TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, misogyny, general horribleness
I am asked all the time why I think Professional Internet Types tend to be male more often than female. Is it because women aren’t as aggressive about building an audience and so struggle amid the media saturation? Is it because women aren’t as funny, or aren’t as talented, or blah blah blah?Maybe we need to consider that one of the central reasons women artists/vloggers/musicians/etc. are less likely to rise to prominence online is that whenever women build an audience online, men threaten those women with rape and murder. And unlike traditional celebrities, most of these women do not have the resources to hire the kind of lawyers and bodyguards that one needs to stay safe.
Like all misogyny, and I want to emphasize this, this is bad not just for women but also for all human beings. We are better off as a species if everyone has a chance to be heard, and we are worse off if talented people like Kitty Pryde don’t have the basic safety and security that one needs in order to effectively make and share stuff.
But it’s not just these kinds of horrifying threats (which as pointed out above is “the most normal thing”).
I also want to say something to all those guys who are like I was as a teenager, the people who aren’t sick people trying to get someone’s attention by harming or threatening them but who do have weird relationships with the women who make stuff they like.* You think that if this person knew you, you could be friends…maybe more than friends. And so you want to get her attention, so you can get to know each other, because then you’ll definitely become friends or maybe—
Stop.
When you start falling down that rabbit hole, stop. I know it’s hard. But stop.
What we love—even if these people make highly personal and confessional vlogs or whatever—is the stuff they make, not the people themselves. And what we really want is for more of that stuff to exist in the world. So the only proper way to be a fan is to let them be, so that they can bring more good and useful stuff into the world for us to enjoy.
* EDIT: Many people are yelling at me for saying the person in the above ask is not a sick person harming or threatening people. That is not what I am saying here. I am speaking to the people out there who are NOT like this person, but whose excessive and sometimes romanticized attention can shut down discourse. I thought that was pretty obvious from the grammar, but I just want to underscore it.
My partner just spilled tea on my head.
He says, “Tea is GOOD for the skin, though. Helps with crows feet.”
P.S. Said partner wants tumblr to know that the tea was cold. I thought this went without saying. Rest assured that if someone dumped boiling water on me, my first instinct would not be to tumble about it.
Amazon is making fanfiction legally publishable.
With royalties.
This…is not the world I imagined when I wanted to be a writer 18 years ago.
I just need to process this, okay? I just…I mean, I was part of the fanfiction community. I liked fanfiction and still do, and it gave me some of my best writing practise, and I side-eye anyone who runs their mouth off saying fanfiction isn’t real writing and real writers shouldn’t do it.
But geez…if it exists, Amazon will try to monetize it.
Here’s the announcement page, and here’s the submission guidelines they have so far. Apparently they ‘don’t accept pornography, or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.’ Without a word defining what exactly they mean by that. Oh, and they demand global publication rights. Lovely.
I don’t know. I need to think on this.
You know, the one that gives housewives/full-time mothers a pension— wages for housework?
It’s ONLY A HUGE VICTORY FOR FEMINISM, SOCIALISM, AND WOMEN OF COLOR. Not a big deal or anything. Tumblr is mysteriously silent about this.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/05/venezuelas-new-labour-law-best-mothers-day-gift
I am…working on a post on morality and empathy. It’s simmering in my head.
It probably won’t be great writing or anything, because I wore my writing muscles out wrestling with this damn story—
—and it’s still not finished oh my god—
—but nonetheless I think it might be the product of near non-stop pain for two years. So, you know. Notable. For me.
i am reminded that english is a flawed language every time I am forced to use “that that” in a sentence
“That that” has caused me more angst than I would care to admit.
For awhile I had my various social justice blogs unfollowed. It was a mental health thing. They’re back on now, but that’s why I’ve basically just been talking about myself on here for the last month instead of anything important. Hopefully as word rolls in from the outside world I’ll become less fascinated with my navel.
In the meantime…RANDOM THOUGHTS.
I’ve been staring at my sentences in despair. I really would like that grammar course.
As I edge my way out of professional writing retirement, I’ve been looking at online literary magazines.
The very first time I submitted a manuscript, it was to a print magazine. They didn’t take email submissions, so I sent the thing by snail mail with an SASE.
Six months pass.
The SASE comes back, with the manuscript and a rejection note. It was a very nice rejection note —they said that particular story was not for them, but to please submit again. The editor had written on the manuscript itself with suggestions for improvement. Which of course I was thrilled by that; editors are busy people, and here this one had taken time out of their day to clean up my mess. In retrospect they could probably tell how young I was, and wanted to be encouraging. I pinned the note to my wall, where all my other rejections would eventually sit until I painted my walls and lost them. I still have the marked up manuscript.
But anyway, I did not submit again. It was rewarding and all, but six months is a freaking long time to sit on one’s hands. After that, I submitted exclusively to places that allowed email, and I would only have to wait a few weeks for word back (as for when one finally showed up without a rejection…third time was the charm, for me)
Now I’m looking at these modern online places, and the wait period for one of them is two days.
And that is…very tempting.
After making a mere $84 million at the U.S. box office, Star Trek Into Darkness is considered by some to be a disappointment. Perhaps the problem is that it was a touch confusing. To help our readers better understand it, we’ve complied and answered these Frequently Asked Questions about the movie.
This thing is funny.
I enjoyed the Star Trek Into Darkness movie. As a movie. As Star Trek…I feel it misunderstands a lot of TOS.
Like…I dislike how Kirk is basically his internet-meme self and not how he was in the show. He really wasn’t a womanising misogynist who treated women like meat —no really, in one episode he fiercely defended this one alien girl’s right to birth control because her sexual decisions were nobody else’s fucking business.
Also, if you actually watch, it’s usually the woman who makes the first move with him, not the other way around. ALSO, saying a man who is promiscuous is therefore a man who uses girls for sex is all kinds of messed up. Don’t they know you can be casual AND respectful? LIKE HOW KIRK (and Riker, for that matter) IS IN THE SHOW?
Also! New blonde female character! You know, that character in the original material was an unmatched genius. She created life from nothingness. In this movie, she does…nothing. Except tinker with one bomb. Oh, and have a scene where Disrespectful Womanising Kirk sneaks a look at her in her underwear after she EXPLICITLY ASKS HIM NOT TO. BECAUSE MALE GAZE, MOTHERFUCKER.
There are other things I have issues with. Like I said before, the philosophy of Star Trek —particularly TOS— is dead simple, but it is THERE. There’s a spirit to this series, one that it could not fully live up to given the time it was made, but that the current movies could represent if they chose not to be lazy and pandering.
I feel Into Darkness…far more than the last one…chose to be lazy.
Oh well. The Star Trek movie curse lives on. At least we can look forward to something awesome next time. ;)
Man.
I wanna finish this story so I can watch the third episode of Sherlock. I started it and I liked it. I’m not usually one for the adaptations, either. They be all, “Irene Adler, what up, amiright?” and I’m like STOP IT STOP STOP IT STOP—
And possibly I’ll sit outside and stare at things, because I’ve felt an urge to do that the last few days and not had the chance because I am chained to this bitch cruel mistress here.
*pours pig’s blood on keyboard*
