well behaved women

I know it was naive. I know it was foolish. I haven't even read the books all the way through myself! But I honestly thought my shock and horror at Stephenie Meyer was tapped out; that she had gotten all of her 'WHAT THE FUCKING HELL NOOOOO's out of me.

I was wrong. Mark of Buzznet has been reviewing Twilight, and it's a fairly stress-reducing ride, at least for those that have read the books previously and are just relieved to see somebody sane react. The gifs help.

Then we get to chapter thirteen of Eclipse, where I thank the lords I didn't read it and we get to read SMeyer writing about how Mexicans are violent awful people (as opposed to the "civilized" north), and how being a vampire automatically makes you white.

Gods above and below, how the hell is this woman too fucking stupid to understand how offensive she is?

Picked up from randomsome1

I need to purge my brain of this ugliness.

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Neither Fictional nor Real:

So, Hollywood. Take a power structure of people who are willfully ignorant and unwilling to deal with people as people, as well as making concentrated efforts to keep us from having access to venues to tell our stories.

The argument "it's only fiction" really can only apply if you have context to understand the difference between fiction and reality. And, it's also interesting that we're not allowed to tell EITHER our fictions OR our realities, but that others get the right to do that for us, and seem amazed as if we stepped out of a comic book or something when we demand the right to tell our stories.

And it's always interesting how one group profits in reality for making fantasy about another and that group is never us.

Television Without Pity - But Racism is Dandy!

Not that I ever expected well of a site that Supernatural is heavily connected with, but hey. This is pretty nasty.

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Another Merlin post, this time a bit of a linkspam to articulate, well-thought out opinions, specifically concerning where Merlin falls through in gender and race issues.

How Not to Handle a Woman: The Problem(s) with Morgana

The White Mists of Avalon: Thoughts on Morgana's Race


And this, not on Merlin: [IBARW] It's not murder, it's a metaphor

Abstract: If you're going to argue about a text's metaphorical or allegorical representations of race, you may want to take a look at how it treats actual people of color before forming your conclusions about the subversion of racial stereotypes.

This includes huge problems I have with a frequent approach to supernatural genres: associating the plight of minority groups with the plight of supernatural beings that actually feed off of humans/are animals is actually pretty insulting in its own right.

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Aaaaand back to the subject of racist white women, Kirstie Alley trashes any esteem I had for her as a person after her protest of Polanski.

"becuz it is my observation that African Americans are more free and fun and light hearted, as are Italians..."

Oh, christ. Then she goes on to dig herself deeper and deeper. Next she throws a big, public temper tantrum over being called out. Good lord, what a child. What a sad, arrogant, petulant little child.


And to cap things off as completely depressing, here's this: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Inspires The Murder Of Children

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On Hating Female Characters.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about how many readers seem to hate female characters more than they hate male. Or rather that the same behaviour from a male character is okay but someone inexcusable in a female.

NO KIDDING. I read and enjoyed this post a while back, but a link popped up on my flist, and I returned to it and decided in light of some recent comments I'd read that it needs to be sung from the rooftops.

She also has a very good post here: The Advantages of Being a White Writer Highly recommended.

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Wow, I'm crossing 'Warehouse 13' off of my viewing list.

Warehouse 13 also treats the idea of history being powerful, dangerous, and relevant today as a crazy, fantastical notion. "Who would think that? Doesn't everyone know that the past is something we tear down and lock away in the attic to make room for the new?" Well, it turns out that not everybody does think that way. Especially people, like indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and other victims of imperialism throughout the world, who had their language and/or history and/or culture and/or lives forcibly removed by colonizing powers. A power like, say, the United States government.

An assessment of the artifacts shown therein.

Twilight vs Quileute legends: Where it points out that despite Meyer stating she was telling the truth, she just appropriated the name and lied her ass off. It describes the actual legends.

Pocahontas. Ohhh, Pocahontas. Too many issues with Disney's story to count, but this one does a pretty good job. And an analysis of the second movie, too. It's like The Other Boleyn Girl for racism.

Here is the Powhatan response to the Pocahontas myth.

We of the Powhatan Nation disagree. The film distorts history beyond recognition. Our offers to assist Disney with cultural and historical accuracy were rejected. Our efforts urging him to reconsider his misguided mission were spurred.

"Pocahontas" was a nickname, meaning "the naughty one" or "spoiled child". Her real name was Matoaka. ....The truth of the matter is that the first time John Smith told the story about this rescue was 17 years after it happened, and it was but one of three reported by the pretentious Smith that he was saved from death by a prominent woman.

Yet in an account Smith wrote after his winter stay with Powhatan's people, he never mentioned such an incident. In fact, the starving adventurer reported he had been kept comfortable and treated in a friendly fashion as an honored guest of Powhatan and Powhatan's brothers. Most scholars think the "Pocahontas incident" would have been highly unlikely, especially since it was part of a longer account used as justification to wage war on Powhatan's Nation.

Euro-Americans must ask themselves why it has been so important to elevate Smith's fibbing to status as a national myth worthy of being recycled again by Disney. Disney even improves upon it by changing Pocahontas from a little girl into a young woman.

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On one hand: very pretty.

On the other: ooh, white men go into space, land on alien planet, either do a full-body 'blueface' or steal a native's body so they can gather intel on natives, and then make war. Oh, and a beautiful ~exotic~ native woman is involved in a starcrossed romance! Oh, and by doing this they 'fix' a disabled person.

I am feeling sour over this.

Especially after reading that this twit:



...is bragging about getting to use a whitewashed film about a Chinese-American martial artist and inventor as his vehicle. Here's what Tommy Zhou should actually look like:



FAIL DETECTED. If anyone's curious, it looks like the entire four-issue comic is online, completely legit at Drunkduck.com

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Oh good god.

The Demise of Off Our Backs

An examination--brief--of classism and racism--extensive--within a 'radical' feminist organization. The racism is awe inspiring to behold, fountaining up in a mess of hot, frothing entitlement, malice and prejudice.

Basically, a WOC calls the racist white women on their racism, and one explodes in messy rage, spiteful, appalling and horrifically racist and sexist language, and apparently is now seeking to bring charges against her. (Excerpts in the first link.)

I'm ashamed to know they call themselves feminists.

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People are so astonishingly loath to admit their own culpability, even in an environment as constructive and undemanding as a classroom. (I'm sure I've suffered a kind of that reluctance in the past.) Are they simply so attached to their lofty perception of themselves as just and correct? The sheer ridiculous effrontery of a privileged person informing the oppressed that they are being 'over sensitive' if they note prejudice is almost hard to grasp. I'm left floundering as to how to speak to these people.

Can you really argue with someone who doesn't recognize logic?

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My fellow students in Multicultural class are extremely frustrating. One boy nearly pitched a fit over the idea that because he was born white, he was part of a racist system. The teacher pointed out that it was obvious that people of colour are affected by it by simple dint of birthright, but the boy was utterly determined to nonsensically deny anything that might give him any sense of responsibility or accountability. Two women in the space of moments made staggeringly sexist remarks that left me almost trembling with anger.

Give me a goddamn break.

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Little House on the Prairie: An in-depth, concise summary of all the many reasons that book should never be given to children.

I never read it. And boy, after reading this? I'm glad I never read it. Jesus. I'm pretty offended that it's still on the shelves in its untouched format.

I would not want my child to read Little House on the Prairie. I would shield him from the slights she slings upon his ancestors. They appear in her book only as beggars and thieves, and she adds injury to insult by comparing the Osages—who turned Thomas Jefferson’s head with their dignity and grace—to reptiles, to garbage or scum (depending on the definition of the word she actually uses). Mrs. Wilder assigns them descriptive adjectives that connote barbarism, brutality, and bloodthirstiness, and makes much ado about their odor. But she makes light of their obvious plight: In one passage, she describes almost mockingly the skeletal figures of two Osages who are fed cornbread by Ma, the eating noises they make and the pitiful sight of them stooping to eat specks of food they spot on the floor.

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The Dos and Don'ts of Being a Good Ally (Broader than Lambda, and more important than I can stress.)

fiction_theory: That's the problem with slacktivism, with the idea that you can sit back, make some nice nifty posts, put up a banner or two on your social networking pages, and suddenly you're as invested in the struggle as someone who lives it every day.

That's the difference between real allies and faux-allies. Real allies want justice. Faux-allies want cookies and fringe benefits and nifty buttons. They want quick, cheap rewards. Thus, faux allies get upset when they're told that the cookies are reserved for those who have gone hungry for decades, not for those who haven't missed a meal in their lives. Real allies just want to see people get fed so nobody goes hungry again.

kaigou: In which the dog invents a new term

Pop quiz! Name the moron who made this statement!

“I think it’s one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan.”

If you answered "Jackson Rathbone," you get a cookie! And thus, I hereby propose:

rathbone /ˈræθboʊn/ [rath-bohn] v.
1. To appropriate or fake membership in a minority group, based on a belief that such appropriation requires little effort to be sufficiently convincing: She thinks hair dye's all it takes to rathbone it.
2. To hoodwink, or be hoodwinked by, faked membership in a minority group: He totally rathboned the casting director.

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Human beings: they induce in me at once despair and admiration. Different human beings doing each, of course.

No, you can't time travel. But you can tell people something different happened, you can change perception. And in the human world? Perception is reality. What actually happened in the past takes a backseat to what we are told happened and what we believe happened. This is why our criminal justice system is so problematic, because when we put somebody on trial, we're not really making a decision on objective truth. We're making a decision on whether a jury believes the evidence is sufficient to put them in jail. Whether they actually did or did not commit that crime often doesn't matter.

It is not the past, but completely 100% objective truth, that is beyond anyone's reach. Which is why it is so incumbent upon us, if we know that none of us is going to be entirely accurate, to make sure that our inaccuracies aren't hurting anyone. That is why we must realize the limits of our perceptions, our realities, and do our best to make sure that our narrow views aren't costing someone else dearly.

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They are just so gosh darn cute.


Author makes an idiot of herself. Wow, lady, just...wow. First of all: no. Simply because you live in a happy, ignorant little bubble does not in any way mean you get to dismiss racism and sexism or pretend they don't exist/have nothing to do with you. I'm glad you feel very superior about your little boy's friends. I'm soooo glad you, as a person of privilege, feel race should not have attention drawn to it. It's so sad that this woman thinks gloating about how ~progressive~ she is gives her the right to make insensitive comments.

I'm thinking of a few comments of my own and hoping they didn't come off that way, because I sure didn't mean them that way. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem...

And her condescending remarks about the woman who discredited the whole 'Muse' thing not being a writer and so not understanding her ~Speshul Snowflake Divine Inspiration~ made me want to roll my eyes so hard.

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I really loathe it when authors put the fail out there where it will reach the public when real information might not.

A Critical Review of Ann Rinaldi's My Heart Is on the Ground: The diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl. I find this incredibly rage-inducing because we read about this in my IDS class, we read actual accounts, and they were heartbreaking. And this--this is just obscene.

ETA: For bonus gross: the author adds plagiarism to their list of accomplishments!

Then there's this: Seale and Dow essay on DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER, by Beth Kanell. This appalling piece of exploitative fiction is compounded upon by the author appearing to try to blame it all on the reviewers. Uh, what the hell?


I'm just going to go off and console myself with gazing upon Uhura, since I'm having trouble with actual episodes. (And her miniskirt. Damn those things were short!! I don't know whether to be exasperated--ETA: I am assured that the fashion was, indeed, that short. Rock on, impracticality. Rock on.--or just let my overheated brain gently dribble out of my ears as I die happy.)

I'd also like to direct you over here for an image comparison.

I've seen at least three people--and only three because I haven't involved myself in the discussion--whine self-importantly about how objecting to the casting is racist too! Oh you poor little white person, how dare anyone ask to be equally represented in the media! How dare they say that 90% white casts everywhere and all the time are unfair! Are your poor little self-righteously entitled feelings hurt? Boo hoo.

No, really. This is my sympathetic face. Come closer so I can punch you in the kidney.

On a happier note, I'd like to direct you the new Star Trek, Uhura, and why feminism and the struggles involved in it are different for white women and women of color A must-read.

This is why Tara in True Blood made me roll my eyes and black Bonnie in Vampire Diaries made me grit my teeth. They can't have an ethnic heroine, but they'll throw in a sidekick--in True Blood to enact some appalling ethnic stereotypes, in Vampire Diaries to obliterate the series' awesome supporting cast to make it more like Twilight--and I'm tired of it.