Literature and gender. blah.
Jul. 10th, 2007 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm reading another chapter of the literature and gender book we had a couple of chapters from in intro lit 1. It's about children's literature and so seems relevant for kidlit next year. There was supposed to be reading lists in the mail but nooooo.
Anyways... book is annoying. I mean, it's annoying the same ways talking about gender is annoying, so it's doing its job, but it's still annoying.
There was just this bit about Humpty Dumpty saying words mean what you say they mean. It said in the book that HD is a-gendered but they'll call him he because he has masculine qualities of being powerful and dominant.
... bzuh?
And once again they demonstrate the dumb. If you're going to call that masculine, how do you get powerful women?
ETA: They just pointed out the keyword, many pages later - "Master"
... I didn't notice that?
Heh.
/ETA
Thinking about it, I suspect if HD was in fact called She then they'd have a different read on the same conversation. Something emphasising fragility, precarious position, and the way power over language is the only demonstrated power. They'd probably call it powerless... well, no, actually, it's a lit book, they're all about the power of words. But it would get filed under passive or something.
And the point of the book is that gender influences your reading on stuff, what you think about gender influences how you see, but they're supposed to be telling us and I feel they're showing it the bad way instead.
Very blah.
Can't they just stick with representations of and by women? You know, actual female characters, or female authors. All this masculine/feminine qualities stuff is just *dumb*.
They had this 'guess the gender of the author' game which I refused to play because you just never can. Their point was you never can. Did they really have to put it in there to prove that? Given the amount of arguing about it, apparently so.
If women use masculine writing and men use feminine writing - and they do, and individual authors do, however you define those terms people muck about with language every which way - then what is the point of putting gender labels on it???
No point.
Now there is a point at looking at stuff like the prevalence of Sleeping Beauty type stories or stories where women have adventures but it was just a dream or the massive imbalance in children's fiction where there's a bazillion more male characters than female. That's stuff you can point at and it's right there.
All this reading makes me want to write more women.
It should be easy writing women in a Giles story. There's thousands of Slayers around now.
But I kind of want to write a thing where he is no longer defined by his semi-parental role with Slayers and tries being someone else. You know, like an empty nest story? Kids grow up so who is he now. And if there's still Slayers to teach then it's not like that at all.
I always say he's a teacher not a parent, because parents are always parents but teachers end up colleagues. Students grow up to be teachers, no more being their teacher. And they're only teachers in teaching times anyway.
But some of the people who'd need telling that include Buffy and Dawn. So argument not quite worky.
Also, Slayers in a ghost series are really not playing to their strengths.
Which could be interesting of itself.
Also, you could have disabled Slayers now and there'd be no dark council machinations to get rid of them and get a new workier one.
Is a Slayer still a Slayer when she can't fight?
Yes. Has been fighting. Still has the nightmares.
It's like Watcher getting old, maybe can't do the physical stuff any more, but would still know about the war.
Doctor Who: no shortage of women. So why do they keep falling out of my stories?
Well partly because I never liked Rose, and partly because the characters I keep thinking of are me, and there's a word for that.
Torchwood also: why I no write Tosh and Gwen? Because Gwen winds me up with her must-be-nice and Tosh fades into the background with just being the voice of the computer. I know, she's more than that, but when she's just making the computer work and saying what she finds out... *shrugs*. And the thing where her primary characteristics seem to be curiousity and wanting to know more about aliens and their technology... that's the Torchwood mission statement, that's not a unique character.
... if all the women fall out of all my story ideas I think the common factor there is me.
Possibly it has something to do with why I don't have any women in icons. Except me. Rarely.
I could write about Martha. I like Martha. Except for a few aspects that got undermined by the ongoing Doctor worship. And mostly I could fix those. I think.
Meh. Admit it: Hardly any the characters live in my head are women. Even the ones I like. I just end up playing with Jack and Ianto and Giles and Ethan and Andrew and Oz. Those are all guys. Most of the time.
... actually of that list I privately decided Jack is aBetan hermaphrodite and Andrew and Ethan have tried being girls and quite liked it and Oz in my Buffy-becomes-a-boy bunny was the guy with a model of masculinity that included nail varnish and hair dye and stuff and... well, it wasn't Giles that was in Rocky Horror, but... I guess the guys in my head aren't exactly what you'd call classic masculine, if all that gets included.
Ianto doesn't have girl parts in any of my stories yet.
He's just the mommy. With the food and cleaning and filing and organising and driving the big car and patiently looking after the long term disabled/ill person in the basement.
All the girls I like are the ones who also kick arse. Like Aeryn and Buffy and Amanda and Ivanova and, er, actually pretty much everyone on Blakes 7 kind of goes on that list.
Or there's Dax, who has been men.
Mostly though I don't turn them into men in my head. Except the Buffy fic bunny which was mostly a response to someone saying there was no proper fic like that. And she got fed up of it and turned back.
... conclusion: likes both.
... this is not in fact news.
Anyways... book is annoying. I mean, it's annoying the same ways talking about gender is annoying, so it's doing its job, but it's still annoying.
There was just this bit about Humpty Dumpty saying words mean what you say they mean. It said in the book that HD is a-gendered but they'll call him he because he has masculine qualities of being powerful and dominant.
... bzuh?
And once again they demonstrate the dumb. If you're going to call that masculine, how do you get powerful women?
ETA: They just pointed out the keyword, many pages later - "Master"
... I didn't notice that?
Heh.
/ETA
Thinking about it, I suspect if HD was in fact called She then they'd have a different read on the same conversation. Something emphasising fragility, precarious position, and the way power over language is the only demonstrated power. They'd probably call it powerless... well, no, actually, it's a lit book, they're all about the power of words. But it would get filed under passive or something.
And the point of the book is that gender influences your reading on stuff, what you think about gender influences how you see, but they're supposed to be telling us and I feel they're showing it the bad way instead.
Very blah.
Can't they just stick with representations of and by women? You know, actual female characters, or female authors. All this masculine/feminine qualities stuff is just *dumb*.
They had this 'guess the gender of the author' game which I refused to play because you just never can. Their point was you never can. Did they really have to put it in there to prove that? Given the amount of arguing about it, apparently so.
If women use masculine writing and men use feminine writing - and they do, and individual authors do, however you define those terms people muck about with language every which way - then what is the point of putting gender labels on it???
No point.
Now there is a point at looking at stuff like the prevalence of Sleeping Beauty type stories or stories where women have adventures but it was just a dream or the massive imbalance in children's fiction where there's a bazillion more male characters than female. That's stuff you can point at and it's right there.
All this reading makes me want to write more women.
It should be easy writing women in a Giles story. There's thousands of Slayers around now.
But I kind of want to write a thing where he is no longer defined by his semi-parental role with Slayers and tries being someone else. You know, like an empty nest story? Kids grow up so who is he now. And if there's still Slayers to teach then it's not like that at all.
I always say he's a teacher not a parent, because parents are always parents but teachers end up colleagues. Students grow up to be teachers, no more being their teacher. And they're only teachers in teaching times anyway.
But some of the people who'd need telling that include Buffy and Dawn. So argument not quite worky.
Also, Slayers in a ghost series are really not playing to their strengths.
Which could be interesting of itself.
Also, you could have disabled Slayers now and there'd be no dark council machinations to get rid of them and get a new workier one.
Is a Slayer still a Slayer when she can't fight?
Yes. Has been fighting. Still has the nightmares.
It's like Watcher getting old, maybe can't do the physical stuff any more, but would still know about the war.
Doctor Who: no shortage of women. So why do they keep falling out of my stories?
Well partly because I never liked Rose, and partly because the characters I keep thinking of are me, and there's a word for that.
Torchwood also: why I no write Tosh and Gwen? Because Gwen winds me up with her must-be-nice and Tosh fades into the background with just being the voice of the computer. I know, she's more than that, but when she's just making the computer work and saying what she finds out... *shrugs*. And the thing where her primary characteristics seem to be curiousity and wanting to know more about aliens and their technology... that's the Torchwood mission statement, that's not a unique character.
... if all the women fall out of all my story ideas I think the common factor there is me.
Possibly it has something to do with why I don't have any women in icons. Except me. Rarely.
I could write about Martha. I like Martha. Except for a few aspects that got undermined by the ongoing Doctor worship. And mostly I could fix those. I think.
Meh. Admit it: Hardly any the characters live in my head are women. Even the ones I like. I just end up playing with Jack and Ianto and Giles and Ethan and Andrew and Oz. Those are all guys. Most of the time.
... actually of that list I privately decided Jack is a
Ianto doesn't have girl parts in any of my stories yet.
He's just the mommy. With the food and cleaning and filing and organising and driving the big car and patiently looking after the long term disabled/ill person in the basement.
All the girls I like are the ones who also kick arse. Like Aeryn and Buffy and Amanda and Ivanova and, er, actually pretty much everyone on Blakes 7 kind of goes on that list.
Or there's Dax, who has been men.
Mostly though I don't turn them into men in my head. Except the Buffy fic bunny which was mostly a response to someone saying there was no proper fic like that. And she got fed up of it and turned back.
... conclusion: likes both.
... this is not in fact news.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 07:38 pm (UTC)An empty-nest Giles story would be interesting - we got a bit of that in S4, but we never really saw what he was feeling or thinking when he left Buffy after OMWF, either. Buffy'd outgrown him, Giles thought, so he left and she stayed in Sunnydale. Sort of empty nest in reverse.
He's rather outgrown himself being a Watcher, as well.
That's the great thing about Joss shows - there's always so much more going on with the characters than we ever get to see, because they're so fully realized.
I had some vague thoughts about the male bias in SF and fantasy, but they won't gel. I do like reading about what you're studying, by the way.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 08:09 pm (UTC)It's like... for Buffy et al the important thing about growing up is not to let the already-grown define them, not live by definitions that some other dude invented, change the rules.
But for Giles the important thing is to make his life all about Buffy?
Methinks some writer has done teenage but not paid attention to the flipside.
It's like the way it bugs me that for two new series Doctor Who companions now their happy ending has involved their parents getting back together. These are grown women, not little kids, and even if they were little, making their parents relationship a reward for the kid makes them only exist as parents, not their own selves, and that's just so wonky.
I mean it's also a 'recurring characters exist as backup to series regular' thing, but it surely generates more stories to leave the parents in conflict anyways, so it's just not worky.
... and now I'm wondering when I stopped seeing stories through the teenagers. Perspective moment. Woah.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:14 pm (UTC)The more comments I read about the new improved Dr Who, the more it sounds like they've lost their way and are just flapping around. Kind of like the last couple seasons of X-files, or most of Lost.
Of the new ones, I've only seen the Eccleston season. I like him, but Rose began to piss me off a bit - she's very self-centered.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:28 pm (UTC)If I've given that impression of Doctor Who recently then it must have been in the time since the last episode, since pretty much the whole rest of the season was made of deafening squee.
There's some stuff on the isms level that is not of the good. Room to make a lot of argue about that stuff.
But on the other hand... it's the only TV I'm actually still watching on TV. Everything else waits for DVD, and I can't always be bothered to watch those.
*shrugs*
YMMV
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:39 pm (UTC)I've been thinking that just once, the Doctor should pick up a fan, one of us, instead of some mundane who has to be introduced to the concept of alien life forms. That'd be real fun. Think of the trouble a companion like that could cause just by being curious about how the TARDIS works, or going up and talking to some alien being instead of cowering in a corner with big frightened eyes.
The Hiro Nakamura model (I've got powers! Cool!) instead of the standard screaming companion, I guess.
I'm obviously in an evil mood.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:46 pm (UTC)Mickey was all fanboy about travelling, in his couple of episodes
but yeah, has potential.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 08:09 pm (UTC)Lit&Gender book is most annoying when talking on stuff I know better than they do. They talked about Lord of the Rings and mentioned Galadriel, who fit their point, but left out Eowyn, who really doesn't. They gave the vague impression of not having read to the end yet. And there was a bit on women in F&SF and it mentioned the Earthsea Trilogy. Which stopped being a trilogy six years before the lit book was published.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:15 pm (UTC)Did the book mention Left Hand of Darkness? It's all about gender and/or identity, and a good read as well. Most of LeGuin's writing is, for that matter.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:29 pm (UTC)And no, not mentioning that.
F&SF were covered in one paragraph that gave me the impression they hadn't hardly read any.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:34 pm (UTC)