Good News – My hosting people are being extremely helpful, they take regular backups and they’re going to try and restore ASAP

UPDATE: the site has been restored, but I’m keeping it in maintenance mode until I figure out what’s going on

ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s all sorted!

The facts show that only 33 per cent of the world is Christian, and in NSW a quarter of children choose not to attend lessons on theological scripture. I think it is possible to be non-religious and a good person.

By all means, Mr Nile, you go out and be as Christian as you want; I respect that entirely. But that does not give you and your supporters the right to attempt to shape a future generation of adults in your mould – that is a religious conservative.

Parenting – your doin it rite. [yes grammar pedants that was deliberate]

I ran my first anti-sexism workshop for children last week. They were a Montessori class of 5-6 year olds and I concentrated on questioning gender stereotypes, identifying sexism and a little bit of acceptance stuff of gender queer identities. I didn’t use those terms though, I talked instead about people thinking there are rules about boys and girls and how these aren’t really rules, and everyone should get to choose for themselves what they like and how they like to look.

It all came about after I heard about some worrying examples of ‘gender policing’ going down in my daughter’s class. I approached her teacher to see whether she had any plans for tackling this stuff with her class and she asked me if I’d like to run a workshop for them. I am really grateful to her for that invitation; this was a lovely opportunity not only to help turn something bad around in my daughter’s class but to see what other young children think about sexism. It was pretty fascinating.

The workshop went really well – the kids were really receptive and by the conclusion of the workshop were readily able to spot sexism in toy catalogues presented to them and were happily repeating phrases in their analysis that I’d been using throughout the workshop, like “colours are for everyone”, “feelings are for everyone” and “toys are for everyone”.

In many ways the children were a lot less weighed down by stereotypes than I’d expected – my first question to the class was “can boys like pink” and the class consensus was a quick and resounding “yes”. It was difficult to tell whether they were particularly progressive children (ie. maybe those enrolled in a Montessori school are not representative of their peers), or if they are too young yet to have met some of the more rigid ideas about gender. For instance, another question we discussed was whether boys can cry and the kids were like ‘have you seen our playground at lunch time?’ whereas once we got to the slide with pictures of men crying they paused. In fact, one boy was quite challenged by those images and my accompanying statement that “everyone cries sometimes” and told us emphatically that his father has never cried. I suggested that this was something worth asking his father about – when was the last time he had cried. This same boy gasped and covered his eyes with his hands when a slide later came up showing pictures of boys playing with dolls, wearing ‘princess’ clothes and learning ballet. It was an impressively horrified reaction. He was an interesting little boy, and brave to share his reactions so honestly given he was increasingly at odds with the class in his views. I would have loved to explore his responses more, we did a little bit of talking about them, but there is a limit to how much you can unpack something challenging with a child you don’t know very well and also to how much you can focus on one child while also keeping hold of the attention of a class. Sometimes you’ve just gotta plant the seed and leave it to grow or wilt elsewhere.

As progressive as they were (‘can girls have short hair’, ‘can girls run fast’, ‘can girls do skateboarding tricks’, and ‘can boys grow up to be daddies who stay home and look after their children’ all received enthusiastic endorsements from the class), there was still plenty of sexism in their thinking to keep the workshop rolling. For instance, “can girls be the boss or are boys the leaders?” got some disturbing responses. However, once I started testing their thinking with some real world examples they were quick to nominate examples of their own of female leaders. They caught on fast. Working with children that age is fabulous, they’re totally guileless. They don’t try to second guess your workshop or get jaded and cynical with you, they just leap right in with their honest thoughts – and so many of them are ripe for the unpacking. For example, showing the children an image of two medical professionals doing similar tasks, one male and one female, and asking them which was the nurse and which was the doctor produced a clear and probably unsurprising result. The woman is the nurse, they decided and the man was the doctor, when in fact in this particular example it was the other way around.

Some of the work I did with them about questioning sexism and stereotypes was from the perspective of looking at how ‘appropriate expressions of gender’ change across time and place and therefore aren’t absolutes. A great example for this was looking at ‘boy clothes’ and exploring the many skirt and dress-like clothing options worn by males in countries outside Australia – Scotland, Fiji, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Greece, many African countries etc. Another example I talked through with them was the history of ‘pink for baby girls’ and ‘blue for baby boys’ and how it was once the reverse.

Towards the end of the workshop we looked at some photos of androgynous and gender-queer children and adults and I talked about how you need to get to know someone for who they are rather than knowing people as a ‘girl’ or a ‘boy’. Having unpacked so many gender stereotypes along the way the children were entirely unphased by this component. It was pretty delightful to watch – no rejection of the images, not even mild giggling – just some nodding and quiet attention.

This week I am running the workshop all over again for another class of children the same age and it will be interesting to see how they compare. Wish me luck.

Cross-posted at blue milk.

(Image credit for the illustration in this post).

Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?

image credit: futurlec.com

I would have thought that you might have stopped digging now on this gobsmacking line you’ve been running about how vewy, vewy difficult it is for anybody to detect an invisible, odourless gas, but not only are you still insisting that CO2 is weightless, you keep on implying that it cannot be detected. Doesn’t anybody in the Liberal Party know how to use a search engine? Because finding these sold online took me all of 2 minutes.

Of course, carbon dioxide is also not the only carbon emission that will be being regulated under the new carbon pricing scheme, another fact of which you are no doubt well aware but are choosing to simply ignore in favour of simplistic misrepresentation.

Your contempt for the voters of this nation is outrageous.

Having only started listening fairly recently, I compiled their back issues into four audiobooks (it was way too big for just one), and am working my through, and loving it.

Galactic Suburbia is an Australia feminist speculative fiction podcast, hosted by three switched-on, outspoken, insightful women:

- Alisa Krasnostein (girliejones), owner of Twelfth Planet Press, a Perth indie SF press

- Tansy Rayner Roberts, Tasmanian author of Power and Majesty and The Shattered City, who has guested at Hoyden and also here at the Foothpath-Hogging Menace

- and Alex, aka Random Alex, a Melburnian fan

Alex, Tansy and Alisa discuss, pontificate on, debate, and squee over SF news and awards, talk about the culture they’ve been consuming lately, review various SF texts, admit to their feminist imperfections, and chat about cons and stereotypes and discrimination and life and their pet subjects. It’s not all feminism all the time, but if you’re not on board with a critical feminist look at the field, this podcast is definitely not for you. (Or maybe it is – you could do with some educating, is all I’m saying.)

I love it that the show is long. They talk all the time about how they’re going overlength, but I love it. You’re not getting soundbites or boiled-down un-nuanced positions; you’re hearing three people (and sometimes their guests) hammering out the nitty gritty of their topics, examining them from every angle, and sometimes changing their minds or refining their positions over time. You get to hear them debating in an informed and passionate way – and sometimes you might find yourself arguing with them, as if they can hear you, when you’re out in public with your headphones on, not that that’s ever happened to me or anything. (I may have also burst out laughing at some points.)

And I love it that the three of them are coming from different places in the SF world – authoring, publishing, and consuming – though of course they’re all fans as well. And that they are fans of different aspects of SF, from ‘hard’ engineering science fiction to magical fantasy. And that you feel like you’re hearing part of their life, instead of actors in a studio: sometimes the baby cries, sometimes the dog barks, sometimes they need to take a break to take care of things. And most of all I love it that it feels like I’m sitting in a living room with them over cake and cocktails, and talking and joking and ranting and arguing about the cultural and fan world that simultaneously captivates and frustrates us immensely.

Also, there is cake.

My only personal criticism might be that sometimes they get to the end of a discussion about a book, and they don’t repeat the name and author so that I can make a proper mental note of it, having had my interest piqued by the discussion. Of course, I am probably just too lazy to go and look at the show notes for myself when I get home from my walk, except by then I’ve forgotten about it. Hrm. Whoops.

Example episode blurbs:

“In which we hit and run the Locus Recommended Reading List, tackle e-books and piracy, and delve into the knotty issue of religion in science fiction.”

“In which we bid farewell to Joanna Russ, talk e-publishing (again) and Alisa reads a real live actual book. With bonus raving about Doctor Who and Alistair Reynolds – in other words, another episode of Galactic Suburbia.”

“In which we surf the wave of feminist SF news that has deluged the internet this fortnight, plus Margaret Brundage, why YA books are allowed to be as dark as they want to be, the Tiptree Award, Connie Willis, were-thylacines, Ted Chiang and Alex finally discovers Bujold…”

“In which we have run out of our supply of feminist ire for 2010 and are reduced to being happy bunnies with rainbows and vanilla sprinkles. Also, we discuss re-reading, re-watching, and our (apparently unhealthy) emotional attachment to beloved books. With zombies.”

Get your Galactic Suburbia here.

You can also catch the team at Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth, where their goal is to, with a few other reviewers, “read as many SF, fantasy and horror stories as humanly possible every year”.

—

Footnote: Also, I’m really sorry – I’m reviewing and recommending this even though I’m aware there are no transcripts. I think transcripts would be amazing. I suspect Alex, Alisa and Tansy think transcripts would be amazing. At two+ hours per podcast, it would be a massive, massive undertaking to have transcripts produced, and I have no idea if there is that sort of volunteer labour available – I know I couldn’t do it.

• Fatness and Rob Ford – Shameless Magazine – your daily dose of fresh feminism for girls and trans youth

– “Rob Ford is fat. And because Rob Ford is fat, much of the criticism he receives, from otherwise progressive-minded folks, is tinged (or outright doused) with fatphobia.” – WARNING ON COMMENTS – THE FATPHOBICS ARE OUT IN FORCE

• Maria Sveland on Feminism | FiveBooks | The Browser

– “The feminist author chooses liberating literature for women, from Virginia Woolf to Erica Jong. She says that men still don’t share equal responsibility in the home, and that life after divorce is easier”

• Stop putting bathing suit pictures on Facebook, you trollops.

– “But look, if dudes see women as not-quite-human, what you wear isn’t going to change that. And if it does change it, then dude has a problem. Why do you want to hang out with a guy who sees you as a “full human being” only so long as you’re wearing a loose floor-length skirt and an oversize turtleneck?”

• Nope

– “Telling people to “smile” and/or “laugh” is not, in fact, nice.”

• Dan Savage To Rick Santorum: "I Displayed Remarkable Restraint."

– Dan Savage wins this one

• Georgia Rep. Bobby Franklin Found Dead

– “I’m too pissed off about the revisionist history bullshit that the media is pulling with this guy to comment on those things. People are saying that he was kind, gentle, principled and that he was a great man. Fuck that. This is a man who wanted to demand proof of natural miscarriage from women, which is not that easy to prove. He wanted to restrict women’s right to exercise their reproductive freedom. This is a man who demeaned victims of rape. He didn’t want gays openly serving in the military, or getting married. This is not kind, gentle, or great. I don’t know why it’s okay to speak ill of the dead in some cases, but there’s the urge to silence those who are calling out the shit in this case. His ideals and policies, what he wanted for the US, were no better than the Taliban. But somehow, for no good reason, he’s being propped up as an amazing man and politician.”

• A Feminist Visits Comic-Con

– “One thing that struck me over the course of the weekend is how quickly it starts to feel “normal” to see women’s bodies on fetishized display. If I, a card-carrying feminist, become somewhat immune over the course of four days, what does the constant onslaught of female sexual objectification in the wider culture do to people over years?”

• Pirates Have Seized the Ship of State

– “These G.O.P. pirates, yielding to their Tea Party cronies, are giving us a non-choice: We throw everyone overboard who isn’t traveling in first-class or we all walk the plank of debt default.”

• Norway Massacre: Anders Breivik’s Deadly Attack Fueled by Hatred of Women – The Daily Beast

– “Anders Breivik used anger against women to cast himself as a crusader, believing feminism is destroying the West from the inside and creating space for Islamism, says Michelle Goldberg.”

• Economic News About Wealth

– “If the value of your house drops by 40%, and all your wealth is tied up in its equity, what happens to your wealth?”

• inside the mind of a gender traitor

– “The way I am saying all this may make it seem as though the gender traitor is self-aware of what is going on, as if she says to herself “I will trade friendship for my respect of other women”, but that isn’t what is going on at all. She believes everything she says, she just doesn’t pause to examine the troubling aspects of her behavior, or her “friends”, long enough to notice the dynamic at work.”

• All those wizards and dragons

– “A particular sub-branch of fantasy is now what most people associate with it as a whole. That is a shame, considering that of all the forms of fiction, fantasy is the least deserving of this sort of reductive thinking, with plenty more to offer than just wizards and dragons. ”

• How 38 Monks Took on the Funeral Cartel and Won – Conor Friedersdorf – National – The Atlantic

– Carpenter monks want to sell simple, solid wooden caskets without the standard funeral home markup. The State of Louisiana doesn’t want them to. Will this end up setting a Supreme Court precedent?

.. when you said you want to wear white and be a princess for a day?

From here, thanks Kat.

From the depths of a snowy prison, Basement Cat plots revenge

Dogs biting Mailmen are so Last Year

Post your favourite Revenge themed pictures here.

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