Here’s a neat bit of doublethink I’ve never been able to comprehend. I live in a culture which informs me:

Men are natural leaders, and therefore should run countries, corporations and households. Women in charge would just do whatever their PMSing hormones made them want to do, and Men are ruled by their hormones, can’t help themselves, so it’s the job of women to avoid provoking men into raping us, cheating on us, or hitting us.

How does that work? Let’s follow the ...Read More

This is not reassuring. Talented director and writer Kathryn Bigelow has been nominated for the Best Director Acadamy Award. In fact, the film for which she’s nominated got the same number of Oscar nominations as James Cameron’s Avatar. This is fantastic because she deserves it, because only three other women have ever had this nomination, and none of them won it. My fingers are crossed.

But there’s a problem. Bigelow was once married to Cameron. They divorced in 1991. And yet:

Or ...Read More

When I was in my early twenties, I told a young white guy how sick I got of all (non chick-flick) movies being mostly populated by white men, with other types of people only showing up as sidekicks, romantic interests or acknowledgments of how gosh-darn difficult it was not to be a white man. His initial response was,”Oh, god, why does everything have to be politically correct?”

At the time, I was naive. I didn’t realize how prevalent bigotry still was ...Read More

CBS has decided to run an ad for fundamentalist Christian group “Focus on the Family”, in which Pam Tebow discusses how she ignored doctors’ advice to have an abortion:

The ad… is expected to recount the story of Pam Tebow’s pregnancy in 1987 with a theme of “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.” After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child and gave birth to Tim, who went on to ...Read More

I should warn you up front I’ve never watched the modern Dr. Who series, just because I always wanted to see it from the beginning. Now that what remains of the show from the early ’60s is available on DVD (some episodes were taped over, as was the policy at the BBC then!), I’ve been watching the early years with William Hartnell. I’m impressed with the show overall, but one character really stuck out: Barbara Wright.

Barbara, Ian and Susan are ...Read More

I recently got to see all of the 1978-1981 British sci-fi series, Blake’s 7 on Region 2 format, which is the only way it’s available right now, unfortunately. It looks like your typical Star Wars era cheesy sci-fi, but the overall tone is more 1984. It’s also a clear antecedent for many shows that came later – Farscape and Firefly/Serenity, to name two.

Blake’s 7 is not perfect on the gender front; it even plays with a few tropes that ...Read More