestly, and I include lesbian porn there, too), I can't say if these are accurate depictions of characters or not (to be honest, I wouldn't know an accurate portrayal of a Bi male, and I am one), but I'm going to guess they aren't.

So, are these writers as under the hammer as males doing a similar thing? If it's women, writing for a female market, is using a male name to publish (I'm going to say/assume) bad male depictions going to be considered as problematic as the reverse, and if not, why?

[Shryke]

I'm sorry, I assumed from your post that we were all being facetious and thus not bothering to make a solid argument.

You, after all, were the one implying that the lack of a convincing portrayal of female characters was just another thing that someone might not like about a book, a personal preference not in any real sense more important than a lack of vampires. It may be obvious why this is so, but it rather escapes me, I'm afraid.

No, I was asking what your criteria were and why you would use them. Because if you were actually paying attention, I figured you would have noticed the complaints were more "Why are all the female main characters in the sex trade in some way?" and "not enough female main characters", not "none of these are convincing portrayals of a women". Or even if it was the later, it was said to be due to the first two points. And my question was why "too many whores" or "not enough women in the cast" counted as a valid criteria.

I provided an example of a clearly ridiculous standard as a way to show not all criteria are good (or valid if you will). And once we've established that some criteria are good and some aren't, the question becomes how one distinguishes between the two.

Of course, by this point we've moved on to this discussion anyway, cause apparently other people got it.

But, you know, I'm sure facetious comments of no substance contribute alot.

[Shryke]

Yes, I think this is spot on. Especially since in reality, it really often is a (straight) woman writing out some sort of fantasy. Often about Draco Malfy in leather turned emo sparkly vampire as one of the participants.

(I have no idea how smut slash fic written by a straight woman differs from ones written by a gay man. Never really delved deep enough into this to spot any difference, or more correctly, never read something I knew was written by a gay man. I always assume the default for slash fic is a female writer.)

This is a good question Lyanna and we should find out.

And that means someone's gotta take one for the team.

/looks meaningfully at Nukelavee

[Galactus]

and even though his intentions and purpose are different, he ends up in the same boat as Jordan on this.

Honestly, I think Jordan and Bakker are doing exactly the same thing: They're trying to do say something about equality (although they do so in opposite ways, Jordan by trying to show an equal society, bakker by showing an unequal one and drawing paralells to our own) but they both incorporate far more stereotypes and prejudices than either of them is willing to admit.

[TerraPrime]

Right, it would come across as odd if all the women were whores. What I'm asking is why it comes across as odd that the novel (or movie or whatever) just has the main character(s) as a whore.

It seems the conversation is continually slipping between descriptions of the world itself and the specific characters we, the reader, follow within that world.

It has to do with windows within the novel. The author creates these windows by showcasing characters, and through these windows we perceive this fictitious world. If we're repeatedly shown X, then it raises the question of does Y also exist? In other words, if the major female characters in this novel, however many, all share trait X, e.g. very much the harridan stereotype, then one wonders if there are indeed non-harridans in this world, because the author has chosen to focus our attention on these female characters. Is this a story about women who are harridans? If so, then maybe it's ok. But if this is a story about, oh, I don't know, gathering magic plot tokens to save the world, then why do we see only harridan-like female characters?

And this is where number of female characters become important. The more female characters you have, the less easy it is to have this narrow window issue. If, say, your main cast features 6 men and 1 woman, and this woman just happens to be an emotionally submissive type who derives joy from sexually satisfying her male husband, it'll be the only window we have to see the women of this world. In comparison, if you have 4 male characters and 3 female ones, and only one of the female characters are like that, then we see a diversity of types in this world, and we can then focus on why this character is like this, and to explore the story, instead of being sidetracked by the nagging question of "why the eff are women such doormats in this world?"

Can you avoid blindering your readers if you use only a small number of female characters? Possibly. Someone might even have done it. But it is far easier to achieve if your balance within the story is even.

For instance, we can look at Martin's world, which features a good balance of male and female characters. His range of female characters allow us to see a wide range of traits in women of his world. We have Cat, Cercei, Brienne, Daenerys, Sansa, Arya, and Asha all having significant screen time. Imagine if his cast were restricted to Brigette, Brienne, Lady Mormont, and then, Sansa, Irri, and Lollys. That would, at least to me, give me a different impression about the gender dynamics of Westeros.

But that doesn't make me find a book about a whore odd. It would, though, make me find a book about a world where every women is a whore odd. But, in my experience anyway, what we see is generally the first not the second.

I don't find books with female prostitutes as characters odd, or unacceptable. I find books that are not about prostitution featuring a predominant cast of female prostitutes, odd. Context.

As for what we see, it goes back to what the author is showing us, through the selection of major characters given screen time.

Right, but is the artist actually tinkering with these presumptions at all? If the female main characters are all involved in the sex industry, that doesn't mean everyone is. That seems rather a large assumption not supported by the text. (or the movie or the whatever)

But I am not saying that if X factor is present then it must be a sexist work. I am, indeed, allowing for context. But I do need an explanation, a justification, or some sort of narrative, when I see things that I find odd.

Right, but is Memoirs of a Geisha sexist (even inadvertently) because it's about whores?

I don't necessarily find it to be sexist, but I can see why someone else might. I think it is in thee same mold, but less successful, as "Raise the Red Lantern," in that it is showcasing the effects of a sexist society on women living in that society and how it turns the sexism inwards and so that it is channeled at other women, or in other words, how women become co-opted as fellow oppressors of other women in a sexist society (the real life parallel would be mothers who conduct female genital mutilations on their own daughters).

And if not, it's because, as you say, that's what the book is about. The characters are whores for a purpose. And if characters in another work are also whores and also for a purpose, can that book then be sexist (even inadvertently)?

Inadvertently, through poor execution? Yes, the book can become sexist. But for merely attempting the subject? No, not when I'm evaluating the book. Others may differ in opinion on this.

Which purposes make something sexist and which don't? Or is it about something else besides the purpose behind those characters being whores? (like, the whole "happy whores" thing for instance)

I don't think there's a list of Approved Theme where if you draw from it you are automatically Not Sexist. At least, I don't operate that way. Can a book that depicts a happy whore be not sexist? Quite possibly. But it depends so much on execution and context. Also, the challenge is that it is difficult to pull off writing a believable character who's happy at being a prostitute, in a fictitious world where women's chastity and reputation are valued and commodified. If the world is set so that a woman with sexual experience prior to her marriage is highly sought after, then I would have an easier time accepting the existence of a content/happy prostitute because she probably has a career as an instructor to high-born society ladies who need to perfect their sexual techniques prior to marriage, etc.

And I would say PoN is very much about sex.

I guess so. I stopped after book 2.

Diversity in WHAT though? In the world or in the cast? Because these are not the same at all. And yet, as I said above, people keep trying to act like they are.

And as I explained, the cast is the window through which we, the readers, see the world. This is a unique problem, imo, for SF/F and speculative fictions, because we expect the authors to alter the reality. In a Tom Clancy movie, for instance, I would not expect that there might be a different gender dynamics that's different from our current reality. But if I pick up book 1 of a new series from Author N in the SF/F/H genre, then I would need to be on my toes when it comes to expectations, include gender issues. Therefore, I am looking for clues to either confirm or contradict the hypothesis that the gender roles in this fictitious world is analogous or similar to our world. So every depiction is a clue, and if the author is niggardly (hur hur) about clues showcasing balanced depiction on gender issues, then I, the reader, will lack evidence to confirm the hypothesis.

And what if the author is not writing a book about how water is wet. But simply mentioning that, yes, water is wet while talking about sailing or something. Is the author making a point about that or are you simply focusing on that because it's something that's important to you?

Why can't it be both? There's more than 1 meaning to a given text, else the whole discipline of literary criticism would collapse, I should think. There are intended messages, and unintended messages, in a piece of written work. I think it's perfectly legitimate to read, for instance, "Wuthering Height" for a class/caste perspective and not for a romance perspective, even if the author had originally intended it to be about romance and class issues are just the background for novel. As an another example, Martin might or might not have intended to frame his story in the context of meritocracy versus inherited power, but there's enough material in his work that one can construct a case for the issue without grossly distorting the text.

[mormont]

But, you know, I'm sure facetious comments of no substance contribute alot.

I'd have guessed that, yes.

The awkward fact is that your comment was in response to this from Lyanna:

In my opinion, a novel where all women are whores, or there are no women presented, or only badly presented, will earn my criticism and it will detract from my appreciation of that novel.

And that your response didn't limit the topic to the first part in any way. Therefore the topic was, in fact, the portrayal of women in general. Fair enough if that's not what you intended, but reading it in context, I think it's fair to say that you failed to get that point across to at least 36.5% of people. ;)

My comment, in point of fact, was a facetious way of asking you what your criteria are: because the suggestion of your posts is that pretty much any personal preference is equally insignificant, that there is no inherent validity in female readers' wish to see fiction that properly represents them. On what basis is that suggestion being made? I've read your posts in this thread and I don't see any such basis - only an assumption that this is the default view and demands that anyone differing from it justify themselves. That's just silly. It doesn't really merit more than a facetious response, in all honesty.

[Lyanna Stark]

Honestly, I think Jordan and Bakker are doing exactly the same thing: They're trying to do say something about equality (although they do so in opposite ways, Jordan by trying to show an equal society, bakker by showing an unequal one and drawing paralells to our own) but they both incorporate far more stereotypes and prejudices than either of them is willing to admit.

This is a good point and why both of them fail in different ways.

At the same time, I think it's importat to point out that works of fiction are rarely black and white, i.e. sexist and non sexist. It's obvious Bakker wants to make a point about unequal societies, it just gets all muddled when he throws in stuff like women are metaphysically inferior, and how Esmi needs to be told she is as good as a man....by a man; or Jordan, who creates a society where women rule supreme, yet the women are about as mature as really immature and shallow high school drama queens.

On the other hand, you have writers like Tolkien, where women are far more passive and don't, as a rule, take any space on the battlefield or do much apart from look pretty and possibly powerful from afar. His society is conservative and his values old skool catholic. Yet he managed to create Eowyn, with more agency than any of Jordan's and Bakker's women added together (until she decided to hold a meek and housewife-like speech at the very end). He created Luthien who without flinching went into Morgoth's lair together with Beren to take back the silmarills. Sure, she does it to help the man she loves, but it's not like he had a sucker's chance in hell without her. She does all the heavy lifting while he mostly manages to get caught and severely injured.

I'm sure there are loads of other examples. This is just to illustrate that just because you can level criticism at a writer or an novel doesn't mean it's 100% sexist, or that it completely avoids being sexist, or at least that prejudices and stereotypes (or conservative morals) don't slip in somehow.

This is a good question Lyanna and we should find out.

And that means someone's gotta take one for the team.

/looks meaningfully at Nukelavee

I blame you for making me go looking for slashfic yesterday and ended up reading lots of Dragon Age slashfic on LJ. Mean! That said, I found nothing that wasn't written by straight women as far as I could tell. And the audience seem 100% straight women too!

Hazarding a guess, I'd go out on a limb and say at least some slashfic written by straight women are a bit too sparkly and filled with way too much fluff. It really is complete wishfulfillment, just with another sparkly hot guy inserted instead of the writer, I think. Maybe it's just me being prejudiced, but I can't see that gay male writers as a group would have such a tendency towards fluff and sparkles. Or pretty, pretty emo angst.

[Shryke]

I blame you for making me go looking for slashfic yesterday and ended up reading lots of Dragon Age slashfic on LJ. Mean! That said, I found nothing that wasn't written by straight women as far as I could tell. And the audience seem 100% straight women too!

Hazarding a guess, I'd go out on a limb and say at least some slashfic written by straight women are a bit too sparkly and filled with way too much fluff. It really is complete wishfulfillment, just with another sparkly hot guy inserted instead of the writer, I think. Maybe it's just me being prejudiced, but I can't see that gay male writers as a group would have such a tendency towards fluff and sparkles. Or pretty, pretty emo angst.

Hey now, Terra Prime gets layed doesn't he? The audience is out there!

[Shryke]

It has to do with windows within the novel. The author creates these windows by showcasing characters, and through these windows we perceive this fictitious world. If we're repeatedly shown X, then it raises the question of does Y also exist? In other words, if the major female characters in this novel, however many, all share trait X, e.g. very much the harridan stereotype, then one wonders if there are indeed non-harridans in this world, because the author has chosen to focus our attention on these female characters. Is this a story about women who are harridans? If so, then maybe it's ok. But if this is a story about, oh, I don't know, gathering magic plot tokens to save the world, then why do we see only harridan-like female characters?

And this is where number of female characters become important. The more female characters you have, the less easy it is to have this narrow window issue. If, say, your main cast features 6 men and 1 woman, and this woman just happens to be an emotionally submissive type who derives joy from sexually satisfying her male husband, it'll be the only window we have to see the women of this world. In comparison, if you have 4 male characters and 3 female ones, and only one of the female characters are like that, then we see a diversity of types in this world, and we can then focus on why this character is like this, and to explore the story, instead of being sidetracked by the nagging question of "why the eff are women such doormats in this world?"

Can you avoid blindering your readers if you use only a small number of female characters? Possibly. Someone might even have done it. But it is far easier to achieve if your balance within the story is even.

For instance, we can look at Martin's world, which features a good balance of male and female characters. His range of female characters allow us to see a wide range of traits in women of his world. We have Cat, Cercei, Brienne, Daenerys, Sansa, Arya, and Asha all having significant screen time. Imagine if his cast were restricted to Brigette, Brienne, Lady Mormont, and then, Sansa, Irri, and Lollys. That would, at least to me, give me a different impression about the gender dynamics of Westeros.

I don't find books with female prostitutes as characters odd, or unacceptable. I find books that are not about prostitution featuring a predominant cast of female prostitutes, odd. Context.

As for what we see, it goes back to what the author is showing us, through the selection of major characters given screen time.

But I am not saying that if X factor is present then it must be a sexist work. I am, indeed, allowing for context. But I do need an explanation, a justification, or some sort of narrative, when I see things that I find odd.

See, I think this is where we significantly differ. It seems your comment here at the bottom about explanation or justification goes back to the bolded part earlier about the chosen main characters and what that means for the world in general.

I don't find the choice of characters necessarily says anything about the world in general or the like. Just because the only female character is emotionally submissive and without agency doesn't mean all women are (unless we are shown otherwise) or that all women should be or that this is the theme of the like (again, unless we are shown otherwise).

I don't find the choice of the cast of characters charged with meaning unless the book uses other venues to make it obvious that it's supposed to be. And even then, those other hints give us context to what that intent is.

Basically, I don't think on should assume all women are doormats in the world shown just because the only female main character is one.

And as I explained, the cast is the window through which we, the readers, see the world. This is a unique problem, imo, for SF/F and speculative fictions, because we expect the authors to alter the reality. In a Tom Clancy movie, for instance, I would not expect that there might be a different gender dynamics that's different from our current reality. But if I pick up book 1 of a new series from Author N in the SF/F/H genre, then I would need to be on my toes when it comes to expectations, include gender issues. Therefore, I am looking for clues to either confirm or contradict the hypothesis that the gender roles in this fictitious world is analogous or similar to our world. So every depiction is a clue, and if the author is niggardly (hur hur) about clues showcasing balanced depiction on gender issues, then I, the reader, will lack evidence to confirm the hypothesis.

See, I am looking for clues that the world is different from ours. I basically assume it's the same unless I'm told otherwise. Like I assume the sky is blue and men have the penises and water is wet and all that shit. This, to me, would seem the logical null hypothesis.

[Shryke]

This is a good point and why both of them fail in different ways.

At the same time, I think it's importat to point out that works of fiction are rarely black and white, i.e. sexist and non sexist. It's obvious Bakker wants to make a point about unequal societies, it just gets all muddled when he throws in stuff like women are metaphysically inferior, and how Esmi needs to be told she is as good as a man....by a man; or Jordan, who creates a society where women rule supreme, yet the women are about as mature as really immature and shallow high school drama queens.

I think Jordan definitely slips, though I think you may have it wrong. The intent is not so much that women rule supreme but that the historical basis and political structures of the world have sort of destroyed the idea that "women are inferior" more or less completely. But at the same time, these same political structures have also enforced some rather harsh gender divisions on most societies. So you get not so much a world where women are better, but where women are considered seperate but equal to men (and the various societies interpret these roles differently) Which sorta works well enough as long as you don't look at it too closely.

The real issue is that most of the women have a rather specific .... attitude and approach to gender relations that even if you don't find it grating, does get tiresome in repetition. I think he's sorta trying to make a point, playing up the gender divisions, but there's not enough diversity in that way it's shown. There's more then one way for men and women to be different and have trouble communicating and all that.

For Bakker, the "women are metaphysically inferior" is kinda the point (ancient religious texts are hella sexist and all that, and Earwa is the world of the Old Testament more or less) and "man telling a women she's equal to a man" thing is, as I said before, very deliberate in not being a real feminist awakening-type moment.

I don't find the prejudices/stereotypes, for me, showing up there at all because the female characters are rather deliberate choices along the theme of the series, which has alot to do with sex and power.

[Shryke]

I'd have guessed that, yes.

The awkward fact is that your comment was in response to this from Lyanna:

And that your response didn't limit the topic to the first part in any way. Therefore the topic was, in fact, the portrayal of women in general. Fair enough if that's not what you intended, but reading it in context, I think it's fair to say that you failed to get that point across to at least 36.5% of people. ;)

If you'd actually read it in context, you might have noticed that it was a line of conversation descending from a question of why these criteria were used in the first place.

But again, I'm sure doing so would take valuable time from your attempts at snark. It appeared no one else got mixed up.

My comment, in point of fact, was a facetious way of asking you what your criteria are: because the suggestion of your posts is that pretty much any personal preference is equally insignificant, that there is no inherent validity in female readers' wish to see fiction that properly represents them. On what basis is that suggestion being made? I've read your posts in this thread and I don't see any such basis - only an assumption that this is the default view and demands that anyone differing from it justify themselves. That's just silly. It doesn't really merit more than a facetious response, in all honesty.

Um, no, I've never said any personal preference is equally insignificant. In fact, the very point, which I had put in the reply you are quoting which you were again apparently too busy to actually read, was that not all such preferences are equal. Hence bringing up a clearly ridiculous one. The question was about how one establishes which criteria are significant or meaningful and which aren't and which are more then others.

If "there are no sparkly vampires in Hamlet" is a ridiculous criteria, why is it so? If "there are too many women who are whores" is a valid criteria, what is it so?

I mean, at least 2 of the people in the thread got what I was asking and responded along the line of discussion, so apparently I missed, at most, 33.33% of the audience, which more then meets your arbitrary smart-ass criteria. It also apparently warranted more then a facetious response. But hey, maybe they actually read what I wrote.

[Prince Alexander]

A lot of very good comments on either side of the argument. On a more basic level though, lack of diversity in Bakker's female characters made the book pretty boring for me. Gender dynamics are a huge theme, I just can't live without it. It had other merits, but I prefer to get carte blanche juggernaut like ASOIAF rather than the narrow minded if very deep story that I can comprehend/enjoy well enough when a few moons align.

[Callan S.]

It'd be interesting to have a novel where it's primarily female characters, some of them high paid lawyers, or useful things like scientists (heh!), others currently stay at home mum, another a politician and...they have all done sex work at some earlier part of their lives. It'd be interesting to see if it all came off as a lack of diversity in the female characters? But this falls into ideas for writing novels simply as science experiments, I guess.

Actually that'd be funny for Bakkers fan fic stuff - rewrite the female characters to have no connection to sex at all, (Esme does some sort of labour or seamstress or such, Serwe becomes a soldier) and see if suddenly diversity of character abounds?

[Sci-2]

Genderblindered: “We’re both queens. So who will hang out the laundry?”

See, if you’ve got a society that’s truly, really, totally “equal” you’re not just going to have women guards, lawyers, and bodyguards. You’re also going to have an equal number of male child caretakers, kindergarten teachers, nurses, secretaries, receptionists, sex workers, and housemaids (unless you have cunningly created a society that doesn’t have sex work, and if it’s truly equal, I can tell you that it probably won’t. But that’s another rant).

“Equal” societies aren’t just about putting women in armor and calling it good. It’s about totally breaking down the assumptions of gendered work – for everyone – and rethinking, from the ground up, how that society builds, organizes, reproduces, communicates, and even what it dreams about.

[Arthmail]

Genderblindered: “We’re both queens. So who will hang out the laundry?”

Guh. Stupid. There is only so much fucking work an author can be expected to do while still having, you know, a story.