sundries

[rm]

Wrote the abstract for the comics piece of the fan mourning project and submitted it to the D*C academic conference and the Comics Studies conference that happens in NY in conjunction with NYCC. I am made of awesome.

Death (expound). Something else passes out of the world. It makes me sad. I think it's a fabulous examination. FABULOUS. But then my education was a little odd. Also, the question about "does the presence of Nazi uniforms change the moral character of an orgy?" is pretty amazing too.

A real person needs real help to keep her apartment and her child. The Internet did it. Over $2,000 has been received. $1,200 of that will keep this woman in her house with her child. Of the rest, money that donors did not ask for back if the goal was met will be used to give the woman gift cards for groceries and other necessaries.

A WWII love letter from Brian to Dave.

We're getting a new subway map. I hope it's not as annoying as the one London has (NOT PROPORTIONAL).

Dispatches from the Other. A new edition of The Second Sex is coming out, with material formerly removed and in a much better translation.

A student studying for a PhD related to the Jack the Ripper murders has just been arrested for, you guessed it, killing prostitutes. The article is infinitely more bizarre than that though. It includes both the information that he shot one of the prostitutes with a crossbow to the head and that he liked to take his pet monitor lizards on on leashed walks. I'm not proud, but this is the most riveting thing I've read in AGES.

Why being part of the audience matters. Also, in places, this rant is laugh out-loud funny.

Last night on Angel: Oh my god, Wesley! You try to do the right thing and everything goes to shit, you poor bastard. Also, you all notice how it's Wes who keeps winding up with all the severe injuries? Something is percolating in my head about him as The Hanged Man.

Prediction: time works differently in hell, Connor will be back as an adult, soon, and everyone will try to avoid telling him that Angel is his dad. Also, that fucked up time-hopping demon? I have a bad, bad feeling about him as in he might be one of the team or Connor or something, and his trying to kill Connor was about trying to end his own personal eternal misery.

Comments

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Grrr. That review of the Second Sex (which I have not read) is really annoying. The reviewer ignores the fact that women-controlled, easily accessible birth control was still in its infancy when the book was written (the pill), and pregnancy and childbirth were still significant causes of death for women – and I'd imagine that would have an effect on the perceptions of motherhood, pregnancy and childbirth.

She also has the usual, unproven but popular 'gender personality characteristics are inborn' that is in vogue right now, but I hate. The reviewer also seems to be happy to pass on what seems to me to be a myth about how young women feel joy and celebrate their first menses – the majority of women I've talked to, this is not the case … though I may be getting a select population.

I do sympathize with the translation issues; French is not an easy language to translate into English, for all the two are fairly closely related. However, it sounds like both the old and the new were not translated by anyone with any … knack for translation.

[arianhwyvar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, ugh ugh ugh on that 'girls are thrilled and honored to get their periods!!!11!!OMG!' Even for a lot of us who had been educated such that we knew what was going on -- and that we were not in fact injured or dying -- I think 'disgust and horror' is closer than 'excitement and pride.' And I assume that when The Second Sex was written, it was much more common for girls not to be taught about menstruation in advance, and thus to experience their first menses as a pretty horrifying and alarming thing.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

See and the things I've read about raising daughters and girls growing up and all that seem to universally say that girls are thrilled and excited (or can be taught to be so) but what I've heard women whom I know say is almost universally that it was at best a kind of gross shock and worst a terrifying thing.

So -- it seems to me there's almost a ... propoganda attempt by, I dunno, adult women writers, to generate and maintain a false story about this. Maybe it's an attempt to battle the 'unclean and gross', 'women's genitals are disgusting' tropes that are present in our culture?

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

God yes, I dreaded getting mine (I thought it was going to be like peeing, all at once!) and when I did get it, I hated it. At this point, I'm hoping it will all be over with as soon as possible.