Women, Men, SFF part deux

[thistlepong]

Yet your life has, however marginally, been shaped by your gender. Mine never has. At no point, or at least none that i can think of. Nor is it likely to. And gender effects everyone, sure. But as much as i am aware of it, i've never experienced it. I can support the notion of feminism, but i think intellectually i cannot accept male feminists because they can never experience the world as women have. Not that women are all delicate flowers or anything, but i simply cannot gain firsthand experience.

You know, I think you understand privilege rather well despite not terribly enjoying it as a term.

[Kalbear]

Yep. That's basically the defining statement of privilege in a nutshell - to recognize that you have not experienced things like they have and that on a fundamental level cannot directly relate to it.

But really, recognizing that fact and being able to see what those differences are is about as good as you can do - as well as noting that your expeiences don't trump theirs.

[Prince Alexander]

Prince Alexander,

That's fascinating. I actually think virtual realities are amazingly interesting in that regards that we can actually pretend to be something we are not, and perceive a little bit of what it is to be viewed through that type of lens.

Indeed!

[Sci-2]

Keeping up with the archive, another good post by Moon:

My Trouble With Urban Fantasies And Beating Them At Their Own Game

There may be individual examples which qualify as such, but I don’t believe UF as a genre is inherently subversive and pro-feminist. Its primary tropes rely on the old idea that only one type of female strength may be validated and recognized: physical power, violence, and a willingness to kill. Relationships with men define the urban fantasy heroine, primarily romantic and sexual, but also in other ways–when push comes to shove it is a man she will turn to...She seeks patriarchal approval by striving toward being “one of the boys,” and almost mandatorily breaks down–emotionally or physically–such that she must lean on a man’s shoulder figuratively or otherwise to get back up...

She associates minimally with other women, and often dismisses women less physically inclined as simpering airheads, women less sexual as prudes, and women more sexual as evil sadistic sluts who compete with her for male attention. In the career of a UF heroine, she will almost inevitably direct gendered slurs at other women: bitch, skank, whore and slut are perennial favorites. She excels because she stands tall as an exception among her gender, elevated above all other women.

[Lummel]

Reading that makes me sad. There is so much I am glad I am not reading.

What century is this now?

[Datepalm]

Wait, she really liked Heart of Iron? Thats it, we're done. She's going to have to call Bakker some very creatively nasty names before I take her seriously again.

[Sci-2]

Wait, she really liked Heart of Iron? Thats it, we're done. She's going to have to call Bakker some very creatively nasty names before I take her seriously again.

Heh. What didn't you like about it? Admittedly it didn't strike me as something I would jump on to read.

[Shryke]

I still think there is a special type of feeling of "betrayal" if it turns out a man pretends to be a woman. Conversely, there is rarely a problem with a woman pretending to be a man for a long period of time. That is seen as quite legit and understandable (there were 2-3 of these on my vanilla server during the first 1-2 years of WoW before speaking on ventrilo, teamspeak and skype became a must, all but one with male avatars and all of them in top guilds). Which in itself is an interesting observation. I'm not sure what it means, only that it is there.

I think "woman pretending to me a man" is seen as legit and understandable because it IS understandable to most people. I think most people (male or female) can understand the desire to, say, not get hit on all the fucking time while playing a game or the like.

Prince Alexander,

That's fascinating. I actually think virtual realities are amazingly interesting in that regards that we can actually pretend to be something we are not, and perceive a little bit of what it is to be viewed through that type of lens.

MMOs are really interesting for alot of things like that. They expose strange gender dynamics that are normally buried under other things. They are also fascinating little economic experiments. People are actually starting to study them in some fields.

[Datepalm]

Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia:

It's got a stupid plot, stupid characters, and it's so desperately 'feminist' and 'non-western' that it becomes boring condescending tripe with no capacity for any genuine historical or contemporary engagement with those issues. No, sorry, if you're from St Petersburg you're still not actually Asian or non-white, despite shoehorning in anachronistic authorial lectures about how Russian is actually so like totally not western and they only think they are because western imperialism made them think that. I know it's terribly uncool to be white and western, but someone must.

[Shryke]

Not really, especially since Moon agrees with you. She calls what she does "performance rage" and even asked her

readers if she should keep it up. Several readers demanded that she never drop the rage.

What's amazing to me is how Bakker and his bros missed Valente's point by a wide mile. Mamatas has referred to Bakker's posts as a "meltdown" and the "Someone was Mean to Me and I must Whine Tour". He's called Bakker a whiny crybaby who "bursts into tears" in various forms.

Yet no one feels the need to call Mamatas a rabid animal.

No, they probably called her other names. Ones that, perhaps, are more insulting.

There's not much of a point being made here unless you acknowledge that "rapid animal" is some sort of special notable insult, rather then just a more directed form of "you are an idiot" or something equally mild and inoffensive.

At least she admits the whole thing is a stupid schtick. I suppose that's something. :rolleyes:

[Shryke]

Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia:

It's got a stupid plot, stupid characters, and it's so desperately 'feminist' and 'non-western' that it becomes boring condescending tripe with no capacity for any genuine historical or contemporary engagement with those issues. No, sorry, if you're from St Petersburg you're still not actually Asian or non-white, despite shoehorning in anachronistic authorial lectures about how Russian is actually so like totally not western and they only think they are because western imperialism made them think that. I know it's terribly uncool to be white and western, but someone must.

I'm talking that privilege bullet for all of us Datepalm, don't worry.

[Datepalm]

I'm talking that privilege bullet for all of us Datepalm, don't worry.

Thank your lucky maple leaves you're Canadian. Can you imagine if you were a straight, white, western male from the USA?

[Sci-2]

No, they probably called her other names. Ones that, perhaps, are more insulting.

Mamatas is a dude. It's a really minor point, but when you write "rapid animal" I think of Moon as the Roadrunner and Bakker as the coyote whose traps always lead to his own injuries...

Damn. Uncanny, that.

[Arthmail]

"This novel is the essence of what makes Americans mockable."

It is this sort of attitude in a review that makes me, as a non-American, go...why the fuck should i care about anything that you say? Tone determines everything.

[Sci-2]

I think you should take comments like that with a grain of salt, in the same way I take comedians who say "white people are like this".

If you're using RoH for reviews as opposed to sarcasm-laden entertainment, the positive reviews have more content analysis and less snark.

She's put me on to Tanith Lee, Helen Oyeyemi (who herself explores women as victims in Mr. Fox), and Nalo Hopkinson to name a few.

[Seli]

I think you should take comments like that with a grain of salt, in the same way I take comedians who say "white people are like this".

If you're using RoH for reviews as opposed to sarcasm-laden entertainment, the positive reviews have more content analysis and less snark.

She's put me on to Tanith Lee, Helen Oyeyemi (who herself explores women as victims in Mr. Fox), and Nalo Hopkinsonto name a few.

The sad slightly disappointing thing is that all things concerned those are still more or less western authors. It would be nice to have someone with so much (many times good) comments on the way we in the west treat other cultures and women actually give examples of how other cultures to it better. Perhaps she does so under another name somewhere else.

Although a recent article by Charles Tan indicates that at least in the Philippines the same happens as here in western Europe, with US and in lesser extend other English language authors dominating genre, and especially genre-awareness.

edit: tone

[Nukelavee]

Thistlepong, just for you - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_fire

And, actually, yeah, you should read up on it yourself if you want to argue the point. Otherwise, well, you won't know anything about anything anybody says about the topic.

You could read up on Mark Kostabi as well. Fascinating guy, with a sharp sense of how critics in fine art work, and can be worked.

I was lucky enough to get to spend an afternoon with him, in his office, at Kostabi World, back when I was a student. Still not certain how we talked our way into that, butt he same technique, plus my resemblance to Egon Schiele, got us into a Schiele exhibit days before it opened.

And, yes, some critics are totally viable, and valuable. But they aren't the ones searching for hot artists to create work that justifies their views.

This is actually quite interesting to me as I always thought feminism is feminism, so to speak, not that there were different types of feminism that women and men could understand.

I don't think there are different forms of feminism based on gender, but there are certainly different understandings of what is is, depending on gender. Well, often, anyways.

Hunh. Turns out Bakker lives in the same city I do. Do I read one of his books on the off chance I run into him? Or do I just repeat what I read here?

[Ran]

Mamatas has referred to Bakker's posts as a "meltdown" and the "Someone was Mean to Me and I must Whine Tour". He's called Bakker a whiny crybaby who "bursts into tears" in various forms.

That's all very mild compared to the blogger at RoH, however.

Anyone, of any gender, race, or creed, who fires off such invictive with such sustained vigor certainly comes off as rabid in some fashion. It feels like an amazing stretch for people to read "rabid animal" as some sort of ethnic or racial slur, a stretch that makes me wonder at just how shaky their foundations are. It's referring to a behavior, a cruelty in communication that simply never seemed to let up from my brief glance at the .... I can't even call it a discussion. It was very ugly.

And I say this as a person on the forum who argued that Bakker's work appeared to be the work of a misogynist, so it's not like I'm carrying water for him. I just thought ACM was extraordinarily brutal in the face of someone who, however poorly socialized, obstinate, arrogant, and wrong he might possibly be, was at least trying to be civil only to receive more abuse amidst the substantive commentary. No matter how obstinate and stupid he may have been, to bash him, and then bash him some more, and then bash him yet again, seems uncalled for. If Nick Mamatas gnawed on a writer like a dog with a bone, never stopping, I'd think he was being pretty rabid as well.

[Kalbear]

Which is a bit odd, ran, since ROH had dropped the whole thing with Bakker after that one post; it was bakker's five posts after it + watts coming to the rescue that she finally responded in kind, and only to watts.

Of the two, Bakker is clearly the one who can't let go of that bone.

Ymmv on the offense rabid animal can cause, but you might, maybe, consider that you're wrong about it given folks like valente have chimed in on its rudeness.

[Linda]

Rabid animal is mild for that pathetic waste of air. She's a filthy excuse for a human being and there really isn't language strong enough to describe her. So, all in all I'd say people are being very restrained. She deserves to get every bit as much as she gives and then some.