| All Hallows' Eve |
[30 Oct 2009|04:46pm] |
I have a complicated relationship with Halloween. Growing up, I never trick-or-treated; I was bundled off to my church’s ‘Harvest Festival,’ where we played games and got told about Jesus, so I don’t really have the emotional connection to or experiences of Halloween that others seem to. And as I’ve learned more about it, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
I have learned to be wary of Halloween. I have learned to shut my eyes to ‘geisha’ costumes, ‘Mexican bandit’ costumes, ‘Indian chief’ and ‘Indian princess’ costumes–all worn by white people, always. I am not claiming that no PoCs, particularly those middle/upper-class, cisgender, straight PoCs, are completely oblivious, but…it’s more complicated.
As far back as I can remember, I have been too uneasy to dress as another ethnicity. I remember complaining about this quite a few years ago, in my pre-activist days: I knew I didn’t look like the white characters I loved and there weren’t any Asian characters I knew to emulate, much less Chinese American ones. “White people can be anything, but I only get to be Asian,” I’d say; I didn’t know how true that was and still is. My skin is too brown, too yellow to pass for white. I look wrong and grotesque dressed as a white woman, but for some reason I never saw it as grotesque when white women dressed as me. Now, of course, I am more attuned to the realities of normalization, the privilege of being unmarked.
Sometimes these are more obvious than not. In this case, Halloween is one of those magical times when racism and sexism can be on full display, so obviously that people look at you oddly when you point it out. ”Well, yeah,” they say. ”But it’s just for fun, really.” It’s ‘just for fun’ that the only costumes available are for white women who want to dress in an explicitly ’sexy’ way–not that I want to deny anyone the right to dress however the hell they want, but when it is social pressures that demand they hypersexualize themselves rather than their own choice, I am not okay with it.
There needs to be a stronger word than ‘problematic’ for Halloween.
Side note: I really find the trend of men in drag for Halloween disturbing. Aside from my complicated feelings about drag in general, a lot of costumes don’t actually make a serious attempt to appear female; the humor is derived from the fact that OMG it’s guy in a dress!!1
In other words, I feel that in most cases it’s not a question of assuming another gender identity for a night; it’s mocking the idea of performing a non-normative gender identity. Because it is supposed to be funny. (Overheard in hallway yesterday, directed at a male: “You should go as a slutty girl! That would be SO FUNNY.”) Moreover, women in drag are not read as funny, they’re read–well, a lot of different ways. But it’s rarely if ever humorous.
Links to people more coherent than I:
http://meloukhia.net/2009/10/whats_the_difference_between_costuming_and_appropriation.htmlhttp://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/tag/sexy-halloween-costumes/ http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/your-annual-halloween-post/
http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/seriously/
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/10/suddenly-get-interested-in-non-white.html
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/10/21/the-racialicious-halloween-roundup/
http://www.angryasianman.com/2009/10/bad-halloween-costumes-2009.html
http://www.angryasianman.com/2009/10/more-oriental-hooker-y-for-halloween.html
http://www.reappropriate.com/2009/10/26/lets-have-a-racist-halloween/
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/30/guest-post-asian-hair-for-halloween/
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/29/racist-halloween-costumes/
http://contexts.org/socimages/2007/10/30/halloween-costumes/
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/28/halloween-another-chance-to-trivialize-women-in-masculine-occupations/
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/30/gendering-halloween-costumes/
Links specifically about that godawful ‘illegal alien’ costume:
http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2009/10/19/undocumented-migration-is-no-joke-neither-is-the-illegal-alien-costume/
http://www.apaforprogress.org/illegal-alien-halloween-costume-sets-firestorm
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| How to get completely fucked up in a way that you can tell yourself is sort of educational |
[16 Sep 2009|02:33pm] |
So, a friend and I had this idea for a Chick Flick Drinking Game. Doubtless it has been invented and reinvented many times before; however, we couldn't find rules for a feminist perspective online. So we made our own.
The rules: make mixed drinks, and take a decent sip every time one of these things happens/is expressed. Watch chick flicks until you can't actually tell if something's misogynistic or not. Keep plenty of water on hand. Do not under any circumstances take shots for each of these things, or you will definitely die of alcohol poisoning.
In no particular order:
*Heteronormative assumption
*Female identity is oriented around relationship
*Sexual double standard
*Gendered career assumptions
*Makeover scene!
*...that includes getting rid of glasses
*Secondary female character is catty/bitchy
*Ugly/gay best friend
*Heels worn in inexplicable situations
*Woman cries without ruining her makeup
*Woman wakes up with perfect makeup
*Romantic interest is a complete asshole/sexist
*...and it is read by woman/women as charming
*Romantic interest 'saves' woman
*Men have problems with commitment/opening up emotionally
*Women are all about commitment/opening up emotionally
*Slut-shaming
*Nonwhite character's culture is sampled as 'exotic' etc.
*Feminism is alluded to as militant/lesbian/man-hating
*Women are lying liars who lie all the time to trick innocent men
*Non-gender-normative appearance/behavior is The Funniest Thing Ever
Any other ideas?
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[16 Sep 2009|12:45am] |
A graphical analysis of my time. All numbers are fairly accurate, give or take an hour or two.
For scale: the 'personal life' slice represents 3 hours. I just spent 1/6 of that making this pie chart, because I am a huge dork.
The sleep slice is bigger than I thought it would be, even at an estimated 7 hours a day. Blogroll/email/waiting mostly represents the time I spend in between classes, meetings, and everything else where I'm sitting in a hallway with my laptop checking my New York Times or Feministe or Slashdot feeds. Since I get over a thousand news items/articles every day, I'm constantly behind in trying to keep up and be informed, or whatever it is I'm trying to do.
Sorg=student org, commissions=web design and art things that I'm either getting paid for or doing as a favour
I don't know whether or not this will be representative of the rest of this semester, but this is a breakdown of this week's schedule and has more or less resembled the past couple weeks.
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| Why I'm Trying to be Vegan |
[02 Sep 2009|09:47pm] |
(Most info here is from T. Campbell, P. Singer, or M. Pollan's works iirc; if you want to know specifically where something comes from I can dig up the references, but that's a lot of work and this is just what I've synthesized.)
While preparing for the GRE, in one of my characteristic attempts to avoid Actual Work, I started reading up on veganism. I've been a vegetarian for about a year and a bit, and pseudo-vegetarian for about six months before that, and that's been going pretty well; in Ann Arbor, lovely town that it is, vegetarianism is not especially uncommon, so it hasn't really been difficult or shocking to explain to people. However, when I started telling people I was going vegan, I was overwhelmingly met with incredulity and consternation. I have also been met with some common questions; I don't mind answering them at all, but I thought I'd post a manifesto of sorts to save everyone time.
( My Reasons )
( Common Objections )
( Common Questions )
( Suggestions )
( Effect on My Life )
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[01 Jul 2009|02:47pm] |
So...last November was the last time I updated my dA blog. It was a few lines of happy-shiny Obama-y triumph. I don't update enough blah blah blah...I'm just bad at maintaining multiple blogs.
(For the record: although I do think he's especially dropped the ball queer-wise, not to mention with regards to copyright law and the non-release of those torture photos, I still think he's 1) infinitely better than McCain/Palin and 2) a pretty decent president on his own. He's followed through on a lot of things I hoped he would i.e. stem-cell research, and of course there's the whole 'we as a country have reached the point where we can have a president of color' thing. That's still kind of amazing to me.)
Anyway, this totally random individual who doesn't even devwatch me commented with a more-or-less-polite Obama bash, including the words 'traditional marriage' and the claim that McCain is a moderate.
I have no idea what to do.
On the one hand, the #1 rule of the internets (well, top ten, anyway) is Don't Feed the Trolls.
On the other, this is my page. My house. An area for me to express myself, more or less under my jurisdiction. I shouldn't put up with this.
On the other hand, is letting myself get sucked into this probably futile discussion-headed-for-debate going to be a huge emotional drain? Haven't I had to deal with this bullshit for as long as I've been politically conscious--hell, haven't we all been surrounded by, steeped in this kind of bullshit for ages? Haven't I paid my dues?
On the other hand--yeah, I know that activists never stop paying. I'm not sure I consider myself a full-fledged activist yet, don't know if I've put in the hours, but it's something I certainly aspire to be.
Is it my responsibility as someone trying to be an ethical human being to respond point-by-point? What do I owe the commenter, and myself? Do I have an obligation here to do everything I can to educate, or is it futile? Am I being baited?
I'm not going to delete the comment because I am pretty hardcore anti-censorship. But I still don't know what I'm going to do.
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| Random notes on movies |
[12 Jun 2009|11:32pm] |
xposted from fb
On the Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs movie--it hasn't even come out yet and it has made my hatelist. The dinosaurs fucking dawned hundreds of millions of years before the last glacial maximum, people, and now I'm going to have to explain to tour after tour of second-graders that dinosaurs did not live at the same time as mammoths, etc. The entire premise is total bullshit--for one thing, technically many dinosaurs did not 'die out,' they evolved into birds.
Also that stupid female rodent thing makes my blood boil.
On a brighter note, I am increasingly excited about the Where the Wild Things Are movie. Looks like a cult classic in the making. From the previews it actually seems to be doing a good job of capturing the feel of the book--about a child, accessible to children, but not childish and with a definite dark edge.
The 'Buffy' movie is. Well. Megan Fox? Really? She is the cherry on top of the godawfulness sundae. This movie is essentially a giant 'Fuck You' to all the fans.
Saw Up today--I give it 7/10 for sweetness and lack of fail. It was typically Pixar-pretty, although I did feel it didn't showcase Pixar gfx as much as previous movies. Even Cars had a lot of ray-tracing shinies and sweeping vistas and beautiful lighting. Here I felt the lighting, while quality, was not exceptionally spectacular in the same way previous movies were. From Monsters, Inc. through Wall-E, the graphics were the first thing I gushed about while leaving the theater. This one...good, even for Pixar, but not great.
Bonus points for making an APIA main character without making a huge deal/ulterior motive out of it. Bonus points taken away for the persistence of gender problems; this was a buddy movie, which would be fine if it weren't for the fact that every single Pixar movie has centered around a male character or characters, even when it made little to no sense to assign those gender roles. Excellent rundown here: http://vastpublicindifference.blogspot.com/2008/06/pixars-gender-problem.html
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[06 Apr 2009|04:37pm] |
So it has been pointed out to me that I am the worst person ever at updating my lj regularly. Or blogging in general. I just fail.
Anyway, last week the museum scheduled me four 9am shifts in a row and now I never want to have kids. Seriously, what's wrong with them? They're stupid, and short, and cannot follow directions like 'do not throw the bowl of sand onto the floor.' Also they are loud. Damn kids.
So, there's that. Other than that...things have been pretty uniformly busy and boring to hear about.
I mean, I have been writing a Dinotopia campaign for Call of Cthulhu in my nonexistent spare time. Go look at the wiki, I sacrificed my grades for it.
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[18 Feb 2009|08:16pm] |
THERE IS TOTALLY A SPIDER IN MY ROOM
GUYS
YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW FREAKED OUT I AM
Okay, so I have this totally unreasonable and completely disproportionate fear of spiders. I don't know. I just flip out whenever near one or the possibility of one. I fear spiders more than death.
The thing is that my cat is TOTALLY USELESS as a hunter.
ME: Go, cat, go!
CAT: *pokes at general spider area*
ME: Yes! Slaughter that vile creature! Halt its reign of terror!
SPIDER: *moves slightly*
CAT: *flees to other side of the room, whiskers aquiver*
ME: ...cat, you are useless.
See, I get that this is totally hypocritical of me. And it is probably fitting that my cat and I share similar irrationalities. But dammit, cat, why can't you be one of those urban tigers I hear about?
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| Please excuse incoherence and warped sense of significance. |
[18 Dec 2008|09:09am] |
So...I have been up for about 24 hours now.
What have I been doing, you may ask?
I spent most of yesterday playing Starcraft: the Board Game at the (quite rightly deserved) urgings of Steve. It took about eight hours, but that was mostly because we were all learning the game. After the game concluded, we were all pretty excited about playing board games for some reason--I am guessing it has to do with OMG THERE IS A WORLD OF FUN OUTSIDE D&D TO BE HAD, not that we love D&D any less--and went to Steve's games closet to discover a Pokemon board game, which turned out to be even more fun (at least for Steve and me, the ones who actually really love Pokemon to a somewhat unsettling level). Then, since Steve used to collect Monopoly games, we played the Lord of the Rings version of Monopoly. And then we watched Dr. Horrible for the millionth time.
To summarize: I have spent an entire day playing board games about video games and a classic piece of geek lit, and then sang all the words to a musical about a supervillain. I feel there has been some kind of line that has been crossed.
I decided to post because I have been awake for a really long time and no longer have any judgment at all.
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[04 Nov 2008|09:52pm] |
I know not all of us are American, but...as I'm sitting here, waiting for the results, too on edge to make the post about Christianity and the election that I was going to (at least partly spurred by something my friend said to me: "Yeah, you seem like a good Christian girl gone bad.") I feel I need to make something clear:
If McCain and Palin win, I'm going to apply for graduate school and probably citizenship in another country. Most likely Canada as it's closest and speaks English; if not Canada, England. I'll have a whole new set of problems to care about, but as for America...McCain would be the final nail in our coffin. That's it for foreign relations. America will no longer be a country I could say I belonged to without an overwhelming sense of shame.
I'll probably finish up my last year here, and by then I'll have applied to and hopefully been accepted by a number of grad schools elsewhere. Somewhere the vice president doesn't think creationism is a scientific theory.
The world needs Obama, America needs Obama...I need Obama. Please, my country, don't fuck this up.
Edit:
WE WON
THIS IS SO AWESOME
I CAN FINALLY BE PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN
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[21 Oct 2008|01:06am] |
Things that will not make me take you seriously:
1) Putting "science" in quote marks.
2) Seriously quoting MacKinnon and/or Dworkin.
3) Using blatantly inflammatory rhetoric.
Have been researching a paper for my Sex Panics in the US and UK class (taught by Gayle Rubin! SO AWESOME.) and I chose to examine antiporn feminism as a sex panic. In the course of such research, naturally I must read a great deal of self-identified feminist antiporn literature.
It is difficult going. One reason I have to actively force myself to read things I disagree with is that I keep getting tripped up on wanting to tell the author off, using actual reasoning instead of insane ranting. It just seems that if I could get one or two sentences in, I'd feel so much better. "That evolution occurs is a fact; how it occurs is the theory, just like gravity." "No reputable study has ever shown a link between abstinence-only sex education and decreased sexual activity, only decreased safe sex." "What you consider a whole and separate person is actually a cluster of cells that, through the next eight or nine months, will slowly absorb its physical and genetic identity from the woman who is not in fact simply a container or an incubator for the prioritized life."
It's been like this for a while. I know that I'll never respect myself if I choose to be exposed only to viewpoints that mirror or inform my own. It's just really, really hard not to throw the book I'm reading at a wall.
( So, er, here's my venting at the essays I can't respond to directly. More ranty and less reasonable than actual academic standards demand; I am not trying to write a damn paper here. )
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[13 Oct 2008|12:01pm] |
Argh, may actually have to dress up this year. Did not want, but might be working a Halloween party at the museum.
I'd do Inara Serra or Toph but I don't think anyone would get it. Plus, Toph has a difficult costume to make last-minute.
I'd be lame and do Neil Gaiman's Death again, but I don't have the hair for it anymore, plus I don't know what happened to my black pants.
Should I say I can't work just to get out of wearing a costume? Aaargh.
Also, guys have so many more options geek-wise. Women in comic books etc. have such complicated outfits. Color me shocked.
Edit: I could be Link, I guess? I would need to buy practically everything, but two oversized green tshirts (one for the hat, one to cut into a tunic), a long-sleeved white shirt, a couple of belts,and white leggings can't be that hard to find. It's the gloves I'm worried about. One just does not find longish leather gloves lying about.
Edit 2: Evasion successful!
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[09 Oct 2008|11:49am] |
Random Question:
So I'm thinking of changing my gmail address.
Pros:
1) I kind of don't really like 'paperdragoness'--it's something I went with when 'papercrane' wasn't available. I like papercrane, but that's somewhat in my past now. It's not horrible, as handles go, and it means something to me, but...I came up with it when I was thirteen and I'm not that person anymore.
2) With the emergence of gmail as The Way To Communicate, I've begun to use it for more official things. Not super-official, just things like sharing docs for student orgs. And it's a little weird to see 'name.name' or the like for everyone else and then this somewhat immature handle.
3) It would be nice to choose something most people can spell, unless I went with my name, which I might. I dunno.
Cons:
1) It is a giant pain in the ass.
2) Giant. Pain. Ass.
So...what do y'all think?
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[02 Oct 2008|11:02pm] |
INSANE OLD BUS LADY: Have you ever noticed that Ann Arbor is shaped like a heart?
ME (attempting to be polite to total stranger): I have not. How fascinating.
INSANE OLD BUS LADY: A heart on the sleeve of God, perhaps?
ME: Perhaps indeed!
INSANE OLD BUS LADY: You look like a real American girl.
ME: Er, yes? Oh thank god it's my stop.
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[23 Sep 2008|11:52pm] |
Been a while; school and various student orgs kicking my spare time to the curb.
Anyway, the main point of this post is to let y'all know ( I HAVE A KITTY. )
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[15 Aug 2008|08:18pm] |
I HAVE A NEW APARTMENT
I am rooming with a friend of mine in a gorgeous 900 sq. ft. apartment, and I am just completely thrilled. It's pretty cheap for the area--about $900/mo--and just a couple minutes' stroll away from a bus that goes right downtown.
Dudes. It is going to be awesome.
I think I feel like an actual adult now, which is weird because my parents still pay for the majority of my schooling/living expenses.
Also, I think I may cave and buy Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign. Not that I use InDesign much, but the University's offering the package for about $150 to students, which is phenomenal.
In other news, bought FFTA2, and it has been consuming my life in the most awesome way possible.
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| Not even trying for interesting anymore. |
[30 Jul 2008|11:18pm] |
So, I have two art projects that were due like THREE DAYS AGO that I cannot finish because I CANNOT ACCESS A FUCKING SCANNER. They are done otherwise, it is just that I CANNOT FUCKING SCAN THEM AND GET THEM TO PEOPLE.
It is super frustrating.
In other news, I have gotten hooked on South Park. I spent eighteen years of my life not watching it, and then suddenly it was like WHAT IS THIS MADNESS. It is stupid and pointless and I love it so, so much.
Kenny rocks. I'm just saying. Every time he comes on screen I go YEAH KENNEH! And thus I have about twelve pages of Kenny (and some Kyle) sketches in my sketchbook. That I can't scan because hello, I don't have access to a scanner.
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