la_marquise

Radio 4 is talking in a very interesting way about maths and maths teaching and it's making me think about how I was taught.
Which was badly. What I learnt early on was that maths was scary and hard, that girls in particular were never going to be good at it and that mistakes were something to be ashamed off, because they were badges of inadequacy. Boys, on the other hand, were naturally good at it, and this was a sign of how much better and more important they were. This gendering has stayed with me lifelong -- as an undergraduate, I was regularly patronised and shamed by male friends because I was 'only' studying an arts subject which they assumed was easy. (I should, in retrospect, have handed them a chunk of Old Irish and said 'Fine, it's easy: so translate this.') This putting down and patronising of me because I'm neither a mathematician nor a scientist has continued throughout my adult life. About 4 years ago a man told me he'd decided he did respect me after all, because a 3rd party had convinced him that history is a science (sort of) after all.
I was silenced. I could not think of a single thing to say that wasn't, essentially, 'wtf?'
It's okay, even now, to put women down in public because they aren't brilliant with numbers. Girls see this happen to their mothers, teachers, friends all the time.
I had one year of good maths teaching in my entire school career and that year I got the top marks of any student in that year. I speak 3 languages (and have some ability in 2 others) and I can work with sources in a further 6. We grow up and are educated in an environment that is toxic for women. Our culture continues to handicap, discourage and bully women and girls when it comes to maths and science education.
This R4 programme suggests there are people out there who are working hard to redress this. That's great. I'd love to go and learn maths alongside this cohort of junior-age children, because it sounds like they are being taught to learn by positive reinforcement, not by the use of shame, fear and gendered expectations.
So, if you find yourself on the edge of putting someone down about their mathematical ability, especially if that person is someone who was disadvantaged by gender, race or ableism at school, I have a suggestion for you: don't. Bite your tongue. And then ask yourself what assumptions you've internalised about others.

Skirt of the day: short blue bird print.

So two things I read last week have set me thinking. The first was this post on principles by Nancy Jane Moore at the Bookview Cafe website. The second was a question posed on twitter by kateelliott on twitter. Two proposals, two remarks -- 'the first thing a principle does is kill someone' 'do you self-censor and why/' -- that spoke straight to my core, to that part of me that sits back and tries to drive. To, if you like, my madness, and the ways in which I work with, through, around the world.

I've talked before about rules and how they accrete in my head. I am trained to accept rules, to be mindful of them, to be, I suppose, law-abiding. I'm trained to be, as the tag sometimes notes, a Professional Good Girl. Professional Good Girls keep to the rules and remember all the things their friends and relations and acquaintances don't like, don't want, don't approve of. Professional Good Girls end up with a head full of voices telling them about all the things they are not allowed to do. Don't say X or do Y, because person P hates that. Don't think Q or wear R, because person S doesn't like them. Don't think the mean things, even in the space inside your head, because Good Girls don't. Good Girls sit still and accept the blame, the pain, the anger, because Other People matter more than they do.

It's not an easy space, being so Professionally Good. And that's just the bit about what I'm allowed to do and say and think.

Then, there's Other People. Other People have more rights than me. Other People are more important. Other People must be pandered to, served, obeyed, deferred to. It gets, frankly, tedious. Especially when all this Goodness and deferring runs up against a principle.

You see, I believe in principles. Principles matter. Principles are the flood defences, the storm shelters, the shields that hold back cruelty and injustice and unfairness. Principles stand between us and the madness of pure, unbridled self-interest. In my head, anyway. Principles matter to me, because they are at the foundation of who I am, of what I believe. I may be, as my friend M once said, the last old-fashioned socialist in captivity, but that's fine with me. I'm proud of my principles. It matters to me, to stand by them.

I don't want to bore you explaining what my particular principles are. That's another post. But the thing that caught my attention, between Nancy Jane Moore's blog post and Kate Elliott's question was this: what happens when the rules and the principles collide.

The answer is fairly simple. I get into hot water. Any time I have my throat exposed in public, any time I post one of my rants or long commentaries, you can be pretty sure that a rule and a principle have met. The last time I really got into an on-line mess? That started because I felt that a third party had been harmed, and should be defended. That's one of the principles, you see. I cannot stand by and let someone else be bullied, harmed or undermined. However much I hate conflict -- and I do -- I am not allowed to look away, because someone has to do something, and I can't be sure that anyone else would. Because Good Girls help. This particular behaviour -- which is a rule and a principle (It Is My Duty To Help, combined with Bullying shouldn't be condoned) has been getting me into trouble my whole life. But I can't unlearn it. In my head, that need -- that duty -- to stand up for others is bigger than any inconvenience or pain it may cause me, however much it may frighten me. In my head, it's never right to put my self-interest or comfort ahead of the need of others who are less privileged than me, who are being belittled or dismissed, who are being treated unjustly. I may, alas, be the stuff of which martyrs are made. It is my duty -- and my sense of duty is harsh and strong and unrelenting -- to speak out, to act, to Do Something, because somebody has to, but the only person I can be sure will is myself. It doesn't make me nice to know, sometimes. It certainly doesn't make me comfortable, to myself or others. There's a piece of me that empathises on some level with that cold, principled, unkind man Robespierre, who on a number of occasions chose what he considered the common good over his own wishes and desires. (I don't agree with his policies. But, pace Simon Schama, he wasn't a monster, only a man driven to his extremes by his harsh, unforgiving principles. Saint-Just may have been a monster.) Principles can be hard, and cold and even cruel. But they matter, because without them, the tentacles of selfishness grow too strong.

This attitude of mine is, frankly, somewhat annoying. It drove my teachers mad 'don't get involved'. It used to drive my colleagues mad, because I would insist on asking the questions that the powers that be did not want asked. It drives the marquis mad, because I get myself into messes and arguments. It drives me mad. I am harsh on myself, and, sometimes, judgemental of others. I am bound up with ideas of duty that drive me bonkers. But I can't not do it.

And yet, I self-censor. I think most people do, in one way or another. There are lots of reasons. Other people's privacy, for instance. It's not up to me to decide what to say, what to reveal, sometimes, when others are involved. Rules -- those noisy things that infest my head. There are things I don't say, because I know it will upset or annoy or distress others. There are a handful of things I don't say because I don't want to deal with the consequences. There are things I don't write about because I feel they are better expressed face-to-face. And there are lots of things about which I don't think the world really needs my opinion, where I don't know enough. None of this means I don't care about those things. But I have chosen not to join in.

And then there are the ones that make me angry. The places I self-censor because of the Rules. The places I am silent because I've been taught that I Am Not Allowed. Don't say X, Kari: Y won't like it. Here's a list of things I self-censor not out of principle, not for any of the reasons above, not even entirely out of fear, but because someone else's voice is too loud in my head.

American exceptionalism
Gun control
The Labour plan for I.D cards in the UK
Scottish Independence
Julian Assange
Private education (in certain circumstances)
My own blasted country and its history
Why I really, really don't enjoy sunshine and heat

In a sense, none of this matters. Except... One of my principles is that I should not silence others. Silencing someone, particularly someone who has less power, or less privilege, is never good. Free speech -- if you believe in that (and I only do up to a point, because I live in the UK which has different rules on hate speech to those of the US, say) -- must be granted to all participants in a discussion, not just those with the loudest voices or the biggest sticks. Any statement that begins 'Your opinion doesn't matter because...' is a warning sign. It's an attempt to control, to dominate, to insist on a single story. Other people may well be right or they may well be wrong, but they should be listened to with respect.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to fantasy -- and to sf, for that matter. Principles are out of fashion right now. Since the 80s, at the latest, we have lived, in the west, in the realm of the Individual. It's all about Us. Heroes are mavericks, doing it Their Way. Other people have to get on board or be run over.

I'm generalising, of course I am, but a lot of current sff is about personal success, personal goals, personal achievement. Even when this is set against a background that refers to improving conditions for others, the latter is very much a sideline, an also ran. The focus is on the hero and how -- while saving The Suffering -- he or she achieves personal gratification and happiness. There are very few heroes who walk away from their own interest for the sake of others. Sacrifice is as unfashionable as principles. You have to go back a way to find examples. Galadriel rejecting the one ring, and accepting that she must dwindle. Gandalf holding back the Balrog. Michael de Sandoval of Dorsai and his companions, holding the castle against high odds. The pilot who stays on board the dying spaceship to let others escape. These days, there always seems to be a get-out, a back door via which the hero escapes at the last minute to enjoy the glory. A happy ending, yes, but it's a cheat. Principles are not easy. Duty is not easy. And when we don't show that, when we cheat, we undermine them, we reduce them to toys and poses. We undermine their value and their importance. And we reduce those acts, those choices made by the characters to just high-jinks and flash. The story becomes all about the hero. The poor who are always better off under the stable-boy king become no more than window dressing, because they don't really matter to the plot. They are just there to make the hero look good. In a sense, such fantasy is dangerous, because it makes change look easy and cheap, and it seldom questions the idea that what really matters is the individual getting what they want. This kind of narrative silences the underprivileged, the poor, because it reduces them to tokens, subordinate to the personal success of the chosen few. They have no agency. They are a voiceless mass, awaiting rescue, and nothing more. That, frankly, is a pretty patronising approach. And this story -- Wam the trainee pilot saves the galaxy and becomes admiral -- is a lie. It's never that simple. History shows us that, over and over.

In the real world, self-interest and the interests of others will conflict, probably on a daily basis. Uncontrolled, unchecked, it leads to exploitation, deprivation, huge social inequity and the Conservative Party (also the US Republican party) (Yes, my personal political prejudices are showing). Greed is not good.

There's a reason why Yvelliane makes the choices she does in Living With Ghosts. A number of readers didn't like those choices much. They wanted her to live happily ever after. In the very first draft of that book (which was hugely different to the final version) she did. And everyone got ice cream and kittens. (Or, all right, that's not the case.) It was a rotten draft and a rotten ending. I was lying to myself, offering fluff and nonsense. Power comes with responsibility, and responsibility should -- must -- be shouldered. It's a matter of that cold thing, principle.

And it matters. It should matter in our genre, because books have power. Books effect those who read them, though seldom in the ways the authors expect or intend. When we omit people or belittle their experience, we harm them. When we imply that following our own self-interest is all that matters, we contribute to a culture that grows ever more selfish and unkind and unfair. PRinciples may be out-of-fashion, but they have a lot to offer us.

And there are authors now who still speak of them, write of them, write with them. Patricia Bray, pbray, whose heroes do what they must, what is right, in the teeth of their own wishes and needs. kateelliott, who writes about the effects of war and wealth on ordinary people. Ken MacLeod. Walter Jon Williams. Aliette de Bodard, aliettedb. Lois MacMaster Bujold, sometimes. The comforting ending, the personally advantageous decision are all too often not the best. The stable-boy king or space admiral is not really a hero, if it's All About Him. Because the world is always bigger than us, bigger than the hero. And that should be remembered.
Edited to add: Ursula K LeGuin has written about principles today, much more insightfully than me: http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2012/10/08/restraint/
Skirt of the day: denim.

So, there's a phrase I keep hearing lately -- 'the best people'. It nearly always crops up in circumstances in which someone is defending the status quo. "We have to pay huge salaries or we won't attract the best people"; "We have to do it the way we're always done it or we'll miss out on the best people"; "If we give support to that group, we risk not supporting the best people" and so on.
The assumption underlying all of these statements is that the speaker -- usually a highly privileged man, let's be honest -- knows who these "best people" are, and others don't. The assumption is that "best people" can be quantified in terms that everyone is expected to know, but which are seldom, if ever, actually laid out anywhere. The assumption is that the system we already have is the best one, because changes to it risk losing those precious "best people".

Fair enough, you may say. It takes an expert financier, say, to recognise another expert financier. The rules and regulations and habits that have created the system have been in place for a long time, and the people who operate them have doubtless refined and reformed them, and are competent and reliable. They know what they're doing. It works, don't fix it.

Except, of course, that much of the tine, these systems *don't* work, or don't work well, or only work for some people. Except that, of course, there are many, many systems that have been in place for a long time that are demonstrably damaging and uneven and unjust. Systems like patriarchy, privilege based on race, privilege based on class, privilege based on sexuality. Except that we *don't* necessarily know who these "best people" may be, and nor do those who appoint or laud them. What we know is what the system likes us to know. What we know are the mechanisms that prop up the system and the interests -- racial, gendered, class-based, ableist and so on -- that that system upholds.

When I look around me at the "best people", this is what I see. They tend to be male. They tend to be white. They tend to come from the upper social classes. They tend to have a particular educational profile. They tend to have money and to come from families with money. They tend to be friends with a lot of other "best people". They are, in short, the very people that modern free-market capitalism, sexism and racism are all designed to privilege most. They are the oligarchs. (Yes, there are exceptions: there always are. But I'm speaking of the general here.) And every time a banker, say, or a government official speaks of the "best people" I know what they mean -- and so do they.

But the thing is, I don't know if these people really are best. I have no way of judging: I don't have material against which to compare them, by and large. What I do know is that when they are performing well in their jobs, the lives of ordinary people don't seem to benefit very much -- but when they perform badly, they get to keep their privilege, by and large, while ordinary people pay the penalties. Bankers who fail leave their positions with huge bonuses. Public sector workers who are reduced to break-down by overwork and aggressive management are forced out of work, offered pensions that average well below a living income, demonised in the press, and threatened with having those small pensions cut. And they pay tax at the normal rate. Famously, up until 1918, men who were mad, who were murderers, who were alcoholic, incapable, could vote and women, however intelligent and able, could not, here in the UK. But the law of the land held that men were the "best people" as far as the franchise was concerned. Our default images of power and ability remain male: the male politician, the male scientist, the male explorer. This week, the women's football (soccer) world champions (Japan) travelled economy class to the Olympics, while the male team from the same country, who are not considered to be particularly good, travelled first class. The reason? The men were "professionals": they were the best people, even though, in fact, they are not. In job after job, I've watched as women -- gifted, competent, brilliant women -- cluster in middle grades while men are promoted past them. As a culture, we assume that men are better: why else the annual breast-beating over school exam results and the current Tory re-working (yet again) of the exam system? Boys, we are told every year, are being beaten by girls. And this, it still seems, is not acceptable. Because culturally we are told that boys are to be the best people. The same series of lies, assumptions and obstructions underpin issues of race; block the access of people from non-white backgrounds to education and employment, to justice and opportunity. The system of "best people" has little to do with real merit. It's simply one of the many many weapons our culture uses to uphold and retain privilege for those who are already at the top, and to deter, prevent and hamper those below them from "infringing" on what is seen as their rights.

So: next time that phrase comes up, stop and think. Ask what we mean by "best". And ask why we think that.

So I really don't know why I watch Glee, a lot of the time. It's sentimental, it's shallow, it's full of cliches and stereotypes and it rarely features music I like. And I really, really, really hate many of the characters. It's Beverley Hills 90210 with show tunes.
And yet I go on watching. Partly that's down to season one, which started so well. It offered us a genuinely varied set of characters from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of issues. And it seemed to want to honour that, for about half a season. But then the agenda appeared. I loved Kurt: I loved his gallantry and courage and sense of self, I loved his gift for friendship and his ability to understand others. I have always hated Rachel, but back then her sheer selfishness was a feature and we were not expected to sympathise. Will... meh: it's not a teacher's place to share his personal life with his students in that way, and I find him creepy. But Mercedes rocks -- she still does; and so do Santana and Brittany and they have all had reasonable plot lines. Over the three seasons, there have been some great arcs: I am delighted by the Santana/Brittany relationship and how it's been allowed to develop. I love that Mercedes stays tough and isn't skinny, and gets to be cute and sexy and smart and attractive -- and to tell Rachel where to get off. I'm delighted that Artie talks back, has big dreams, can behave like an idiot or a hero like anyone else (the wheelchair user is a Person Just Like Anyone Else). I'm pleased that Kurt has Blaine and that that's presented positively. And ever once in a while, the show has great dancing, and I am, as we know, all about the dancing.
But, but, but...
There's Kurt again. He's still fabulous. All the way to all those scenes where he lectures and humiliates the female characters and is Right. Male problems always trump female ones. Women are always Wrong about things and cause their own unhappiness. Gee, thanks. Those young women are his friends and allies, but the writer wants them to know their place. That hurts. (Blaine is kinder, thankfully. But I sense that the script is on Kurt's side, slut-shaming. The way he spoke to Quinn in the latest episode and the way, in particular, he was a mouthpiece for making sure we all know that a girl who gets pregnant, is thrown out by her parents, is humiliated at school, marginalised and patronised, made to give up her child and then made to behave in ways that suit others, hasn't really suffered at all, because... Well, Kurt claimed everyone went on loving her really, which is just not true within the show's own continuity. But men have it worse, in Glee world. Note we did not get a plot-line about Santana starting, say, to self harm, when she was outed and her grandmother rejected her. She's just a girl, after all.)*
And then there's Tina. I love Tina, she was my favourite character from the start. The shy misfit girl who *doesn't* have a huge ego hiding her insecurity. The bright one who no-one really seems to want to know. The one who wants to be liked but only knows how to pretend. At the start, she got some attention from the writers. She got to increase in confidence, to form a very sweet relationship with Artie. In season two, she got to stand up for herself. But she has never got fair screen time. She gets one or two lines. She doesn't get songs, or even, very often, lines in songs or close-ups. She doesn't get to do anything except back-up Rachel on stage and off. That's been the pattern for two seasons now, and was rather the pattern in a lot of the first. She was given a song, remember, and Rachel complained, and Tina was nice about it, gave it up and that was it. Rachel learnt nothing, except to add to her entitlement. The script told us Tina was a good girl, 'taking one for the team'. Because the people who don't matter must do that.
And Tina doesn't matter. Like the song says, 'Nobody's Asian on tv'. Like original Star Trek back in the day, Glee is leaning back on its laurels, patting itself on the back about how inclusive it is -- while tokenising its Asian characters completely. Apparently it's enough that they're there. Oh, we get the occasional crumb. Mike got a typical Asian story earlier this season, when he got an A- and his parents were angry. Because the Asian characters can't be real people, oh no. (There was briefly a Chinese family on Brookside, the defunct UK soap. They did nothing, because the writers apparently thought that only 'Asian' stories could be told about them, and they only knew one or two of those. Same is true of the characters of Indian origin on Eastenders: nothing to write about there except white assumptions about perceived prejudices in their religion, and arranged marriage.)
I hoped, for 4 or 6 episodes, back at the start of Glee that Tina -- and Mike,when he joined the main cast -- would get to be a real character, like Rachel or Kurt or the eternally boring, pointless Finn who we're all supposed to find so fascinating. But I was put right pretty soon. Tina isn't a person, she's an Asian Face, and that's supposed to be good enough.
It isn't. Not in any way at all. It's racist. It's unacceptable.
At the end of the current season, several of the characters graduate and, in theory, should leave the show. Including Rachel, Finn and Kurt. In theory: the rumour is those characters will still be around somehow. Tina isn't a final year student (Mike is). Season 4 could be her turn to shine. The show has a great chance here to show us that she is a person after all. She has hopes and dreams and problems -- not just 'Asian' problems. In my world, this could be the year Tina gets to be the star, to have a life just like Rachel and Kurt. Or maybe she could share the spotlight with Mercedes: they are, we are told (but seldom shown) great friends. There could be some wonderful stories in that, friends becoming rivals or, even better, refusing to be made into rivals and finding new ways to share and deal.
It won't happen, of course. Tina isn't white-bread pretty. Tina doesn't tick the boxes that define 'people'. Tina's only Asian. What we'll gt is a new set of angst-ridden, plot-absorbing pretty white characters, with maybe, if we're lucky, a bit more screen time for Mercedes (but she won't be the star, either, because she isn't thin enough, she isn't white enough). Mike will graduate and go and never been seen again. Rachel and Finn and Kurt will be back every other week, to suck up all the screen-time and take all the starring roles. Because they're the only kind of people who matter.
And that makes me angry and sad, because it's a lie, and a pernicious one. And this show claims that it doesn't do that kind of thing. That it's all about celebrating difference.
So long, of course, as you're white.

*I don't agree with Quin that suicide is never an option. And the plot about Karofsky's suicide attempt is heartbreaking and all too realistic and I hate that young gay men are subjected to these pressure. But that's not my point. My point is that the show put the lines about suicide being selfish and bad into Quinn's mouth, not, say, Artie's or Puck's, and then reveled in having Kurt tell her off and reduce her experiences to trivia. And that isn't acceptable. Oddly, being publicly slut-shamed, pregnant and rejected destroys young women's lives and some of them attempt suicide too. And that isn't a lesser form of suffering just because they aren't male. I suspect, too, that Quinn is about to be killed off, to angst-up Rachel, and because she's just a spare woman these days, and those don't really matter. The fact is the show did not need to humiliate a woman to have this plot-line (and the earlier one about Blaine coming to terms with his sexuality did not need to include a speech from Kurt humiliating Rachel, with the script on his side).

So yesterday I finally got around to reading the May issue of the SFWA Bulletin, the one focusing on the Nebulas. Lots of interesting stuff, as usual and all the regular features, so far so good. And a piece by Connie Willis on Blackout/All Clear.
Now, I was underwhelmed by seeing these win the best novel award, because the historical errors in them are, frankly, parlous, and -- as an Oxbridge historian -- I am personally rather offended by how stupid she thinks my kind are, apparently (I had the same issues with Doomsday Book). But that's my opinion, and the Nebulas are a US award and people do make cultural errors. So and all...
Then I read her short piece in the Bulletin. Here's the key excerpt. 'That era [Britain in WW2] is just so fascinating -- the blackout, the gas masks, the kids being sent off to who-knows-where, old men and middle aged women suddenly finding themselves in uniform and in danger, tube shelters and Ultra and Dunkirk, and running through it all, the threat of German tanks rolling down Piccadilly! What's not to like.'

That was when I looked up, and said, very sharply, 'How about all the dead civilians? That's not to like at all.'
Because, you know, the Blitz was *not* fun. My Uncle Bob served in the army and was at Dunkirk, and subsequently, due to shell shock, was put to digging bodies out of the rubble left by bombs in London. He never got over it. My Auntie Florrie contracted TB of the bone while working as an army nurse and died young as a result. My mother, then a junior school child, lived less than 8 miles from where Hess was being kept as a prisoner, though she didn't find this out till she was in her 50s. She remembers the evacuees, too, miserable and terrified and confused. My father can remember finding the hand, still in its glove, of a Canadian pilot whose plane was shot down. None of that is fun.

Here's my point. History is not a theme park. It's not a story, either. It's people's real lives. If you're going to write about it, about any part of it, you need to do your homework properly, you need to be respectful, because -- as Ms Willis did with me -- otherwise, you're going to find someone's sore place, someone's vulnerability, someone's sacred or difficult or secret thing, and you're going to do damage. Other countries aren't theme parks, either, nor museums, nor big bags of useful resources. They're homes to millions, they're people's lives, too.

I didn't know I had a hot button about the Blitz. I was taken aback, rather, by how strongly I felt about this. Doomsday Book annoyed the hell out of me, because the errors were so egregious and so easily avoidable. The same is true of the errors in Blackout/All Clear. And I'm inured to people's assumptions about how stupid, how dim, how un-rigorous and unscientific and woolly historians must be because, after all, anyone can do that job, anyone can read books about the past, can't they? You don't spend 30+ years specialising in an obscure historical period without hearing every negative view going about your value, status, skills and profession.

But the Blitz is not likeable, it's not fun, it's not an adventure playground. And talking about is as if it is lessens us all. I'm sure Ms Willis didn't mean her comments that way, either. I've never met her, but what I've read suggests that she's a perfectly nice, intelligent woman. She written some books I like and some I don't like. That's on me, not her. I'm sure she didn't set out to hurt or offend. This is about my perceptions, my reactions. I accept that completely.

And while I'm talking about this, let's have a look at another phrase I'm seeing a lot lately, 'Eurocentric fantasy'. This, as far as I can tell, means fantasies set in backgrounds drawn from a sort of default idea of mediaeval Europe (usually Western Europe at that). I understand what people mean by this, and what they are thinking about. The thing is, as a European myself, these fantasies don't feel 'Eurocentric' to me. They don't feel like Europe at all, they feel like a mix of 50s Hollywood historicals and Las Vegas, they are theme park fantasies -- right up there with that 'England' where everyone is either Hugh Grant or a Cockney, and we have names like Rupert and Gwendolen (not in my lifetime, oh Buffy -- and Wesley is a surname, not a first name in the social class that Wesley Windom-Price is supposed to come from). I get how this happens -- we have 'theme park' America here, a land of cowboys and drive-ins and deep-fried bacon. I got into a discussion a few days ago on jimhines blog about the term 'First World', and how to me it means something different to what it seems to mean to many non-Britons. We have different understandings of the world, depending on who we are and where we live, on what we are, on what we have learned and observed. But when I see the whole 'Eurocentric' thing as a slam, while my head understands what is meant, my heart hears something else. My heart hears, "well, *your* past is rubbish and overdone and bad, and we've mined it out and used up all the fun stuff anyway and now it's just this huge negative thing that we don't want any more". (I am not here demanding that we get a free pass against the many many bad things done by the British through history. I am talking about 2ndary world fantasies drawing on European cultural tropes.) Plus, some of the tropes and themes mean different things to us now to what they did in the past, or to what they mean to the European diaspora.

I'm not saying all fantasies based on European histories are bad. There are many good ones -- I've written about Judith Tarr's and Kit Kerr's before. And there are more. But those are properly researched, properly thought through. They're not highlights and assumptions and 'isn't this cool'? I do my best to be careful with my own books: I read about the same volume for my fiction as I do for my academic writing and I try to do my best. I probably make mistakes. My feet are clay. I hope I'm not doing too desperately badly.

I guess what I'm saying is, at bottom, very simple. Be careful, when you talk about other people's things, histories, homes. We don't all understand the same things in what we read, we don't all have the same assumptions. We start from different places. It's far too easy to discount, to elide, to erase people by not respecting that they may not be just like oneself. It's far too easy to trample, to damage, to stamp hard on sensitive toes.

And this is a very British blog post. I seem to be turning into the poster girl for this kind of thing, lately. But it sits in my head and it niggles, and... Well, that's me, I guess.
I'm friends'-locking for now: will open it if others think that would be a good idea.

Skirt of the day: jeans.

Saturday update: I'm still here reading but today I won't have time to post. I will be back and commenting tomorrow. Have a great day.

So, the marquis and I have finally got around to watching The Big Bang Theory. (Yes, I know. But we have a Hong Kong film mountain to watch, you know.) On the whole, we like it. It's reasonably sharp, most of the time, and it's funny and it's pretty kind to the tribe of the fan. And on the whole, the characters are believable and appealing and engaging. I buy that Penny would go for Leonard: he's a nice guy. I get why everyone puts up with Sheldon, despite, well, Sheldon. And Raj is adorable.
But then there's Howard. Howard isn't funny. Not to me. I've met Howard too often, and, like Penny, I don't like him close to me one bit. Howard makes my skin crawl. I've been on the receiving end of that and it's vile.
It's a fine piece of writing by the script team and a wonderful piece of acting by Simon Helberg. I believe in Howard 100%. Like I said, I've met him.
The writers get that he's creepy. I get that. His friends get it, too. And yet, and yet...
There's an episode in season two -- no. 12, 'The Killer Robot Instability' -- that crystallised for me how and why I'm uncomfortable with the character. ( Brief spoiler here )
In the extras on the dvd for that season, the writers talk about that episode, and how important it is, because we get to see that Howard is vulnerable, that he has feelings. In principle, I have no problem with that. I understand. I know that the creepy behaviour is a cover for deep insecurity and loneliness and anxiety. I really do understand all that. I even sympathise.
But...
The thing is, this isn't news. I don't need to see the softer side of Howard. I knew it was there already and so, I'm willing to bet, did the majority of other women out there, especially women in fandom. Because we have all -- or almost all -- been on the receiving end of that desperate persistent creepy harassment. We have all snapped. We have all been told off, because Howard has feelings, you know, you mean girl. All the writers of that episode have done is reaffirm a daily fact of female life and female socialisation. It's our job to keep the menfolk happy by tending to their feelings. It's our job not to hurt them. It's our job to put up with all kinds of behaviour, because they only do it because they're sad/lonely/misunderstood. Penny doesn't need to learn about Howard's feelings, whatever the writers think. She knows. Of course she knows. She was brought up to know. But the writers -- who are male, and who on the whole do a fine job with the show -- have let Penny and the female audience down badly here. Because this episode is back-to-front. It's not Penny who needs to learn, it's Howard and his friends.
Howard manifests a common belief amongst some men -- that they are somehow owed access to women, that they have a right to it and that they can express this by pestering and harassing and bullying until some woman some day just has enough and gives in. It's clear that some people find watching this behaviour in a sitcom funny. I don't. It makes me cringe. When Penny finally snapped, I cheered, because I hoped that the writers were going to come through for me, and have Howard learn that women are people, not objects. I wanted him to look at himself and really think about it -- and apologise to Penny. And I wanted his friends (well, Leonard and Raj, anyway, Sheldon doesn't do people) to back her up in discouraging his standard behaviour. But the episode let me down, because it was all about man-angst.
It's not just that I'm mean and man-hating. I really do feel sorry for Howard in a lot of ways. But I'm not responsible for him and men like him. And I'm tired of living in a world in which I and other women have to be. I'm tired of having to endure harassment because I might hurt a man's feelings if I object. And I'm tired of the media reinforcing that attitude.
There's been an ongoing debate in UK fandom over sexual harassment and one of the issues that has come up a number of times is the perceived unwillingness of some parts of male fandom to police itself. This episode of TBBT is one of the best examples I can think of of the ways in which men can collude -- even unwittingly -- in maintaining the status quo of harassment. No-one stands up to Howard and says, 'She was right, and you need to apologise and stop doing it.' Oh, they sigh and roll their eyes at how he acts, but they don't intervene, they don't try and stop it, they don't police it in any way. They think, 'Oh, that's just Howard' and don't go beyond that. In s.2, ep.12, they go so far as to think 'We need him happy: make her say sorry,' which is just plain wrong. And it could have been a great episode, it could have been a genuinely important episode, because it could have reinforced something else, which is that men can support women against harassment and that harassers can start to learn.

So, one of the charges often levelled at fantasy is that it's full of polysyllabic names and that that's totally unrealistic. Because, y'know, in the Real World (TM), everyone is called Bob or Sue. Just everyone.
This, with respect (okay, with minimal respect) is nonsense. The Real World is full of all sorts of names and naming customs. And, frankly, as a complaint, it's riddled with entitlement. I, the reader, want everything to be easy for me and familiar to me. I don't want to face difference. It's scary.
Bollocks to that. Language -- language in its widest sense, meaning all those wonderful, contradictory, baffling, eloquent, elegant, fluid, magical, changeable, ways in which we communicate and miscommunicate with one another -- is one of our greatest gifts and challenges and tools. Languages are rich and nuanced and redolent and textured. Language is one of our greatest adventures.
And I, for one, want to go on those adventures. I don't want to read about worlds that are exactly like mine, to see only my own practices and expectations and ideas mirrored. I want to be shocked and scared, challenged and surprised, baffled, frustrated, delighted, awakened, expanded. I want to learn.
And I don't learn in a landscape where everyone is limited by one set of rules, where it's only 'realistic' for characters to be called Boyon and Girla (or, for daring writing, Boyol and Girlie). That isn't the world I live in now, for heaven's sake.
Reality check. Not everyone has a name like Bob or Sue. Even within my own white British culture, I know or know of Elizabeths and Bartholemews, Susannahs and Benedicts, Annabels and Julians. Not all of them are Liz or Bart, Sue or Ben, Anne or Jules, either. And if we lift those cultural blinkers, the wider world has and uses proudly, happily, longer names every single day. Saraswati. Paradorn. Ssima Be-Ping. Hideyoshi. Hitomi. Bronislav. Go and look at Thai names, or Indian ones, or even Irish. Conchubhair. Mael-Sechlainn. Derbhorgaill. We are not all white and Germanic. We are not all uniform, nor should we be.
And I won't fit my characters with the strait-jacket of lazy (culturally privileged?) reader expectation. Most of the names I use derive from Old French, Middle English and Welsh. Some of those are short -- Aude, Jehan. Some of them aren't -- Thiercelin, Gracielis.
Name vary, people. Names and naming conventions differ with time, with culture. Some times and cultures allow for abbreviations or pet names -- Thierry, Sue, Pinky. Some add syllables to indicate intimacy or respect -- Ryouga-kun, Mo-Colum. My characters don't live in a world defined by my junior school, which was in a white-bread small village. They don't have to end with the suffixes that make my culture-mates feel comforted. They aren't me. They aren't Jane-from-Basingstoke or Jack-from-Poughkeepsie, either. If I want to read about Jane and Jack, Ill buy a book set in those sort of places. If I find Jane in Fantasyland, her writer needs to convince me that Jane is a natural fit in that place -- and that that place is real in itself and not just Basingstoke with dragons. (Actually, Basingstoke with dragons might be an improvement. But you know what I mean.)
When William Morris made his translations of Old Norse sagas, he adapted the female names he found in them so that they ended in -a, enforcing Latin grammatical practice and (in part) naming practices on 12th century Scandinavia. It looks and sounds wrong. Like 19th century contemporaries who, following the fashion for Anglo-Saxon revivals, gave their daughters Old English names (Ethelberta), he was blinkered by his own cultural expectations.
Fantasy needs to be bigger than that. So, don't go telling me I have to stick to Boyon and Girla. This world I write about is not the world right outside your door. The Real World is bigger than your street. And so should fantasy be.

Dear Advertisers and manufacturers of certain snack foods,
It's a dangerous world for women, weak and spineless as we are. Cupcakes and chocolate bars lurk in the shadows of every corner, waiting to ambush us. Sweets and biscuits stalk us, day and night, breaking into our homes with malice and violence on their minds. We are helpless before them, utterly controlled and governed as we are by our uncontrollable animal natures that force us to be enslaved to all that fat and sugar. It is indeed a very, very hard thing to be a woman, trapped in these bodies that lack any kind of self-control, decision-making powers or independence. How lucky we are that you are there to save us, with your lower calorie versions of these dangerous enemies. Every day, thousands of women are saved from the hell of eating what they want by sweetener-loaded, food-value empty diet cereal bars with their addiction-soothing tastes of Real Chocolate. Where would we be without you, nannies of the food world, given that we have all the impulse control of a three-year-old.

I'm pretty sure I remember the days when advertising to women was mostly about looking after men and children. I'm really, really, really fortunate that these days you know we're people too and that we *need* sugar and sweeties and shoes and gossip to function. I shudder to think of those poor women of former days, whose basic natures were so ignored. Yes, I am just a big child! Yes, I will die if I don't have sweet things! Yes, I need you to protect me from the spectre of not being thin enough through your treat substitutes, because I am totally incapable of saying no to cake or chocolate by myself. I'm just not strong enough, controlled enough, adult enough to look after myself.

Enough, already. Here's a newsflash. We don't need to be told 'naughty but nice', we don't need to be 'saved' from sweeties. We're grown-ups who can choose for ourselves, who can walk past cake shops and chocolate stalls without gibbering or whimpering or needing counselling. We're not naughty three-year-olds who can't say no and who need to be addressed in a special language of rewards for good girls.

Here's a thought experiment. Put a man in one of those adverts for lo-cal snack bars and see how likely it looks. Pretty damn stupid, yes? I am not taken in by your attempts to infantilize me. I can look cake in the eye and say no all by myself. And if I decide to say yes, the world does not end.

Oh, and those protective, non-fattening good girl foods? They don't even taste nice.

yours in high dudgeon,
The Marquise