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There will be spoilers.
I love feminist science fiction and fantasy fandom. I am part of feminist science fiction and fantasy fandom. And then I come across something like this in a post titled “I Hate You, Steven Moffat“:
In Which I Rail About Doctor Who Fandom and the Pink Ghetto
February 22, 2012 at 8:33 am 
Stephanie Zvan When Sex Isn’t Enough
February 21, 2012 at 8:27 pm Stephanie Zvan We’re all hearing (if we’re paying any attention at all to U.S. politics) the refrain that sex by itself, for fun and pleasure, is somehow “less” than sex that carries out the sacred duty of procreation or sex that expresses the divine love of marriage. It’s a common trope that most of us who argue for a reality-based, shame-free view of sex argue against…at least when the religion involved is conservative and Abrahamic.
Chris Hall notes that we’re not always particularly good at being consistent in this view:
#MenCallMeThings, Dragon’s Age Edition
February 21, 2012 at 8:40 am Stephanie Zvan If you’re having a bad day, if you get creeped out by heaping loads of abuse, this is probably not the post you want to be reading. Try the baby foxes instead. If you keep reading this, you will once again be confronted with how women are treated on the internet.
The woman in question is Jennifer Hepler, who wrote for Dragon Age II, among other games. I don’t play role-playing games myself, but this is one of the ones I heard about constantly on Twitter after it came out. People lost hours of their life to this game and went sleep-deprived without complaint…at least until morning. They chattered about the characters as though they were real people. In other words, my friends did exactly what you’d want from a game’s audience.
That wasn’t enough for some people, however. The Mary Sue has a good rundown of the objections of some gamers to the game and to an old comment by Hepler that if what you like about a game is story, you ought to be able to tweak your game experience to maximize the story. In other words, in a world with more games than most people can play, some gamers are upset that one company’s game(s) might be different than everything those gamers have played to date. They might be…inclusive.
The Hepler hatred has been going on for almost a year. It recently flared into bright, shining misogyny, however, first with a thread on Reddit that got enough out of hand to be taken down after Hepler started getting phone calls at home. Then Hepler got a Twitter account. Suddenly people no longer needed to stalk her to touch her.
Separate Still Not Equal
February 20, 2012 at 4:47 pm Stephanie Zvan Making Muslim women cover up and segregate themselves has nothing to do with controlling them, don’cha know. It has nothing to do with restricting their lives in ways that make them more dependent on men, easier to control. It isn’t about subjugation. It’s about modesty.
The Medical Facts Behind Pre-Abortion Ultrasound
February 20, 2012 at 11:41 am Stephanie Zvan Who knew that the Virginia legislature was packed full of doctors, specifically OB-GYNs? Oh, wait. They’re not. So what the hell is up with them legislating medical care? Is it somehow okay because they’re onlly legislating it for women? (No need to actually answer that.)
Dr. Jen Gunter, on the other hand, is an OB-GYN qualified in two countries. So maybe we should listen to her when she talks about the medical science behind pre-abortion ultrasounds. I know I learned something.
Second-trimester abortion
Let’s just take that off the table. Every second trimester abortion needs an ultrasound and often gets more than one. Second-trimester abortions are more often done for birth defects, typically diagnosed or confirmed by ultrasound (sometimes a few ultrasounds are done). In addition, these procedures require more skill the further along, so it is essential the practitioner knows the gestational age with as much accuracy as possible. Ultrasound laws will not change any procedure costs for 2nd trimester ultrasounds, but they may affect the viewing requirements (whether the woman sees/hears a description of the ultrasound). I’ll get to that in just a bit.
First-trimester abortion
Many providers already do a 1rst trimester ultrasound, especially with medical abortion. This is because a medical abortion can only be done up to 63 days (9 weeks). However, there is a growing body of literature suggesting medical abortion can safety be accomplished without an ultrasound for 98% of women. So these laws will prevent practitioners from doing away with an ultrasound (i.e. prevent them from practicing evidence based medicine) which will halt efforts to expand medical abortion into low resource settings. Ultrasound requirements will also affect many women getting a surgical procedure as and ultrasound is typically not required if the size of the uterus agrees with the dating of the pregnancy (although some providers do ultrasounds anyway, generally for medico-legal reasons).
Go read the whole thing. Send a copy to your state and national representatives as well. If they insist on passing laws on this stuff, don’t let them deny that they’ve seen the scientific information.
Bonus: While you’re at Jen’s blog, check out her proposal for National No Non-Procreative Sex Day.
The Great Hurt
February 19, 2012 at 6:40 pm Stephanie Zvan It wasn’t that no one was willing to share the story.
After writing the script for the play in 1972, Gawboy could not find anyone interested in helping to produce it. “The Great Hurt” sat in his desk drawer until he was asked recently if he had any material on the historical trauma that American Indians suffered in boarding schools. Audiences are now ready for his play.
Tad Johnson, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Bois Forte Band, is head of the American Indian Studies Department at UMD. He saw the performance. He said, “I thought it was very moving and very powerful. It used actual words of Capt. Pratt, who founded Carlisle School, and the children. It was very stirring.” He said the use of actual photos “had a big impact on me and a lot of the people in the audience.” Johnson’s maternal grandparents attended boarding schools. “People lost parenting skills and lost their language,” he said. “I knew all that, but hearing the actual words was moving.”
The play is scheduled to be shown at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul on March 9.
Someone needs to record this. It will always be more powerful in an auditorium filled with other people’s reactions, but it needs to be shared more widely. Whether we’re ready or not.
What Is Marriage?
February 19, 2012 at 9:20 am Stephanie Zvan As you probably know by know, Minnesota votes this fall on a state constitutional amendment to define marriage as one man and one woman. Minneapolis’s First Universalist Church produced this ad, which features Albatross, whom you’ve probably seen in the comments around FtB now and again.
This is one of those cases where our liberal churches and our atheists are ganging up standing together on the same side of an issue. We’ll disagree about this or that again later, but for now, we work together.
I’m Gonna Tell on You
February 18, 2012 at 9:23 pm Stephanie Zvan Yesterday morning, I received an interesting comment from a fellow named Sig on my second post examining the claim used by MRAs (as documented here, and seen in current usage to shut women up here) that prison rape means more men than women are raped in a year.
Stephanie as Im not allowed to comment here… Im going to be making multiple posts about the false assertions you have made relating to rape about myself and everyone else in the mens movement.
I figured it was going to be hilarious, as this is the guy who was trying desperately and illiterately to prove I was wrong based on the fact that I’m a feminist. What I didn’t anticipate was just how funny the results would be.
It starts with the fact that Sig’s idea of publicizing how evil I am is to put four posts up on Reddit. No, really.
Saturday Storytime: Adaptation
February 18, 2012 at 8:52 am Stephanie Zvan Martha Wells‘ book, The Cloud Roads, has been very well reviewed indeed. Of course, her books usually are. She just released this prequel on her website for those who can’t get enough. It’s very different in tone from the book itself, which it should be, as its protagonist comes from a very different background (covered here, in another prequel).
He woke lying on his back, blinking up at the worried faces that hovered over him. Braid was here now, and Rill, and Petal, as well as Balm. But the person crouched next to him was Jade, the young daughter queen, the soft blue of her scales vivid against the gray walls. He stared at her, startled. She watched him with worry and some other emotion he couldn’t quite place. Fear? What’s she afraid of?
“What happened? Did I fall?” he tried to ask, but his voice was a strangled croak. He was in his Raksuran form and he could feel the gritty stone floor under his scales. He started to lift a hand to his head.
“Just lie still.” Petal caught his hand. She was leader of the teachers’ caste, and she and Chime had been friends since the nurseries. He had never seen her look this disturbed. Her voice tight and tense, she said, “Flower’s coming.”
Chime stared at her. He cleared his throat. “Am I hurt?” He didn’t feel hurt; stunned, maybe, and a little sore in the back. Nobody answered, they just looked at each other, like…like he didn’t know what. Fear made his heart pound. “What is it? Tell me!”
They all looked at Jade. Jade took a sharp breath, as if about to plunge into something unpleasant. “Chime, something happened when you shifted. You don’t look like yourself. I mean, we can still tell it’s you, but it’s you…if you were a warrior.”
He stared up at her, incredulous. “That’s not funny,” he said weakly, but no one was laughing. “That can’t… What? That’s not…” He pulled his hand from Petal’s grasp, stared at it. The scales of his shifted form should be gold-brown, a common color for Arbora in his line. But the light fell on dark blue scales, catching a gold undersheen. The blue was close to Jade’s shade. There were blue Arbora, but it wasn’t as common… “Oh, this can’t be happening.” Chime pushed away from them, shoved himself to his feet. He staggered; his balance was off, his body oddly light.
Someone must have carried him out of the central well; they were in one the smaller side rooms, the one with a fountain pool fed by a channel in the wall. Chime almost swayed over backwards, stumbling to the pool. Catching himself on the rim, he stared down at his reflection.
He was looking at a Raksuran warrior, tall, lean, with blue scales. Horrified and fascinated, he raised his spines to see if they were longer, and something else extended out behind him. It took him a moment to realize he was looking at the edges of his wings as they unfolded from his back. “Oh, no.”
Jade said sharply, “Chime, don’t.” She stepped up behind him to press on a spot between his shoulder blades. Some reflex he didn’t understand made the wings fold back in at the pressure. “There’s no room in here. If you extend your wings, you’ll hurt yourself.”
Your wings. That was why his back felt heavy, why his balance was gone, why his body felt light. Warriors had lighter bones than Arbora. He turned to Jade, saying helplessly, “What happened?”
She spread her hands. “I wish I knew.”
I Need an Aspirin
February 17, 2012 at 4:30 pm Stephanie Zvan Although that may be assuming a bit much.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Lucky you. Go read Emily’s post, “Men should just shove aspirin up their urethras“. Then, while you’re calming down, enjoy some of the spontaneous art created out of internet rage.
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