The background being that someone used My Little Ponies as a justification to draw your typical "sexy supergirl" pose, someone else was kind enough to do a redraw that actually provides some ethnic diversity, and someone else pointed out that the very real problem with the ubiquitous "sexy supergirl" is that it ignores that there's any particular kind of sexy besides simply having breasts and a willingness to wear very little in the way of clothing:
The sameness of the character designs hurts this. There’s a lot of different kinds of sexy. Athletic and tough can be sexy. Voluptuous and plump can be sexy. Nerdy and smart can be VERY sexy. Gentle and nurturing can be sexy and so forth. Here sexy is conveyed entirely by “large tits, lots of bared skin”.
This.
RECOMMENDS! What have you been reading/writing/thinking about lately?
31 comments:
That was excellent!
My favorite example of plump-and-AMAZINGLY-sexy is this:
http://www.redwombatstudio.com/wpg2?g2_itemId=342
Actually, Ursula Vernon is just one of my favorite artists, period.
I read "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein this week. Totally gripping, couldn't put it down, and immediately read the first part a second time because of reveals from the second part (I probably would have flipped back mid-read, instead, but I was on a Kindle and that's harder to do on a Kindle.)
Part of what I liked about it: YA about female friendship instead of about dating. The fact that it was a really cool adventure story set during WWII about a pilot and a spy: also really cool.
So in the past two weeks I finally officially enrolled in the classes I've been taking all year, had a couple of finals, and a last rush to actually get all of the work done I was supposed to have done already. And I did that all while sick, accidentally inventing a word in the process. I wrote about that here, but it's probably not that interesting.
I read Will talking about how a post of his that has become popular, which then led me to reading the post itself. I somehow missed it the first go round, it's about his thoughts on Hufflepuff and talent and effort and thus about the value of hard work. It's a good post, it deserves to be popular.
Fred Clark has returned to going through the worlds worst books, so I read his first post about Nicolae: Rise of the Antichrist. Also so many interesting comments to that post.
And not much else. Still not reading much.
I wrote a post summing up the whole no confidence thing I've been talking about for a while, so that people could find out what happened with Selma Botman and the University of Southern Maine regarding that without wading through my commentary.
I moved the thing I wrote about Susan's return to Narnia over to the blog. Did the same with a reviewish thing of the Left Behind series I originally wrote as a post at Slacktivist.
I wrote sort of mini commentary on each of a bunch of movies I've recorded to DVD, specifically the 25 or so I had sitting unprotected and mostly unlabeled on top of my satellite box.
And finally I wrote about the lack of Bechdel passing conversations in The Avengers, the lower than should be there number in Firefly, and how I think that's in part due to the women in both being placed in roles that don't interact with each other. (And in part because The Avengers has almost no women in it.)
Chris, I love your Avengers post. The Maria Hill character bugged me in ways that I was too tired to enumerate, but OH LOOK CHRIS DID IT BETTER THAN I WOULD HAVE ANYWAY. *thumbs up* :D
This past week I read Alice Hoffman's "The Dovekeepers" and the first book of Maggie Anton's Rashi's Daughter's trilogy, so I've been heavy on the historical fiction about Jewish women.
They were both good reads. The Hoffman I had incredibly complicated and mixed feelings about--I was very critical of a lot of the choices she made, and not entirely sold on the writing style, but when I read other critical reviews I felt very defensive of the piece. It's about four women living through the siege of Masada--so, yeah, I felt immensely protective of everyone, plus, if you were raised Jewish you KNOW where this story is going...
The Anton piece is basically a romance novel, and it takes Rashi's eldest daughter, Yocheved, (she Anglicizes it 'Joheved') from childhood to the birth of her first child. It isn't brilliant, but it's fun, and I love fiction about premodern Jewish communities. (Plus a couple of very sexy scenes.) I'll definitely read the next two.
My favorite bit of the Anton (only mild spoiler): Joheved's husband sufferes from depression and impotence after his sister dies in childbirth, so Joheved goes to consult first with her aunt the midwife, and then on a recommendation, with this elderly mystic who sells amulets and such. He gives her a whole complex spell for restoring her husband's virility, part of which involves capturing an image of mating dogs in a mirror and putting the mirror under her bed. Unable to find dogs mating, she goes for an image of sheep mating. When all the resulting events are all over, she explains this to the mystic who yells at her that sheep are FAR too powerful for a mirror that size, and she's lucky that her husband is still alive. He walks off, muttering "Sheep. I can't believe she used sheep!"
I finished the 11th Sisters of the Moon series, Shaded Vision (Galenorn) which allows me to say: Anyone who might be triggered because the 10th book, Courting Darkness, has a sexual assault as a plot item, can safely skip the book entirely and go on to Shaded Vision. There may have to be inference drawing to explain the presence of the new character and a couple other references, but for the most part, book 10 was a plot digression.
Past that point, I keep up with my blogroll and occasionally actually write entries. Oh, and I changed the name of the blog - felt overdue, now that I know what I know now.
With Maria Hill it's so weird because on the one hand you get the impression that if you put her in her own movie she'd hold her own as well as any James Bond ever did, yet on the other hand in this movie she is defined wholly by her relationship to Fury to the point that without him she'd have one line consisting, basically, of, "Oh crap engine [number] is out, we can't afford to lose another."
And it's frustrating to open the movie with, "Meet this character, she's awesome," and then spend the rest of the movie going, "But she never gets to interact with anyone but her boss, except for that one time she said two words about her boss."
Yeah, she was super awesome in the opening sequence, but once it was over (and she was stuck under rubble), I mentally* turned to Husband and said in my Voice Of Authority, "We shall not see her again."
'Course, you do see her again, but not really as anything other than Fury's second in command in charge of keeping the set pieces afloat while the boys did the talking and actioning. And I didn't even catch her name until the end credits.
* "Mentally" because I do TRY not to talk in theaters. Home is still fair-game, though.
I didn't catch her name until after the movie. Hapax mentioned it in discussion at The Slacktiverse and I looked it up and discovered, "Oh, that's who that was." When I saw the movie a second time I did catch her last name being used at some point, don't remember exactly when, so it is in there.
Thisthisthis. Sometimes I think the sameness of comic book characters goes further that "only X is sexy" all the way to "only X exists." If you stripped 'em naked and shaved 'em bald, many comic women would be indistinguishable. Which is not cool. But I do have to offer the possibility of limited art ability rather than limited understanding as the cause-- drawing differently shaped people is not automatic to everyone who can draw people.
Was also somewhat grouchyface about the lack of ladies in Avengers, and it also jumped out at me that SHIELD seems to hire its flying-aircraft-carrier employees based on body type and how that body type would look in catsuits. And why catsuits, anyway? A uniform where you don't have to de-shirt as well as de-pantsing to use the restroom seems more practical. I really enjoyed the movie and have been bugging my father to take me to see it again, but... the costumefail and the bodytypefail are there.
Reading: A few more Simon R Green books, a Deathlands, and a childrens' book about fairies called "13 Treasures" which has a great first few chapters but I was trying to bread it on a roadtrip and carsickness prevented me from finishing it. No sense wasting a good book while you feel too rotten to enjoy it.
Roadtrip: As usual, my family stops at every used bookstore along the way. This time I think we hit five. I picked up a Deathlands, several vintage D&D books, a treatise on becoming invisible that I haven't read yet, and a book about being on the show "Destination Truth." One of those "reality" shows where they go looking for bigfoot, a genre I enjoy but don't believe for a second. Should be interesting to read what it's like to film one. The point of the roadtrip was to go to the ocean and poke in tidepools. Saw an otter, some starfish, an entire pool full of spiky purple things and sea anemones waving their tentacles in the current.
trigger warnings as marked:
(tw: rape and revenge) I've been re-reading the Tarma and Kethry stories after listening to the Mercedes Lackey filk you posted. Unfortunately this is making me revisit some problems I've had with Lackey. For a satisfying read sometimes bad guys need to get what they've got coming to them... but turning a rapist into a woman and setting him up to be raped to death by his fellow rapists just tastes bad to me. It wasn't like that was the only option the heroes had--they could have turned the rapist to their employer or whatever justice system there was in that area. Oh, yeah, and maybe the rest of the guys gang could have been brought to justice too, instead of sent a victim.
(tw: unjust execution and abortion rights) Online I've been reading Pharyngula which I may have to start avoiding because it's too depressing. Of note are posts on a recent execution in Texas where an innocent man was killed and a post titled 'Let them have coathangers' about abortion in Mississippi. ... I think I need to go do some gardening now. I bet pennyroyal is popular this year. >.>
(no more tws) Actually, I really do need to do some gardening, but that means more sitting at my computer. See, mint cross pollinates, which can be good or can be bad depending. I'd rather have my spearmint, catnip, orange mint, and chocolate mint all stay their respective selves. Everything I've read about growing mint says to keep the various mints seperate. Alas, they don't define 'seperate'. Five feet? Twenty? Are we talking acreage here?
As you can probably guess I'm not much of a gardener, though my parsley is hip high after surviving a very mild winter.
Other than that I'm experimenting with knooking which is an unholy conmbination of knitting and crocheting (knitting with a crochet hook, pretty much). I've added the afghan stitch to this and I'm playing. That's what Sunday afternoons are for, isn't it?
TW: Rape, Capital Punishment
I haven't read the associated story, but I know exactly the filk song that they made to accompany it.
And... sometimes I wish fantasy books wouldn't even try to deal with rape. Because while I see the appeal of "thank you for contributing to a culture which makes it terrible to be a woman, now enjoy BEING one," I agree with you that this is HIGHLY problematic.
But... then you have fantasy worlds (which may not be the case here, I don't know) where the only other alternative is a clean death because the society doesn't have jail time or rehabilitation, so I don't even know what to do with rapists since I'm not pro-capital punishment. Presumably the author needs to come up with some kind of infrastructure for jails and a justice system but that's a LOT of world-building and I'm not sure it works and plays nicely with a lot of stock fantasy settings.
So then we're back to: what do you DO with rapists? And -- frankly -- I think it's WORSE when they're conscripted into the military or something where they *never rape anyone ever again* because (a) there are no women and rapists only rape women, (b) army discipline solves everything, (c) 'good' armies don't rape during war time and obvs this army is good because it's led by the Good Guys and filled with rapist recruits. I hate THAT trope so much I want to hurl it into the sun.
TL;DR: That setup makes me uncomfortable too, but I don't know how to fix it. *waffle* Pretty filk song, though. Link for the curious. Though I don't think that's the singer on my CD -- it's the right lyrics and music, though.
To be fair, the sameness of comic book characters applies across the board, especially in the early days when comics were supposed to be disposable entertainment for ten-to-twelves. It's why so many comic characters dress exactly the same day after day and superheroes have brightly colored, distinctive costumes with big symbols on the front. And once the trope is established, it's done because that's how superheroes have always dressed.
And the skin-tight part? It's a lot easier to draw than regular clothes. That's why organizations from the comics like SHIELD have skin-tight uniforms.
TW: rape, excutions
Many years ago, at my college graduation party, the then-boyfriend of a friend (who claimed to be ex-Army and wasn't) was rambling on about how women should not be in combat because they could be captured and raped. My darling grandmother looked at him curiously and said, "Well, so could you be dear, but you haven't let that stop you from a career in the military. I think that's very brave."
He turned green, and thankfully, shut up.
Which is a lead-in to how I am always baffled that you apparently need to turn the rapist into a girl in order to play this 'see how you like it!' game.
I hate this twist, which I've read a couple three timesl; I especially hate it if other malefactors will not be brought to justice.
I'm opposed to the death penalty in my own time and place, for various reasons, but I honestly don't much mind in people in fantasy worlds where they don't have the social structure for other responses to violent crime going ahead and executing folks.
And sending them into the army? Yeah, any good sergeant is going to thank you profusely for that when THEY end up having to hang the guy, mid-campaign. A Song of Ice and Fire avoids the actual problems of a standing, moving army by shipping rapists off to the Night's Watch, which is not the worst solution I've ever heard, although it is acknowledged that a lot of folks who don't deserve to be there also end up there. This does, of course, fall under the category of assuming 'they won't reoffend if there are no women around' and 'military discipline solves all', but I think there's also a certain amount of leeway for them falling off the Wall if their second chance doesn't work out well.
One of my own fantasy pieces involves a protagonist who (in a military setting) demands and gets the unpleasant execution of two soldiers after a particularly ugly rape and murder. I didn't feel wonderful about it, still don't, but given my protagonist's personal experiences and take, and the actual resources at hand, it was what she was going to do. I feel ambivalent about it. She doesn't.
Of course, my world is almost an alternative history, and magic is very, very marginal. In a world where you can give a man a woman's body through magic, it seems to me you would be able to actively rehabilitate him through magic. And messing with his head does not, in fact, seem less ethical to me than turning him into a woman, and subjecting him to sexual violence. This could just be me.
Now I feel dumb for not previously knowing Ursula Vernon outside her writing. But awesome because yay, art!
Regarding the Lackey filk -- I've heard a satiric version that observes that the sorceress really shows what she thinks of women by turning the rapist into one. Alas, I can't find the words online.
That Tarma & Kethry scene bugged me a lot too. It seemed like the kind of poetic justice that would be more fitting if the whole concept of suffering didn't exist, and there was only fear and discomfort---if the victim of, well, anything could be totally fine and stable and balanced in the rest of their life, so that incidents of awful things only produced an angry fist-shake in the air and a yell of "Curseeees!"
... actually, that's true for most poetic justice, isn't it? Like, if all we're doing is moving transient unpleasant experiences and luxuries around, poetic justice is great. Let the pinched . . . become the pinch-ee! Let they who steals another's slice of cake---get LESS cake on the next seven meals! It's when you start immiserating people---side point of interest: particularly with miseries that I'm personally familiar with---that poetic justice starts feeling like just a reiteration of the original crime.
It's when you start immiserating people---side point of interest: particularly with miseries that I'm personally familiar with---that poetic justice starts feeling like just a reiteration of the original crime.
Wow, this is really profound. o.O
Because I really don't think one has to be secretly misogynist to say "you know what? let's see how YOU like it", and turn someone into a woman. I *get* that -- I wouldn't probably do it myself, but I get the impulse. (I don't know what I'd do. Again, I don't go in for capital punishment. Honestly, if we're in a No Holds Barred magic setting, maybe I'd youthen them to a baby and try to raise them better this time. And that is probably STEEPED in massive consent issues so maybe not. I really don't know.)
But, as you say, it's the difference between a sort of childlike "fair's fair!" justice and a justice that says, "er, no, this is bad. Period."
Very eloquently put, Jenna. :)
> Honestly, if we're in a No Holds Barred magic setting, maybe I'd
> youthen them to a baby and try to raise them better this time.
In addition to the consent issues you mention, that could run into problems if there are physical roots to their being abusers. Which seems possible for the worst-of-the-worst if not necessarily for the average perp.
I might try a guardian angel that prevents them from exploiting/abusing/oppressing/hurting others more than ... one? two? standard deviations below the norm for what I consider a reasonably enlightened society, ideally using direct assistance (information or physical protection) to the victim; conceivably it would also help them out if they're ever caught in a situation (press-ganged onto a pirate ship?) where having such a guardian is an actual survival or misery risk for them. That's excessively simplistic, vulnerable to prison-break in a high-magic setting, and maybe overly generous, but it seems like the kind of thing that minimizes risks of committing a moral crime myself.
I'd prefer some mix of forcing empathy if their problem is principally conceptual and fixing them if it's physiological/historical, but both of those seem like they might have wicked unintended consequences.
Jonathan, I hope so! That sounds fantastic and I would love to read it.
"All hands, prepare to engage the enemy fleet. -breath- Main battery, stand by for targeting solution, I want every -breath- turian bastard behind us firing on the same unlucky patch of Reapers. -breath- For a thousand years, our species has been the punchline of every -breath- joke in the galaxy. Today, we strike the fear of the ancestors into these -breath- machines."
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Also, if magical castration had issues of bodily autonomy and consent, this has issues like whoa.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
[Continuing the discussion of gender change as punishment, specifically focusing on revenge.]
Going beyond the specific example, which apparently was using it as one part of a brutal means of execution, punishment by turning into a woman has problems beyond all of the ones already mentioned. For example it has the potential for serious blowback.
You've got this evil person, now this evil woman. And you do what with them? If you had a functioning prison system, or any legitimate means of restraint or rehabilitation, you wouldn't need to resort to magically making the person transgendered as punishment. Which means that either you're killing them (in which case just kill them, leave off the body dysphoria) or you're unleashing an evil woman upon the world.
An evil woman who presumably considers herself entitled to a higher level of respect than this, I'm assuming sexist, society will be giving her and probably has a history of enforcing that expectation of respect with violence.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
I mean if we're assuming that she can no longer use brute strength or status to preform her evils, then that's going to push her into different means in which case there's a good chance the post-femalization evil is going to tend toward the lethal. Avenues with more finesse that the individual might consider probably require resources that have been stripped away, and it's not as if the individual would have any knowledge of the avenues women in the society might use.
My understanding is that the things that tend to be equalizers in combat also tend to be rather on the deadly side, and more importantly combat might seem best avoided entirely* pushing our evil one to go for poison or a knife in the back. It's safer. Non-violent means of revenge generally require status or power that the evil one is probably assumed to have lost with his/her gender.
So, sure, you seem to be begging the person to become a serial killer, but it's not like that will happen every time you change a violent criminal into a woman and set her loose upon the world, and it's not as if a sexist society would use the crimes those apparent women who do choose that path as an argument to justify restricting the freedom of all women, right? Right?
-
* I'm assuming this person is a sexist, so wouldn't he/she think, "Now that I'm a woman I can't win in a fair fight, I guess I won't fight fair"?
Great points, Chris -- I can imagine that it WOULD be used to unfairly oppress women further.
I meant to add this, but then my computer rebooted and I forgot it in the comment:
---
Sorceress: Could I make him mentally experience the trauma his crimes have inflicted on his victims? Like, once a day or something?
Warrior: Like that one Voyager episode with Paris? Didn't that turn out badly?
Sorceress: I think so, but wasn't that just because Paris was innocent? Other than that, it was fine?
Warrior: You're asking me if a Star Trek Voyager episode was internally consistent and devoid of Unfortunate Implication? I dunno. Probably not.
---
Additionally, if the change isn't until death -- as in, the changed person will die soon anyway -- then there's nothing stopping them from hiring a wizard to revert the curse, and they're really not likely to have Learned A Lesson in the meantime, after-school specials aside.
And now I'm thinking again about how much any kind of "turned into an X" tale (frog, beast, child, different gender, etc.) is seriously squicky at the heart of it.
Was also somewhat grouchyface about the lack of ladies in Avengers, and it also jumped out at me that SHIELD seems to hire its flying-aircraft-carrier employees based on body type and how that body type would look in catsuits.
It is a military organization, and likely has fitness and weight standards.
And -- frankly -- I think it's WORSE when they're conscripted into the military or something where they *never rape anyone ever again*
The fuck? People do this? At what point did
Which is a lead-in to how I am always baffled that you apparently need to turn the rapist into a girl in order to play this 'see how you like it!' game.
Because the point, generally, is one about misogyny rather than rape, per se. And not all rapists are quite so... indiscriminate.
Isn't this a bit of a 'not as bad as Saddam' case either way?
The entire allied fleet executing a mass-FTL jump, leaping to one side of the Earth instead of coming head-on, because if they did that then the Reapers would be between their cannons and Earth, and stray fire from the chaotic battle would bombard the already-devastated homeworld.
If it was 'already-devastated' enough you didn't care it might help, as you'd be fighting down into a gravity well, and they'd be fighting their way out. Of course, most sci-fi ships have enough power that this doesn't really matter
With Emotional Rage, we will avenge ourselves upon the Reapers, no matter what the cost, Commander... Sorrowfully, for there is little else in this universe for the elcor now that Dekuuna has burned to a cinder. The history of the elcor may end here, today, but... Contemplatively, it is a good end. If any are left to remember us after this day, they will.
Why is it that this pattern of speech makes me think of Hymnos? It's sorta monotoned instead of sung, obviously, but the emotion-statement pattern is similar.
Again, I don't go in for capital punishment. Honestly, if we're in a No Holds Barred magic setting, maybe I'd youthen them to a baby and try to raise them better this time.
If you're 'youthening' is sufficient to erase their memories and personality, then seems more efficient to just hang them or whatever. You're still killing them, just in an unecessarily elaborate way. It's not technically more cruel, it's just highly unusual... and sick.
Additionally, if the change isn't until death -- as in, the changed person will die soon anyway -- then there's nothing stopping them from hiring a wizard to revert the curse, and they're really not likely to have Learned A Lesson in the meantime, after-school specials aside.
Right. Which is why magical gender change isn't a viable punishment for anything above after-school-special grade crimes.
It is a military organization, and likely has fitness and weight standards.
Even so, I'd expect quite a range of variation.
http://www.shakesville.com/2012/05/what-does-us-olympian-look-like.html
It is a military organization, and likely has fitness and weight standards.
That is a good point that totally never occurred to me. Maybe because the folks I was thinking of don't really fight in the movie, just man the bridge and look at computers. But if they fight the rest of the time that would explain their general fitness. That works!
...maybe I'd youthen them to a baby and try to raise them better this time.
This actually happened to Magneto in the X-Men comics; some third party turned Magneto into a baby to "give him a second chance" and he was taken in by a scientist friend of Professor X, who then tampered a bit with his genetic code, ostensibly to protect him from mutation-induced mental instability. And then some other third party restored him to his previous adult self, and he promptly went into full paranoid rage mode over said tampering.
The alternate-universe/reboot Ultimate X-Men also had a storyline where Professor X tried a version of this on Magneto - mind-wiping him and giving him a new life as a special-ed teacher, with the intention of letting him get attached to that life and then gradually re-introducing him to his magnetic powers and the truth of his previous life. Needless to say, some of the other X-Men were really disturbed by this, and it all went to hell when some of Magneto's old allies found out and undid the mind-wipe.
So yeah. Mind-wiping is creepy as all get-out, and liable to be ineffective if there's any possibility of reversal.
The lack of body type diversity in SHIELD didn't bother me as much as the lack of racial diversity. I don't think I spotted a single SHIELD agent of colour aside from Nick Fury. I'm used to it in protagonists, but I spent much of the movie puzzling over how white SHIELD was. What was weird was that extras in the civilian scenes were fairly diverse, making me wonder what changed in the casting process.
On the vague chance people remember me from occasional postings here and a little more often at the Slactiverse, Farah above is me - who is discovering why people complain about Disquis.
Ana, I was vaguely thinking that part of the problem might be that fantasy is so heavily based on mythology and folklore, and there's almost nothing there actually punishing rape. And then the 'turned into an X' actually reminded that there's a magical response to rape in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi. (Welsh mythological cycle).
The king's nephews rape the king's 'footholder', a young woman whose position at court involves being a virgin and holding the king's feet in her lap. This happens in the king's absence, and when he gets back, the footholder confronts him:
'An attack, Lord, was committed upon my person - quite openly - and I myself did not stay silent. There is no-one in this court who wouldn't have known about it. It was your nephews who came, Lord, sons of your sister: Gwydion son of Don and Gilfaethwy son of Don. They committed an assault on me and an insult upon you. They slept with me - and they did that in your chamber and in your bed.'
I love it that she's quite clear that he's the one who's been shamed by this situation.
He makes restitition to her by marrying her himself, and then turns the nephews in breeding pairs of various animals--deer, wolves, and pigs, IIRC, and sends them out into the wilderness for a year in each form, from which they return with offspring.
Problematic in ever so many ways, but...you know, compared to most ancient stories about rape, I'll take.
It alarms me more than a little that my first objection to the MLP sexbots was "that's not how breasts work," followed by "what the fuck LEGS," followed by "corsets don't work like that, either." THEN the objectification/sexualization/erasure-of-the-ponies'-identities.
Also, YAY Ursula Vernon! I have Saint Egg and Feral Strawberry prints on my kitchen wall, and my husband and I pre-order each and every Dragonbreath book (the ONLY books we buy rather than borrow at this point). We might make Nurk a bedtime story while we wait for Toothbreath... he hasn't read it yet, and it is a cute story.
I rather wish Ursula'd had the inclination to write more about the elf Sings-to-Trees and the orc warrior he was nursing back to health. She's got lots of awesome, paying works on the go nowadays, but I liked those characters.
Still trying to persuade Husband to let me hang Valley of the Wang.
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