And that's it for tonight - 06 May 2008

Always more in the news than meets the browser. I’m still miffed that when Ubuntu upgraded, they decided to go with a beta version of Firefox 3 as their shipping browser. It crashes often whenever taxed with lots of tabs to open at once. These things are beta for a reason. Enlisting an OS’s userbase as an unofficial testing crew is not a smart idea. Hopefully they put the Firefox 2 branch into a separate package. I may go back to that one until Firefox 3 actually has an RC, unless beta 5 is supposed to be the RC. A lot of my add-ons broke with the sudden upgrade. Although I did get one back, so it’s not all bad.

Anyway, onward to the news things. The skies have been grey all day today, which means my rain sense has been going off all day, too.

To start with something light-hearted, Zombie season is coming. Are you prepared? Along with that, If Rick Astley knew then what he knows now...

For the true fans of the game... and those that can put together a full 11 a side, Table Football XXL, which can put 22 on the pitch all at once. Bet it takes as long to score in that as it does on the real field.

And then there are the pudding cups that are supposed to look like female breasts. From the land where all things are available through vending machines, of course.

But following on a good story - the wedding cake and place settings for the guy who proposed to his wife with a hacked Bejeweled.

Because there are primary elections today, Black Box Voting's forums note more than 1.1 million voters have been purged from Indiana's rolls just in time for this particular election, despite needing to clean up the records before every general election. This is in addition to using decertified machines, according to the post.

With more candidate stuff, Star Parker gushes with praise for John McCain's health care plan, which adds tax credits so that the self-employed can purchase health insurance and get the cost refunded on their taxes, and making it so every insurance company can compete across the nation with every other insurance company, instead of being restricted only to what’s available in one’s own state. Ms. Parker thinks this is swell because she doesn’t like employer-based health care, figuring that it leads to waste and not asking whether procedures are necessary (because they’ll be paid for!). A tax credit is only good if you can afford the up-front price, of course, and the market-based solution always gets praise from the conservative establishment. Would still be much simpler to guarantee that everyone receives a certain standard of care, and for those that need additional material, they can purchase (or get through their employer) additional coverage. The Slacktivist has his own comments on how McCain’s economic policies work, and he's not fond of McCain's "gas tax holiday", considering it horrible policy. In addition to the Slacktivist, did we mention that 200 economists also think a gas tax holiday is a bad idea? Also in that piece is an article about how there is a Poor Person’s Rate on just about everything we can think of - if you make enough money, you pay one price. If not, you pay a different price, often higher. So the people who have the least to spare are charged the most. And McCain seems more than willing to take money away from necessary infrastructure to shovel into the profits of oil companies. Dodge is at least disguising their PPR a little better by making people think about low gas rates.

Carol Platt Liebau implores the voting populace not to be fooled by Senator Clinton's chameleon abilities. What Senator Clinton will say to try and get votes is fairly boundless, it appears. With that kind of ability to shift, would anyone be surprised if, upon attaining the office of President, she changed from an electable “moderate” to something more in tune with the conservative ideology? John McCain proudly proclaims himself a hypocrite, claiming to be someone who will enforce clear limits on powers... while succeeding someone who has made the powers of the executive great, and planning on using some of those powers himself to continue fighting an unpopular war.

All of this and more from the media, to bradhicks is old hat. And thus, he hungers for actual news to make the news at some point soon.

Internationally, the death toll from the Myanmar cyclone could reach 10,000, according to the foreign minister of the country. More stories about violent weather - is this just more meida outlets covering it, or more actual violent storms?

Iraq tones down their rhetoric toward Iran, despite the Untied States turning up their bellicosity a couple notches, including releasing a report that says Hezbollah is training militants in Iran for use in Iraq.

Oil prices continue to go up, with speculation going up even further in the futures market. More profits for the oil companies.

China struggles to fight off a resurgence of hand, foot, and mouth disease, but thinks things will be under control in time to start the Olympic Games in Beijing.

In domestic news, the FCC has ruled that both "TMZ" and "The 700 Club" qualify as bona fide newscasts, and thus stations don’t have to worry about equal-time requirements with regard to political candidates.

Robert Bluey finds the potential classification of polar bears as endangered an environmentalist ploy designed to stop exploitation of Alaska for domestic oil supplies, and a nod to “global warming alarmists”. There’s a nice dig in at Canada at the end, too, dismissing it as a country that America doesn’t need to follow the example of for a majority of time.

I seem to have a nexus of material that brings out the worst of humanity today. To start, allegations that a father repeatedly used a stun gun on his 10 year-old child, which is horrible. There’s also the Yankees fan that ran down the Red Sox fans . And then there’s the woman convicted of manslaughter because her cry of being raped caused her husband to kill her lover. According to the account, however, the husband saw her kissing someone else and already pulled his handgun out, intending something. If she noticed the gun, and feared that her husband was going to shoot her and her lover, then the rape cry makes more sense. According to her account, he shot the truck she was in before pulling her out of it, so she was probably trying to save herself from being shot as well. In any case, the husband shot the lover, and he’s dead, and now she’s getting the prison sentence for it.

At least the story of Mellisa Bruen's Spring Weekend does not end in rape or death, but it could have, had she not decided she was going to fight back against anyone who wanted to try and rape or fondle her. More power to her that she was able to fight off her attackers, and great shame on the boys who tried.

The Odd News department must add one more fatality from Civil War technology to the roster. I wonder who that cannonball would count as a kill for, if things were still being tracked somewhere. Additionally, the carpet is coming off of Westminster Abbey so that a beautifully-designed floor can shine through. And the conservationists are trying to figure out how to make sure that having feet treading on the treasure is not going to damage it any further. But happy endings for a dolphin as we close out the section, as Winter has an artificial tail, to replace the one she lost.

Mildred Loving, the person who brought suit to be able to marry a person of another race, has died at 68 years of age. Elsewhere in the country, yet another gay marriage constitutional ban goes further along the legislative track. Because having a law that forbids it isn’t enough, people want to enshrine their prejudices in the constitutions, where it’s much harder to overturn or get at. Mildred Loving talked about her experience and what marriage is to her, and I think the populous should sit up and listen to her remarks. Everyone is a collection of stereotypes, but nobody is defined by them, and that it’s not really a good idea to use stereotypes freely in making judgments.

A reminder for the blog audience: You own your copyright, and are free to go after people who steal your work outside the bounds of fair use. Unless you specifically have noted that your works are in the public domain or use a licensing system that is known to your readership, that stuff is yours to do with what you like. Now that we have that out of the way, some stories about writing - getting your details right can only help your story, even if it is a speculative fiction. Also, for the curious, Patricia C. Wrede has kindly provided a list of questions to help fantasy (and other) authors get their worlds built well.

Good news on the fight against botnets - researchers have demonstrated an ability to infiltrate and pollute the Storm botnet, which renders it far less effective.

Next to last for tonight, in the search to make all equal, No Touch Monkey links to a multimedia production of Harrison Bergeron, about a world where everyone is equal, and it’s enforced by government regs. The source short story, by Vonnegut.

At the tail end, though, something that will induce a WTF in most people - A teacher has been disciplined and may be dismissed for a magic trick. A quick trick with a toothpick and it’s up before the Assizes for wizardry. Well, I know someone who can comisserate. Ozymandias J. Llewellyn got tarred and feathered for the "quarter-behind-the-ear" trick. Sadly, this doesn’t really make me think things are strange, because a mother is apparently angered by books that have the word "porn" in them, despite containing no actual pornography (either that, or someone at UPI is having a laugh), so the strange is no longer immediately discountable as a hoax. Just recall, everyone is not watching the same show, even when they’re on the same channel at the same time.

And on that note, going to bed.

A Unicorn's Perspective on a "Radical Feminist"

It’s rare that something aggravates me enough to devote a single entry to it, but I have to say, this has done it. I think our Unabashed Feminism department would also be interested in reading the source material from these points and drawing their own conclusion. I think they alerted me to the original in any case, so here we go.

The original powder keg was the bold assertion that Joss Whedon's Firefly is as antifeminine as it gets, according to the view of the author, because Mal disregards Inara, despite loving her, Jayne is a lech and a womanizer, the frequent use of violence as a cure to problems, Inara’s presence and profession, Zoe’s position between the man she loves and the captain who kept her alive, and the jokes are supposed to be taken seriously, apparently. Ah, and apparently Wash is a rapist, because he and Zoe have sex. Did I miss anything?

Well, she takes quite a bit of offense at the episode Our Mrs. Reynolds, where Saffron tricks Mal into believing he married her, so that she can steal his ship and do stuff with it. So, let’s follow her through this episode and see what she has to say.

Our radical feminist endears herself to very few persons in part one of her screed against Joss, claiming heavy comment moderation, equating the existence of male feminists with unicorns (throughout the episode, she refers to Mal becoming a unicorn when he does something in defense of the equality of both sexes), and mocking the idiots who told her that she would be better off dead. (Actually, on mocking idiots who would tell someone to go kill herself because she has strong opinions, we agree. Which no doubt would horrify her to no end.) Once she gets to the episode, she apparently doesn’t like that Mal cross-dresses for the purpose of the plot, and appears to enjoy doing so. The laugh that Zoe and the crew have at Mal once he finds out that he has Saffron is apparently not funny, because Saffron in this domestic disguise is a sexual and domestic slave, and no black person or woman, not even in the future, would joke about slavery. Confronted with the idea that some men kill women, rather than recognizing Mal saying “What kind of backwater do you come from where that happens?”, our authoress finds Mal’s advice to Saffron to fight back to be useless, because women who defend themselves are killed, or locked up, or have their lives taken from them. If Joss truly believed that, she says, he’d write a character that did just that and got away with it. But no, because The Patriarchy endures, there aren’t any characters that do that. (Except River does it in the movie. And possibly elsewhere...) Then Book’s advice about burning in hell with child molesters, should Mal take advantage of her, is apparently an indication that Joss reads Hustler and likes to joke about child sexual abuse. I’m trying to figure out these left turns, I really am, but my knowledge and deductive skills just aren’t up to the task.

This taking the jokes seriously continues through Saffron’s dinner and Wash’s joking about Zoe cooking dinner, which nets him a glare of death. Because Mal didn’t want Saffron to cry of feel useless, he let her cook dinner and ate it. This is apparently confirming Mal’s status as rapist slime. Jayne, being the oaf he is, offers to trade Saffron for his prized gun, for which Mal smacks him upside the head. But this is apparently not enough, as our authoress only sees Mal masquerading as someone who believes in equality for women. As she puts it, “I see two rapists. Only difference is that one is in a two-dollar-shop disguise as a unicorn.” And thus ends part one.

With that lovely taste, let’s get to part two of the analysis of Our Mrs. Reynolds.

Rather than taking Saffron’s dismissal of her history as a way of keeping Mal and others from looking into her past too deeply, the authoress considers it use of a misogynist writing technique on Joss’s part, and then pairs it with Zoe’s objections and Wash’s unwillingness to comment on local practices and impose his or Zoe’s view on Saffron. A very Prime Directive sort of thing, but for our writer, it turns into a defense of how men do all sorts of things to women to try and break them, and how in the face of all that, women are then called weird if they try to conform, or if they try to buck the system. A fair point, but I think that’s heavy subtext reading to get there from Wash’s wishy-washiness.

And then Saffron’s plans are finally revealed. Her skillful manipulation of Mal’s eye and weakening of his will are transformed into how the authoress does not find any sort of submissive attitude sexy, and Saffron’s submissive attitude, deceptive that it is, is yet another example of Joss Whedon’s anti-woman writing style. Then, when Saffron knocks Mal out, the revelation that she’s actually quite competent and has been playing Mal for an idiot is also anti-woman, with the implications apparently being that Joss is telling us that all women are liars. Her further manipulation of Wash, to which Wash is resisting, although acknowledging that it’s difficult, subsequent knocking out of Wash (to which our authoress says is the very first remotely feminist bit in the whole script) and then her attempt to manipulate Inara are all judged by this same damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t strategy. I’m guessing that nothing short of storming on and kicking everyone’s butt would be sufficiently sexy and feminist for our authoress. Even though it would be a really stupid plan, and not very likely to work.

Mal’s revenge on Saffron for her tricks is then spun into a justification for domestic violence because of Mal’s appropriation of the marriage theme running through the entire episode and playing up the “jilted husband” angle. Apparently, it’s Mal taking out his frustration on her for being capable and not the feminine submissive she was acting as, not for tricking him and trying to steal his ship. After a parting shot at Inara, whose “sexuality is neatly controlled by patriarchal institutions...the good whore: the wife”, as opposed to Saffron’s apparent use of her skills against those institutions, in her own self-interest, the episode and the commentary end.

I think this pair of commentaries is a classic example of reading your conclusions into the source material. Starting from the perspective that all the men want to subjugate and rape women, it becomes very easy to read all sorts of intent and style into the work. In the comments to this entry, Joss and all men are “probable rapists”, for example. If the conclusion in these pieces were that men are often unaware of the potentially sexist and misogynistic way their writing could be interpreted, especially when making jokes, there might be a case for it. Or a commentary on how societal expectations of women in “the past” or “backwards planets” are way screwed up, sure. But I just don’t see how this episode confirms, creates, or reinforces a lot of the ideas expressed here.

Not to mention, now that I’m looking at it, I find lots of places where doing one thing is useless, but doing the other thing is useless, too. Mal’s advice to Saffron to fight back is useless, because women who fight back get put in their place, but Saffron’s particular fighting style is wrong because she doesn’t stomp every man into the ground from the beginning. Instead, she prefers tactics that succeed by utilizing the very assumptions that our authoress hates against Mal and his crew. When Wash floats the idea of Zoe taking on some of Saffron’s submissive tendencies, Zoe rebuffs him. Mal expresses progressive ideas in the face of Saffron’s submissiveness, but being Companion-trained, she’s very good at manipulating him. Wash doesn’t fare any better. And really, the only remotely feminist thing in the episode is Saffron planting a boot in Wash’s head? Yet Mal’s justifiable anger at Saffron lying to him is an endorsement of male violence against women? Saffron’s lies are Joss being misogynist, and the reward she reaps for lying and deceiving is also misogynist? These are no-win situations. The conclusions have already been drawn - men cannot write feminist works, men are all probable rapists, all rape is sex, and all jokes are really windows into the author’s soul and must be taken seriously.

Of course, since I enjoyed Firefly and Serenity, I’m probably blind and biased on these conclusions. Being male as well, I’m probably beyond the pale and not supposed to be even worthy of deigning to give my opinion. I read through this to see how far things would go. I wanted to see what the justifications were. I find that picture of the characters, the writers, and men in general to be an unfair portrayal, based on the evidence being presented. I do not share the underlying assumptions. And I felt the need to say something about it. So, I suppose this is the bleating of a unicorn. What do you think? Does the horn fit?