I use Stumbleupon, and I once thumbs-upped a website about feminism. I don't remember what the site was, but I remember one of the comments on it, along the lines of: "Women have it better than men. They get a speeding ticket, they shake their ass. They need a drink, they shake their ass. They want a promotion, they shake their ass."
In response to that comment on Stumbleupon, I said "Yes, because I love having to get things with my ass instead of my voice." But there's more to it than that.
This morning, I thought about the fact that a State Fire Marshall is coming to my workplace, and that my boss told me that if we upset him, even if it had nothing to do with the fire code, our whole facility could be in danger. I was changing this morning, saw myself in the mirror and thought, What if he comes to talk to me while I'm working the front desk? What if he doesn't like the fact that I'm gender non-conforming? What if he says something about it?
I couldn't do anything if that happened, I told myself immediately. I couldn't complain or report it. I shouldn't even talk back to him. My workplace might have bad relations with the fire department for a long time if I did, and too many people need this place to thrive. Then my mind wandered.
What if I was looking particularly feminine that day instead, and what if he hit on me? I should take it, I told myself, to keep him in a good mood, to not endanger my job and the jobs of others.
What if I was pulled over, and the cop told me to shake my ass to get out of my ticket? More importantly - what would he do if I didn't? Would I get a bigger ticket? One that I couldn't afford? What if he touched me? What if I didn't let him? Would I be arrested? Would I be attacked?
Later today I was reading the deeply disturbing post about anti-feminist reactions to George Sodoni on Alas, A Blog. Some said that women should consider the murders a "tax" for women taking advantage of men. Some said that women deserved this for not sleeping with men.
The thing the anti-feminists ignore, or maybe just accept, when talking about how women take advantage of men, is that in their imagined situations, men have the actual power. Unfortunately, in reality, it usually remains true, that straight white able-bodied cis men have the most power - socially and economically, and they are more likely to be in positions of authority. Women, according to anti-feminists, gain access to (or "take advantage of") men's power by giving men a sense of ownership of their bodies (shaking their ass or "putting out").
Of course, the idea that this is what "power" is for women is so deeply problematic. But if we follow the logic, what happens when women deny men ownership of their bodies? They remain powerless. And those with power can (and often do) punish them.
No, anti-feminists, women don't have it better than men. Because it can come down to this. Because if I don't shake my ass, I'll get a ticket. Because if I don't flirt back, I don't know how this stranger at the bar will react. Because if I don't have sex with him, maybe my supervisor will fire me. Because if I don't put up with sexual harassment, I will be punished. Because if I report it, those in control of my life will resent me. Because if I acknowledge that my body is mine, and not yours, I am putting myself in danger.
The worst part of writing this? Is that I know there are some minds that wouldn't change from reading it.
edit: I'm not saying this is right, or that therefore women SHOULD put up with harassment or SHOULDN'T report it. I'm saying that anti-feminists who complain about women having it better don't realize that punishing women for expressing body autonomy is not a TAX or a PAYBACK for taking advantage of men - it's a system that ensures men can continue taking advantage of women.
I also think if anything DID happen, my workplace would support me in reporting it - but the people who I would be reporting on would have the power to make our lives more difficult, and whether they'd exert it or not, that's the crux of the issue.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
The Problem with Shaking My Ass
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Breaking News: White Privilege Exists
Obama mishandled comments on race. Bold headline, eh?
According to the article: "Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of how President Barack Obama has dealt with the racially tinged dispute between a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer and a well-known black Harvard scholar — with white voters especially likely to take a negative view, according to a poll released Thursday."
Emphasis mine.
Gee. Really? White people are less likely to empathize with Obama's sentiments on this? I think this poll, and the wording of its reporting, is less telling of Obama's tact and more telling of those who took the poll. In other words, white privilege still exists. Of course, that headline might not go over as well.
Also, I'm continuously surprised (though I shouldn't be) that the public is surprised that police officers did something racist. This story - and I'm sure some bloggers have touched on this but I haven't read them - is only a big story because a Harvard professor was involved. If it were a middle class or poor black person that no one had heard of before, this would not be reported on. It would be the norm. And, Ian added when we were discussing it today, "he would probably still be in jail".
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Invisible
Q: Where in the news media can you find a discussion of race in which the host addresses the most basic ways white people are privileged, instead of mindless squawking about what is and is not racist, or, more often lately, "reverse-racist"?
A: Come on now.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Neutral Man's Burden | ||||
| ||||
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The Theme of the Day Is, Themes
I am endlessly amused and impressed by collections of clips displaying themes in pop culture that we take for granted. And so today I have amassed for you a COLLECTION OF COLLECTIONS.
Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions (Lonely Island):
I'm Not Here to Make Friends (FourFour):
Finally Tonight, Jesus (Everything is Terrible):
Put the Camera Down/Turn It Off (FourFour):
Medicine (Target Women with Sarah Haskins):
I could actually use a lot of other Sarah Haskins videos, I'm sure. I'll leave just this one for now, since I was shocked that I never noticed this stupid black and white theme.
I'll add more as I find/they inspire... please leave any I've missed!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Overdue (aka No Longer Relevant)
Alright. I have a few posts in the queue that are long overdue. And I refuse to go the usual route of letting them die alone. So, a solid month after the airing, here are my thoughts on the Dollhouse finale. I'll break it down into things I liked, and things that disappointed.
What I liked:
- I liked that Alpha's obsession with Echo was not actually based on his recognizing her brilliance, or her capacity to be like him, or anything that justified his treating her like an experiment and plaything. I liked the reveal, be it contradictory to all that was built up, that Alpha just became obsessed with an unhealthy crush.
- Amy Acker. Though I'm sold on Eliza Dushku as Echo, sometimes during assignments I find myself thinking about Faith (during her fight in the restaurant with Ballard, I actually said aloud "This is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Battlestar Galactica crossover episode." Though I've never actually watched BSG. This is my distaste for Watchmen [the comic, not the movie, which I haven't seen] make me a bad nerd. Among other things). But Amy Acker, not surprisingly, is amazing in every new role. I completely forget her character in the last scene and totally buy into whatever she's playing that minute. I wonder why few if any fans saw the Dr. Saunders being a doll thing coming - what a perfect way for Joss to utilize her versatility. I mean, to my understanding the last time they worked together, he killed off her character just to create a chance for her to play something else.
- Topher's facade cracking. Please, please, please, let this continue to develop in season two. Topher, the goofy asshat, taking a introspective and serious turn could have major positive implications for the direction of the show.
- Ballard feeling discomfort and conflict around November. His reactions to her in Briar Rose were infuriatingly simplified. The ending would indicate that she's being phased out, which is really frustrating. I feel unsatisfied. Speaking of...
What I Didn't Like:
- The playing up of Alpha's violent past and the playing down of the Dollhouse's recklessness with him. This was a huge problem for me. If this was the case, why was it even significant that Echo retained memories? I'm a little interested in Ballard's talk of souls, since the intersection of science and spirituality is always a rich and worthy topic, but, I feel like, they're undermining their own point. Society controls us - except you can't change people! I'm deeply disappointed by this 'evil people are just evil' mixed message.
- The instantaneous of Echo's enlightenment (conveyed so user-friendly-y via monologue) followed by the erasure of that enlightenment. No struggle in either direction.
Well, at this point the show has been picked up for a second season, and I'm glad. I still believe in the basic concept, and despite the missteps, I want to see where it goes. Oh, and if I get my hands on the unaired actual finale, maybe I'll write something up on that. The shots I've seen from it have been most titillating.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Today in Victim Blaming
Alright. Am I the only one who saw this ad and legitimately thought the message was going to be "don't be a shithead when your friend might have alcohol poisoning"? No, unfortunately, actual medical information about the dangers of binge drinking is not the way anti-drug ads tend to roll. Shame is the way anti-drug ads tend to roll. Whatever people do to you when you're incapacitated is your fault, not theirs, apparently.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Hmm.
Today I was asked: "So, what does a feminist do?"
To which I replied: "Anything they want to."
Oh my gosh I'm going to write about Dollhouse and share things from rallies in RI but just for the minute have Joss Whedon's Equality Now speech:
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
How It Works
Um, I haven't been posting lately because I've been hopping around the East Coast and then over in France at Taize.
It was my third pilgrimage in the last three years. Maybe this isn't something you would assume about me from this blog (or maybe you would? I have little idea about how I'm perceived). After talking about being a bit of a church geek (though the friends I travel with to Taize constantly remind me that I'm not a real church geek, not at all) in a response to a Bishop poem that alluded to Peter, I've had a professor ask me, "So being a church geek is compatible with being politically left?"
To which I, bewildered, answered: "..Yes?"
"How does that work?"
I gave him a brief and insufficient answer about Jesus being a big liberal commie. I guess I could rant on it a while here but, I started writing this entry about how I wasn't going to write anything lengthy yet. And I always feel utterly scattered whenever I try to pull my shit together to talk about religion. But what it boils down to is that the base of my political views and the base of my Christian views are the very same: Egalitarianism. In other words, love. It's not some miracle that they work together. Truly, sometimes, it is the only way they work.
Anyway, that's why I've been out. Maybe I'll write something more expansive soon. I'll leave you right now with my two favorite English-language songs from Taize. Neither of these videos are mine.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
A Few Words on Political Correctness
So, today Shakesville pointed me over to the Daily Kos, which I know of but almost never read and, well, I guess this kind of thing is why.
The writer, after really sensibly explaining that dismissing marginalized groups as "oversensitive" and "too PC" is just a convenient way to acknowledge what you're saying is disrespectful, but belittle and emotionally attack your critics, and go on offending people. Good.
Then, of course, he goes right on to belittle and emotionally attack critics and go on offending people. But don't worry! It's ok because the people he's pulling fatphobic, transphobic and misogynist joke about are conservatives! He also throws in some racism and ableism in at the end for good measure.
You REALLY don't get it already.
Ok, first, fuck putting quotes around transphobic. I know you know it's real. The problem with jokes aimed at conservatives, or anyone, that exploit marginalized groups (in this case, people that deviate from normal/ideal gender phenotype and presentation) is NOT that you're directly saying "such and such groups sucks!" It's almost never that clear. But the joke just isn't fucking funny unless it involves the prejudice. If gender was acknowledged to be fluid and gender binary was meaningless? Calling Ann Coulter a man, a drag queen, a tranny, masculine, or saying she dresses too femininely, or isn't feminine enough just wouldn't make any sense, never mind being funny. By making a joke about anyone's gender nonconformity, you are reinforcing the validity of gender conformity. One may say "but I support transgendered people!" I'm sure you have, politically. But you're also happily engaging in the system that dictates their difference; their difference which makes them the butt of jokes, their difference that causes people fear them, their difference which causes their lives to be valued less than NORMAL people, their difference which causes the brutal murders which create the need for a Transgender Day of Remembrance.
You didn't mean to. But you fucking did.
I see similar in arguments against hate crime laws - why is this joke worse because it's aimed at a certain kind of person? Why is this crime worse because it's aimed at a certain kind of person? Neither is because hating super-special marginalized people is the super-awfullest kind of hate and so we have to be super-sensitive to it. It is because when you joke about, or harass, or commit violence against, one marginalized person (or one person who is targeted because of their perceived association with a marginalized group, such as a cisgender person who is perceived as transgender), you are sending a message to ALL people of that marginalized group: it is not ok to be what you are. It is deviant. It is funny. It is bad. It will not be tolerated. It will be punished.
God, I could go on, but that part infuriated me the most for personal reasons, and of course because I've heard too many "progressives" repeating the ever-hilarious "Coulter is a man" sentiment recently.
Here are a few calmer words on being "politically correct" (i.e. respectful) from Jay Smooth:
And embedding is disabled, but yeah, I immediately thought of Beau Sia's response to Rosie O'Donnell a few years ago, when the writer at the Daily Kos finished with:
And I thought, real easy to say when you have the privilege of not associating these "jokes" with "real issues" like, say, the violence they justify.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
why I still love the internet
lily allen + queers + webcams =
Seriously, I love you, internet. I was researching androgyny the other day, and, can you imagine trying to find a comprehensive and sympathetic perspective on that in books? I mean, I'm sure it exists somewhere, but in my local library? Nuh-uh. Thank you internet, for connecting queers!
I am using the word "queer" today in retaliation to the Plumber Who Must Not Be Named's recent admonishment that:
I'm not sure if he's trying to attack GLBTIQ folk's right to use it, or defending his right to use it. If it's the former, well gosh, I have no idea why we'd want to spin unusual and different into a positive. And if he's defending his right to use it, well gosh, I have no idea why a guy who says he has gay friends but won't let them near his children calling us unusual and different might be insulting.
Also, who the fuck says "honky"? Really? That's really the racial epitaph that... oh, why do I bother. This is what Lily Allen lyrics are for.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Briar Rose Thoughts and Theories
Here be Dollhouse spoilers!
Predicting plot details of my favorite TV shows correctly inflates my head in a very special nerdy way, and Maia at Alas, A Blog independently put together the Alpha has an imprint of Topher theory I put forward a few weeks ago. Alan Tudyk has also stated that "the fact that Kepler's mannerisms are so similar to Topher's was not an accident". Whether or not this will be the catalyst for a character change in Topher that I was hoping it would be is perhaps less likely. Especially if the show doesn't get much farther.
So, after the last episode, new theory. Thinking about what the future would hold for Victor now that he's had his face sliced up, I realized that Dr. Claire Saunders is a doll. I've felt from the first few episodes that she's an inaccessible character intentionally, though at first I thought she was Alpha's person on the inside. One of my viewing buddies smartly pointed out back in that everyone-gets-high episode that Saunders is the only one kept out of the mix - I thought it was because it would reveal too much about her, and in a way that's true, because her reaction would have revealed she was a doll. (That episode was also useful in establishing that Topher was not a doll, which I had wondered about.)
Then, of course, two episodes ago came the revelation that Dr. Saunders never leaves the dollhouse. I am a bit ashamed I didn't put this together right then. Last night, I was first tipped off when Dominic said "Whiskey", which is part of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet which all the dolls are named after. I didn't know why everyone would act like he was talking about the drink, but it makes sense if the doll he was talking about was in the room. Then, of course, came Alpha's leading question, "Did you always want to be a doctor?"
I thought this was too obvious to write about, actually, but my viewing buddies seemed perplexed by my conclusion at first.
As far as the more philosophical content of this episode, I was feeling the "it's not your fault you can't leave" message, but then not so much the "the prince is the dream of the princess" message, though that might have been for lack of clarity. This is a much longer post, but a problem I have with Joss Whedon at times is that he always has these leading strong women whose power was forced upon them from men. The thing with Buffy was that the show lasted long enough for her to fully explore and eventually undermine the source of that power, not only making it her own but ultimately sharing it with other women. I don't expect Echo to undermine the Dollhouse(s) and welcome the other dolls to share in her power quite yet. But I am tickled with anticipation to see her to undermine her savior, Alpha.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Buddha, Eve, Victim Blaming
The Boy has voiced his own comparison brought on by my shaved head, and I'm downright tickled by it. He thinks my state of hairlessness (or at least, near-hairlessness) resembles the Buddha! He added, "But the one you see... on the internet... do you know what I mean?"
Not really, but maybe he was talking about the body art forms logo:
Hmm. The labret, the plugs, the squinting grin, the thick brows... I can actually totally see this one.
So this post has some meat, let me mention a discussion I had about a different religious icon this past week. After reading excerpts from Paradise Lost, my literature class split up into two teams for a mock trial. It wasn't the devil being tried, it was Eve, and to my surprise, the vast majority of the class was on the team condemning her.
So, I hesitate to explain or label my religious inclinations, but I'd say I'm more Christian than your average liberal arts college bear. But this Eve being responsible for the fall thing? I think it's bullshit. We were going by Milton, not the Bible, of course, in which case, this Eve being responsible for the fall thing is even BIGGER bullshit.
She is so clearly deceived into biting the stupid fruit (the devil as a serpent tells her: you need to do this, I did it and I'm fine, I'm better than fine I'm great, it will really be OK with God, heck, he'll probably be proud of you, and so on), and then Milton makes it so clear that Adam is making his choice freely, with full knowledge of the consequences. Basically, Adam was capable of informed consent and Eve was not.
Can you already imagine how the "trial" went?
Instead of arguing that, say, Eve should have followed the commandment of God above the advice of a snake (a shaky argument, but the only valid one in my mind), these are legitimately the kind of questions I got on the stand:
-Why did you want to go out by yourself?
-Didn't Adam warn you not to go out by yourself?
-Didn't you know that there was an enemy in your midst?
-Weren't you suspicious of a talking snake?
-Didn't you know you would be tempted?
So, they sort of acknowledged Eve was deceived, but it was her fault for getting into the situation because she was reckless. Sound familiar?
Yes, this fake trial of Eve was a cornucopia of victim-blaming language. After a few minutes of this all going unquestioned, I asked to speak out of turn to say "If you knew theres a robber in the neighborhood, it's still not your fault you got robbed."
This is not misogyny in the Bible, or in Paradise Lost. This is misogyny straight out of the mouths of my college peers, who think these kinds of approaches are valid legal maneuvers. I'm sure they didn't make the connection to rape trials, but the logic is appallingly similar.
In seventh grade or so, we spent a whole day learning about and discussing consent. I still remember most of it - we were given a lot of scenarios, some sexual and some not, and asked if the victim or the perpetrator was to blame for the crime. The number of people who, totally or partially, blamed the victim steadily decreased throughout the day.
At the time I thought that, like learning about puberty or drugs, this was the standard.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
I Was Going to Post Something Curmudgeonly
About the tea parties, and/or habeas corpus (fucking, fuck). But then I remembered buzz cut loves:
No one has drawn these comparisons yet, which is surprising, considering the musical tastes of my loved ones.
I should be bothered by people wanting to touch my head, but honestly, I feel slighted when people DON'T want to touch it. Guh. I love my head.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Almost Too Good to Be True
Right-wingers love teabagging, and NOM (who I can only assume are I Can Has Cheezburger enthusiasts?) have created Two Million For Marriage (2M4M), a campaign against gay marriage (apparently, no one tried googling m4m before the launch).
All of this has me itching to create the Board for the Defense of the Sanctity of Marriage (BDSM), just to see how many join up.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Some Things I Needed
So. It might be redundant to say gender issues are a theme of my life right now, but the past few days have just been... you know when you're reading a book, and you get to the chapter that uses the title in a bunch of sentences? It's been like that.
I had dinner with the wonderful Jennifer Miller on Tuesday. Here's the short youtube version of the documentary Juggling Politics about her political Circus Amok:
On the way to see her screen the film and perform that night, I got harassed for the first time about my buzz cut. Nothing traumatic - a gang of ten-year-olds shouting. I didn't hear most of it. A friend told me later that they asked if I was a boy or a girl.
The next day, we workshopped a short story in a fiction class that had a scene implying rape was justified/healed by pregnancy. I wish I was surprised that some other people didn't understand why it was upsetting.
Later that day I watched the single most disturbing film of my life. There were multiple graphic rape scenes. My professor apologized afterward for not warning us about them. I was trying not to break down for the rest of the three-hour class.
Today in another class were talking about Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. That's always a little bothersome because I'm practically a Bechdel fangirl, but also because the book deals with sexuality and gender a lot, and I'm constantly being reminded that my understanding and experience with these topics (and therefore the connections and reactions I have with the book) doesn't match the majority. There's a lot of examples I could pull out, but what affected me today was Bechdel's story about seeing a pornographic wall calendar and feeling inexplicably exposed and ashamed, and then telling her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison. Other students assumed it was just another example of wanting to be butch and masculine, but I think the inclusion of the calendar points to something else - the inherent vulnerability of being female.
So my head is swelling with all of this and more. Shaving my head has spurred some thoughts on where I fall on the gender spectrum. The other day a friend online posted something I really needed to read: she, like me, was wondering about her gender identity, and she, like me, had the thought, "Who the fuck am I to be transgender? How dare I?" I have this feeling, like, if I wasn't strictly female, I would have figured it out by now. Which is, of course, bullshit.
I also found Alison Bechdel's coming out story online this week, and this scene was really significant:
Speaking of shaving my head, I posted some photos on my facebook account, and somehow the whole of my extended family knows about it now. I expect this entry itself will be read by at least one or two family members that google me with enough intensity. I don't know if I can express this without sounding like a hypocrite, or self-important, but, the thing is, if I write publicly about my personal life (which I have, more in song than here, but I hope this blog is headed for a more personal tone), I don't do it for people that I know. I'd prefer if people that I know let me choose how and when I share things with them. I write publicly in the hopes that someone else needs to hear something that I have to say; just as I needed to hear about Jennifer Miller and Circus Amok when I came to accept that my body would never match ideals about hair (without much unwanted suffering), just as I needed to read that Alison Bechdel was still struggling with her identity at age nineteen as I'm still struggling with mine at age twenty-one, just as, in that fiction workshop, I needed to hear that one other person was upset by that scene before I could say it myself.
Today on Feministing, this song was posted:
I've been listening to it kind of non-stop all day. After a week of feeling drained the casual nature of misogyny and the normativeness of ignorance about gender's complexities, I needed this.
(edit: CocoRosie's history of racism has been pointed out in the comments on Feministing. Ugh. Their song made me cry, but, ugh.)
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Reflections on Head Shaving
After saying for years that I would do this soon, I hunted down a pair of clippers and just did it. I have never been happier. I have urges to fix my hair throughout the day, and instead I touch my fuzz and just smile. I feel like I've escaped somehow.
All of the attention I've received has been positive so far, but I haven't strayed far from my college campus. Here are some things I have noticed, though:
1. Several people have asked if I did this for charity, or gave my hair away. It wasn't long enough, but I didn't really think about that option. I don't think that's a bad thing, or a good thing, just neutral: didn't think of donating my hair. Just wanted to chop it off. No reason required.
2. I have been compared to every Famous Bald Woman I can think of, save Britney Spears (whose head-shaving incident, I maintain, was awesome). Natalie Portman, twice. GI Jane. Sinead O'Connor. Deb from Empire Records. Though I liked all the comments, since I like all of these women, it baffles me that shaved heads are still abnormal enough on women that this sort of thing happens (and that people focused on Britney's baldness as a sign of insanity). Also, thinking of fictional shaved women, I couldn't help but notice a trend: Portman's character was forcefully shaved. Demi Moore's character shaved for the military (I haven't seen the movie, but I imagine it's either compulsory or, more likely, to prove herself). Robin Tunney's Deb freely chose to shave her own head (a scene which really stuck with me and I've posted it below), but throughout the film she's poorly adjusted and in a place of desperation. I looked for more on the web - Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3 apparently shaves to avoid lice. Where is a happy well-adjusted fictional woman who ditches her hair?
The idea to write this down came from the popular What I Learned By Shaving My Head.
Share in the shaved head heaven with me:
There's a longer version of the following scene on youtube, with embedding disabled.
Watch more Empire Records videos on AOL Video
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
My Ada Lovelace Day Conrtibution: Diana Eng!
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, and I'm joining many bloggers by celebrating women excelling in technology. The first one to come to mind was one of the first people I wrote about in this blog. If you've been here before, you may remember it all started with a little show called Project Runway, just before their second season. My favorite contestant on that season, and I contend the most kick-ass person to ever be on the show, nay, reality television:
Diana Eng, self-proclaimed "Nerd and Fashion Deisgner". She was an automatic favorite of sorts because she graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, not twenty minutes away from where I grew up, but I was completely swept away when in her audition, she introduced a hoodie that contained a small camera and a heart monitor. When the wearer's heart rate increased, the camera snapped a photo of whatever they were viewing.
Eng didn't make it to the final rounds on Project Runway, unfortunately, because, among other things, Michael Kors doesn't understand how magnets work. (Me? Bitter?) There's also the fact that the time and material constraints of the show didn't make room for her skills with technology (though in 2006, she did design and create ablogging purse with two teammates in less than 24 hours).
Of course, Eng is too good for me to define her through the show. When she was only 22, an inflatable dress she designed had been featured on ID Magainze. Here's the cover, and her blog entry marking it:
"I've dreamt of making it into ID magazine since I was 13. As a child I made really awful pamphlets and brochures documenting my latest design ideas for things such as nesting tea cups and landscape inspired furniture. Then I would send the brochures off to ID mag editors positive that they would feature me the next month. I was never selected. And after going to art school I've often wondered what they thought of my subpar entries. But this month I made the cover with the inflatable dress I made with Emily Albinski. The gorgeous girl in the photo is my roommate JungIn You."Her first book, Fashion Geek, came out March 17th, full of projects for tech-savvy. She also helped found the hacker group NYC Resistor, where members "meet regularly to share knowledge, hack on projects together, and build community". She's included in their own Ada Lovelace day post, wearing what I believe is the same fibonacci scarf pictured above - a fibonacci scarf!
You can follow what Diana Eng is up to at her blog, Fashion Nerd.
Thanks Diana, for being my technology heroine, and showing literally millions of girls and women how fashionable math and science can be!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Damn you, Joss Whedon
For getting me so emotionally invested in this show.
So, not a full recap or analysis or anything, but yeah, the Episode That Changed Everything delivered. We abandoned the adventure-of-the-week set up, and I'd be happy to never go back- Echo is still central, but we got really involved in the other characters.
Sexual violence got serious treatment this time, and I thought these things were important: It was clearly treated as rape even though Sierra didn't say no or physically resist; and the rapist handler, whose name escapes me, tried to excuse his behavior because the Dollhouse is "in the business of using people". Obviously the excuse isn't acceptable, but I think Joss was wisely making a connection of sexual violence to the environment of objectification and exploitation.
Things that bothered me about Sierra's storyline: I can't recall if they actually used the word "rape" - I know Dr. Saunders said "Sierra's had sex" after the exam, but I don't know if they changed the language after it became obvious that she didn't (and really, couldn't) consent. Also, a little mad at Boyd for letting the other handler attempt again in order to "catch him in the act" instead of, oh I don't know, asking Sierra about him. Of course, it was hugely satisfying to have him punched through a glass wall with his fly down.
The big thing that changed with me is that I am now completely invested in the fate of Mellie/November:
I saw the reveal coming, but it was still a bit heartbreaking. Previews for future episodes indicate possible revolt against the Dollhouse. Can she just be the main character now, please?
Unrelated to this episode: another blog pointed out how wildly inaccurate the homebirth scene was... which I really should have noticed, since I've seen homebirths. Though Topher's probably not a mifwifery expert, and you probably couldn't get away with a completely accurate homebirth on TV (we need to throw a sheet over her- for medical reasons!), this is a still a case of ball-dropping. Oh well. I appreciate the attempt, if not the execution.
