All of the latest on same-sex marriage in California from an actual Californian. Jed Hartman comments here and here, including on the story that Attorneys General in ten other states are worried that they might get Gay Cooties from California. Sad really.
Feminism
You’re a Good Man, Jerry Brown
California’s Attorney General turns down a request to stop same-sex marriages until the matter can be put to public vote. The voters will, of course, have their say eventually, but state officials can’t just be overturning court rulings willy-nilly.
There’s a poll on that Chronicle article, and it is currently running 87% in favor of Brown’s decision. You may want to give it some help anyway.
Scott Has a Fan in Hollywood
The feminist web site BlogHer is running a series of podcasts called “Letter to My Body” which is designed to inspire self-esteem, realistic body perception and open discussion on body image amongst women. Obviously it talks about being fat and the like, but today’s podcast was with actress and transgender activist, Calpernia Addams. I’m impressed that BlogHer is willing to include a male-to-female transsexual in its campaign – that’s a much more enlightened attitude than certain other feminist organizations have. But the reason that I’m writing this post is that slap in the middle of the interview Calpernia starts talking about this wonderful YA book she’s reading all about body image. Yes, you are right, it is Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. So there you have it: SF and gender in one post. Now I’m going to write to Justine and ask her to pass on the good news.
Oh, and the interview is pretty good too. The BlogHer journalist has a bunch of very on-topic questions. Calpernia kind of muffs the Autogynephilia question, and it sounds like the questions were more pointed than she was expecting, but there’s lots of good stuff in there.
NY To Recognize CA Same-Sex Marriages
Several sources have pointed me to today’s news that the Governor of New York, David Paterson, has instructed state officials that they must recognize same-sex marriages conducted outside of New York as legal. New York, of course, does not allow same-sex marriages. But Massachusetts does and California looks like it will. For that matter, Canada does as well. Now in order to get married in Massachusetts the people involved have to be residents of the state. But what happens if they change jobs and have to move to New York? Would they be no longer married? And thus far California is planning to let anyone marry there. Indeed, “gay marriage tourism” has been suggested as a potential benefit to the state. So this is a real issue for other parts of the USA. How can someone be legally married in one state, but not in another?
Doubtless there will be a challenge to Governor Patterson’s ruling. Indeed, the whole basis of the Governor’s ruling is that he has had legal advice that he has to recognize the marriages until such time as the State Legislature says otherwise. It also seems likely that conservative governors in other states will now be under pressure to state that same-sex marriages will not be recognized in their domains. It could all get quite complicated quite quickly. Indeed, the Republicans are very much hoping that it will because they see it as a possible wedge issue in the coming Presidential election. They feel that if Obama (or Clinton) can be tagged as the pro-gay-marriage candidate then this will give McCain a significant advantage.
Meanwhile there are reports that San Diego County is considering allowing staff to opt out of performing same-sex marriages if they object to doing so. There are also government officials in the UK trying to get out of having to perform their duties because they are homophobic. The LA Times is rightly scathing. We wouldn’t tolerate a government official refusing to perform a marriage for a mixed race couple because they happened to be racists. If the local law, be it in California or the UK, says that same-sex marriages (or civil unions or whatever) are legal, then government employees are bound to follow that law.
Yeah, I know, I’m not a Californian citizen – I just spend a lot of time there. But people are apparently interested in my writing about this stuff, so I do.
Work for Girls
Alex Massie is taking a break from pillorying Gordon Brown to take a look at prostitution instead. Normally I’m rather suspicious of men who call for prostitution to be legalized, but Alex has show distinct Libertarian leanings in the past and the article he links to from the New Zealand Herald is quite interesting. Apparently New Zealand legalized prostitution in 2003. The newspaper article is in response to a government report commissioned to investigate the effects of the new law. And the results seem positive. None of the dire predictions usually made by religious extremists appear to have come to pass, and while there are not a lot of positives to report, the fact that over 60% of those prostitutes surveyed “felt they were more able to refuse to provide commercial sexual services to a particular client since the enactment of the law” is excellent news.
Given the weight of evidence that abounds, I am astonished that there are still people who think that making an activity that is popular illegal will stop it happening rather that simply move it into the control of criminals.
Lesbian Albatross?
Here’s a story guaranteed to set off alarm bells in fundamentalist churches. The albatross is a famously monogamous bird, with pairs staying together for years to raise chicks even though they spend much of their lives roaming the oceans on their own. But what is a girl albatross to do if there are not enough guys around? On the island of Oahu, female Laysan albatross outnumber males by almost 2:1. Does this stop the girls breeding? No it does not. Raising an albatross chick is hard work, and normal couples only ever manage one per year, so this isn’t a single-parent scenario. So the female albatross pair up together, and raise the chicks between them. Currently around 31% of baby albatross on Oahu have two mommies. Obviously the girls need to find a male to get pregnant, but aside from that the commitment to monogamy appears to hold, with female:female pairs staying together for years and raising each other’s chicks. More details here.
Phone Arnie
Via Nicola and Kelley – the office of the Gubernator has set up a telephone poll to allow people to express their opinions about the recent California Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriages. Apparently you don’t have to be a Californian to vote. You don’t even have to be in America, because I have just made the call. So you can bet that fundies all over America, and probably all over the world, are going to be calling in. They are well organized. You can register your vote too. Here are the instructions:
1. call 916-445-2841
2. press options 1 (English); 5 (to vote on a hot topic); 1 (same-sex marriage); 1 (vote yes).
Why yes, I did just ask you to vote in favor. Are you surprised? My many gay and lesbian friends thank you in advance for your support. The call only takes a few seconds, so it won’t cost much even at ruinous BT international rates.
Flames Over Middle Earth
It is now a well established theory of popular journalism that the best way to get lots of eye tracks for your web site is to get someone to write something manifestly stupid, and hopefully offensive, and then sit back and wait for the flame war to develop. I’ve been busy running economic models all morning, but the helpful Will Plant has pointed me at the latest exercise of this type over at The Guardian.
The basic plot is as follows: because some male persons have said unkind things about JK Rowling, this is proof positive that the literary world is dominated by Evil Male Critics who will stop at nothing in their tireless quest to put down everything ever written by women in the history of the universe, Evah! You can guess how the comment thread goes. This is, I’m afraid, one of those articles that will be quoted again and again when men want to prove what pathetic, selfish idiots feminists are.
On the plus side, it has given people the opportunity to mention a whole raft of wonderful women writers who might not otherwise have got their names in front of the great book-reading public. If it leads to a few book sales down the road that will be a good thing. I’m sure there are more names that could be dropped, if you fancy popping over there and can stomach the pile of righteous outrage in the comments.
What I can’t understand, though, is that there are people who are surprised at the description of the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies as a “big burning vagina”. Isn’t it obvious?
CA Judges Show Sense
Looks like there is some good news from California on the subject of same-sex marriages. Jed has more details, but this is the important bit:
we determine that the language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union “between a man and a woman†is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples.
I think “Woo Hoo!” is an appropriate reaction. 🙂
On Hermione
Over at Yatterings my friend Iain has a long and interesting essay on the role of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter novels. Having only read one Potter book I’m not in a position to comment much, but I think anyone interested in Feminist approaches to literature will find it interesting.
Men Are Dangerously Emotional
In my real world job I take a keen interest in commodity trading and management of the associated risks. Indeed, I used to call some of the training courses I ran, “How not to lose your shirt to Enron.” The current problems with credit derivatives, and spectacular trading disasters such as the recent one at Société Générale, are the sort of thing I used to teach people to guard against. Mostly the work I did was mathematical and procedural, but I’ve always been interested in other explanations as to why people take silly risks. One of the explanations that is gaining ground is that men get overcome by their hormones. In a high stress situation a good dose of testosterone turns out to be quite useful, but the worse things get, the more testosterone men pump out, and the less rational they become.
You know, we hear an awful lot about how women are unsuitable for management or public office because they are “too emotional”, but actually men get emotional too, and sometimes their emotional reactions can be really, really dangerous.
(This is also a very good reason for discouraging men from having business meetings in lap dancing clubs. It clouds their judgment.)
Tiptree Results
Are here. Predictable but depressing. Sometimes I think that Feminism is heading back to the 1970s at breakneck speed.
Nothing But Red
Peter Wong, who contributed a number of comic and movie reviews to Emerald City, writes with the following news:
Nothing But Red is a benefit anthology inspired by the brutal honor killing of Du’a Khalil Aswad. That killing, which occurred one year ago today, inspired TV series creator Joss Whedon to write an impassioned essay condemning the murder. Editor Skyla Dawn Cameron was inspired by Whedon’s piece to solicit from fans essays and art for what became Nothing But Red. Among the 70 contributions to the book is my essay “(A Woman’s) Blood Cleanses Honor.”
Proceeds from the book benefit Whedon’s favorite charity Equality Now. This organization works around the world to push for justice and equality for women.
The book is available via POD and e-book by ordering from this link.
For more information see the International Campaign Against Honour Killings and the Nothing But Red blog.
ICFA Continues
This morning saw a session on “sexualities” that had two trans-related papers, both of which were actually about gender bending and gender acquisition rather than about actual trans people. This was kind of disappointing because one of them was given by an expert on Brazilian SF.
The next session was the traditional panel run by Robin Reid and her Secret Slash Cabal, and it produced three superb papers. Vera Cuntz (my room mate for the con) provided an insightful and amusing paper about twins and incest in Harry Potter which actually made me want to go and read Rowling. Barbara Lucas entertained us all with stories about a goth-based perfume company, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and the associated fan community. And Eden Lee Lacker provided a masterly critique of the hideously inept FanLib.com project. I suggested that they go off and write a paper about “World Enough and Time” and associated controversies, and I’m looking forward to the result next year.
The Guest Scholar this year is Roger Luckhurst and his splendid speech introduced me to the idea of science fictional photography. This year’s conference is supposedly about “the sublime”, which is a posh was of saying “sensawunda”, and yes of course it is possible to attempt to photograph the sublime. Also these days we have photoshop. If you think this is nonsense, go check out the work of Andreas Gursky.
There are far more sessions available than any one person can attend, so please switch now to Karen Burnham who has an entirely different set of panels to talk about.
Self Promotion
It isn’t often that I get an opportunity to talk about a book because I’m in it, but there are a couple around at the moment. The book I’m currently reading is The WisCon Chronicles, edited by Timmi Duchamp. It is a collage of material taken from WisCon 30: interviews, panel transcripts and so on. I’m in it because of a panel called (rather pretentiously) “Is Reading Feminist SF a Theory-Building Activity”. (Wiscon, for those of you who do not know, is a feminist science fiction convention.) I have to confess that I was very nervous being put on that panel and didn’t have much a clue what to say beforehand. I also think I performed better at other panels at that con. However, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to be on a panel with Karen Joy Fowler, and if we really did need to talk about feminist theory I knew I could rely on my fellow panelist to do the business. As it turns out I seem to have ended up talking a lot about trans issues.
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Feminist Conspiracy
Over at the excellent Biology in Science Fiction blog, Peggy gives the lowdown on the real science behind methods of populating the world without the need for men. It is all an evil plot, of course, concocted by the Secret Feminist Cabal for the express purpose of oppressing Republicans, religious fundamentalists and geek boys who can’t get a girl. The only way to save the world is to vote for Ru Ron Paul for President.
Microcon
Today I have been to Exeter. Partly that was because I wanted to do some shopping, but mainly it was to see Pat Cadigan who was a Guest of Honor at what must be one of the world’s smallest SF conventions. Microcon is put on by the Exeter University Science Fiction Society (XSF), and it is attended primarily by XFS members. There were a few older fans there (hi Christina!), but I think they were all past XFS members. Total membership was something in the region of 30.
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Feminist Snark
Are female superheroes anorexic? io9 has the evidence.
All Too Predictable
OK, so I guess this is what has really been making me cranky. Here in the UK over the past week we have (thank you, Goddess) seen three men convicted in separate, high-profile, sex-related murder cases. This has been very convenient for our government, because it proved an ideal time for them to admit that, prior to many previous assertions to the contrary, they had actually been merrily helping the CIA ferry people around the world to places where they could be tortured. That piece of news was very quickly forgotten by our sex-obsessed media.
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Women Make Good Actresses Shock!
Following on from the Oscars, The Guardian has an article by Sarah Churchwell pointing out that women only seem to win those little nudey man statues when the contest is for being a woman (or for doing things that women do, like making clothes or putting on make-up). I mention this because I’ve been doing my Hugo nominations and, as is often the case, a lot more than half of the people on my ballot are men. And when the list of nominees comes out there will doubtless once again be a chorus of disapproval from people complaining about how awful the SF industry is, and how this is all the fault of Evil sexist “Hugo judges”, Evil sexist SMOFs who fix the ballot, and Evil sexist publishers and editors, not to mention Evil gender traitors like myself who vote for men.
Well, actually, no. I know that is is much easier, and much more fun, to yell and scream at people you know than to deal with the real problem but, as Churchwell points out, it happens elsewhere too. The reason problems, I suspect, are more to do with the fact that many boys are still socialized from birth to believe that women are inferior and not worth their notice except as sex objects, and that many girls are still socialized from birth to believe that they are inferior and so they shouldn’t try to compete in a world that belongs to men (or indeed that the whole idea of competing in unfeminine).
To pick up on a theme from Churchwell, separatism does not equal equality, having quotas does not equal equality, only cultural change brings equality.