A particularly insightful article by a blogger here got me to thinking quite a lot lately. More importantly it got me to writing and the subsequent post has ended up serving as my introduction in returning to blogging with my partner here.
I’ve had the good fortune of being a cis gendered male born into a wealthy western country. Even though I began life in one of the poorest corners of that nation, I count myself fortunate in many ways. Read more
I replied to a post on Jezebel regarding the ‘outing’ of Amanda Todd’s alleged blackmailer:The only problem is… what if it isn’t him? What if he’s just some guy getting caught in the crossfire who never did anything to her, and now he has vigilantes threatening to kill him?
I’m not personally okay with vigilante violence/action. I’d be okay with outing people like this if we were absolutely certain, but we’re not. Unless there’s a police investigation, we can’t be certain, and I kind of wonder if this will interfere or bias the police. Perhaps they had another suspect but stop pursing them in favour of this man, and the real perpetrator is let free.
I just think it’s very important, when talking about exposing people online, that we be very careful we don’t get so caught up in outing someone that it no longer matters who we out. It’s easy to ruin an innocent person’s life, too.
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
I left this comment on a local website in response to a sexual assault and the fact that 69% of voters in a poll feel that women aren’t doing enough to protect themselves from date rape drugs.
The other night I went over to a friend’s place and was introduced to someone new. It turns out that we had worked for the same company, and he mentioned the owner’s name. I said he was a sweet man, and he asked if I was joking, saying the man had no heart. I said I found him to be excellent and that he spoiled me for Christmas when I worked there.
Anastasia Steele is a much talked about character. She is the lead female protagonist of the popular 50 Shades of Grey, and people absolutely love calling her a Mary Sue.
You might not like her, or understand what Christian Grey sees in her, or feels that something in 50 Shades of Grey wasn’t really what you wanted it to be. You might find it hard to empathize or sympathize with her, or that her story is hard to believe. But none of that makes Anastasia Steele a Mary Sue.
There’s a lot of splintering in feminist groups. Feminist seems like a bad word, even to women and men who want equal rights and equal pay for the genders. Even to those that agree there is a patriarchy and that we should work to dismantle it. Even to those who agree that the way we treat each other, and our daughters, and our sons, is shameful.
It’s no hidden truth that certain things in our world are gendered. Barbie dolls are for girls. Big trucks are for boys. Dresses are for girls. Blue is for boys. Pink is for girls.
These are not universal truths, and have not always been truths, of course. Not long ago, men wore tights and dressed their boys in pink and let them have curly hair. Now we wonder what doing something like that will do to our children’s self esteem and several schools have banned male students from having long hair, dressing in a feminine manner, etc.
Trigger warning for discussion of sex work.
There was a thread earlier on Literotica talking about prostitution, why it was illegal, and what that meant. Someone said the problem was that some women didn’t have a choice but to sleep with people for food to feed their family.
As defined on TVTropes.org,
“Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. Above all, a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, a linguistic idiom… you know it when you see it.”
Last year, Feminist Frequency did a video about The Evil Demon Seductress trope.
Lost Girl is a show I wish I had known about a year ago. Smart, interesting, and with a very talented cast, it’s an urban fantasy with humans and ‘fey’, which come in different varieties. Most are based in fairytales, legends and urban myths. The main cast includes a succubus, a human, a siren, and a werewolf. Other types of fey have included witch doctors, naga, etc.
