kaberett | Entries tagged with f

It is an article entitled Rey is not a role model for little girls. By a man. (That turns out to contain oblivious cissexism too, hurrah.)

The first sentence is I hate to break it to you, but Rey is not a role model for little girls.

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Two irritations, first of all: ( Read more... )

Better things:

Vienna Teng. Still on a kick. Lots of Antebellum (title) and Recessional (I want to search for her in the offhand remarks; who are you, a stranger in the shell of a lover? dark curtains drawn by the passage of time...) at the moment. (Also quietly but consistently, Blue Caravan: my true love is a man that I haven't seen in years/he said go where you have to, for I belong to you/until my dying day; so like a fool blue caravan/I believed him and I walked away...)
I got my act together to phone Student Finance England back. I mostly didn't explode in a shower of anxiety, though I did end up slightly snappishly saying "if you're going to use my name all the time, call me Alex", but I think that given that she was, well, using it every other sentence; and I had introduced myself as Alex at the beginning of the call... I did also end up interrupting some, but that was because she was reading off a hideously unclear script that wasn't really relevant. Apparently they really do want me to send them duplicate copies of the letters detailing my endometriosis that they already have, because sending them the exact same copies will mean that I've still got the incurable condition I had at undergrad that I might otherwise have got better from...? Anyway, this is turning into a rant, but the point is, I Did The Thing.
I continue to enjoy the Toby Daye books.
Guiltknitting is on the home stretch - last block of colour, final bit of beading, then finishing.
I have in the oven more of the puttanesca pasta bake, which is brilliant because it means that I am sorted for meals for the rest of the mass spec run.
Supervisor and lab manager concurred it wasn't my fault that the mass spec was playing up (and with any luck it'll behave itself over night so I can start getting data tomorrow).
I have successfully bought the tupperware my supervisor instructed me to, and additionally replenished our stocks of Sainsbury's Basics Italian Hard Cheese and Osem parev chicken-style stock powder.
I have a microwaveable waterproof soup pot thing that has a steam release vent. Realisation of the morning: I can prep hot chocolate in it and microwave it once I'm at work. WINNING HERE.
I tricked myself into rendering the kitchen semi-habitable while dinner was cooking, hurrah, including some long-overdue breadpet-management. (On the downside my hands are still recovering from some insect bites - even with antihistamines in my system I react quite impressively - and are consequently Not Best Pleased with me for the washing-up. No, I can't wear gloves, they're almost all latex and I refuse to use disposables.)
... yeah, actually, I'm really pleased with myself about work stuff - productive conversation with my supervisor in which I requested a meeting to discuss two different areas of the literature in addition to talking about conference wossnames and my 21-month assessment. Maybe if I'm feeling really enthusiastic I'll have an outline of the talk to bring with to said meeting. It is really nice feeling semi-competent.

(oh, oh let me be your Augustine)

Content note for discussion of rape.

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In a whole bunch of senses

jedusaur and I ~grew up together~ - we met in

metaquotes back in the day, have met up in person a couple of times now, and did a lot of thinking about sexuality/gender/theology/fandom/ethics/etc in at least peripherally related ways; I know Julia's influenced my thinking (even if we haven't always agreed) & I'd like to think the reverse holds. ;)

-- which is relevant partly because I'm speculating about why she asked this particular question (when I could, you know, just have asked her, but hey!) and partly because I think it's useful context for how & why I'm framing my response.

Two key points, I think: (1) yes, becoming a more aware feminist has changed some of my attitudes to what I find funny and; and (2) no, becoming a more aware feminist hasn't meant I no longer have a sense of humour.

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"Stemettes" is an absolutely terrible term to use for female undergraduates in STEM fields. No. Wow. Inarticulate fury.

This was great, but again my laptop ran out of battery power partway through. The thing that really got to me about LonCon in contrast with OSBridge (... aside from the bit where OSBridge was actually better at inclusivity, by and large) was that unlike OSBridge LonCon3 didn't have extension cables everywhere so people could charge during talks.

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Just in my inbox. Emphasis mine: I am feeling extremely cynical about what it takes to get a dude in a position of power to make that kind of a statement...

Dear colleagues
I'm calling for information from the broad community about bad rock coring damage.

Many important sites are being devastated by this practice and it's bringing our science into disrepute. So I'm raising this as chair of the Geological Society of London's Geoconservation Committee - hopefully to guide approaches to reduce the problem. I know this is not just a UK problem .... There is however a spate of this going on in the NW Highlands at the moment. I also know there's been discussion on this list about bad rock sampling practice. So let's try to stamp this out together....

I'm sure many of you will be dismayed to see the attachment here of rock-coring damage to this famous outcrop of the sub-Torridonian unconformity adjacent to Loch Assynt, in NW Scotland. This location is visited by many hundreds students every year and is a key location in the NW Highlands Geopark. The local officers are dismayed about this. The outcrop is on land owned by the John Muir trust - a major conservation organisation (http://www.jmt.org/vision.asp).
Doing collecting like this is equivalent to stealing birds eggs or butterflies. Can you imagine archeologists being allowed to drill into the megaliths of Stonehenge etc? It's a question of ethics and must stop. Geologists in general risk being viewed as having no regard for their environment. So our various conservation and public awareness campaigns and initiatives may become less well-regarded or ignored.

Other sites in NW Scotland that have been attacked in this way include designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest that are protected by law - so such coring is a criminal act. Pleading ignorance is no defence! They include a lot of the classic outcrops of Durness limestone around Durness itself and eastern Eriboll and the Scourie dykes at Scourie More. Not to mention virtually every one of the dykes forming part of the Tertiary swarm at Elgol on Skye.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not against rock coring itself - but it can be done better - such by excavating parts of outcrops then recovering them. Even then the holes should be refilled - and ideally finished off with the outcrop face off-cut of the core all bonded with a resilient, weather-proof cement - to leave the least visible trace of the activity. Going after the best, most visited and previously photogenic sites is reprehensible. There are plenty of good-practice guides around that could be consulted... and applied (e.g. www.geologistsassociation.org.uk/downloads/GARockCoringGuide.pdf).

So - what to do? Too often we discuss and report these as individual incidents. It's time to gather information more widely. Of course it's not just members of the tectonics community who are responsible - and so please pass on this request for information to colleagues.
And send me images (really not at not too large a file size: to [e-mail address]) - with some location specifics. If you can tie these examples of damage to specific publications that have arisen from them - then you might like to send me the link to the paper too. Although I'm specifically interested in auditing the extent of the problem through the UK - - please also share examples from elsewhere in the world.
Once we know what's going on, then we can work out better strategies to educate those who do this kind of thing - and promote better practice.

Many thanks

Rob

On using blanket statements about groups with more systemic privilege.

[Thing the zeroth: if you'd like to reply to this post, please don't feel you have to respond to both points!]

Thing the first: I am currently after recs for metal with clever, feminism-compatible lyrics and competent guitar lines.

Thing the second: this is because the new boy is a metalhead and a guitarist, and as we know I am very, very lyrics-driven.

Every time I've been anywhere in public with That One Gentleman, I'm pretty certain we've been read as a cishet couple. (Well, except when we were also out with That One Lady, at which point I still get read as a cis woman but people's heads explode a little more.)

As a result, I am currently bristling pre-emptively about the charge that I'm only pretending to be interested because my boyfriend is, which is typically levelled at women, and is clearly bullshit. So: it's misogynist in terms of dismissing women's legit interests as subsumed to A Big Strong Manly Male, and of constructing women as conniving and only out for money; and it's shitty on a human level, because it negates the power of introducing stuff you love to people you love (and reciprocally, taking an interest in stuff that people you love love).

And it is also ableist as all get-out. Because, actually, listening to unfamiliar music takes a lot of my brain and energy, more so when it's in an unfamiliar genre I don't understand the conventions of. (To be clear: when I listen to unfamiliar music - even new music by an artist I know I like - I begin by disliking it. How intense that dislike is lets me know whether it's worth persevering.) Having someone think about what I already like, and make deliberate and careful choices about where to get me started to minimise the shock, is a really big deal - it massively reduces the barrier to getting into a new thing. But it doesn't remove it, so of course I am going to prioritise energy allocation on those things that have the most potential to make people I love happy.

There. That's a bit of a rant. Over to you.

Two words: compulsory heterosexuality.

As so often with fannish wossnames, I have

randomling to thank for pushing me to this realisation/articulation. Spoilers for S1 follow.

( Spoilers for S1. )

I've been fortunate enough to hear from gay kids all across the country. A lot of them don't have supportive families, but some do. I cherish the good stories, but there's often a moment in those good stories that makes my heart hurt: when they tell me how happy they are that their parents "still" love them -- because all those kids knew that not loving them was an option.

Amelia at HuffPo (yes, I know).

This says something that hurts my heart, too: both because it is so achingly true - of myself, of so many other kids - but also because it erases me down to "gay".

"Gay" isn't good shorthand for either GSM or LGBT+, and I do so wish people wouldn't do it.

rmc28 has, again, produced an excellent links round-up on how not to harass people.

One of the arguments that regularly rolls around, though I have my hopes that it won't in this particular instance, is BUT WHAT ABOUT AUTISM.

Hello: my name is Alex, I was diagnosed with autism last month at the age of 22-and-change, and I'll be your guide today.

What this means in practice is that I am an Adult Autism Diagnosis [NHS; The National Autistic Society]: I wasn't spotted during childhood, so didn't get any support at all when it comes to learning how to socialise "normally". (There's no particular reason it shouldn't have been picked up - except, you know, that I do extremely well in tests, was assigned female at birth, and am upper-middle-class, which clearly accounted for my social difficulties. Though given the choice, I'd probably rather anyone had noticed the abuse going on at home than the ASC.)

Here's some more context: one of my areas of expertise, about which I will talk enthusiastically and at great length, is sexual health, safer sex, and sex in general.

AND YET SOMEHOW: I have managed not to sexually harass people. On the other hand, I have been regularly harassed and assaulted throughout my life, including one occasion on which a Guest of Honour was a little more handsy than I was entirely comfortable with, without actually making me scared or upset forever.

In that respect? I'm lucky.

But I'm going to repeat that: without any teaching, without any support, I manage to avoid harassing people. My social skills aren't fantastic, but I've taught myself (and been taught by the magic of the Internet) how to minimise any discomfort I might cause others. Here are some of them; I'm not perfect at doing all of them all the time, but I make a significant effort to build all of them into daily life:

I regularly check in verbally about how much I'm talking, and if it's "too much".
I make clear to people when striking up group conversations that I struggle with maintaining an appropriate volume, and I am always, always okay with being asked to speak more quietly.
Before raising potentially Difficult subjects, I explicitly ask "is it okay to talk about [topic x]?" If I don't get enthusiastic consent from everyone in the conversation, I drop it.
I always explicitly check before offering physical contact: "Do you do hugs? In that case, would you like one?"

In conclusion, because it seems to need repeating a lot: autism spectrum conditions are not a reason for harassment, they are not an excuse for harassment, and Internet-diagnosing unfamiliar-to-you highly socially competent predators makes life harder for everyone except predators.

Don't do it. Just don't.

A noldo and kaberett production.

I watched Avatar: the Last Airbender for the first time in August 2011;

noldo and

mustela_nivalis were very encouraging, and very patient about my flailing.

At the beginning of season 2, I started writing fic for the first time in about eight years.

I got to the end and they pointed me at the Avatar: the Legend of Korra trailer, and I collapsed into a small puddle of hyperventilating squee.

So when The Promise was announced, I promptly put all of it on pre-order. Like, oh, pretty much every other fan with the finances to do so, I suspect.

And, d'you know, I was heartbroken. Sure, characters had the same names... but where's the Katara who, two minutes into the first episode of the first season of this mainstream USois kids' TV show, called a dude out for sexism and was taken seriously? Where's Toph interacting with Katara? Why is Mai relegated to ~the girlfriend~? Why is Sokka so bloody cissexist?

And that, boys and girls and everyone else, is when I got upset enough to go through the books and do a line-by-line count of who says what to whom.

By the power of

noldo, I bring you the distressing results in the form of brightly-coloured graphics. So far I've only done counts for Books 1 & 2; Book 3 will follow on in the not-too-distant future. For these purposes, one "line" is approximately one speech bubble.

( Part 1 )

( Part 2 )

Summary

y so faily ;______________________________;

This show had such a great pattern of being incredibly feminist, and giving us actual complex developed - & developing! - female characters, who weren't defined solely by their interactions and relationships with the men of the series. Unfortunately - all my other issues with characterisation aside - as underlined by the statistics, that really, really doesn't carry across to the books.

Thoughts very welcome!

It's very difficult, though, given how thoroughly sexist and racist and hereosexist (and anything else you care to think of) the undergraduate body is.

Exhibit A: Caltech's shocking lack of diversity: a microcosm for the United States?
Exhibit B: Diversity should mean more than just race, a shockingly under-researched, misrepresentative and inflammatory article by a Caltech undergraduate, published in the Caltech student press.

I've left a comment on the latter, which is currently in moderation. I reproduce it below.

( This is the comment I left on the article. )

Ugh. Things I am kicking myself for not having been aware of, and passing on for those of you as are also likely to care. :-(

1. NPR's top 100 SF/Fantasy books. Bold if you've read, italicise ones you fully intend to read, underline if it's a book/series you've read part but not all of.

[Bold & italics indicates things I've read since first doing this meme.]

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Of the authors mentioned in that meme, fourteen (23%) are women and sixty (77%) are men (none, to my knowledge, are non-binary). Of the women, one (7%) gets multiple mentions; 13 (21%) of men are mentioned more than once. Four (29%) of women get mentioned for series; twenty-one (35%) of men get mentioned for series. Also, everyone on that list is white, as far as I can tell. (Spreadsheet available on request.)

2. My books

By way of comparison, I tracked the books I read this year. I read somewhere in the region of 90-100 books, by 24 authors. 9 (38%) of the authors are male. One (4%) of the authors is trans.[1] One (4%) of the authors is non-white. Most of the books were series written by women.

My goal for the year was to actually read some books written by women, and I'm really glad of that: I read a bunch of stuff I really enjoyed but might not have got around to if I hadn't been ~being political~. This year: attempt to read (a) ANYTHING AT ALL IN GERMAN, and (b) books by people who aren't white.

[1] This would have been 2/25 - 8% - but circumstances intervened and I couldn't face it

Sh! [NSFW], the "UK’s first ever sex shop for women, trading since 1992", has recently made its policy on trans* customers explicit [content warning: cissexist language, mention of rape]. There's some good stuff in there, but there's also a lot that's really, really bad.

I composed & left a comment, pointing out aspects I considered problematic. Turns out they have comment moderation on, so I reproduce it below.

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Crossposts: http://kaberett.livejournal.com/478837.html

Content warning: street harrassment.

If you search the web, you'll find it's full of tales illustrating exactly why it is a bad idea to shout "give us a smile, darling" at (someone you perceive to be) a woman walking past.

It is an especially bad plan if the ambient temperature is 1°C and you are blocking the pavement smoking...

... and the person you instruct to smile is me. Because what you will get is a smile, all right, but it will be tight and angry and accompanied by the explanation that I have pneumonia and an allergy to cigarette smoke.

Just sayin'.

Crossposts: http://kaberett.livejournal.com/477227.html

If ever anyone needs convincing that real-name policies don't work to enforce civil behaviour, I'd hope that the comments on this post would make the point (protip: never read the comments). Honourable mention for this one goes to Richard Steven Hack, who is not only posting under the name he uses on Twitter, Myspace and Facebook, but whose name takes you to his professional website.

Two prizes to give out today.

One goes to Google, for their campaign to get users to nag their friends to switch to gmail: never mind the fact that if people haven't already switched to gmail they've probably got good reasons for it. I'm finding this particularly screen-crawly because of the timing of the campaign relative to the G+ launch. I think I liked Google rather better before all of the completely explicit attempts to get people to consolidate their entire online life to a single provider.

The other goes to Wikipedia, specifically for the page on V for Vendetta the book, and in particular the section on characters. Four major characters are listed, of which three are male. All get at least a decent paragraph. The sole female major character... gets two lines. Two lines. This is shorter than most of the descriptions of minor characters! Everything she does is described in direct reference to V!

A bonus mention goes to Anonymous for Operation Avenge Assange. Cheers dudes, rape apologia is exactly what we need.

(By the way, if you're thinking of telling me I should just edit the wikipedia article, then -- don't. (1) The last time I made a "major change" to wikipedia, this happened; (2) I have read the novel once and subsequently returned it to the library, and feel that the people who list every damn chapter heading are probably in a better position to write an accurate summary of Evey's character than I am.)

who only by moving can balance

only by balancing move

[SW:TFA] okay no I actually can't with this

{how much did we lose to live this way}

A note on discussions of rape

#14 Feminism & humour

no. go away.

LonCon panel partial transcript: We Have Always Fought

"rock-core damage - call for information"

... well, that's astonishingly accurate

Your morning dose of righteous anger

[Elementary] ... and a reason that I don't love this show

I'm not gay. Get over it.

On autism spectrum conditions & anti-harassment

[meta: AtLA] Gender in The Promise

Summary

I don't love Caltech, but I wish I could.

So much fail

Number-crunching: books

(no subject)

And today's winner is...

(no subject)

Well done, Internet, congratulations on the creepy

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