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Some Links and Otherwise Checking In
*waves* I am so discombobulated this Fall. My summer was ridiculous and Fall is not any less so. ANYWAY. Stuff to share:
"The misogyny towards fanfiction: she, her, hers" by Nandhini Narayanan
I am concerned about this social inclination to dismiss or trivialize fanfic works. The implication is that something written by women and read majorly by women is somehow less important and unworthy of respect. There was a loud and angry twitter campaign a while ago called #fakegeekgirls. The premise was that several women were attending comic conventions in costumes in order to “seem nerdy and pick up the interest of men.” Female cosplayers were specifically picked on and accused that they were dressing up to get attention. Yes, I saved up for weeks, tailored my own spandex outfit and took a nine hour flight to trap you in my romantic clutches, dear stranger. ...
Consider how, by trivializing and marginalizing an entire body of work as unimportant, we are not paying attention to the trends that are manifesting in fanfiction. Think about the profound space fanfiction provides for representation of minority communities. Canonical books, comics and TV shows revolve around the white male. Fanfiction provides the space for a gay Clark Kent, a genderqueer Sherlock Holmes, a lesbian Nancy Drew or an asexual Harry Potter. Most mainstream blogs are cis-gender owned, but Tumblr has more out and proud gender-queer writers in fandoms than any other social media site.
A short, superficial piece, but it's a relief to have someone somewhere calling these shenanigans what they are.
~
PBS Idea Channel gets it Absolutely Right about Trigger Warnings in the Classroom:
My favorite quote is "Academic trigger warnings aren't a shield or armor, they are a horn announcing the charge is coming." Yes. This.
~
I got a paper on recovering the history of women in the book trades accepted into next year's ASECS conference, which is back-to-back with PCA. This is only the second book history paper I've had accepted and the first one in the US, so I feel very happy (and relieved) about it.
~
Other news: I've joined a local writing group with some of the cool Tolkien people I met back in April, and we're meeting for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm also very excited about that, though I haven't written anything creative in way too long. (I feel like a slacker, while fully aware that I have, in the past month, sent off two sets of book chapter revisions, finished half of a book chapter, and revised two outlines.) Because I like books on writing, I started reading The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club this afternoon to start thinking. That totally counts, right?
"The misogyny towards fanfiction: she, her, hers" by Nandhini Narayanan
I am concerned about this social inclination to dismiss or trivialize fanfic works. The implication is that something written by women and read majorly by women is somehow less important and unworthy of respect. There was a loud and angry twitter campaign a while ago called #fakegeekgirls. The premise was that several women were attending comic conventions in costumes in order to “seem nerdy and pick up the interest of men.” Female cosplayers were specifically picked on and accused that they were dressing up to get attention. Yes, I saved up for weeks, tailored my own spandex outfit and took a nine hour flight to trap you in my romantic clutches, dear stranger. ...
Consider how, by trivializing and marginalizing an entire body of work as unimportant, we are not paying attention to the trends that are manifesting in fanfiction. Think about the profound space fanfiction provides for representation of minority communities. Canonical books, comics and TV shows revolve around the white male. Fanfiction provides the space for a gay Clark Kent, a genderqueer Sherlock Holmes, a lesbian Nancy Drew or an asexual Harry Potter. Most mainstream blogs are cis-gender owned, but Tumblr has more out and proud gender-queer writers in fandoms than any other social media site.
A short, superficial piece, but it's a relief to have someone somewhere calling these shenanigans what they are.
~
PBS Idea Channel gets it Absolutely Right about Trigger Warnings in the Classroom:
My favorite quote is "Academic trigger warnings aren't a shield or armor, they are a horn announcing the charge is coming." Yes. This.
~
I got a paper on recovering the history of women in the book trades accepted into next year's ASECS conference, which is back-to-back with PCA. This is only the second book history paper I've had accepted and the first one in the US, so I feel very happy (and relieved) about it.
~
Other news: I've joined a local writing group with some of the cool Tolkien people I met back in April, and we're meeting for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm also very excited about that, though I haven't written anything creative in way too long. (I feel like a slacker, while fully aware that I have, in the past month, sent off two sets of book chapter revisions, finished half of a book chapter, and revised two outlines.) Because I like books on writing, I started reading The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club this afternoon to start thinking. That totally counts, right?