In my last post, I outlined some of my basic thoughts about sex education. As tends to happen, though, I left out some stuff that should have been included, might not have been entirely clear on some stuff, and left out dealing with more complicated topics. I'll try to rectify that somewhat in this post, although I will still stay away from the nitty-gritty of dealing with a world where there are many perspectives on sex and sexuality, and where many of those perspectives are bad.
First off, what's the point of thinking about this in the first place? Well, I have a certain vision of how I think sex and sexuality and everything around it should work, and I think my ideas are preferable to the way things work today. As might have been obvious from my last post (at least in its blatant disregard for practical problems facing sex education programmes in many countries), I was presenting, in a sense, a new normal. By tacitly endorsing polyamory, asexuality, and a variety of kinks through presenting them as valid options to be discussed in sex education programmes, I am in fact trying to move sex and sexuality away from a situation where cisgendered heterosexual PIV (penis-in-vagina) sex is regarded as normal and what all other types of sex build from, and where cisgendered heterosexual monogamous relationships are what every other kind of relationship is compared to. The way I see it, that kind of sex and those types of relationship are perfectly ok and will no doubt be preferred by many; but just as I don't see a reason why we should keep marriages as the privileged form of relationship in society today, I see no reason to treat concepts like heterosexuality and monogamy as normal and the rest as different. Providing a foundation of knowledge and tools to discover ourselves in a non-judgemental manner should be the goal of sex education, and implicitly or explicitly saying that a certain set of behaviour is normal is to set up the rest as weird and different, which goes against the goal of allowing people to discover themselves with an open mind. Of course, this is not to say that educators should obscure how the world looks in regards to what are the most common types of relationships, just that they (and we) should avoid using normative language when presenting that information.
Masturbation is a topic that I didn't cover in my text on sex education, which seems like a pretty big oversight. In particular, in the part talking about encouraging getting to know your body, masturbation would naturally be a big part of that. The existence of masturbation and what it means (stimulating erogenous zones, etc.) and that it's a good way of finding out stuff about your body and what you might like in a safe environment, although with the additional information that you might unexpectedly like different things entirely when you're having sex with someone else. It is also crucial to point out that if you don't particularly care for touching yourself and it doesn't do anything for you, you shouldn't do it; the same ideas about consent, pleasure, communication, confidence and safety apply to masturbation, though of course pleasure and safety are probably the most important factors given that you're on your own. Apart from some basics, I'm not sure what you need to tell younger people about it - do it if you like it, and don't if you don't. I don't really think there's much chance of people overdoing it more than any other fun thing, so I'm not worried about that. In some cases I think there needs to be some pushback against pervasive messages that say that masturbation is a bad thing, to be sure, but that's more situational. Personally, I would like to see a case made against masturbation on its merits - it feels good, it lets you discover things about your body, it can potentially improve your sex life, and can be a good stress reliever. On the negative side... well, I suppose some people get obsessive, but that doesn't seem to be much of an epidemic. On the whole, I stand by my opinion that masturbation is pretty awesome if it's something you like.
An issue some people had with my last post was using BDSM as an example to tell youth about. I can certainly understand why, I can personally get pretty creeped out by some depictions of BDSM. At the same time, I think it's a valuable example of how people have different reactions to different stimuli, and that what is arousing for one person can be a total turn-off for another, and keeping only one perspective on what "should" be sexy and arousing is pretty narrow-minded; better that they learn early that there is a wide range of possibility for what pleasure can mean out there. Of course, BDSM is also something that provides a valuable opportunity to talk about consent, communication and safety, as it shows that it's not the actions themselves that matter, but the context and the existence of clear communication and consent. Take a situation where a man is blind drunk or fallen asleep, but still has a hard-on. Someone takes the opportunity to suck him off - doesn't really matter who or why, the act doesn't leave a mark, and he probably won't remember that it happened when he wakes up. Contrast with a BDSM scene where someone flogs their partner to the point that they break the skin, but it's done under completely consensual forms where the couple communicates with each other. Discussing that issue, I would hope that the non-consensual act is the one considered bad. Certainly, the BDSM scene can also provide ample material for a discussion about safety and how communication can be done in a way that assures active consent, but that just makes it all the stronger as an example. As such, including BDSM as a topic of conversation seems to me a good thing, as well as other kinks (though as I want to move away from "normality", as written above, maybe kinks isn't the right word to use, but that's a later topic). As always, teaching and dealing with the discussion in a way that's age-appropriate would be key.
Finally, I was going to turn my attention to more complicated topics like pornography and sex work, which are complicated to me because I am often of two minds about both topics. However, since they are indeed complicated, I will leave them for a later blog post.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Sex education - core values and a wide range of options
For a while now I've thought of writing down my thoughts about sex ed, as it is a topic that interests me greatly, but I have not really structured my thoughts on. So I'll try to do that here (this sprung out of some thoughts I had involving safewords sort of developed towards healthy communication surrounding sex in general, being a bit of a prerequisite for more complicated conversations).
In sex education, there are five core values which I think should encompass the entire educational programme:
This is not to say that all sex has to be super-pleasurable, nor that sex should be an activity always targeted at achieving orgasms. That can quickly lead to people putting mental pressure on themselves to perform, either by always being ready for sex (which is pressure often put on men today) or to always orgasm (pressure that is often put on women to be an ideal sex partner). Putting the expectation on people to be up for sex are against the ideas of pleasure and consent both. Not everyone can reach orgasms, or cannot do so easily or in certain situations, but can enjoy sex all the same. Putting mental pressure on someone to have a certain small set of reactions is also pretty antithetical to the idea of pleasure.
Continuing the point about pressure above, communicating when you want or do not want to have sex should also be free of any kind of guilt, and no one should feel that they need to fit what they want to express to some ideal standard of sexuality.
To tie communication to consent a bit further, it is also important for people to start questioning those who do not seem to care about communicating with their partner, and make it clear that there is no excuse for not making the effort to understand your partner or presumptive partner.
At the end of the day, these values are what I think should be expected parts of sexual interactions (there is, of course, an argument that they should hold true for all interactions). It is perhaps important to note that these core values are the same for everyone, I see no reason for different core principles for different genders, although in practice how we relate to them might differ as we are dealing with a long history of male, hetero and cisgender privilege which behooves us to take extra thought on how to realise these values. The idea of sex as a transaction (where men gain something and women lose something) or the idea of women as gatekeepers and men as sex seekers are both pretty wide-spread, so that even though I want to define a new normal, it might be better to specifically argue against prevalent and pernicious ideas of sex and sexuality.
In presenting these values I am not saying that sexual education is just about teaching them in a vacuum. Regurgitating the definitions of the words would serve little purpose; what we need is to build knowledge and understanding about our bodies, sex, and sexuality in a way that makes the above terms possible and meaningful, which is what I'll try to do in the following part presenting a rough outline for the topics that should be covered.
Moving up in age, learning about erogenous zones and how everyone's different in that sense and how they can find different sensations pleasurable is of course also important, as is learning about the wonders of pregnancy and vectors for infection - ideally before anyone can become pregnant.
Learning about our bodies is essential to create confidence in our physical selves, gives us understanding about what pleasure is and can be, lets us understand the risks associated with sex, and thus improves the foundations of communication and makes possible informed consent.
Personally, I think a programme for sex education should, at the very least, include information (and, based on the recommendation of a friend, personal stories from these perspectives) about people who are not interested in having a sex life at all, for whichever reason, who are not interested in having a sex life with other people, who only have sex in long-term relationships, who don't connect sex to romance, who have sex with any gender (and hopefully the discussion would make it obvious that "any gender" does not mean "any person"), who have trans bodies, who have sex with one particular gender, who associate pain with sex, who associate giving pain with sex, who associate dominating others or being dominated with sex
Though all the different views on sex and preferred kinds of sex above are different in many ways, I think the values of consent, pleasure, communication, confidence, and safety remain true for all of them, and the best way to communicate how those values relate to different situations is to talk about it and discuss in an open manner. It's important to note, to avoid becoming lazy, that the above values might be most important to talk about for sex that has been considered the "normal" for a long time; if you're doing something that is not considered "normal", you're more likely to think more about the fact that there are things that you like doing that your partner might not like, making communication more clearly important. If "everyone knows" about a specific kind of sex, then people might think communication isn't as important, meaning people might end up not having as good a time as they could.
Though I could probably present some ideas stressing the value of having relationships where you communicate with your partner and mutual respect and all that, I think I will leave it at the sex, for now.
Finally, I should mention that I do not think that a sex education programme can be a panacea to things I think is weird with the way sex and sexuality is treated in society today, but it is one factor we can and should strive to make as good as we can, while we also work to make the rest of our culture and the messages communicated about sex and sexuality better. Of course, there are lots of passionate people who do sex education already, and have worked on doing it for a long time, so this should be seen as no more than my thoughts about (part of) it given form. To be better informed, there are lots of other sources to consult, from Sweden and elsewhere. I'm also going to link yes means yes! because I really like it and it has been really informative about consent and sex.
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I've added a follow-up to this post.
In sex education, there are five core values which I think should encompass the entire educational programme:
Consent
Consent is perhaps even more than a core concept, indeed without it the idea of a positive sexuality is a joke. To be more specific, what I'm writing about here is affirmative consent, and preferably enthusiastic consent, meaning that people should expect their partner or partners to be into the idea of having sex with them and that cajoling someone into sex is pretty weird. The lack of a no should not be understood by anyone to mean "yes". If everyone had enthusiastic consent as the standard, the points about communication and confidence would be unnecessary, as they would be part of the definition of consent. Alas, we are not living in a world where enthusiastic consent is the universal norm, and that's something we have to deal with.Pleasure
I must admit that I kind of took this for granted until I was reminded that it's really a pillar of the entire activity, and though I find it to be obvious, what motivates me to write this post is, after all, that the way sex is handled in society does not seem to be aimed at pleasure. Having pleasure as an expectation both for yourself and for your partner gives a pretty good goal to reach for with your communication. Of course, everyone gets to define for themselves what is pleasurable.This is not to say that all sex has to be super-pleasurable, nor that sex should be an activity always targeted at achieving orgasms. That can quickly lead to people putting mental pressure on themselves to perform, either by always being ready for sex (which is pressure often put on men today) or to always orgasm (pressure that is often put on women to be an ideal sex partner). Putting the expectation on people to be up for sex are against the ideas of pleasure and consent both. Not everyone can reach orgasms, or cannot do so easily or in certain situations, but can enjoy sex all the same. Putting mental pressure on someone to have a certain small set of reactions is also pretty antithetical to the idea of pleasure.
Communication
Communication makes most social interactions better (imagine that!) In fact, you could even say that sex itself is communication, using verbal and body language. As such, it's important to let people gain a vocabulary for expressing themselves, as well as understand that everyone's different in how they communicate, and of course respect for the fact that communication is a mutual and reciprocal activity. By nurturing ideas of the value of communication, we make the sex that does happen more enjoyable and into more of a positive experience, and hopefully avoid sex that would not feel good or be a negative experience in the long run.Continuing the point about pressure above, communicating when you want or do not want to have sex should also be free of any kind of guilt, and no one should feel that they need to fit what they want to express to some ideal standard of sexuality.
To tie communication to consent a bit further, it is also important for people to start questioning those who do not seem to care about communicating with their partner, and make it clear that there is no excuse for not making the effort to understand your partner or presumptive partner.
Confidence
Having a vocabulary for sex and consent is all well and good, but it's useless without the confidence to express it. That means that people need to be confident that they will not be shamed or mocked for their bodies or sexual desires, and take pride in yourself. Although every aspect of sex education is something that is made difficult by the wide world out there with its many different messages, the way a lot of those messages whittle down our confidence in ourselves and shame us for who we are might be the most obvious. There is also, sadly, a constant pressure to conform to the right kind of sexual drive, like being constantly "up for it" as referenced above, or to perform a certain way while having sex. Confidence can be important to stand up to that kind of pressure to conform, and to be able to communicate what you actually want and what would be most pleasurable to you. Confidence also means accepting that people have a wide range of reactions to sex, and to listen to your partner with an open mind instead of, say, getting upset when they might not want to have sex or when they react to something while having sex in an unexpected way.Safety
Safety means both getting the knowledge you need to have sex, as well as learning warning signs for stuff like patterns of abuse, both to keep yourself safe and to protect others by calling others out for unacceptable behaviour.At the end of the day, these values are what I think should be expected parts of sexual interactions (there is, of course, an argument that they should hold true for all interactions). It is perhaps important to note that these core values are the same for everyone, I see no reason for different core principles for different genders, although in practice how we relate to them might differ as we are dealing with a long history of male, hetero and cisgender privilege which behooves us to take extra thought on how to realise these values. The idea of sex as a transaction (where men gain something and women lose something) or the idea of women as gatekeepers and men as sex seekers are both pretty wide-spread, so that even though I want to define a new normal, it might be better to specifically argue against prevalent and pernicious ideas of sex and sexuality.
In presenting these values I am not saying that sexual education is just about teaching them in a vacuum. Regurgitating the definitions of the words would serve little purpose; what we need is to build knowledge and understanding about our bodies, sex, and sexuality in a way that makes the above terms possible and meaningful, which is what I'll try to do in the following part presenting a rough outline for the topics that should be covered.
Our Bodies
It is pretty important to understand our bodies - sex education should allow kids of all genders to understand their bodies and what happens to it during puberty, and appreciate that the body is a pretty awesome thing. This of course also has to give information about cis- and transgender issues as well as other gender identities. Perhaps most importantly, it has to instill a sense that it's good to ask those who are knowledgable if you wonder about something and not create a dichotomy of "normal" and "other". When teaching younger kids, I must admit that I'm a bit uncertain of how to teach kids about sexual abuse in a way that does not send mixed signals - explaining meaningful consent and age seems a bit too complex, but simplistically making some parts of your body "bad" for touching seems like it could be negative in the long term - this seems like something I should read up on.Moving up in age, learning about erogenous zones and how everyone's different in that sense and how they can find different sensations pleasurable is of course also important, as is learning about the wonders of pregnancy and vectors for infection - ideally before anyone can become pregnant.
Learning about our bodies is essential to create confidence in our physical selves, gives us understanding about what pleasure is and can be, lets us understand the risks associated with sex, and thus improves the foundations of communication and makes possible informed consent.
Sex
A problem with teaching about sex is that it's impossible to define what a good sex life is. It varies from person to person and trying to impose a model of normality in it would be both foolish and wrong. It is easier to teach what good sex isn't, but has a potential to get mired in negative messaging where you tell people what not to do all the time, which doesn't seem very pedagogical or constructive. What is needed is to give some notion of what sex can be while having an open and constructive discussion about what can go wrong, ever keeping an eye on the five core principles above. What is most important is to give a sense of the possibilities that exist, while stressing that it comes down to personal preference and communication with your partner or partners. I see no reason why we should privilege either sex in long-term relationships or sex as an activity like any other as the "normal". It might sound a bit trite, but people really should do what is right for them, based on being given solid information and the tools to use that information in a positive and constructive way.Personally, I think a programme for sex education should, at the very least, include information (and, based on the recommendation of a friend, personal stories from these perspectives) about people who are not interested in having a sex life at all, for whichever reason, who are not interested in having a sex life with other people, who only have sex in long-term relationships, who don't connect sex to romance, who have sex with any gender (and hopefully the discussion would make it obvious that "any gender" does not mean "any person"), who have trans bodies, who have sex with one particular gender, who associate pain with sex, who associate giving pain with sex, who associate dominating others or being dominated with sex
Though all the different views on sex and preferred kinds of sex above are different in many ways, I think the values of consent, pleasure, communication, confidence, and safety remain true for all of them, and the best way to communicate how those values relate to different situations is to talk about it and discuss in an open manner. It's important to note, to avoid becoming lazy, that the above values might be most important to talk about for sex that has been considered the "normal" for a long time; if you're doing something that is not considered "normal", you're more likely to think more about the fact that there are things that you like doing that your partner might not like, making communication more clearly important. If "everyone knows" about a specific kind of sex, then people might think communication isn't as important, meaning people might end up not having as good a time as they could.
Though I could probably present some ideas stressing the value of having relationships where you communicate with your partner and mutual respect and all that, I think I will leave it at the sex, for now.
Finally, I should mention that I do not think that a sex education programme can be a panacea to things I think is weird with the way sex and sexuality is treated in society today, but it is one factor we can and should strive to make as good as we can, while we also work to make the rest of our culture and the messages communicated about sex and sexuality better. Of course, there are lots of passionate people who do sex education already, and have worked on doing it for a long time, so this should be seen as no more than my thoughts about (part of) it given form. To be better informed, there are lots of other sources to consult, from Sweden and elsewhere. I'm also going to link yes means yes! because I really like it and it has been really informative about consent and sex.
*
yes, really. Consent, pleasure, communication, confidence and safety are important terms and reading about the BDSM community has further informed my opinions about them to a great extent - I think discussions about relationships like that would be useful. One can of course discuss at which age such a discussion should take place.I've added a follow-up to this post.
Friday, December 28, 2012
My favourite fictional worlds
As a reader of genre fiction, in particular fantasy and science fiction, I have read a whole lot of stories set in fictional worlds (of course, one can make the argument that our own world is as fictional when put into a story). Over the years, I've gained an appreciation for worlds that are logically coherent, fantastic, or just plain neat, and I figured I'd list my favourite ones.
Apart from the interesting interactions between humans and other races, the Deverry Cycle also has well-developed magic system akin to that of the Kabbalah or Golden Dawn, as well as a clear idea how other planes connect to the physical one. Though you can notice some changes in the world-building over time, it's a well-constructed and researched world that I wouldn't mind seeing more of (especially with the technological developments hinted at at times).
Apart from the physical, the spirit realm is well-represented and so far, Elliott seems to have a firm grasp of where she wants to take it.
At the moment, they are about to wake a long slumbering insane castle to protect themselves from the giant airship that is Castle Wulfenbach. Also dragons and mind-controlling aunts. Though I live just about everything about the world, the series keeps offering up mysteries to which I want answers which makes the world even better. And I can't wait for the battle that will ensue between Zeetha, warrior princess, and Bang, pirate queen.
There are plenty of other worlds I have enjoyed over the years, and series like Babylon 5, Mass Effect, The Fourlands by Steph Swainston (who takes the fantastic to the next level with gardens of meat!), The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, the large, sprawling mess of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and the interesting magic system and depressing world of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, but on the whole the worlds above ar the ones I've spent the most time thinking about, at least recently.
Annwn from the Deverry Cycle by Katharine Kerr.
Most of this series takes place in Annwn, which is a world to which the Gaul tribe of the Deveti flee from our own world in the time of the Romans. The story is set over the next 1200 years as society, technology and politics change over time, and the meeting of the immigrating humans and the peoples that already live in that world.Apart from the interesting interactions between humans and other races, the Deverry Cycle also has well-developed magic system akin to that of the Kabbalah or Golden Dawn, as well as a clear idea how other planes connect to the physical one. Though you can notice some changes in the world-building over time, it's a well-constructed and researched world that I wouldn't mind seeing more of (especially with the technological developments hinted at at times).
Alternate Earth of 1837 (Gregorian Calendar) from Cold Magic by Kate Elliott.
The world of Cold Magic is our own. Except, you know, for the magic, the cold, the salt ghouls who took over Africa, the Malinese who immigrated with all their wealth and changed the political balance in Europe, the surviving Roman Empire, the glacier that covers Scandinavia and the rest of the north and the dinosaur-descended trolls who live in North America. Cold Magic has a great world, in my mind, that changes some fundamentals and drives those fundamentals to large-scale change millennia later. Another thing that really gets me excited is that it's a world that's on the brink of mass movement politics and the industrial revolution, and a Napoleon-like character making waves.Apart from the physical, the spirit realm is well-represented and so far, Elliott seems to have a firm grasp of where she wants to take it.
Terra GirlGenius (or whatever) from Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio.
The world in Girl Genius is in the genre of gaslamp fantasy (earlier steampunk) but with the essential ingredient of MAD SCIENCE! to spice it up a bit. Britannia has a sunken empire with a power-mad queen,, no one has managed to travel to America and back for years, small-time sparks go insane and create various abominations to gods and nature, warrior princesses from hidden nations roam the countryside in traveling circuses, and Pax Wulfenbach keeps Europa relatively calm. That's the world we're thrown into and gets to see through the eyes of Agatha Heterodyne, heir of long-lost heroes. Unlike the first two worlds, the world of Girl Genius is not particularly famed for logical consistency, opting instead for BATSHIT INSANE, and it is completely wonderful.At the moment, they are about to wake a long slumbering insane castle to protect themselves from the giant airship that is Castle Wulfenbach. Also dragons and mind-controlling aunts. Though I live just about everything about the world, the series keeps offering up mysteries to which I want answers which makes the world even better. And I can't wait for the battle that will ensue between Zeetha, warrior princess, and Bang, pirate queen.
The Universe of Warhammer 40k by Games Workshop.
The universe in Warhammer 40k is crazy. The setting is Gothic science-fantasy on a galactic scale, and it features a theo-fascist Imperium of Mankind, who can be seen as the "good guys" of the setting, except for sacrificing 10 000 people to their undead emperor a day, preferring to wipe out the population of a whole planet rather than accept the risk of heresy, who keep scientific advancement suppressed and in the hands of techno-priests, and other general insanity. Of course, when your enemies are the forces of Chaos who can take over people's minds and invade worlds with demons, fungus-based orks who pillage worlds for fun, undead mechanical beings, an alien insect-like species that live only for feeding, and the other unpleasantries of that universe, maybe that approach makes sense (not really). In truth, I probably just like it for the insane quotes the franchise produces."An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded."
Arda by JRR Tolkien.
One of the most successful fictional worlds ever. Though I have my problems with the books Tolkien produced, I can still lose several hours reading wikis and other sources about Middle-earth, the history of the elves, the curse of Fëanor, and everything else Tolkien wove into a great mythological whole.The World of The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Though the sci-fi universe she created with the Dendarii (Miles Vorkosigan/Naismith) series is more popular, and though I like that a lot as well, Lois McMaster Bujold really got me with the world in Curse of Chalion, though mostly because of the theology. The three books in the series highlight heroes that grapple with great problems and the questionable blessing of sainthood, with the gods of that world trying to reach into the world through them to bring about their wanted end. Though not particularly well-developed, getting to see her world through the eyes of her ever-cynical protagonists makes it a joy to experience, and the five gods of Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, and Bastard make for an interesting group and theological setting.There are plenty of other worlds I have enjoyed over the years, and series like Babylon 5, Mass Effect, The Fourlands by Steph Swainston (who takes the fantastic to the next level with gardens of meat!), The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, the large, sprawling mess of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and the interesting magic system and depressing world of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, but on the whole the worlds above ar the ones I've spent the most time thinking about, at least recently.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
I like characters to fight their story
I finished watching the anime Princess Tutu the other day, and it made me a bit more aware of what exactly I love about my favourite anime (and possibly favourite serialized work overall), Revolutionary Girl Utena. Princess Tutu is about a town that has fallen halfway into the world of stories, with the main story called The Prince and the Raven. The prince could only trap the (obviously evil, as ravens are) raven by using his own heart, leaving it scattered in the town. So the prince lives, devoid of almost all emotions, protected by his knight from the story (doomed to die at the claws of the raven), and with the raven's daughter hovering around him, looking to claim his love. You know, a fairy-tale. Into this story comes a brave duck who wants to help the prince so much that she's turned into a girl to be able to do it, as well as getting the powers of ballet, as so commonly happens.
More to the point, the story of Princess Tutu revolves around how set in stone a story is. The main antagonist in Princess Tutu isn't necessarily the raven, but the storyteller whose influence still shines through in every part of the town. The characters try to break free from the confines of the tragedy that the storyteller has made for them, especially the knight in finding a new purpose after having avoided a glorious death. It's about characters refusing to be defined by a story and roles others have written for them, whether consciously or not. In Princess Tutu, however, unlike Revolutionary Girl Utena, the story is a bit more straightforward; we know that the antagonist is the storyteller (who is a character himself, after all), at the end the characters hew quite closely to the roles they were supposed to play, having only replaced the storyteller with a more benevolent writer, and it's more the story that has been challenged, rather than what happens in Utena.
With the ending of Revolutionary Girl Utena, what is challenged is more completely the roles and archetypes that the characters are assigned by the story as it's "meant" to be told. There's no official storyteller who believes himself to be in total control, it's understood by the main players that Utena, for instance, has agency, but they believe that in the end she, and everyone else, must conform to the roles set. As a viewer, you are also led to believe that Utena should be the prince of the tale, with her princess and enemy (the evil one, the witch), and that's what you're supposed to root for. It's quite brilliant when the most visible antagonists use the approach of trying to get Utena to be their princess to defeat her, putting them as the prince and turning Utena's princess into a witch (since there can be only one princess, after all). Revolutionary Girl Utena uses the core concepts, the brave prince, the beautiful princess, and the evil witch, of fairy-tales, but doesn't otherwise use fairy tales as much as Princess Tutu, yet manages to thoroughly penetrate the problems of these archetypes when applied to characters who are multi-faceted. And in the end, instead of more or less going with the brave prince rescuing a princess, Revolutionary Girl Utena manages to deliver a message that what's wrong is not if the wrong person wins, but that limiting ourselves to roles and archetypes is what should be fought to the last breath. And that's what I love more than anything.
More to the point, the story of Princess Tutu revolves around how set in stone a story is. The main antagonist in Princess Tutu isn't necessarily the raven, but the storyteller whose influence still shines through in every part of the town. The characters try to break free from the confines of the tragedy that the storyteller has made for them, especially the knight in finding a new purpose after having avoided a glorious death. It's about characters refusing to be defined by a story and roles others have written for them, whether consciously or not. In Princess Tutu, however, unlike Revolutionary Girl Utena, the story is a bit more straightforward; we know that the antagonist is the storyteller (who is a character himself, after all), at the end the characters hew quite closely to the roles they were supposed to play, having only replaced the storyteller with a more benevolent writer, and it's more the story that has been challenged, rather than what happens in Utena.
With the ending of Revolutionary Girl Utena, what is challenged is more completely the roles and archetypes that the characters are assigned by the story as it's "meant" to be told. There's no official storyteller who believes himself to be in total control, it's understood by the main players that Utena, for instance, has agency, but they believe that in the end she, and everyone else, must conform to the roles set. As a viewer, you are also led to believe that Utena should be the prince of the tale, with her princess and enemy (the evil one, the witch), and that's what you're supposed to root for. It's quite brilliant when the most visible antagonists use the approach of trying to get Utena to be their princess to defeat her, putting them as the prince and turning Utena's princess into a witch (since there can be only one princess, after all). Revolutionary Girl Utena uses the core concepts, the brave prince, the beautiful princess, and the evil witch, of fairy-tales, but doesn't otherwise use fairy tales as much as Princess Tutu, yet manages to thoroughly penetrate the problems of these archetypes when applied to characters who are multi-faceted. And in the end, instead of more or less going with the brave prince rescuing a princess, Revolutionary Girl Utena manages to deliver a message that what's wrong is not if the wrong person wins, but that limiting ourselves to roles and archetypes is what should be fought to the last breath. And that's what I love more than anything.
I love Swedish fathers
I know it's trite, and that it's true that fathers sometimes have to do way less than mothers to get a hardy "well done" from the crowd, and it remains a fact that women spend more time on domestic work, especially after a couple has children, and finally, men only take out 24% of the total parental leave. Be that as it may, seeing that one guy on the subway the other day who had a BabyBjörn on his chest and another one on his back while everyone were in heavy winter clothes just made me really happy. Having a chat with a co-worker who will take his 8.5 months of parental leave starting this week also added to my general sense of happiness about how men's share of nurturing parenting is increasing, which I think is a good thing for children, men, women, and society as a whole.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Unwanted Pregnancies Should Be Rare. Abortions Should Be Safe and Legal.
Let me start off by saying that of course I'm against cancer surgery. I mean, it's an invasive procedure that no one wants to do, so why would anyone proclaim themselves to be in favour of cancer surgery?
Okay, so it might be that I've been reading a bit much about abortion recently and am starting to get annoyed at how many people who really need to point out that they're totally not "pro-abortion". I suppose I get the urge to do so, but it gets a bit silly when we consider just about any kind of medical intervention: in the ideal world we wouldn't have to do them because there would not exist any reason to. It's kind of redundant.
Personally, I find safe abortion to be a wonderful invention that has improved the lives of countless women, whether they needed it because they didn't want to have children or because there was a medical emergency that necessitated it. I don't think we should have to tiptoe around how much better a world with abortions is than one without it. I suppose it is possible to envision a world where we've gotten rid of unwanted pregnancy, but we've certainly never had such a world, and it's a far way off today. Preventing unwanted pregnancies is an important public health objective, however, and is definitely something we should work towards and then no one would need abortions. It's just too bad that the people who proclaim to be against abortions do not seem to care to do anything useful about it.
On another note, I hope that a restrictive exception-based approach to termination (in Ireland's case abortion is allowed to protect the "life but not health" of the mother) is an exceedingly poor approach to take, whether it's a ludicrous provision about allowing it in cases of rape (proven how, exactly) or when it leaves doctors wondering whether a situation fits the legal definition of life-threatening. Of course, in the case of Savita's tragic death, it might have been the influence of the Catholic approach that lead to an all-too-late intervention, rather than the unsettled legal situation, per se.
The link about the Catholic approach is specifically about the US, and I certainly don't know if it's similar in other parts of the world, but if it is, I hope pregnant women who get health problems stay away from Catholic hospitals. This harrowing account will definitely stick with me:
Okay, so it might be that I've been reading a bit much about abortion recently and am starting to get annoyed at how many people who really need to point out that they're totally not "pro-abortion". I suppose I get the urge to do so, but it gets a bit silly when we consider just about any kind of medical intervention: in the ideal world we wouldn't have to do them because there would not exist any reason to. It's kind of redundant.
Personally, I find safe abortion to be a wonderful invention that has improved the lives of countless women, whether they needed it because they didn't want to have children or because there was a medical emergency that necessitated it. I don't think we should have to tiptoe around how much better a world with abortions is than one without it. I suppose it is possible to envision a world where we've gotten rid of unwanted pregnancy, but we've certainly never had such a world, and it's a far way off today. Preventing unwanted pregnancies is an important public health objective, however, and is definitely something we should work towards and then no one would need abortions. It's just too bad that the people who proclaim to be against abortions do not seem to care to do anything useful about it.
On another note, I hope that a restrictive exception-based approach to termination (in Ireland's case abortion is allowed to protect the "life but not health" of the mother) is an exceedingly poor approach to take, whether it's a ludicrous provision about allowing it in cases of rape (proven how, exactly) or when it leaves doctors wondering whether a situation fits the legal definition of life-threatening. Of course, in the case of Savita's tragic death, it might have been the influence of the Catholic approach that lead to an all-too-late intervention, rather than the unsettled legal situation, per se.
The link about the Catholic approach is specifically about the US, and I certainly don't know if it's similar in other parts of the world, but if it is, I hope pregnant women who get health problems stay away from Catholic hospitals. This harrowing account will definitely stick with me:
I'll never forget this; it was awful—I had one of my partners accept this patient at 19 weeks. The pregnancy was in the vagina. It was over… . And so he takes this patient and transferred her to [our] tertiary medical center, which I was just livid about, and, you know, “we're going to save the pregnancy.” So of course, I'm on call when she gets septic, and she's septic to the point that I'm pushing pressors on labor and delivery trying to keep her blood pressure up, and I have her on a cooling blanket because she's 106 degrees. And I needed to get everything out. And so I put the ultrasound machine on and there was still a heartbeat, and [the ethics committee] wouldn't let me because there was still a heartbeat. This woman is dying before our eyes. I went in to examine her, and I was able to find the umbilical cord through the membranes and just snapped the umbilical cord and so that I could put the ultrasound—“Oh look. No heartbeat. Let's go.” She was so sick she was in the [intensive care unit] for about 10 days and very nearly died… . She was in DIC [disseminated intravascular coagulopathy]… . Her bleeding was so bad that the sclera, the white of her eyes, were red, filled with blood… . And I said, “I just can't do this. I can't put myself behind this. This is not worth it to me.” That's why I left.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Ah, fuck anime
I can take a lot of stuff that I don't necessarily find good in terms of gender politics, I've watched series with plenty of eye candy and varying degrees of fanservice whether in terms of visual style or character quirks. Stuff like Ikki Tousen, Re:Cutie Honey, K-On!, or a certain series that will not be named. After a while, that kind of thing just rolls off me if there are other qualities of the show that I like enough to keep watching, and to the extent that the existence of said gender politics, I can ignore and criticize it as I see fit.
So maybe it's weird for me to want to flip a damn table when I see a female character unquestioningly go stand at the stove and cook food for the male characters who lounge around a table waiting for her to finish. It might just be because it's reflects the fact that domestic work is something that overwhelmingly falls on women in pretty much every country, while the existence of super-powerful people who punch each others' clothes of is more restricted to excessively silly action shows, grounded in male gaze and viewer-attracting calculation though it may be. It might also be that I'm feeling extra sensitive about the topic in a Japanese context at the moment after reading Susan D. Holloway's Women and Family in Contemporary Japan, where the situation for some mothers in Japan is analysed based on a set of extensive interviews with mothers in Osaka. It also provided a historical background and left me fuming at the conscious policy to restrict women to domestic and part-time work, unquestioning assumptions about gender roles, and the smothering of the ambitions of young women on the altar of said gender roles, and to see part of that play out in a series I'm watching pushes my buttons a bit extra right now.
I should probably be clear in that there weren't that much in Holloway's book that was new to me, but having it all laid out at once does give it an added weight.
So maybe it's weird for me to want to flip a damn table when I see a female character unquestioningly go stand at the stove and cook food for the male characters who lounge around a table waiting for her to finish. It might just be because it's reflects the fact that domestic work is something that overwhelmingly falls on women in pretty much every country, while the existence of super-powerful people who punch each others' clothes of is more restricted to excessively silly action shows, grounded in male gaze and viewer-attracting calculation though it may be. It might also be that I'm feeling extra sensitive about the topic in a Japanese context at the moment after reading Susan D. Holloway's Women and Family in Contemporary Japan, where the situation for some mothers in Japan is analysed based on a set of extensive interviews with mothers in Osaka. It also provided a historical background and left me fuming at the conscious policy to restrict women to domestic and part-time work, unquestioning assumptions about gender roles, and the smothering of the ambitions of young women on the altar of said gender roles, and to see part of that play out in a series I'm watching pushes my buttons a bit extra right now.
I should probably be clear in that there weren't that much in Holloway's book that was new to me, but having it all laid out at once does give it an added weight.
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