Interesting links on the internet

[hawkwing_lb]

Kate Elliott on Omniscient Breasts:

Imagine a female pov character is going along about her protagonist adventure, seeing things from her perspective of the world as written in third person. She hears, sees, considers, and makes decisions and reacts based on her view of the world and what she is aware of and encounters. Abruptly, a description is dropped into the text of her secondary sexual characteristics usually in the form of soft-focus Playboy-Magazine-style sexualized kitten-bunny-I-would-fuck-her-in-a-heartbeat lustrous-eyes-and-nipples phrases. Her breasts have just become omniscient breasts.

This is what I mean when I speak of the male gaze. The breasts are no longer her breasts, they have become the breasts as described by the omniscient heterosexual male narrator (in the person of the writer) who is usually not even aware that he has just dropped out of third person and into omniscient to describe her sexual attractiveness in a way that caters to a heterosexual male audience.

Karen Healey, Revealing, isn't it?:

What women criticising sexual harassment and the response to it at various SFF cons actually are:

- unwilling to contribute to the comfortable illusion of fandom egalitarianism at the risk of their health, safety, and right to be treated as complete and whole persons deserving of respect
- ready to speak up on their behalf and on behalf of others
- refusing to take this crap

Ana Mardoll's analysis of the eleventh chapter of Prince Caspian:

Susan is crying.

Susan has been torn here to Narnia over her stated objections. She spent the night in the ruins of her old castle, crying herself to sleep as she clutched an ancient chess piece -- the one link she has left to the past. She has been marching and rowing and working non-stop for three days straight. Since she was the only one with a ranged attack, she was called upon to use serious force in order to save the life of Trumpkin. Her sister was almost killed by a bear, and in the process she was forced to consider breaching her principles against killing sentient creatures. She was nearly skewered with an arrow, had not her brother tackled her to the ground. She hasn't had a comfortable night's sleep since she arrived here, nor a pleasant meal to eat. She has committed wholly to the fight for Narnian independence, even knowing that they are very likely to die in the process. She has been shunned by Aslan.

And now she is crying.

OF COURSE SHE IS BLOODY WELL CRYING.

I'm crying for her. And the narrative won't even acknowledge this stuff. I didn't make any of the above up -- that stuff is in the narrative. But we don't get to see how it affects Susan. Even to the point where her tears are relayed by what the "others" think. But, hey, they could be wrong. Whatever. Not important. Nothing to see here. Move along.

---

Possibly I should actually do the work I should be doing now.

Comments

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

awesome links - thanks!

and omg the comment on Elliot's post re: women being naturally more bi or some shit. NO, d00d. NO.

I'm pretty sure if you grew up with media that presented women's view of you as being more natural than your own, and in which women were supposed to be aggressive to the point of not caring about consent, while men were supposed to be passive and polite no matter what, and in which women tended to be bigger and stronger than you...well, then, I suspect you'd be a bit more open to fooling around with men. I know, crazy theory, but I'm sticking to it.

And then there's the whole part where bodies themselves are not the only thing that people find attractive, but also personalities and how bodies are presented. And you know, maybe you don't find agression all that attractive (for possible reasons, see above) and women are always shown as aggressive but men are shown in the kinds of poses that you find attractive, the kinds of poses that are always held up as being sexual, and well...possibly you might not find the idea of finding men attractive to be such a strange concept.

[possibly I really am just innately drawn to pretty boys and androgyny....but I rather suspect this has something to do with it.]

But I'm sure that's all just silly lady talk, and it really is nothing more than genetically determined brain chemistry. Because that makes sense, yes? That's clearly the more logical option here, right?

(and this is assuming the data indicates what he thinks it indicates re: the Kinsey scale, but wev)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. And also that it is less threatening to the paradigm for slightly bi women to admit to their non-hetero-ness than it is for men - simply at the level of the subconscious, where repression happens. :P

(If that makes any sense.)