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...)

Ugh, ita, that makes me feel ill.

Nora, Lisa, I'm sorry about the shitheads.

I keep getting told how nice and agreeable I am. Internally I am like, "WTF? I HATE people."

Oh, lisah, that is such bullshit!

On further reflection: I think the forced pregnancy trope isn't consciously aimed at anyone. Every time it's used I suspect the writers think they're being creative. But the target audience is, I think, men. The issue of control over one's reproduction is one that most women have struggled with, and don't really need Kemper or Davies or Mallozzi to pontificate on. Men see the horror of the forced impregnation but don't see the way it's reflected in the daily concerns of women, don't see that for some women there's little distinction between SF and reality.

I was about to say 8 or 9 things, but you all wildly intelligent people covered most of what I would say. So I'm going to say "ditto" and move on.

Matt, my twitter feed is abuzz over some fucked up flu-like virus going around that saps people's energy. Do you have a bug?

In re the BART spokesman, it's possible WMATA's is worse. When people were complaining about being sexually harassed on the transit system - sometimes by Metro workers - his resposne was "one person's flirtation is another person's harassment" (the wording may not be exact).