Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nockiemommy]

This is interesting, and I'd like to get a take on others' opinions of the blog I found that mentioned QC and Jeph. There are 3 actual blog posts to read, and all are linked from the one I'll post. It's written by a feminist, and I'll quote one of my favorite lines here. From the 'sexuality and identity' post, the authoress says this: "In portraying sex work and promiscuity, Jacques takes a no-shame, sex-positive approach to open sexuality - while still depicting internalized and externalized slutphobia."

http://www.deeplyproblematic.com/2010/08/women-in-questionable-content-women-run.html

Let the comments commence!

[AnAverageWriter]

"Slutphobia?"

Ugh.

I have a truly special pet peeve reserved for people who make themselves look like idiots by misusing the "-phobia" suffix. True phobias are terrible, debilitating things, capable of turning the lives of innocent, good people into shambles. I have absolutely no respect for people who think its clever to take their agendas and attach "phobia" to anyone who might have an opposition to them.

[Carl-E]

Oh, she finally finished the trilogy.  The other two have shown up in the forums before. 

But when did this happen? 

"They discuss gender fluidity and trans men with a fair amount of respect, though the comic has othered and marginalized trans women on a few occasions."

I don't really recall transgendered individuals ever coming up at all - unless Jimbo was born female! 

[Penquin47]

The links are there... the respectful one was Tai and Marten talking about how Tai used to pass for male but identifies as female, while the less respectful one was Dora commenting on Faye's descent into sluttery passing through straight men into transsexuals.

[Is it cold in here?]

Jeph said something quite pungent about people applying their agendas to his comic.

[pwhodges]

These are pretty thoughtful and nicely observed blogs.  However, they fall foul of the usual fault of not sufficiently realising that any model of the world (in this case the comic) is bound to be a deficient representation of it just because it is smaller. For instance, there must be hundreds of millions of disabled people in the world, so to complain that two are not sufficiently representative in some way (problems with love, in this case) is expecting a degree of accurate representation that is simply impossible with a small cast.

Because any model of the world is a simplification, there is a sense in which any agenda whatever can be used to over-analyse it and find fault.  The difficulty is picking the line between bringing up what matters and losing a sense of proportion - and I think these blogs are better than many in that respect.

[jwhouk]

There was that line Veronica had about "convincing drag queens" which might have raised her (his?) dander.

[Carl-E]

The links are there... the respectful one was Tai and Marten talking about how Tai used to pass for male but identifies as female, while the less respectful one was Dora commenting on Faye's descent into sluttery passing through straight men into transsexuals.

I see - they weren't linked from the originally linked article (where the quote came from) , but rather were explained in the other two.  

Also, we've been here before...

[nockiemommy]

Many thanks! I'm shamed to admit I haven't poured over the dozens of pages of threads, but I'm glad to have brought the (final?) post of the QC-inspired-series to everyone's attention. I, myself, found portions of the posts interesting, and thought-provoking, and some irritating (hear! hear! to the aforeposted hatred of 'phobia' misuse) ... but still, an interesting read, overall. And thanks for the link to the previous thread, Carl-E!

[Skewbrow]

 However, they fall foul of the usual fault of not sufficiently realising that any model of the world (in this case the comic) is bound to be a deficient representation of it just because it is smaller.

Didn't all of psychohistory depend on the fact that Hari Seldon figured out that the Galactic Empire could be modelled with a much smaller piece of itself - Trantor? If all of psychohistory goes out of the window, then we're doomed to have a longish period of chaos, when the empire falls.

[pwhodges]

Indeed.  Fortunately the story-telling was better than the science!

[Skewbrow]

Quite.

<nerd alert>
On a related note a junior colleague is often bemoaning about the CS, EE majors who (after learning about the cosine and wavelet transformations) come up with various and sundry "magic transformations" that allow universal data compression to exist. In spite of him proving as the last theorem of his course that this is trivially impossible.
</nerd alert>

[Olymander]

Didn't all of psychohistory depend on the fact that Hari Seldon figured out that the Galactic Empire could be modelled with a much smaller piece of itself - Trantor? If all of psychohistory goes out of the window, then we're doomed to have a longish period of chaos, when the empire falls.

It's been over a decade since I've read those, but didn't most of psychohistory get thrown out the window when the Mule started "messing around" with things anyway?  Not to mention the whole Second Foundation to "keep things on track" and all the other things.

[Skewbrow]

IIRC the Mule did represent a serious threat to the Seldon plan. May be the plan is a stable equilibrium point, so as long as the Second Foundation manages to keep the perturbations small enough, then such disturbances would eventually be dampened out. Gaia OTOH...

[Wiregeek]

the only nit I have to pick is her disregard of Dora as having "thin privilege as Faye's boss"..   Boss privilege can be pretty damn thick!

[IanClark]

It should also be pointed out that Faye has poked fun at Dora's diminutive frame a time or two herself. To say that the comments have a "sinister edge" is assuming more than a lot and if I was to play Devil's Advocate I could point out that by implying that a thin woman making fun of a slightly larger woman is automatically "sinister" and not playful ribbing with no real judgment behind it, the author is almost implying that women can't playfully joke about each other's size, as an obsession with thinness apparently dominates their psyche too much to wave a comment like that off. Also, if Dora's uncontrollable jealousy is anything to go by, she doesn't seem to believe much in "thin privilege" at all. One could easily make a very strong case that Dora's always seen Faye as more attractive than herself.

However, I don't think this is so much a case of someone's agenda dominating their blog, it's more that the author seems to stumble when they actually have an agenda. I don't think it qualifies as having an agenda to say that portraying women in positions of power is a good thing, or that portraying women as not being man-obsessed is a good thing. This and the comment about the service industry were the only things that irked me. The service industry currently makes up 75% of the work force. Having any group of people, particularly twentysomethings, not portrayed as primarily confined to the service industry would be unrealistic.

[Carl-E]

Gaaah, I had to re-read that part again.  I thought the "thin privelege" was, as wiregeek joked, the privelege of being boss that was thin in and of itself, or perhaps later the privelege of being Marten's lover rather than Faye. 

But no, she really meant the privelege of being thin, something I really don't get, especially as an aficionado of the zafttig  and the better endowed. 

Ah, well.  THe agenda forms the words, but not the reading of them. 

[Is it cold in here?]

There was a "Fat Faye" thread a long time ago in which Jeph pointed out that he's always intended to portray Faye as attractive to the other characters.