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Welcome to the Fifth Carnival of Feminists. I’m Chally, blogger here at Zero at the Bone, and I’m very pleased to be your host for this edition. We’ve got all sorts of fabulous writing of feminist interest from around the world. Let’s get started, shall we?
Objectification
RosieRed23 takes on the bizarre preoccupation with breasts in No boobs for you! posted at Spare Candy. It’s in response to the wailing over Megan Fox not revealing her breasts in new film Jennifer’s Body as well as the fascination with celebrity nudity in general.
Amanda of The Undomestic Goddess writes Esquire: Strike Three. She’s taking on the treatment of women in Esquire: ‘Congratulations, your induction into the world of male lust, and thusly, second-class citizenship, is complete.’
Racialicious’ Thea Lim writes about some imagery that manages to dehumanise both the white woman and the man of colour involved. The post’s called Kanye West: Using interracial sex to sell concert tickets.
Reproductive justice
factcheckme presents a collection of videos related to reproductive rights. The post’s at femonade, featuring Hillary Clinton being full of win and a documentary on the work of the Fistula Foundation in Ethiopia (an amazing organisation I’ve been following for years, see their website).
Over at Feministing we have Rejecting “population control” as a way to fight climate change. Ann thinks that ‘given the history of population policy, to me the only acceptable international family planning policy is one that is motivated by increasing the empowerment and choices for women.’
Parenting
Kate of Rebel Raising has something to say in Is that child crazy? ‘How much of the time are children behaving in the way an adult would if their life were like a child’s life?’
“How Can Feminist Mums Avoid Being Humourless Childhood-Ruiners?” Lauredhel and the Hoyden About Town commentariat have a few things to say on the subject.
Parenting means that boundaries aren’t always as secure as one would want. You can read some of Arwyn’s thoughts on this at Raising My Boychick in Toddlers are triggering.
Violence against women
In “Corrective” Rape Is Not Foreign., piecesofstring takes on the idea that homophobic violence is just a problem “elsewhere”. It’s vital to take this on everywhere it happens.
Cara from The Curvature writes Protecting Your Safety While Speaking Out is Not Irresponsible. It’s in response to feminist assertions that Katie Price should name her rapist.
Women who make false rape accusations *don’t* make it harder on real victims. says SarahMC at the Pursuit of Harpyness. Lots of other factors do.
Angry-making
The Czech gives us an update on Jamie Lee Jones’ incredible and horrific story in Halliburton Gang-Rape *Not* a Work-Related Activity?. I hope she gets the justice she deserves.
Trans-misogyny? There’s an app for that. Helen from Bird of Paradox shares a pretty nasty Apple ad.
The Australian Immigration Department is refusing to grant refugee status to two women who fled Kenya to escape FGM. Natalie at She Speculates writes Fear of Genital Mutilation Doesn’t Warrant Refugee Status in response.
Paid work
Deborah obliterates an opinion piece arguing against women serving on the front line in the Australian military in Look out! Incoming brain-fart!! posted at her blog In a strange land.
In Promoting women is up to the companies, Jemima Aslana at Jem’s Lair discusses workplace gender equality and quotas in Denmark.
As part of her Feminism in Schools series, Ashley of Small Strokes writes Feminism in Schools: Teaching Feminism When You’re Not a Feminist. She discusses both course content and some factors that are less often thought of explicitly.
Illustrations from life
At Catspaw, Lucy talks about her experiences at university as a trans woman, including dealing with fellow students, professors and study material. The post is called I’m (Mostly Not) Coming Out.
Veronica, writing at Viva La Feminista, is wondering about the times when speaking up might make things worse. The post is called My privileged nose & reporting a slap to a baby.
Here are some reflections on (particularly racial) identity, figuring out experience and finding connections: This is [not] who you are by T. R Xands.
Disability
Ouyang Dan writes Where I jump in and defend pills…. Posted at random babble…, it’s a defence of meds and the people who take them in a world in which PWD are shamed for managing their own health.
amandaw hits it out of the ballpark with Domestic violence, C-sections considered pre-existing conditions at three rivers fog. It’s about ableism, healthcare, ableism, misogyny and ableism.
Popular culture
Next up is Disability & Television by Anna Overseas at her blog Trouble is Everywhere. She tackles the, ahem, questionable representations of PWD in Glee and Supernatural.
Laura is pondering Bisexuality on TV? at Adventures of a Young Feminist. Particularly concerned with Thirteen on House, Laura explores both the problematic and the positive.
Language
meloukhia makes a solid argument as to Why Inclusionary Language Matters over this ain’t livin’. Includes a rundown on intersectional feminism.
Chally of Zero at the Bone (what do you know, that’s me!) wants to share what’s Next on the list of things that really annoy me. Namely, progressives using ableist language.
Metafemming
At The Fem Spot, Femspotter writes So what kind of feminist are you anyway?. It’s her ruminations on the different branches of feminism, tied into a discussion of Hillary Clinton and the US election.
Dori of A Truly Elegant Mess has Important Thinky Thoughts. ‘There is a danger in making an identity out of an ideology. It leads to fighting about identities instead of discussing actions.’
A little bit of 101
At Criss writes…, Criss L. Cox presents Emotional Intelligence FAIL: Victim-blaming 101. ‘This is one of the problems in our society, the blame is always on the other guy.’
‘As a woman you can eschew or embrace femininity, but you will be rewarded and punished in equal amounts no matter which option you choose. You can never win.’ Exactly so. You can read the rest of tor’s post femininity: damned if you do, damned if you don’t at adrift and awake.
Not fitting in the patriarchal box
ashinynewcoin writes ticking all the boxes means not talking politics. She’s been thinking on the phrase “high maintenance”.
Marjorie Morgan at Girls Outdoors wants to draw your attention to Freya Hoffmeister. Freya is paddling her sea kayak around Australia, trying to be the first woman and the second ever person to achieve this task. That’s pretty amazing.
Three more for the road
Over at The Bitch Who Roared, Linda Radfem shares The Marriage Thing. It is an institution of which she is not a fan.
The Angry Black Woman wants to know What Do You Do When You Experience or Witness Street Harassment?
Kim Powell of the news with nipples keeps us up to date on the latest in super sciencey laydee studies. Apparently women can’t keep secrets and, well, Women drink so they can’t smell vaginas?.
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Now for an extra bit of fun: Here’s a visual representation of the most common words used in all these posts (including the carnival itself (the meta! it’s too much!)) I made using Wordle.
The folks at WordPress have been having a bit of trouble with links lately, so I predict some of you finding the same. Let me know if you have any problems, please. Thank you for coming by; do stick around and check out my other posts. The next carnival is being held at RMJ’s Deeply Problematic so don’t forget to submit.
With a little bit of being parented, too.
Spilt Milk offers Thoughts before Father’s Day, a tribute to her dad I find very moving.
Blue Milk wants you to play gender stereotypes with her. It’s a fun game in which statistics, expectations and observations perform a merry dance in order to fit children in a box. Fabulous takedown of something that often leaves me speechless.
Arwyn of Raising My Boychick goes for gold with The misogyny of denying milk-making moms mental-health medication: ‘This “I don’t want to give you anything until you wean”? That’s not a careful critique of the pharmacological industry, that’s not an intersectionalist examination of the role kyriarchy plays in the creation of women’s mental health issues, and it’s not a sober weighing of the balance of “greatest goods” when faced with exposing a child to an ill mother or minute quantities of probably-safe substances. No, that’s nothing more than an ignorant, authoritarian, fucked up, misogynistic ultimatum.’
At Feministing we find Raising a Feminist/Raised a Feminist: A Mother’s and Daughter’s Perspective. It’s by Sil and Eliza Reynolds and on their relationships with themselves and each other as feminists.
My Kid Loves a Kyriarch is by Ruth Moss, posted as part of Arwyn’s Womanist/Feminist Parenting Primer series, which you should also check out. Ruth’s piece is on her struggles to raise her kid in a feminist way by herself and how this interacts with her ex-partner’s parenting.
You must read Pain as Discipline by Ouyang Dan of random babble. She tells us why hitting children as a means of “discipline” doesn’t work and the range of impacts it can have.
Next we have It’s Not About Me by Jay, guest posting at Feministe. Because a child’s choices and safety are vastly more important than a parent’s control over them.
Over at Hoyden is “How Can Feminist Mums Avoid Being Humourless Childhood-Ruiners?” Seems to me that a good part of feminist parenting is doing exactly that: giving children beautiful childhoods and helping them become strong people. Well, as long as we’re asking, Lauredhel and commenters count the ways.
Veronica of Viva La Feminista writes Be still my feminist mama heart…My daughter and the Emmys. ‘I affirmed her voice. And I think that is one of the most feminist things I can do for her as I help her find her way in this world.’ Thanks to Arwyn for suggesting this post.
Kate of Rebel Raising speaks truth in Is that child crazy? ‘How much of the time are children behaving in the way an adult would if their life were like a child’s life?’ Absolutely brilliant. Thank you to Ruth Moss for suggesting this post.
And this is from back in March, but the cutest thing: Melissa McEwan of Shakesville posts a fatherhood PSA in which a father helps his daughter with cheerleading practice.
By the way, if you haven’t seen blue milk’s 10 feminist motherhood questions series, do have a look.
In honour of the 94th anniversary of Alice Sheldon’s birth, which was a few days ago, here is a review/analysis of the classic science fiction story “The Women Men Don’t See” (1972). Published under her pseudonym (and maybe written by her persona) of James Tiptree, Jr., this is arguably her most iconic story. You can read it here.
Let me start by saying that this is an unbelievably good piece of writing. Tiptree articulated so many means of oppression I could never quite lock down before. I could hardly bear to read it. When I first read this story I took weeks to finish because it kept touching a nerve. I had to keep stopping because I was constantly overwhelmed. Tip was deftly throwing all these experiential truths about women I had innately known but had never heard anyone express, the habits of movement, thought and relating you adopt to live as a woman. When I finished this story, I knew that I had to claim feminism for myself.
It runs thusly. Our hero is an American government agent of some sort, Don Fenton, on a fishing holiday in Mexico. The small plane in which he is travelling crashes, leaving him stranded with Estéban the pilot, a Mrs Ruth Parsons and her daughter, Althea. The way science fiction stories generally have gone after this is that the white man saves the day. It’s obvious that Don thinks this is how things are going to go, too. He grows frustrated when the women neither panic nor respond to his attempts to save them. (‘The women are shaky, but not hysterical.’) Reading, you become aware that the situation is well out of Don’s hands. And then, of course, the aliens arrive. The women end up saving themselves, but you’ll have to read the story to find out how.
Crucial to “The Women Men Don’t See” is the turning of science fiction’s alien convention to feminist use. Women are presented as aliens. Don can only relate to women through preconceived ideas: setting up camp is ‘playing house in a mud puddle’. Surely Ruth must be the ‘Mother Hen protecting only chick from male predators’. Even on the plane before the crash, he thinks ‘The Bonanza jinks, and I look back with a vague notion of reassuring the women. They are calmly intent on what can be seen of Yucatán. Well, they were offered the copilot’s view, but they turned it down. Too shy?’ He can’t see that the women are not what he thinks, and it frustrates him that they can operate outside of a context in which he has power. (Most disturbingly: ‘The woman doesn’t mean one thing to me, but the obtrusive recessiveness of her, the defiance of her little rump eight inches from my fly—for two pesos I’d have those shorts down and introduce myself. If I were twenty years younger. If I wasn’t so bushed’.) Indeed, there are many little references that turn the reader towards this idea of alienation – ‘End of communication. Mrs. Ruth Parsons isn’t even living in the same world with me’ – but of course the crowning moment is when aliens of the outer space variety turn up. Don draws his gun and yells at Ruth to get behind him. When she doesn’t, he slips on an injured leg and shoots her by mistake, reinforcing her difference. Don proves his thought that ‘she’s as alien as they, there in the twilight’ perfectly true.
That’s not the only construction of the other in “The Women Men Don’t See”. When Don and Ruth go off to fetch water, he develops a notion that Ruth is fantasising about Althea and Estéban having sex back at camp. Mother Hen’s little quirks, as he puts it, are really his; it’s for the reader to pick up that Don is projecting his racist, sexist, powerless imaginings. His fantasy is rife with racialised language, the usual meme of the young white woman being taken by the macho brown man. ‘Oh, for mahogany gonads.’ (There’s more to be said about race in this story, but I think I’ll need some co-readers to really pick it apart.)
But it’s the positioning of the audience that makes “The Women Men Don’t See” exceptionally clever and Tiptree’s signature piece. It is only by adopting a feminist reading position that the story clicks. That is, Tiptree asks you to accept women’s accounts of their own experience. You have to realise that Don isn’t the protagonist at all: Ruth is. It’s only then that the structure, the progress of the story falls into place. It’s not that we’re to see Don as bad, or that his experience is invalid. I think Don is there to observe, to tell the story because Ruth has no means of doing so. I think Don’s a shining example of how we can easily, horribly, miss the whole point and merrily shore up oppression. I like what Julie Phillips, Sheldon’s biographer, has to say: ‘… maybe it is about what it says it’s about: the writer’s difficulty in speaking of, or even seeing, women’s experience – including her own.’ But then, as much as being Tiptree allowed Sheldon to say things she couldn’t say as a woman, the persona was horribly limiting as well. She once wrote that ‘I’m getting fairly tired of being a man; so much one can’t say.’
How you read this story depends on how and where you see the author. If you’re relating to Tiptree as he was known at the time of writing – a tough, mysterious man, sympathetic to feminism, if in an odd fashion – it reads like an insightful piece that never quite reaches its zenith. If you’re reading Tiptree as a woman – bright, confused, going ever onward – you can see it as a beautiful, layered game. And then, where is Tiptree in the piece? Perhaps you see him in Don, with his background in intelligence work, love of fishing and stumbling attempts to understand. Then there’s Ruth, the quiet and persistent voice moving around the edges. (I think of Ruth’s voice like one on a badly tuned radio, rarely clear, going to extremes.) I lean towards both, because Alice Sheldon had many ways of relating to herself, and I think this piece must represent her internal dialogue as well as a societal one. There’s just one scene in which we get to hear Ruth’s voice loud and clear, and what she says seems to be a representation of one of Alice’s attitudes – oh, just one, hers was a complex feminism – towards women and our chances. And it’s not pleasant. But if ever there was a classic line, it’s ‘What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine.’
While Tiptree cannot envision the end of the patriarchy, she sees escape as a possibility. You see this appear again and again in her writing. In “With Delicate Mad Hands” (1981) the heroine, CP, can only escape patriarchal society by crossing the universe. But, as with many of Tiptree’s stories, love and self-realisation mean CP’s death. “The Women Men Don’t See” is a little different. While we know that Ruth and Althea go on, live their lives, perhaps continue their family, we never get to see what this experience of freedom looks like. And that’s fine and good for the purposes of this story, because its arc belongs as it is. But nowhere in Tiptree have I yet found a beautiful future. Even the utopia in the classic “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” (1974) turns out to be anything but. (But then, I’ve never read an all-woman utopia that actually was. I find Joanna Russ’ Whileaway very discomforting.) This is terribly sad. Tiptree, you and I are stuck here on Earth, in the chinks of the world-machine. There’s no escape for us but what we make of what we have, even if we don’t know what that will look like.
The edible ball bearings joke. It will never die.
Here’s a video of a fantastic water thingy in Canal City shopping centre in Japan. It forms patterns in the water: dolphins, stripes, chains, characters, stars, it’s fabulous!
Here is one of the best wedding toasts ever. It’s a musical! The man of honour sent out tapes to all the guests so they could learn their parts and they only had a few chances to rehearse. It’s the most charming thing.
Here’s Catherine Tate’s and David Tennant’s 2007 Comic Relief contribution and it’s very funny. Transcript at Tennant!Love.
Lastly, a clip from The West Wing (subtitles included). Josh and Donna are being their usual lovable selves.
Welcome to the twelfth edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnival. This is a special one as it marks a full year of DUFC goodness, served up to you from around New Zealand and Australia. We’ve had a fabulous lot of blogging over the last year – have you seen QoT’s list of contributors? Wow – as continued with this edition. The carnival has become something of an institution for all of us. I’m honoured to be hosting this first anniversary celebration.
Before we begin, congratulations are in order! Blue Milk just had her baby! On behalf of the Down Under feminist blogging community, Blue Milk, warmest wishes to you and your whole family. We are absolutely delighted for you. All the best for the years ahead.
Perhaps now would be a good time to serve the cake, eh?
(A pink feminist cake! Confusing, isn’t it?)
General Feminism
From Hellonhairylegs we have One Day, a post on what we’re told as children will make us happy as adults.
Andra of Andragy says a lot in a little space with CyberBullying, Feminism, Mean Girls, Queen Bees and Boys. ‘Just for today, I believe that feminism cannot succeed without unpacking the violence of group dynamics and stereotypes both masculine and feminine.’ She shares her experiences as a parent and some reading she’s been doing.
Schroedinger’s Tabby shares some false comparisons between women and men: ‘it’s always about using emotive language to put someone down’.
Caitlin writes about trying to find a label for herself and a place in feminism. You’re not alone in that, Caitlin.
Audrey of Audrey and the Bad Apples blogs a speech she gave on the value of contemporary feminism the world over. A quote: ‘One of the best tools you can give anyone is a sense of belonging and purpose. It’s the hope for a better future – not one which has been handed to you and to which you must resign yourself, but one in which you have had a hand forging.’
Violence Against Women
Ludditejourno posts a list of women and children dead as a result of domestic violence. It’ll stop you in your tracks.
Over at Ideologically Impure, Queen of Thorns tells us why there are no second chances for Tony Veitch.
At I Am Not Cake, Jet writes the powerful Rape Culture: Still Not Funny. You’ll be wanting to bookmark this one.
More from Caitlin, this time at The Dawn Chorus, in Misogyny in Football? Never! At least not according to North Melbourne….
Let’s all say it together, everyone… it’s not sex, it’s rape! Hoyden About Town’s Lauredhel has something to say about strategic remorse.
No doesn’t mean no?! Anna of The Hand Mirror reports on an outrageous defence by the lawyer of a taxi driver convicted in a case of abduction and indecent assault of a passenger.
Class and Economics
AnneE at Elsewoman writes a brief and pointed post about race, gender and unemployment in New Zealand.
Here’s a thoughtful post from Helen from Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony. It’s called The Home ATM is out of order #2: Thinking about schools and is on home equity, education and the economy in Australia.
At The Radical Radish, rayedish talks about Australia’s wage gap and an opportunity for discussion that just shouldn’t have been missed. Presenting Can we talk about this (wage gap) civilly, please?.
Race
More from QoT, writing about the Eskimo lollies issue and New Zealand pride in ”Iconic” might not be the word you’re looking for.
Then there’s the excellent Andrew Bolt, Wajin-looking Koori, Aboriginality, and comments full of lies over at Hexpletive (now cross-posted at HAT). Jo Tamar from Wallaby adds her thoughts on identity and the majority narrative in There’s a reason I don’t read Andrew Bolt. Give them both a read.
Writing and Literature
Mel Campbell at The Dawn Chorus shares some thoughts on the late JG Ballard’s partner and invisible muse, Claire Walsh. It’s an unusual piece for feminist blogging and a good read.
In a thought-provoking reminder of universal sisterhood, Allecto of Gorgon Poisons shares two similar pieces of writing on women’s experience.
Subversion!
Blogging at Musings of an inappropriate woman, Rachel Hills documents an intriguing look into wedding culture by artist Lee Gainer in Why would anyone spend two months’ salary on a ring, anyway?
In an action of momumental win, sajbrfem of Fifty Two Acts made actual feminist cookies. I can’t even pick my favourite.
Parenthood…
Thinking about pre- and post-pregnancy bodies and lives, Spilt Milk writes The new me is the old me is the new me. ‘I’ve been trying so hard to forge my identity as a mother that I’ve let many other parts of my identity slip into obscurity.’ She adds Body and soul, a beautiful piece on reconnecting with her body during and following pregnancy.
aztec-rose of WoLFi TaLEs reminds us of a very important issue that may be pushed aside given the economy. The post’s called Paid maternity leave at risk… of being dumped.
… and Reproductive Justice
Emma at Emervents writes a letter to her MP and Nicola Roxon regarding the Maternity Services Review and improving healthcare in Australia. Over at narrating kayoz, Kirsten also writes to Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon. It’s an open letter and includes Kirsten’s personal story. Meanwhile, Lauredhel is trying to move the conversation from stat-wrangling towards a reproductive choice perspective.
Western Australian breastfeeding mothers are having a time of it. For Colin Barnett’s assertions regarding breastfeeding, I for one have no words. Lauredhel found some in Mothers Not Human: In The Words Of Our Premier. Emma in Oz has some lovely snark on the same subject. To finish, Georgie of Surprisingly Domestic centres babies in the discussion with the wonderful Why I breastfeed in public.
Trans
At A.E.Brain, Zoe writes a lovely piece called Appearance on valuing appearance and the experiences of late-transitioning trans women. In Another Piece of the Puzzle, she takes a look at a study called “Regional gray matter variation in male-to-female transsexualism”.
Chally (hey, that’s me!) writes Say, we haven’t filled our daily quota of dehumanisation! Let’s go do that then. It’s on a Ninemsn article about Aussie Ladette to Lady, so you know how that’s gonna end.
Media
Could it be feminism in the MSM? Jo Tamar reports.
Oh, Sam de Brito. This time, he’s kindly telling us how to do feminism. Fuck Politeness informs us as to Sargeant Major de Brito’s Great Feminist Battle Plan. In a continution of the ‘guerilla style Media Watch’ we’ve all come to expect from FP, she writes a response to a Miranda Devine piece on Bettina Arndt in What’s good for the gander….
At Larvatus Prodeo, Kim writes “the conclusions are only as good as the original assumptions”. I can’t think of anything to say that won’t spoil your reading!
The Stupid. It Burns.
Mimbles, blogging at Mim’s Muddle, was not alone in being astounded at one Clementine Ford. She writes about it in Quick Hit: Pot, meet kettle.
Meanwhile, Anne serves up some snark to a misguided scientist in Oh, those wonderful males.
In a Strange Land blogger Deborah has been blogging on atheist parenthood. What really raised my blood pressure was when her daughters, having opted out of participating in a school Easter activity, were sent to pick up rubbish. ‘I’m finding it hard not to see that as a punishment for not being Christian,’ says Deborah. The Strange Lands had words with the school. Post here, background here, update here.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, formula feeding, April Fools, and a lesson to be learned in public relations. Here’s Tigtog at Larvatus Prodeo and Lauredhel at Hoyden.
Relationships
Regarding Mel Gibson’s divorce, Deborah says Enough already with calling it “his” fortune. Because nothing Robyn Gibson contributed matters, according to the media.
Richie has a post for us on a webcomic called, wait for it, The Nice Guy. The title pretty much says it all: Do you have that female friend that you’re hopelessly in love with that unloads all her problems on you, only to end up back in the sack with that loser ex that cheated on her with her own sister, leaving you high and dry?
Disability
As usual, Lauredhel has some excellent writing on the subject. Firstly, a quiz on representations of disabled bodies in logos. Hmm, can you tell what’s missing there? She also offers us 101: A note to able-bodied readers, which had me thinking how glad I was that somebody finally said it! It’s about inappropriate centring of abled people in PWD spaces. Lastly, we have Psychiatrists see reasonable adaptations to CFS, label it “cause” and “maladaptation” – as amandaw says in comments, ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’
Jo Tamar blogs about Dan Savage’s willingness to miss the point regarding the use of the word “retard”. Jo takes this disingenuous behaviour down very well.
I, Chally, opened up about being chronically ill in a series called Not Staying Silent. It consists of Introduction, I hope you know what you’ve done, Claiming the Label, or, conceptualising myself as disabled, Real Problems, Deference, Response and Recovery.
And if you’re looking for more resources on disability activism, the good people at Hoyden About Town did your homework for you.
That concludes the Twelfth Down Under Feminists Carnival.
I had a fabulous time putting it together. Thanks for reading and take care of your lovely selves. See you next time at Demelza’s place (submissions to demelzagf at yahoo dot com where the submissions page is inaccessible), and do consider volunteering to host a future carnival.
For more information, have a look at the carnival homepage.
Enjoy your cake!
Prepare yourselves, for you are about to witness a thing of win.
If you can’t access it, allow me to drop my jaw at describe the video. It’s called Extreme Knitting and it involves knitting ‘with 1000 yard strands simulaneously’ using 1600 balls and cones of yarn. First they bring in many bags full of wool, then they sort them by colour/shade. Having collected the ends of all the wool in each group, they tied a knot in each, then pulled these ends up over a railing on the next floor up, leaving thousands of strands stretching up in a rainbow. One person guides the wool up and stops it being entangled while the other arranges the wool. The second person then knits the groups of wool as though each group was a strand. This is done painstakingly, involving a lot of physical effort, on giant needles. My favourite part is seeing all the balls of wool tumbling as they’re pulled upon. The hat tip goes to Witty knitter (excellent blog name!).
Edit: io9 linked this post. Welcome to all the readers coming in. If you’d like to read more of my stuff, look around using the tags and categories or the archive feature. Here’s more on feminist science fiction (with some more on race) and here are a few posts on Doctor Who.
Further edit: This post has been republished at Hoyden About Town.
What to say about Octavia Butler? I wish I’d known of her while she was alive so that I could have made contact. I will take a few minutes to act as one of her characters – seeking communication that can never come, missing the point by a little bit, skipping too many steps – and make contact as best I can.
I will use my words and I will use those of others, because together with our words we can try and approach this grand wordsmith. But there’s nothing I can say today that will give you the full flavour of this marvellous writer and this marvellous life.
Octavia Estelle Butler was a leading light of the science fiction world, black, a woman, a lesbian, where white men dominated.
Her work is scary. You will come in unprepared and on surfacing you’ll find you’ve changed your mind. About something, anything. We all face up to the fact that life is messy and complicated and painful, but Ms Butler picks up the thoughts at the back of human awareness and drives them home. It’s not necessarily direct; she was too fine a craftswoman to lead you right to the centre of a story. But by the end, she’s led you all around and through the premise and the story and the terrible implications. And the conclusion – such as it is, because her work is of a wider human conversation – has gently but definitely found its way to you. She said something to this effect herself: ‘Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow…Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.’ (Source here.) She created a space for people like herself in the human imagination.
She was born on 22 June 1947 in Pasadena, California. Her mother, who worked as a maid, raised the young Octavia alone after the death of her father, who had shined shoes for a living.
From the The New York Times:
“I didn’t like seeing her go through back doors,” Ms. Butler once told Publishers Weekly. “If my mother hadn’t put up with all those humiliations, I wouldn’t have eaten very well or lived very comfortably. So I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.”
[...]
Always conspicuously tall for her age, Junie grew up paralytically shy, losing herself in books despite having dyslexia. Octavia Senior could not afford books, but she brought home the tattered discards of the white families for whom she worked.
It’s well worth your time to read the whole article. It talks about black characters in science fiction and human nature and themes.
Marcia Davis of the Washington Post:
Butler was a young black woman coming of age at a time when black women were mainly invisible. And when she was noticed, it was with unkind eyes. She was six feet tall by the time she was in her teens, a girl with deep brown skin and short hair. She was sometimes mistaken for a man, she would say. Early as a child, she cocooned herself in a world of books and nurtured audacious ambitions.
[...]
I wonder if in all that aloneness, in all her solitude, she knew just how beautiful she was and that she was loved.
She was known for her solitude, her careful way of writing, her quiet way of subversion.
Octavia Butler died after a fall outside her home in Washington state. She was 58.
Her friends Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due were interviewed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
“Octavia was one of the purest writers I know,” Barnes recalled Sunday. “She put everything she had into her work – she was extraordinarily committed to the craft. Yet, despite her shyness, she was also an open, generous and humane human being. I miss her so much already.”
Due added, “It is a cliche to say that she was too good a soul, but it’s true. What she really conveyed in her writing was the deep pain she felt about the injustices around her. All of it was a metaphor for war, poverty, power struggles and discrimination. All of that hurt her very deeply, but her gift was that she could use words for the pain and make the world better.”
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“The only consolation in losing Octavia so soon,” stressed Due, “is that she must have known her place in history.”
More of Tananarive Due’s thoughts can be found here (and do yourself a favour). I also hope that she knew her place in history, but how can we? There must have been so much left in her to say, working its way through in her mysterious head. And I don’t think Ms Butler’s legacy is entirely apparent. As with any person working powerfully and unobstrusively, there’s so much that’s intangible. Her legacy is not just a list of books and short stories and awards. Her influence is in the work of the colleagues she left behind in feminist science fiction, in the arguments of all those college students studying her, in many people struggling with past and identity, in the new shape of a genre. It’s in my thoughts on abortion and autonomy. Octavia Butler changed my mind and added much to public discourse.
The Internet Review of Science Fiction:
I think we all take some similar journey—we have something that we wish to communicate within us, and are stifled. In Octavia’s case, it was her beauty, intelligence, her warmth and courage. She could not communicate these things directly: when she wrote of slavery, publishers rejected it. When she wrote of blackness, publishers put green people on the covers of her books. She had to learn to speak in metaphor, or risk starvation.
Indeed. It has often been said that science fiction is a genre of colonialism. Mankind explores the furthest reaches of the galaxy, claiming new ground for Earth. The rational scientist conquers the alien other. Women are there as figures of horror or of lust. All of this characterises much of early science fiction. From the late 1960s, women started to make themselves known in science fiction, reclaiming what Mary Shelley started. Writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Joanna Russ, Tanith Lee, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Marge Piercy, Suzy McKee Charnas, Dorothy Bryant, Kate Wilhelm and Alice B. Sheldon (under her various pseudonyms) wrote up a storm and changed the face of science fiction. At a time in which people of colour were far from the SF mainstream and women were just emerging from publishing under masculine pseudonyms or gender-neutral alternatives, Octavia Butler was the first of her kind.
All of these women opened up what science fiction could mean. Alli Sheldon’s biographer suggests that science fiction is a good tool for women and feminism with its metaphors of alienation and distance and the other. Science fiction allows one to talk about the world without talking about the world. It also allows you to follow your ideas to their conclusions. And Octavia Butler didn’t shy away from utilising these tools as best she could, constructing the experiences of black women with the language she was allowed.
Piny wrote about Ms Butler after her death: ‘It’s hard to talk about Octavia Butler without going all inarticulate and rhapsodic. [...] Her prose–clear, stately, efficient–leads you in and then quietly changes around you. Eventually, mostly, you catch up, maybe, but the story never becomes manageable.’
The first story I read of hers is her most famous short story, “Bloodchild”. I can’t even bear to tell you the premise because it should be read and felt without knowing what’s around the next corner. It funnels many complex ideas into a narrative at once so like real life and so foreign you’ll forget yourself in it except for your sense of discomfort. No matter what you currently think, it’ll open up new ideas for you on bodily integrity, ownership, slavery, abortion, pregnancy, family ties, colonialism: it’s something different for every person. It is one of the finest pieces of storytelling I’ve ever encountered. And then there’s “Speech Sounds” in which humanity almost dies off because a plague drastically limits the capacity for communication. And in Kindred a black woman travels back in time and has to save the life of a white slave owner who was her ancestor so that she can be born. Here’s a list of her works.
Ms Butler’s response when asked ‘What good is science fiction to black people?’:
What good is any form of literature to Black people? What good is science fiction’s thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what “everyone” is saying, doing, thinking–whoever “everyone” happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black people? (“Positive Obsession” 134-35)
This is from an essay she wrote.
But whatever is the source of our intolerance, what can we do about it? What can we do to improve ourselves? Of course, we can resist acting on our nastier hierarchical tendencies. Most of us do that most of the time already. And we can make a greater effort to teach children to resist their hierarchical impulses and beliefs and to channel what they can’t resist into sports and careers.
Will this work? Well, it hasn’t so far. Too many people will not, perhaps cannot, do it. There is, unfortunately, satisfaction to be enjoyed in feeling superior to other people.
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Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we’re as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.
She didn’t believe in utopias. She didn’t believe in giving up, either. And I hope she’s found some kind of peace.
Notes: Her homepage is a good place to start looking for more information, as is Wikipedia. Here’s the page for the scholarship fund in her honour. You may also want to have a listen to this musical tribute by Nicole Mitchell.
The first image is by Beth Gwinn (source here). The second is sourced from here.
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