On slash and gender identity and Will Smith and God, I love my friends.

My friend Tolkienista and I just had an interesting conversation about slash and sexuality and whether or not it’s okay for slash authors (many of whom, if not all, are white cisfemale authors writing about cismen having sex with other cismen.)

I’m a white cisfemale bisexual woman living in large city, for the sake of this conversation. Tolkienista’s a friend of mine from grad school, and also a white gay cisgender man.

Tolkienista’s blog can be found here. http://tolkienista.wordpress.com/

On the Editing: I have marked the majority of my edits with [content changed brackets] to indicate changes. Places where […] is marked indicate spots were non-relevant or confusing bits of conversation happened- mostly going, “Oh, yeah, right, I see what you mean” etc etc, and I have removed them for the sake of flow. Other unmarked corrections for grammar and spelling occurred.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Tolkienista
I am wondering, for a moment, about slash. Because I just read a long tumblr thing from a woman who was sort of blistering about the HRC logos and then talks about being into writing slash.

Kitewithfish
Which she should be- [HRC] are kind of problematic in their complete domination of the discussion about gay rights

Tolkienista
No, I get that
[…]

Tolkienista
And I am just suddenly wondering about the ethical dimension of imagining and writing about the sexual experience of someone who is not "your people," in a very narrowly defined sense of the term.

Also, I think people are wrong when they say that the HRC dominates discussion of gay rights. I actually think that gay rights began to move forward a bit in the past five years as the HRC's rights-centric, steady-as-she-goes approach stopped being as popular among rank-and-file

But they are right when they say that the HRC is awful

so I consider it a wash.

Kitewithfish
I think there's something to be said for the problems of slash being an extension of patriarchal systems of thought

In that most of the authors are women, righting about sexual experiences in which there are no women.

And most of them DON'T go anywhere NEAR the gay issues properly
( Keep reading! )

Revamping the Resume, and "I Need a Chair."

Sterile proficiency is the hallmark of revamping my resume. It's not a creative task- in fact, it's a task that requires a certain inflexible uniformity, an awareness of the norms ands strict adherence to them. It's a miserable, soul grinding task. It's the skill of making oneself unobjectionable.

Also, I hate men in cafes. Not that I don't hate men in other circumstances. But in cafes it becomes obvious: men lack social graces. Women are cordial: Pardon me. Would you mind...? may I sit here? The subjunctive and the conditional abound, and all in all the pressure of other people's mind is gently soothed away by a clear signal: I mean no harm. Men are blunt: I need another chair. Is this space free? Not the slightest energy put into being anything than large and present and taking up as much space as they feel is their due.

I'm being harsh. There are plenty of thoughtful, gentle men and even traditional gentlemen who do not impose themselves unnecessarily on others.

But shit on a cinderblock, if you're going to ask for the other chair sitting empty at my table, could you please bother to do better than, "I need a chair." I don't care if you need a chair. I don't know you. I am unmoved by you. You are breaking my attention for the thing I am doing and offer no acknowledgment of that fact, much less an apology for the imposition.

Do better.






Note: Yes, I have encountered rude women. They are farther between by far than men. Women are generally obliged to apologize for our existence in a way men are not, and so "I'm sorry" comes to our lips far more readily in situations where it's even slightly called for. Rude women are generally specific and pointed in their rudeness, rather than blundering.

Melissa McEwan, may I cordially request that be permitted I have your awesome babies?

"I don't know how many times in how many different ways I can say this: Lecturing marginalized people on the ways in which they need to make privileged people more comfortable is not just failing to be a good ally; it is deeply hostile behavior that centers the comfort of the already-privileged. Maintaining one's comfort cannot be an objective of someone keen to shed hir privilege."

-Melissa McEwan
Go and read the rest of her post here: And Then This Happened. (Part umptyone of the ongoing documentation of movement atheism being jerks to women.)