Head on over to Something More Than Sides to check out this awesome 20th edition of the carnival. The theme this month is on feminism and childcare, there are some very interesting posts on that topic and several others.

Happy reading, also thanks to Pharoah Katt for her wonderful effort in putting the carnival together!

http://morethansides.blogspot.com

New Zealand wins... journalist Simon Collins wins as do all the organisations and agencies and various others involved in stuff covered by the following three articles... I'm totally blown away that this kind of thing actually exists. I'd be over the moon if any one of these things happened... but for all 3 to be happening? Wow.


Teen sex education, teaching skills in how to negotiate sexual intimacy, respect and communication, this with a clear goal of reducing instances of sexual violence.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10615048

Education programme targetting bars and bar staff with regard to predatory behaviour. This is the first article I've seen talking about protecting women from rape that doesn't go into a victim blaming spiral. The onus is instead put on the person behaving badly, and on the establishment as hosts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10615041&pnum=0

Talking about society, culture of rape permissiveness and of how deeply ingrained and invisible the trend to male dominance is. Lots of broad ground covered in this article.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10614961&pnum=0

I'm migrainy and so damn grumpy right now. Everything is annoying me.

F'rinstance. The phrase "Time Tot" being used in a story without irony. Also, the use of the word "bullocks" instead of "bollocks."

Thank goodness for danglypartsiple. I'm so glad I joined when it started up, and immediately posted my own faux pas. I now feel entirely without guilt when I point out other people's.

Cheer me up, people. Share your favourite malapropisms and other funnies. Pretty please. <--- OMG, that used up all my reserves of people skills today.

Um, I will likely not respond, as I'm far too cranky, but I will appreciate it like whoa!

ETA: Thanks to tesserae_ for linking to the awesome essay, The Zombie Finger of Rob Lowe by laura j. valentine.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/338382.html.

I like this being on holidays business! Yesterday M7 & M4 were taken to lunch by friends who kept them for the afternoon as well - hubby and I barely knew what to do with ourselves with no kids present! We ended up going to Dome for an early lunch, watching Slumdog Millionaire and have a nap each! V. nice :) Possibly the last time for a good many months we'll be home alone without children!

Hubby went back to work early this morning. Woke up to an email from battersblog  from the train station and they proceeded to prepare a lovely BBQ dinner for us all, while kids continued to play astonishingly well together - we then discussed movies, books, writing and whatever else popped up until nearly 9pm - very late for the littlies and very pleasant for us :)

This is definitely what holidays are about. So the jobs didn't get done ... they'll still be there another day!

Made 108 cookies, spent over an hour on the wiifit, decluttered, cleaned, read books, played with water, emailed friends, cooked, cleaned more, played more, and had a lovely day with the kids. Oh, and I organized more stuff.

It feels like a lot.
:-)
The 108 cookies I am particularly proud of. We started at 4:30 and finished them all by 5:30. Maple syrup and oat, date and walnut, and chocolate chip ones.
We have food in the house again! Woo!

We have fested, and it was good!

( 12 Days of Cliche Masterlist )

( Thoughts on Fests )

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/337973.html.

So over the past year my approach to goal setting has shifted quite a bit.

I have been of the school of thought where, I look at what I could expect to have happen, and aim just a little higher. I almost never inside of this, made goals that I didn't already think/know I could do. That's all very well for succeeding at what I set out to do... but did nothing for other things like actually knowing what I'm capable of, or how to fail and fall flat on my face... look stupid.

Those things are actually quite important. If I can never deal very well with making a fool of myself and looking stupid - then there's a world of angst out there for me. I can do without that. So recently I've been involved in a few theatre sport like activities that required me to get the hell over that thing. Once upon a time, I'd have run away, hidden, or done anything I could to escape taking part in any such exercise. Actually not letting myself do any of those things made a real difference. So did actually being silly, over the top and looking stupid. It wasn't as terrible as I always felt it was (possibly cos I got to own the circumstance surrounding!) Also, no other situation involving these things will ever be so terrifying again.

I love the freedom of this. It's like a huge weight has lifted from my shoulders.

So the thing I'm trying to learn now is how to stretch myself, and take on doing things I don't actually know if I can do... things that matter to me, are important to me and I have no idea how to make it happen. In the past when I've known basically how to go about things, I haven't had to exercise my creativity or delve into the areas of uncertainty. Now I have to. Some of that is working out what the purpose of the thing is, or what milestones to measure, or what difference is it going to make, what is it *not* going to do, all that kind of stuff.

I'm learning how to declare that I'd like to do something, or have something and make a commitment.

It's kind of like throwing my hat over a very high wall, and then having to go retrieve it despite not knowing how.

My experience of it is that I'm floundering a lot, I feel incompetent sometimes and slow. I have to remind myself that this is stuff I actively don't know, am learning, and can't just get a set of instructions to follow and do it from. I've noticed that I'm trusting myself more. I'm also noticing when I'm putting myself down more, and making myself small, and making others small. I'm seeing bigger pictures and possibilities.

The shift has opened up a world for me at what I hope is the right time, that this combined with the study that I'm doing will allow me to really see what I can do... to really try and not be afraid to fail. To really care enough to fail.

It's interesting, exciting, inspiring, sobering and grounding. And many other things.

Am still editing and uploading photos from our trip to Perth and surrounds, but really wanted to share these fantastic Russian Dolls which belong to my dad:





I love them so much, just wish I could've got Putin in focus.

(People on LJ won't be able to see my quick and dirty icon based on the first photo unless they click the link to DW version of post.)

This entry was originally posted at http://ironed-orchid.dreamwidth.org/487257.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Well I am quite excited to see Shawna McCarthy on livejournal: shawnam. Welcome!

She responds to the discussion this week about the Realms of Fantasy Special Issue here:

...he's now finding out the hard way that what sounds good in your head sounds awful on the internet. I know he's not a sexist pig, and using the terms a) "girl writers only" and b) "ladies" was not intended in any way other than a) as a joke, and b) as a young male person's ignorance of how much we women hate to be referred to as ladies. I also know that this ignorance is a sign that, yes, we still have far to go in the battle against sexist language and the underlying, unaware sexist attitudes,...

...

Objecting to Doug's choice of language in announcing it is legitimate, but he has apologized and is slowly but clearly learning his lesson is just what you can and cannot say on line. I too apologize to anyone who was offended by his words,but I do not apologize for fact of the issue's very existence.

Elsewhere on the internet last night I found myself being stripped down for being offended, told I had a skin so thin it was translucent and that this poor man was never going to win because I was always going to tear strips off him. These are of course the traditional methods for silencing women, being put back in the box. I've come a long way I think in this last year. I don't think I was wrong to express my own reaction and I don't need this reaction to find approval from a man in order for me to be able to feel it. It was also implied that I could not object to the word "girls" in a professional call for a professional submission because my lj handle is "girliejones". It had me thinking about whether I need to defend or explain the idea of taking back and owning words that have been used derogatorily and how the use of words is all about context. But I'm not teaching Feminism 101 anymore.

Most of the time I am okay with being broke, but sometimes I am heartbroken. Why? Take these coats and jackets for example.

I think I want them all ..

http://www.eshakti.com/clothsrpage.asp?catalog=Clothes&cate=wool&pagecount=1&view=all&pcat=Jackets

Happy birthday, queen_ypolita!

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cassiphone talks more on the Realms of Fantasy special issue here. To be honest, I kinda lost interest in the entire discussion at the "girl writers" bit in the submissions guidelines so she makes a really good point on how the poor use of language and tone can get in the way of the spirit of your message.

I lost interest because, even if that was intended as a joke, the language says a lot to me about the underlying attitude. Why would you ever refer to professional female writers that way? I've been trying to wrap my head around whether the reverse would ever happen. Noone would ever refer to writers like Jeff Vandermeer or Cory Doctorow or China Mieville as "boy writers". There's even a more stark comparison in the guidelines themselves which asks "Gents" not to apply. Male writers = Gents; Female writers = girls. It's hard for me to get past, clarifications or no.

In fact, let's look at the clarification. A wise woman called Mr Cohen to explain to him why his language was offensive. And um, he opened his apology post with "It appears I have accidentally ruffled some feathers... ". You know, I don't even know where to start with that. Chooks? Hen houses? *shakes head*

Anyway, I've mostly lost interest with that aspect of the discussion.

I was reading this interview by Graham Sleight of Farrah Mendelsohn over at Omnivoracious about her new book On Joanna Russ. It's a really interesting interview. But check out this little snippet I found in the comments today:

What perpetuates the idea among men that women don't write SF is that too often they are content to write about feminism and being female. When female writers start applying their talents to writing on and about a wider palette, they are likely to find a broader interest. It would be interesting for example if more female science fiction writers seemed more interested in well, science for example, than they are in their own identity issues. So long as every discussion of female sci-fi writers in inherently a discussion of feminism, don't expect this to change.

The words that jumped out at me in this paragraph are "broader interest". What a piece of work is man! I am utterly fascinated by the arrogance of that statement, that because something is not directed at him, or resonates within him and draws on his own experience, it therefore (by definition!) is not broad or of broader interest. If 50% of the world is female, and it's not, it's more, then surely something that speaks to half the world, or addresses issues relating to half the world's population, can not be of narrow focus! And in fact, more women read than men, so surely then something that speaks to the greater populace and audience can hardly be accused of less than broad appeal? And what should women be writing about if not about being female? Should they write about ... being male? Because of course what this man *really* means is that he only wants stories that *he* can relate to. He doesn't want stories to challenge or push his own personal boundaries, perspective or viewpoint, he doesn't really want to explore ideas of other or outer or not-like-me. Frankly, I wonder why he reads science fiction at all. Or rather, what he is saying is that he wants science fiction to continue to be a subset of stories about white, middle class American men.

I'd get angry but ... I feel embarrassed for him. How boring and um ... narrow.

There's a really interesting sub-thread in jimhines' post on the topic of the Realms of Fantasy Special Issue, involving oldcharliebrown - here - oldcharliebrown explains that one off special issues with a bias towards female content can not affect the overall sales of a magazine. It makes sense when you think about it - magazines are not ordered on an issue to issue basis. They are ordered by distributors and sellers based on an overall performance. One particular issue might suddenly attract a greater number of readers because it suddenly appeals more broadly - say you do a female only issue and more women readers see it on the newstand and buy a copy based on the names on the front. But that will end up only being a blip on the overall year's sales. In other words, the way to increase your readership, or appeal more broadly to, say, female readers, is to change your overall editing approach and attitude and to follow this through consistently, appealling to a broader readership.

This morning I opened my laptop to find an email from Helen (my supervisor) saying 'CALL ME, I've lost your number!'. So I did.

They've got my examiner's reports back.
 
AND ONE OF MY MARKERS PASSED ME WITH NO REVISIONS.
 
And the other one passed me with minor minor revisions (she wants me to add an awesome reference that she bullied her publisher into providing and tweak one paragraph).

So... change two lines, fix three typo's and...

I can see tomorrow from here.

Thank you for all the birthday wishes. I had a nice day.

So it's been a wild ride these last few days. What with last night drinks with the peeps in Tas, and then having asthma for the first few days back and today, I am exhausted. I was supposed to be well rested and I am not. I was supposed to spend this week getting stuck into Sprawl edits and I haven't even started yet. Ah well. So far, The Grand 2010 is treating me damn fine! And if being tired because life is a whirlwind of awesome is my main complaint, well then ... it's all good!