gender & feminism

BFTP – Friday Hoyden: Pippi Longstocking

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Pippi is everything I wanted to be as a child but didn’t know how – outrageous, loud, anti-authoritarian, strong, free-spirited, messy, generous, powerful, and brutally honest. She is self-sufficient, thinks “ladylike” is a loud of hooey, and is an efficient dispenser of justice to bullies. Her shoes are too big, her clothes are a mess, she can lift a horse over her head, and nobody knows what to do with her. What’s not to like?

BFTP: Slash and Teh Magick Testicles of Perspicacity

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Like all good evolutionary psychologists who focus on gender, Don hasn’t bothered to talk to any actual *whispers* women. Especially not to any women who write and/or study this, erm, *whispers* smut. Because women can’t define their own experience, can’t tell their own stories, can’t have any useful insights into their own motivations. Because women’s fan academia doesn’t really exist in any meaningful sense, not until chest-beaters come along and put their stamp of Knowledge onto it. Because women’s culture is there to be picked apart with tweezers and analysed with a touch of distanced fascination, a modicum of distaste, and a whopping serve of wilful ignorance. For lo, he has Teh Magick Testicles of Perspicacity. Here, let him show you them.

A 1950s Alternative Universe

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on Saturday night I found myself watching a late-night 1950s black and white movie – something I haven’t done much of since the demise of Bill Collins and Ivan Hutchinson’s shows. Oh, how I used to love those old black and white movies (cue massive eyeroll from the kids). Some of the interest lies in a mixture of plot points which appear to have been written while dropping acid combined with gender and class expectations which are all too real.

What would Anna Bligh do?

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Anna Bligh, the Queensland Premier seems to finally be living up to the potential she showed when she first became Premier. Her leadership during this flood crisis matches much of what I have heard from those who have worked for and with her during her time as Premier – that she is calm, intelligent, respectful, decent, personable, sensible and brave – but the reality of her style never previously translated to her broader public image. Some of the criticism of Bligh applies across the board to politicians generally, who these days seem to be over-prepared for public appearances to the point of coming across as robotic and false.

Something wrong in the wiring.

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There must have been a glitch in my wiring then, somehow I got the ‘male’ wiring and I am obviously an affront to nature or at least to motherhood. I don’t want to be a ‘house-wife’ and I think that is a pretty awful term with a nasty stereotype “what did you do all day?” attached and doesn’t reflect the reality of unpaid work whether you have children or not. ‘Working mother’ is a tautology, because it doesn’t matter whether you are paid or unpaid you are still working. Bloody hard I might add.

BFTP: Friday Hoyden – Eleanor of Aquitaine

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Another Summer Slowdown blast from the past post from the archives.. A long time e-friend in 2006 welcomed the arrival of his second daughter, to be known as Eleanor.

I love that name, as Eleanor of Aquitaine (at various times Prince of Aquitaine as ruling Duchess, Queen of France, Queen of England, Queen Mother and Regent of England) is my favourite historical hoyden. EofA is, indeed, how I judge the quality of any encyclopaedia I encounter.