entirely ruined her disposition with books

This weekend I read City of Illusions, one of Ursula K Le Guin's early Hainish novels.

Here's my review:

This is the strongest of the 3 early Hainish books but goodness gracious, young Le Guin couldn’t write a woman to save her life, could she?

That’s horrifying for what it says about the culture she grew up in but heartening because it reminds us that we can grow: this is the same woman who, decades later, was able to write Tehanu. May we all be so lucky as to become better versions of ourselves.

And I was just thinking about female writers who are extremely good writers, but could not or did not write women with any real agency or interiority.

Obviously this made me think of Rosemary Sutcliff, and how deeply and tenderly she explores male characters and their relationships to each other...and how women are only ever ciphers in her work.

I've never been able to decide which explanation is worse: that she was incapable of believing that women (besides her) had any real depth or whether she thought they could, but she was just completely uninterested in it.

The difference between Le Guin and Sutcliff is that Le Guin grew. She saw where she was weak or had failed and she worked hard to become better. I admire that tremendously.

(Btw, I've heard she and Joanna Russ were correspondents, which makes so much sense, and I would commit murder to be able to read the letters between them.)

What's striking about Le Guin's internalized misogyny is that she was so smart and also she lived in the 20th century. Female writers of the past had written wonderful and nuanced female characters, so it was clearly possible. Le Guin's mother was an interesting, thoughtful, intelligent woman with a talent for writing. So why did Le Guin have such a hard time discovering(?) that it was possible to write interesting female characters? I speculate that it had something to do with the world of anthropology that she grew up in because of her father, but there were significant female anthropologists during Le Guin's formative years and surely she came into contact with them? I just don't know.

I guess we all just have major blind spots and the question is whether we are open to having those pointed out to us and working to learn to see.

Gah, y'all, I have been so incredibly spoiled by my flist/dashboard, by my years in Buffy fandom, by the happy little world of feminist-consciousness I've been living in fandom-wise for the past few years. Trying to figure out how to deal with a fandom that isn't even on Feminism 101 levels is hurting my heart and my brain and making me realize how grateful I am for all of you.

Warning: fairly explicit talk about rape/sexual assault below the cut. PLEASE don't click on it if it might hurt you in any way at all.

( trigger warning: rape orsexual assault )

For those of you who have any interest at all in talk about beauty standards/fashion/Korean culture/kpop, this video is worth checking out. A British model heads to Seoul to look into fashion week there for Vice and talks to a bunch of random people about fashion in Seoul. Featuring the world's shortest and most bizarre interview with Infinite, the most polite punk you'll ever meet, a rockabilly barber, and couples' matching underwear. Plus some really sad stuff about beauty standards and plastic surgery.

It's a mishmash of interesting things, and what I particularly liked was the people she talks to who aren't in the entertainment industry. Mostly because everything I know about Korean culture has been filtered through kdramas/kpop, so getting to hear from normal people in a nice change.

There's some stuff I learned and some stuff that broke my heart, and did I mention that the Infinite interview is really strange? It was clearly filmed at the time they were filming the bts stuff for the Second Invasion DVD so the styling is very familiar, and it's so strange to try to look at them through the eyes of someone who has no idea who they are.

There's some quite uncomfortably graphic plastic surgery stuff starting at about 25 minutes in, so you might want to avert your eyes if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.

Anyway: check it out.

Apparently I had seen this before? I guess I had, because I just found it while I was transferring things over into my delicious account. But I stumbled upon it and enjoyed it as though it was/were (whatever) the first time I was seeing it.




Oh, fandom. How I love you.



[eta] Aaaaand, apparently the new Doctor Who companion ( the vaguest of spoilers )

Last night, Robin McKinley (FAAAAAAAAAAVE) linked to this post about twitter stories about sexism which lead to a this website. Y'all should check it out: it's powerful and infuriating.

Last night, Robin McKinley (FAAAAAAAAAAVE) linked to this post about twitter stories about sexism which lead to a this website. Y'all should check it out: it's powerful and infuriating.

+ mollivanders has some thoughts on Molly Hooper which are excellent. Oh, oh, oh Molly.

+ upupa_epops has brilliant, brilliant thoughts on Katherine and Elena (and by extension Damon and Stefan)

+ lutamira has stats about the Oscar noms that are simultaneously depressing and not at all surprising. [eta--this is flocked, too! But the article is here and if you want to rant, you can totally do it here in the comments]

And now I'm going to go back to work/taking breaks to read Derek/Casey fic because who am I.

So Mark, he of the Mark Watches blog, is now watching Buffy straight through and posting his thoughts as he goes. This has stirred up a lot of feelings in the remnants of BtVS fandom, and we’ve already talked at length about the depth of his analysis (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) and whether or not we think it’s weird that he’s making money off of basically just posting his emotional responses to a show (for the record, my thoughts are: yes, it’s weird, but I’d probably do the same thing if I had the option, so I can’t really blame him). But I wanted to talk about something I’ve seen mentioned a couple of times in passing in discussions about other aspects of his analysis, because it’s been on my mind a lot.

I can’t remember which post it was (please feel free to link me to it if you remember what I’m talking about), but someone mentioned that you almost have to watch the show in its historical context the way you would read a book written three centuries ago or something like that. Because social justice-y ways of watching the shows were not at all prominent ways of approaching these texts back then (15 years ago, more or less, which: crazy).

For instance. ( Read more... )

And I am sure I’m leaving out something I meant to say, so don’t be surprised if this post is edited to add stuff in the future. My mind does not at all work in a linear fashion, so I usually end up leaving things out.

So Mark, he of the Mark Watches blog, is now watching Buffy straight through and posting his thoughts as he goes. This has stirred up a lot of feelings in the remnants of BtVS fandom, and we’ve already talked at length about the depth of his analysis (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) and whether or not we think it’s weird that he’s making money off of basically just posting his emotional responses to a show (for the record, my thoughts are: yes, it’s weird, but I’d probably do the same thing if I had the option, so I can’t really blame him). But I wanted to talk about something I’ve seen mentioned a couple of times in passing in discussions about other aspects of his analysis, because it’s been on my mind a lot.

I can’t remember which post it was (please feel free to link me to it if you remember what I’m talking about), but someone mentioned that you almost have to watch the show in its historical context the way you would read a book written three centuries ago or something like that. Because social justice-y ways of watching the shows were not at all prominent ways of approaching these texts back then (15 years ago, more or less, which: crazy).

For instance. ( Read more... )

And I am sure I’m leaving out something I meant to say, so don’t be surprised if this post is edited to add stuff in the future. My mind does not at all work in a linear fashion, so I usually end up leaving things out.