tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25183966622413214372024-02-20T15:56:43.424+00:00Bitch TrekFeminism. Sci fi. Other things.Captain Bitchfacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08113564524386052554noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-89675243906134335202011-07-09T10:40:00.003+01:002011-07-09T10:42:40.315+01:00Another noteYou may notice that I'm no longer named as the author of my previous posts. This is because I've changed my google profile. Or murdered the original Captain Bitchface for the sole purpose of taking over her shitty blog, whichever's more fun to believe.Captain Bitchfacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08113564524386052554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-1458306479966098082011-07-09T00:07:00.002+01:002011-07-09T00:08:30.953+01:00Transformers: Dark of the MoonIt's kind of rare that a film turns out to be <i>less</i> misogynistic and shitty than I expect it to. Oddly enough for a media franchise whose primary purpose is to sell bits of plastic to explosion-hungry little boys, Transformers: Dark of the Moon <i>actually <a href="http://bechdeltest.com/view/2469/transformers:_dark_of_the_moon/">passes the bechdel test</a></i>.<br />
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That's right; despite the fact that the action sequences play like they were written by eight-year-olds (and then Optimus Prime fought the decepticon with his AXE! and they FOUGHT and FOUGHT! and all the cars were FLYING IN THE AIR), somebody on the writing team has actually realised that there is more than one woman in the whole world, ever. And that sometimes two of those women TALK! To each other!! HOLY SHIT GUYS!<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Sure, blink and you'll miss it, but it's a whole lot more than we get in some productions.<br />
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There is a lot I could say about this film. I could list the plot holes. I could talk about the fact that it's a fun experience if you ignore the bits that look like an Army recruitment video. I could express disappointment in the passivity of the hero's girlfriend, or talk about how the female CIA chief, whilst a refreshingly strong female character in her own right, is only a feminist character in the most basic and insubstantial way. I could spend an entire blog post talking about how Carly Spencer needs to <b>eat a fucking sandwich now, right now, because she is quite obviously starving to death whilst trying to run in high heels</b>.<br />
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Instead I'll say this: Anyone who thinks women have perfect equality need only to look at the film industry to be proved wrong. The most controversial part of this movie, with all its violence and sexual undertones and bad language (aren't transformers a kid's toy?), was a scene where two women talk to each other about something other than a man. For five seconds.<br />
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It's still a man's world, no matter how far we've come.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-58534691419934768602011-07-05T18:20:00.001+01:002011-07-05T18:21:35.608+01:00Don't Do ThisHas anyone called <a href="http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/what-not-to-say-to-a-daughter-in-law/">Carolyn Bourne</a> (a.k.a <a href="http://whetmanpinks.com/index.php">Carolyn Whetman</a>) an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism">ableist bitch</a> yet?<br />
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They haven't? Well, good. Because that would be BAD and WRONG.<br />
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For those of you lucky enough to have escaped the media for the last week, Carolyn Bourne is the tolerant and reasonable individual who wrote a long email to her future daughter-in-law, Heidi Withers, about how awful she was.<br />
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An email which then went viral. Whoops!<br />
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Heidi's crimes--aside from the obvious "being less upper-middle class than Carolyn" and "going near Carolyn's son whilst in possession of a uterus"--include not hand-writing a thank you note to Carolyn for the privelige of being patronised by her for a weekend, asking for more food at the dinner table, and having diabetes.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Yep, you heard that last one right. A detail which, strangely, seems to have eluded mention in most British newspapers (although it has been mentioned on the New York Times website, above). Without it, Carolyn's comments about food, below, make Heidi seem like an innocuous fussy eater type at worst. Add in the fact Heidi is diabetic, and the comments speak for themselves in a way I'm sure Carolyn never intended them to.<br />
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<blockquote>When you are a guest in another’s house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat – unless you are positively allergic to something.<br />
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You do not remark that you do not have enough food.<br />
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You do not start before everyone else.<br />
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You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.<br />
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When a guest in another’s house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early – you fall in line with house norms.</blockquote><br />
No prizes for guessing that Carolyn Bourne is probably the kind of person who thinks women who eat more than half a fucking spoonful a day are crass and unladylike. Factor in a stubborn refusal to cater to the needs of a diabetic in your house (presumably "I will go into a diabetic coma if I eat your shitty home-made raspberry compote" doesn't count as an allergy), and, well, I can see why the term "ableist bitch" might be deemed appropriate. You might even be tempted to add "ignorant" to "ableist bitch", but that would be very very rude indeed.<br />
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Even ruder would be to send her letters and emails calling her an ableist bitch. Even though her company postal address and telephone number are available on <a href="http://whetmanpinks.com">her website</a>. And also here:<br />
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<blockquote>telephone +44 (0) 1626 863328 or <br />
fax +44 (0) 1626 888911 <br />
<br />
Whetman Pinks Ltd <br />
Houndspool Ashcombe <br />
Dawlish <br />
EX7 0QP <br />
Phone: 01626 863328 <br />
Fax: 01626 888911 <br />
Web Site (URL): www.whetmanpinks.com</blockquote><br />
While I'm sure there are a lot of angry diabetics out there who would like to tell her exactly what they think of her shit, those individuals absolutely should not call up her company and pretend to be ordering flowers in order to shout obscenities at her, especially since the phone is probably being answered by someone other than Carolyn at the moment. So you'd either have to go to all the trouble of asking for her specifically, and everything, or just stick to writing letters and emails.<br />
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But don't do that. Because that would be very rude. And as we've all seen, Carolyn Bourne hates rudeness almost as much as she hates people who won't eat her shitty food because it might kill them. You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves for even thinking about it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-70656618242989094662011-07-05T17:48:00.000+01:002011-07-05T17:48:29.463+01:00A noteSo I might have stopped writing in this blog for a while. And just completely abandoned the whole "post a day" thing. Score one for laziness! Woooo!<br />
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I think the best approach, given my fluctuating schedule, is to simply write about things that make me angry whenever I feel like it. This may lead to more posts. You never know.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-53467227667637276632010-12-09T00:34:00.002+00:002011-07-05T17:49:38.807+01:00Wednesday!Well... early Thursday morning, by now.<br />
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I was going to make this one a long post about how much Enterprise sucked at the whole "chicks in space" thing but then I ended up being delayed on the train for the fifth. fucking. time this week and would rather use my pent-up vitriolic rage to talk about the Assange case.<br />
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For those of you who have been living under a fucking rock for the last few days, WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange has been accused of rape. Now since Julian is famous and arguably does good things for society, he is obviously innocent, just like famous rapist and filmmaker Roman Polanski. (Did I say "rapist"? Oops. I meant alleged rapist. Because he's a rapist. Allegedly.)<br />
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<a name='more'></a>As usual, countless blogs, the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336291/Wikileaks-Julian-Assanges-2-night-stands-spark-worldwide-hunt.html">Daily Fail</a> and--of all people!--<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/interpol-the-worlds-datin_b_793033.html">Naomi Wolf</a> have managed to pledge their allegiance to wholesale victim-blaming douchebaggery. Equally, <a href="http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/12/04/why-its-wrong-to-casually-dismiss-the-allegations-against-julian-assange/">other</a> <a href="http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/12/06/some-thoughts-on-sex-by-surprise/">and</a> <a href="http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/12/07/how-we-describe-women-who-report-sexual-assaults-now/">better</a> bloggers have covered this story way better than I ever could.<br />
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I can't speak for whether Assange is guilty or not, but I <i>am</i> quite bothered by a media that suddenly seems to have taken its definition of consent from <a href="http://bitchtrek.blogspot.com/2010/12/its-angry-feminist-friday-folks-and-you.html">Edward Pasteck</a>, so here's my thoughts on the subject. If you go to a cafe and order a cup of tea, and instead the waiter comes over, pours boiling water over your face and then shoves a teabag up your nose, nobody's going to tell you you got what you ordered. Nobody's going to automatically assume you're lying, or tell you you deserved it because of what you were wearing, or that you "<a href="http://fforphilistine.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/assange-and-rape-rape/#comment-210">entered into a contract</a>" when you walked into that cafe and therefore don't get a say in what happens to you.<br />
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Incidentally, I am quite bothered by the fact that 100% of my ranty feminist posts so far have dealt in some way with rape apologists. I would say "I hope this isn't becoming a trend", but who am I fucking kidding? It already has.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-48186833488619742942010-12-06T20:47:00.002+00:002010-12-08T23:51:02.843+00:00Monday!Monday is Recommendation Day!<br />
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I often find that books written before about 1960 simply do not have the ability to piss me off, however obnoxiously sexist they are. So I hope you can understand why, despite the fact that all the female characters have about as much personality as dysentery, my first ever recommendation for this blog is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley">Mary Shelley's</a> <a href="http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/advancedSearch.do?buttonClicked=2&isbn=1604440961">The Last Man</a>.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><i>The Last Man</i> is a story of secular apocalypse, written after the death of Shelley's husband Percy and absolutely redolent with post-Romantic holy-shit-guys-look-at-what-the-French-are-doing disillusionment/paranoia. It's mainly about a plague which devastates mankind (although Shelley devotes roughly half of the book to foreshadowing and setup), and in modern terms is only science fiction in the loosest sense; however, for fans of apocalyptic literature, it's worth at least a trip to a well-stocked library to see if you can stomach the writing style.<br />
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A lot of people who read this book end up hating it, because a) most of its readers are English Literature students and b) it is a fucking <i>tome</i>. The Broadview edition, for example, uses very small text and is still roughly the size of a former Soviet state. But if you're the kind of person (read: masochist) who likes a big meaty brick of a book to read before bed, or at least won't feel guilty about skipping past Mary Shelley's many elongated descriptions of the scenery (which are pretty but add nothing to the plot), you may well benefit from giving it a try.<br />
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In essence, if you've read through all this and still aren't put off, <i>The Last Man</i> may well be the book for you. Personally, I love it. I know not everyone does, which is a pity, but perhaps you will too.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-13978729619147656842010-12-05T10:58:00.002+00:002010-12-08T23:50:28.779+00:00Sunday!It's sunday!<br />
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Have a video of a cat!<br />
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<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nslfwZPHBeA?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nslfwZPHBeA?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="540" height="300"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-13786682989841518242010-12-04T02:17:00.001+00:002010-12-08T23:49:54.272+00:00Saturday!It's Saturday! And I found <a href="http://tigerbeatdown.blogspot.com/2009/05/important-announcement-there-are-no.html">a Star Trek (2009) review </a>by <a href="http://tigerbeatdown.com/">Tiger Beatdown</a>'s Sady! I hereby declare Saturday to be "I totally agree with this lady/dude" day.<br />
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<blockquote>"To tell you whose would be a spoiler, but I should probably let you know: after several scenes in which Uhura is established as a strong, independent woman who will not, repeat, <em>not</em> be reduced to a sex object, she does in fact end up dating one of the leads. Also, her uniform still doesn't come with trousers."</blockquote><br />
This article expresses quite nicely what I found irritating about ST:2009: that and the fact the film doesn't, in my opinion, pass the <a href="http://bechdeltest.com/">Bechdel test</a>. For shame! "To live up to the aspirations of the series, the movie would have to boldly go a lot further than its source ever did," Sady writes, and I am in complete agreement. For the franchise that bought us the first (or one of the first) interracial kiss(es) on TV to have clung on to the "No Chicks in Space" trope so far into the 21st century is staggering. Let's hope the scheduled sequel makes up for it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-18106403717445487172010-12-03T21:48:00.001+00:002010-12-08T23:49:18.367+00:00Friday!<font color="white">It's Angry Feminist Friday, folks! And you know what that means. It means I trawl the internet looking for something to get angry about and then I get angry about it. Now, like many people, I am a woman, and object to the idea that some people think it's okay to have sex with me without asking my permission first, so it didn't take me long to find something to get angry about. Today, it's <a href="http://jezebel.com/5691871/american-guy-in-paris-freed-from-the-idea-of-consent">Edward Pasteck using semantics to argue that it's okay to rape people</a>.<br />
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Other bloggers, such as <a href="http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/11/29/updates/">Sady</a> and <a href="http://bigthink.com/ideas/25147">Lindsay Beyerstein</a>, have covered this perhaps better than I can, but in a nutshell: <a href="http://www.jezebel.com">Jezebel dot com</a> fucked up once again last week by publishing an article (linked above) which suggested--well to tell you the truth, actually it just comes right out and says that<br />
<blockquote style="font color: white;"><div style="border: medium none; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">"America gets many things wrong about sex. Right there near the top of the list is our attachment to the idea of consent."</div></blockquote><br />
I'm not an American, but I <i>am</i> kind of attached to the idea of not getting raped, so I guess that's half a a slap on the wrist for me. I wonder if anyone has suggested to Edward that he is too attached to the idea of not being hit in the face repeatedly with a hammer.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>But to continue. The crux of Mr Pasteck's argument seems to rest on some kind of impenetrable imaginary barrier between the definitions of "consent" and "decision". French women, he argues, "decide", rather than "consent", to have sex, and are therefore more empowered than their American counterparts since<br />
<blockquote style="font color: white;"><div style="border: medium none; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">"...our [Americans'] use of the word "consent" complicates the way we view the relation between sex and pleasure. "Consent" is a weighty term otherwise reserved for elevated, formal, even sanitized contexts."</div></blockquote><br />
So he's managed to point out the particular resonances of the word "consent". Well done. Protip, Edward: deciding to do something is still a form of consent. If you decide to have sex with someone, you're consenting to them having sex with you. You can't do one and not the other; the definition doesn't change because some wannabe journalist wants to get laid more often.<br />
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To paraphrase Spock (and yeah, that's probably going to be the only sci-fi reference in this article, sorry) his logic is flawed. I'd like to be able to say that the writer has simply not expressed himself very well, and that he merely wants Americanwomen to feel as comfortable with the idea of sex as Parisian women appear to be... and that might well be the case, assuming Edward Pasteck turns out to be some kind of fucking idiot who genuinely believes "consent" is French for "Objecting to having sex with Edward Pasteck". Alternatively, it could merely be a ploy for attention--"hey guys, look at me, I'm using highly contentious language to get people to read my article".<br />
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However, I feel it is a lot more likely that the whole "consent"/"decision" malarkey is actually shoddy pretense for the real argument in his article, which can be summed up as "I wish I could grope women without having to worry about whether they want to be groped or not".<br />
<blockquote style="font color: white;"><div style="border: medium none; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">"I'm not suggesting that a woman have sex with someone she doesn't want to, but I'm hoping we can start having more guilt-free sex by any means necessary."</div></blockquote><br />
That's French for "I don't get enough guilt-free sex". Well, Ed, maybe you should stop writing articles that make you sound like a rapist. That's French for "Shut the fuck up, you talentless hack".</font><br />
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<i>Jezebel</i> has since published <a href="http://jezebel.com/5700664/from-the-editor-paris-consent-and-shitstorms">a half-hearted apology</a>, where the editor Jessica Coen (not the writer) kind-of apologises (but not really) for "[failing] to give an explanation as to why [Pasteck's article] was on Jezebel in the first place." (Holy backpedalling, batman!) Apparently<br />
<br />
"sometimes it's worth being confronted with the voice of an issue head-on, particularly in a place such as this, where you can safely react and discuss if you so choose."<br />
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Sorry, Jessica, but if I wanted to hear an arsehole talk about how it should be okay to get women drunk and then rape them, I'd hang around Watford town centre on a Saturday night. I think you simply agreed to publish the article without realising what a stupid idea it was at the time. Then, when you realised, you engaged in what we call <a href="http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#surprise">a bit of classic derailing</a>. That's French for "being a fucking idiot". Frankly, I expected better.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2518396662241321437.post-67135691516373927162010-12-03T20:31:00.001+00:002010-12-07T20:56:47.031+00:00Good evening.In an effort to a) make myself write more and b) add my voice to the ever-growing number of of <i>holy gender stereotypes batman, women who like sci-fi</i>, I have started a blog. Here it is. This is a brief outline of the things I'll be doing if I don't get distracted buying shoes or crying about Sex in the City or someshit:<br />
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Mondays - Recommendation Mondays! Short stories, novels or authors who won't <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisposableWoman">piss</a> <a href="http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/index.html">you</a> <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe">off</a>.<br />
Wednesdays - SF/Feminism Wednesdays! (Least. catchy. title. ever.) In which I ramble on about some aspect of a scifi work or fandom (probably female Trek characters for now) and whether or not it pisses me off.<br />
Fridays - Angry Feminist Fridays! In which I write about something that isn't necessarily sci-fi related but almost certainly pisses me off.<br />
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Seeing a theme here. Not quite sure what it is.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0