Category: General

digitaldiscipline:

fozmeadows:

shinykari:

fozmeadows:

The point at which men feel compelled to make a separate, masculine fandom name for themselves, the better to differentiate themselves from other, presumably female fans inhabiting the same space, is the point at which they feel their gender to be not only relevant to their expression of fandom, but so important that it needs its own word, lest we confuse them with women.

The fact that men seem only to be interested in doing this on entering traditionally or predominantly female fandoms says a lot about the logic behind it. Where fans are presumed to be male, there’s no need to assert their maleness with a masculine name; where fans are presumed to be female, however, they strive to differentiate themselves, not only to void the risk of being mistaken for women, but to rebrand the actual property as being for men. 

If such men were genuinely interested in disproving gender binaries and the sort of sexist logic that tries to steer their tastes in other directions, as is sometimes claimed, they wouldn’t feel the need to establish that the thing they like has masculine properties, as though they couldn’t or wouldn’t like it otherwise. This isn’t like the oft-ignored female fans of comics and videogames asserting, rightly, that such things are for everyone, which category happens to include them; it’s men expressly stating that an originally or traditionally feminine property isn’t really feminine, the better to make it for men.   

Following this logic, female-dominated fandoms are only worth joining if men can make absolutely sure that their support isn’t confused with female support, or their interests with female interests, the better to assert their more selective ownership of the property. Crucially, this move also has the effect of forcing women to either accept the gendering of the fandom and adopt their own, feminine nomenclature – possibly one the men themselves have created, heedless of the fact that it was irrelevant prior to their insistence that it wasn’t, as per the term pegasister – or to refuse the binary and so have the male term become synonymous with the fandom as a whole, as though male interest is the only kind that matters.

tl;dr: If you’re a guy and your first thought on approaching a new fandom is “how do I make a name that describes my interest in this thing while letting everyone know that I’m a dude”, then do us all a favour and stay the fuck out of it.

conceivablyanyone said in tags: #I think about this all the time  #it’s like guyliner or bromance  #why is masculinity so fragile that simply being associated with something that girls like is a huge threat to it  

I have an answer to this:

While English isn’t a gendered language in the sense of having a gendered grammar, like Spanish or German, we nonetheless have many words that possess both masculine and feminine forms, like actor and actress, author and authoress. Often in these instances, the masculine form of a word is synonymous with its neutral, default or original form, in keeping with the fact that feminine variants were later linguistic additions; often made, it must be said, not just because women had started doing a thing they’d previously been prevented from doing, but because men at the time wanted to establish that female efforts at the same pursuits were different (and likely inferior) to their own. 

Thus: women aren’t actors, they’re actresses; women aren’t authors, they’re authoresses, and while some of these feminine variants have more linguistic traction than others – we still say actress, but authoress sounds quaint and sexist – it’s noteworthy that there’s no commensurate tradition for making masculine variants of female forms. Nursing, for instance, is assumed to be a traditionally feminine career, but while we sometimes specify ‘male nurse’ as distinct from just ‘nurse’ – this being a rare professional default with a feminine implication – we’ve never gone so far as to make a whole new word for it.

Which is, I suspect, because there are so few historical instances of men moving into female spheres, rather than vice versa, until very, very recently. But now that it’s started to happen, what do we see? A discomfort with the idea of feminine terminology doubling as neutral. Rather than accepting that words like ‘romance’ and ‘eyeliner’ can be applied equally to men, we’re creating masculine variants whose express purpose is to prevent the traditionally feminine terms from becoming universal. Slowly, surely, we’ve been shedding those early feminine -ess words from the language, dropping them as we’ve come to see the lack of utility (and the surfeit of sexism) in unnecessarily distinguishing gender in such instances, thereby reverting to using the traditionally masculine forms as universal. But now that we have the opportunity to do the same with feminine forms, we’re baulking.

What’s most interesting about this, though, is that in both instances, it’s seemingly men creating and sustaining all the separate, unnecessarily gendered terms: first to deny women full membership of historically male professions and groups, and now to prevent themselves, however ineffectually, from being associated with traditionally feminine concepts.

Because language cooties.

… that is a fantastic goddamn analysis, Foz.

joichang:

riddlemetom:

unfollower:

I like how sweden just decided one day that gender is fucking bullshit so they got a gender neutral pronoun and stopped separating boy clothes and girl clothes and have pictures of spiderman pushing a baby stroller in a toy magazine why isn’t every country like sweden

you push that stroller sassy spiderman!

you fight those bad guys girlfriend!

you style that hair lil’ dude!

and in that moment, i swear we all wanted to be swedish.

rubenesque-as-fuck:

I’m pretty sure being an adult is just doing the things that need to be done, often while muttering, “I don’t wanna” over and over under my breath. 

So, I registered to submit things to (attempt to) obtain my nursing registration in Washington State. Having gone through roughly the same process for BC I figured I kinda knew what I was going to need. So I was all set to fill in tedious paperwork and submit many cheques to all my unis saying ‘please send them transcripts, again’. I’d had a look at the notes and was all prepared for everything. The mission ‘get US registration’ was a ‘Go’.

Except one thing.

One thing I’d somehow missed.

They want my High School Graduation Certificate (or equivalent). Unfortunately, the examination board that assessed my ‘A’ Levels is long gone, and now I’m waiting to hear whether the company that now handles that ex-registration board’s replacement certificates need me to pay separately for my ‘AS’ and my ‘A’ level certificates.

It’s not that it will take a long time. All in all, including the ‘normal response time for enquiries’ (because I’d rather not pay nearly 100 if I can only pay half that) it will take a month or so. Assuming they get back within their ‘normal response time for enquiries’. And in the grand scheme of things that’s not a long time to wait. But it’s irritating because mentally I was all prepared for a step forward, and what I got was a month-long-step-backwards.

It’s also doubly irritating because Nikki pointed us at a means of getting Rebecca across to the US that’s potentially more convenient, albeit more paperwork. I’d got all excited, was feeling inspired, and then shot down in flames.

Feh, is my general opinion on the situation. Feh.

Anonymous:

GNU Terry Prachett

archwrites:

copperbadge:

GNU Terry Pratchett

GNU Terry Pratchett

tinierpurplefishes:

Pi! Also Pie! When I went into the bakery, they had one slice left, and it was just the kind I wanted :)