We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

Let's put this up here as well.

Apparently I do have things to say! (in response to this) Mostly in Holmesfic, because that’s mostly what I write. Mostly exceptionally specific.

To start with, because people dealing with unpleasant circumstances is pretty much the basic stuff of narratives, and if we’re talking Victorians then you have a full supply of unpleasant circumstances as soon as you use a female pronoun. But they were there, they were doing things anyway.

And because people ask for them, for Yuletide and other challenges and Rarewomen (which I should be finishing now instead of writing this).

It’s not because there isn’t enough of it in fandom, because I’m pretty sure that if there was I would still be writing it. But there certainly isn’t enough of it.

Or maybe it is: because I’m interested in things on the margin of stories and teasing out characters and ideas that are only implied, and a lot of those characters are women.

And because media gets it wrong. Because people (men) spend all their time talking about Irene Adler and warping her beyond recognition and basically talking as if she’s the only woman Sherlock Holmes ever spoke to, and this is wrong. Like, factually incorrect. So I write about other women, instead, in hopes someone else will too.

And that Rex Stout thing is going around and man that makes me angry. It’s just full of a nasty mid 20thC misogyny that I can’t stand. And if you get women wrong you get marriage wrong, you get human relationships wrong, if you write women as aliens then eventually all your characters become aliens.

And because it’s so easy not to, it’s really easy to write stories with no named female characters and way too easy to write stories that don’t pass the Bechdel Test and this is actually really scary, that you can just accidentally not have any women in a story and not notice.

But mostly because women are sexy and women on top of each other are sexy and women are adorable and women having sweet lesbian crushes on each other are adorable and women are awesome and women whacking people with pokers in defense of their loved ones are awesome.

And because if a character just starts creating herself in my head it will be her. That’s just how it seems to work. And I have no problems with this.

And because her picture's featured on Wikipedia today: Voltarine de Cleyre, ladies and gentlefans.

Look how your children grow up. Taught from their earliest infancy to curb their love natures — restrained at every turn! Your blasting lies would even blacken a child's kiss. Little girls must not be tomboyish, must not go barefoot, must not climb trees, must not learn to swim, must not do anything they desire to do which Madame Grundy has decreed "improper." Little boys are laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys if they want to make patchwork or play with a doll. Then when they grow up, "Oh! Men don't care for home or children as women do!" Why should they, when the deliberate effort of your life has been to crush that nature out of them. "Women can't rough it like men." Train any animal, or any plant, as you train your girls, and it wont be able to rough it either.

More women anarchists, everyone.

It's the tenth anniversary of legal gay marriage in Ontario!

It has come to my attention, through supergee, that today is National Coming Out Day. Not my nation, but hey. Coincidentally, it is also almost exactly the fifth anniversary of my coming out to my parents at Thanksgiving dinner. Two separate dinners, actually, my parents not being married anymore.

So if anyone's interested, I'm pansexual. And my gender identity right now seems to be "mostly female".

And good luck and best wishes to everyone who needs them in such matters.

Regarding The Blind Banker.

Been trying to remember where this was, and then I just accidentally stumbled on it.