And the Movie Was Pretty Good Otherwise

So there's a bit in Funny People that got my attention. One of the subplots is a pretty standard loser-comedy romance: Boy meets girl, boy turns out to be way too shy and awkward to actually interact with girl, roommate sleeps with girl. Pretty standard stuff. All you need is a discussion on how girls only sleep with jerks and shun guys who actually care about them, and you're set. And Funny People does hang around in that territory for a while.

But then . . . the guy in question realizes that he's done something weird by getting mad at this girl he hardly knows for sleeping with his roommate, apologizes, and then ends up going on a date with her, wherein making out and perhaps other things happen. The moral of the story is: "Of course women won't sleep with you if you never ask. Having actual conversations with them helps, too."

It was very weird. Not only did the movie demonstrate why the Nice Guy routine doesn't work, it did so in-character and made something of a big deal out of it. Which I wasn't expecting. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. Really quite refreshing.

I Am Not Dumb and I Must Scream

I am not stupid.

My mother is not stupid. My grandmothers, my aunts, my cousins are not stupid. I have no stupid friends. (Even the guys.)

Women are not stupid.

I watch General Hospital. I play The Sims. I've fainted. I bake. I feel emotions other than rage and triumph.

I'm still not stupid.

Maybe I am a mutant. Maybe the fact that I play Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, (it has math!) Oblivion, and Civilization, that I don't read romance novels, watch Grey's Anatomy, or talk about Botox, that I have aced every standardized test I have ever taken, can do Calculus, and help my boyfriend with his math homework means that I am part of that cadre of "brilliant outliers."

Maybe.

Or maybe, just maybe, gender is a little more complicated that brain scans and IQ tests. Maybe there are more kinds of intelligence than abstract logic and suppressing your emotions. Maybe there are a lot of women who are good at "male" things--and a lot of men who are good at "female" things.

Maybe gender and intelligence are both way too messy and complicated to declare that "women are dumb" with a handful of studies and some circumstantial evidence.

I am not "dim." Not deep down, not even a little bit, not even secretly.

I live in a society that undervalues what women are good at, and then tells them to go take care of "men and children and the weak" because they obviously aren't useful for anything else. I live in a society that is obsessed with measuring and testing and putting people into categories so it can confirm what it already knows about race and gender and class.

But I'm not stupid.

And Charlotte Allen isn't, either.

IQ Tests Are Bogus Anyway

Anyone else been keeping up on the Watson debacle? (If you haven't been, check out Watson to Africa: You're All Dumb. Lots of nice links, get the whole story.)

My first reaction to this is: seriously, what century is he living in?

Second reaction: Please, everyone, can we quit obsessing about intelligence? As a concept? The most important part of a person is not how smart they are. It's not the be all, end all, absolute measure of human value.

Yes, parts of Africa are messed up. Lots of places in the world are messed up. News flash: Smart people are also capable of colossal screw-ups. Intelligence is not an absolute indicator of success, and success is not an absolute indicator of intelligence. Not on a continental level, not a national level, not on a personal level.

So please, stop using intelligence as a crutch for your outdated ideologies.

Not That I Don't Like Drow . . .

What. The. Hell.

Drow. Jeez. Bit of an 80s flashback there. Some of it is kinda cool, but some of it is scary.

And not even good scary.

Lo! Actual discussion of the topic!

Unfortunately, There Are No Flying Cars Here

I was having a discussion today (wouldn't call it an argument; that requires a certain measure of coherence) when the other person involved (in the middle of a long, uninteresting monologue) said something along the lines of "in every society in history, men and women have had different roles."

Allow me to introduce you to this marvelous new thing we're living in. I like to call it "the future." Unlike every other society in history, we have iPods!

What's that, you say? You don't believe technological advancement has anything to do with societal change? What do you think democracy is, then? An unfortunate reversion from humanity's natural state of rule by whoever had the luckiest grandparents?

Sure, maybe "in every society in history," men and women really did have meaningfully different societal roles. Anything's possible. Why, exactly, are you holding that up as some kind of ideal? This is America. We believe in progress.

Here in the marvelous world of the future, most major forms of economic activity don't depend on how hard you can stab things.

This Is What's Called "Male As Default"

I am Officially Irritated.

Finally got on the Wizards website. The Race article? Very cool. The Class article? Very, very cool. I like fighters. I like this vision of fighters. We're only on the idea stage now, but these are ideas I can work with.

But the teaser video. Indeed, the teaser video.



There are no women in this video. Zero. There are, in this video, sixteen players of Dungeons and Dragons, and not a single one of them is female. Not even in the fancy future 2008 video.

Why are there no women in this video? Women play D&D. Lots of women play lots of D&D. And they spend money on it, too. But not in this video.

No. What this video says to me is, "Women? Women don't play D&D. They didn't play D&D in the past. And they definitely won't play D&D in the future."

This does not make me happy.

You May Perhaps Have Read This In The Newspaper

Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?

(Hint: No.)

Revolutionaries

Watched Pan's Labyrinth. Great movie. With help from Harry Potter and Zompist, it's triggered a couple of thoughts.

The basic struggle--political, moral--is between those who think that people are equal, and those who don't. However. The very act of fighting for the prior conviction tends to convince people of the latter.

People in power, as a general rule, think they're better than other people. Why else would they be in charge? Those who challenge them, then, tend to hold the opposite conviction.

But revolutionaries are not average people. And it's one small step from "not average" to "better than average."

I don't know which side I'm on.

I don't know which side I want to be on.

I don't even know which side I'm supposed to be on.

This Feels Like A Manifesto

I don't use the phrase "spitting mad" nearly enough.

It's not like I don't have occasion to. Take this Livejournal entry. A fairly typical demonstration of female objectification, notable primarily for the excellence of the visual aids, and the obtuseness of the commentary. Spit-inducing enough in its own right.

But scroll ye down to the comments section. Therein, you will find similarly familiar responses--and the inevitable admonition that we're all taking this too seriously, because it's "just fiction."

Excuse me? When did you join the human race?

I run into this every single day. Not just in a context of feminism--everywhere.

"It's just fiction."

"It's not important."

"It's not real."

"It's just art."

"Spend your time doing something important."

Well, sorry, but fiction is important. Stories are important.

Art is important.

Damn, This Is a Good Website

Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed)

Geekery and feminism, all in one blog.

We need more of this.