The same old stories
May. 22nd, 2013 06:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAm reading a long thing about how historical fact and the stories that get told don't match up in very many places
http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/
which linked to another thing I'll read in a bit
http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/psa-your-default-narrative-settings-are-not-apolitical/
both are about how women actually did exist in history. women did all the things. but the stories that we're soaking in try and tell us different.
A lot of it is also about the difference between casual perception and actually counting. This is an important difference, because estimates, about gender, are wrong. Over and over and over, estimates are very wrong. Sometimes those estimates are based on sloppy unthinking, like when they didn't bother checking the gender of Vikings, just assumed that those buried with boy things were boys, because boys were buried with boy things. Not checking at any point in this loop until the 21st century. Turns out swords are for girls too, who knew? Turns out there's a lot of women with swords. Turns out that not actually counting means not seeing that. But it's not just in history. In classrooms in the here now, estimates of how much women talk are hugely inflated, so if you start getting even close to equal time everyone will perceive it as female domniated, including the women. Same just trying for parity in a group, at first glance it'll see like All The Women OMG ALL even if they're not quite up to half. I don't have the links today, they're on delicious somewheres, these things come up over and over.
We have somehow been taught to see so wrongly we cannot see ourselves. We cannot make accurate estimate of ourselves. The only way is to actually count.
http://characterscount.pbworks.com/ and my http://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/tag/counting attempts might be very small data, but they're actual numbers data. Across many kinds of acting you get pretty consistent numbers. 2:1 Male:Female roles. I don't know the same numbers for media that don't have employment statistics for their characters. I'm not optimistic they'd do any better.
The numbers problem and the look what women can actually do problem feed into each other. If there aren't many women around, they won't be doing so many things. If women don't do many things, why have them around? So there's the same old same old where characters are only women when they 'need' to be, when they're wives or girlfriends or mothers or daughters or the occasional stereotyped job, and somehow that doesn't add up to half the world. Consistently erasing a chunk of people would logically have that result. There's chunks of men that get erased to varying degrees too, it's a complex intersection mess like everything else cultural, but by the numbers we can see how short of parity it lands.
And it's bloody stupid.
It makes stories more bland, repetitive, and predictable. If women are only there to do xyz then you know what characters are doing as soon as you see their gender. Even people who don't care about 'political corectness' (and seriously? existing is PC?) should care that their stories are falling apart because all these components got yanked out.
Mostly though people don't see it. Their estimates match some vague sense in their head that the world is as it should be. Nice quiet women filling just enough space in the world, business as usual, carry on.
*spits bad taste*
Sociology type arguments can do the same unthinking things. But sometime it's more complex/subtle than that, usually about power. I been reading newspaper columns having an argue with each other about masculinity, and the latest round had somebody pipe up that feminism was doing nobody any favours by not addressing that most men grow up in a matriarchy. Yes, this was news to me. His argument was basically that men go home and get talked at by women (really, his only example was a man ignoring his nagging wife) and that means that the private sphere is a matriarchy. Ignore that the stereotype of the nagging woman was shaped around the pearl grit of women not having the power, economic or decision making, to just up and do for themselves, so they have to talk a man into doing things. Ignore the research that says women do most of the housework and men think they do most of the housework. Ignore actual numbers. Man experience is going home to a space with women in it, therefore that space must be a matriarchy. What does he even mean by that?
To be fair, some families have matriarchs. Some men go home, hand over the money, and let themselves be directed in the rest of the day's work. That is a thing that happens, and not far away on my family tree at that.
All that adds up to is the old public/private sphere division. Calling the private sphere a matriarchy just means women are in charge of the bits women stereotypically are permitted to be in charge of. Does the word really match that?
Women is talking. They must be dominating. :eyeroll:
Arguments need proper actual counting. How many people exist. How many hours work they do. How many decisions go their way. Otherwise we see the story, somehow instead of what we are in the middle of living.
It's a bit scary really. Reality and what happens in a human brain aren't very well connected.
We need better stories, and I think getting stubborn about parity is baseline necessity towards that.
Thinking of what all them women should do really ought to diversify the storylines, as long as they exist in the first place.
http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/
which linked to another thing I'll read in a bit
http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/psa-your-default-narrative-settings-are-not-apolitical/
both are about how women actually did exist in history. women did all the things. but the stories that we're soaking in try and tell us different.
A lot of it is also about the difference between casual perception and actually counting. This is an important difference, because estimates, about gender, are wrong. Over and over and over, estimates are very wrong. Sometimes those estimates are based on sloppy unthinking, like when they didn't bother checking the gender of Vikings, just assumed that those buried with boy things were boys, because boys were buried with boy things. Not checking at any point in this loop until the 21st century. Turns out swords are for girls too, who knew? Turns out there's a lot of women with swords. Turns out that not actually counting means not seeing that. But it's not just in history. In classrooms in the here now, estimates of how much women talk are hugely inflated, so if you start getting even close to equal time everyone will perceive it as female domniated, including the women. Same just trying for parity in a group, at first glance it'll see like All The Women OMG ALL even if they're not quite up to half. I don't have the links today, they're on delicious somewheres, these things come up over and over.
We have somehow been taught to see so wrongly we cannot see ourselves. We cannot make accurate estimate of ourselves. The only way is to actually count.
http://characterscount.pbworks.com/ and my http://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/tag/counting attempts might be very small data, but they're actual numbers data. Across many kinds of acting you get pretty consistent numbers. 2:1 Male:Female roles. I don't know the same numbers for media that don't have employment statistics for their characters. I'm not optimistic they'd do any better.
The numbers problem and the look what women can actually do problem feed into each other. If there aren't many women around, they won't be doing so many things. If women don't do many things, why have them around? So there's the same old same old where characters are only women when they 'need' to be, when they're wives or girlfriends or mothers or daughters or the occasional stereotyped job, and somehow that doesn't add up to half the world. Consistently erasing a chunk of people would logically have that result. There's chunks of men that get erased to varying degrees too, it's a complex intersection mess like everything else cultural, but by the numbers we can see how short of parity it lands.
And it's bloody stupid.
It makes stories more bland, repetitive, and predictable. If women are only there to do xyz then you know what characters are doing as soon as you see their gender. Even people who don't care about 'political corectness' (and seriously? existing is PC?) should care that their stories are falling apart because all these components got yanked out.
Mostly though people don't see it. Their estimates match some vague sense in their head that the world is as it should be. Nice quiet women filling just enough space in the world, business as usual, carry on.
*spits bad taste*
Sociology type arguments can do the same unthinking things. But sometime it's more complex/subtle than that, usually about power. I been reading newspaper columns having an argue with each other about masculinity, and the latest round had somebody pipe up that feminism was doing nobody any favours by not addressing that most men grow up in a matriarchy. Yes, this was news to me. His argument was basically that men go home and get talked at by women (really, his only example was a man ignoring his nagging wife) and that means that the private sphere is a matriarchy. Ignore that the stereotype of the nagging woman was shaped around the pearl grit of women not having the power, economic or decision making, to just up and do for themselves, so they have to talk a man into doing things. Ignore the research that says women do most of the housework and men think they do most of the housework. Ignore actual numbers. Man experience is going home to a space with women in it, therefore that space must be a matriarchy. What does he even mean by that?
To be fair, some families have matriarchs. Some men go home, hand over the money, and let themselves be directed in the rest of the day's work. That is a thing that happens, and not far away on my family tree at that.
All that adds up to is the old public/private sphere division. Calling the private sphere a matriarchy just means women are in charge of the bits women stereotypically are permitted to be in charge of. Does the word really match that?
Women is talking. They must be dominating. :eyeroll:
Arguments need proper actual counting. How many people exist. How many hours work they do. How many decisions go their way. Otherwise we see the story, somehow instead of what we are in the middle of living.
It's a bit scary really. Reality and what happens in a human brain aren't very well connected.
We need better stories, and I think getting stubborn about parity is baseline necessity towards that.
Thinking of what all them women should do really ought to diversify the storylines, as long as they exist in the first place.