Tony Abbott is currently doing his most energetic pork chop impression calling for a SSO in Question Time so that he can call for a vote of No Confidence in the PM.

Sigh.

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Rosie the Riveter

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Benjamin Preiss reports that the gender pay gap has doubled over the last year — with women, as usual, coming off worst in most professions. Meanwhile a few weeks ago, Josephine Tovey and Amy McNeilage reported that in New South Wales girls have outperformed boys in maths for the first time– though for many years, girls have outperformed boys in every other HSC subject.

There is always much hand-wringing when the HSC results are released, about how and why our education system is failing our boys (and quite often the blame is assigned to female teachers — especially if you read the comments), but I would suggest that our boys aren’t being failed at all. Priess paraphrases Professor Anne Bardoel, saying that “the findings [about the gender pay gap] were surprising given that female students often outperformed their male peers,” but I don’t find this surprising at all. I would hypothesise, quite simply, that boys don’t work as hard at their schoolwork because they don’t have to. Because they are still, in the vast majority of professions going to earn more than their female classmates. Because if they enter into a female dominated profession, such as primary teaching, they are far more likely to be promoted above their female peers. Meanwhile, boys have many more options with respect to entering trades — particularly well-paid ones — in comparison with girls.

Really, is it any wonder that high school boys don’t do as well as high school girls? Why in the world would they need to, when it seems that the old adage that women and girls have to work twice as hard to be thought half as good still has a lot of truth to it.

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It’s the season finale! Will the group make it to Pride?

My hope for this episode: I’d like to see Max and Toby get together, and I’m hoping that Rae turns up with a girlfriend that she met at the Beta-Go musical rehearsal (I’m assuming that Rae went along to it, without the rest of them). That way, Series 2 could feature MOAR WOMEN, and be all Bechdel-y. :)

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In verse!

(Except I was kidding about the “in verse” bit. :P)

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Related posts:

1. Outland Open Thread: Episode 6, “Pride”
2. Outland Open Thread: Episode 4, “Fab”
3. Outland Open Thread: Episode 3, “Andy”

Discuss it here!

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Related posts:

1. Outland Open Thread: Episode 6, “Pride”
2. Outland Open Thread: Episode 5, “Toby”
3. Outland Open Thread: Episode 3, “Andy”

Discuss them here!

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Related posts:

1. Outland Open Thread: Episode 6, “Pride”
2. Outland Open Thread: Episode 5, “Toby”
3. Outland Open Thread: Episode 4, “Fab”

Last week saw the premiere of a new Australian comedy, Outland, penned by John Richards and Adam Richard, which focuses on the lives of a club for gay sci-fi geeks (or “science fiction enthusiast homosexualists” as club member Rae would prefer). It’s the perfect show for anyone who can relate to the line, “There’s a dalek in your sugar bowl.”

And so I announce the inaugral HAT Outland Open Thread — it’ll go up every week to coincide with the initial broadcast on ABC1: Wednesdays, 9:30pm AEST, but if you miss it, it’s repeated on Thursdays at 10:30pm on ABC2, and it’s also up on iView for two weeks from the date of the original broadcast — which means that you still have time to catch up on the first episode, if you missed it.

Since we didn’t do an open thread last week, this one can be used for the discussion of both Episode 1 and Episode 2.

And what did I think of Episode 1? My (spoilery) thoughts are below!

Episode 1 is all about Max’s struggle to come out to his new love interest, Dylan. While he has no issues with the fact that he’s gay, he’s rather embarrassed about his love for sci fi — and the other members of his sci fi club, who turn up on his doorstep just as he and Dylan are about to embark on (as the website describes it) “a close encounter of the intimate kind”. Shennanigans (and panic attacks) ensue.

I found Outland to be a wonderful, funny examination of queer sci-fi geekery. The in-jokes were plentiful (and I’m sure I missed more than a few), and the characters were endearing in spite of their flaws. This show doesn’t make them out to be saints — like most people, they are sometimes sexist, racist, ableist, etc — but in general, I found that the comedy was used to ask people to reflect on those things, rather than perpetuating them, and it manages to do this without coming across as didactic.

There are also obvious resonances with Russell T Davies’ Queer as Folk, although Outland is much more lighthearted. The use of surrealism in certain scenes is reminiscent of Davies’ work, while Max’s decision not to pursue a relationship with Dylan (because Dylan didn’t know that daleks have been able to levitate since 1989) seems to be an echo of Vince from QaF deciding to break up with Cameron when Cameron was unable to name the actors who portrayed all seven (at that time) doctors*. I thought that these touches were a nice tribute to a man who has done amazing things in terms of the representation of queer characters, not only in sci fi, but in TV in general.

Nothing, of course, is perfect. Women are under-represented in the core group of characters, perpetuating the myth that female sci fi fans are rare. Indeed, Rae, portrayed by Christine Anu, is the only woman in the group. She is also the only central character who appears to be non-white*, AND the only character with a mobility-related disability — so it would seem that the otherness has been heaped upon her in spades. Anu rises to the task brilliantly — her portrayal of Rae is rich and nuanced — but still, I do wonder why there couldn’t have been another woman, and I also wonder — how did she manage to get up all those stairs out front of Max’s house? Daleks may be been able to levitate since 1989, but I’m pretty sure that no one has invented a levitating wheelchair yet. So it seems like the show is sidestepping the accessiblity issue there.

I did really enjoy the treatment of Max’s panic attacks though. As someone who is not a stranger to anxiety issues myself, I appreciated the way that his friends just treated it as “Oh, it’s one of these things that happens to him,” — they didn’t make a huge deal out of it, but Fab, in particular, did support him through it. They didn’t respond perfectly to the situation — but they did their best. I’m also glad that it was treated humorously — simply because on a personal level, I find that being able to laugh at my anxiety helps an awful lot (but perhaps others will feel differently).

Over the next five weeks, each subsequent episode will focus on a different character. This week will be Rae, followed by the straight-laced and far-too-rich Toby, the highly intelligent Andy who likes to share fisting stories, and the dalek-dress-wearing Fab. And I’m guessing that the sixth episode will bring all their invidivual stories together.

For now — have at it! Boldly discuss where no woman has discussed before!

*Back then, the Eight Doctor didn’t count.
**Other core characters may be non-white, but they haven’t identified themselves as such.

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1. Outland Open Thread: Episode 6, “Pride”
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Allie Brosh represents herself as a cartoon stick figure, lying in bed with a sad face and the word "No" as a happy-faced sun rises behind her.

It’s been almost a month since Allie Brosh posted this at her blog Hyperbole and a Half, but I only just saw it: Adventures in Depression.

I know I can definitely relate to this, and I have the feeling that I’m not the only one.

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I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small economies – careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction – any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. [...] String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold.
–Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (1851)

I’ve been thinking about this passage a lot lately. Gaskell wrote this as a parody in the mid-19th century, when waste was much less common than it is today. Gaskell’s narrator pokes fun at herself for saving on packaging, while Gaskell herself was probably woefully unaware of how much waste packaging for goods of all sorts would produce a century and a half in the future.

I think that most of us here probably waste far more than we need to (I certainly do), but at the same time, most of us probably have our own little small personal economies to reduce waste, and it strikes me that sharing these with each other could be useful. We may not save the world with these, but it still makes a small difference. And the more environmentally mindful habits that we form, the more likely we are to be mindful all the time.

One of my personal economies is waste associated with take-away food — I try not to make a habit of buying the stuff, and so I make up big batches of soup and freeze them, or make up a chickpea-based salad that will last a few days in the fridge, so that I don’t get stuck buying my lunch when I’m at work. (And it’s a great way of using leftovers too.) If I know in advance that I will require take-away, I often take a lunchbox with me, and ask that that be used instead of a disposable container.

My efforts in this direction, however, are compromised by the amount of disposably plastic I use in other areas. For instance, I like to freeze meat in individual portions — one or two sausages, one chicken breast, etc — and I find myself using disposable freezer bags for this task, because with plastic tubs, you end up with a lot of wasted freezer space (and my freezer is not large). Perhaps someone here will have some sort of personal environmental economy that will help me with this issue.

There are also a few things that I’m just starting to do, so they aren’t habits yet — but I’m hoping they will become so. For instance, the waste of my food scraps has been bothering me, and I don’t have a big enough garden to make compost. I feel rather silly that it never occurred to me before that the community garden down the street from me would have a use for compost scraps, and now that I’ve got in contact with them, I’m hoping that I can form a habit of delivering my plant-based scraps to them once a week.

So, what are your personal little environmental economies? Where are the areas that you’d like to reduce waste, but you need a few tips on how to go about it?

(And just a disclaimer — while I’m obviously all about sharing suggestions here, please don’t be shaming anyone who doesn’t do X. Everyone’s situation is different, and a little economy that may be very easy for you may be very difficult for someone who doesn’t have as many spoons as you, or for someone in a different financial situation, etc.)

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Elisabeth Sladen, our beloved Sarah Jane Smith, has died, aged 63. She died after a struggle with cancer that she chose not to make public.

Lis Sladen has touched many people through her portrayal of Sarah Jane, both in Doctor Who between 1973 and 1976, and in The Sarah Jane Adventures, between 2007 and 2010. I am one of them. I didn’t watch Doctor Who before the 2005 re-boot of the series, but when I went back and watched the older episodes, Sarah Jane quickly became my favourite companion, while The Sarah Jane Adventures was a breath of fresh air in the usually male-centric Whoniverse. Sarah Jane always will be a wonderful feminist role model, and Lis Sladen will always mean a lot to girls and women around the world for that reason.

I recall reading that, when Lis Sladen left Doctor Who for the first time — back in 1976 — she requested that her final episode be a happy one. She didn’t want her departure to be full of tears, and angst at her leaving, and I have to wonder (although of course I can’t know), if she was similarly motivated here. Regardless, it is certainly true, that for her fans, her final years were joyful ones, in which her achievements in The Sarah Jane Adventures were highlighted. While I’m greatly saddened by her death, and I can’t help but think that it came too soon, I have the feeling that she would want her fans to concentrate on the good things — the things that gave them joy.

So pour yourself a glass of wine tonight, put on your favourite Sarah Jane story, and if you believe in such things, imagine that Lis Sladen and Nick Courtney are having a drink too, somewhere “over there”. (And if you’re like me and you don’t believe in such things, imagine it anyway, because it’s a nice image).

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