Sexual assault, rape culture, and a tiny bit about Platner and the White House’s #1 sex pest
CW: discussion of sexual assault: me talking about my own experiences, including my sex life (minimal details, but that may still make some people uncomfortable).
I had a cis man remove a condom during sex and come inside me without consent, and I didn’t know it was sexual assault. Until I called my friend M. I sought her advice after he’d done it 2-3 times and I was frustrated. She labeled it what it was. Continue reading “In Case You Also Didn’t Know”
Orlando by Virginia Woolf Rating: 4/5 stars
#52Challenge prompt: A novel that is considered classic
Virginia Woolf, where do we start? This is the third Woolf novel I’ve read. I place it in the middle, having adored Mrs. Dalloway and having struggled to read To the Lighthouse.Orlando is funny in ways those other books are not. It also features avenues of fantasy — namely Orlando’s ability to change genders at will and their extraordinary long life — that Woolf’s hyperrealistic other work doesn’t dare venture into.
(Arguably, Woolf wrote this for her girlfriend, Vita Sackville-West, and speculation is that she didn’t mean to have it published to the world. Woolf like realistic books. Orlando is not one.)
Apparently, we’re having another round of “that’s just fanfiction.” Implying that fanfiction is below prowriting quality standards and should be dismissed, and that if you want to insult a prowriting piece, just call it fanfiction.
Xena and Gabrielle are a very popular fanfic pairing.
For those that live under rocks, fanfiction or fanfic is a derivative work of another creator, usually created out of love for the original work. More often than not written for fun and just because. Fanfic is largely created by women for women. And fanfic is infamous for its explicitly erotic stories, which do constitute a significant portion, though not all fanfic. Erotic fanfic often falls into Rule 34: if you can think of it, there’s probably erotica/porn on the internet about it.
See what I did there. A lot of those are published books! A lot of them are famous and well-written! There are even whole sections of GoodReads devoted to stories declared rewritten fanfiction by readers.
I said nothing as the woman sitting across from me mused that shaving one’s legs in the sink was the ultimate defining moment of womanhood. Whose womanhood? Perhaps only her own, perhaps only the other socio-economically privileged, mostly white women present. Perhaps she thought this expression resonated with all of us or perhaps it was to separate the superior kind of woman she wanted us to be.
Society’s mirror is a false one.With few exceptions, I try to only dig enough into other people’s own psychodramas to interact with them or make them characters in stories. But I can tell you this barrier she set up affected others; it affected me. It’s never a flaming sword of body hate. No, it’s just tiny little jabs collected over months of similar comments, environments, and messaging that eventually make you bleed, face-down on the ground.
I spent a whole half year unhappy with my wardrobe choices. Staring in a mirror of unhappiness. Nothing looked right, and I didn’t seem to own what I needed. Or it wasn’t clean. My mornings just dragged out longer than necessary. And no amount of shopping or wardrobe purging seemed to fix it.
I decided to add “equality” given that I do read a lot of articles with intersectionality that cover stopping a lot of -isms, and they are all equally important. As always, these are links that I found interesting and you might too.
Me
Books Nominated for 2013 Hugo Awards!
Woohoo! Chicks Unravel Time & Chicks Dig Comics were nominated for The Hugo Awards. Big congratulations to the editors, all the other writers, and everyone else involved in the production and love of these books. 🙂
Introducing Moz Reader!
I love working for such an amazing company like SEOmoz. I’ve been so bummed about Google Reader shutting down, but guess what, we stepped up and created the Moz Reader! I’m really thrilled. (If you’re wondering where I was, I was in NYC instead of in the video.)
Cute Animals
Adventure Kitten Gear
Okay, REI wins with the adorable as they have all your adventure kitten gear.
So it’s been a while — too long — since I’ve made one of these posts, which means, I’m going to just do a link dump without my usual explanations so I can hurry things along and get to the new stuff. As always, what I like, you may not like.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
