When will we get off this merry-go-round?

One hopes that with each successive year we move to new and more interesting places but, alas, we are still having the same conversations our foremothers had 100 years ago. Will today's vigorous conversations mean that in another 100 years this will finally be history?

Why lie when the truth would do?

I was really excited to see The Eagle Huntress doco, and with good reason. As it turns out, Aisholpan and her family are immensely charming and lovely to spend time with. Their support for each other is inspiring and the young Aisholpan's hard work and dedication would encourage anyone to follow their dreams. I was even more interested in the fact that she was, as purported by the synopsis, the first woman to participate in the eagle hunting tradition of her family and nation.

Imagine my surprise when it turns out that wasn't true. And, moreover, that the truth is just as good if not better than the fiction the doco makers felt they needed to cultivate.

The Eagle Huntress Ancient Traditions and New Generations by Adrienne Mayor is well worth the read. Aisholpan is following in the traditions of the men and women who came before her and the truth inspires on its own merits.

I am wholly mystified by these film makers. Why lie when the truth would do?

Heheh

My favorite game of gender swap in scientists' bios form: click here.

h/t Beth

Socialization is a powerful thing

And we would do well to remember that. It's amazing to me how often people refuse to accept that most behaviors are learned.

Great article for writers

Make conscious choices rather than default choices.

Click here for full article

Must Read!

16. For the first time in his life, he found himself imagining a future together with someone. He was embarrassed to tell her this but he had never really been in love with the women he had dated. “Well who would play me in this rom-com of your life?” she teasingly inquired. “You have such beautiful olive skin,” he crooned, “so you can be a person of color or racially ambiguous in the book but definitely a white woman in the movie.”

Don't miss the whole article here!

Interesting Read

Some good points in this article.

I expect better!

I recently read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat (pub. 1984) and was pretty astonished at the language used by a scientist and non-fiction writer regarding individuals with severe mental impairments. (Lucky for me, a friend read it at just about the same time so we were able to vent in a flurry of email exchanges.) Initially, I was only annoyed at the lack of scientific detail. I chalked that up to it being pubbed in the 80s, the scientific literacy of laypersons has increased enormously since then so I can't exactly blame an author/publisher for being aware of the contemporary landscape. But that offensive (and inaccurate!) language was just inexcusable. So, ok, pass on that author and moving on...

And, bam! It happens again!

I just finished Isabella (pub. 2005) and the author was at pains to explain some of the differences between current and 14th Century English (and Welsh, Scottish, French:) cultural norms. She, like many historians, believes that Edward II was gay or bisexual. There's some explanation about how that wasn't an accepted lifestyle at the time (if only it was 100% accepted now! dare to dream!) and its relevance to the events of the book. She later says that he was capable of (or not revolted by?? can't find exact sentence) "normal sex" since he had not only 4 children with his wife but at least 1 extramarital child. Um, "normal" sex? Looks like maybe you just gave yourself away on that one.

In another instance she describes Isabella as "highly sexed." Hunhhh????? Isabella is thought to have been a woman interested in sex (omg, alert the presses) and so she's "highly" sexed? WTF???? By the author's interpretation, Edward II had two long-term extramarital lovers, a wife with whom he had children (and so, presumably, sex), and numerous (brief) liaisons with lovers before he was married and some after. Where is his description as "highly sexed?" Looks like maybe you just gave yourself away on that one.

And there's this: "Reginald, a widower, was dark of colouring and character." Some of the main players had their physical descriptions relayed but not over many and certainly not such a minor dude as this one (he was featured in ~4 paragraphs) but, dang, it's fun to lump "dark" coloring in with character because it just sounds great and, hell, there isn't a significant portion of the population that still suffers from stereotypes of "dark" being bad! Looks like maybe you just gave yourself away on that one.


So, yeah, it appears that 21st Century historians are as likely as 14th Century historians to say that gay/bisexual individuals have "abnormal" sex, women who like sex are unusual*** and to be described differently than other women (and men, natch, who are clearly always up for it), and "dark" characters are bad and match the "dark" color nicely. Ugh! Ugh, ugh, ugh!!!! There goes another author.

The shame about all this is (I mean, other than the obvious), these academics/scientists write on some really interesting topics. I want to know these things. I want to learn these things. However, I am past the point of being willing to sift through offensive garbage to get to the good stuff. It's unacceptable anytime but certainly in works of academic rigor.


Come on, people, I expect better!

***ETA: or more likely in the 21st Century??? Just read a very edifying passage in The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England (thanks for that, Beth!) and it seems the flack that Isabella was catching for her behavior was more because she was a queen rather than because she was a woman. (Though they weren't exactly shy with the "woman is the root of all evil" stuff, be she a queen or no.)

A Good Point

ETA2: Another good point.

ETA: A more in depth look at the concept mentioned in the video below.

Check out this video, and a browse around the other posts is certainly worth your time.

hat tip: GL

Linky Link

Too good not to share!



hat tip: Jed

"It's not a literary question."

A Good Read

This is my life, after all. Who could possibly know more about it than me?

According to the internet, the answer to this question is, “anyone with an internet connection and the means to communicate their thoughts to me.”

I cannot tell you how many times in the last week alone I’ve been interrupted whilst talking about my own lived experiences by white people who “just want to share their opinions”. Everyone, it seems, has opinions to share about my life and whether or not I’ve truly experienced it the way I say I have.

Read the full article here.

Quotable

"You're just doing this to get laid." Oh, son. You know what I do to get laid? I treat women as humans while being super smart and attractive. This is a trick that works really well, so I've kept doing it solely for my wife's benefit.

Seen here. 
(And I highly recommend the post linked in the first paragraph.)

Women Like Each Other

Many people (and esp. the folks in my former writers' group) have heard my endless harping on the lack of female relationships being depicted, well, any damn where and there's a reason for it! Women like each other and you'd hardly know it from the majority of popular media images.

Women are loyal friends and we regularly work and rely on one another, yet it’s a rare treat to see women publicly portrayed as working together for the common good and embraced for doing so – in movies or in news.

That quote is from this very good article that you should definitely read.

Interesting Read

In support of those who speak up.


hat tip: Dr M

Inspiring

Funny, insightful, inspiring! Check out this video.

ETA: And this important commentary.

Great article

Give this one a read!

Still Not Interested

Back before Breaking Bad was Breaking Bad (before even the pilot aired, actually) I had some interest in seeing the show. I admire Cranston as an actor and Gilligan as a writer and I thought the combination would be good. But then I read the plot of the show and knew I'd never see it. Now it's over and despite its enormous critical success, and never ending word-of-mouth recommendations, I have still not seen the show.

My list of reasons is short but vehemently felt (not least of which is being a member of a family that has felt the very real and serious effects of meth addiction). I was thrilled to come by this article by Malcolm Harris that not only hits on all my reasons but adds a few more, lays out an excellent and educational pop culture critique*, and does it much more eloquently than I ever could.

*Including 100% nailing why I had no interest in Savages as a book or film.


I've included a few quotes below that particularly struck me while reading but do click on over and read the entire article, whether or not you like/watch Breaking Bad it's an article worth reading. 

The point of critically examining cultural objects like Breaking Bad isn’t to place them in categories good or bad, to predict the ending, or even to decode what’s “really” happening; the point is to pay attention to our attention, to look at how it’s being held, on what, and how someone’s making money on it. If pop criticism is to be good for anything, it’s that.

The idea that people will always pay more for purer or small-batch products makes a lot of sense to demographics used to paying more for quality gimmicks — conveniently, the same demos advertisers pay a premium for. But it doesn’t make sense for the consumers Breaking Bad so sparingly depicts. When we do see White’s ultimate customers, they’re zombies: all scabs and eroded teeth. We’re not talking about impulse buyers or comparison shoppers here; it’s a textbook case of what freshman economics students call inelastic demand. As Stringer Bell told D’Angelo Barksdale in another show about drugs, in direct contrast to what Walter claims, “When it’s good, they buy. When it’s bad, they buy twice as much. The worse we do, the more money we make.”

A Breaking Bad in which the street dealers were diluting the product would have had Walter and his partner Jesse Pinkman competing with every local operation, struggling to set up a larger distribution network without costly middlemen and, well, interacting with meth users a lot. But The Wire on Ice isn’t sexy enough to sell a Dodge, and a teacher slanging to his fucked-up former students would turn stomachs, not open wallets. Suffice to say it would be a darker show.

In Savages, another recent story of Mighty Whitey getting people stoned, Berkeley-educated botanist Chon (maybe the only name whiter than “White”) and his war-vet buddy Ben combine exported Afghan seeds and a public-Ivy STEM degree to create a strand of superweed. A narrator asserts Afghanistan is the source of the best weed on earth with the same revelatory reverence that Anthony Bourdain might declare Iberia the source of the best pork. It’s not enough that these two 20-somethings grow and sell weed; they have to do it better than anyone else by a huge margin.

White-washing the illegal drug market involves depicting it like markets wealthy viewers are more comfortable and familiar with, namely those of the farmers market or the local pharmacy. Walter White combines the ostensible moral complexity television audiences demand in a post-Soprano protagonist with a cleanliness that allows him to market expensive cars.

Don't Be a Troll

Be a Human.

Cover Posing Series Link

I remember the original post but I had no idea it had spawned what can only be referred to as a series. I love these images and highly encourage others to check out this insightful look at book covers.

I doubly enjoy the cover posing because a game that Dr M and I play is gender switching in pop culture. It's remarkable just how much easier it is to get past our engrained sexism and see the ridiculousness of it all when you start putting men into the positions (literally) women are often stuck in.