sundries

[rm]

Sexism, let me count the ways: a new book in the UK asserts that women who allow nannies to help raise their children produce boys who grow up to be adulterers. And the girl children? Well they just become sluts and substance abusers.

The high school that canceled the prom because of a lesbian in a tux also reportedly repeatedly suspended a transgender student for earlier this year. In the realm of the slightly bizarre, this has come to light through Dan Savage, who has a good record about a lot of things and is entertaining as fuck, but has also been repeatedly faily regarding transphobia.

Wreckage of WWII plane found in Oregon.

That man who would become Pope Benedict XVI was kept more closely apprised regarding a sexual abuse case in Germany than previous church statements have indicated. Anyone got any insight into precedence/likelihood of the pope resigning?

I know we're supposed to hate A.I. (which I still think came perilously close to being one the greatest films ever made in spite of all the ways it falls apart; when I think about what it could have been had its vision fully succeeded I can barely breathe), but I can't introduce this link in any other way: Man Hatten, the place where the lions weep.

Dear Amanda Palmer: The problem with hipster racism is that if people don't know you it doesn't sound like a joke (which was never very funny anyway); it sounds like racism. Also, despite the illusions that celebrity media and internet culture encourage, most of the people who are really pissed off at you right now, don't know you; hence your racist joke sounding, you know, racist. Also, please stop contributing to our societal abuse of the word irony.

That said...

Dear Everyone Else, I am extremely sick of people calling her "a bitch" and "a slut" and other gendered terms that are about shaming female gender and sexuality because they either are (rightfully) angry about this latest debacle and default to those words (I'm working on it too!) or, and this is what I'm really irritated about, because they don't like that she's marrying Neil Gaiman.

This thing is about Amanda Palmer and who she is in public. While this thing may or may not be relevant to who she or Gaiman are are in private, if you don't know them personally (_personally_, not whatever quirk of internet/celebrity culture put the whole Internet on a first name basis with them) who they are at home isn't relevant to you, and the jealousy and misogyny I've seen directed at her deeply, deeply muddies the water in the critical response to her work and the performance of her public life. Please knock it off. It's not helping, and it's not appropriate.

At long last, a URL and registration information for the Bristol conference at which I'll be presenting the paper about mourning for fictional characters: Desiring the Text, Touching the Past: Towards An Erotics of Reception.

Observation about White Collar fandom: Look kids, the rape narratives are back. No, really. Rape hasn't been a huge topic in Torchwood fandom at all. White Collar fandom? Rape, rape, rape, prison rape, prison rape, prison rape. Some of it's kinkmemes, some of it's people processing their own experiences, some of it's just there, but I'd forgotten this aspect of fandom. This sort of thing was prominent in Harry Potter fandom, but it had slipped my mind the degree to which its thematic absence from Torchwood (although I've seen a few stories here and there) is atypical of both fandom and media in general.

Comments

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

I think you're onto something there; it's missing that element of sex-as-special-case that makes taking it by force into a threat worth treating as its own narrative focus. [Edit: if sex isn't something to RESIST, then there's comparatively less incentive to consider taking it as an avenue of attack?] That said, one could possibly make a case that psychological rape might have been played up more, since the show does have that added possibility of screwing more intensely and directly with minds than some, what with the retcon angle (what Gwen did with Rhys does come to mind here)...

[elisi]

That said, one could possibly make a case that psychological rape might have been played up more, since the show does have that added possibility of screwing more intensely and directly with minds than some, what with the retcon angle
*nods* I think that the way the show treats retcon is maybe a factor - it's seen as a tool, mainly. Although Adam of course showcased the dangers of being able to manipulate people's memories... Hmm.

if sex isn't something to RESIST, then there's comparatively less incentive to consider taking it as an avenue of attack?
I think having Jack as the main authority figure is actually quite important in this respect. Jack is overtly sexual, but not when it comes to threatening people. Sex is, although often screwed up (see Gwen/Owen), generally portrayed as a *good* thing.

Must ponder more, my head is full of thoughts and I'm not sure I'm putting things right. It's a very tricky subject.

[rm.livejournal.com]

One recurring theme I _do_ see in Torchwood fanfic is that rape is culturally abhorent to the culture Jack is from in a much stronger way than it is to the overall culture we are from .

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

I suspect I'd like Jack's culture a hell of a lot more than the one we currently have.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

if sex isn't something to RESIST, then there's comparatively less incentive to consider taking it as an avenue of attack?
I think having Jack as the main authority figure is actually quite important in this respect. Jack is overtly sexual, but not when it comes to threatening people. Sex is, although often screwed up (see Gwen/Owen), generally portrayed as a *good* thing.

This is where I was attempting to go in an unfinished comment, thank you.

A lot (not all) of rape narratives come from a "sex is bad" place, so if you're dealing with a group of characters for whom that's not a trope, you remove that angle. It's very refreshing, honestly.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Which raises this thing where shouldn't one of the reasons rape is evil be because sexual contact should be a good thing, as opposed to because sex is bad?

Man, this is getting really thorny and our culture is sooooooooooooo screwed-up.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Well, consider this:

Sex is bad.

If you get raped, it's your fault somehow. Either you wanted it and are trying to cover your ass after, or you were dressed wrong and sent the wrong message, or you just didn't say no loud enough. The onus is on you, the victim, to have prevented the rape. Otherwise, well, clearly you did want it or deserved it.

Also, a girl or woman who has been raped has been sullied and is a dirty thing. Who wants a dirty thing? You know, because sex is bad and she had sex.

Sex is not a bad or dirty thing on Torchwood, and while there's all kinds of weird things behind any given character's consent, it is always given.

When you're writing Torchwood, which is full of adult characters for whom consent, while may have caveats, is given freely by way of Alien pheremones, brainwashing, or ulterior motives. That is to say, in the moment the consent is given, it is meant.

It's hard to write a rape narrative of the above sort (again, LAZY WRITING WHOA) when a rape victim, in that environment, would receive compassion, help, and retribution, not shame.

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

It's hard to write a rape narrative of the above sort (again, LAZY WRITING WHOA) when a rape victim, in that environment, would receive compassion, help, and retribution, not shame.

THIS. Torchwood takes the motivation to tell that story away by neutralizing (most of) a potential rapist's reasons to use sex as the avenue of attack, as opposed to simple non-sexual violence; if there's no value-added to rendering the attack with a sexual dimension, because you can't plausibly play off of the cultural assumptions about sex that you cite, then odds are your typical writer is just going to go with the straight-up mugging/assault/ohmygodanalienjustrippedmyfaceoff and save themselves the trouble of opening that can of worms, if said can of worms isn't specifically the story they're intending to tell. (Which it could certainly be, I have seen it done even in this fandom, but it means that OMG RAEP isn't automatically a go-to complication to muddy up just any story with.)