I have to say this is probably the weirdest thing I've ever seen:

When I speak to young women about life lessons and TV career choices, I try to check off the basics of the business for them.... But what I find always gets bulging eyes and double takes is when I say something like this as my closer.

"Ladies, one more thing: and perhaps the most important thing I will say here today. If you plan to have a family, please .. PUH-leeease, do NOT forget to get married and have kids. And start now. Even in your 20's!

"Huh? Did she just say that? Doesn't today's woman have options? Doesn't today's woman need to get her career in line before she thinks about getting weighed down by a family?"

Despite the shocked responses I am sure to receive for blogging this, I know that the strategy to "put off" having kids and developing a family is about the most shortsighted concept I have ever witnessed among my colleagues and close friends.

Finding a job is hard enough, but have you ever considered the odds and the challenges of finding a good man?

Bad news, girls. The odds are definitely better on getting the right job than getting a good partner for life. Someone who will grow with you. Someone to develop memories with. Someone who was there in the beginning. Someone who will be there at the end.

Don't push away that chance if you're one of the lucky ones who find that partner. And remember, you can always change a job. I hear it's much harder to switch out a husband.

But let's talk about the greatest gift a woman can receive: being a mommy. For professional women, there simply is NO good time to have a baby. Putting it off only makes the challenges greater. Having babies after 35 increases medical risk and is, lets face it, exhausting. It is also trying on a marriage and a career.

Maybe it's just that I'm not at all in her target audience, not wanting children at all and already being 30 anyway. But I must say that partner finding never worked for me like jobhunting. And I can't imagine that it would be the healthiest and wisest way to pursue having a family to be checking people's credentials as if they were applicants for a position.

And perhaps I'm strange, but at 20 I was a confused virgin who was very scared. I can't imagine how much worse I would've felt if I'd wanted to be a mother and felt intense pressure to "get cracking."

And although I've long since left childfree communities behind, I must say that it always irks me whenever I see phrases that even smell remotely of "the greatest thing a woman can do is be a mommy." First of all, that's terribly cruel to women who are infertile or women who are trans. Why is it that such women are, apparently, missing out on the most important experience of womanhood simply by some crap draw in the life lottery? How does that make any sense?

And second, yes, this author is saying that a child is a gift, rather than that a child is specifically the purpose of a woman's existence. I totally agree that children are gifts. I love them very much. I just don't understand why the only version of that gift that truly counts, that truly fulfills -- a woman? A person born with a uterus and vagina? -- is producing her own offspring. What does that say about those of us who haven't, or can't, or don't want to? Have we missed the meaning of life? And why is it that our own love for and bonds with children cannot be so great a gift? What is this, "sure, you adore your nieces, but that love just isn't enough?" Love is love. What makes it a blessing is that it exists, not what form it takes.

And if "the greatest gift" for one half of humanity is being a biological mother, is the meaning of -- a man's? A person with a penis's? -- life to be a father? Why is that never talked about?

Third, the thing that bothers me the most about this way of talking is that it seems to indicate that a person's greatest accomplishment is reproduction. I don't believe that. I certainly believe that striving to be a good parent gives a wonderful and noble purpose to life, and is absolutely important and absolutely should be valued as much as professional accomplishments. but I don't understand the idea that what we truly are and what matters most about us is not the accomplishments we leave behind, but the humans carrying our genetic material.

Surely creating new life is profoundly fulfilling to those who choose to do it, and surely it is an experience unlike any other. I don't mean to deny that at all.

But surely another, and at least equally important, wonderful thing about parenthood is the same as the wonderful thing about teaching, or counseling, or advocacy work, or even just being a wise and patient friend: the effect we have on someone else's life, the guidance and support and love we offer to another, not just the brute fact of whether we had something to do with that other person's coming into being.

Y'all know those disgusting transphobic radical feminists I rant about periodically?

This time they've stunned even me.

They started a blog called http://belledame222.wordpress.com/

Why is this important? Because Belledame222 is the name of an online friend of mine who, as I and a few others do, engages their bullshit.

They made an entire blog simply to mock her. It's as if they called their blog "TrinityVA" and filled it with rantings to make me look bad.

I... damn. I may be a kinky bastard with an incredible temper who has difficulty not poking at the fail, but that's just... wow.

I just got home from the art supply store. I bought a bunch of purple pastels, because I only had one and I want to do more Transformers fan art and that kind of messes with making good fan art of Decepticons ;-) but wow, pastels are expensive.

I'm trying to figure out which Transformers to draw next. I'm torn between drawing Cyclonus and trying to do something complicated that isn't a portrait. I kind of want to do the latter, but I'm wondering if I should find bigger paper first. The thing about pastels is that they make really fat lines, so it's hard to make something very detailed on small paper.

I also forgot to mention here that I've started putting my fan art on my deviantART, which I didn't used to use for anything but have had for a long time. If you want to see it, it's over here: trinityva.deviantart.com/

I also copied my fanfiction over at my new dreamwidth. I don't know whether I'll put it all there, but I actually really like having a clean space for it. Is it easy for people who don't have dreamwidth accounts to comment over there?

The fanfiction is here: stainless.dreamwidth.org/

A central listing of all the fics can be found here: stainless.dreamwidth.org/685.html

... who the hell is this, and what the hell does she think she's talking about?

This is one reason why I'm unabashedly factional about this stuff. A whole bunch of weird hateful nasty stuff all goes together: hating people who have certain kinks, hating transgendered people, hating sex workers. I don't know why it all goes together like this, but inasmuch as I see it all tied together over and over again, I have no problem opposing it all.

Just... read this.

When I was working at one of my other jobs, one of the things I helped to edit was a paper on veterans' issues. I was really triggered reading parts of it but I kept working, because... you know what? It didn't matter to me. Comfortable me sitting at a desk spending one day shaking and crying was worth it to at least try to help these people, somehow, maybe. And was nothing compared to anything they went through anyway.

And after that day, I was fine. Because it was the least I could do. And because I felt proud of myself for... I don't know. At least trying to do something.

Now I just... hope it mattered.

Is really good. Though it's little lacking in pervertedness. It's more just a good album. That's a bit disappointing, although it's better music than they've ever made before.

Back now. :)

I will be gone for a few days. Try not to blow anything up while I'm gone.

....courtesy of Ren.

In this thread, which is a long one, the absolutely disgusting has occurred. SheHasNoName has asserted that porn has caused as many deaths amid women as occurred in the Holocaust.

That’s right. She is saying porn is responsible things on par with the death of roughly 5.9 million Jews, 2-3 million Soviet P.O.W’s, 1.5 million Romani, 2 million Slavs, 250,000 disabled people, 15,000 homosexuals, and other assorted “impure” peoples.

I asked her to prove this. Which of course she cannot because it is a flat out no holds barred lie that she used for anti porn dramatic effect figuring that no one would call out the pure vileness of her statement. Guess what, she was wrong. And aside from James, that whole lot over there is either letting this slide or supporting her. Her come back is that proving such things would betray the confidentiality of these (apparently) MILLIONS AND MILLION of women. And then fucking Laurelin chimes in and basically tut-tuts me for wanting proof of such an utterly wrong accusation.

This lends me to think these people are not only anti-porn, but anti Jew, anti Soviet POW, anti-Romani, anti-Slav, ableist, homophobic, and anti realizing what a fucking moronic and horrible statement that is.

...Yeah, pretty much. *wince* *rage* I'll never understand why it is that people who could be making cogent points about an industry that, yeah, they have some (but nowhere near as much as they think, IMNSHO) reason to criticize become howling hyenas any time they say anything.

I just had a peek at my flist and noticed someone -- not going to name names -- posted something to the effect of "Every time I see the term 'Transfandom,' I cringe."

Which I understand. A lot of people use "trans" as shorthand for "transgender and/or transsexual," so one often sees "trans folk" and the like used to refer to transgendered and/or transsexual people, "trans stuff" referring to issues relating to such people, etc.

I myself was so used to "trans" used that way that "Transfandom," even when I first saw it, kind of threw me. It sounds a little like it means "fans of trans people." Which in turn sounds vaguely like it means "creepy unwelcome fetishists."

But the thing is... I no longer feel like that. And I'm not sure whether I no longer feel like that because I'm lazy and got used to the fandom's adopted name despite sketchiness, or whether I feel like that because seeing "trans-" used frequently in a different context reminded me that, hey, it doesn't only mean one thing, despite some people shortening it and having gotten used to that.

But I'm thinking it's probably not laziness, and here's why:

There are in fact some words that have changed meaning and now clearly refer to groups of people. I don't see "gay" used frequently to mean "happy," for example. If a group of knitters decides, thanks to general perkiness, to call themselves "The Gay Knitters' Consortium," most people hearing the name will assume that it's a group for knitters of a certain sexual orientation, rather than a group of giggly knitters with sunny dispositions.

However, I'm not sure "trans" is the same. "Trans" doesn't enjoy this widespread understanding of its meaning. I see it a lot in the circles that use it and on the progressive Internet, but it's not, for example, the standard way to talk about a transgendered person in a formal essay or a newspaper article. It hasn't wormed its way into all of the culture, at least not yet.

This is something of a weak point in itself, though, as if trans people claim, for example, that "trans" is the most respectful term to use, or the most inclusive, or the least clinical sounding, or the like, then this objection falls apart. Just because it hasn't caught on outside of certain communities in a widespread way doesn't mean it shouldn't. In fact people who are bigoted and obnoxious might be doing their damndest to stop people from calling those they hate what they want to be called.

However, there's a second reason I'm not sure wincing at "Transfandom" makes sense. And that is just that "trans-" is in a lot of words for a lot of widely different reasons. Yes, trans people have (in a limited way) managed to claim the unadorned syllable, used outside of a compound word, for their own. But that doesn't mean the meaning of "transcendent," "transatlantic," or, yeah, "transformer" (whether the electrical device or the fictional giant alien robot) has been retroactively rewritten with a twinge of transgenderism tossed in.

And "Transfandom" and "Transfan," in this context, are clearly a reference to the fictional giant robots.

Yes, I did initially think it sounds a little bit like it means "tranny chaser," and I do understand why people find that unfortunate, but the thing is... that's a coincidence, not an intended consequence. (On the other hand, I have seen some Transfans joke about the similarity in the words, for example referring to Pat Lee as "the Transman," and that I do find sketchy and bleh.)

Now, the obvious objection is that even if it is a coincidence, if it's still obnoxious to an oppressed group it's not a good term to use. But I'm... not so sure I'm convinced. While there are still some derogatory terms I just wince at in all cases ("retard," the use of "that's so gay" to mean "that's uncool," etc.) I find myself thinking that a lot of these corner cases -- even, yes, in the case of words that denigrate groups I'm clearly a member of -- just don't matter to me much any more.

For example, I was doing something advocacy-related the other day, and explaining some accomodation people needed or the like, and another person in the meeting said, "Well, just tell us what the handicapped -- er, the disabled -- whatever it is -- need." And it didn't bother me, and that wasn't because of the hasty self-correction. The person took seriously that people with disabilities were having problems, and that that mattered, and was in the position to at least try and help. That matters much more than the term the person used.

You all might think I'm a bit hypocritical here, as I just posted about terms yesterday. I talked then about how I don't like the terms "mech and femme" as the fandom in question uses them. But I think that case is relevantly different. In that case, we're talking about the terms we use for certain classes of characters and the assumptions and stereotypes that, whether we mean them to or not, lurk behind them. In the case of "Transfandom" and "Transfan," I'm not at all convinced that a pernicious stereotype lurks behind noticing that one can easily add "fandom" or "fan" to a word that already has an f in a convenient place.

I might, of course, be wrong, and I invite anyone who doesn't like the term to call me out on it if I am. But like I said, I think the case for it is murky at best.

Around the blogoverse recently, there have been a lot of critiques of how fandom deals with issues of race, issues of gender, etc. While I think many of these discussions have become so huge that they ended up generating quite a bit of heat in addition to the light they shed, I feel that they raised very important points about the way certain issues are dealt with in fandom. With that in mind, I started thinking about gender in Transfandom.

There are quite a lot of female Transformers fans, so I'm not going to be talking here about dynamics of exclusion, or widespread discomfort that I see women fans expressing. but I do see some dynamics that I find strange and somewhat retrograde, which I find surprising and perhaps a little depressing in a fandom so full of women.

The first of these is the terminology often used to denote a Transformer's gender.  (I'll get to why they have genders at all in another post. For now, just go with the idea that they do, as that's what canon says.) Male Transformers are often referred to, at least by fen, as "mechs," while female Transformers are called "femmes." 

Now, I am not the sort (any more) to yell at people for "language." I use these terms myself now and then, because they're commonly understood, though I try to avoid them.

But I see problems with adopting this pair of terms:

1. There is nothing to suggest maleness about the word "mech," and restricting its use to males makes females some sort of odd "other." The word "mech" is short for "mechanism." Using it for a male TF is like choosing to use the word "human" when you mean "man," or "child" when you mean "boy." Yes, men are humans, but half of all humanity are women. If "human" implies "man," that seems to imply that women are not truly human. Similarly, using "mech" for the males seems to suggest that female TFs are not true "mechanisms." But what is that? They're malfunctioning? They're organic? They only partially exist? Female Transformers are "mechs" too... which defeats the purpose of the word as a gender marker in the first place.
2. The word "femme" suggests femininity, when a female individual may or may not be feminine. In fact, most original female characters I see fans create are very, very feminine. Some of this may come from canon, in which many the most recognizable female characters (G1 Elita One and Arcee, TFA Blackarachnia and Slipstream; I'd speak to BW Blackarachnia here too but I'm not familiar with BW enough to know much about her other than that she looked quite feminine) are quite feminine, sometimes exaggeratedly so. But in fanon, the tendency I see is for fan-created femmes to be pink or purple, have exaggeratedly feminine mannerisms, etc. If they're Decepticons, they're often "femme fatale" types. Where the males, in canon and out of it, have varying degrees of stereotypical masculinity. Starscream is practically a queen, and is of course even more of one than usual in much of fanon. Whereas deciding that "femme" means "female character" discourages thinking up and writing about unfeminine female TFs, or masculine ones. "This OC is my no-nonsense butch Autobot who has a crush on the other female in her unit" makes some sense; "this OC is my butch femme" doesn't. I don't know how closely I believe in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but it seems to me that word discourages people from thinking of the variance in gender expression that can and should exist in a complex society.

For these and related reasons, I find the choice of those terms unappetizing and a little bit retrograde. I don't immediately have better suggestions. In terms of humans, "female" and "woman" mean different things, as do "male" and "man," so I don't think just saying "female mech" or "male mech" when we mean the equivalet of "woman" or "man" is the best solution. But this linguistic convention is basically the equivalent of saying "humans and girly-girls" to mean "men and women." And something about that is... not on, in my opinion.

There's plenty I'm fine with in canon and in fandom, such as the relative rarity of female characters. (Of course, that might bug someone else, for perfectly valid reasons.) But these words... it just seems odd that a fandom with a lot of women in it wouldn't collectively cringe at them, as I do.

Spiffy icon, made for me by the talented pellimusprime . Concept/text mine, images and animation put together by her.

ganked from aeon_entwined

( in which i am a giant nerd )

The ongoing Transformers fanfic part 5.

What happens when Nova finally finds what she's looking for... ;-)

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four

So I rented Revenge of the Fallen yesterday, just to see it again. And I've been having delightful fun with aeon_entwined making fun of the titular character. (I hate him so much. And I doubly hate the way they took Megatron from a menacing and interesting character to his simpering lackey. Slaggit, movie Megs' fearsomeness in the first was part of what got me into the fandom in the first place and they nerfed him. >_< Nooo!)

Hence, I bring you silliness! Hope it amuses you as much as it did us.

The Fallen: Now, apprentice, we must...
Megatron: Apprentice? What the hell are you talking about? And why are you just sitting around here like a dumbaft? Go kill some Autobots or something.
The Fallen: That's your job. You're my apprentice. I sit here and plot and look evil while you do my bidding.
Megatron: You are crazy. Useless, too, apparently. Soundwave! What the slag is this guy's problem?
Soundwave: Analysis: Frilly angry robot believes this is the second Star Wars movie.
The Fallen: Cease this nonsense. We must activate the energon harvester and destroy their sun!
Megatron: Hmmm... yes... that sounds good. I hate those annoying critters. But... who the fuck are you, anyway?
The Fallen: I... AM... THE... FALLENNNNN!
Megatron: Well, that explains why you're still sitting there. Starscream, help him up.
Starscream: I live to serve you, Lord Megatron. *muttermuttercussinDecepticonmuttermutter*
Megatron: I heard that. I'm standing right here.
*Starscream finally succeeds in hauling the Fallen to his feet*
Megatron, to the Fallen: Now. You. Stop bothering me and go slag some Autobots.

Said it before, probably shouldn't bother to say it again, but, in response to this:

It's no great news that "feminism" -- the word and, by extension, the movement -- has an image problem. Women of all ages and colors have, at turns, bristled at the term, embraced it, lauded it and disdained it, practically since it was coined. However, after years of soldiering on under the burden of a heavily loaded word, a new crop of progressive and politically active women are finally addressing the problem. Some are looking to reinvigorate "feminist" by laying claim to the word -- a new magazine and a recent book are both cheekily titled "The F Word" -- while others are contemplating new words and phrases to employ in the fight for women's equality. After years of quiet debate, women are tackling their own labels with the energy of a movement anxious to make itself fresh again.

I'm not scared of the word. I got fed up with the people who seem, so easily, to become its public face. I got tired of being told over and over "if you believe in equality, then our word applies to you, and you must stick it onto yourself and be proud of the label, no matter how uneasy your alliance is with us. You're allowed to disagree vehemently with us on some matters, of course. We promise we're indulgent. But the moment you decide our word is not for you, you label yourself a hater of your own freedom, fool."

Why do these people never ask how much being condescended to a person can take before she leaves? Why not ask whether it's more important to her to be recognized as a freedom fighter -- or at least, to parade around like an idiot using the phrase freedom fighters are supposed to use, while doing nothing more than smugly blogging from behind a wall of (usually) white privilege and class privilege -- or more important to her to stand in solidarity with her sex worker friends, kinky friends, femme friends, SAHM friends? Or to stand up for herself, should she fit into one of those categories? I've seen people in all of those groups critiqued for insufficient slavish loyalty to some official concept of women's "liberation," and more than a few of them called enemies of women's freedom. And, as I've said before, I am so done.

I'm loyal to my people and my principles. Not your names. As I've said a thousand times, call me a feminist if you want. You won't be wrong. But hearing "but if you believe in basic decency, you're a feminist" for the thousandth time won't make me don the badge again.

Also, it quite honestly demeans feminism when you claim that anyone who believes in equality is a feminist. Plenty of people "believe in equality" from their couches. I don't think they should get to count alongside actual activists, simply because we'd like more people to like the word "feminist" better.

No, it's not a new chapter... it's some art!

There was a character creation contest over at tf_animated and I decided to color a screenshot of TFA Starscream into a version of Nova. Because you know you all need to know what she'd look like with an epic chin! XD

This is a version of her as a 'Con, before the fic takes place. I was going to do Neutral!Nova as well, but I just didn't have time.

( without further ado, the image )

This makes me happy.

This May, Sila, now 38 years old, underwent a simple but profound operation to undo the past. She traveled to Trinidad, Colorado, where Dr. Marci Bowers, a gynecological and pelvic surgeon, has recently begun to perform "clitoralplasty" or "female circumcision reversals" on African women. A relatively new procedure, it reshapes the anatomy and, in 80 percent of patients, restores pleasurable sensation. "I want my womanhood back," Sila told Bowers when she first spoke to the surgeon about the operation. "I just want to know it's there. To have the feeling that I can fight against this culture."

....Bowers performs the surgery free of charge, and the hospital caps its fees at $1,700. "As Dr. Foldes has said, you cannot charge money to reverse a crime against humanity," she says. "Sexuality is a right."

....Since Sila, Bowers has performed four additional surgeries with two more scheduled for this month. A California nurse, Ngozi, who was circumcised as a newborn in Nigeria and also had her labia entirely cut away, came to Bowers in August. She is already feeling results, she tells NEWSWEEK. "Before, I would look at my textbook and look at myself and they were two different things. I wasn't even human." Bowers performed not only the clitoral operation but also plastic surgery to create labia for Ngozi, 34. "Now when I look at myself I feel like a woman," says Ngozi, who says she has even experienced orgasms for the first time in her life. "It's beautiful, I just love it, it feels like you're melting. Before it irritated me when my husband tried to touch me, now I reach out to him."

....Sila had spoken with two of Bowers's first three patients. Mariam—she agreed to give only her first name—was circumcised as an infant in Mauritania and now lives in Virginia. She spoke with NEWSWEEK seven weeks after her surgery and was still healing, but had begun to recover some sensation. "When I cross my legs or sit in a certain way, I feel something," she says. "It's kind of exciting. You keep wanting to do it." She is still haggling to have her hospital stay covered by insurance. "I've gone through this hell, why are they going to say this is cosmetic?" she says. "They don't even know what they're talking about. If a person is missing something, it's not cosmetic."

Dear Dr. Bowers: Thank you for being awesome. :)