Results of Ruminations

Writing advice is like underwear--certain styles work for certain people, but it's really there for support. Man. I feel like that should be a meme, like with flowers or something. Y'know, an inspirational Instagram photo. Hold on a sec. Yeah, that's more like it. Source . Just like you probably shouldn't try on every type of underwear simultaneously, not all writing advice is useful at the same time. And some doesn't work at all for the individual. One piece of writing advice that always requires a little bit of tailoring would be the "Write what you know" advice. Taken too literally, it makes it seem as though the only thing people should write is a journal--after all, what one knows is what one has done. I think there's some value to that. Some people lead interesting lives. I'm not one of those people, so I prefer my fictional stories to be a little bit more than recitation of my minutia. One thing that I believe about writing fict...

During the summer, I get the chance to see a few more movies than I do during the school year, and I had the opportunity to do so today by going to see Wonder Woman, which released today and was, therefore, screened and shown by a bunch of people over the last week. Still, I was one of the first to see it on its opening day, and I have to admit that I enjoyed it as much--if not more--than I was hoping to. That's a huge relief. Wonder Woman (and Wonder Woman ) means a lot to a lot of people, and there is also the pressure for a flagship property to perform well that will help ensure a continued franchise. And the controversies surrounding screenings  as well as Gal Gadot's politics and history  threaten to take away from how much fun this movie is. So I'm leaving the troublesome stuff behind to focus on the film itself, which I endorse and encourage people to see. It's definitely my favorite superhero movie in a long time, and though nothing will ever surpass the gee...

I'm listening to All the Single Ladies , a tracing of feminism in America. I'm only a couple hours into it, so I'm not really reviewing the book, but listening to some of the struggles that women have had to deal with in the United States reminded me of another book about important steps in the feminism movement: Wonder Woman. The book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman , is an interesting read that's focused more on the bizarre, somewhat eccentric life of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator. With the new movie (please be good, please be good) on the horizon, now's a great time to get into what was happening in the background, before the comic became one of the mainstays of the DC brand. The book, however, treats the personal, familial dynamics more thoroughly than as an analysis of the character, which is fine (though I was hoping for more of the latter when I read it), so there were a lot of different pieces that were unexpected in the story. Fo...

Today is International Women's Day, as well as A Day Without Women. As a self-professed feminist, this is my kind of jam. I've been poking around Twitter off and on throughout the day, and it's been great to see how many cool women have impacted history. Some are cool bits of trivia: I have some LeGuinn on my shelf. I realize that I'm remiss in my sci-fi cred by not reading her stuff yet. Some rake insipid criticism over the coals: I love how happy she looks. Like, that's why feminism matters...in part. Some brought a painful history into a compassionate light, which reminds me that one of the greatest losses misogyny has caused humankind is that it has deprived deserved recognition of the kindest, strongest people who have ever lived: That quote, though. No one I know marched, struck, or did much besides do their normal thing, though I made sure to wear red to mark the occasion and demonstrate my solidarity. It wasn't much--most people didn...

I got my hair cut today. I try to have that happen about five times a year: During the summer, and then at the end of terms. Term doesn't end for another month, but my hair was getting unmanageable and uncouth (that's right, I called my hair uncouth), so I shelled out $17 and had a professional cut my hair. Haircuts are a strange thing. Unlike almost any other human excretion, hair is visible to everyone.* This is fascinating to me, in part because calling hair "excrement" is what Gertrude says of Hamlet's locks in act 3 scene 4. This makes sense, because it is something that is pushed out of the body as a waste product , though we normally think about it exclusively as fecal. And we have a problem with, like, everything that humans emit. We don't like to think of urine, sweat, tears, blood, saliva, mucus, reproductive fluids, or even human odors. Fingernails can be pretty gross, too, particularly when they're removed from the body and left behind. Whi...

A couple of years ago, my family and I watched the entirety of Avatar: The Last Airbender . It's a really well done cartoon from Nickelodeon that still has a pretty strong following, despite the second series, Korra , not quite catching my interest in the same way. During LTUE this year, there was a paper by an undergrad from BYU whose thesis was "Feminism and Avatar: The Last Airbender ." The paper he was presenting wasn't finished, and his primary conceit was really just being explored at this point, rather than being polished and ready for presentation. As an educator, it kind of bothered me that he had come to present a really interesting idea, but hadn't finished the exploration in any depth. While I didn't mind the request for feedback and the general discussion--in fact, I enjoyed that quite a bit--it felt slipshod to have an unfinished product presented at a writing conference. But the conversation definitely got me thinking. The audience was posit...

I was at a writing conference, attending a panel in which the presenter (who wrote the fascinating The Mythology of Superheroes   and is a Ph.D. of comic books) was discussing the problems of female representation in comic books. One of the older (white-haired) attendees groused that it only made sense for women to have traditional roles in comics because they are biologically weaker than men. Despite the fact I was not the presenter*, I couldn't help but bark out, "But they have super powers! They can punch through walls! There's no strength difference in comic books!" The point was, I thought, pretty clear: The beauty of fiction is that things that in our own world from which we cannot escape--expectations of woman timidity, softness, and "weakness"--is irrelevant. Women in fiction, particularly speculative, fantasy, and sequential art have the potential to be completely emancipated from any crusty concepts of traditional gender roles, biological expecta...

As a cis-het white guy, I have the privilege of being able to grouse about a system that favors me while reaping the benefits of the same system. It's a nice little benefit--one that has really only helped me. It wasn't until I was in college that I started to see how much of my life is smoothed over by virtue of my gender, race, and sexual orientation. It really makes my complaints about things that bother me seem petty. One thing, however, that bothers me to no end is sexism manifested in my workplace. I'm not talking about the top-down approach, such as hiring practices or the administration as they make teaching assignments. If there's sexism there, it's so subtle that I can't see it. No, I'm tired of the societal sexism that impacts female teachers. Not only is my wife an educator, but a great many of my coworkers are, too. The problem is pretty obvious: Students and parents treat female teachers as surrogate mothers and, therefore, expect them...