Feminism

You know who worried about women wearing makeup?

Feminism, wingnuts
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some douchecopter telling women not to wear makeup

Amanda Marcotte talks about the latest trend of sincere, pouty men telling women not to wear so much makeup:

Apparently, this is just the most famous of a trend of young men writing signs extolling the joys of “natural” beauty and taking photos of themselves with these signs, complete with wounded expressions conveying the pain they feel because the women of the world get dressed in the morning without thinking first of the preferences of these guys’ specific cocks. It’s just the latest manifestation of a multi-decade long trend of men, who are invariably self-satisfied to an alarming degree, holding forth on why they hate make-up and think women should choose a “natural” beauty path instead. This sort of thing tends to be polarizing amongst women. The weak-minded amongst us buy it hook, liner, and sinker, swooning over these guys for their supposedly feminist-ish ways. The rest of us fly into a sputtering rage, because we know that this is just some more bullshit oppression dressed up as liberation.

You know who elses worried about women wearing too much makeup and abusing their natural beauty? The nazis every authoritarian regime in the world ever. No matter what the reasons for the objections where (makeup is offensive to god, Jewish decadence, a bourgeouis indulgence, unnatural, immodest, undsoweiter), it’s always about controlling women, just as much as the makeup and makeover industries are. If you’re worried about women being “forced” to wear high heels, it’s no improvement to make flat shoes mandatory.

Silence or rape threats

Feminism, science fiction
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Catherynne M. Valente explains why what Christopher Priest did could not have been done by a woman:

I couldn’t, of course, even if I wanted to. But neither could almost any other woman writer or blogger I can think of. Go after popular SF writers and a respected award? She’d have gotten death threats, rape threats, comments telling her everything from shut up and make [unnamed internet male] a sandwich to wishing she’d be raped to death because that would shut her right up.

[…]

That’s the line I walk, and most female authors and commentators walk. On one side of it is a silence which we can’t afford and on the other are the blowback and threats, which come quietly and secretly through email or boldly and baldly in comments.

This is a reality you don’t have to face as a bloke; one of the greatest advantages/privileges of being a straight, white male is that if people dislike me or disagree with me, it’s purely because of what I say or do, not what I present as. Which means that voices like mine or Priest’s are both overrepresented and overvalued, both because we are listened to more and because other voices are dismissed; even worse is that some voices aren’t just ignored but actively chased away. With rape threats even!

Apart from anything else, this impovers the dialogue we’re all having with each other about science fiction, if you can only be taken serious if you’re a straight white bloke and if you’re not, you get sexist or racist slurs (or both) aimed at you. It’s not good for fandom and it’s obviously incredibly bad for those who are subjected to it.

For those of us who don’t run this risk, there’s the obligation to do something about it, to speak out against such attacks whenever we see them, obviously not participate in them ourselves and most importantly, not blame the victims for something they supposedly done to “provoke” these attacks.

Balancing gender in reviews

books and books review, fantasy, Feminism, science fiction
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For the second year in a row Niall Harrison has looked at the gender balance in science fiction/fantasy reviewing, looking at both which books were reviewed and who reviewed them, for a range of sf and fantasy outlets. A month ago, Renay at Ladybusiness did the same for individual bloggers, which in turn inspired Martin Lewis to take a look at his own output, which prompted me to do the same.

As you know, last year I made an effort to read more female sf writers, both by picking a reading list at the start of the year as by in general paying more attention to female writers. As you may also know, I try and review everything I read, though I don’t always succeed; I’ve read some hundred books last year and wrote only fiftytwo reviews, not all of books finished that year. But of those fiftytwo reviews, it turns out twentyseven, or roughly fifty percent were by female authors. Slightly more than a third of those (twelve) were the books I’d put on my reading list; the rest are not just fantasy and science fiction, but also include a fair few history books.

Why is this important? Because obviously, if you agree that a rough gender balance in science fiction and fantasy is a good thing, just reading more female writers is not enough, you also need to talk more about them too. One of the perennial problems with female writers after all has been that their contributions to the genre have often been overlooked, ignored or minimised. Getting more people to review them is a first step to put this right.

Below is the complete list of reviews:

As for 2012, so far I’ve continued striking the right balance: of the twentyone reviews to date, eleven were of female writers.

Bearing false witness

Comix, Feminism
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cartoon about Sandra Fluke

It’s just a coincidence that on international women’s day Tom Spurgeon linked to two of the most horrible cartoons that have been published about Sandra Fluke. The cartoon above, by Gary McCoy, is one of them, while the second one puts some racist icing on the sexist shitcake by putting in a Huggy Bear style pimp.

Sandra Fluke was the woman who testified before Congress about having anticonception as part of health care insurance and how when it isn’t covered by such insurance it can be quite expensive to pay for, especially for oral contraceptives like the pill, which have to be taken regularly and which can vary widely in cost and effectiveness. Frustrating enough that such hearings need to be held in what calls itself a civilised country, but for the dimbulbs on the American right who oppose any sort of measure that can give women any sort of control over their own bodies and sex lives, this made Sandra Fluke a whore and a slut, as Rush Limbaugh called her.

It’s no surprise therefore to see some cartoonists pushing the same stupid, hateful lie, but is depressing. Unlike Tom Spurgeon, I don’t think anybody actually believes this bullshit, unless they’re very sheltered and ignorant about how the pill works, which is impossible but unlikely and in any case no excuse. It isn’t viagra, you don’t swallow it just before sex but actually need to take it on a fairly rigid schedule to get its benefits and apart from being an anticonceptive, it’s also used to help women with a host of medical problems. To believe it’s a sex pill and a woman taking it is a slut is so incredibly stupid that it cannot be done other than in malice.

The secondary features of these cartoons confirm this malice. Gary McCoy turns Fluke into a bloated monstrosity scribbling on the doors of a men’s lavatory, while Mike Lester silences here completely, while a stereotypical pimp figure tells the reader she’s a whore. These are nasty, vile cartoons and the people who made them should lose their jobs over them, just as Limbaugh in a just universe should lose his radio show.

Because what Limbaugh and these cartoonists, as well as all those good Christians chuckling over their jokes” are doing is bearing false witness, lying about and attempting to destroy one ordinary woman just because they see some transient political gain in it.

SF Mistressworks nominated for a BSFA Award

Feminism, science fiction
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The British Science Fiction Association (BSFA for short) has just announced the shortlist for its 2011 awards. And amongst the nominees for best non-fiction is a website I’ve contributed too, Ian Sales’ SF Mistressworks blog. Ian set the blog up last year as part of his attempts to get more coverage of female science fiction writers, inspired by the discussions about the gender imbalance in science fiction in general and British sf publishing in special. For the same reasons last year I had my own reading project, to correct the gender imbalance in my own reading.

The SF Mistressworks blog is intended as a showcase for all sorts of science fiction written by women, to demonstrate that,
as Ian puts it:

a) women have been writing science fiction since the genre’s beginnings,

b) many of their books should qualify as classics, and

c) many of their books are, in fact, better than “classics” by their male counterparts, and have at least aged better.

Such a showcase being necessary because more so than their male counterparts, female sf writers run the risk of being written out of the genre’s history, even when they were incredibly popular. For instance, around the time that Ann McCaffrey passed away, I remember reading a rant by somebody annoyed that a high profile review of Christopher Paolin’ Eregon books talked about the influence of Tolkien on them, but said nothing about the obvious Pern influences[1]. For various reasons, it’s much easier to construct male orientated histories of the genre, to talk about Verne-Heinlein-Niven-Egan-Stross, not so much to talk about Shelley-Moore-Le Guin-Cadigan-Williams.

I’ve contributed several reviews to the site, reprinted from my own booklog, for books I considered fitted in well with its aims[2]. As such I can’t help but be proud to see Sf Mistressworks recognised for its contributions, though obviously its success is mainly due to Ian Sale’s hard work and dedication. It’s a great initiative and I hope this recognition will help it continue its good work.

[1] If anybody recognises this article, let me know, as could I find it today? Could I buggery.
[2] E.g. The Sign of the Labrys, Ammonite, The Sword of Rhiannon and The Female Man.