Diana Wynne Jones's Charmed Life

I remember disliking Charmed Life from my childhood (that is, compared to other Diana Wynne Jones books), because I thought it was scary, and maybe a bit hard to follow. I was certainly too young to follow it when Mom first read it to me, but of course I've read it ample times since I was old enough. Still, somehow I didn't notice till I read it today that the source of all the irritation is ( how incredibly stupid the protagonists are. )

Grumpy Tea-Drinking Wax

It's dubious tea-drinking Wax! (Wax called it grumpy, but the eyebrows are dubious.) Her grumpy, dubious faces are extra cute. For some reason she's exceptionally easy to draw chibi-style. They always look like her. Maybe it's because her skull is so square. Or because I spend so much time looking at her. ♥

When a feminist isn't a "feminist"

I spent hours yesterday and today reading up on this trainwreck in the feminist blogosphere after links from miriam_heddy and ciderpress. It's about racism and intellectual theft, and how white feminists use their priviledge, consciously or un-, to coopt the voices of women of colour, claiming their ideas in the process of making those ideas heard without attribution instead of working to make the voices of women of colour heard as well.

As my mouth fell slowly open in horror yesterday, I understood for the first time why some women who believe in the systematic oppression of women and believe that it's wrong choose not to call themselves "feminists." For the first time, I understood that this has nothing to do with a misunderstanding of terminology on their part. What this battle over terminology has to do with is yet another one-way visible veil of priviledge blinding us over here on the priviledged side of the veil. We have the luxury of saying that the history of the movement doesn't matter because of the dictionary definition, of all things. We have the luxury of saying, "But look at the dictionary! You meet the dictionary criteria, so if you claim not to be a feminist, you're wrong." But women of colour don't have that luxury. They can't define a political movement by the dictionary in defiance of its history and its present when it's busy silencing them, instead of doing what it says on the tin and working to change their marginalisation.

I'm ashamed and disgusted that I didn't see this before and that I inadvertently contributed to the attempts of systemic priviledge to silence the marginalised by arguing this point with them before. I'm sorry, belatedly, to my friends and to anyone who's listened to me say those things, whatever side of the fence they're standing on. I was wrong.

scifi tv :|

I want to like Torchwood and Doctor Who, but I've been finding it difficult lately, not to mention impossible to get excited about it. bibliotech gave a good explanation of why a few weeks ago. ( Whine and a severe lack of cheese )

So I have similar problems with every other currently-running sff show that I've tried to watch except The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I don't have too extraordinarily high hopes for, however, because they could so easily fuck it up next season, or cancel it right away. But at least the small hopes I have are in the optimistic direction, since it isn't cancelled yet, and it's just the sort of fun that lets me ignore and handwave away all kinds of low budget, lame dialogue, and plot inconsistencies. You can't go into skiffy and enjoy it if you're planning to look for holes in the pseudoscience, after all. I wonder if we should try watching that new vampire show, or... or... or something. There is a void in my life.