Martha Jones is a fucking star → Look at these fucking companions
Yeah, I’ve already reblogged, but she’s just so damn bad ass!
(This list will be forever in-progress. Please add on as you see fit).
- Challenge sexist jokes, such as dumb blonde jokes or jokes about rape.
- Avoid using words such as “bitch”, “ho”, “slut.”
- Recognize when you “zone out” when women are speaking, when you value a man’s opinion…
One of the things that has frustrated me about science fiction is that technology pertaining to the smaller aspects of our lives is often neglected in favor of big giant rockets and exotic weaponry. Birth control seems non-existent and childbirth is still rocking the stirrups. And the home is at best not mentioned much. One of the things that “the future,” when we use that word as a metonymy for an idealized world in which machines solve all our problems, is supposed to do for us is give us time. Relieve us from work that is repetitive or unpleasant and allow us the sheer, simple hours in the day to do more. And yet, by far the biggest time sink going is the need to clean our habitats, prepare food and clothing, and maintain our environments. For those who have always had the, dare I say, privilege of ignoring that work, you simply cannot imagine how much time it takes to do all that and then turn around and do it again, often multiple times a day if there are offspring at play. Despite the fact that we here in the first world are supposed to have leveled up our gender equality stat, women still perform the majority of this labor, often in addition to a full shift outside the home. Fully automating this activity would free humanity on a scale that even the most awesome BFG can’t even begin to contemplate.
And though many enjoy cooking, though food prep has become a source of pride and even a hobby for a lot of people, vanishingly few get excited about what they’re going to clean today.
By far the biggest literary offender on this subject, I feel, is steampunk. Because when you’re talking about the 19th century, the invention that changes everything is not the difference engine, it’s not the airship, it’s not clockwork robots. It’s the washing machine. 19th century laundry was a brobdingnagian task that took all week, involved caustic chemicals that ruined the body over time, and exhausted both the spirit and the back. Only the ultra-rich could avoid taking part in at least some portion of it. Free women from that and you have a strong feminist movement almost instantly and probably a suffrage movement far earlier, you have a force of political action not broken by lye fumes and the crippling lack of time that hobbles any population attempting to manifest change. And yet we see again and again shiny tech meant to either imitate current “male” sphere toys, military and industrial and computational or to advance that same sphere past 19th c. specs, and very little thought at all spared for the half of humanity that spent that century maintaining households at the expense of most other activity.
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| — | ‘The Future is Gender Distributed’, Cat Valente, here. (via radtransfem) |
I love Buffy
I love Angel
They have feminist aspects to them
But look at this trend:
Buffy, granted power, and routinely punished for it. Every relationship she has ends in utter tragedy, and she is left blaming herself for it because there is something “wrong” with her, that being the Slayer…
I think the reason I find geek culture so obnoxious at times to engage in is because the people are for the most part the same privileged dips that inhabit mainstream culture, but with the added detriment of a victim complex. They’re still largely white and center their race, they’re still largely…
One teacher’s approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”
She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.
“My ponytail,” she cried.
“Can I see?” I asked.
She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.
“How’s that?” I asked.
She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.
‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’
Here’s my take:
Bisexual and pansexual identities often look the same:
- Both bisexual and pansexual people might feel desire towards any amount of genders. People who feel desire towards people of more than one, more than two, many, multiple or all genders can identify as bisexual or as…
