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writer, singer, webwrangler, blogger, comedy tragic | about.me/vivsmythe

  • Double standard watch: the “gay panic” defence

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    Yet another lowlife who murdered a man and stole things from him has claimed that the victim made sexual advances, and that he became “enraged” and “had no other choice” than to slay the victim. He’ll probably end up being… Read More ›

  • Carnivalia, transgenderism and the gender binary

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    Two feminist blogging carnivals were published this week: Carnival Against Sexual Violence 53 The 17th Carnival of Radical Feminists Both carnivals contain plenty of excellent posts to ponder, provoke and especially to disturb. Which brings me to the posts that… Read More ›

  • SF Sunday: machines and freedom from slavery

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    From my Quotes File (which you can see serving up random quotes at the bottom of the sidebar):

    The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
    Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

    I find the search for the perfect robot society a continuing feature of SF novels,

  • Random Awesomeness

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    22

    Created by OnePlusYou – Online Dating Service

    This quiz is hosted by one of those dating sites, and they try to get you to sign up to get your quiz results. An unobtrusive link at the bottom allows you to skip that and just learn the

  • Friday Hoyden: who’s your hoyden?

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    And when were you last hoydenish?

    Open nomination thread for your favourite hoydens: any woman with a whiff of unconventionality about her!

    Yes, stay-at home mums absolutely do count: there’s nothing to stop us being audacious, exuberant, and boisterous in our mothering. And you can count yourself, too, if you’ve done anything particularly hoydenish lately. Here’s me:

  • Caption this:

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    booby with sealion
    Booby with sea-lion, originally uploaded by SheilaE

    It’s crying out for a bukkit line, I think

  • Feminism Friday linkage:

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    Impossibly Beautiful
    from Shakesville by Melissa McEwan (read the whole series, linked at the foot of the post)

    Olympic medal-winning women called “gold-diggers”
    from Feministing by Ann

    aussie gold diggers

    Why feminism should be taught in schools
    From The Times by Joan Smith

    Looking back, I’m amazed at how much we achieved – many feminist ideas, such as the right to maternity leave, have become mainstream – but I’m also horrified by the casual misogyny of 21st-century life. Since my book, Misogynies, was first published in 1989, it has got much worse.

    But 21st-century politicians don’t use the vocabulary of their 20th-century forebears, and feminism needs to reinvent itself as much as any other political movement.

    Also from The Times:

  • UK Criminal Compensation Authority Blaming Rape Victims

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    Under guidelines meant to minimise compensation payouts for people who “contribute to their own ordeal during a criminal incident”, such as people taking part in the crime, or offering provocation for an attack, certain bureaucrats decided that women being out in the world socialising in a perfectly legal fashion were liable for provoking their own rapes, and cut their compensation payouts accordingly. Public outcry has meant that the decision has been reversed, but how could they have been so wrong headed in the first place?

    It could be something to do with the way that the media reports rape, of course. Melissa reports [trigger warnings], and then responds to a typical Daily Mail women-blaming op-ed (the pictorial juxtaposition has to be seen to be believed):

    The piece itself is just unrelentingly infuriating, as its male author offers up gems like:

  • Whoydensday: Old vs New, strengths and weaknesses

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    As part of an excellent essay on the role of the Nostalgia Factor in the Russell T. Davies (RTD) era of Doctor Who, Iain Clark makes many excellent points about both the new and the old series of Who, why Sarah Jane Smith was really the only choice as a returning former-companion for the new generation of Who-watchers, and the differing emphasis paid to character vs story in each.

    Clark is writing what purports to be merely a review of the one episode of the second RTD season, yet by the end he’s engaging in an analysis of the entire Rose Tyler era in counterpoint to what we see of the characters in School Reunion.

  • But why are women so worried about their looks?

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    I took a lot of flak in a recent discussion elsewhere for suggesting that women who have cosmetic enhancement surgery might be responding to just a little bit more than their own psychological insecurities about attracting a mate – that there might actually be some much larger social issues about why women choose to be surgically enhanced i.e. that it’s not just about getting sex, even if the surgery they are having is aimed at increasing their sexual appeal (by certain widely acknowledged to be fucked up standards).

    Here’s just one high-profile example of how women are trained from a very young age to believe that their looks matter more than anything else about them, not just when it comes to finding a sexual partner, but also in terms of recognition and reward in other aspects of life: