Yo, this might be short, since I’m GETTING MARRIED TODAY. Hip hip.
Goblin Fruit celebrates its 20th AWESOME issue.
Disney Princess: Deconstructed. Again. And again. And again.
From SunlessNick: Uhhh. Public proposal? Awkward.
This is why you’re broke.
JT sends along No Longer Quivering, which talks about how toxic the Quiverfull movement is.
From MC:
Take a great film scene between men and recreate it with women:
Dude steals women’s identities to get their nude photos to blackmail them.
A prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than be arrested by one…
Check out this write up of the Tunisian Revolution!
From SockBonobo:
This is the first time in the magazine’s 88-year history that Weird Tales has had an all-female editorial/management staff.
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Oh, I was totally unclear – sorry. I meant to say: we use “male” and “female” to denote gender, and maybe we need a separate SET of terms to denote biological sexes. Like, I would be “Female” in terms of my assigned gender, but my sex would be “[some other term]” based on the fact that my chromosomes are whatever and my body has these parts rather than those.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Many congratulations, Maria! I wish you and your new spouse the best!
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
Starbuck was a great character. She was female, but the writers didn’t seem to feel the need to mute her personality traits to express this (or add in “feminine” or “nurturing” traits). Yes, she fell for her best friend… and slept with him, and then the day after married some other dude and proceeded to cheat on him with said best friend, eventually even openly. And she’s still the best pilot, she still kicks ass, she still does all these other things that Starbuck does. Even THAT behavior isn’t written as feminine or bitchy–she tells the Oracle she’s a massive fuckup, and the Oracle’s response is, “Who hurts everyone she cares about. That was your mother’s gift to you.” She’s kind of a self-destructive and dynamic character from the beginning.
Also, Bechdel test all over the place. But yes, BSG sort of fell off the horse somewhere in the third season, probably due to the writer’s strike, but I never felt like they failed Starbuck.
Shaun(Quote) (Reply)
Those terms already exist, for the most common sexes and genders, at least: female and male for sex, feminine and masculine for gender.
I agree that it would be useful to have conventional signifiers for the less-common sexes and genders. Thing is, since I identify and present as the most common case (female/ feminine), I am loathe to start making suggestions about how a persecuted minority to which I do not belong should be designated.
iiii(Quote) (Reply)
I would have loved to hear her say ‘I might have said yes, had you not pu me on the spot in front of all these people’.
I have that fantasy too.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Hee, I probably picked it up from you. I brought it up after the concert about 3 years ago on the forum and someone mentioned it would be great if the women in question said ‘I would have had you not pulled that stunt’ – ever since I’ve been longing to hear about that happening.
scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
And why exactly do you think that every human has to fit your narrow definitions of “man” and “woman”? God forbid that someone born with two x-chromosomes defines themself as male and asks of their parents to call them “son”…
Actually, then the character would STILL BE A MAN. Just a man played by a woman.
Bart Simpson isn’t female because he’s played by a female voice actor, and a trans man isn’t female because he has a female body and is played by a woman. If the point is that you’d like to see a character exactly like Jim Kirk, but a woman, then having a woman play the character but using terms like “son” *will* throw you out of it, because it implies that the character is still male, just a female-bodied male.
I mean, I’d love to see more trans people in media too, in positive ways (I am ready to go beat the crap out of everyone at Adult Swim on Cartoon Network for their mistaken belief that extreme transphobia is funny), but I don’t think it’s nearly as interesting to have James Kirk played by a woman but still be a man as it is to have Jane Kirk. A trans person as a starship captain is a cool idea, don’t get me wrong, but women are 50% of the population. I’m a lot more eager to see women in charge, acting like “the person in charge who just happens to be female”, than I am to see trans men or gay men, because of the difference between “5% of the population is unrepresented in this category” and “50% of the population is unrepresented in this category.” (It would be cool to have a trans woman or a gay woman, although those risk a certain other kind of fail, where it’s implied that she’s only a good captain because in some sense she’s “really” male or she’s more “masculine” than other women.)
Alara Rogers(Quote) (Reply)
Those could work, but that’s not how they’re explicitly or exclusively used (man/women, boy/girl are also used in unhelpful ways). Most people don’t even realize there’s any point differentiating between sex and gender. They think that somehow the biological assignation of a sex naturally flows into certain cultural roles for your gender, when in fact, that’s an extremely misleading view.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Actually, then the character would STILL BE A MAN. Just a man played by a woman.
Actually, no. The character might identify as male or transgender, but they could also define themself as bigender. Then this Jim wouldn’t be ‘a man’.
btw: I just found this blog entry titled ‘Lois Lane is Captain Kirk’ http://redboots.net/planet/?p=252
A quite interesting comparison that fits into our discussion.
M.C.(Quote) (Reply)
It could go either way really, it could be “literal”, as in a woman playing a male role like in Takarazuka theater or the character is a transman…I’m just spit-balling here.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
I think that depends on the ways in which Disney work is being deconstructed; especially when you’re talking about messages/relationship standards that are still being pushed as “romantic.” Seeing the deconstruction of the princes is a bit of a fresher take than deconstruction of the princesses, but I think being able to make a bulleted list is pretty neat to see, too.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
See, as an art/pop art/street art nerd, if I was involved with somebody who made something that spoke to me really deliberately in “coded” language/visuals (using your SO’s name is hardly coded or subtle, but it’s coded in that other people won’t interpret in the same way as the intended receiver of the message), I would really get a kick out of that.
But I’m also very private; I wouldn’t even want to be proposed to in front of my parents, let alone trapped in a claustrophobic screaming metal death trap in the sky with a bunch of strangers who are also my clients/customers. NOT COOL.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
I wasn’t too bothered by leaving in “Jim” and “son” (and even “father,” because oh yeah, I just went there), because I think it helps promote the analysis of the use of gendered expectations in writing and heteronormative cisgendered language/roles. I’m a big fan of “flipping the script” to analyze gender/sexuality/class/race/ethnicity/etc. roles as proscribed in mainstream media.
Another example of that that I thought was very well done was in the movie Across the Universe, where a scene opens up with Prudence, a cis, femme, Asian-Am cheerleader singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” As the camera progresses throughout the number, it’s revealed that instead of pining after the quarterback framed in the opening shot, she is really singing about her head cheerleader (who was in the same shot), and the “Oh please / say to me / you’ll let me be your man” line was left as is… when it occurred before the “reveal.” No lyrics from any songs were changed for the movie, but I thought that it was an interesting way to use the tools at your disposal to send a message without being too heavy-handed.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
Doesn’t that terminology already exist, though? Cis(man/woman), Bio(man/woman)– though I prefer not to shorten that so everyone knows I’m speaking based on chromosomes and genitalia, and I usually just say “biologically male/female”– Butch vs Femme (referring to the social constructs of masculinity vs femininity), Genderqueer, Metrosexual, Androgyne, ftM/mtF & Transman/woman…
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
“Bigender” is an awesome term and I love it and I’m using it in the future, btw. It’s much better (and less aggressively… I don’t want to say exhibitionist, but performative?) than “genderfuck” at expressing the blurring of typical gender lines while not being a traditional transsexual/cis/drag/transvestitism role.
WHICH, by the way, I hate every time it comes up on RuPaul’s Drag Race, because often the drag performers on the show are reeeeally transphobic, though it’s cut from the episodes generally and shown in the “behind the scenes” separate show feature immediately after each episode of Drag Race.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
I wasn’t *bothered* per se. Like I said, it would just be nice to see female sexed-and-gendered people in roles like Kirk’s, acknowleging them as women yet with none of the usual bullshit attached to Women’s Roles.
When I see that scene played completely straight by 2 women, it really drives home some of the ridiculous things they do to actresses as women. For example, the camera did not once pan up “Jim’s” body nor linger anywhere “sexy”. Neither women “performed” sexy, either by facial expression, speech or body language, for the camera and a presumed straight male audience. “Jim’s” face was non-sexily bloodied and she drank and sat in a non-”sexy” way. The bartender did not, for example, stand in such a way as to push her cleavage up; she did not roll her shoulders forward suggestively. Little changes make all the difference.
PS When I sing a karaoke song orginally by a man to a woman, I do not change the lyrics either. I sing as a woman singing to another woman, because I don’t need to make it all heteronormative, even though I am actually straight. It can raise some eyebrows at my (conservative) family gatherings. Why, yes, I am the black sheep of the family!
JT(Quote) (Reply)
Oh, yeah, definitely! That’s what I meant, that the gender/sex reversal without changing the script draws attention to the change BECAUSE more “male” roles for women (and more “female” roles for men) are needed/desired in mainstream media. (Also, Pike’s not a bartender. He was at the bar because Kirk got into a barfight with another member of Starfleet; Pike’s actually a captain. WHICH IS STILL AWESOME.
)
And the first time I heard “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” it WAS with changed lyrics, but it was also a really crappy pop cover that was put on a CD for the Sailor Moon dub, which had its own issues with changing character gender/sex, their presentation of such, and sexuality that was readily apparent even to casual viewers. The dubs are really, really, bad on their own even without the dramatic cuts and rewrites, though. The shows/comic unedited does/did some really interesting and progressive things regarding homosexuality and transsexual identity, represented equally in “good” and “bad” characters and not as “good” or “bad” traits (though characters I’m interpreting as trans may actually be characters who are perceived to be of a different gender than they identify, since Sailor Moon translation has been pretty inconsistent; and I know in the manga-to-anime transition, at least three female characters who lived in drag as men were changed to actually shift gender in their “transformation sequences” to be less confusing). Even the live action show did a decent job with gender expression… I can’t speak for the musicals, though.
/irrelevant ’90s side rant
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
Something that bugged me about Sailor Moon is that for the most part lesbians were good guys and gay men were usually bad guys…I must admit I DID CRY when I finally watched the original uncensored first season in Japanese and Zoicite died…WHY DOES GAY LOVE HAVE TO BE SO TRAGIC, HUH~!?!?! (at least Fish’s Eye got to live in Mamoru’s aquarium)
I also wondered if “NO MAN CAN BECOME A SENSHI SO WHY THE FUCK DID YOU CHANGE THE STARLIGHTS” (according to Word of God) was maybe trans-phobic?…but this also reminded me of an episode about a little boy who practiced kendo that’s so inspired by the Senshi that he dressed in a seifuku in their honor (and of course they changed him into a girl in the English dub…ARGH).[/brain fart]
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
You know, now that I’m thinking about it, yeah, most all the homosexual men were some kind of evil character… the only exception I can think of is in the live action adaptation of Sailor Moon, where Usagi’s mother’s best friend is an incredibly flamboyant show business guy who also works with Minako (who is a pop star in that version), and that the Shitennou are all redeemed; it really only covers SM/SMR territory, and it deviates from the manga and anime plots rather dramatically after a while, so no Starlights or Outer Senshi. There is also an Evil Pseudo-Lesbian, who claims she’s in love with Usagi to cover for her obsessive stalking and abusive behavior (in the show, she’s portrayed as a schemer and liar, plus, later character information reveals her to be a sort of projection of Queen Beryl intent on kidnapping Mamoru, so: definitely not true) but Usagi is very chill about it and still wants to be friends. The only reason Minako (who brought the behavior up in the first place) seemed pissed is because it was unsafe to keep the other girl around and her plan to dissuade Usagi from hanging out with her didn’t work. But PGSM is very different from all the other iterations of Sailor Moon, and actually had a lot more direct influence from Takeuchi, so idk?
Even in the Sailor Moon R movie, the character Fiore (an alien symbiote guy who’d been nursing a childhood crush on Mamoru for years) is villainous primarily because of his actions due to his obsession with Mamoru. But I don’t know if that’s just because Mamoru usually has Dangerous Potential Love Interests and everyone wants in his pants, as evidenced above.
Regarding the Starlights, I had always thought that maybe it was that the TV producers had, like, met their Lesbian Threshold and wanted more dudes in the show? Or more conflict for the Mamoru/Usagi pairing? The same way I didn’t question that the show was SO girl-centric that most guys were just going to be Bad (even if that badness was “competing for the same boyfriend”), I didn’t question whether or not a lot of the manga-to-anime edits (inserting male love interests for many of the female characters when in the comics there was usually a heavy emphasis on the girls’ friendships/devotion to each other) were coming from the same place as the Americanized edits re: sexuality/gender expression. I don’t know enough about Japanese culture to make any kind of informed statement on the differing cultural or personal attitudes that influenced those decisions, though.
Nice catch!
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
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