Sexism and Feminism in Geekery 11

I know I know I'm once again behind.  Part of the problem is so much happens that I always feel behind.  ALWAYS.  Somehow being behind makes me procrastinate as the links pile up.  The world is just full of sexism and feminism to cope with the sexism that even what I originally thought was a small subset of the discussion covers a lot of information, articles and posts than originally expected.  In some ways it's great that we're having so many discussions about sexism around the literary, fandom and geek worlds.  Then sometimes it's sad that even though we have SO many discussions this is still the world we find ourselves in.

Girl Leaning Fandoms Get the Worst Haters

This article was written because Den of Geek lost a bet with the internet.  Honestly, their loss equals our win if this is the type of commentary we get.  While the football being for boys thing stings a little bit (big football fan. I think it only skewers male because we don't raise our girl-children to watch it and they also lack the experience playing it), this article is spot-on it's it's commentary on fandom.

     Yet it was in the comments field of that article that one point stuck in my head, where it's firmly resided since. As one commenter put it, "it does seem that fandoms that can be 'female' learning (such as One Direction) do get a lot of stick, but if it's male skewering (e.g. football) then it gets a free pass".
     A further commenter picked up the baton: "anything with a fanbase mainly composed of teenage girls - One Direction, Bieber, Twilight etc - gets tons of these uber-macho comments from people desperate to prove that they don't like this sissy garbage". As such you get "homophobic slurs aimed at the artists and misogynistic ones aimed at the fans".

Read more here.

Cosplay Creeps And You 

This video is pretty much perfect and everybody who attends a con or cares about geek culture should watch the treatment women cosplayers are subjected too.

Do Women REALLY dominate the YA market? 

Stacked took an excellent look at something year hear time and time again.  If we're not worried about the poor boy readers, we're noting that YA is really where the women can get ahead (often disparaging YA in the same article).  This article on Stacked full of numbers, statistics and graphs, all things I love in an article, and really in-depth.

     As should be absolutely clear, there has never been a time women have outnumbered men on the NYT List in the top ten. Never. There have been six weeks where there have been a grand total of four women in the top ten -- January 6, February 24, March 31, May 5, May 19, and June 9.

Many studies have shown that any time there is gender equality, such as calling on students in a classroom, it's always perceived as the women dominating the discussion.  There's too much data in this article so you need to read it for yourself here.  This article also spawned a REALLY long and sometimes confusing (due to twitter's terrible ability to organize conversation) discussion on twitter among YA authors. There is absolutely no way to summarize these so I'm just linking them as well.
First day of discussion is here.
Second day of discussion is here. 

Female Characters Should Be People Too (Duh)

The fact that Seanan McGuire is one of my favorite authors is a well known fact.  She also makes a regular appearance in this column.  Since the October Daye series is one of my favorites, this particular passage of this excellent post about female characters amazes me.

     Midway through either the second or the third book—I don't remember anymore—I got a note from one of my proofers saying "You can't have Toby do this, she's always been a little bitchy, but this makes her a total bitch. No one will like her if she does this."
      I panicked. I couldn't write a series about an unlikeable character! I'd never get published, no one else would ever meet my imaginary friends, and everything I'd worked for my whole life would be over, all because Toby was unlikeable.
      Then I took a deep breath, and wrote back to the proofer requesting that they do a find/replace on the .doc, and plug in the name "Harry Dresden" for every instance of "October Daye." They did, and lo and behold, what had been "bitchy" and "inappropriate" was suddenly "bold" and "assertive." A male character in the same situation, with the same background, taking the same actions, was completely in the right, justified, and draped with glory. He was a hero. Toby? Toby was an unlikeable bitch.
      The proofer withdrew the compliant. I have never forgotten it.

Read More Here