the wrong end of the telescope

I debated filtering or friendslocking this, because it involves a conversation about body hair, but fuck it, it's important.

Today I was told I may have hormonal issues--or rather, that I may have more male hormones than is usual. Note the 'may have'.

( on body hair and how people react )

But it's a relevant one. Expect a longer entry on this issue this weekend, but if I don't post something right now it's going to be too difficult to work. It's about the Swedish version of It gets better, or should I say, the derailing version. Seriously. ETA: and they haven't contacted Dan Savage? What?

( brief discussion of the original context for the American campaign )

Trigger warning for discussion of rape of a 13-year old girl. I am so fucking furious and disgusted by the sheer-i don't even know. I have to write it down somewhere or i can't work. FYI, this is why Assange's assertion that our rape laws/trials are unfair upset me so much. Because no, fuck you, they're awful. Especially the lower court.

( oh yeah our rape trials are biased and super feminist, totally )

What the fuck are we doing to it?

Horrific racist riots in Moscow, and there was just a suicide bombing in Stockholm. The guy doing it died, but no one else, which is practically a fucking miracle considering the season and that it's Saturday night and that it happened in central Stockholm. I cannot deal. I cannot fucking deal.





This I want: I want people to think for themselves. It makes it harder to believe the easy answers.

Actually, I want two more things as well: give love, when you can. Stay alive, and give love.

I woke up to the news that the first female leader of the social democrats has resigned, forced out by a party that blames her for losing the election (yeah, a lot more people share that blame considering she hasn't been their leader for that long). Goddammit, i knew they'd do this! The party is in trouble? Elect a leader from a marginalized group, that we can blame if it goes wrong. GODDAMMIT. They need to change and they won't do it now, they'll just blame her and move on. And now they won't have another woman for a long time. I hate the world.

ETA: Wow, that was quite the rant. I won't apologize for it, but if I rewrote it I would write it on my computer instead of a phone and I would be a little clearer. I'm still fucking furious about this.

Look. I've been seeing an argument made in a lot of places about the recent (and the not-so-recent) language fail in bandom, and I've been talking about it in a number of other people's journals, and I'm just—

( on holding men to a lower standard )

( on holding your favorite accountable )

( on holding everyone accountable )

So sometimes you're backreading your flist because you're stuck on a section of your thesis that you have to rewrite and you come across fandom-related things that get you angry enough to need to say something before you can go back to work.

Look, my thesis is partly on gendered language and how faily it can be, alright? This is not a time where I'm terribly inclined to be lenient. Please keep the discussion polite and on topic.

( brief note on gendered insults )

I swear, my cup runneth over. Apparently it's crappy sexism week!

So in order to make me a little less mad, would you help me out? It involves going to a Swedish website and voting. The website in question is Dagens Nyheter, which is our biggest daily newspaper. They currently have a poll up that asks why readers believe Sweden hasn't yet had a female prime minister. The three options to choose from are, from left to right: Diskriminering (discrimination), Tillfälligheter (coincidence), and Brist på kompetens (Lack of competence).

Currently the last one is winning. By a lot. Right, obviously it's because no female politician is qualified enough that our parties have had something like three or four female leaders through the years (if you discount the Green Party, because they have it written into their rules that they have to be led by a man and a woman) and that the Social Democrats haven't had one until now, and the Moderates (the biggest conservative party) never have. Obviously that's because the women aren't qualified enough.

In order to provide a little more context, the leader of the Social Democrats has been through all manners of hell because she's a woman. I can't even tell you how many fucking articles has been written about her handbag and her lack of firm leadership and--okay, breathing.

So if you would, go to the website above, scroll down just a little bit until you see the radio buttons, and clicking on the one to the left. I mean, if you're willing to take my word for it that discrimination is most likely the primary cause of this. There's no submit button or anything, just click on the radio button and your vote will get tallied. I don't expect that I have a big enough readership to actually win, but perhaps we could even out the numbers? I would really appreciate it.

PS: I know it's just an internet poll. But it's at a major newspaper and it's kind of reflective of how many people in my country seem to not think women are qualified enough to lead us. It's been a tiresome election year.

You do not attack an aid ship on international waters. You do not. That is only permissible under wartime maritime law or when you have been directly attacked. This was an aid ship and it was not going to Israel.

The information varies on what happened after that and whose fault anything was, but the consensus is this: 19 aid workers are dead, more injured. But all of that happened after boarding. You do not attack an aid ship on international waters.

ETA: Official death toll now says nine dead. Not as bad, but still fairly awful.

ETA 2: As this post puts it, the Israeli military-political complex is a far more useful term for the force behind the massacre of aid workers yesterday than the name of the nation Israel. The longer term presents a useful distinction between Israel the country, which it is possible to love even if you don't actually support this action, as it is possible to love other countries whose leadership perpetrates horrendous acts. It's a fairly important distinction.

I was going to write a long and thoughtful entry on representation in fiction and how Gail Simone, for instance, gets it right, and I will still write that entry, but I hit a point where I'm a little too angry to write it.

The thing is, representation is an important issue in more ways than in fiction, and tonight on Swedish television in a segment on Hassa Helal, the Saudi poet, there was a blatant example of Doing It Wrong. Very unfortunate: it was on a talk show I quite like (it's about literature). Even more unfortunate: it's not like this is an isolated uniquely Swedish issue.

Standard disclaimers apply: I'm very capable of being wrong, and please tell me if you think I am.

( see, it's very clear who is allowed the authority to speak )