entirely ruined her disposition with books

OMG Y’ALL YOU HAVE TO READ THIS ESSAY.

Okay, does anybody remember SurveyFail? Anybody? If you were following metafandom a couple of years ago, no doubt you do. Two researchers who had nothing to do with the fannish community decided to survey fandom about its kinks, pretty much. In doing so, they revealed ALL KINDS OF FAIL. Fandom went crazy—in the amazing, snarky, intelligent way that we tend to do when outsiders are trying to pain a particular picture of us that has nothing to do with reality. [eta: Here's the FanLore entry, in case you want to do some digging. ]

Anyway, we kind of kicked them out? Or so I thought. Apparently they JUST PUBLISHED A BOOK which is full of still more fail. And a brilliant anivad has written an excellent, excellent critique of their both their methods and the ways in which the kyriarchy silences those it sees as Other.

One of my favorite parts of the essay is where anivad talks about the way in which the internet can be used as an equalizer, as a way of the voiceless being able to speak. When the mainstream media, owned by huge conglomerates mostly headed by white guys, refuses to let the oppressed speak, the internet gives us a voice and at least the potential to be heard (admittedly, most of us aren’t heard beyond communities of like-minded people, but the potential is there. By the way, did I mention that you should all go read this essay about livejournal in Russia? Because it opened my eyes to so many things. GO READ NOW).

And all of this just reminds me—AGAIN—of how dismissing internet relationships is just another way to silence people. I was thinking specifically of those of us who have anxiety struggles or other mental health problems. One of the hardest parts of my depression/social anxiety disorder is that way it makes me feel alienated. I don’t want to go out and be around people—it’s too tiring, too awkward, too draining. But, like most people, I still want relationships. I still want to connect to people.

And the internet lets me do this. I connect with people like me, I have conversations with people who are passionate about the same things I am, I build relationships with people I would never had a chance to be with otherwise. My sister jokingly says that my family and the internet is my social life, and you know what? These last few years, while my emotional problems and life situation have made me spend so much time at home, it’s true. And it’s not a bad thing. I hatehatehatehatehate this cultural conception of people who have friends on the internet as stinky losers sitting in their mom’s basement, unable to make friends in real life. It’s so not true of most of us, and even if it is, so what? I know some people whose moms have quite comfortable basements.

The internet is amazing. It’s been a lifesaver for me, and for so many other people. Obviously, as a tool, it can be used for destructive purposes as well (from hate groups organizing to child predators to leaked sex tapes/naked photos). But it can be used for beautiful things. It can let my social anxiety-riddled self connect to other people. It can let people who feel very, very alone and alienated find people who are like them, who share interests or struggles or perspectives. Geography is no obstacle. The boundaries of distance are melting away before our eyes.

And when people dismiss internet-formed friendships or mock them or ignore them or stigmatize them, what they’re really doing is marginalizing us. The ones of us who aren’t neurotypical. The ones of us who are different or Othered. The ones of us who are voiceless.

And look—I’m a privileged person. I’m a white, straight, thin, Christian, middle class white girl from America. I have nearly every single kind of privilege imaginable. The only two areas in which I suffer oppression—my gender and my mental illness—do render me voiceless and marginalized in some areas, but there are far more areas in which I belong to the oppressing group. And if the internet and the communities we form are so important to me with all of my privilege and with my relatively easy life, I can’t imagine how life-saving, life-affirming, life-giving it might be to someone whose very identity comes under fire even more often and with even more violence than mine does.

Anyway, all this to say: the internet is a beautiful tool. My mama often compares my “friends in the computer” to relationships that a lot of literary figures used to maintain via mail and written letters. It really is similar…except that it’s even more convenient, because it can be instantaneous if you want it to (or not, if you don’t want it to—one of the things I love about the internet is that I can literally turn off the conversation and walk away if I need to!) and the conversation can involve as many or as few people as you want it to. That is truly amazing.

--

And as a little aside, I went back on whedonesque yesterday. *sigh* Yes, I did. I just wanted to see what people were saying about that super weird interview with Jane Espenson and Georges Jeanty (um, Jane, I love you. Madly. Passionately. BUT PEOPLE QUESTION BUFFY'S AUTHORITY ALL THE TIIIME). Instead I ended up reading a bunch of people poo-pooing the idea of trigger warnings with the argument of “Well, if someone gets assaulted in a Laundromat, then seeing a washing machine might trigger them, and I can’t know that, so obviously I can’t warn for everything, so I shouldn’t have to warn for ANYTHING!” Which is the biggest bunch of hogwash I’ve heard in a while and made me roll my eyes majorly. I wrote up a big long reply and felt much better. I didn’t post it because I didn’t want to get sucked back into that vortex, but it made me feel better to type it. And the whole thing reminded me of why I stay in the spaces I do on the internet. Oh, beautiful flist, I love you.

Hilarious conversation of the day:

Random guy who has returned to check on the status of his application:

“Yeah, I think I talked to you last time I was here. I remember the really pretty hair. If it was blonde, you would remind me of Taylor Swift. And I’m not just saying that because I want to talk about my application.”

HAHAHAHA.


Also, please to be looking here. Since ruuger got banned from the website-which-shall-not-be-named, she needed something to do. Being awesome, she has blessed us with icons which will ADVERTISE OUR CONSPIRACY.

OMG Y'ALL.

Did you know that we as Spuffy/Spike fans have ~superpowers???? That we can render things meaningless for other people? Also did you know that anyone who doesn't think the earlier seasons of BtVS are "better" is automatically "lacking in perspective" about the show?

Because I wasn't aware of this, but I'm so glad that people have informed and enlightened me! I can now fix my perspective to get it in line with....

Oh. Wait. Who decides these things again? They're opinion-based? You mean that no one is actually wrong if they enjoy a different episode of a TV show than I do? Seriously?

CHAOS WILL NOW ENSUE. HOW WILL THE UNIVERSE BEAR UP UNDER SUCH ANARCHY?

*runs and hides*

This day has been so full of fail. I cannot have a conversation online without someone failing horribly. Work has been more relaxing and soothing to my soul, and we all know how I feel about that.

Like this:

Having a conversation on whedonesque (duh), which is full of fail on other levels (like this gem: "I'm not sure to what extent critical gender theory is an ideal tool for analysing individual texts as opposed to identifying trends in the medium as a whole" embedded in a bunch of pseudo-intellectual stuff that basically boils down to, "You're wrong, and my privilege lets me say so"), and then the most faily thing ever is said:

Other person:

I haven't got as far as the glowy sex, but aren't you arguing the (in my opinion impossible to objectively define) line between seduction and rape? Sounds like she got the horn and went irrational, as anyone can. I think if she's fine with it afterwards then you have to allow her the empowered choice to be so. Even if it ruins the story.

Me:

No, we don't, fraac, though you certainly can if you want to. But we don't have to because Buffy isn't a person. We can ask why the writers needed to include it at all and say we think they should have thought about it more. Which is what we're saying.

AND THEN.

Other person:

Surely if we're talking about her rights then for sake of argument she's a person? Otherwise you could do anything to her.

I think that, in the same way freedom of speech means defending to the death your worst enemy's right to verbally attack you, the ultimate expression of feminism is to defend a woman's right to enjoy being raped. In both cases it's about accepting (i.e. loving) our fellow humans for all they are, even where their existence is at odds with our deepest fears. So it's about courage and self-awareness.

[eta]

AND THERE'S MORE!

What if the character of Buffy spoke to the writer, as (previously) well-formed characters often do, and said she enjoyed the coercive universe aspect of sex? Either she's a person or she isn't, can't have it both ways.

[eta 2]

FOR FURTHER PROOF THAT THE UNIVERSE IS FAILING AND FAILING HARD TODAY, PLEASE TO BE LOOKING AT THIS POST.

But perhaps not if you value your sanity and your faith in humanity.

Please read that last link I linked to (once again, here) and report the hell out of this guy. I know the superpowers of my awesome feminist flist can shut this guy down.

...

...

...

...


Just needed to get that out of my system.

Carry on.

A comment over on the website-which-shall-not-be-named got me thinking.

Here it is:

It is horrid but their sex brought on the end of the world so it was never meant to be a positive development. It’s already happened to her once before in Where the Wild Things Are when something urged Buffy and Riley on and they were turned into mindless sex zombies who had "no control over themselves." This time it's only has larger and more disastrous consequences.

It may be squicky but I’d still prefer that story to a story where Buffy knowingly jumped the bones of Twangel and didn’t care that the world started crumbling down around her.

There are about seventy places I could go with this (like, how very, very much I hate WtWTA), but what I really want to get to is this:

Why does questionable sex have to be at the heart of this at all? I hated WtWTA; I hate this. I'm so incredibly over Joss's whole SEX LEADS TO BADNESS thing. And reducing the entire plot of the season to Who Buffy Boinks...seriously?

So let’s talk about consent and sexual punishment in the Buffyverse. I don’t have any deep insights into it; I haven’t really done enough thinking about it for that. But I would like to start up some conversations about it.

And it’s all gonna be behind a cut for the sake of mollivanders, as not to spoil her, and for the sake of the portion of my flist that could care less about my natterings about BtVS


( Cut for Rambling )

NO NO NO NO.

Not more S8 angst! NO MORE! No more tone-deaf comments from "professionals"! No more patronizing comments about how anyone who isn't happy with the direction the comics are going are just shippers or just ignorant or just stupid or ANYTHING LIKE THAT. NO. DO. NOT. WANT.

Someone! Quickly distract me from this nonsense! There's a new Community on tonight, isn't there? YAY!

In happier news, I now have like a gazillion userpics! So! If anyone wants to link me to your favorite icon posts (all the usual suspects as far as fandoms go), I’d love to do some perusing. I realized I have exactly two icons with just-Spike in them; I think I need a few more. I’m also looking for some good Community ones, maybe some X-Files stuff, Farscape probably, maybe SMG, Jessica and/or Hoyt or Jason from True Blood, and some from awesome movies. Maybe some with Daniel Bruhl’s or Enver Gjokaj’s or Chiwetel Ejiofor’s faces (as they are all my future husband. Don’t argue). Just a thought. Take a look at my icons so you can see what kind of styles I like.

I am an icon snob.

OH AND I NEED AMY POND ICONS STAT. I’m having not a lot of luck finding them; the coloring most people use makes her hair look not-as-awesome as it is on the show. And I am basically ALL ABOUT HER HAIR. She may have surpassed shampoo!commercial!S5!Buffy hair for hair-that-I-love-and-covet. And also Gina Torres. That woman has awesome hair.

And in case you missed it, I’m (sort of) on tumblr now. I haven’t really done anything on there; I need to get on that. But you should be friends with me there ‘cuz I’m gonna put up pretty pictures and good music and quotes and such! Once I master it.

Gah, I am so behind on life. I have a thousand things people want me to edit/look over, so many obligations that I made. And I go home at night and just can’t make myself do them. I think I am incapable of accomplishing anything outside of an academic environment. In school, I was motivated. Now, I have zero will power.

I fail at life.

But: icons! And Community!

1. What happens to potentials after they age out? Once they are old enough that they know they won't be called, what do they do? From what we see of Kendra, they've been raised to deny their emotions and not to know how to relate to the larger world. It's all dutydutyduty. How do they ever acclimate themselves to the rest of the world? I can imagine some of them becoming Watchers--Lydia, for example, could have been a potential at one time. But obviously they can't all go into that line of work.

Also, as a sort of corollary to that question, from what I can tell, the WC does a really bad job of finding all the potentials, since Buffy, Faith, Rona, Chao-Ahn, and aaaaalll those girls who were empowered by Willow's spell in "Chosen" had no contact with the WC. And was Giles trying to actively find little baseball girl and the girl in the trailer and all the other girls who became Slayers that day? If they're just going about their business, wouldn't the First have been after them?

Any thoughts?


2. I'm going to ramble a bit about this here because I don't want to get into another fight on whedonesque.

So there's this discussion about whether Angel was a better show than Buffy (it wasn't, but I'm not going to argue with someone over their own taste ;) ). What I'm finding really fascinating about the discussion is that the guys in the thread are all saying they liked Angel better because there are more strong male characters to relate to.

I think the main reason I'm finding it so interesting is because Joss has specifically said that he wanted men to be able to relate to Buffy. He talks in the Equality Now speech about how he wants men to find things to relate to in a woman's story, things they might not be comfortable embracing otherwise.

Besides, as a woman, I've been inundated with male stories from birth, and I have zero problem relating to men. For instance, Spike is the character I most relate to out of the whole universe (even if Buffy's my favorite, I don't start relating to her at all until her commitment to protecting her sister and her struggles with clinical depression in the later seasons. Early-seasons!Buffy and I have nothing in common). Any given book in lit class or any show that I watch, it's a toss-up whether it'll be a woman character or a man who I most relate to. I mean, favorite literary character ever? Quentin Compson. I have nothing in common with Caddy.

I've always found it endlessly fascinating that women can always relate to male characters but men can't relate to women. It's all about the ways in which our culture privileges male stories and marginalizes female ones. I definitely plan on making a commitment to having my sons read/watch stories from the female perspective so that they can learn to relate. There are tons of awesome young adult books out there with girls as heroes, and then there’s shows like Buffy and Veronica Mars when they get a little older. I want my sons to have no problem with embracing Buffy or Meg's adventures in A Wrinkle in Time or Mary Lennox's transformation in The Secret Garden or Mara's courage and resourcefulness in Mara: Daughter of the Nile (my favorite book in my early teens, and one that's basically a historical spy novel that I think would be awesome for both genders, but the title discourages guys from picking it up). Obviously, I want my daughters to relate to boys and men, too, but they'll have no problem picking that up--it's what our culture teaches them to do from birth.

I don't know, I guess I just found it discouraging that all those guys can't relate to women. I'm always more disappointed to see sexism or racism or just plain cluelessness on whedonesque precisely because I expect more of the people who embrace those shows, and even though this isn't nearly on the level of the arguments I've gotten into over there with guys who think objectifying women is no big deal, it still disappoints me.

So my question is: am I absolutely ridiculous to be disappointed?

Plus, I think I'm a bit annoyed because every show/movie/book ever has strong male characters for them to relate to. Ever. Show. Ever.

I know a lot of you are whedonesque-y kinds of people, so it's possible you've already read this.  But if you haven't, scurry on over to Amazon right now and read Joss's review of Dr. Horrible.  It's so ridiculously over-the-top that anyone who isn't familiar with his sense of humor will probably think he's insane, but I laughed literally from the first line to the last one.  Priceless.