Completely Left out All the Fingles

Here's the thing. We all understand about kyriarchy, right? An elaborate caste system, with many axes on which we're placed higher and lower than other people? And how it's wrong? And how men as a caste outrank women as a caste, even though there are lots of caste divisions within the male population. So women complain about how a man is oppressing them, and the man will say "Hey, I'm oppressed because I'm [poor/disabled/black/etc] and therefore I'm entitled to trample women!" And women say, "No you're not. Nothing excuses trampling people, not even having been trampled yourself."

This applies to slash-fic too. There are a lot of stories purporting to be about men, but portraying 'anal sex' that cannot possibly work. If you call the writers on it, they'll say that not every detail has to be exact. But it is exact. Those stories are exactly realistic portrayals of vaginal sex. They're stories about a het couple, with a search-and-replace done on the pronouns. Kaigou discussed some of the reasons some people write stories that way.

Occasionally a gay man will say that he doesn't like having his name taken in vain, that he wishes straight women wouldn't use gay men's images as a front for female experience. He may point out that it's hard for gay men to tell their stories when all the relevant search terms are drowning in het-disguised-as-slash. He will promptly be jumped on by a bunch of women saying "This is women's space, slash is not about you."

Except I don't think that's fair. It's true that we don't have enough women's spaces or enough stories where women's experience is given central importance. But neither do gay men have enough safe space to tell their stories, and it's not fair for us to project our erotic fantasies onto them, and drown out the reality of gay male experience, any more than it's fair for straight men to project their erotic fantasies onto women and drown out the reality of our experience.

Oursin graciously included me in a meme she's doing wherein I get to answer five questions she asks. Since my profile is a bit on the cryptic side, she came up with the following:

1) Resisting the temptation to ask, 'is your location somewhere south of a one-eyed yellow idol': are you living in the place you would choose, or is there somewhere where you would rather make your life?

I'm happy living in the northeastern U.S.A. I am a native New Englander, and my family is strongly traditional. The traveling I've done so far made it very clear that I belong here and nowhere else. If I moved far away, lost my accent, learned all the customs, and wore local clothes, I would still be 'that Yankee lady'.

On the other hand, there aren't many old-style Yankees left even here in Yankeeland, so sometimes I feel out of place anyway, like one of the last survivors of an ancient culture, possibly arrived by time travel.

2) Have you ever been to Nepal, or is it on your 'some day' list of places you would like to visit?

I've never been there. It might be neat to travel there someday, but that would probably be part of a round-the-world trip.

3) While thinking about greeneyed yellow gods, would you say that you subscribed to any belief (or unbelief) system?

Hmmm. Lots of belief systems. I learned feminism at my mother's knee. Strong second-wave influence there. For religion, I subscribe to the Baha'i faith.

I believe that cats try hard to communicate with us. My cat's communications often boil down to "Mom? Excuse me? Mom? Mom! MOMMMMM! FEED ME! I haven't eaten in an hour!"

I assume that luck demons listen to us. It is never a good idea to say things like "Nothing can stop me now!" or "We should be fine as long as it doesn't snow." I don't really believe in demons, or a sentient and reactive Fate, but fairy tales, Buffy, and F/SF reading have left me with a firm conviction that it's just not worth the risk.

And I believe that, if you break into people's house of worship and desecrate their sacred art, they will be angry, and probably come looking for you with extreme prejudice.

4) What works of feminism would you strongly advise the Colonel's daughter to read?

Probably The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer, for the message that trading sex appeal or conventionality for presents is not such a good idea. And maybe Cynthia Heimel on the benefits of directness, and not demanding a man jump through hoops to amuse you.

5) Resisting the temptation to ask 'any relation to Mad Carew', is there any particular significance to your username?

I thought of Kathmandu as an ancient trading nexus, like Samarkand. See, my father traveled through Samarkand when I was first a gleam in his eye, and my mother's best friend traveled through Nepal and Tibet, so in a way it feels like ancient trading nexuses are where the idea of me began.

And I like wordplay, so Kat -> cat -> catkin as in pussy-willow.

I didn't see any of Leverage last year, not even any commercials for it; but the fan reviews I read motivated me to try this season's episodes. I started with S2 E1, the Beantown Bailout Job. You know the scene in the bar after the play, when they're all saying What I Did on My Summer Vacation? ("...we are doing some very hinky things in Pakistan." "And what did you do, Elliot?" "I was in Pakistan." ) And they're all saying how bored they are, committing regular old crime, how it was so much more fun being good guys and having daring adventures? That's when I realized: These are the heirs of the Saint.

You may have seen the movie starring Val Kilmer. Ignore that. It didn't convey the mood of the Saint canon at all. The movie was violent and grim and desperate. The book Saint tended to smile, even in straits that seemed grim to the lay eye, because he saw it all as a game; he was having fun.

The Saint was a con man's con man. He would fall into conversation with a clever man who had this nifty device to extract gold from the air, or some such, and who just needed a little capital for the patent fees...and the encounter would end with the clever man completely cleaned out of money and the Saint strolling away whistling.

He didn't identify exactly as a con man. He described himself as a buccaneer: pirate, or maybe closer to privateer. He was comfortable and competent at fighting, picking locks, shadowing people... oh, just read the author's own description (from Catch the Saint)

In the course of his good works, of which he himself was not the smallest beneficiary, the man so paradoxically called the Saint had assumed many roles and placed himself in such a fantastic variety of settings that the adventures of a Sinbad or a Ulysses had by comparison all the excitement of a housewife's trip to the market. His range was the world. His identities had encompassed cowboy and playboy, poet and revolutionary, hobo and millionaire. The booty he had gathered in his years of buccaneering had certainly made the last category genuine: The assets he had salted away would have made headlines if they had been exposed to counting. He could have comfortably retired at an age when most men are still angling for their second promotion. But strong as the profit motive was as a factor in his exploits, there were other drives which would never allow him to put the gears of his mind permanently in neutral and hang up his heels on the stern rail of a yacht. He had an insatiable lust for action, in a world that squandered its energies on speeches and account books. He craved the individual expression of his own personal ideals, and his rules were not those of parliaments and judges but those of a man impatient to accomplish his purposes, according to his own lights, by the most effective means available at the moment.

He pulled some capers for himself, some to help out other individuals, and a few against major villains who were a threat to the general welfare. He was mainly UK-based, although when the author, Leslie Charteris, started traveling to the U.S. and dealing with Hollywood, the Saint did too.

The canon runs from 1928 through most of the rest of the 20th century, the exact end date depending on whether you count collaborations or licensed works. I can particularly recommend the short stories collected in The Saint Intervenes (1934) as giving a good view of his cheerful style and varied activities.

(Crossposted to what_ho_chaps.)

I was re-watching the "Be a Man" sequence from Mulan. It's my favorite part. And it occurred to me---this is framed as becoming a man, developing the strength and speed and stamina a man should have. That's right in the title of the song. But all of those were things Mulan could do, with proper training, and I have another context for that kind of training.

It was a tradition of one of the Northwest Coast tribes. Before the modern industrial world interfered, their way of making a living relied heavily on fishing and boat travel. And the entry to womanhood, described by one of the last women to go through it, reflected this.

A coach-type person would collect all the girls in the right age range (mid-to-late teens) and take them down to the beach. They had to practice running up and down the beach, hour after hour, to build up their leg strength. They had to swim up and down the bay, hour after hour, to build their upper-body strength. The woman recounting this said "and just when we thought we were getting good at it, they told us we had to run without kicking up any sand."

When your coach thought you were ready, the womanhood initiation ritual was that you and two other people paddled wayyyyyyyy out to sea in a kayak. Then you climbed over the side, and the other two people paddled back while you had to swim home.

When you made it back to the beach (if you made it back to the beach), the whole tribe was waiting with a blanket and a bonfire and a victory song about how a girl went for a swim and a woman came home. The whole point was that you had developed the strength, stamina, skills to do an adult's work on the boats and to take care of yourself if you fell overboard.

This is why I am irritated by Clan of the Cave Bear and similar works that invent societies where manhood initiation rituals center on some kind of achievement, but womanhood initiation consists of first period and first intercourse. That is not what womanhood is about. And now I wish there were a version of the song called "Be a Woman".

Joanna Russ wrote this interesting book called Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts (The Crossing Press, 1985). I haven't read the whole thing, but there's an excerpt posted at the Feminist Reprise library. I think it relates to what's been going on at Shakesville.

See, Melissa McEwan created and maintains Shakesville as a feminist blog, supporting it with her own money, time, and energy. She asks visitors and commenters to respect a few simple rules, such as to refrain from personal attacks or violent imagery.

And yet some commenters, more and more of them, keep disrespecting her authority by violating her rules. As her co-bloggers put it,

Rather than meeting with the same care and concern that she consistently demonstrates to community-members at the blog, she is treated as if she is the butler or maid-servant, whose job it is to clean up after or protect others, but who has no right to ask that her safety be attended to. After a period in which her expressed concerns are met overwhelmingly with indifference, she understandably concludes that her voice will be neither heard, supported, nor defended. ... Melissa steps away from the blog. In order to assure her own health and well-being, Melissa removes herself from an environment where her dignity, authority, and safety are not being respected. ... Community-members flood her email and comment-threads with communications about how important Shakesville is to them, and how much they respect and cherish her work -- often these communications are accompanied with pleas for her to keep blogging, questions about where the pub went, or demands and ultimatums that she blog about this or that. ... Wash, rinse, repeat.

This isn't a one-time thing. This isn't even an anomaly centering on Melissa and Shakesville. Joanna Russ wrote about exactly this phenomenon over twenty years ago. This is a chronic pattern acting out the imperatives of cultural femininity. Maybe if we become aware of it, we can stop letting patriarchal thinking drive us into attacking our own.

See, what Joanna Russ pointed out is that women are not supposed to be powerful, to succeed, to achieve any kind of acclaim in the public sphere. But if we insist on doing such an unfeminine thing, we're expected to make up for it by devoting ourselves wholly to serving other people's interests. And I do mean wholly.

As Russ put it:

...one of the ways achieving women combat the guilt of success is by agreeing to be Magic Mommas.

* MMs give to others -eternally.
* MMs are totally unselfish.
* MMs have infinite time and energy.
* MMs love all other women, always.
* MMs never get angry at other women.
* MMs don't sleep.
* MMs never get sick.

ETA: Russ also made it clear that people don't always agree to be Magic Mommas. Sometimes, if one member of a group is even slightly more active than the others, they will appoint her Magic Momma and expect her to be infinitely giving even if she never offered to. [/ETA]

Doesn't that sound like the demands people have been making of Melissa? 'Post for us, constantly, endlessly. You're not allowed to sleep, to have other responsibilities, to be upset when we pull your known triggers, to say we did wrong by triggering you or insulting you or trying to rename you as though you were an object.'

Russ also pointed out that Trembling Sisters, women who play the more conventional feminine role, avoiding achievement or feeling unable to act publicly, tend to feel that Magic Mommas owe them that endless stream of love and giving; that they need the Magic Momma's energy/money/advocacy/comfort to make up for the powerlessness and confinement of their own lives. And if the Magic Momma ever complains about these endless demands or criticizes the Trembling Sister (say, because the Trembling Sister committed personal insults or threats of violence), the Trembling Sister complains that her feelings are hurt, that the Magic Momma's being so mean, this is such a betrayal from someone she trusted and relied on! How can you hurt me, don't you know I'm more important than your feelings or your life?

This trashes the Magic Momma's feelings, reputation, and safe space.

Trashing in the feminist movement has always proceeded from "below" "upwards," directed by the Trembling Sister (that is, those who've adopted the TS position) at the self-elected (or merely supposed) MM. The hidden agenda of trashing is to remain helpless and to fail, whatever the ostensible motivation. The payoff is to Be Good (though miserable). The TS/MM scenario is predicated on the unrealistic ascription of enormous amounts of power to one side and the even more unrealistic ascription of none at all to the other. It assumes that hurting another woman's feelings is the worst thing--the very worst thing--the most unutterably awful thing--that a woman can do. In a world where women and men are starved, shot, beaten, bombed, and raped, the above assumption takes some doing, [my bold] but since the MM/TS script requires it, it gets made. (The script also assumes that the MM has no feelings, or if she does, hurting them is a meritorious act.) (--Russ)

None of this is to say that any Shakesville commenters are Bad People: we all get conditioned by the patriarchy; we all sometimes obey that conditioning without realizing what we're doing. By the same token, we all need to strive to identify that conditioning and stop acting on it.

No one originally takes either position of her own free will. The Feminine Imperative is forced on all of us. But in adulthood, and certainly within a feminist community, a woman who remains in either position is her own prisoner. The women's community as a mystically loving band of emotional weaklings who make up to each other by our kindness and sweetness for the harshness we have to endure in the outside world is a description that exactly characterizes the female middle-class sub-culture as it's existed in patriarchy for centuries--without changing a thing. This is not a revolutionary movement but a ghetto in which anyone seen as having achievement, money, or power is cast as a Magic Momma, whose function is to make up to everyone else for the world's deprivation and their terror of effectiveness. This is impossible. So the requirement becomes to make others feel good all the time, an especially seductive goal in times of political reaction when activity directed outward at the (seemingly) monolithic social structure is not only frustrating but frighteningly dangerous. So honesty goes by the board, hurt feelings are put at a premium, general fear and paralysis set in, and one by one any woman who oversteps the increasingly circumscribed area of what's permissible is trashed. Eventually, after the demons of success and effectiveness have been banished, and all the female villains who made everyone else feel miserable have left or been silenced, what happens?

The group disintegrates.

The Feminine Imperative has been faithfully served. The enemy has been driven from the ranks. Feminism has been destroyed. (--Russ)

And that would be a shame.

So in one of the many MammothFail posts, starlady38 wrote:

I am filled with historical rage on many levels, not the least of which is that her blithe planning on the thread that you quoted could plausibly have been spoken at various points in this world, when colonizers wanted to erase the Native peoples (and succeeded in doing so, to a large extent!). How, how, how, could she be so willfully blind to the reproduction of that actual violence inside her text?

That's exactly it. This wasn't a creative decision made by Patricia C. Wrede after careful thought. This was the tapes in her head playing themselves. I recognized them because I got those tapes too.

When I was in fifth grade, we had a test question that asked whether the English or the Dutch were the first settlers of North America. I got in trouble for writing in that the Indians were.

When I was in high school (early 1990s), my history textbook talked about the origins of American democracy, and how "this empty continent made a wonderful blank slate in which to experiment with new forms of government" ... that is, once we'd gotten rid of those pesky natives. (Quotation not exact, but as accurate as I can recall.)

When I was in college, I looked up an old (microfiche) geographic survey of Maine from the late 1700s or very early 1800s. It said Maine used to be rich in natural resources, full of huge herds of deer, huge flocks of turkeys, freshwater mussels so big you had to cut them in pieces to eat them, and the soil was so rich that farming was a get-rich-quick occupation ... at least for a few years, until colonists' farming techniques ran down the soil, and then they'd move on to a fresh patch. I printed out the page that explained how "the land being largely uninhabited, and that by a people of but little industry," the fruits of the land returned to fertilize the soil, and that was why the land was so rich when white people arrived. It couldn't be that the Indians had carefully arranged their endeavors to maintain natural resources and minimize human effort. No, they were lazy, and besides, they hardly existed at all. (Of course I lost that printout, but "the land being largely uninhabited, and that by a people of but little industry" is an exact quotation. It was so shocking I memorized it.)

And then there was Wrede's statement, when explaining why she wanted replacements for indigenous East-Coast place-names, that the people who spoke those languages have all died out. Well. I guess my local tribe must be zombies. Just for the record: The Last of the Mohicans was fiction.

Experiments have found that it's easier to recall a story or idea when you've encountered it lots of times. That's why parents worry so much about their kids being kidnapped or abused by a stranger, even though it's very rare: news media spend weeks publicizing and dwelling on every stranger-kidnapping, so examples are easy to think of. And people faced with a puzzle, exposed to a cue that suggests a certain solution, will come up with that solution but be completely unconscious of the cue's effect, and insist that they thought of the solution on their own.

"American Indians never existed at all, so it's okay for us to take their stuff" is a lie that American white people have been telling ourselves for a long time.

So when Wrede tried to think of how North American history could be different with respect to American Indians, there was one scenario that came easily to mind, that was subtly familiar, that resonated with all the ways she'd been taught to think about history and America and Indians: threat, not really human, not really there, and besides they're all dead now. And she insisted that she came up with the solution to her problem independently, by pure creativity.

These lies were begun before any of us were born. They've been repeated all our lives. When we're children we have no control over what grownups tell us, but when we grow up, we are responsible for noticing the lies and rooting them out.

There were movies about Pippi, based on books by Astrid Lindgren, and I loved them all when I was little. Pippi was The Girl Who Never Heard That She Couldn't Do Something, the strongest girl in the world, and that included being stronger than grownups. She lived in her own house, with her monkey and her horse, and she made friends with a couple of normal children named Tommy and Annika, and completely rocked their world. She was one of my heroes.

Astrid Lindgren also wrote some other things. I can recommend Ronia, the Robber's Daughter. Ronia was the daughter of a mountain bandit, and when she grew old enough to be allowed out of the house, into the wild and dangerous woods, her father warned her to "watch out" for the forest's dangers, and her mother told her that the local predators got more aggressive if they could smell your fear, so the best thing was not to be frightened.

And in the days that followed, Ronia watched out for what was dangerous and practiced not being frightened. She was to be careful not to fall into the river, Matt had said, so she hopped, skipped, and jumped warily over the slippery stones along the riverbank, where the river rushed most fiercely. She was to stay by the waterfalls. To reach them, she had to climb down Matt's Mountain, which fell in a sheer drop to the river. That way she could also practice not being frightened. The first time it was difficult; she was so frightened that she had to shut her eyes. But bit by bit she became more daring, and soon she knew where the crevices were, where she could place her feet, and where she had to cling with her toes in order to hang on and not pitch backward into the rushing water.

What luck, she thought, to find a place where she could both watch out that she didn't fall in and practice not being frightened!

So her days passed. Ronia watched out and practiced more than Matt and Lovis knew, and in the end she was like a healthy little animal, strong and agile and afraid of nothing. Not of gray dwarfs, not of wild harpies, not of getting lost in the forest, and not of falling into the river. So far she had not begun to watch out for Hell's Gap, but she planned to start soon.

Ronia is for more advanced readers than the Pippi books. It's a bit darker and includes slightly more mature subjects, like romance and feuds.

Now noracharles has started a community for Astrid Lindgren fanfic. It's called bullerbyn, and so far has posts in English, Swedish, and German. If you're a Lindgren fan, I encourage you to check it out.

Five of them, to be exact.

So if you want one, send me your email addy.

ETA: Only one left.