Category: personal

do you hear the people sing?

As I think anyone who knows me knows, I am an unabashed lover of both musical theater and politics. And, I believe that American politics are often at their best, or worst, when those politics are engaged in theatrically. It’s political theater for a reason, and I think we’ve lost a great deal in the discourse due to the current societal devaluation of both rhetoric and performance.

Which is why this Les Miserables moment from the Wisconsin protests has me in tears, especially as word is coming out that among other petty actions by the Wisconsin governor in this struggle, he has just ordered that the windows of the capital building be welded shut in order to prevent food deliveries to the occupying protesters.

Read the stuff. Watch the video. Pay particular attention to the protesters in the background of the footage uninvolved with the planning of the intentional performance. People singing along, and one man, right at the beginning, who smiles and seems to take his hat off in respect.

Stories matter.

butch isn’t ugly

Butch Lab Symposium is a blog carnival/round-up where participants blog independently on a monthly theme related to butch identity, and then later post a list of other participants’ pieces.

This month’s question, “What do people think ‘butch’ means? What are the stereotypes around being butch? What do people assume is true about you [or the masculine of center folks in your life], but actually isn’t? What image or concept do you constantly have to correct or fight against? How do you feel about these misconceptions? How do you deal with them? Do you respond to these stereotypes or cliches? How?” seemed particularly on point for me.

In my essay in Whedonistas I talk a good deal about how hard I find it to identify with the women of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series. I don’t look, or feel, like them by default. Yes, sometimes I wear dresses and present femininely, and, when I do, I can be quite good at it. Sometimes it feels comfortable and sometimes it doesn’t.

My life as a boy, meanwhile, is very much the same way, and, and the end of the day, it’s hard for me to have a word for what I am because there are such rigid definitions, not just of male and female, but of butch and femme. Sure, I have the de rigueur short hair, but the fussy suits make people questions my masculinity cred in the queer community as surely as they make some people questions the masculinity of foppish men in the world of more mainstream gender roles (see: my off-hand remark about Wesley Wyndham-Price in my Whedonistas piece).

As far as I can tell, most people think butch means a whole lot of things that don’t really have very much to do with me. Of course, there’s the role of the butch/femme dynamic in the lesbian community past and present, and I’ll confess I have some affection for its cultural presence in my world, even if it’s largely worked against me and mine (I’m not just butch, my partner wouldn’t define as femme (again, check Whedonistas for more, but she keeps a pick-axe under our sink), and a whole lot of femmes I know that have dated each other are really sick of explaining to people, that yes, really, two femmes can be together!).

But more than that, there are just all these cultural expectations of masculinity that get bound up in butchness that make me really uncomfortable, not just because in a lot of ways I’ll never measure up, but because in a lot of ways, I don’t want to. Because gender is often defined through others (the “a man is a man because of how a man responds to a woman” theory of gender), butchness often seems to become about what it’s not, and as such, often seems to engender a great deal of rhetoric that is covertly, if not overly, misogynist.

Being butch doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, mean I have to have certain interests (e.g., sports, which I largely don’t care for), skills (e.g., Patty changes lightbulbs and deals with tools because I am largely useless at these things), and social and sexual roles (my own being unnecessary to describe for the sake of this entry). And it certainly shouldn’t require me to be misogynist, which is something I see more and more gay women complaining about lately — butches that assert their butchness by denigrating femmes in all the same ways that women get denigrated by men in het culture.

But, if I reject the external assumptions of what a butch is, what’s left to define me as butch, at least on the days where I would consider myself such? The answer, is, simply, that I don’t know. This is striking, not, however, because of any need to self-define a role in the community of gay women, but because of what it says about gender on a wider scale. If there is nothing that is essential to butchness (although I’m sure a lot of us, probably even me, would say we know it when we see it), then there is, also arguably, nothing that is essential to masculinity.

And that’s when people in the heterosexual and heteronormative world, especially if they’re politicians it seems, start getting really scared. If masculinity or femininity — if butchness or femmeness — only exists in the eyes of others, how can you ever really be sure you are what you say you are? Is it too much to ask that people be that self-assured of their gender identity, whether it is consciously constructed or not? And is this challenge to the idea of gender certitude why the idea of gender as flexible and self-defined makes some people so angry? Or why trans and gender non-conforming people are so often in so much danger?

On this theme, I was struck particularly by Rachel Maddow’s segment last night on political truth. In passing in that segment (it’s towards the end, for those of you not wanting to watch the whole thing), she mentions the way that people try to insult her when these arguments about political truth come up — they say that she’s gay and that she looks like a man.

Now, I don’t know whether Maddow identifies as butch or not, but I do know that in her off-camera presentation she reads so much more masculinely to me than she does on camera (and effectively admits to same in the segment, although even more briefly). I imagine, based on my own experiences, that that’s a hard bargain to make every night. It’s a moment she doesn’t linger on in the piece, but it points the way to one clear thing: “looking like a man” is, apparently, for many people, one of the worst things a woman can do.

But for some women, that’s not an insult. Hell, it can be the best thing we’ve ever damn heard. Which gets me to the misconception about butchness — whether my butchness meets some butch standard or not — that aggravates me the most: butch isn’t ugly. It’s not a presentation that derives out of some failed femininity. It’s not this thing we do because we were bad at what we’re supposed to do. It’s just this thing we do.

On the list of preconceptions about butchness that come from both inside and outside the queer community, this one is, I recognize, seemingly trivial. But, using people’s self-definition as a slur is a nasty business, and defining butchness as ugliness is a special type of misogyny that is restrictive and vicious for all women, regardless of whether butchness is even anywhere on the map of their world.

it’s raining (and not snowing!) trash day

It’s trash day and I’m in the middle of moving offices. In the rain. Pray to your gods for me, as long as they’re not evil.

Last night I booked Patty and I for San Francisco. I’m super excited, as I haven’t been in about four years. SF, is, for me, one of those towns I feel like I could never live in, but that resonates for me pretty intensely emotionally. Anyone out there have any recommendations for gluten-free restaurants (particularly in Chinatown) or bakeries? Also, I need a rec for the high-end hot restaurant that we just have to try. Giant redwoods, yes? Never done it. Combined with a tour that drops us in Sausalito for an afternoon with a trip back on the ferry? Speak to me. This will be my first trip there that’s not for business or visiting elderly relatives.

But enough of where we’re going, since that’s not ’til August. Let’s talk (briefly, one more time) about where I’ve been. The Whedonistas launch was rad (here, I make the thoughtful face); the books were snapped up, and the reviews (all good) are starting to trickle in. So yay.

And despite various logistical difficulties and the “but wait, wasn’t it a Doctor Who convention?” factor, a few pictures of my cosplaying Arthur from Inception did happen and are floating around Facebook. Main lesson there: everything takes longer than you think, and despite Arthur being really the perfect cosplay for me in terms of him being slight and not super tall, I carry myself like I take up a lot of space, far more so than Arthur does. Ah well, always Jack at heart, I guess.

In news of the world, which, as usual, you should really be paying attention to, things in Libya are a heartbreaking bloody mess that’s absolutely a legacy of colonialism and the US’s willingness to make nice with terrible people if it provides even an illusion of guaranteed access to oil at prices we deem marginally tolerable. While CNN hasn’t been particularly good for what’s going on in the big picture, and their analysis is spotty and US centric, I can’t say enough about some of these phone interviews Anderson Cooper’s been doing. Really heartbreaking. As usual, remember this stuff isn’t happening in just one country. Protests continue throughout the region.

Meanwhile, things in the US are pretty intense too. Aside from the war on women with bills aimed not just at legalizing violence against abortion providers, but federal level bills that seek to eliminate funding for women’s health and family planning services, the biggest news story is arguably coming out of Wisconsin, where union issues and the right to collective bargaining are front and center.

I’ll be frank; I’m both a union member (SAG now, and I’m a former CWA member) and someone who hasn’t been following this story as closely as I should be. But the right to organize is critical even if modern unions don’t always function how I personally want them to.

So, one of my readers asked me to link to some stuff. This includes videos (and transcripts) as well as links to various roundups. This isn’t just Wisconsin anymore, either, but has spread to Florida, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

Let’s also not forget that New Zealand has had a terrible disaster. Here’s some words from someone there on what it’s like and how you can help.

Meanwhile, in the realm of people making stuff and how you can help, PodCastle is looking for voice actors. Additionally, while I’m not much for comics, if I were, I’d probably be a huge fan of (or making something like) Baritaria Historicals – The Assassination of King Valliet and The Birthday of the Princess. Check it out.

Oh, and that reminds me, both the empires in the book Kali and I are working on finally have names now, a fact which, while unimportant to my day to day life at this particular moment in time, helps me sleep better at night.

See you from the other side.

today’s acafen problems

These may amuse you, because even as I grapple with them, they are amusing me:

1. I realize that Jones is a ridiculously common surname, especially in the UK and especially in Wales. But generally when I’m writing academic articles, I mention the character’s whole name the first time I refer to them, and then refer to them by their last name throughout the rest of the article. Which is all well and good, until you’re writing an article about the Whoniverse that necessarily must mention both Harriet Jones and Ianto Jones and may mention Martha Jones, and I don’t really want to go traipsing about in scholarship being all familiar with these folks and calling them by their given names, but the constant use of their full names is remarkably awkward (although probably what I’m stuck with — I simply cannot refer to even a fictional prime minister by her first name). Meanwhile, on Twitter someone tells me that in Wales it is common to deal with the problem of Joneses by referring to them with reference to what they do. So, Jones the companion? Jones the … whatever it is we think Ianto does at Torchwood? Jones the PM? Somehow, that gets even more awkward in terms of construction, despite being infinitely more hilarious.

2. The Face of Boe presents a similar problem. Do I reference him continually as the Face of Boe, or do I, after the first mention, shorten that? And if so, do I shorten it to the Face or Boe? If I shorten it, I’m leaning towards the Face. That said, on Twitter, this provoked amusing levels of varied opinion and raised the issue of appropriate pronouns for the thing/person/tentacle monster/Face/Jack. Help me, Internets, help me!

3. Apparently, according to the Sherlock commentary tracks, everyone does this, but I keep writing (in a different article than the DW one mentioned above) “Sherlock and Watson” when I meant to write “Holmes and Watson.” This is an entirely aggravating up-hill battle that I shouldn’t even need to be having.

I have these sorts of problems a lot, and recently felt sort of embarrassed that on some of the HPA stuff I’ve been doing about gender and bullying I keep referring to Snape as Severus, as if he’s an old friend. But of course, for me, fictional characters are old friends, even if that’s inappropriate to disclose in most scholarly settings (of which the HPA isn’t one).

I even tried to determine if I get the most antsy about first name/last name issues around characters about whom I’ve done transformative work (fanfiction, for those of us who aren’t being delicate about it), but that really doesn’t seem to be it either (although, it’s surely the case regarding both Snape and Ianto Jones). I suppose that it’s just, as it often is in my writing, mostly about cadence.

For the other folks out there doing scholarly work, what weird problems do you have of this ilk? Because it surely can’t just be me. And I need some amusement while I stare at the 50 pages I need to write in the next few days while also moving my office.

the activism trap

Being an activist can really suck. Let me show you how.

I’m engaged with anti-bullying efforts for a bunch of reasons. This includes the fact that I was severely bullied as a kid, as a teen, during university, and periodically as an adult on the wonder that is the Internet; that I find working on anti-bullying initiatives healing; and that I believe my way with words and openness can help the cause.

But at core, the reason I want to stop bullying is so that people who are awesome have the space to do awesome stuff. It’s hard to make art, do research, be an awesome friend, teach kids, help animals, strive for political reform, provide awesome customer service or do whatever it is you do if you’re being bullied and recovering from being bullied. The best reason to support anti-bullying is so that more people have the space to be the most awesome versions of themselves they can be.

The thing is, when I spend all my time talking about stopping bullying or anti-gay harassment or sexism or transphobia or whatever thing I feel its critical to speak out about (and feel capable of speaking out about — there are lots of issues I support where it’s probably better for me to let other people speak while I keep learning), I don’t have time to do my awesome stuff. And then it’s a little bit like the bullies have won, because they’ve forced me to abandon my agenda and will for the purpose of responding to their actions and arguments.

This really sucks. And it’s emblematic of something I think most activists face at various times. From feminist advocacy to fighting poverty to stopping racism — when you have to be an activist all the time, it’s easy to lose the benefits you’re supposed to enjoy from that activism helping to make the world better. Balance is key, but, in a cruel world, pretty hard to come by.

Which is why I really want to stop talking about the Buffy thing (here, have a summary from someone who was there and isn’t me), because I feel that particular activism trap closing in around me. But, that said, there are a few remaining things I do want to address.

First, thank you for keeping it civil. While a few comments here have made me angry or upset, and while I disagree with some opinions I’ve seen expressed, no one really crossed the line in discourse here. That’s awesome, and I totally appreciate it.

Next, about that argument where you say, “Well, I want to take this person at her word, but she sounds awfully emotional, and therefore I can’t.” — That argument is a misogynistic rhetorical device that often gets pulled out against women who are upset and not against men who are angry. It’s happened in various branches of this discussion (which is now happening across Whedonesque, several blogs, and Livejournal). It’s an effective rhetorical device due to the way we treat women in this world, but it’s not actually good argumentation. It’s also angry-making. Please knock it off.

Additionally, I am really trying to avoid making a post about the whole “toughen up” thing and why it’s so problematic, as, again, I don’t want to get sucked into the negative self-impact activism trap I described in the opening of this post. However, it’s important to me that you understand the following things: First, there is no universal standard of appropriate emotional feeling; just as the Goblin King asks Sarah in Labyrinth what her basis of comparison is when she declares, “It’s not fair,” I would ask you what yours is when you say someone is over-sensitive. Second, it is my sensitivity that allows me to do what I do for a living — writing stories, examining pop-culture, performing, and eroding the artificial boundaries we’ve set up between scholarship and sentimentality. (A theoretical excess of) feeling, just like anything else, can be a tool, an advantage, and a weapon; it’s certainly one of mine. Trying to stamp it out or devalue it, isn’t just nasty, it’s illogical.

Finally, stop with the “free speech” and “censorship” noises. I’m a trained journalist. I give to the ACLU, and I am, like Rachel Maddow, an absolutist about free speech in the legal sense. Wanting to have as little government regulation of speech as possible is not, however, inconsistent with wanting people not to be egregious to each other; encouraging people to be civil in public; telling people to knock it off when I’m offended; and using the tools I have available to me to manage speech in the online venues that I host. Arguments to the contrary are disingenuous, and beyond this statement, I will not engage them.

What would I love to see going forward? I’d love to see more discussion, in general. Just hearing all these viewpoints (which are not split into two camps, but run a wide gamut) is, I think, valuable to everyone. I’d also like to see, as Chip from Two-minute Time Lord and I discussed late one night at this year’s Gally, con panels that have historically been about fans behaving badly branch out into discussions of how we can make things better.

I would also like to see discussion from activists of all stripes talk on how we can work hard, avoid burnout, and reap the benefits of the change we are trying to create in the world while continuing to be activists. It’s hard stuff, and we’re all still learning.

Now I’m going back to explaining why Sarah Jane Smith’s status as a journalist proves that the Doctor is real.

wizards, witchery, and my desperate need for a haircut

Home again, home again, and back in the office, to do a little bit of work before it’s home to finish a first draft of one of the two major bits of writing I need to finish in the next eight days. Yes, I’m terrified. But I’ll get it done, because this (writing on really tight deadlines) it what I was trained to do.

Those tight deadlines mean that I’m not rushing out to do the thing (other than going to see The Eagle) that I’m dying to do this week, which is cut my hair. If you were at Gally, you might have noticed I was looking quite a bit shaggier than usual. There was a reason for that, and I’m been trying to find a way to explain it without looking like much more of a mad(wo)man than I already am. But, I’ve decided I don’t care, as it’s on point to some of the things I was saying about Doctor Who the other day.

When I first started acting, I had this moment, sitting in a theater watching the credits roll on something or other than there were three directions I would work with, somehow, sometime. This wasn’t just an expression of desire in my mind, but a fact that had simply not yet come into being (remember what I was saying about all times are now?)

Those directors were, and are, Sam Mendes, Todd Haynes, and Baz Luhrmann. Folks that know me know that I got my first screen credit in Revolutionary Road, putting me a 1/3 of the way to this thing I decided on in a moment of sentimentality at a picture I can’t recall (although I am alternately sure it was either Haynes’ Far from Heaven or one of the Lord of the Rings films). That this first screen credit also came to me for dancing, for doing the first thing I was ever good at and the first thing I was ever trained to do, also meant so much to me. The residuals checks aren’t bad either (and conveniently timed! One was in the mailbox when I got home from L.A. last night).

But beyond that, I haven’t really worried about it. Some auditions that come up I want more than others; such is the way of the world. But I’m always busy with something in my many ambitions, even if it’s not acting, and I am largely content. Living in New York gives me a certain sort of out. If it’s not filming here, it’s largely not my problem. If it’s not filming in the U.S., then it’s really not my problem — I don’t have to worry about success or failure; the option, in these circumstances, isn’t even on the table.

And then Baz Luhrmann started making noises about The Great Gatsby and moved to New York, and my brain exploded. Because who mostly gets work in non-contemporary films? That’d be me. And who dances? Surely Gatsby would need historical dance. And hey, I live in New York and always, always get cast high status. I was thrilled; I was terrified; I was, oddly, trapped in Switzerland at the time, moaning at my friends in email about the gossip sheets and everything that I was missing. All I could do was not cut my too-short-for-the-period hair, which has since been going through an awkward stage both in terms of shape and gender.

Gatsby was on, Gatsby was off. Christian was telling me to cut my hair anyway. Everyone else I knew was sort of rolling their eyes but also totally understanding of my need to look right should the opportunity arise; not cutting my hair was nothing compared to that business of running away to Australia to study at NIDA in 2005. Patty, when I called her at her dig site in India, sweetly and dutifully said, “Poor baby,” when I complained about the state of my shagginess.

Then, while I was at Gally, the story broke (again): Gatsby‘s on. And shooting (apparently in 3D, but that’s a subject for another post) in Australia. My first response was to punch the air, because my hair has really, really been driving me ’round the bend. And my second response was to weep. And when I told Marci about it, who said all the right things in that sorry-like-you-say-when-someone-dies way, I said, I guess some relationships are always better with longing and thought both of the celebration of longing that is the Whoniverse (hey, I was at Gally) and of my very weird and difficult and solitary previously mentioned month down in Sydney. I even found myself missing Bondi Beach, which was the one place in my beautiful borrowed city I sort of hated at the time — too West Coast for this New York creature.

Righto. So no more Gatsby fears for me. No more terror of not getting the chance or getting the chance and not being good enough. Now, I just get to cut my hair, look forward to the next picture from one of my favorite directors, and not have to listen to “When I Meet the Wizard” from Wicked on repeat to remind myself how easily the people we admire can let us down just by virtue of being human.

I’m oddly content with that. For now. But I still remember sitting in that theater all those years ago as the credits rolled on some film I’ve misplaced in my head. And it’s with great and wacky relief that I can tell you my certitude hasn’t changed. But, oh man, I am so glad to be able to do something about this crap curling on the back of my neck. Now the only lingering question is what the hell to do about my grey.

But whatever the answer is, it can wait until March 2, after I’ve made my editors happy.

Buffy bullying incident follow-up: gender and character bashing

I’m on my flight back to New York (pro tip: American Airlines may have in-flight Internet, but it doesn’t have power outlets in coach), and thought I’d take time that’s unlikely to be productive in any other way to respond and follow up on the Buffy singalong situation of the other day.

First, I don’t care if you like Dawn or not. No, really. I’m pretty ambivalent about her myself. And, I recognize that being late to the fandom (that’s one of the things my essay in Whedonistas is about) means that I experienced the show differently — I wasn’t waiting a week between episodes, and I wasn’t in that discussion hothouse that happens when shows are aired for the first time.

I’m actually totally okay with the fact that many, possibly even most, of the commenters on my first post about this got (and gosh, there sure were a lot of you — this blog had previously gotten about 1,000 hits on its busiest day; thanks to Whedonesque it was over 5,500) side-tracked on how they feel about Dawn. I actually often like digressive conversations, and it was interesting.

However, my post really, really wasn’t about Dawn, and it felt like a lot of people missed that. It was about someone who may well have fit the legal definition of a child being bullied by a room full of adults because she stuck up for a character based both around her own affection for that character and the wishes of the show’s creator. This wasn’t, despite the fact that I am someone who often feels the need to defend the honor and memory of characters, about bullying Dawn. This was about bullying a fan, in the room, who was at a power disadvantage to those doing that bullying.

Character hate and character bashing can be weird. We get it a lot in Doctor Who and Torchwood fandom too, where, I suspect, the most common targets are Rose (DW) and Gwen (TW).

What’s character bashing? Lots of things qualify, but I can think of two easy, obvious and common examples: when fans, for no narrative reason, hold characters to a higher standard than other characters with comparable storytelling purposes; and when characters are portrayed in transformative work (e.g., fanfiction) in a way that exaggerates their perceived negative qualities in a way that’s aggressive, punishing, shaming and non-satirical (i.e., a character who has an extramarital affair appears in fanfiction as sleeping with a different person every night, being abusive to their spouse, and being relentlessly mocked for their sexual behavior by their colleagues in a story with A- and B- plots related to none of these things. It’s just the bullying of a fictional character as filler).

Character bashing is one of those things I really don’t get, and I don’t really study it, and so hesitate to make any sweeping conclusions about it. Certainly, there’s got to be a certain level of catharsis in getting out one’s irritation about a character that drives you mad (I, certainly, am not above shouting at the TV when I find Connor particularly irritating on Angel — I loathe that character, and often resented having to watch him, even as his presence was necessary to facilitate what’s one of my favorite arcs in all of television).

But one thing I have noticed is the way in which gender tends to be central to character bashing and the way in which character bashing often seems to provide a framework for bullying (i.e., of other fans who disagree), or, somewhat more subtly, a surrogate target for bullying.

Now, you’d think I could get behind at least the surrogate target thing. That at least prevents real people from getting bullied, right? Wrong. When people are shouting out things like “I hope you get raped” at group screening events (something I’ve now heard happens at some OMWF screenings, but at least did not happen at the one I reported on), that has an impact on real people. As does when female characters are vilified for being sexual, flawed, attractive, popular and/or successful. Or, when male characters are aggressively and relentlessly ridiculed for their performance (or rather non-performance) of masculinity.

So did gender come into play with what happened at the OMWF singalong at Gallifrey One? You bet. And it was as vivid and fascinating as it was awful.

The people yelling “Shut up, Dawn!” which is what started the whole thing, seemed to be mostly women. Women showing disdain for a young female character for speaking. And what was Dawn saying? Oh, just the truth that revealed the awful crap that Willow was doing to Tara at that point in the narrative. So what was that about? Willow/Tara love? Hatred of a snitch? Contempt for Dawn indirectly calling Willow out on her bad and arguably bullying behavior? Or just resentment for another pretty girl the audience is supposed to have some modicum of sympathy for?

Meanwhile, the people who then started yelling, by insisting both the upset fan and Michelle Trachtenberg “toughen up,” at the girl who spoke up about the anti-Dawn outbursts, seemed to be mostly men.

At this point, a few people yelled out trying to get everyone to knock it off. Which is when the hostility at the young fan escalated (and again, let me remind you — very possibly underage and expressing the wishes of the show creator), and I shouted, “Stop bullying other fans.” That worked (to my relief and surprise), and to me seems to indicate that people knew they were behaving badly.

Which is why when I went up to the fan after the screening and saw her surrounded by several people (somewhere in the 6 – 10 range), I assumed they were there to offer her support or apologies. Nope, they (and again, here, mostly men) were explaining to her why they were correct both in silencing Dawn and in telling this fan that Dawn deserved this and that she is required to “toughen up.”

What was perhaps most remarkable here is that the fan continued at this point, not to defend herself, but to defend Dawn. This is stories mattering in action. There have been so many times in my life where I protected fictional people when I didn’t yet feel ready to openly protect myself. I don’t know this fan, or her internal framework, but I was moved by what seemed like an honorable defense of joy from the moment this mess started.

So let’s recap:

– Women bashed a female character for telling the truth;
– Men then enforced the ability of those women to do that and while mocking a young fan who may have been legally a child;
– Afterward, instead of going to see if the kid was all right (because this is our con, our fandom, our community — Gally is a small con (this is the first year it broke 2,000 people) with a legendarily family atmosphere), people went up to her to reinforce their perception that she and her feelings were wrong and used their status (age and gender) to do so.

After this experience, I think we perhaps need fewer OMWF singalongs and more group showings of “The Pack.”

And if you’re the fan whose defense of Dawn ultimately necessitated this post and the previous one on this subject? I’m so sorry. I’ve been the subject of big discussions on the Internet because I’ve had the audacity to stick up for people or express my opinion. It sucks, and it’s stressful, and the last thing I EVER wanted to do here is contribute to your bad day. Because I didn’t get to watch Buffy until I was 38, it didn’t really get a chance to change my life or make me brave. But among other things, I’m a woman who fights, and I am so glad this show and the community that should exist around it means so much to you. I hope this hasn’t put you off either Buffy fandom or the Whoniverse. Despite what happened on Saturday night, I promise you, most of us do believe that intellect and romance should trump brute force and cynicism.

Thank you for helping fight that fight.

ETA 2/23/2010: A few final thoughts about the discussion this has engendered.

tell me that you’ll wait for me

Every year, without fail, my favorite thing about Gallifrey One is the closing ceremonies. I know that’s a little strange, but I have an innately melancholy nature, and I’m also very cognisant of the degree to which it is often the case that it is only in loss that it is acceptable to speak of love.

Doctor Who is about a lot of things. It’s about the wonder of the universe. It’s about ordinary people getting to be heroes, sometimes at extraordinary cost. And it’s about love, often in ways that are remarkable; Doctor Who often decouples romanticism from sexuality and tends not to privilege any particular type of relationship (familial, friend, business, romantic, sexual) over any other.

All those things make the Whoniverse deeply appealing, not just for the narrative of the the Other reasons much SF/F is often popular, but specifically because it’s often a direct acknowledgment of the complexities of family, longing, and ambition that many other properties simply don’t address (Buffy and Harry Potter, for example, may both be choose your family properties but they are less successful at focusing on interpersonal narratives more often ignored).

But Doctor Who is also about melancholy. It’s about loss. It’s about the wonder of the universe being wonderous because you won’t have it forever. One day, you’ll die. Or the Doctor will leave you behind. One day, all that you’ll have left is longing. And memory. But, just as Doctor Who doesn’t inherently privilege one type of interpersonal relationship over another, it also doesn’t inherently privilege one experiential relationship over another. The moment in which you remember the time you saved the universe is just as important on Doctor Who as the moment in which you saved the universe. That moment in which you long? In which you regret? In which you cry in fondness for a love or adventure or friendship or person that once was, is as valuable as the moment you first discovered all those things.

All Times Are Now, my writing partner and I say. Part of that is about our world-building philosophy and the ways in which we like to tell stories — events echo not just forwards, but also backwards, in time. But part of that is also a sort of emotional worldview that tells us a moment of absence can be just as keenly beautiful as a moment of possession. In fact, they are, quite often, nearly the same thing.

I do a lot of creative and scholarly work about mourning. Often, that feels like the most beautiful thing in the world to me. Sometimes, though, it’s just miserable, or a burden of responsibility for holding other people’s stories I am inadequate in the face of.

Doctor Who often provokes me in me the most wonder when Sarah Jane Smith speaks of the life she once had, when Jack Harkness looks for guidance from the man who once abandoned him, and when Amy Pond tells the Doctor just how long she waited for him.

Some stories aren’t exactly real, no matter what the philosophy of my creative work is, and no matter how hard I try to will them into being. I may still check the backs of wardrobes for portals to Narnia, but it is likely I will never quite believe hard enough to find my way into the snowy forests of the White Witch. The Doctor will, I know I am supposed to know, never come for me.

And yet, the Whoniverse tells me that that’s okay. That my life is no smaller for its terrestrialness, for all the things I’ll never get to do, for all the moments that have passed, and for all the things I’ve lost. Which is why I love the closing ceremonies at Gally. Love. Because more than any other moment at the event, they embody exactly what Doctor Who is about.

stop bullying people for caring about stories just as much as you do

So hey, I just went to my first Buffy singalong, which seemed like it was going to be a great way to cap off the Whedonistas launch. But then this thing happened, and I want to talk about it.

Every time Dawn opened her mouth, people in the audience started yelling, “Shut up!” You can defend this by saying it’s the same thing as what we do at Rocky Horror, except that it wasn’t. It wasn’t clever, and it wasn’t directed at all the characters or the property as a whole. It was directed at Dawn.

When a young fan (certainly not older than college-age, probably still a teen, quite possibly under-age) yelled out asking people to stop, people yelled at her. When she tried to explain that this type of action has made the actress who plays Dawn cry and that Joss Whedon had asked people not to do it, people yelled out that both she and the actress needed to toughen up.

In a moment the Buffy singalong had gone from some fans engaging in questionable courtesy to a bunch of fans bullying a young fan because she cares. A lot.

What. The. Fuck?

Being a fan is about love. Sure we argue and debate and rant about People Who Are Wrong on the Internet. But coming to a Doctor Who convention (as Craig Ferguson says, “Intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism”) and bullying a young fan to toughen up because she had a problem with the way the event was going because a Buffy singalong generally does not involve cheering and encouraging the silencing of a young female character whose arc in the episode is such that she is kidnapped, silenced, sexualized and forced into a marriage in Hell?

That was the most uncool thing I’ve seen in fandom in a long time.

Fans need to stop bullying other fans on- and off-line. It’s vile and disgusting and weak. And it makes us so terribly below the heroes we adore.

The Whoniverse is about the people who were never supposed to be heroes choosing to be heroes: shop girls and queer boys from council estates; women who’ve been left behind and men who’ve been forgotten. Secretaries and PAs and temps. People who, that when you hear their stories, you can’t help but hope that at the end of the world the universe might pause for a second and give you just one perfect beautiful moment in which to fix everything.

So in light of that, who the fuck do you think you are to bully some girl for caring about stories just as much as you do?

ETA 2/21/2010: I’ve posted a follow-up to this, addressing some of the comments both here and at Whedonesque and offering a more detailed description of what happened.

ETA 2/23/2010: A few final thoughts about the discussion this has engendered.

war reporting and rape

I’ve wanted, since the story broke, to say something about the assault of Lara Logan from CBS, in Egypt. But I haven’t had time to formulate all the complex things I’ve felt the need to say: how what happened to her isn’t about Islam or what she looks like. And how being concerned about violence against reporters isn’t about valuing privileged people over non-privileged people in war zones, but about using violence against journalists as one specific metric of repression: Killing one journalist can kill hundreds of stories; killing one journalist can drive other journalists away; and killing journalists, medics and religious figures present in a conflict to offer support services or witnessing represents a disregard for certain conventions of war.

Facts relevant to the matter of Lara Logan include that war reporting is dangerous; that rape has been used as a tool of war against men and women always and everywhere; and, also, that there’s always going to be some man, some where, that thinks the appropriate way to celebrate some event is by committing rape.

But here’s what I’m sick of, other than the obvious: People who decry violence against women not out of any concern for women, but because they don’t like the idea of someone touching what they consider to be theirs; imagined property rights are not the reason rape is bad. I’m also sick of people using words like pragmatism to tell us that women shouldn’t fight, report, or even leave their houses alone.

I have lived a life of being told I need an escort: to go to that party, to wear that dress, to see that doctor. It’s terrible and infantilizing. It is lip service to my safety and “value” that actively devalues me. It is a defense of women that offers them rights as occasionally valuable property as opposed to as constant humans.

Maybe it’s because I’m an only child. Maybe it’s because my partner and I spend more time apart than many people who share a household do because of our work, but I value my time alone. I would not know who I am without the walks I took to the Lincoln Memorial alone in the dark as a university student. I would not know who I am without both the silent and the celebratory New York of 2am. When I went to Australia alone it was gutting; it was also everything I needed — this discovery that I was constant, that I was real, even on Bondi Beach at night, listening to the chatter over drinks people who knew how to have friends in a land I loved probably more than it loved me.

So I resent this world that says a woman must always be escorted. I resent this world that says common sense dictates that a woman must never be warrior or witness. I resent this world that insists its our fault if we are both a certain type of beautiful and ambitious and unworthy if we are not. I resent this world that tells me I am stupid if I am not constantly afraid of rape. And I resent this world that constantly seems to suggest that the only reason anyone wants to shield me from violence is that they don’t want someone they’ve deemed other touching their stuff, as if I am not even in the equation.

Lara Logan is a war reporter. As a war reporter, she experienced violence, which is important because violence against reporters is a critical metric of oppression and the standards of engagement under which a conflict is being conducted.

This piece in the New York Times speaks to the reality and the necessity of there being women covering war zones. It is good, useful and insightful. But it also made me need to sit down and write this and say yet again that we are not children and chattel. And that I have to keep saying that is indicative of the particular absurdity of all these “protect the women” arguments.

If it remains necessary to say women are not chattel and children, it remains true that on some level, in some way, in every place, women are not only at war, but are in fact the very field of war themselves. Ourselves. Which means you can’t protect us through these modes of discourse about our rightful place in war, because these modes of discourse represent, relentlessly, forms of that war itself.

Lara Logan is a reporter. She is also a woman. Neither of those things make her, nor any other woman, public property for anyone to decide what she should and should not do. Not those who would assault her and not those who would, often for their own reasons largely irrelevant to her actual well-being, seek protect her.