Wow, I just got told (by someone nice who I like) that I am a giant asshole in meetings. Am feeling like a giamt piece of shit with a terrible personality. And now I have to somehow stop crying in my car and go into the office. Awesome.

What the fuck, lisah? That's completely suckful and painful and also factually incorrect. You have one of the best personalities on the planet!

Oh lisah, that sucks! I am sending hugs

Wow, I just got told (by someone nice who I like) that I am a giant asshole in meetings.

I am constantly getting told now that I am an asshole in my email communication. It makes me feel kind of bad, but I know that these southerners can't take actual aggressiveness, as opposed to passive aggressiveness. I find it fascinating that though I was at one time the most conflict-avoidant personality ever, now I am a tell-it-like-it-is asshole. I like it!

Ugh, Lisa. Fuck a sleeping room, offices should have a crying room. With Visine. I'm so sorry someone was such a shit to you. There's just no need to do that.

I am super confident you are not an asshole, Lisa! You either, Nora.

I am sorry if you are surrounded by delicate flowers.

Oh, lisah. That's absurd. I'm so sorry.

my boss made me feel better and she called the boss of the person who said it and told him it was inappropriate. He should have gone to her if he had an issue with me. ugh. Work is stressful enough!

People, LEARN HOW TO ACT.

I mean, honestly, should he have had an issue, that's really not a useful way of dealing with it. That's now how you make it better, because most people don't work that way.

Unrelatedly, the people behind the Lara Croft video game have apparently overstated (because this is every good?) the rape content of their newest game, and have gotten a lot of bad press as a result. They'd taken the position that it would help men playing her if she had to fight off a rape attempt. Which, apparently, looks more like sexual assault, but it seems to get the guy shot in the face anyway.

Why is rape so often used as shorthand for getting men to identify with women? I'm also thinking of the repeated trope in sex-switch fics--a lot of the ones I've seen that don't dive right into "isn't sex fun with a clit?" and "I can touch my own boobs!" often have the now-female-bodied character have to fight off male advances. Physically, I mean.

And that's women making assault a rite of passage for men, not even what's happening in the game which seems to be male created content.

Is that the thing that's supposed to shatter male privilege?

I'm also having related thoughts on whether the forced impregnation trope in sff is primarily aimed at men or women, but they are inchoate at this time. That did lead me to this Laura Shapiro vid: [link]

I'm also having related thoughts on whether the forced impregnation trope in sff is primarily aimed at men or women, but they are inchoate at this time. That did lead me to this Laura Shapiro vid: [link]

I think it has to do with women's positions in a lot of narratives being confined to their status as female, rather than as persons. In the male gaze, being female is all about sexuality and reproduction, and women's roles are confined to those issues. So when women are threatened, the threat is associated with sexual violation. Women give birth, so an existential threat must be associated with an unwanted pregnancy (which might even do double-duty by challenging the male ownership of her fertility).

What other value could a woman have, in a narrative?

... and no, that's not the only role women can or should take in a story, but god knows I've seen it enough. Witness Aeryn Sun's transition from soldier, whose issues are associated with her upbringing, personal history, and training as a Peacekeeper, to basically just Lover and Mother in season 4. (Thank god for the mini-series, which did a lot to rectify that...)