#gender
Liu Yang, who’s from Henan Province and lives in Beijing, is an air force pilot and will be in charge of medical experiments once the Shenzhou 9 docks at the Tiangong-1 space lab. The mission is a step in China’s ambitious space plan:
Beijing announced a five-year plan for space exploration in December that included a space lab and the collection of samples from the moon by 2016. The government has previously vowed to reach the moon and establish a manned space station by 2020.
An interesting aspect:
According to China’s state-run news media, the selection process determined that China’s first woman in space should be married, preferably with a child.
Because you need to provide a suitably heteronormative role model when you’re making history.
(Via Tobias Buckell on Twitter.)
Fatihah Iman takes Saladin Ahmed to task for his portrayal of women characters in Throne of the Crescent Moon:
Saladin Ahmed’s debut sword-n-sorcery fantasy novel has come in for some criticism from feminist quarters, some of which I have seen and some of which I have not. Ahmed has engaged with this debate to an extent, and in a comment on a blog post from earlier this year asked:
“Is there a problem, for instance, with not passing the Bechdel Test if one is depicting a world where women’s power is most obviously wielded via intermediary men…?”
Throne of the Crescent Moon is based on Arab/Muslim history and culture – as contrasted with Fantasy Medieval Europe, which is the usual fantasy setting. So the characters Ahmed is talking about here are the fantasy world analogues of Arabs/Muslims, and the world itself is a fantasy version of Arabic/Islamic settings. As a Muslim woman, I would dispute the assertion that “women’s power is most obviously wielded via intermediary men.” And to answer the question: yes, there is a problem if your story about Arab/Muslim women doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.
Because if you’re writing women based in an Arab or Islamic tradition, it should be EASIER to pass the Bechdel Test, not harder…
picklemethis:
jhameia:
wildunicornherd:
Zoo City (an adaptation of Lauren Beukes’s book), Tok Tokkie and The Windmill are all South African projects; I dunno about the Who Fears Death movie, which is based off a book by a Nigerian-American author, has an American producer and Kenyan director, and is set in far-future Sudan.
Via io9.
Aw this is coool!!!
Hey, Nnedi Okarafor is freaking awesome. Who Fears Death is gritty stuff.
What’s even more awesome - all the four mentioned stories are written by women.
Etienne Fourie’s a guy, but 3/4 still ain’t bad. I’m also impressed by the presence of women producers and directors, who are super rare in Hollywood.
feminismfreedomfighters:
breaklitehearts:
Captain Picard-I love you. That’s all.
Reblogging becuase it’s Captain Picard.
MAKE IT SO.
*cranky* Can we all at least agree to start by shunning the men we know mistreat women? Don’t say hi to them in the street. Don’t invite them to your parties. Don’t hire them. Tell your friends not to take their classes or go to their talks. Oh, you only know them online? Great. Don’t link them. Don’t post uncritical interviews with them. When someone brings them up positively, bad-mouth the shit out of them. Googlebomb them like they were Bill Napoli. Don’t let these snakes dare call themselves feminists.
Linksplat
My basic thesis was that while, in the wake of the success of The Hunger Games, women writers are producing a lot of SF for the YA market right now, this isn’t being recognized by the SF community at large…
She then goes on to consider various ways to change this. Do read the comments for criticism and more ideas.
Remind me to ramble later about how fandom is full of out-of-touch old fogeys and how they might be able to get more people under 50 to come to conventions.
In The Cage of Zeus (out now from Haikasoru), a terrorist group targets a society of genetically engineered intersex people, the Rounds, aboard a space station orbiting Jupiter. Charles Tan interviews the author, Sayuri Ueda.
One recurring theme in Japanese fiction is perceiving space as the future of humanity. Do you share in this belief?
Space is such an alluring world. I doubt we’ll ever give up the journey toward space and will continue to set its sights on faraway planets, no matter what the challenge.
But the future of humanity doesn’t lie in space alone. It’s hard for me to believe that a people that haven’t been able to find a future on Earth could ever forge a future in space. In fact, those two missions are one and the same. You could say that our readiness to embark into space is being tested in our daily lives and in the values of contemporary society.
In the excerpt you can see that the translator uses Spivak pronouns. Interesting.
animalstalkinginallcaps:
STOP TELLING ME TO ‘CHECK MY PRIVILEGE’ AND LISTEN TO WHAT I’M SAYING! WE’RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE SOLIDARITY AS WOMEN! IT’S THIS KIND OF PETTY INFIGHTING AMONGST POCS AND WHITES THAT PREVENTS US FROM MAKING PROGRESS IN THE FACE OF GENDER-SPECIFIC INSTITUTIONAL OPPRESSION! WE CAN’T WORRY ABOUT HOW DIFFERENT RACES EXPERIENCE THE TYRANNY OF THE PATRIARCHY! OUR OPINIONS AND SUFFERING ARE DIFFERENT BUT THEY ARE ALL EQUALLY VALID! IT’S ONLY MEN’S OPINIONS THAT DON’T MATTER! YOU HAVE TO SEE THAT!
Nice, but not clueless enough. Clearly the OP has not spent enough time in the feminist blogosphere.
Colorado journalist and romance author Pamela Clare, a longtime reporter on women’s prison issues, weaves real-life cases into her novels—for example, the horrifying (and commonplace) procedure of shackling pregnant inmates when they’re giving birth. In her book Unlawful Contact, the senator hero gets a bill passed banning the practice. Unsatisfied with mere fiction, Clare consulted with lawmakers and actually wrote such a bill, which was passed last year.
Now who says romance is “fluff”, again?
(Via @tobiasbuckell.)
The immigrant experience has got to be the most otherworldly, mind-bending phenomena that can happen to a human. Enter the immigrant woman’s experience and what we have is a space opera super heroine. If I could actually name some of them, I’d say they’ve got nothing on my mama.
In Haiti, and many other places in the world, there isn’t a word for feminism. Whatever ideas surrounding women’s lib are simply stuff women must do in order to exist in any given third world country. And there are the proverbial “a better life for my children” and “to help support my family back home” as to why some women leave their native lands in order to pursue the American dream. So upon entry into this planet where strange customs abound, there is a constant fight to preserve cultural identity, memory, and ultimately, the body.
