“While dieters grumble about being constantly hungry, new research has shown that being in a state of hunger can actually make you happy.”

The article refers to ‘dieters’ in a gender neutral way, though I bet we can all guess which gender has the majority of dieters and why that might be hrmm? I got to this aricle from the ninemsn news link thingy from my hotmail account. Seems to be surrounded in “Womens Weekly” paraphernalia and the links down the side assure me doubly so that this is aimed at women.

So girls! Dieting to achieve that unattainable figure society dictates y’must have will also make you happy! Who’da thunk it! Better get right on that shit yo!

Gah.

I just thought I’d say that Mr Kyle Payne is a fucking fuck fuck fuck asshole. I don’t know. Its a really simplistic thing to say innit? I wasn’t going to say anything at all, because thats as eloquent as it gets really, and I didn’t think the world would be enlightened by my thinking that fuck is a fucking fuck.

Then I thought “Oh I might as well say something.”

An aside: For some reason when I read about this the first time I felt jaded and angry, but I didn’t feel emotional and sad like I usually do when I hear about girl who have been sexually assaulted/abused. I don’t know why. It’s like I was less empathetic then usual.
I’ve been spending less time lately reading the feminist blogosphere and it feels like I might be slipping into my old jaded angry uncaring self. Must rectify this situation.

Even now I don’t feel the heartfelt sadness. I think I should. Somethings up. My empathy levels are down.

*mumble mumble* I don’t know why I even pointed that out. Seemed important to me I guess. I’ve… this is weird.

Stream of consciousness writing at weird times of the AM two nights in a row! Yes! Only this time I’m drunk! (Warning: Content of post may be crap. Deal with it yo!)

A friend just came around with a big arse bottle ‘o wine. He’s really a closer friend of my house mates than mine but my house mate was sleeping, and the dude offered me some of his wine. Then we drank it all together.
This guy lived with us for awhile when he was homeless, and he’s alright, but we had arguments over things when he lived here. He’s a very spiritual left wing sort of bloke, but doesn’t understand his own white male privilege. I’ve had a few infuriated conversations with the fellow ’cause he think racism aint so bad and my feminism is over the top - while wanting all humans to be elevated to a higher level of consciousness and in a state of loving peace.

Anyway. there’s an oppression he understands and thats classism. N’then we started talking. I told him the stories of my friends who’ve been totes classist to me, and he laughed at some of the things they said. N’we talked more.
I talked about my friend whos father has a doctorate, whos father had a doctorate, whos father had a doctorate etc. and how she’d spend a few hundred dollars on a single meal and call herself poor (instead of broke.)
When I mentioned those folk with doctorates I think he felt shame. He started talking about how he’s a laborer. And how people tell him to ‘pick that shit up and drop it over there’ and thats his place in things. And I didn’t know what to say, I could see he was upset. I can’t remember what I actually said. Whatever it was he seemed to pick up just a bit.

Then we talked about teeth. We’ve both got fucked up teeth. I showed him mine. When I smile they don’t look so bad because all the damage is on the backs of them, so I pointed it out to him. He told me about his bad teeth, and fretted about somehow, somehow seeing a dentist.

Anyway, At some point he talked about how he lived with someone and had an conversation with this guy about ‘dole bludgers’ and how the guy was from a ‘better’ family, so he didn’t understand.

“Better” family…

I didn’t pick up in that language ’till after he left. “Better” indeed.

“I don’t think that I’m better than you, but I don’t think that I’m worse.”

I told Allecto awhile back in the comment somewhere (probably to her analysis of Firefly) that I’d write something about Philip Pullmans “The Northern Lights” books.
There are lots of things I’ve been meaning to do and have not/won’t. I don’t think I’ll actually get this post done.

But Dissenter has done an analysis comparing it with literature she considers more feminist. I’ve read both Garth Nix and Isobelle Carmody (The authors whose stories she compares to The Northern Lights) but alas, I can’t remember any of it at all. Not even a shred. O.O

Here’s her post!

I’ll reproduce a comment I made there, just ’cause its got an excerot from the book which I considered to be one of the msot problematic:

——————————————–
I agree with your position, and I’d like to make an addition to your note about female intellectuals. Here’s an exceprt from the book:

“Are you the female Scholar?” said Lyra. She regarded female Scholars with a proper Jordan disdain: there were such people but, poor things, they could never be taken more seriously than animals dressed up and acting a play. Mrs Coulter on the other hand, was not like any female Scholar Lyra had ever seen, and certainly not like the two serious ladies who were the other female guests.”

Mrs Coulter goes onm to explain that she works for one of the coleges, but she’s not really a scholar. So, because she’s pretty and not a boring dowdy female scholar Lyra takes an interest in her. The conversation between Lyra and Mrs Coulter goes on for awhile, and then we get this quote:

“The two female Scholars had nothing exciting to tell, and sat in silence until the men came.”

Yeah. Totes feminist…. Blargh.
——————————————–

For reference Lyra is the ’strong female lead.’ She’s got a lot going for her that I like. She’s stubborn and willful. She’s fierce and she was the first woman to step foot in a room at a college which was rserved previously for men. (If I remember correctly she just snuck in out of curiosity and because she wanted to. Thats cool.)

But what she has going for her is strongly overshadowed by what she has against her. Like the attitudes above, where female scholars are to be taken less seriously than animals dressed up for a play. I mean. Err. Some sisterhood.
She doesn’t seem to develop close relationships with other women. I mean, she has the thing going on with her mother, but for the most part Ms Coulter was played up as evil. Yeah yeah, she repents in the end whatever but part of that repantance was keeping Lyra knocked out and unconscious for months ‘for her own good.’
She develops very fleeting relationships with women. Women we don’t hear about later, or who don’t seem that fleshed out. Like her friends mother, or Ms Serafina. N’those relationships never seem that strong…

While it mentions that women were restricted from doing things, it does it in this really well… light… way. It doesn’t critisize it. it just says thats there. And then the female scholars are played up as boring. Ms Coulter is played up as having had to manipulate the system to get anywhere. (Which you know, I’m not inherently against, but it was showing her as manipulative to show her as bad, bad, bad. Bad mysterious, pretty, evil, manipulative, malicious women! Bad!)

Lyra becomes less and less ‘fierce’ as the books go on. In the second book we’re introduced to a male protagonist who seems to do everything while Lyra sort of whines a lot.

Err. I didn’t mean to write this much, and its sort of cool that I have actually, though I wasn’t thinking very hard about it when I was doing it. Maybe I have written that post I wasn’t going to write…

The short of it is that these books are at best ‘not feminist’ and at worst ‘downright womanhating.’

I read these books because they were touted to be awesome steampunk literature, and I’m really digging steampunkery at the moment. On a semi-related note here is a picture of me dressed as a steampunk. So that these books turned out so bad feels like a big dissapointment.
I want to see steampunk boosk where they put the punk into steampunk! If we’re focusing on Fantastical Victorian Era England That Never Was With Amazing Technology, then maybe highlight something about class isseus perhaps! Show the poor revolting! Show the women fighting!
Show… Something…. punky. I guess. :/

Ergh. On another aside to this whole ’steam of consciousness ramble’ I’ve got going on here since I’m talking about steampunkiness anytway: I remember telling some steampunk off because he was in character pretending to be a victorian man and he was talking about how he was more enlightened then the savages who didn’t understand science. I responded in character as well, seeing as thats how we were talking. I think I told him that savages was a savage way to refer to fellow human beings worthy of dignity and respect and he replied with something like ‘Well, they are fellow humans yes, but not enlightened men of SCIENCE!’ I don’t think I replied. I didn’t know what to say. Half of steampunk is about the fantastic technology and saying ‘Science isn’t as important as people you dolt’ seemed entirely too confrontational for me, and I couldn’t think of a way to tackle the subject in character.
I feel bad at going weak there and not knowing what to say. It was online, so I had time, but I still didn’t know what to do and just left…

The steampunk magazine forums were a pretty good place for pro-feminism in steampunk. In a comment thread once there this was said by an important member of the community:
(Before quoting it I’ll note that i don’t like the oppression olymipics between racism and sexism going on in this thing. I don’t know what race the author is, but I’ve got this sneaking suspicion she’s white and that her saying that there’s not much racism but lots of sexism is… demeaning? condecending? I’m not sure of the word… not good. but I digress….)

on racists and sexists in a scene…
I believe that, unfortunately, a scene will need to weather the existence and interest of these people, but not quietly. There is absolutely no reason we need to accept these people.
Most people, in my experience, are not overtly racist. their racism is at the ‘let’s cross the street there’s a black man up there’ level. (now, the justice system, on the other hand…)
but sexism is everywhere. If I had a nickel for every time some douchebag sleezeball tried some crap on a friend of mine at a club, I would be rich indeed. It just isn’t (this is only my opinion) taken very seriously in our culture, including most subcultures.

But we don’t need to be a subculture that refuses to take it seriously. We can talk to people about their sexist behavior. If that doesn’t work, we can shun them, so that they don’t influence the younger members.
And if that sounds exclusionary, think about how exclusionary a place is when it doesn’t feel safe. I’d much rather be welcoming to women than sexists.
This is no rant against men, far from it. I truly believe it is only the slim minority of subcultural men who would list ‘feminism’ as one of their dislikes.

But then later this thread insulting Allecto and feminism in general popped up, and no-one but me seemed to have much of a problem with it. So. There you go.

Umm.

Thats enough ranting from me for now. I wrote way, way, way more than I expected to, and I’ve not read over it/thought about it very much so I don’t know how much of it makes sense.

Littoral Mermaid tagged me with a meme. I err. Think I’ll do it. Not now though.

I have a chest cold and I’ve been coughing for the best part of an hour and a half. I was trying to sleep, but I keep getting up to drink some water hoping it’ll make the coughing stop long enough for me to snooze some.
So far this plan has not worked. I think I might have to call in sick tomorrow.

Anyway. I had a conversation with a friend today and I don’t know I guess I’ll throw this out there, for anyone who is friends with women who identify as feminists:

“You’re one of the few sane feminists” Or “You’re one of the good feminists” or “For a feminist you’re not so bad” and similar statements are not compliments. The first one is disabilist, and the whole thing is shitty anyway. Like “Your values are shitty, but you’re not so bad” or “I like you, but I don’t like most people who beleive the things you do.” or any other version of ‘your value system sucks’

Feinism is my value system. I use a lot of what I’ve learned from my feminism to guide my life. That means small things, like just trying not to be a jerk, trying to pay attention to people etc. For the most part. Other things too, like trying not to be a privileged ass, and such. You know.
These are my values. Stop insulting them.

N’I know I don’t seem to be as radical as some of my radical sisters out there. But thats not because people who are more radical then I am are rabid manhating extremists. Mostly its because I’m fucking timid and I have a hard time not being nice to people and so when you say bigoted things, or show your privilege timid me will respond by saying something like “I don’t think thats quite right….” or “I don’t agree with you there….” or “Please don’t talk like that around me….” rather then “Don’t be such a fuckwit.” Actually, I wish I were stronger in calling out bigotry and privilege really.

When you say that I’m a good feminist, you’re insulting all my feminist sisters. You’re insulting the women who are stronger then I am and braver then I am. You’re insulting people I respect and people I value.

Don’t say “You’re one of the few good feminists.”

I’m one of the many good feminists. Because feminists rock, yo!

African Native Americans

I’ve just come across this website through various internet browsings.

It’s a little page talking about african native americans, how there were africans and native americans who formed relationships together, how there are Indians from all walks of life, n’how colonists tried to keep Indians as slaves before Africans, but the Indians knew the land and formed succesful escape operations.

It’s interesting and informative stuff.

A long time ago on television I saw this programme about artists. Well I’ve seen lots of programmes about artists really, being as I used to think I was one, and every now and then I occasionally still think it. But there was this one in particular:

A man collected over 1000 autumn leaves and he wrote on them. Happy little statements, nice little messages. He put all 1000 into a sack, and went to the roof of a tall building, and then emptied the sack of leaves into the wind so the messages would get carried far and wide and would perhaps make someones day.

I thought abut it again recently, when reading somewhere (I think it was at Graces) that you always see the streets in some city littered with sexxxy ‘empowermentful’ porn posters and fliers. I got this mental imagery of fliers all about town with sexist depictions of women all over them, just papering the streets. N’I thought… ‘I want to paper the streets with opposite fliers. Things that promote women and are anti porn and anti empowermentfulism. Maybe with some ‘love your body’ stuff thrown in as well.
I thought about how maybe women reading those fliers would see them, and maybe it would brighten their day, and then I remembered roof-leaf-man. N’I thought about how leaves and such are absolutely better because they don’t harm the environment in the same way (Though it’d be harder to notice a message written on a leaf I guess.)
I think I want to do that, or something like that.

N’maybe make little fliers that I can stick on noticeboards and things. Like, outside shopping places etc.

I don’t know. It might brighten some womans day, and I think the effort is worth that.

Does this sound good to anyone else? If it does sound good, and anyone else would want to be involved, then wouldn’t it be awesome if we made a real day of it? Like a bunch of women-folk and pro-women-folk collecting leaves and writing on them for a few months, and then releasing them into the wild on the same day.
It sounds fantastic.

Would anyone else want to be involved in a project like that?

Webpage Accessibility.

Hey there. I was thinking about how I needed to make the image in my last entry accessible. When I say accessible I mean accessible to disabled people, like making it so that screen readers (programs designed to read webpages out loud) can help people with visual impairments to view websites.
Also I’ve been thinking about accessibility because its a subject that comes up at university pretty often. I’m doing multimedia which means I’ve taken a few website design and programming courses.
I’m doing some pretty intense web programming this semester actually.
I’ve got an assignment at the moment where making the website accessible gives us a sizable portion of our grade.

Accessibility is good. If people don’t pay attention to accessibility it makes things a whole lot harder for people with disabilities to get around on the internet.
There are all kinds of things that can make websites inaccessible. Like, using a flash menu where you have to click the mouse and can’t use the keyboard. That could make things difficult for people with mobility issues.
Using low contrasting colours can make things a pain etc.
Y’know, disabled people have as much right to the online world as we do but if people making web content aren’t paying attention to this shit then they’re just not able to access the information out there.
It’s not like able bodied people are out to exclude disabled people.* Mostly its just an extension of privilege. We don’t think about the needs of disabled people because we don’t experience having those needs. We don’t see what they need unless we’re paying attention.

Here’s some sites listing accessibility guidelines:

W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
These guidelines were created by the W3C folk. I can’t remember at all what W3C stands for, but these people are important on the internet. They set HTML standards and shit.
Their guidelines are very strict and fufilling all of it could be difficult/time consuming if you are a web developer, which most people aren’t. This isn’t the latest version of their guidelines I don’t think.

508 Standards, Section 1194.22
These are some guidelines for the level of accessibility required on gonvernment sites. I assume these standards apply in America but their information is good.
These standards are a bit more relaxed. There are good descriptions for every requirement. I can’t really say what it’d be like to read for people who aren’t all up ins on web development being as I’m into this web development stuff quite a bit, but I find this document very easy to read and understand.

Now I know that most folk aren’t web developers, but there’s something simple everyone should be able to do - and thats providing text alternatives to things that aren’t text, like images and video.
One of the simplest things people can do is use alt tags on their images. For example the HTML for an image without an alt tag might look something like this:
<img src=”image.jpg”>
To make this accessibile you can just throw in an alt tag. (Alternative text tag) to add a description to the image. Doing that would look like this:
<img src=”image.jpg” alt=”This is a description of the image - well really its an explanation of an alt tag but you get the point”>

If you’re on wordpress I don’t think they actually show images if there’s no alt tag at all. When you click the image button to put an image in it comes up with a text box asking you to fill in a description. The description is what goes in the alt tag. If the image is used for more then decoration, and is used to illustrate some sort of point or convey any information then it’s important to fill those tags in and give the descriptions.
It’s terribly simple and does so much for accessibility.

I came across some pages to help test the accessibility of a website.
juicystudio
cynthiasays

I ran every website in my blogroll through the last one (cynthia says) testing for the section 508 requirements.
3 out of the 15 pages linked on my blogroll failed the first section, the one about providing text alternatives to non text elements. (Most but not all of the other sections were passed by all of the blogs on my list, likely because of the way wordpress sets things up.)
Some of that failure might be the part of wordpress. I didn’t really look into which templates had what etc, because this was meant to be all very quick.

At any rate - adding alt tags is easy. I also tend to provide transcripts of video that I upload, though that is more time consuming. These are simple things most of us can do. I mostly thought I’d make a post about this because I only found out about this accessibility stuff after going to uni and doing web development courses. There are things every day users, like bloggers can do and p’raps not everybody knows about them.

Hopefully more people might be aware of accessibility issues now, or might know where to do to get the guides and whatnot. I hope to have helped somehow…

*Though they’re often not out to help them. When accessibility gets brought up in class lecturers usually coach it in terms of “You might not want to put in the effort for disabled people or care about social justice issues but it’s illegal if you don’t design your sites so they’re accessible.
My brother is going into web development and I told him about accessibility. He got angry and said that it made him want to go out and kick a disabled person in the head for making him have to do extra work. >.<
I’ve seen a bunch of pages trying to coax web developers into following accessibility guidelines by saying “It doesn’t just help disabled people, it also helps your search engine optimization or it makes websites accessible on portable devices” because you know. The minority of people accessing your website on portable devices are more important then disabled people.
Or something. >.<

This image shows a girl wearing the lolita style of fashion. She’s wearing pink and white with ruffles, bows and petticoats. Her pink skirt has the writing ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ on it; with white symbols representing women. Her white socks have the same symbols in pink.
Beside her there is a quote by Betty Friedan saying “And we had considered ourselves the vanguard of the working class revolution, feeling only contempt for dreary bourgeois capatalists like our fathers - though we still read Vogue under the hair dryer and spent all our money on clothes.”

I’m on a bit of a creative bender. Been doing a lot of programming at university. Hard cold logical stuff. I come home and I find I just want to make things.
This piece here is me critisizing myself for not really acting out on my thoughts that femininity is harmful. Like the last post I made was in no way deep. I really do like lace, hearts and ruffles and I really do hate femininity and it causes me to have these weird conflicting feelings.
I don’t know how other people will read this and I’d be happy for people to take their own meanings out of it, but I want to clarify that whilst I’m taking a jab at myself for claiming a radical label whilst surrounding myself in gendered things, I don’t mean to take a jab at any other woman for her choices.
I’m just exploring what I think of my own choices.

The girl in the picture is a representation of me.

Here’s the real me, for reference:

Fuck Femininity