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May 30th, 2008
 | 10:41 pm
Now for something completely different!
Obviously we all remember that dress wot I started ages ago ( linky for those new to my LJ or forgetful, or not paying attention at the time or etc. etc. Progress has been made!
( now we have some more pictures )
( bonus photos of wooly things )
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May 29th, 2008
| 11:01 am
Naamah makes a nice post here about misogyny (warning, it's kinda sweary maybe NWS and your W). Anyway I wanted to pick up on a small part of it.
here's a widespread attitude that stuff on the individual, personal level doesn't count as misogyny -- one guy being an asshole to one woman does not count as misogyny. It absolutely does count. We are talking about a pattern, and a pattern is made up of individual incidents.
( my thoughts became long )
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May 15th, 2008
| 04:47 pm - A thing I hate
I really hate it when people say "you should X more, $good-thing when you X" where X is an INVOLUNTARY REACTION to something (and $good-thing is like, oh, "look pretty" or something, something for their benefit anyway).
If X is a thing I *choose* (like "wear that dress" or "come to my party") and I like you at least enough to put out the effort of choosing X so you can enjoy $good-thing then that's fine, and the phrase is just a request - could be politer (well, depends on what $good-thing is; I think it's politer to ask me to do things for you by saying what benefit *you* will get, not imagining that I will benefit from doing something *you* want; but only a little bit politer) but could be ruder. Maybe I don't like you that much (maybe 'that much' would have to be a great deal, depends on X), but it's still a polite request; even if I'm going to say "no".
But when X is something like "smile" then I just think this is so completely obnoxious. I mean, if *you* want to see me smile (maybe you don't, in which case, dur, you wouldn't be bugging me about it) then *you* should do things that make me happy because when I am happy I smile. Sure, I've got no reason to suppose that you should want to make me happy, and I'm fine with bumbling along and not smiling. And if you think "make naath happy" is over-much effort for "see naath smile" then, well, that's up to you (and no way to I expect all-people to spend lots of effort to make me happy); but you shouldn't tell me to go around faking being happy just so you don't have to cope with the idea that maybe I'm not smiley-happy right now.
(We can substitute many things for "smile" actually, although "smile" is the only thing that comes to mind that is commonly used *in public* in this way and which could easily be done immediately, most of the others are rude or more life-style comments than right-now ones like eg "loose weight").
This post brought to you by reading something libellum wrote about sexism.
And BTW it is *especially* irritating when *total strangers* say shit like this. "Smile, maybe it'll never happen" - well *maybe* it *just did*, take your oversized nosed out of my business.
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May 12th, 2008
| 06:01 pm - Linky linky.
At least one person has responded to my comments on the lines of "grrrr men don't get it" with bewilderedness and "but no-one told me it". OK, so, I suck big time at writing coherent prose, and I *really* suck at in-person debating if the subject makes me want to sit in the corner and cry (I either shout, unhelpful, or refuse to say anything, even more unhelpful - I don't like crying in public) (and btw I often *do* go and sit in a private corner and cry - and it's not fair that people expect that just because I try very hard to not do so in public that I don't care, that I won't take your intensely personal comments personally and that I won't spend hours crying, angry at you for being insensitive and at myself for failing to get you to understand).
Anyway. So there are a bunch of things that I read, pretty much daily (give or take going on vacation) where people other than me, with better gifts for prose, talk about the Things I Think People Should Get. Sometimes they are just screaming about how unfair it is; and sometimes they offer rational, informed commentary with clear explanations for the uninitiated. Some of these people write on things that I 'get', some of them write on subjects (like racism) that I personally have no experience of.
I'm very grateful to people who put my howls of frustration into words; and I'm very grateful to people who take the time to explain the mechanisms of oppressions that I don't 'get' so that I can start to learn about them.
( list )
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May 7th, 2008
 | 10:38 am
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) foreverdirt linked to this excellent talk about sexism in science, the talk is an hour long and there are introductions before and questions after so it is a bit long, but I think worth it.
One of the excellent points made, and one that I have failed to express when I wanted to, so I'll do it here instead - is saying things like "women are innately worse at science" is *actively harmful* to the progress of women in science, and that if you are thinking of saying such a thing in public then you really ought to be very sure that you are right; that just saying such things with the force of your reputation and your conviction that you are right will cause other people (in this case women) to internalise the message (and as a result be worse at science). It turns out that this has actually *been tested*; if you give girls a maths test then they *do worse on it* if you remind them that girls aren't good at maths before they sit it.
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April 21st, 2008
| 01:04 pm - Book Review (ish) [public]
One of my favourite books Of All Time is MZB's "The Saga of the Renunciates" which is actually three novels in one volume (and which I initially read in three volumes but that is neither here nor there).
It's on my "favourite books" list because it's the first book I remember read which makes what I think is a very important point. There are other books that make similar points, many are likely better written, less fanciful, more academic, and etc. etc. I have even read some of them. However this was the *first* I read (I was about 11 or 12) and it made an impression.
The novels have plot of course, but I'm not going to discuss the plot details; but you probably need some background to understand; so, these novels are set on "Darkover", which is an alien planet, they are on the boundary of SF and Fantasy (but probably more Fantasy because they are about People not Science, or something) some "Terrans" have shown up in their spaceships but the native Darkovans (who are human, as it happens) are living in your bog standard quasi-mediaeval fantasy world (which has some magic, which isn't very relevant). What most of the Darkover novels are about (as says MZB in the introduction to at least one of them) is the contrast between Darkovern society and Terran society; the conflicts that the contrasts cause and so on.
The "Renunciates" of the title of this trilogy are a society of women who have Renounced the traditional protections afforded to Darkovan women (such as being cared for by husband/father/brother and so on) in exchange for the freedom to run their own lives (Darkovan women get pretty much the same deal Mediaeval European women got, except for the part with the magic) some of these women Kick Butt professionally but not all of them, although they are all trained in Kicking Butt because on Darkover if you can't Kick Butt and don't have anyone to Kick Butt for you then you end up not being in control of your own life.
So what these books are about is the contrast between the way women live on Darkover and the way women live in the Terran Empire (which is a whole lot like 20th century Earth in terms of values and so on; except with spaceships and blaster guns). On the surface the most obvious thing to conclude is that Darkoven women have The Short End of the the Proverbial Stick - because, dur, Mediaeval society; but the thing that MZB does, that really affected me the first time I read this, and still does *every* time I read it - is to take the pov of a Darkovan woman and look through her eyes at why Terran women do *not* have the Long End, at the subtle ways that Terran women have it just as bad.
One of the interesting points (to me) is that in Darkovan society there is no pretence about equality for women - and women have the clear choice between doing what they are told and having the respect of society or of leaving that behind to get freedom for themselves. Whereas in the Terran society women supposedly have equality so they have much less ability to say "screw you guys, I'm outta here" because society would be more confused about why they felt that it was sexist.
Anyway, I think that's an important point about the Real World that I have to live in - that in spite of all our laws about equality and so forth that we *don't* have real equality, that a lot of people are still very sexist, and not always in obvious ways. And that sexism is (to me) much more harmful when it is subtle than when it is obvious - because obvious sexism is easier to shout back at whereas if you shout at someone for being subtly sexist then they are much more likely to claim that they have no idea what you are on about and so forth. And that inability to find an obvious entry point to start arguing back against that more subtle sort of sexism is something that leaves me feeling very trapped - that either I can just put up with all the shit that gets thrown at me; or I can try to fight back, fail miserably and be shouted at for daring to complain about "nothing".
I don't know whether I'm the only person who thinks these things about these books, maybe I am, certainly I'm not claiming to have read MZB's mind. Or maybe I'm just stating the Extremely Obvious. I don't know.
I also think that it is important that these novels have Women Who Kick Butt in them - something sadly lacking in most fantasy novels, especially in those that strive to be more realistic than a D&D campaign. It's an issue I think she handles very well - that of teaching women who are conditioned to rely on men for protection to learn to protect themselves. Some of the characters take the mercenary work like ducks to water, some don't - to me, much more realistic than a bunch of Warrior Women all of whom really like kicking arse. Again these were pretty much the first fantasy books I read where the women didn't just sit around waiting to be rescued but did some of their own fighting - and they are much more realistic than (also cool) things like Xena. (and yes, I have since read much other really cool, shiny fantasy with excellent women - but they still right the bad sort :( )
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March 13th, 2008
| 11:10 pm
So, do we remember the pirate gown of extreme coolness that I was all OMG, I WANT ONE OF THOSE over? (No? shocking have a link)well, the lovely harmanhay is giving the pattern away to subscribers to her magazine (OK, so if you sign up I get referral cookies if you tell them I sent you) for which this post isn't really an *advert* but it is a recommendation (I don't really care about the referral cookies, but maybe you don't believe me) because it's fantastic, but only if you like sewing things...
Anyway, so it a dress of great shiny, and I wanted one.
So I'm making one.
So here are some photos (they are click-through to LJ-gallery for bigger versions) so far ( big photos, have a cut )
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July 6th, 2007
| 04:20 pm
I made this thing work! lalalala working thing! yay.
Bored now... MEME TIME.
2 memes
Would you...
1. give me your number?
2. let me hug you anytime I wanted to?
3. let me kiss you?
4. watch a movie with me...even a really sappy one?
5. let me take you out to dinner?
6. drive me somewhere/anywhere?
7. take a shower with me?
8. have a fling with me?
9. listen to me if I called you crying even if you were out with all of your friends?
10. buy me a drink if i didnt have money?
11. take me home for the night?
12. let me sleep in your bed?
13. sing karaoke w/ me?
14. sit in the doctors office with me because I didn't want to go alone?
15. re-post this for me to answer your questions?
16. come pick me up at 3am because my car ran out of petrol in the middle of nowhere?
17. Do you think im cute or hot?
18. Do you like my style?
19. Do you think I'm funny?
20. cry if I died?
21. dance with me?
22. sing happy birthday to me?
23. take advantage of me if I was drunk?
24. strip for me?
And
Ask me anything (give me something to do!). I'll respond in a later (flocked) post, er, probably on Monday because it's the weekend and I have Packing To Do.
Comments screened (but likely to not stay that way unless you request that they do), anonymous comments allowed, this post uncharacteristically public (so, er, make sure you don't mind comments being public - or ask me to keep them screened).
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