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Say what’s on your mind that’s against the moderation rules.

For now the only caveat is no Amp-bashing, please. If you feel you really, really need to do it, write about it on your own site and post a link here.

I started out blogging on livejournal where 90% of posts are whining of some kind.

I feel the need to subject you all to my whining.

(”Whine” by Ursula Vernon of Metal and Magic)

I got strep throat earlier this week, and while my immune system was busy trying to fight off the strep, I developed about 30 canker sores on the top of my tongue, the bottom of my tongue, and the bottom of my mouth. It feels significantly worse than I remember feeling when I had my wisdom teeth removed — and my bottom wisdom teeth were impacted so they had to be carved out of my gums.

Doctor gave me vicodin, which is keeping the pain in check better than ibuprofen was.

So, so far this semester, I’ve had colds, bronchitis, strep throat, 30 simultaneous canker sores, a bleeding lesion in my ear, and stuff I’m sure that I’m forgetting. Jeez, immune system.

This has been your regularly scheduled whine.

Something odd just happened to me.

I have anxiety around the phone. From talking to other people I know, it seems like this isn’t rare. Mine’s gotten worse recently, like a lot of my other anxieties. I *can* make phone calls, and there are kids of phone calls that are easier for me to make than others. For instance, anything spontaneous is easier than anything that I know in advance I have to do. I can call person A to be social for ten minutes, but it’ll take me hours to work up to checking in with person B to confirm that they’re coming to an event, and even when my anxiety problems weren’t bad, it would take me days to work up to calling someone I didn’t know to interview them cold for an article. Once I’m on the phone, I feel fine. I’m charming, I’m funny, I’m articulate. I *like* talking to people, even people I don’t know. The anxiety is around the act of calling itself. I don’t know why. It parallels the anxiety I’ve had in the past year or so around leaving the house. I like being around people and crowds once I’m out, but the act of leaving — and the act of calling — are a barrier for me. Sometimes it’s a barrier like a membrane that I can push through with just a little bit of teeth-gritting and concentration, and sometimes is a big solid wall. There are people I have no or little anxiety around calling, but also places and people I have increased anxiety around calling - for instance, the doctor.

After my medical problems this summer, I’ve had a lot of problems with anxiety and the doctor’s office. My blood pressure goes up to really scary levels when I go in. I have anxiety attacks. My heart rate accelerates so that when I’m resting it’s as high as it should be when I’m doing arobic exercise. All my terror over possibly having multiple sclerosis, I’ve mapped onto the medical facilities themselves.

This anxiety has gotten better in some ways — if I go in to see a familiar doctor, for instance, my blood pressure won’t skyrocket — but it’s still present.

Anyway, one of the byproducts of this is that I don’t call the medical office. My [male] spouse does. If we leave it to me to call, then I will find ways to avoid it or to forget, or I will have insomnia before I have to call (and my mood problems tend to be complicated by lack of sleep), or I just won’t call. And then I miss appointments. No one wants me to miss appointments.

This is one of the things we do in the distribution of labor in our marriage. If I were talking from a feminist standpoint, which I generally do, I would say that my spouse compensates for me in certain ways and I compensate for him in others. If I have anxiety around the doctor’s office, then he calls. If I suck at maintenance tasks because my head is always on global stuff, then he focuses on maintenance tasks like grocery shopping and getting us to appointments. If he can’t do time management for big projects or know how to do the emotional work of maintaining the network of our family and friends, then I do that. And so on.

If I were to talk about this from a disability rights perspective, which I generally don’t, I would say that my social anxiety causes me certain problems which I anticipate and compensate for by asking my spouse to be my caretaker in certain capacities. (I don’t know if I’m using the right terminology here… when I say a disability rights perspective, I mean placing my status as someone with anxiety problems in the foreground.)

Unfortunately, due to a cock up a couple weeks ago, despite the fact that I had my spouse calling, I *did* miss an appointment. We fucked up our records — mea culpa, except for both of us. I really don’t want to miss a second appointment despite the fact that I hate going in.

OK, now we get into fiddly stuff. Because I missed an appt, I’ve had my spouse call in to get a full list of all the times I’m booked to go in. In addition to all the real appointments, they gave us one time when I am actually, in fact, *not* booked to go in. Why? I don’t know. I assume someone just misread or misspoke. Anyway, we noted it down as a time when I had to go in — and that time was tihs morning. I was surprised that I had this appointment time because I didn’t know what it was for, but we assumed it was real.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of contracting strep throat, so we had to make an emergency appointment. We went in, I stopped at the desk to register for the appt, and asked her to confirm that I was coming in today as well. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “We have nothing in the books until January.” I said thanks –and because it had been odd that I’d had the appointment in the first place when I didn’t know what it was for, I started assuming that it had just been an error that anyone had told me about it in the first place.

Still, I wanted confirmation that I didn’t have an appointment and that the woman at the desk hadn’t been misreading my chart, so I asked my spouse to call this morning and make sure that I didn’t have an appointment. He learned that in fact there’s nothing for today, and that was that.

Only it wasn’t. After that, the scheduling people called back and asked to speak to me. A woman let me know on the phone that they usually released information to spouses about appointments, but they were no longer willing to release information to *my* spouse because of the kinds of questions he’d been asking, and I’d have to call myself. I explained why he’d been asking that question, the whole story about the phantom appointment — and she repeated her request that I only call about my appointments myself. “Okay?” she said. I, still strep-throated and half-asleep, said, “Um…” and tried to figure out how to say “No, that’s not okay.” Before I could figure out what to say, she said, “Thank you,” and hung up.

I was very upset. Foremost — stupidly — was embarrassment. Embarrassment that we’d missed the appointment a couple weeks ago, embarrassment that we had this phantom appointment which I knew would look strange and irresponsible to the scheduling people, embarrassment that I was bothering them, embarrassment at being called. Secondly, I knew that their request would cause us problems around my anxiety, and that the likely result was that I would end up missing appointments and missing care.

I don’t want to miss appointments or care. I don’t want my relatively uncomplicated problems to become major ones. I don’t want my phobia of the medical system to negatively affect my health.

I called back and spoke to the woman’s coworker, and explained my problems with anxiety. I explained why I needed my spouse to be able to call. I explained that it was okay with me that he did. I asked her to note in my file that he could call for me. She was friendly, and helpful, and she placed the note in my file, and she talked to me as if I was a reasonable, intelligent, responsible person, which I appreciate.

I know why the schedulers were upset and concerned. They were worried I had a stalker. As a feminist, I approve. I approve of the fact they were paying enough attention to be worried. I approve of the fact that they decided to act on that concern rather than remaining passive. I approve of the fact that they tried to find a way to solve the problem. I greatly appreciate that both were well-intentioned and friendly and helpful and good people.

However, I don’t think the way that they tried to act on their fear was the best way that they could have done so. There are several issues for me here:

1) Once they’d spoken to me about the problem, they knew that the person who had been calling was — as claimed — my spouse. They knew I knew what was going on, and approved. The issue then became not one of protecting me from a stalker, since there clearly wasn’t one and everything that was happening was going on with my understanding and approval. When they found tihs out — which did not seem to surprise them — they did not adjust their plan accordingly. The idea of a possible stalker became more important than the actuality of no stalker.

2) When speaking to someone who is clearly uncomfortable, saying “thank you” and hanging up is a great conflict-avoidance strategy. I heartily approve of this strategy for many occasions. However, in this case, it was a problem because of what I was unable to articulate to them off the cuff. If I had not called back, I would not have been able to tell them why it was a problem. If my anxiety were worse, I would have been unable to call back (this situation got covered under my nonphobia of spontaneous phone calls).

3) They didn’t consider disability when they called. It was off their radar.

There could have been other strategies for dealing with this situation. For instance, the only way that the schedulers ever know that someone is who they claim is that the person provides their student ID number. If I didn’t have an identifiably female name, and my spouse an identifiably male voice, then they would never know he wasn’t me. If they were concerned about protecting my privacy, we could have set up a password for my spouse to confirm his identity, or set up another layer of privacy to make sure that he was someone authorized. They have the ability to mark in my file — they could mark a couple alternate questions that would assuage their fears.

And of course talking to me itself was something that they could have used to assuage their fears. If they had approached the situation with open questions, I might have been able to explain what was going on — and possibly propose alternatives. Now, these women work in a college health center, an environment whch is very aware of sexual violence, and one in which many of the patients — by virtue of being young — aren’t totally able to act as mature adults. Further, this is a situation in which the schedulers are experts and I am not. They have to deal with medical appointments every day. I understand why they approached me with a decision and a plan, and if circumstances had been slightly different, it would have been a good idea. Unfortunately, they didn’t really consider that I was an expert on my own life — instead, they operated based on their assumptions about my life (that I was able to call, for instance). Again, I understand why this happened and know it was well-intentioned, but it misfired in this case.

I am grateful to have read some writing on disability rights in the past couple years. Knowing something about how the medical system creates problems for people who need caretakers to act on their behalf allowed me to contextualize what was going on. It allowed me to see what was happening as a systemic problem instead of an individual one. Having read about the social creation of disability allowed me to think about my problem not as just a failing in myself, but to consider all the ways in which the system is set up to accomodate “normal” abilities and lacks, and to punish deviance from that norm, even when compensating for that deviance is relatively easy.

If I hadn’t had a sense of these critiques, I would have focused on my personal shame at being unable to handle these situations without my spouse’s help. I would have castigated myself for being weak, and tried to force myself to act as if I didn’t have the anxiety. I know what the result would have been — I did not go to a single medical appointment last year. I never even got as far as booking one, despite how severe my depression became. Having access to the consciousness raising of systemic critique of ablism allowed me to look at a system instead of my personal problems.

My problems are mild, but they do interfere with my life. They’d interfere more if I was unable to use the solutions that I’ve set up for myself to cirumvent my problems. I don’t really consider myself part of the disabled community — I don’t think I have a right to, when there are people like Kay with much more severe problems. I feel about it sort of like I feel about cliaming an LGBT identity — I’m bisexual because I am sexually attracted to women, but my few relationships (only three) have all been with men. I don’t want to be disrespectful to people who have to deal with real problems of oppression. At the same time, disowning a disabled identity is clearly an ego-defensive manuever; I don’t want to think of my problems as being real problems. I don’t want to admit that I am not “normal,” or abled, or able to do everything that I expect of myself.

When I got off the phone with the woman, I started crying. I’m still feverish from strep, and was tired, and I’m sure part of my upset was just being weakened. But I was still astonished at the force of my reaction. I didn’t know why I was so upset. Now I’m starting to realize — it was the shame of having problems, and the fear of having been for a moment helpess and vulnerable before someone else.

Commenters, I’m vulnerable here. I ask you to respect that.

Pratchett remains optomistic and asks that the community respond with cheer.

I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet.

As PZ says, Pratchett “Aintn’t dead yet.”

–

UPDATE: It occurs to me that you all may not know who Terry Pratchett is. He’s a comic fantasy writer who has penned many, many novels in a universe called Discworld. Discworld started out as a fairly simple parody of fantasy epics starring a wizard named Rincewind, but quickly got much more sophisticated. It’s a rich and historically deep series that takes on a number of topics. One of my favorite books is a satire of philosophers and religion. The most recent takes on the historical development of paper money. Very little makes me as simply joyful as reading a new Terry Pratchett book — or even an old one that I like.

Reagan started us on the path to capitulating to Muslims! We forget what guts it took Bush to stay in the Iraq War! Bush beaten up by scientists! MASS PRODUCED EMBRYOS!

I laughed. And then I laughed some more.

Near the end, OSC positions himself as a centrist. He wants us to know that the insane Right is just as bad as the insane Left. Well, honey, you’d know. Nice try at claiming to be a moderate, though.

Once you take either of these positions, you lose all rights to be treated as if you might possibly have anything interesting to say. You lose all rights not to be cursed at. You also lose all rights for others to assume that you are a human being and not, say, a shit-covered paramecium.

1) Homosexuality is linked to pedophilia.

2) Black people are less intelligent than whites.

Feel free to comment on this, but guess which two positions you shouldn’t take unless you want to be banned? Pleas for civility will also be ignored.

From Feministe:

Projection, anyone?

A boy scout leader who opposed allowing gay men and atheists serve as troop leaders — and who even sued the city of Berkeley over it — has been arrested on felony sexual abuse charges. For sexually abusing boys in his troop.

But at least he kept the gays and the atheists out.

I said in my last post that I hate simplistic comparisons between female genital cutting and male circumcision. When carefully and well-informedly made, I think that a comparison along some axes can have some use.

This is the best comparison of the two procedures that I feel I’ve seen. You can find it here: www.fgmnetwork.org/intro/mgmfgm.html

It’s a table credited to Hanny Lightfoot-Klein that compares the procedures by picking up quotes from practitioners (some of the quotes may be fabricated, but as far as I can tell accurately reflect real attitudes).

For instance, the last two sets of quotes are:

On thoroughness:

Sudanese grandmother: “In some countries they only cut out the clitoris, but here we do it properly. We scrape our girls clean. If it is properly done, nothing is left, other than a scar. Everything has to be cut away.”

My own father, a physician, speaking of ritual circumcision inflicted upon my son: “It is a good thing that I was here to preside. He had quite a long foreskin. I made sure that we gave him a good tight circumcision.”

and:

On health ramifications:

35 year old Sudanese woman: “Yes, I have suffered from chronic pelvic infections and terrible pain for years now. You say that all if this is the result of my circumcision? But I was circumcised over 30 years ago! How can something that was done for me when I was four years old have anything to do with my health now?”

35 years old American male: “I have lost nearly all interest in sex. You might say that I’m becoming impotent. I don’t seem to have much sensation in my penis anymore, and it is becoming more and more difficult for me to reach orgasm. You say that this is the result of my circumcision? That doesn’t make any sense. I was circumcised 35 years ago, when I was a little boy. How can that affect me in any way now?”

The strength of this table is that it doesn’t need to elide the major differences between FGC and male circumcision. Those differences remain clear in the words of the practitioners. We know that it’s different to scrape away all external genitalia and to completely remove the foreskin, and those differences are right there in the table. But what the table does by putting the quotes in tension with each other is that it also shows, viscerally, the axes along which attitudes to the procedures *are* similar. Both the Sudanese grandmother and the physician strive for a clean, tight circumcision. Both the female and male victims of genital cutting have trouble relating their health problems to a normalized practice.

Over a broad spectrum of issues, I’m relatively anti-comparisons for political effect. Don’t call Bush Hitler — he’s evil in his own ways, thanks — and don’t call the oppression of Palestinians apartheid (I follow Friedman in this; call it its own thing, exile or nishul). Likewise, don’t say FGC and male circumcision are identical - like Hitler and Bush, both can be bad on their own.

This comparison is that rare beast that I do approve of. I feel comparisons are best when they work both accurately and at the gut. This table is written with a relatively light hand. By placing the words and attitudes of real people in tension with each other, Lightfoot-Klein allows the reader to see both realities and draw his or her own conclusions about the points on which they are comparable. There’s no need to create false equivalencies or to elide differences. Here, the differences are on the page and still the similarities sing — and they speak badly for those of us who live in a state with normalized infant male circumcision.

1) Arguments that create a simplistic equivalence between male and female circumcision — which are not the focus of today’s post, so much as:

2) Feminist allies (usually male) who feel the need to respond to the former by discussing how male circumcision is never problematic because *they* are circumcized and they have awesome feeling — really great, their penises are so sexy they can hardly stand it — and can satisfy partners like nobody’s business. Circumcision can’t be bad, because it would be untenable for bad things to be associated with *my* (or occasionally my partner’s) penis. I don’t want to hear about botched operations, and reduced sensation, and how there is no real medical data supporting the practice - LALALALALA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! MY PENIS IS AWESOME!

From A Tiny Revolution, the Daily Show writers explain the premises of the writer’s strike with their usual flair and humor.

Via the delightful Bean:

I’m not sure whether to read this as real propaganda, parody, or clever fake propaganda.

Also, I’ve given up coffee, but that cup looks pretty good.

OK, the image seems to be from Objective 4 Kidz, home of Lambuel who is apparently hearted by Jesus. Can you help Lambuel through a maze so that he can reach church while avoiding temptation along the way?

My OBJECTIVE is JUST 4 KIDZ! The “Z” is for “ZEALOUSNESS,” ’cause Jesus wants us to be hot for Him, not lukewarm. I read in the Bible that He said: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent”… Let’s do that!

Based on the front page, I would tentatively guess the site was real — but then there’s a page called draw Lambuel featuring a smirking, loincloth-clad Jesus:

A drawing of vegetarian dinosaurs worthy of Scalzi:

Jesus as superhero, burning atheists with fire that shoots out of his palm:

And finally, Jesus as pedophile:

I’m going with my original theory — Mr. Gruff is clever fake propaganda created by atheists with the hope that people will read it, believe it, and stop trying to convert us.

(IMO, the funniest thing here is the video of Scalzi’s. Hop on over and check it out if you’re frustrated by creationist imagery of vegetarian dinosaurs rampaging through Eden.)

–

UPDATE, because I realized I hadn’t said this expressly: For the record, I really dislike the images that suggest Jesus is a pedophile. They’re problematic and not funny.

(Only of course, we’re not.)

I’m comfortable with the role of atheism on this blog (and on my own personal blog). It’s not the main topic of discussion, and I’m not even sure what all the participant’s beliefs are. Maia? Rachel S.? Myca? Still, I can talk about my own atheism if I want to. Apart from occasionally being sent stinkeye from commenters for being a materialist (and not necessarily the same set of commenters who want me barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen already, damn it — religious bigotry ain’t just for conservatives anymore!), this is a relatively safe space for me as an atheist.

There aren’t many spaces where that’s true, relative to the number of spaces out there. For atheists used to being isolated, this kind of graphic is a bit like finding that there are hands being extended toward you. Do I agree with them any more than I agree with all progressives? Heck no. Nor do I read most of them (though, hello Elaine Vigneault). But I’m glad they’re out there, talking.

Let’s Talk about Science Fiction, Babies

There’s an interesting discussion over at Pharyngula about the possibilities and dangers inherent in human genetic engineering.

The thread is slightly annoying — a fair bit of priveleged wanking, and no one really bringing sophisticated social theory to the table. But on balance, I’d say it’s mostly interesting, at least in terms of seeing how people want to forecast the future.

As I read the comment thread, the thing that strikes me most as a science fiction writer is how much the discourse of science fiction shapes the discourse about these future technologies. On an obvious level, there are appeals to Heinlein, Egan, and similar hard SF ilk. On a subtler level, the themes that people are presenting as thought-provoking in the discussion (what if we modified people to be obedient? what if there was speciation between upper class and lower class people? what if people want to modify their children in ways we find abhorrent?) are in fact staples of the science fiction genre.

In my opinion, near future hard SF (that’s science fiction that works with the best science contemporarily available to forcast events in the next, say, fifty years) has a problem. And that problem is plot. Consider Frankenstein, a very early work of science fiction — a scientist is able to create life, but the novel’s shape is that of a warning story. We Must Not Because.

Writers working within the constraints of traditional plotting have to find a conflict. Science fiction is often a medium of ideas, which means that the conflict generally has to be related to the idea. So, if you want to write about genetic engineering, you have to do so in a way that gives obeisance to conflict.

I am convinced this creates warning stories even where science fiction writers don’t want to write warning stories. It’s a natural form. If you want to write about Neat Idea X, and your story-writing formula is “create problem within the first two paragraphs,” then the urge is to warn against whatever Neat Idea X is. You still get to write about it.

A further problem is that ideas tend to be explored in a finite number of ways. On one hand, this is because the culture that gives rise to the science fiction has a certain number of associations with a given science fictional idea. The western writers who are forecasting dark, genetically engineered futures — and doing so with generally the same set of tools and projected outcomes — are writing within a western context that has certain central concerns about genetic engineering, and certain hegemonic assumptions about reproduction, etc. We would expect that the science fictional discourse would shift when you look at a different culture with different concerns and assumptions, and from what I know about the growing science fiction movements in India and China, this does indeed prove to be the case.

However, the interaction is recursive. Science fiction writers pen their works within the cultural context that shapes their concerns, assumptions, and the channels of their forecasting. At the same time, they shape the discourse. As John Scalzi pointed out last year when he generously agreed to speak to the science fiction class I was teaching, the shape of the cell phone bears an uncanny similarity to the shape of the Star Trek communicator. This particular convergence seems to be only one of many examples of scientists looking at science fictional technology and thinking, “Ooh, I want that!” Science fictionally proposed theories about space and space travel trickle down into the naming of things, and sometimes their study, in an observable fashion.

It’s trickier to observe other influences of science fiction writers on the discourse about science and the future, but they’re present. I’ve argued before that the ways in which people perceive the world are heavily influenced by narrative and story, and so the narratives that are introduced into the culture about certain ideas are shaped by that culture, but once they are present, they shape it as well. Ant-like matriarchal societies, huge TV screens showing Big Brother talking to you, sad grey-clad people in communist dystopias wearing jumpsuits and going through identical motions — these images have shaped some of our impressions of matriarchy, fascism, and communism. Many discussions of matriarchy, for instance, end up reaching back to the imagery that’s entered our cultural consciousness — and terms that evoke insects or hive-minds are deployed. The same thing happens with genetic engineering and the limited number of narratives and images we associate with it. The first few shiny, imagination-catching ideas tend to overwhelm our cultural ability to imagine other outcomes.

The Problems with Warning Stories

Warning stories can be great: fun to read, fun to write. Some of them are also interesting and sophisticated.

However, I worry about the endless parade of science fictional monsters tramping through our cultural imagination. Cloning does not work the way 90% of science fictional representations say it does. Really. Nothing like. I’ve been involved in many bizarre conversations with cloning opponents, and at a certain point, their arguments tend to hark back to weird cultural myths built out of Star Trek and Twilight Zone rip-offs.

There are three problems here.

1) Bad science: many science fiction writers wrote clones that worked in ways that have more to do with fantasy zombies than what actual clones could possibly be because those fantasy zombie clones were more useful for plot and conflict. Because most laypeople know very little about genetics or cloning, the bad science passes them by.

2) One-dimensional (or as good as) representation, which does not allow for ambiguity in the expression of the science fictional idea or the imagined cultural reaction to it.

3) The playing into monster story tropes which follow a certain formula, and therefore require the writer and audience to envision the science fictional idea as part of a monster mold.

Eventually, the combination of bad science, unambiguous representation, and the monster trope seeps down into our narrative about a science fictional idea, and that’s the point at which someone will seriously oppose cloning because they’re afraid that clones will share the memories, experiences, and developmental history of existing adults, and therefore be able to take over the world.

Breaking Out of the Warning Mold

Writers have several ways to navigate these problems while still paying proper attention to conflict. One is to make the conflict much smaller than the level of “Oh noes! Monsters!” which allows the science fiction trope to play out more subtly and resist becoming the basis for a monster-level plot. A fantastic example of this kind of writing as applied to the genetic engineering/cloning tropes, is Tananarive Due’s “Like Daughter,” a story in which a woman of color who was physically abused as a child decides to raise a clone of herself so that she can give “herself” a new, happy childhood. Unfortunately, the child suffers from being treated as a kind of doll and required to enact her mother’s fantasy upbringing. The mother’s best friend has to interfere and take the girl away.

I wish this story was online as it is truly remarkable. It can be found in the excellent anthology Dark Matter (a century of speculative fiction from the African Diaspora), edited by Sheree Thomas.

The conflict of “Like Daughter” echoes in several different directions. The conflict is personal in a way that survives outside the science fiction context, reflecting on the nature of mothers, daughters, and childhood trauma. The conflict is also sociological: as a professor of mine at UC Santa Cruz said about the story, the question of how to resolve traumatic history is particularly salient for the community of color, and it is no accident that the author is black. Thirdly, the conflict does revolve around the science fictional idea of cloning: without cloning, it would be impossible for the story’s conceit to exist. However, the clone does not need to be made into a monster (or, in the flip, made into a one-dimensionally virtuous yet beleaguered outsider) in order for the conflict to function, because the nature of the story’s conflict is subtle.

In science fiction communities, there’s a concept which has caused much war-drumming on one side, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the other. It’s a fledgling literary movement called mundane science fiction, or mundane SF. The mundane SF movement was started by science fiction writer Geoff Ryman. It asks writers to eschew some of science fiction’s splashier tropes in order to create more realistic, more resonant futures. In order to accomplish this, the mundane movement has banned certain topics, included AI, faster-than-light space travel, psychic energy, and aliens. I think cloning’s on the list.

I think that the banning of topics may accomplish slivers of the mundane SF movement’s goals, but that the movement would have been better off asking for limited scope instead of limited ideas. For me, the science fiction that feels most real and moving is not necessarily science fiction which does not contain aliens — Octavia Butler’s “Amnesty,” for instance, makes beautiful use of aliens — but that science fiction which limits its scope to investigating personal relationships within an altered future instead of grander, global-level catastrophes. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy other flavors of SF, but this is the type that generally moves me the most. (There are exceptions, such as Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, which definitely functions on a grand and global level.)

The other most dominant technique that I see writers using so that they can avoid monster story formulas while still exploring neat ideas and paying due deference to plot, is to make the science fictional trope part of the story’s background. For instance, in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, characters who become soldiers are genetically modified so that they are faster, stronger, greener, and melded with their own AIs. Scalzi’s plot revolves around a war which these characters are fighting. The genetic modifications are integral to the plot — they make the war possible — but they don’t need to be the impetus for conflict, because a different science fictional trope has taken that center stage.

Scalzi’s book works on a grand scale, but it’s also possible to background science fictional tropes while working on a more limited scale. One novel that comes to mind is Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang, in which many fascinating science fictional elements — future homophobia, America’s loss of primacy as a global power, the colonization of Mars, people who can use technology to have flying races — function as the background in service to the main characters’ more mundane problems. How can people learn to be happy with each other? How can a gay man, isolated and displaced, find his place in the world? The backdrops are Mars and a decaying future, but the problems are timeless.

Unfortunately, the technique of slipping science fictional ideas into the background so that the conflict can be derived from something else tends to work better for novels than short stories. Short stories are limited in how much they can tackle, so it’s difficult for them to investigate more than one idea at a time.

Science Fiction Writer’s Responsibility in Shaping the Discourse

It concerns me that when I look at a thread like the one on Pharyngula, I see a lot of analysis that’s shaped by science fiction narratives, when I know that some of those narratives are driven more by the need for an exciting plot than by any real scientific or sociological extrapolation.

People differ in the amount of responsibility that they feel art has to the real world. I’m on the high end: I’m all about social responsibility.

I think science fiction writers owe it to ourselves and to the culture not to use genre formulas without a clear understanding of what they are, what they do, and why we want to use them. That doesn’t mean genre formulas have to go away, but I’d like to see them used with awareness and deliberation. When they’re used with awareness and deliberation, they usually (in my experience) tend to shift anyway: new narrative possibilities open, and the characters, story, and discourse have a chance to breathe.

Melissa MacEwan has a remarkable post up documenting sixty-five examples of “gag gifts” which represent disembodied breasts. There are popsicles shaped like breasts (as above), pillows shaped like breasts, pasifiers shaped like breasts, frying pans made to make breast eggs, cake pans made to make breast cakes, soap breasts, slipper breasts, earmuff breasts, pasta breasts, candle breasts, mug breasts, and more.

Melissa writes:

I can, quite genuinely, understand why people look at one—or maybe even two, or three—of these items and dismiss them as “just a joke.” If I wrote a post about just a frying pan that turns eggs into boobs, I’m certain even some truly feminist women and men would defend it as just a bit of harmless kitsch. It’s just a joke; what’s the big deal? I get that; I really do.

Which is why I went for critical mass.

It isn’t just one “boob novelty” (or, as they tend to be called, “boobie novelty”). It’s sixty-five. If I hadn’t totally run out of steam, I probably could have included sixty-five more. And these things aren’t relegated to adult stores and websites—ads for the Jingle Jugs are being run on radio and TV during ballgames, and many of these items can be found in regular old party stores and gag shops like Spencer’s Gifts, which has franchises in every bloody mall in America. The “Stress Chest,” “Beer Boob,” and “Boobie Fuzzy Dice” are all sold at Spencer’s, right alongside Harry Potter action figures.

The ether is permeated with boob novelties (which is to say nothing of vagina novelties, women’s ass novelties, the women-as-toilets products, etc.), and while each on its own may not be such a terrible thing, the combined effect is having turned disembodied women’s body parts into just so much cultural detritus to be consumed or ignored. No rational person can argue that makes no difference to how women are viewed, as a group and as individuals, by men and by themselves. And that isn’t a laughing matter.

All of which I agree with.

I do disagree with her slightly here:

some readers may correctly note that one can increasingly find “penis popsicles” and the like, it is a false equivalence. In truth, the amplification of disembodied penis novelties serves merely to suggest a perniciously inaccurate illusion of equality… It’s a step forward only in a race to the bottom, and there is little to be gained by treating service to the lowest common denominator as a favorable equalizer.

She adds that “objectifying the body parts of either sex is exploitative.”

I don’t agree that disembodied body parts are inherently, in and of themselves, a problem. Disembodied hands, for instance, as in this mechanical construction that plays classical music:

Are really not problematic. Clearly, the mechanical hand is not comparable to the disembodied breasts — and that’s because there are different social meanings that construct disembodied hands, just as the social meanings that surround disembodied breasts are different from the social meanings that surround disembodied penises. Where disembodied breast novelties are problematic en masse, a disembodied hand, eye, or foot is not exploitative.

And neither does a disembodied breast have to be. In comments at Shakesville, Portly Dyke writes, “Even the stretch to find these items humorous means we all have to go back to 5th or 6th grade,” and I don’t think that’s true. I know highly intelligent, mature adults who think fart jokes are the funniest thing that ever happened. Senses of humor differer. Personally, I can imagine sex positive contexts in which a disembodied breast or penis would be genuinely funny, genuinely fun, and genuinely harmless.

But as Melissa MacEwan points out — that context is not the bulk of America, and particularly not given the ubiquity and social construction of the critical mass she has represented.

I urge you to go over and read her whole post. Not only is the whole list of items overwhelming to see in total, but she has a lot more smart comments about them.

UPDATE: Many of the images in Melissa’s post have been removed by Photobucket. As Melissa notes in comments, “That’s fairly ironic, given that they were images of fake breasts fashioned into various novelty items that are supposed to be “fun” and not offensive.”

From Feministe, via Fetch Me My Axe:

Tuesday, November 6, is election day in Philadelphia, and presents an opportunity for Philly voters to do something about Judge Teresa Carr Deni, who recently dismissed rape charges against a defendant who stood accused of raping a prostitute at gunpoint because she felt it was a robbery, not a rape.

In a rare move, the Philadelphia Bar Association has come out against the retention of Judge Deni after initially recommending retention. If you’re a voter in Philadelphia, this is your chance to make a difference and boot out a judge who clearly does not know the law, or does not believe the law applies to sex workers.

Via Language Log.

Hey dudes and dudettes,

I’ve got a lot of grad school work to get done in the next couple weeks, so alas, my writing for Alas must suffer.

I’ve got a couple posts that are half-written, so I may be able to touch those up and get them online over the next couple weeks. There are also a few queer-centered writing projects I wanted to link to, so I may be able to get that done.

But on the whole, I’m going to be working on exams, non-fiction articles, critiques, and lesson plans, with a teaspoon of fiction writing on the side.

This is neat:

The technology behind the wind-up radio could soon be helping to light up some of the poorest homes in Africa.
The Freeplay Foundation is developing prototypes of a charging station for house lights it hopes will improve the quality of life for many Africans.

The Foundation said the lights would replace the expensive, polluting and unhealthy alternatives many Africans currently use to light their homes.

Field testing of the prototypes will start in Kenya in the next few months.

A few basic facts remind us what electric lights can mean to those who don’t have them:

Kristine Pearson, director of the Freeplay Foundation, said few Africans in the continents most vulnerable areas had access to electricity to light homes.

“Their life stops or is very narrowed when the sun goes down,” she said. “Two extra hours of light would make a big difference to their life.”

The World Bank estimates that more than 500 million people in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to electricity supplies that could be used to light their homes.

Instead, said Ms Pearson, many used kerosene lamps, battery-powered lights or wood fires as sources of illumination after sundown.

Buying kerosene or batteries can consume up to 15% of a household’s budget, said Ms Pearson. In addition wood was hard to gather and unhealthy to burn.

Also, I have to admit — I have a big soft spot for red pandas, which I think might be just about the cutest critter ever. So when I saw a link to a video of two elderly red pandas kissing and cuddling, I had to squee over and pass on the cute.

As I love zoology and paleontology (okay: animals, extinct and otherwise), I feel the need to brag about/display a couple of costumes I find clever.

1) My friend Ann’s daughter Aidan insisted on dressing as a piranha.

2) And last year, my fiance dressed as opabinia, a five-eyed vacuum-mouthed creature that was found in the Burgess Shale.

That paper pinned to his chest is a drawing of an opabinia, so people can figure out what he is. Here’s a version:

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*For the record, I have no objection to sex-ay costumes, though I wish they weren’t de rigeur for girls. I just like weird animal costumes better. Many next year I should get Mike to be a sex-ay opabinia?

Last year after Halloween, I wrote a few limericks about the undead. They’ve just been posted at From the Asylum.

Hope they amuse!