I am female; I am a geek

While I was in college, I took an English course, specifically in science fiction. I’d been an sf (my professor preferred “sf” to “scifi”) fan for some time by then, having been introduce to it by my father. He suggested I read Dune, by Frank Herbert. I think that’s the equivalent of being tossed in the water to learn to swim. Dune was a long book, with a sprawling plot that eventually spanned six books in Herbert’s lifetime, and a few more after that.

Back to my college course, we read material by various authors, new and classic. We read Heinlein and Asimov but also A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski, even a little cyberpunk, or pre-cyberpunk, perhaps. One short story that stayed with me was The Cold Equations (1954) by Tom Godwin. In this story a young girl stows away on a ship that is making a trip, but the trip has only enough fuel to make it to its destination and back, with its pilot and cargo — and no stowaways. The pilot works to save the girl, but in the end, she must be jettisoned out the airlock.

It is a good story (turned into a mediocre TV movie if I recall), but I was bothered by the thought that if the stowaway had been a boy, there wouldn’t have been a story. I know — the story was written in 1954 when cultural attitudes were different, not least between men and women. Still, it bugged me. This lead to two things. First, our prof said if you don’t like the story you read, write the one you want. Sound advice. Second, a male student made his observation that women couldn’t appreciate science fiction as much as men.

Right. So Ursula K. LeGuin, Andre Norton, Margaret Atwood — they just don’t get it. Pffft.

This is on my mind because I saw this article today. Headline: “Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones.” I have to hope this is some kind of satire, because otherwise it’s really depressing. The opening graphs:

Game of Thrones ranks somewhere on the Girl Dislike scale between NASCAR and that National Geographic show where the guy sticks his hand in a catfish’s mouth.

But why does she throw so much shade? If you just can’t understand why we’re intent on harshing your medieval buzz, here are some telltale clues.

• We hate gross things. Know what’s gross? Screwing your sibling.
• It’s hard to follow. Brilliantly developed storylines are great, but whipping out a dry erase board and Venn diagrams to figure it all out isn’t our idea of a good time. Unless we’re talking about soap operas. Those are perfectly fine.

You what? I love this show. I have seen every episode. I read recaps and reviews and HappyPlace.com’s Facebook episodes (hilarious stuff). Know what else is gross? Serial killers. Murderers and rapists. Yet I bet plenty of women watch Law & Order, and Dexter and The Following.

But worse than that is the second reason, and perhaps worse yet is that this article was written by a woman. I’m sorry — you can’t follow it? That has less to do with your gender than the fact that this is an epic story spanning not just continents but tons of characters. If you haven’t been in from the beginning, or haven’t read the books, you will be a bit lost and believe me, that would apply to men as well. As for the soap opera comparison — well, what the hell do you think Game of Thrones really is, minus the medieval trappings? If you can’t follow it because people ride horses instead of drive Priuses, that’s your problem.

As I write this, my husband and I are watching Star Trek: The Original Series on DVD. I have seen Star Wars many times (a gimme for sf fans, right?), and watched all the movies in the series. I loved Joss Whedon’s Firefly and its conclusion with the movie Serenity and have seen both multiple times. I have been a Doctor Who fan since I saw the original series as a kid, complete with cheesy props and costumes where you could see the zippers in the back. I love the new series and the Torchwood spin off. I watched Babylon 5 and one of my favorite more movies is Strange Days. I have read Asimov, Heinlein, LeGuin, Simak; my favorite fantasy series is Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics are amazing.

Have I established my bona fides? Would I be reading and watching all of this if I didn’t like it or appreciate it?

I do hope the article I linked to is a satire; in a way it’s hard to believe it isn’t. But you don’t have to look too hard to find articles about how women gamers still face all kinds of opposition, some of it minor insults and some of it dangerous threats. It’s frightening for those women, I’m sure, and it’s depressing to read any article by another woman that just reinforces these stereotypes.

Now go catch up on Game of Thrones, and then read the episodes as Facebook posts. And I don’t care what your gender is.

Back in the day…

When the Columbine High School shootings occurred on April 20, 1999, I was twenty-nine years old. I was living with my fiancé, with the wedding not quite a year away, and I had been out of high school for twenty-two years.  I went to a Catholic high school, but it was a regional school and so drew from a large area and had a pretty diverse student body, at least for the time and place. It always amused me that I knew two or three Jewish kids whose parents had sent them to this school, as it was better than any available public option (or so I guessed).

Sometime after Columbine, my dad asked me if I’d ever worried about such a thing while I was in high school. First, I have to say, I often characterize myself at that time (mid/late 1980s) as rather oblivious. I don’t mean to say I was ignorant or naive about the world, although I wasn’t the most savvy. I kept to myself, read a lot of books, had some friends and generally flew under the radar. I was not bullied, although I suppose it was safe to say I was somewhat ignored by any in-crowd. Some of this resulted from the fact that I transferred schools about five weeks into the first marking period; any groups of friends that had formed by that time were pretty solid and no one was really looking to add anyone into their group. I kept to my own devices and was generally left alone.

Back to Dad’s question — had I feared someone coming into my school with guns or bombs or anything else? No. Truth was, as I told him, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to think about worrying about something like that. Of course now with one child in elementary school and another about to start this fall, such things kind of niggle at the back of your mind. But you can’t do much about a lone wolf bent on destruction — I have to trust the school officials to make the building as secure as possible; to the other parents of the kids in the school to keep an eye on, well, everyone; the teachers to keep an eye on their kids; even my kids to tell me if they think something’s wrong somewhere. It’s a crying shame that at some point I will have to tell them these things.

These days I read about a lot of sex stuff with teenagers. Surely by now most of us know the names of Audrie Pott, or Steubenville, OH, or Rehteah Parsons. And I think, my God, in four or five years my son will be the age of the perpetrators; in ten, my daughter will be the age of the victims. And it all makes you say: WTF?

I get that kids, teenagers, do stupid things. Fine. The brain is still forming. Logic is circuitous, if it’s there. What seems to make sense in the moment is obviously totally wrong in hindsight. I try to tell my kids that mistakes are fine, but learn from them. When they’re old enough, I will tell them to call me at any time day or night, for help if they need it, and I won’t care whose fault the situation is.

What I want to know is how do these kids come to these horrible conclusions that their actions are acceptable? In Steubenville, we can blame some of it on alcohol. But afterwards? Is high school football that freaking important?

It seems amazing that after all this time of equality, slow though the path has been, and as long as it may stretch in front of us until we get to the end, that when it comes to sex, girls are at fault, even if they aren’t at fault. Yeah, I agree that no one should put themselves in a bad situation. But it happens. And when it happens, that doesn’t mean the “gate is open” or that the victim (no matter the gender) is at fault. The people at fault in Steubenville and the other cases are the ones who committed the crime. 

Did no one watch The Accused?

As I said, I flew below the radar in high school, or I’m guessing I did. No one went out of their way to make things hard for me, which unfortunately is probably what a lot of kids would love to have happen. I remember one slight incident that pales to the point of invisibility given what we read about today.

I hadn’t been in the high school long when a couple of girls approached me and told me that some guy liked me. I probably barely knew who he was.  My reaction was something like, well, okay fine. I didn’t rise to any bait. They kept trying, as I recall. At one point they told me the guy wanted to make out with me and “finger me,” and although I guessed from context what that meant, I didn’t really know. It was getting on my nerves. It ended when they came to me one day at lunch and said the guy wanted my phone number.

Now, when we moved and got our phone number, the phone rang all the time and a lot of times at night. My dad theorized the previous number owner had been a drug dealer or something. After a few weeks of this, we got a new number. When these girls approached me in the cafeteria about the number, I wrote the old one down and handed it to them. I never heard another thing about it (although I thought this was pretty clever on my part, and I’m usually not that sneaky). Whether the guy ever called the number, or the girls did, I have no idea. But that was the end of it.

Like I said, that was nothing. But I can imagine now that if I’d fallen for it, I might easily have gotten the mid-80s version of “slut-shaming” at some point. Actually I bet that version isn’t much different than today’s, except today such things an spread faster with the internet and social networking. And I am still left with why such a thing would happen. Why do people (of any age) want to do that? Why  are parent so oblivious about it? What can we do or say to help prevent it, or prevent a drastic reaction to it?

I hope that my daughter doesn’t have to go through that. I also hope that neither she nor my son ever perpetrate or contribute to such a thing. Saying “How would you feel if it was you?” just isn’t going to work.

And obviously much of this comes back to sex. I’m not blaming anything on sex per se, because sex is well, something you do. It’s what leads up to it that is important. It’s a bit like a story, but in real life, it’s obviously fraught with more consequences. And this is not about saving oneself until marriage. This is about teaching your kids to be as smart as possible, to protect themselves as well as possible from the physical and the psychological damage people can inflict — and that’s a hell of a job.

Let’s reach for the stars, shall we? What would help: a healthier attitude about sex all around; access to information and contraception without judgment; that you should respect yourself and your partner; that it is never okay to forward photos of a person in a bad or compromising situation; that it is never funny to do that either; young men need to be taught that yes, they have needs, but lack of refusal from a potential partner (of either gender) is not implication of consent; young women need to be taught that as well, but also that saying no to anything they don’t like is their right, and that you’ll help them — and believe them — when they tell you they’ve been assaulted (and young men, too).

Maybe in another few decades, we can shake our heads that we ever had to do this.

Internet friendships

Funny things, aren’t they, those “pen pal” relationships we strike up these days? Well, we have for some years, haven’t we? I have. I remember years ago using a social site called “Firefly.com” (no relation to the late, lamented television series), using ICQ to chat with people I hadn’t met.

Now it’s everywhere. Your parents are probably on Facebook, and maybe your grandparents, even if you wish they weren’t. You can leave comments everywhere, and I’m sure lots of you out there have struck up “e-pal” correspondences with a few people, at least from time to time. I certainly have. After I posted a story called Ghosts of the Forum on StoriesOnline.net, my current beta reader contacted me to say he liked the story despite the many (many, many) errors I’d made about Montreal and Canadian French. That was something like three years ago, and we’re good friends now.

Many of you know that MugsyB (aka Tamara Clarke) and I are good friends. I emailed her regarding her first hockey romance, answering her challenge to readers to identify the team and player she’d been thinking of while writing “The Ice, The Game, The Touch.” (I got it right!) We’ve been emailing for a good four years or so now.

My husband and I met because of one of those “small world” coincidences as the internet was growing in the late 1990s. I had struck up a correspondence with someone over the aforementioned Firefly site (which no longer exists, last I checked), and he had begun writing to someone after seeing a comment she’d left on a board for a SciFi channel show. It turned out that the guy I was writing to and the woman he was writing to were best friends. When they discovered that we both lived in the same state, they said, “Well, those two should be talking to each other!” So I sent him an email, and well, we’ve been married thirteen years and together for fifteen. (Whew.)

So sometimes things work out.

And sometimes not so well. This particular incident comes to mind for me every once in a while, and what can I say? It irks me a bit. When I began writing the hockey romances, I was also emailing another author, who said she wanted a hockey romance “for her,” and she’d write a story for me. We traded info on what we liked in stories, set a few soft limit so neither would feel overwhelmed. I also said at one point that I liked her stories well enough that even if some of what I liked in a story didn’t make it in, I’d probably enjoy it anyway. I ended up writing “Game Misconduct,” which she told me she really liked.

The story she wrote for me was a fantasy story, which is fine — I like my sf/f, as many of you may know — and although I can’t say I was crazy over it, and even though elements I’d hoped to see weren’t there, I enjoyed it well enough and it was fun that someone wrote it for me. She even added a character at the end with my name. However, later I saw some comments she made about the story which, what can I say, kind of hurt.

I believe it was on a forum about getting past writer’s block that she advised someone to write something, even something short or fluffy. She named the story she’d written for me, and said it had been just a quick thing she’d tossed off to get the juices flowing.

Well.

She later pulled the story down from the sites it had been posted on for some reworking, and again I saw comments about changes she’d planned, including renaming the character she’d named for me.

I haven’t named the other author and don’t plan to. It’s really not the point — she’s scored a publishing contract, which was her dream, and I’m pleased for her and that she’s having some success. I know she had a hard time and worked for ages before finding a publisher. This is not about any kind of getting even.

What has always gotten me about this situation is that I was so saddened when I had never met this woman in person. We’d never even talked on the phone. Our emails were friendly and congenial, but not quite regular. She was strictly an e-friend, and not one I’d grown close to like MugsyB or my beta reader. Still, it hurt that I’d put in some serious effort on the story I’d written — I included elements she said she liked, and also some in-jokes (which I gather no one but she and I understood, but that’s okay), and had fun writing it as a few things were a stretch for me. So when she said her story was just something she’d tossed off for no real reason, yeah, that hurt.

And that was what got me, like I said. Why was I so affected by the actions of someone I’d never met? And we run into this all the time, right? I’ve done it myself, gotten angrier or more upset than I meant to about posts on forums, comments on articles, things like that. And I occasionally make the mistake of “confronting” the commenter. Which is just useless, and doesn’t even have the small benefit of making me feel better.

I am frequently advising new writers to take any comments or votes with huge grains of salt. What do you care, I say, if a complete stranger who posts as “anonymous” doesn’t like your story? You’re anonymous, too. It’s two strangers trading insults, and what’s the point when they couldn’t pick each other out of a line up even if they were both in it? This is something I try to practice, not just preach. I have enough going on that to let the barbs of cyber-strangers upset me is just stress I don’t need. So I take a deep breath and remember Bill and Ted’s advice: “Be excellent to each other.”

Even on the internet.

Getting political

Well, actually, I don’t like to get very political — not here, not on Facebook or anywhere else. It is unfortunately either an exercise in futility, or a simple matter of preaching to the choir in the echo chamber. Still, with the cases about California’s Prop 8 and DOMA before the Supreme Court today, I decided why not. Also, it seemed to overlap with other areas that were on my mind. (Apologies for any fuzziness; I have a cold that’s getting worse as the day goes on.)

First, let’s talk Catholicism. I was born and raised Catholic, baptized, and have received all the sacraments I am eligible for at this time. That is: baptism, reconciliation, communion, and confirmation. Although I had a Catholic ceremony when I married, it was not the sacrament because my husband is, well, a heathen — he is not part of any organized religion, and has not been baptized into anything. But he’s my heathen, and I love him very much.

And the truth is, I suppose I’ve become something of a heathen myself, or we can say “lapsed Catholic.” Like a lot of people, I’m sure, I started having doubts in high school (thank you to the French teacher who tried to teach us Existentialism) and they only went on in college. How could all of these other people be wrong? What about people who were never exposed to the teachings and ideas of Christ? Are they doomed because of circumstances beyond their control? That’s crazy.

What I really found as I got older and met more people and had more experiences was that what the Church was telling me simply didn’t gel with my personal experiences. Shall we name a few?

* Being counseled on marriage by a man — good man though he might be — had sworn off both marriage and sex. I think it’s one thing to say, get counseling from someone who doesn’t have the exact experience — after all, not everyone gets married, or has been abused, or whatever — but it’s another to get it from someone who has sworn never to do it.

* Being told during a pre-Cana retreat that birth control methods like the Pill and a vasectomy contribute to poor communication and hence poor marriages. Right, tell that to my parents who have been married for 46 years (yow!) and did both.

* In fact, realizing that the retreat was so focused on birth control as to be almost useless. I remember two other things: one, advice that whoever kept the checkbook should receive the receipts from the one who does not. Two — and I’m sure this was not intentional — that a child that a woman had out of wedlock was somehow “second class” compared to the child she had with the man she later married.

* Realizing that the Church considered the religious marriage ceremony of my straight friends was more moral than that of the commitment ceremony my gay friends had in the Episcopal Church. This, after my straight friends obtained a minister because the location of the wedding required it. This, after my gay friends had studied, converted to the Episcopalian faith, joined various committees and wrote their own ceremony.

* The Church considers children an important part of marriage; you are in fact asked if you are open to having children when you begin the pre-Cana process.  Yet again, my straight friends have decided not to have kids (which I think was the right decision for them), and my gay friends adopted two children from a home where “troubled” is only the beginning of the story.

* As we found out in the 90s and 00s, how utterly hypocritical it is to be lectured to by an institution who took steps to protect predators, but not the children they molested and raped. I was on the naughty list because I lived with my husband before we got married; but priests with serious issues who endangered and attacked children should be forgiven, not reported to the authorities, and shuffled off to quieter pastures.

* One thing that got me, and I think it was during the late 90s, was when I read about a letter from a Church official or priest that recommended active discrimination against gays. I can’t remember the details (sorry) but it had to do with not letting them teach, things like that. All I could think was, what a horribly un-Christian thing to do to a group of people.

The Church, and the Christian right, seems awfully focused on what you should not do, and should not do the way they say. Hey, you’re entitled to your beliefs — but you don’t get to force them on me. I don’t see how my everyday actions, presuming I am not attempting to harm or rob you, affect you all that much.

I love the argument that gay marriage is a threat to hetero marriage. Really? Prove it. I have been married almost thirteen years, as have the friends I’ve mentioned above, and another couple who married when their locality allowed it. They must be close to ten years now. Just how does their marriage affect me any more than, say, Ralph Reed’s does?

Answer: it doesn’t.

Study after study is showing that kids raised by gay couples show no more or less problems than those who are raised by straight couples. So that argument’s gone. Those friends who adopted? They received three children at once the first time, and the 2yo boy was non-verbal. Not speaking. Now he’s in school and doing well. They should have left him in the system until someone else came along? Let’s face it, most people are reluctant to take problem kids, and with reason — they take more time and energy than healthy kids, who require a ton on their own. I think people, gay or straight, who take that on deserve applause.

Marriage does not need defending from gay people. It needs defending from people who see it as the only way to do things; who think that people should stay in bad or dangerous marriages because, well, they promised, never mind that someone’s breaking the promise.

And isn’t funny with the kids? These same people who are shouting about pro-life, making abortion (which is a health care issue) more and more difficult to get — what are they doing for the children who are born, and the mothers (and fathers) who have them? It’s like once the kids are here, the job is done. That’s bullshit — that’s when the job starts.

So what do I hope? I hope Prop 8 is struck down, even if narrowly, and I hope DOMA is struck down as well. We are in the middle of a big period of change, I think, and change never goes down well. But it has to start somewhere, and here’s hoping SCOTUS gets us moving.

I probably wanted to say more but I’m beat. Also, I’m sorry for the lack of links, but you won’t have trouble finding any.

 

 

Kinky stuff

I was thinking I’d blog about the oddness of internet friendships, but I’ll get to that another time. Earlier this week, William Saletan at Slate.com published this article about BDSM and why it will never be mainstream. It’s an interesting article, although be warned if you click on any links. Not that they’re NSFW (although I think that’s true in at least one case), but just know what you’re getting into. Some (I haven’t checked most of the links in Saletan’s article) may link to explicit material that could bother you. If you don’t want a lot of BDSM detail, then you may be better off just ignoring the links.

Is there anything “wrong” with BDSM? Tough question. Generally, my answer is no. I think that anything two (or more) consenting and informed or knowledgeable adults want to do is fine. If you want someone to spank you, fine, but I’m not into that. I won’t stop you, won’t judge, won’t tell you not to or even speculate on any childhood reason you might like it. If you want to be tied up — or do the tying up — again, fine. If you want to be hurt, or do the hurting, that gets a little fuzzier and squicks me out.

In those cases I think information, knowledge, and trust are absolutely essential. If you have all of those, if everyone involved a) knows what they are getting into; b) knows the preparations and possible consequences; and c) can rely on their partner(s) to use and respect safe words, then okay. Again, I don’t want it, but that’s okay.

What Saletan’s article tries to get at, and this NYT piece (which Saletan links to) explores, is how “normal” this all is or isn’t.

I’m not sure “normal” matters. There are a ton of people out there with a ton of different sexual preferences, so the “normal” range is likely going to either be pretty wide to encompass a lot of stuff, or it’s going to be pretty narrow, leaving a lot of things on the outside. So maybe normal or accepted aren’t even terms to use, although we have to use something.

So, in my opinion, I’d have to say that probably most people enjoy dabbling in various aspects BDSM and my guess — only a guess — is that light bondage and spanking are probably the most common activities. Does that make them normal or mainstream? Maybe. Does it matter? I don’t think so, particularly.

When you get into inflicting pain, be it physical or emotional, I think you get farther away from the normal range. Most of us, I think it’s safe to say, do not want to be hurt. We take over-the-counter medicines for various things, because we don’t want to hurt, and that kind of hurt is much less than what one might experience with some parts of BDSM. Nor do we want to be hurt emotionally — we don’t want to be called names or insulted.

Yet some people, in limited or controlled circumstances, get turned on by these things. And I think you have to be very careful when violence or pain are involved in an activity that is ultimately designed to bring someone pleasure. I get, at least on an intellectual level, the idea that giving up control to someone can be exciting.

It’s a little taboo, really, isn’t it? For what, close to one hundred years or more, going back to Susan B. Anthony agitating for women’s suffrage, we have been told that women can and should be strong and independent. And there is nothing wrong with that. I think it’s an important message. It’s led to other things, if only indirectly. We don’t see spousal rape as acceptable because it occurs within marriage; we don’t believe that husbands have the right to beat their wives; we believe woman can choose their own marriage, or not, and to have kids, or not.

So no wonder, I think, that women — and men — who wish to be involved in an activity that involves giving up control to someone, mental and/or physical, fear what others might say. Especially when it comes to sex. Society has changed a lot on how sex and sexuality is viewed, but BDSM still isn’t quite out there in then open.

I tend to think it never will be mainstream, especially because when you get to the discipline, submission, sadism and masochistic aspects of BDSM, you are looking at violence. Violence may be common, but it’s not exactly “mainstream.” And asking to be treated violently is a sensitive and I think dangerous thing. I can only hope that those who want such things pair up with an understanding and reliable partner who will honor limits and safe words.

I’ve never written anything with BDSM. Well, okay, Island Encounter had some slight elements of feminine domination. So that’ll teach me to never say never. However, I won’t write it — and I don’t edit it for other writers — because I’m not familiar with the scene and don’t want to be. I don’t edit BDSM stories because although I could help with punctuation, I wouldn’t know enough about the content to say if it’s right or not. If I had an idea that called for it, I’d probably look into it, but I’m not sure I’d ever have that kind of idea.

Because I, personally, prefer things more “even” in my stories. I do not find violence or insults arousing, and it’d be hard for me to write that. I’m not sure I could relate to a character who liked such things, and it would no doubt come across in a story. Does that make me “vanilla?” Probably, but that’s okay.

I don’t think there’s anything “wrong” with someone who wants to be spanked or paddled, or to do it to someone else. But I also think that you can’t demand such behavior be accepted as “normal.” As Saletan argues, that kind of sexual preference is a choice, unlike a person’s orientation. We all have preferences on various things, some of which are “normal” and some are not, and we can’t demand that everyone like them.

I Liked the Oscars

Last night, my husband and I watched the Oscars. I had not — and still have not — seen any of the best picture nominees, but that didn’t stop me from printing out a ballot and filling in what I wanted based on what I’d read. The two movies I did see that received Oscar noms were Marvel’s The Avengers (nominated for best visual effects) and Pixar’s Brave (winner of best animated feature film).

I am a movie fan — I’d like to call myself a buff, but I think that implies a level of knowledge of both movies and the stars that I don’t quite have, so I’ll call myself a buffette. I like good movies and bad ones. My husband and I are suckers for the $3 and $5 bins at stores like Walmart and Big Lots. We own a copy of every Pixar film, and many other animated ones, at my instigation (not the kids’). I have a stash of movies made by the “mockbuster” studio The Asylum, including “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus,” which contains performances by Lorenzo Lamas and Deborah Debbie Gibson, in case you’re wondering whatever happened to them.

I don’t expect a whole lot from the Oscar telecast, or even the host. It’s a pretty thankless job — make people laugh while the film industry, which makes a boatload of money every year despite the perennial gnashing of teeth, pats itself on the back. Don’t offend too many people, but don’t be too milquetoast either. With those kind of low to mediocre expectations, it’s hard to get disappointed and if I’m going to invest 3.5 hours into a show, I at least want not to be disappointed.

So I watched last night, I laughed, I was entertained, I was pleased to see Ang Lee win Best Director for Life of Pi, and somewhat disappointed that Frankenweenie did not win Best Animated Feature. What can I say? I’m a big Tim Burton fan. On the other hand, I haven’t seen Frankenweenie, so perhaps Brave was the better film. (Or perhaps people feared being stomped on by Pixar’s desk lamp).

Yet I get up this morning, and everywhere I look, the Oscars are being slammed. MacFarlane was lame and unfunny and misogynistic. (Really?) According to Tom Shales over at Roger Ebert’s site (and I enjoy Shales’ articles), MacFarlane also couldn’t sing or dance (again, really?). For MacFarlane himself, I had no expectations — I have not watched Family Guy, although I’ve seen bits and pieces, and I did not see the movie he wrote, Ted.

But I thought he was funny. I actually liked the opening number “We Saw Your Boobs.” I just found the whole idea of singing such a song — backed by a gay mens’ chorus! — great fun. Some of his one-liners hit and others missed. I admit I squirmed at the Django Unchained/Chris Brown/Rihanna joke, but hey, you can’t like it all. And I could have lived without “All that Jazz,” from Chicago. You had John Travolta there — give us a number from Hairspray!

I was relieved to find a couple of articles over at Slate.com written by people who, like me, were in fact not offended by MacFarlane’s routine. Even in this day of constant commentary, guess what? You are free to turn off the television. You are not obligated to watch the Oscars, nor, even with the ease of access of Twitter, et al, are you obligated to express your opinion of it to the world (but if you want to, have at).

A lot of people went on about the boobs song and how it was degrading, etc. True, there is not likely to be a male equivalent like “We Saw Your Balls” or “We Saw Your Junk.” (Although wouldn’t it be fun, and let’s get Meryl Streep to sing it, with that same chorus.) Why? Because aside from Harvey Keitel in The Piano, you won’t find much male frontal nudity in mainstream US movies. (Wait, there was that guy in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, right?) So why can we not poke a little fun at nudity in the movies? Yeah, it’s female nudity mostly, but who’s fault is that? Until the MPAA and other groups loosen up, and/or the actresses decide to keep their shirts on until there’s topless equality, this is the state of things for a while. So let’s sing a song about how silly that is.

(Aside: Some may note that Jodie Foster baring breasts in The Accused was different than Kate Winslet in Titanic, and I’d agree. But this is slippery ground in humor. Should MacFarlane have limited himself to only rom-coms, or coms, or roms, or trashy horror movies? I don’t know. It wouldn’t have made a difference to me, but others might have carped at that very limiting. It’s up to MacFarlane to decide, then up to us to be offended or not.)

But perhaps in a more egalitarian song, MacFarlane could sing “We Saw Your Butt,” because I’d say male and female derrieres appear in about equal numbers of movies.

I can’t keep up with all of the things I’m supposed to be upset about, to fight for or against. So I’ll just pick my battles. This is not one of them.

Years ago, on MTV, they ran a special that dealt with things like the influence of music on suicidal people, and other “dark” things. You know the type of thing — did Black Sabbath really get people into Satanism and what not. Personally I’m guessing the guys in Sabbath were too drunk and/or high to do much with inverted crosses. What I remember is Lemmy from Motorhead saying that there are always people who will be offended, that there are people who go around with little notebooks, waiting to be offended so they can write it down.

And now they take it to Twitter.

 

What I’ve been doing

You know I haven’t been writing. What I have been doing these last few months is crocheting. One nice thing about that is I don’t need an editor. Of course it means I can’t write while I’m doing it (or eat, which is a side benefit, really) but I figure since I’ve done a fair bit, I’d add in the pictures.

First there are the Victorian doll dresses. This is not because I’m a big doll person, but because I wanted to use up some yarn. And they worked up quickly, another plus. My son requested a Dalek, and I obliged. At Halloween, I made trick-or-treat bags (two of my own design, one following a pattern). Recently, I made each of my kids a minion (also my own design).

There are a few others, but those are the highlights.

Sorry it’s a little disorganized. I haven’t figured out the picture stuff yet.