Post for the Bored III

This'll be my last linkspam for a while. I went on a bit of a craze over the last few days.

Trigger warning: the majority deal with the issue I'm thinking most about at the moment, and that's feminism/Rape Culture/gender disparity. So there.

Anyone who thinks sexism is not an issue is thoroughly idiotic.

FIRST:

Why Team Jacob Always Has to Lose in Twilight. I am no fan of Twilight, books or films. The only good thing that Twilight brought to the world is an onslaught of criticism of Meyer and a bunch of making fun of the shitty series, most awesomely Cracked, where there is a lot of criticism on the saga. This article brought something new to the argument that I hadn't thought of, and that is WHY Bella has to end up with Edward and why Jacob cannot be her twue luv. While I have many issues with the character Jacob and his shapeshifting band of Native Americans (they can shift because American Indians are in touch with nature! They are one with wolves! I see what you did there, Stephanie Meyer), I had MORE issues with why the hell he would want BELLA. She's obnoxious. Poor kid.

Why Crime Novelists Don't Get Women. By author Christopher Rice. It's always AWESOME to have men speak about this issue, and his article is great. It's a well-written rant about the absurdity of four major crime-lit women stereotypical characters that piss him (and me) off.

What Would An All-Female Expendables Look Like? I LOVE this post. It's awesome. I would love to see this as a real movie. I love kick-ass women, and I love action movies. Best of both worlds! I still need to see The Expendables, but I am looking forward to when I do. :)

So I'm Pretty? That Doesn't Oblige Me To Sleep With You. This sort of thing is not even limited to just this. If I am drawing something, and someone comments that they like it, and would I draw something for them? No. No I won't I have limited time. I hardly know you. Why should I spend any of my time on you when all you did was say a few words? But it's a LOT worse when the "complimentor" is expecting you to respond to their unwanted sexual advances with sex as though you should be grateful that they took the time to notice you exist.

Nnedi's Wahala Zone Blog. Nnedi Okorafor is one of my new favorite authors. She is an author of Nigerian descent, and writes with a very intriguing and awesome sort of African-culture-filled-ness that was ENTIRELY amazing to me. She's a Professor of Creative Writing at a Uni in Chicago. The novel of her's that I read was "Who Fears Death," which I would describe as a post-apocalyptic Harry Potter meets Moolade, only completely not. It really struck a cord with my privileged-white-female-in-need-of-becoming-culturally-aware side, as well as my love of fantasy, scifi, and postapocalyptic tales. I adored the characters. I am having trouble coming to terms with the ending, which usually means that when I reread it in a few months I will love it even more. Nnedi is just a super-aware, super-smart person and I love her blog. A lot. As I finish my novel I may try to write her to get advice on my character, Norcross (Rachel Norcross), a black vampire lesbian who was sold into slavery as a human to a vampire in the mid-1700's New Orleans, turned into a vampire by her master, then killed him, then was shunned by vampire society for many years for killing the man who "made" her. Anyway, being a little white ginger in Colorado makes me very nervous about writing characters of such a drastically different background. Yup.

Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University. A large part of "Who Fears Death" is the issue of female genital mutilation. Which is, across the board, a horrendous practice for no reason other than to keep women subjugated, often by each other. This story is horrible and highlights the fact that these sorts of practices are NOT just the "primitive" practices of backwards tribes and men in Faraway Places like many people think. This is Cornell fucking University. USA. And it's awful. And yet another mark on the "misogyny is still rampant" side of the chart.

Are We There Yet? The question asked and answered in this article about sexism in the USA. The answer? No. No, we're not. But we're working on it. And we need to continue to work on it. Maybe someday.

But we are making some slow progress. Here is a very very nice letter from a fraternity denouncing the notion that if girls in college go to a party, they are saying they want sex (and are therefore "asking for it" if raped.)  Asking to Be Raped? We Don't Think So. Thanks, boys, you rock.

Then there's this: RidiculousTips For a Miserable Sex Life.

AND FINALLY:

Why It's Wrong to Equate Military Service to Heroism. I wrote about this in a previous post, in which I state that: "the ACLU fights more for my personal freedom than soldiers in the US military." I fully stand by that, across the board. I mentioned that the only time I thought a war was justified or the soldiers WERE fighting for my freedom was World War II, which was questioned by my (single) commenter, Cynthia (thanks, Cynthia! Sorry I hardly ever respond. I suck). And, well, thinking on it more after that made me feel more strongly that they were. See, WWII was not a war America wanted to get into. in fact, it seems like one of the only wars we openly resisted getting into until our hands were "forced" by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The reason I see this war as being an instance in which fighting in the war was better than not fighting in the war as far as my personal freedoms were concerned, despite the ATROCIOUS THINGS we did during the war (internment camps for the Japanese, the atomic bombs, etc), is the fact that, as opposed to the hypothetical snow-ball effect that people thought would happen with communism, Nazi Germany and japan and Italy were not going to stop their conquest with some countries just to leave ours be for a future of peaceful coexistence. Unlike Iraq, which was not taking over a continent, we had real reason to fear Nazi Germany. We had tangible reason to fear the Japanese (they freaking bombed us, btw, preemptively [and I hate preemptive action more than most things]). So what does that have to do with this article? Not a whole bunch, beyond the label of hero. There have only been a couple people I have known who I would call heroes, and none of them gained that label in an act of war or during service in the military. Because being sanctioned by the government to kill other people is not heroic.

That's all for now, folks!