The ghost of dead oil magnates wander the halls of this institution, whispering in scholarly ears to strive till their legs cramp and their eyes water, that there is never an "enough" to anything in the halls of this institution, that there is no escape.

Only not right now.

This portion of a post from healingmirth got me thinking about career women in media these days.
"...but I'm not sure I can handle another hour of the.... and the hardworking "hilariously" uptight woman who's been ripped from her planned and promising career path without any explanation. I have a sinking feeling that in the second half her tragic past will be revealed as the reason she threw herself into her work, and that she just needs someone to heal her heart."

This reminded me of a comment I left on a postabout the upcoming film Morning Glory, which also looks like it features a young career woman who will lose it all and find that she needs to get out of her office to fulfill her life and/or find that an unexpected problem that distracts her from work contains more meaning to her than her career.*

I keep getting this feeling like all these movies don't want women to succeed. These career women so often seem to find that they are unhappy in their jobs, or that something unexpected will happen that will make their happy jobs disappear or force them to leave it.**

Your job is probably not going to be the most rewarding part of your life. For some people, it is, and that's a wonderful opportunity to have in your life. But much more often, even a good job is challenging and difficult and will have parts that you really hate. So the fact that these career women are shown as finding their jobs less than fulfilling is not a bad message- it's realistic to a point, and the message is not bad. But the fact that the message seems to be sent so much more often using a female character, (with whom presumably, women in RL are more able to relate, and men in RL may have problems relating) suggests that this is something women need to hear more. If women worked more often out of the home than men, or if there were a prevailing stereotype of woman as the provider, then this message would be a great thing to target at women- progressive and thoughtful, even.

But that's not the case. There are more men with full time work than women. In most companies, there are more men in higher positions than there are women in higher positions. But, regardless of numbers, the normative gender roles show women's careers as less important than men's. Women in film cannot find fulfillment in their jobs, because they are supposed to be fulfilled by other, more feminine things. And TV and movies are showing that in these characters, and that, frankly, bugs the hell out of me.

Because I am currently living a life that is about the kind of scholar I want to be, and yes, that is my job. It's also my calling, and the most intellectually satisfying thing that's happening in my life. I have made is explicit with my Significant Other that school comes first, and he agrees, because he is doing the same thing. And if something came along and disrupted that part of my life, I would not "move on." I would come back, brandishing my fists, and get back to doing my job, because it's a big honking important thing in my life.


Footnotes-
* I posted at the time that overall, the idea that you need to get a life beyond your highpowered career, is itself not bad, but I notice it being played a lot with female character and not so much with male, and the discrepancy bothers me.
** Am I the only one who sees this as a pregnancy metaphor? Suddenly and unexpectedly having to leave your present life behind because of some gigantic change that you don't really expect and don't have much time to prepare for? That sounds like your birth control failed.

I have recently discovered little sticky Post-It notes made of plastic. They are AMAZING when you want to keep easy track of several concepts in a book while taking notes for later reference. I mean, right now I am keeping an eye out for "ground of being," "Method of Correlation" and "process thought" in Tillich, and I have a little colored sticky note for each concept, and it's kind of a perfect way of being able to really quickly reference things. I'm still taking notes, writing in the margins, using a colored pencil to highlight words, and now I have these little sticky tabs.

I begin to think that I will not even try to resell these books. I've done too much to them as it is . I need to keep them.

In the past two days, I have had two presentations, a great epiphany on author, a great epiphany on another author that I will now be incorporating in my paper, and also gotten a pretty good night's sleep most nights.

Left to do:
Two papers about 20 pages each, some of which can be totally moved from one paper to another and incorporated in both. Life is good. I will be eating porkchops and mushrooms with my boy this evening.

has a certain anticipatory charm to it.

Currently, I am waiting for:

Greg Rucka's No Man's Land novelization- I've read this before, and it's a lovely, complex read that gives depth and scope to the characters in the Batman-centric crossover, No Man's Land. Great Two-Face characterization and really interesting look at Jim Gordon's brain. I keep meaning to read the trade paperbacks of NML that preceded the writing of this, but I'm content at the moment to wait for this plain-text version.

Handmade soap- I bought a very large lump of handmade soap from an online vendor with a startlingly barebones site (we're talking geocities-level, here). I will post more on it when it arrives, but it should be here this week or early next.

Matcha- The last year I was at my undergrad, Swelles (not the real name), I got a free canister of decent powdered matcha green tea, which is incredibly strong and yet has no unfortunate aftereffects like jitteriness. I've been missing it recently, so I decided to buy some. That will probably show up sometime after finals ends, but that's okay, really.

Huh. I just realized that I start work in a week, only I'm kind of too busy at the moment to be scared or freaking out. Huh. Kind of nice. We'll see how long that lasts.

Idfic, which I have understood fairly intuitively and only recently had a term for, is both a frustrating and interesting experience. Because I've recently been spoiled by smartly edited fanfic, where the presentation of the fiction is much less likely to knock me out of the text.

The most recent idfic that I've seen rec'd, Harbingers of Beatrice by Holly, which is Spike-centric, and Unintentionally Yours by Dinkel, which is an arranged marriage fic with Voldemort and Harry, are both designed to appeal to the slightly twisted part of my brain that really just wants to see these things happen for the sheer hell of it. They should be really interesting and fun reads where the authors just decide to go wherever they want and play with the story as they feel like it, and that I, the reader, tag along for the crazy ride that I want to go with. And, really? They are. They are fun, interesting stories that are just about the story the author has in her head.

But I'm having a problem reading them because the grammar keeps knocking me out of the story.

I thought I got over this! I starting reading fanfic on fanfiction.net, for the love of pants! The standards of grammar there were really quite low, to speak politely, and while there are some great authors still posting there, there are many, many more people who are writing without editing at all.

But then I started following recs to websites, and following recs to other sites, and over the last two years? I really haven't found much new fiction that hadn't been rec'd somewhere by someone. Which usually meant that there was an editor somewhere in the process. And I've lost the knack of not caring about the editing anymore.

So, right now, when I read these two fics (and I mean to finish them, for there is great and enjoyable crack therein), and the author continually misplaces commas? Or picks a word that bears no actual meaning to the word she really clearly wants to use, and the one she picked just sort of sounds kind of similar? I get knocked out of the story again. And it makes me sad.

Because I want to be able to read these and like them and find new and vast interesting things in them. But for the most part, I just want to be able to read them without falling out of the story. I want to be able to get lost, and I can't. And I don't know whether I should blame the authors for not getting a better editor, because they did go to the effort of writing the fic, and I can't complain when the free work of someone's unpaid imagination is rough around the edges, because they are still doing it for love and I still love that they are doing it, misplaced commas and all. Or, perhaps I should blame myself, because I know that I once had the skill to ignore the rough edges of fic and love it for what it was and try and wish nothing more from it. But I can no longer do that, and I'm more than a little bit sad about it.

Hair is dry and was washed about five hours ago- It feels less oily than it did a few days ago at the five hour mark, so I think my scalp is getting the message about not having to go overtime on the oil production. It still feels somewhat more oily than it would had I washed my hair with shampoo, but is at about 80% of Perfect Cleanness and is decently presentable for wearing loose. The ends of my hair smelled a little like vinegar while they were still wet because I didn't take enough time to rinse the ends out properly.

Reading: Reality as Social Process by Charles Hartshorne. I sincerely think that the man just repeats his same main thesis in pretty much the same language in the first chapters of every book he writes, but since it's kind of an off-the-beaten-track thesis, I think that he's probably doing okay.

I made this potato salad recipe last night, substituting apple cider vinegar for rather gourmet vinegar that the recipe calls for, and I was quite pleased with the end result. It tastes a lot like some things I have eaten in Germany and Austria.

Somethings I would change in the recipe/directions
-cut the potatoes to bite-sized, not the halves or quarters.
-I might next time use a drier white than the Chardonnay I tried this time- maybe a pinot grigio would have more bite
-I wonder if this might not make a good dressing for roasted potatoes, too? We shall see.

I was reading Karen Healey's post about the attractions of WisCon, particularly this panel she's hosting:

1) Superhero Comics as Fan Fiction: An Archontic Approach (Karen Healey) The multi–authored contemporary superhero comics of the main Marvel and DC fictional universes are essentially palimpsestual works. Constantly writing over and referring to earlier works in the same canon, they are rich in allusion, irony and self–reflexivity, and contain multiple complex and contradictory continuities. Moreover, although subject to corporate control and creative constraint, contemporary superhero comics are created primarily by fans of the established canon. In short, they're fan fiction. I propose a theoretical approach to superhero comics drawn largely from literary analysis of fan fiction, particularly from the theories of Sheenagh Pugh and Abigail Derecho.

First, that sounds really cool. Secondly, it makes me consider if the reason I liked comic books as a child was the same reason I liked reading fanfiction, and the same reason I like 19th century novels chock full of Biblical allusions. Intertextuality! the common thread of my reading habits.

What can I say? I like my books to talk to each other, not just to me.

There are several approaches to talking about God which attempt to be gender inclusive (with the goal of not excluding anyone from identification with God by removing an ability to relate to God based on gender.) This is less about God, who is generally held to be above gender/without gender/wholly unrelated to gender in Godsself.*

Sample sentence with traditional gender assignment for God as male-
"God loves all His children, and we should return that love to Him without reservation, as He Himself has done, loving us as a father."

No Pronouns- This method would remove all pronouns referring to God because of the problem of the fact that the gender-neutral pronoun in English does not really apply to persons/intellegent beings, and God is generally considered to have attributes at least symbolically/analogically equal or greater to those of a person.

-Example: "God loves all God's children, and we should return that love to God without reservation, as God Godself has done, loving us as a parent."

-Benefits- Removes the whole concept of gender from God, which is appropriate to most scholarly approaches to God that I've seen. Works that specifically argue for God's masculinity (not that I have found any, but I do not doubt that there are some) would not use this, but as most theologians these days are not that interested in proving God has a penis, I think that this works pretty well. One can argue that it also has the virtue of including those whose gender is not covered by the traditional male/female polarity

-Problems I have with it- I don't think "It sounds weird" is a good argument against this- things sounds weird until you get used to them, then you get it over it. The virtues of inclusivity are greater than those of aesthetic sensitivities where people are feeling victimized by the language of religion.

The problem that I have with this is just.... I don't like it. I don't know why I don't like it. It bothers me that I don't like it, because I am of the opinion that this is probably the best answer, including male, female, and those who identify as anywhere on the spectrum between those poles, and those who don't find themselves in that spectrum at all. I think it's a good system, I would fight for it, but I still just kind of love the other option more.

-----

Mixing pronouns This method alternates the normative male/female pronouns (not the neuter pronoun 'it.')

-Example: "God loves all Her Children, and we should return that love to Him without reservation, as She Herself has done, loving us as a Father."

-Benefits- Where traditional language has defaulted to male when talking about God, this method does not default to either traditionally normative gender, and moves between them, explicitly including both. This allows the writer to specifically highlight aspects of the divine nature that have most emotional impact when discussed as female, and others that have more emotional impact when discussed as male. In explicitly including the feminine pronouns, it works to correct the historical exclusion of the feminine aspect of God and allows women, who often feel disaffected with masculinist language, to fully identify with God as feminine.

In juxtaposing the concepts of male and female in God, it highlights how neither gender is perfectly appropriate, and may incite reflection on how normative gender roles are not perfectly appropriate for humans either.

Speaking as a religious cis-female, I still really really fucking love it when someone talks about God as "she", particularly the Holy Spirit, but God in general as well.

-Problems- While this method allows the inclusion of the genders for which we have pronouns, it excludes the genders for which we do not yet have standard English pronouns, and those people who do not identify with any gendering at all.

It is also subject to the author's projection of sexist ideology onto God Godself, using feminine pronouns to speak of traditionally female-ascribed roles like nurturing. (Personal experience: God's love and nurture is often talked of in feminine language, if not pronouns, and I have never heard anyone talk about a wrathful God with feminine imagery. Mind you, I don't hear a lot of people talking about God's wrath, period, but I think the point still stands.) It could be used as a cover for traditional ideas about gender roles and assignment.

May also be confusing to read aloud.


*I'm not going to talk about Jesus here, because there is little argument that Jesus was historically correctly identified as a cis-male. The role of being human and the redeemer of humanity are gender neutral, but I've yet to find any scholarly argument over what gender Jesus was assigned/identified with, and so I'm going to set that aside. If anyone knows of any essays/books that discuss Jesus's gender as a topic of discussion, that would be wicked cool to read so please point me in that direction.

Didn't wash my hair today, just put it up in braids and pinned it to get it out of my face in the hideous hot weather. The ends of my hair are feeling a bit harsh, but since I haven't gotten a hair cut in almost a 6 months, I think that is probably outside the baking soda's blame. My hair tends to be a bit oily, and today does not seem that different. I suppose I should probably buy a thick hairbrush to try and redistribute the natural hair oils a bit, but even if I go and get the brush now, trying to brush my newly curly post-braid hair would be a....(dun dun duh!) a recipe for DISASTER!

I have papers to write and things to work on, but I am hungry and feeling productive, so I am going to try a recipe for cold soba noodles and return to my work after dinner. I get more done in the mornings anyways.