The Problem With Higher Standards

Sometimes I miss being ignorant of both my privilege and my oppression.

I went to see two movies this summer: Pacific Rim and Two Guns. I enjoyed both of them and went to see Pacific Rim two more times after I first watched it. And despite liking both movies, I couldn't help feeling disappointed. Maybe disappointed is too strong a word; perhaps 'dissatisfied' would be more accurate.

Both have lead characters who are POC (though none of them are a sole lead; they all share the spotlight with white dudes). Pacific Rim also has a female character as an action protagonist. She gets her own narrative arc that is about her development, rather than supporting the development of a male character.

Spoilers below.

---

Another friend wanted to see Two Guns after we'd already watched it once. And I just... I knew I wasn't going to enjoy it a second time. The first time through, the clever dialogue and the chemistry between Denzel and Marky Mark was enough to get me past the painfully hackneyed racial and gender tropes: a Mexican drug lord who is in cahoots with the CIA! domestics and thugs! and of course there's one female character who is of any significance and what happens? she gets fridged.

Ugh.

And I was just so bummed about it, because like... I want to be able to spend time with this friend, but I feel like no matter what I do, I'm excluded. Either I tag along and suffer through a movie that I'm not happy about and keep my mouth shut so everyone else can have fun, or I stay home by myself while everyone else has fun.

I'm tentatively hopeful about Saving Mr. Banks, though.

Another FemFreq Video!

After yesterday's rambling post, here's one that's nice and succinct!

Perhaps you're already familiar with Anita Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency, but if not, you totally need to check it out. Because if you're reading this (*crickets*) you're probably interested in critical analysis. There's a fascinating push-pull between a culture and its created works -- or should that be 'between created works and their culture'? Analysis is a way of looking at the individual pieces of each and how they fit together and how one piece perhaps influences others, and it's super intriguing.

Anyway, Sarkeesian recently produced the third video in her series Tropes vs. Women:

And -- big surprise here -- it's fantastic. May I say that I even love her outfit? I love that she wears a blue-and-pink (maybe salmon, but hey, that's a pink tone by my reckoning) plaid shirt. Is it a metaphor or just happy coincidence? I don't know, but it's awesome! And the familiarity of it just makes me smile. It reminds me of Mr. Rogers hanging up his jacket and putting on his cardigan. It's like, "yay, here's Anita again in her comfy shirt, and she's going to be calm and clever and just a wee bit adorably snarky."And she always is.

So you should watch the video!! Check out part 1 and part 2 if you haven't already seen them.

Reflecting on Mary Sue

So I followed a link to this post on tumblr and it got me thinking (again) about Mary Sues. And then I was putzing around over on the ffn forums and saw this topic and its discussion and it got me thinking even more. So here's what I said:

First of all, I'm gonna say that I don't like the term Mary Sue for two reasons.

(A) It's been used so much to slander characters for so many different reasons (too many strengths, too few flaws or flaws that do not seem proportionate to the character's strengths, too unique [how is this even … ugh, that phrase is an offense to Standard English!] too easily successful, unlikely connections with significant canon characters - the list goes on) that it currently feels like a catchall slur for "I don't like this character and I'm too lazy to go into specifics."

(B) It's sexist. Let's say there's an idea for a new dude character with a tragic background that recalls the protagonist's own, world-class athletic ability, a rare hair color / eye color / complexion combination that matches the protagonist's, starts as an adorable, witty sidekick who softens the protagonist's hard heart, and grows into a freaking sex god who leads a team of superheroes despite being a vanilla mortal, because he's just THAT good… If this idea is pitched by a dude to a dude, not only is it not immediately scrapped, it might actually be accepted for publication and given its own series!

Dick Grayson, I love you, but you're a Mary Sue by anyone's reckoning.

And this was decades before the actual "Mary Sue" was ever written. I don't think it's remotely coincidental that the name we use to denote a type of character who is near-universally despised and mocked comes from a female character in a story with a female author.

---

The key to a character being labeled a Mary Sue is that the character's traits -- abilities, good looks, popularity and success -- seem unbelievable. It's kind of sad that despite having made significant progress in gender equity (women are allowed to own property! YEAH!) it's still much easier to believe in a man being competent, handsome, popular and successful than in a woman having those same qualities.  But I guess that's only reasonable, as it's a sad but honest reflection of our current cultural reality. Overall, women have to work much harder than men and accomplish more than their male peers to achieve a commensurate level of respect or even acknowledgement.

Further, traits that are typically coded female -- a focus on beauty, popularity, and romance -- are the ones that get the most heavy vilification from the anti-Sue critics. I doubt that this is a coincidence, either.

Finally, there are plenty of over-the-top characters that I enjoy despite (and perhaps even because of?) their Sue-ness. Dick Grayson is one, definitely, but also Jacky Faber and Kvothe, to name a couple others off the top of my head. Interestingly enough, the latter two are both redheads, and I can't remember but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if Kvothe had violet eyes.

So love your Sues! Give 'em hell, sure, but love them through it all.

Image credit: Mary Sue Academy on deviantArt

RE the "Fake Geek Girl" meme

So I've been surfing around The Mary Sue - I think somebody linked to a post about Xena - and ended up reading several articles about this meme, and their comment threads. It got repetitive very quickly.

The remarks that kept returning over and over and over were the following:

• the "fake geek girl" meme isn't intended to apply to all girls who are geeks, just those who are posers
• some girls dress hot at cons without knowing a lot of facts about the character/series/other characters/other media
• "fake geek girls" give "true fans" a bad rep
• some girls pretend to be into geekish works so that they can get attention from guys
• people shouldn't have to "prove" their status as a fan

But what I didn't see much of was pushback on how one proves one's status as a "real fan" - apparently, by knowing a lot of stuff about the work in question, from the characters to the plot events to the in-work shoutouts to other works, to even knowing details about the creators and the other works they've been involved with. It's apparently a big deal among nerds if you can name all of the [insert character title here]. 

For all that science fiction is considered a geeky medium, knowing a bunch of facts seems an awfully old-fashioned kind of cred. I mean, with a wealth of information literally at most people's fingertips, how is keeping that same information in your head a mark of status anymore? It seems like an awful waste of time, to be honest. And it's not like it makes the world a better place. Fact-spewers haven't added anything to the continuum of human creation, nor does their memorization lend itself to shared experience. Instead of conversation that fosters a deeper relationship with others, these infodumps lend themselves more to competition, isolating each lonely nerd even further as he attempts to prove that he knows more, can recite more.

Yeegh.

Why isn't there the assumption that real fans - hardcore fans - are fans who create? Roleplays, character memes, art of every nature and description, fanfic, playlists... COSPLAY. Dear lord, the cosplay. These are things that can be shared with others, that add to the collective experience of the fandom. The value of a bunch of memorized facts shrivels in comparison.

So the next time some dudebro asks me if I actually know who the original X-Men were, instead of either blowing him off or trying to prove I'm a fan by letting him interrogate me, I'll redirect and ask him what fanart he's drawn lately. Or what costume he's planning to wear later on. No? Well, fanfic, then. What's your handle on AO3? dA? FFN? ... what do you mean, you don't know what those are? Jeez, next you're gonna tell me you don't even have a tumblr!

I'll try to resist the temptation to accuse him of being a "fake geek guy," though it might be difficult. But if he's not a complete loser, hopefully he'll be able to recognize that there are many more ways of being a fan than he'd originally thought.

Good Habits - August 26

So some of the comments on an EC Ning post brought up some really painful memories. We live in the Deep South, and while back north of the Mason-Dixon line I was slightly right of the area's center, here I am apparently a liberal heathen. For the most part, I just suck it up and soldier on, because I don't know how to do otherwise with any grace.

I would hope that, if I were an area where my views weren't on the fringe, I would still retain an awareness that there are those to whom they seem preposterous. I know that I don't understand, for example, what it means to be ... racially oppressed, I guess, comes the closest to what I mean. I've lived in places where I was a racial minority, but even there being white meant privilege.

I'm not apologizing for it. I am who I am, and if it's not something I can change, I'm not going to waste time moping about it. Privilege is awfully nice. It's nice to feel valued. It's nice to truly believe that what you say, or do, really matters. It's nice to have agency.

Tangent: haven't heard back yet from the salon where I ordered my purple wig. I really really really hope it comes in today or tomorrow! I sooo want to wear it for the hafla tomorrow night!

Back to the point: There are many ways in which I'm privileged. Most of them, in fact. But one instance in which I've missed it is in being female in a subtly patriarchal culture. In this area, it is taken for granted that women are supposed to want marriage and children. It is taken for granted that men are the primary breadwinners, and that a woman's work outside the home is secondary to her role as primary caregiver. It astounds and horrifies me that people (can) say that as a wife, the only decisions I should make are those that my husband delegates to me.

Other than that, I love living where I do.

I am absolutely overwhelmed with the revamping plus having three preps at once. I feel like I'm always behind. I'm always tired - not physically exhausted, or sleepy, just tired. It's not too bad. But there's always an undercurrent of stress. There is just SO MUCH to do. I don't have a sub for tomorrow. I spent most of my planning time calling and leaving the same damn message. It was incredibly frustrating, because there is so much other stuff to do. AURGH! Photo day is coming up and I'm scared because we've got a new photography company and I don't know quite what to expect.

And Pipsqueak is not working. ONCE AGAIN! I get so tired of this crap. It's absolutely ridiculous. So do I NOT write and just go police the room? Or do I write with them, which is what everyone says I should be doing? The quickwrite I assigned them was about their ideal day. Pip was also supposed to come by yesterday for detention and did NOT. So I guess I get to write him up. Woo.

My ideal day would be one in which I woke up and found that everything had been arranged already. Photo shoots had already been scheduled, the whole way through the year. Lesson plans were all transferred over onto the inconvenient form that our administration makes us use. All of the messages left for me with questions about senior portrait retakes had already been answered. All my announcements had been turned in to the front office. All of our ads had been sold for both the newspaper and the yearbook. All students had ordered and paid for a book and had already received their receipts. All of the students in my classes had completed their homework and turned it in and it was already graded.

"Overwhelmed" only BEGINS to describe it. I don't particularly want to go to bellydance tonight. Right now I just want to go home and vegetate. I want to tell this class to just read for the entire period. I don't want to bother with lesson planning. I'm tired of students trying to squeeze two extra minutes - the pass says you're excused at 1:45, kiddo, I'll let you out of the room when the clock says 1:45 and not a moment before.

Some days make me wonder...

Good Habits - August 22

Oh dear. It's already Sunday. Well, fortunately the only things I have planned are getting my head the rest of the way shaved, going out to eat, and creating lessons for Journalism I and a schedule for Journalism II. And maybe working on the list of panels I want to go to at NCTE.

No church today, though that means we will probably field some calls this afternoon. I wish I knew where my phone was.

I've been up for awhile reading blog posts and I'm going to go ahead and use one of my comments as the rest of my freewrite. So there. And then I'm going to go brush my teeth because I think I didn't. I did have breakfast - a leftover chicken strip and a roll, and a bowl of oatmeal... and a bunch of candy corn. Not my fault, though; the Hunk left them over here by the computer and they are SO TASTY!!

So I read a post on Courtney's blog about how female geeks tend to self-label, and an earlier one that it linked to. Go read those first, then come back here.

---

Are you done yet?

---

Okay. So this is what I said:

I'm sure I'm going to think about this more, but I wanted to go ahead and comment while it was fresh in my brain. (I got here from Courtney's link, btw.)

Labeling female groups as 'girls' tends to be less threatening than 'women.' But what I'm hearing is "oh, we don't want to upset da menz!" and I think there's a LOT more to it than that, though perhaps not consciously.

Part of it is possibly due to the dominant culture's idolization (idealization? maybe both?) of youth. It's like we're trying to balance out the black mark of being female, or saying "being female isn't bad, see? I'm young and cute and fun!"

Additionally, females in ages past had incredibly limited opportunities, and so girlhood today is in many ways about all the opportunities available to females that weren't there before. 'Girl power' stuff often clarifies this - the "girls can do anything!" idea. But as we age, we make choices. We say, "I'm going to do this instead of that." We trade out opportunity for expertise. I tend to think expertise trumps opportunity, but I don't see it being lauded the way it perhaps should be. And of course it doesn't help that expertise in women tends to be valued less than it is in men. :(

But most significantly I take issue with the idea (and I think I felt this more in Courtney's post) that self-labeling as 'girls' rather than 'women' is less subversive. I just flat-out disagree. I think the opposite is true: because the word 'girl' implies less power, it is less openly aggressive, yes. But open aggression is kind of the opposite of subversion.

In the war against privilege (particularly male privilege, in this case) girls are the scouts and spies. They can infiltrate the base and even ingratiate themselves. It is more 'womanly' to challenge a man about a privileged statement by saying "that's misogynistic and hateful;" it is more 'girly' to say "when you posted that, it made me feel bad. I wish you wouldn't."

Both tactics can be effective. And if we want to change the culture, why should we limit ourselves to one or the other?

I'm a feminist, but I prefer to be subversive. In some ways, it's easier: instead of taking a stand ahead of time, you get to bide your time until privilege rears its ugly head to you personally. Of course, there's usually not a lot of time to bide... ;)