true things about gender that you can learn from watching Avatar:

(Some of you may have seen this before; it's a belated crosspost of something I said someplace else. To everyone else, hi again! I haven't forgotten you - just not in a bloggy mood atm).


1. No matter how much more experienced, more intelligent and more educated a woman might be than a given guy, he is still going to get more honoured for his accomplishments than she is.

2. If a guy repeatedly nags a woman, oversteps her clearly stated personal barriers and ignores her 'no's and her requests to be left alone, he won't be in any way punished for this. The woman in question may then be forced to give him her time, energy and attention.

3. Women are expected to 'civilise' and to educate men, even if they don't want to.

4. Related: in any mixed-gender officialdom, low-reward educative roles will be disproportionately occupied by women. (Trufax, just ask the next female education rep you see. In any group. Anywhere.)

5a). Also related: if a woman is better/more experienced than a guy at anything, it's only so she can teach him how to be more badass at that thing. She will never be referred to as a 'stone-cold sky hunter' or whatever the hell it was, no matter how many years of experience she has at it. If it's at all technical/athletic/masculine, no one will ever say that she was 'born to' do it, even if she was.
5b). The guy will end up with a more pimping ride than her.

6. Men are expected to choose a woman to pursue from a range of possible partners. Women are then expected to say 'yay' or 'nay'. Everyone is expected to be heterosexual.

7. 'Masculine' feats are easy ways to win public belonging. Even the possibility that you might have a masculine role - a warrior, in Avatar context - offers you potential value in the eyes of the people in control of your life, who are men.

8. So-called anthropologists will ascribe rigid gender binaries to the cultures they study. If the intelligence of non-white women is recognised, it's classed as cultural/religious rather than logical/scientific.

9. You will wind up in the magical data treefridge.


... :/

Ffs.

I am tired of seeing that stupid story over and over. I mean (when I wasn't trying to find a way to get my giant 3d glasses to stay on my face) there were camera angles in that movie that provoked physical-based emotional reactions from me, I was really wanting to get into it, but the fucking fratboy bullshit mentality was so frustrating that, god, I reached this point about 3/4s of the way through where I literally had tears leaking out of my eyes at how stupidly racist and sexist the story was. I was wishing it was a videogame because then I could have wandered about in it and talked to all the NPCs instead of looking 'down' on them camerawise as they sat on the floor and gyrated oh god James Cameron what is wrong with you? however gratuitous and crazy Zhang Yimou is at least he gives the impression of knowing that I exist and that I have a point of view.

...So basically I just switched off after that and started msting it with some of the imaginary people in my head, and had this tremendously eerie, detached moment of looking at the massed flying dino armies, asking 'so what would you do?' and getting that 3 Daft Monkeys line in reply:
Do you think gods hang round in bars and compare armies that they've got?

Mhm.

more about the olympics

I think what really got the goat this time was the story about the switch-up between the two girls for the opening ceremony. Supposedly Lin Miaoke was more attractive than Yan Peiyi, so Lin Miaoke mimed the song “ode to the motherland” for the opening ceremony whilst the real singing voice was recorded by Yang Peiyi.

[...] What I think is truly despicable about the whole thing, regardless of how Yang Peiyi feels about it — is that this makes a farce of the modern concept of the Olympics.

Athletes gathered here from around the world to participate in competitions to see who is the best. This is a gathering designed, not only to see who is the best, but to give recognition to the best.

For me, the idea of not giving due recognition to someone at the Olympics just goes against the grain.

Kyrias, as promised.

Recently our expectations of coverage of women have been lowered, nullified; we have become used to seeing that strange category - celebrity women - pictured constantly, relentlessly, their image before us for no other reason than that they happen to have headed out for a pint of milk with their makeup on skew-whiff. At Beijing we have seen the antithesis of that - we have been treated to the sight of ordinary women reaching extraordinary heights. The women we have been thrilling to aren't in our eyeline because they happen to be the offspring of some 1970s rocker, or because they've bagged a multimillionaire boyfriend. They aren't on screen because they have starved themselves to a size zero - instead, their bodies are a celebration of strength.

From the Grauniad - h/t to the red one: it's a great article, one that meanders through sport and media and celebrity culture, and you all should go read. Viv.id disagrees:

A couple of years ago, Tigtog posted about athletlcs uniforms and the trend toward sexified, midriff-baring, underwear-style women’s uniforms. ...Minute increases in performance cannot account for this difference, otherwise the men would be in skintight clothing also.

No. It’s not about faster, higher, stronger. Women in sports are promoted as sexualised bodies for ogling; men are promoted as performers.

Viv.id have comparison photos of male and female team costumes for various sports - and prove that the difference was not marked in the 1980s. h/t to a comment at Shameless. (false advertising: that Shameless post is totally not shameless. But thanks for that photo!)

Also, Ren brings the boycandy.

on presentational devices at your precious non-politicised Olympic Games

Feng Silu, another volunteer, says they have gone through rigid training to achieve perfection. During the training sessions, they have to stand in five to six-inch heels with their jaws tucked in while balancing a 16-page book on their head and keeping a sheet of paper between their knees, for at least an hour at a time. If either object fell or slipped from place, they would have to start the exercise all over again.

"We only take a few minutes' rest every a couple of hours. You know, we need to adjust our pace and stride constantly to achieve perfection. When it was break time, even bending my legs hurt. And as we have our stockings on during training, we may wear out two or three pairs each day."

From CRIEnglish. (h/t Kyrias, who has promised a post on this in the near future. [edit: It's here.]

Wearing a red dress and pigtails, Lin Miaoke charmed a worldwide audience with a rendition of "Ode to the Motherland".

But the singer was Yang Peiyi, who was not allowed to appear because she is not as "flawless" as nine-year-old Lin.

The show's musical director said Lin was used because it was in the best interests of the country.

From the Beeb, with pictures of the two children.


Marina Hyde, for the most part, wrote the Olympics post I didn't want to:

Amazingly, it's not even the IOC's most unedifying moment of the past fortnight. That honour belongs to their decision to suspend the entire Iraqi Olympic team on the basis that the country's National Olympic Committee had not been properly recognised by the IOC. Clearly, Iraq's real crime was not having the right paperwork, though before rescinding the ban on some (but not all) of the athletes, the IOC chuntered that it was because of suspicions of "political interference in the Olympic movement".

Last week I asked them to clarify why they had never suspected political interference when one Uday Hussein was chairman of the NOC. Unfortunately, they were far too grand to comment, but having since read senior IOC member Dick Pound's book, I discover that they couldn't be sure that Uday was a political placeman. Thank God they didn't put two and two together and make five.

Instead, they focus on issuing directives forbidding athletes from making any political statements. Surely it's time the IOC re-examined their definition of what it means to be political. It seems entirely acceptable for states to politicise the games by using them as propaganda, and for corporations to do the same (22 years of McDonald's sponsorship feels faintly agenda-driven). Only the athletes are warned not to step out of line.

Priorities being what they are, the IOC did not bother to issue similar directives instructing China not to bulldoze homes to make way for the new Beijing. And yet they must have known this would happen, as so many games have been preceded by what we might euphemistically describe as a tidying away of humans who don't match the decor. Consider Mexico City, where police opened fire and killed hundreds of student protesters; or Atlanta, where the organising committee actually built the jail to which many people who committed new offences on the city statute book - like lying down in the street - were dispatched.

that one non-post about Wimbledon

Sometimes when you're writing blog post drafts, you realise they're just burying other drafts. This one I abandoned due to pure derailment (more on that in a moment), but I think it deserves to live.

Coverage of women's sport does, as with most coverage of women's anything, suck. Most often it's not there much at all, but then you get blessed lovely Wimbledon, in which it is there and is often cringe-worthy. Last year the blue person (with a wee bit of help from me) made a beautiful collection of the worst of the worst Wimbledon online news (locked away on Livejournal, gah [edit: It's here, so go read]), and I intended to reprise that this year.

Except:
a) many news sites were so turned on by gorgeous, fabulous Rafa that they reverted to Option 1 - not covering the women's game so much.
b) it was genuinely better. For real. I think this is partly because the worst reporting last year was about Marion Bartoli, who had the gall to play in the final in spite of not being thin. This wasn't just mean-spirited of her, but actually affronting to the laws of nature and acres of newsprint were devoted to the question of how it had happened and how it could be prevented in the future.
c) I was derailed by the discovery that by far the most stupid thing said all fortnight was by one of the female players.

Friends, I give you Sveltlana Kuznetsova, the dimmest bulb in the entire box.

...behind her on the players' terrace there is a commotion, as a posse of photographers cluster around Serena Williams. I have heard that she and Serena are good friends, I say. “Yes, we text. We go out sometimes. I have big respect for African (-American) people. I think I was black in a past life, because I feel so much for African culture. I tell Serena that I want her hair, to have corn rows like her. She laughs at me. She says we all wish for what we don't have. But she teaches me some slang, and shows me dance moves.” A delighted laugh. “I can't shake my body like African people.”

Wow.


For what it's worth, here's a few more:

At The Independent, Paul Newmanat has made his tennis article contain as little tennis as possible. Instead, he faithfully regales us with Venus Williams's comments about...get this...food and babies. They are not even comments about eating babies, which would at least have been more entertaining than this trash.

And the Indy crowns itself as my new least favourite sports site with this from Tim Glover:

Equal pay isn't fair play [...] yesterday's winner in the family affair that was Williams v Williams walked away with prize money of £750,000, the sum that will be earned – really earned – by the men's singles champion today. Parity? It's nice work if you can get it, although for most of the time it can hardly be described in the women's game as work.

At The Times, the women's game is 'tame' and Venus and Serena Williams only reached the final because other players 'the top seeds at Wimbledon capitulated one by one and handed the trophy and the prizemoney to the Williams sisters'. [Fact: black women never deserve anything they've fought for. MOW keeps pointing this meme out.] Fortunately two commenters call Nick Pitt on his bullshit; 'didnt the same two guys play the final before. Didn't the women have upsets all through the two weeks. When this happens to the men it's exciting.'; 'Djokovic and Roddick lost early too. Does that mean men's tennis is in "trouble" ? Serve and volley? Few men play it anymore either.'

Over at the Daily Telegraph, Venus Williams is no longer a woman:

Venus' serve alone would have blown a few hats off in the Royal Box, and it was almost like watching the men's final on a Saturday. Not for nothing are they sometimes referred to as the Williams brothers.

More wow.

The Guardian's David Mitchell is brutally honest about the sexualisation of women's tennis, but is oblivious to the crap behind it:

Ana Ivanovic caused quite a stir at Wimbledon before being knocked out, largely because she's pretty. This has a particularly amusing effect on the BBC's ageing male commentators, who struggle to find a way to refer to the fact without saying anything sleazy. Their discomfort is palpable as they struggle with phrases like "very mobile and athletic", "nice dress", "young lady" and even "lights up the court". They're like tremulous uncles, weary and nervous of their own arousal.

They know they've got to mention it, you see - it's good for the business that is women's tennis. So they've got to say something but they know it mustn't be "I, for one, would like to bang her!" or "What's great about a player like Ivanovic is that she attracts a lot of teenage wankers as well as the tennis fans". They don't want metaphorical jizz on everyone's mental centre court but, at the same time, they know that, if the internet's taught us anything, it's not to underestimate the masturbatory pound.

Did you hear that subtext? Yes, yes, straight women don't masturbate. I guess Sue Barker's constant drooling over Roger Federer is representative of some phenomenon unknown to science.

on dickwads:

I'm a bit late on this one, but Ren and Belle are spreading word about Kyle Payne, who is a blogger - a man who both blogs and does IRL conference stuff against pornography - who has pleaded guilty to breaking into a woman's bedroom, assaulting her and taking nude photographs of her in her sleep. He is still merrily blogging away, and presumably will continue to do so until he gets put away. What. As Belle reports, he is facing an open sentencing at Buena Vista County Courthouse, Storm Lake, Iowa on August 11th. If you live nearby, you might want to show up and have your word on that.


Someone else is being a dickwad lately: Obama and a supporter of his, comedian Bernie Mac. Lisa K is just plain mad about this. Gina brings the context:

Most Black women know that the standard fare for African American comedians is anti-Black woman attacks. It is always acceptable to make us the butt of their jokes. They usually get a pass however by the Black community, because the people they are insulting are Black women and nobody really cares about us anyway. No Black woman is immune from the anti-Black woman musing of these Black comedians, not even a potential Black First Lady, afterall, she’s a Black woman, and nobody really cares about us anyway. The only people that get into hot water for disparaging Black women are White people.

[...]Let’s be clear, Bernie Mac didn’t get shouted down because of his sexism, he got shouted down because he embarrassed Barack Obama. Sexism and misogyny by Black entertainers is permitted and even rewarded. It was refreshing to see someone confront it, whatever the reason. They were right, implying that Black women are inherently unsuitable to serve as First Lady of the United States of America is not funny to me.

I am avoiding most threads about this one; my fee-fees, they are slighted. (Yeah, pass me a hanky). But ultimately I'm reminded of Obama's early ties to gay-bashing preachers - something that put me off a lot at the time but later became a 'teachable moment', and also a tool with which to extract promises and declarations of tolerance. (Promises. Declarations. Yeah.)

My fee-fees. But get down to blood and bone and there's something that matters far more; Iraq, and the continuing and consistent commitment to getting out. A commitment to not continuing, or repeating, such massive bloodshed and extortion. I'm going to c/p from a MoveOn mailing here, even though I hate their tone, because it has all the important bits in it:

Iraqis want U.S. Troops out. No one was expecting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to speak up in favor of withdrawal—after all, he's close with the Bush administration. But with elections in Iraq coming up, and a great majority of Iraqis opposed to a prolonged U.S. occupation, Maliki can't afford to toe the Bush line. So he's surprised everyone by standing up this week for a timetable for troop withdrawals and a date certain to end the war. The LA Times headline reads, "Iraqi prime minister advocates withdrawal timeline."

As a result, the "endless war agreement" Bush has been pushing fell through. Since January, hundreds of thousands of us pushed Congress to stand up to President Bush's proposed treaty with Iraq, which would have tied the next President's hands and made it much harder to get out. This week, the Washington Post reported that that agreement has fallen through—Iraqi leaders are putting their feet down and demanding a much shorter agreement.

And now even the Pentagon is considering faster timelines. According to reporter Michael Hirsh at Newsweek, "a forthcoming Pentagon-sponsored report" will recommend a big drawdown of troops—suggesting "that U.S. forces be reduced to as few as 50,000 by the spring of 2009, down from about 150,000 now."

In other words, it's now clear: Most Americans are for a timeline, and so are most Iraqis. And even experts in the Pentagon agree.

For his part, Barack Obama is using these developments to hammer home the point that John McCain and President Bush are now isolated in their resistance to any kind of timeline for withdrawal. He wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times yesterday that reaffirmed his commitment to a timeline that would have all combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months.

It concludes, "Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea. . . [F]or far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender. It's not going to work this time. It's time to end this war."

They added a thing Obama said today:

George Bush and John McCain don't have a strategy for success in Iraq—they have a strategy for staying in Iraq. They said we couldn't leave when violence was up, they say we can't leave when violence is down. They refuse to press the Iraqis to make tough choices, and they label any timetable to redeploy our troops "surrender," even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government—not to a terrorist enemy. Theirs is an endless focus on tactics inside Iraq, with no consideration of our strategy to face threats beyond Iraq's borders.

[no title today]

Creeping realisation: I've written a fair bit about things I care about here, but not nearly as much as I intended about things that really hit me deep-down. I realised how ingrained this was getting on the Trans Day Of Remembrance last week. The things I write here are usually polite-disagreement territory, give or take a swearword or two; transphobia is more like I-would-cheerfully-put-your-eye-out-with-a-corkscrew land. I don't keep a corkscrew in my handbag, so when the sparkly one and I are out and about and the sparkly one gets hassled, I tend to smile. Sometimes, we both laugh. They are not nice smiles or nice laughs, even when they seem to be so; my intent is to penetrate, and then twist.

I could say more - describe specific incidents I've witnessed or had related to me, and the people who instigate them; drunk, sober, young, older, nosy, objectifying, they-think-they're-so-subtle, women, men. I could ask why it is that gender lines are, by so many people, held to be fortresses - like a Great Wall, a bulwark we pretend is visible from space (<3 Snopes), diligently patrolled to keep the Khan at bay.

But what last Tuesday was about is murder.


Coupla links; Julia Serano on 'deception' and Holly brings the 101.

point. laugh. *try* not to cry.

It's Ann Coulter, so I guess those are the only possible options. This was linked on a comment thread at Bitchy's place because of her hate-comments about SMers and their bodies, so don't follow the link if that would ruin your day. The bit that ruined my day was this bit of omg-who's-to-BLAME-for-this-DEBAUCHERY;


COULTER: Most of all the culture of children raised without two married parents.

GIBSON: You're blaming this on divorce?

COULTER: Well, let's take a poll of the members of that club and see how many of the girls in that club grew up sleeping in the same house as their father.

ewgpheagperg[34awy93qwAAAGHAAAGHAAAGH.

so, if married parents =/= 2, a divorce has occurred and the daughter now has no live-in daddy.

Yeah, all single-parent families are the same, all of them, and they're all so wrong and naughty.