Ha.Rule 5 "It's good to be good. It's better to be, well, not "lucky", exactly." Rule 5 says I should go for it,probably.

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Deborah:

Talk to the Mormon Church about that, ma'am - they donated nearly twenty million dollars to make sure it didn't pass. Apparently, God doesn't love girls, or at least, the people who claim to have his private email - as well as having all the money - say so.

As a currently vigilantly non-practicing Mormon and practicing agnostic, I feel like this isn't quite the entire story. It also had a lot to do with Mormons being interested in shutting out anything resembling the acceptance of homosexuality as a valid gender issue. That's what they told us in church, anyway.

Not in so many words, of course, because that would've, y'know, encouraged people to wonder about homosexuality, and then...well...it's a slippery slope. Indeed.

There's still a lot of work being done on the ERA, only three states left to pass it (they have 35 of the required 38 necessary). Utah, natually, being one of those states stuck in the nineteenth century, equal-rights-wise.

Hi! My name's Marie, and I'm trying to write a sci-fi/fantasy novel at the moment. ;-D

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Hey requeen! Welcome. And yep, of course it's not close to the whole story. But two very high-profile Mormons at the time Carl Whatsis (why can I never remember his surname?) of Carl Jr. and a fairly well-known hotelier, were extremely vocal about how much they were giving, and they were very vocal about why. I was in the UK at the time and they spoke fairly freely to the locals from the BBC.

My point to Cindy is, don't blame the movement for not passing it. The movement was underfunded and up against not only the God Squad and the uberright, but against vocal God Squad folks with extremely deep pockets.

The ERA was something I fought for, and I didn't much appreciate the patriarchy taking time from their golf games to keep me and mine from earning the same money they did, for doing the same job, especially when they stated their reasons.

Anyone tries dehumanising me, or reducing me to peonage in the name of their beliefs, is welcome to try, but they also talk to my crossbow. I really, really really wanted those two gentlemen to come tell me why Eve should make 63 cents to Adam's dollar for doing the same gig. Alas, it didn't happen.

So where are you in terms of the novel? Planning, partial, done, rewrite? Dish, please.

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My point to Cindy is, don't blame the movement for not passing it.

Yeah, neither do I, deb. I was having fun. I don't have the patience for this earnest sort of conversation, right now...

The movement was underfunded and up against not only the God Squad and the uberright, but against vocal God Squad folks with extremely deep pockets.

...which is why I won't bother to explain how Christian women got me interested in feminism in the first place, in a positive manner.

Sometimes, I just take the piss.

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Heh. Cindy, I don't class solid practising Christians with the God Squad. Totally different reality. In the same way I'm a lefty who snorts at about 3/4 of the completely humourless ultra-left, whom I think are nutjobs.

But that line about screw the movement? Was said to me in all seriousness by far too many "post-feminist" women. I hear it a LOT, mostly by twenty and thirty-somethings.

Those would be the ones who reaped the benefits and have joined the "I've got mine, what's the big deal?" school. Have you met my pet, Peeve? So yeah, I take it seriously.

Still want to hear about Maria's novel. Hard sci-fi?

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"God Squad" is not a phrase that -- by itself -- says anything other than "religious" to me.

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Most of the hoo-ha about the ERA occurred just as we moved from New Zealand to Blanding, Utah. I remember the hysteria over protests at Temple Square, and something on Donahue with one of the leading protestors that my librarian taped. She wasn't Mormon, so I think she was being slightly subversive, letting me and my group of friends watch it.

Here, it was mostly about the gay thing, it was the whole "foot in the door - once women are equal, gays will be equal, and where will it end?" Which, as we all probably know, is simply code for "women and gays=not equal."

Anyway, sorry for the bit of thread-jacking. I just find the subject interesting. ;-D

To answer your question, Deborah, I don't think it's quite hard sci-fi, although I am trying to keep all my science pretty much as honest as possible. Brushing up on quantum theory, looking at information on dark matter, that kind of thing. I'm also trying to make it as amusing as possible, although apparently most of the funny is quite accidental. Which is good, because me and trying to be funny is just wrong.

Thus far, I am about two chapters in, and have been on it for two weeks, officially, tomorrow. Heh. Someone on another board goaded me (in the nicest possible way) into writing a piece of fan-fic, and I figured that while I was at it, trying to prove that I could, I might as well get off my ass, metaphorically speaking, and start one of the books I've wanted to write since I was about ten or eleven and discovered science fiction. The further I get into it, the easier it is, although it has been hard to sit and type the amounts I want to. I've been working around that by keeping a notebook (actually the Notebook of Doom), and writing longhand whenever something hits me. That has also helped me work out some of the beats, although I don't have an outline yet, to my shame.

So, in first stages still, but I'm still interested and working on it, which is more than I've managed before.

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"God Squad" is not a phrase that says anything other than "religious" to me.

Your definitions may - and apparently do - vary. I heard the phrase first from my buddy in London, who was a Jesuit, and rather fierce about it (damn, I miss Tom. Best debater I ever knew). When I say God Squad, it has a particular meaning, and it differentiates significantly between "human being of any given faith practising said faith" and "fanatic lunatic determined to plough across the face of the planet on a Holy Mission". The original usage of the phrase came to me with far stronger connotations toward the latter than the former.

Brushing up on quantum theory

I can't tell you how amazing I find that sentence, and how happy it makes me.

Can you talk about the Notebook of Doom?

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But that line about screw the movement? Was said to me in all seriousness by far too many "post-feminist" women. I hear it a LOT, mostly by twenty and thirty-somethings.

That was pure piss. I am not post feminist, though. I am solidly feminist. Someone--Sars maybe--wrote a great (well, I thought it was great) essay along the lines of, "No, you *are* a feminist." I'll have to see if I can dig it up.

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Actually, really I think of these guys from Good Morning America: [link] Anyway. Off to write another apartment drabble.

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