worryingly jolly batman

Spent the last hour alternately literally throwing up because I think I ate something gross, and metaphorically throwing up because of the left-wing response to the Julian Assange rape chargers. Here is some required reading for you all.

"We require — not ask, not prefer, absolutely require – progressive media and public figures to stand against rape in every case. Again, this is not negotiable. This is mandatory. This is a requirement: If you don’t stand against rape, and make that stand a crucial and central part of your platform, we do not accept you either as a real “progressive” or as someone who is in any way qualified for authority or a leadership position. We will not buy your merchandise; we will not support you; we will speak out against you. Because a progressive movement that doesn’t stand against rape isn’t a progressive movement. It’s just The Man, it’s just the oppressor, it’s just oppression, in a baseball hat, holding a camcorder."

Say you’re at a family barbecue and someone mentions that one of Assange’s accusers was a feminist who wrote about taking revenge on men, and you say yeah, rape is terrible but so is being wrongly accused. So many women just cry rape to get the attention, it’s disgusting and your mother-in-law leaves the room because she was raped many years ago by a trusted family friend and nobody believed her, but you don’t know that story, because you never asked. How does your mother-in-law feel, how does she feel about you being the parent of her grandchildren?"

"Dinah has been politically engaged since she was in junior high school, working on a host of left-wing causes. Articulate and brave, as soon as she turned eighteen she spent school breaks traveling around the country working on various campaigns. And on one such campaign, while traveling alone with this celebrated male activist through rural Wisconsin, she was raped by this man she looked up to and admired.">

1. I had this big rant about how I started watching Supernatural again last week and how I kind of find the whole angel-demon-apocalypse thing weird/boring and yet I suddenly really like Castiel (which I really didn't back when I was last watching the show, beginning of S4) but it was kind of confusing and off-track and vaguely anti-Christian and also turned into a rant about how I just hate apocalypses so I deleted it and instead I think everyone should give me Dean/Castiel recs. I think this is the third time I've returned to this show, maybe the fourth, and I have to say I don't know why. There are better shows on TV. There are shows with actual women on them, which I happen to really enjoy. But w/e it sucked me in again.

2. Here's a profic rant that's been building up for awhile, probably since the Wellington book festival. I was not having a great week and didn't get to much, but I did get to the Margo Lanagan and Neil Gaiman panel about writing ~~Darker and Edgier~~ YA.

Anyone who's cracked a book lately is aware of a surging interest in young adult fiction. This is at least partly because the shit is really selling lately, and not just to teenagers: also to women of all ages (like me). One aspect of this is that the stuff that's really selling is fantasy; for awhile in there it was urban fantasy, now, of course, it's paranormal romance. It's worth noting at this point that I think some of the greatest fantasy being written at the moment is being written for teen audiences. Gaiman (Coraline, The Graveyard Book) and Lanagan (Black Juice and many other short story collections, Tender Morsels) are only two examples. However, they are certainly poster children for a particular style of writing and for a fairly significant crossover audience.

Naturally they were asked about this: writing for YA, the differences between writing for YA and writing for adults, writing graphic violence and/or sex, how has the crossover audience affected YA, etc. They both said basically the same thing: they don't think of themselves as writing YA books. They write the books with the protagonists they want to write and then their publishers decide and you know kids can read all kinds of stuff these days and blah blah blah they're way too cool to make marketing decisions, which is all, you know. Fine. It's fine. I understand what they're trying to say: they're trying to say that the children's and YA reading audience is sophisticated, can be much more sophisticated than they are given credit for. And this is true, particularly for children who are prolific readers. (I was going to get into a discussion here about the relationship between privilege, especially educational and financial, and being a "good"/"sophisticated"/voracious reader, but I think I'll talk about it another time so I'll just leave it there.)

But Neil Gaiman couldn't answer the question without taking five minutes to diss the problem novel, which he described in this way (paraphrased): "Back when I was a journalist I would come across YA/teen books for review and they were all these horrible things about your brother being a drug addict and becoming HIV positive and your stepfather beating you up and your girlfriend getting pregnant."

Now, Gneil is hardly the first author or book reviewer or editor to take a swipe at the problem novel (sometimes also described as an issue novel and not to be confused with the social problem novel), which is indeed a staple of the YA genre (and has been since, oh, The Catcher in the Rye). Wikipedia has a fairly nice definition and brief summary of attitudes to the problem novel which I will quote here:

Problem novel is a term used to refer to a sub-genre of young adult literature that deal exclusively with an adolescent's first confrontation with a social or personal ill. The term is rather loosely defined ... as dealing more with characters from lower-class families and their problems; being "grittier"; using more realistic language; and including dialects, profanity, and poor grammar when it fits the character and setting.

I would add to Wikipedia that problem novels are famously YA but are not exclusively so: they're just as common in picture books and middle-grade and intermediate novels.

Now, first off let me point out that the problem novel has a frankly illustrious history. To Kill A Mockingbird is a problem novel. So are The Outsiders, The Chocolate War, Maniac Magee. These are widely-acclaimed novels, and if you check the list of Newbery and Carnegie Medal winners, you will see problem novels cropping up often. (I think Tithe is a lot like a problem novel too, by the way. Francesca Lia Block has written a few.)

So there's no doubt that problem novels can be good. Those novels, their existence and their value, doesn't need to be justified. However, it has become increasingly clear to me that adult readers, writers, reviewers, don't understand and often don't appreciate the problem novel, the ones that don't win Newbery awards, and it's these people who are popularising crossover YA fiction and it's a real attitude problem.

Anne Fine (Goggle-Eyes, Madame Doubtfire, Flour Babies, Step by Wicked Step, Round Behind the Ice-house) has won the Carnegie medal multiple times. Jacqueline Wilson (The Illustrated Mum, The Suitcase Kid, Bad Girls, The Story of Tracey Beaker) has won the children's Whitbread several times. These are women who write prolific, straightforward problem novels, about divorce, adoption, stepfamilies, shoplifting, mental illness, death, bullying, romance (not all in the same book.) (Note: these are both Brits and I'm referring to them because I read a lot of both of them. Judy Blume would be a US analogue.) But I do not think they are understood and they have no crossover audience of which I'm aware. And this is because - and I think this is crucial - they aren't writing for adults. They aren't writing ~the books that come to them~ and then letting their publisher pick who to market it to depending on what's hot. They are writing books for children and young adults about issues that are of vital and pressing concern for actual children and actual young adults. And these are the writers that are being dissed when we diss problem novels.

They made a movie of one of Anne Fine's books, Madame Doubtfire. Maybe you saw it, it had Robin Williams in it and it was pitched as a family film. But in order to make it as an American, Hollywood movie, they had to cast - well - Robin Williams. They had to change the protagonists from the children to the adults. Because Madame Doubtfire is profoundly a book about children. I have no doubt that it would not have sold well as a family film, because they have to be sold to adults as entertainment for adults. And I think this is a signal of why I find all this talk about crossover audiences and fiction for all ages and blah de blah upsetting.

Sure - we can sit around slagging off Go Ask Alice til we're blue in the face (and I think GAA is problematic because it's a bit of a cautionary tale, but w/e). But problem novels are profoundly not for us. They're for children and middleschoolers and young adults who, actually, do want and sometimes need to read about someone whose brother is a drug addict and whose girlfriend is pregnant. They can be crucial for teens in crises and for helping teens not be in crises and "at-risk" teens and children. Slagging them off is, to me, part of a process of co-opting the young adult market for 23-year-old women like me and I don't want a bar of it. Stop doing it, everyone.

Little bit o'links:
Justine Larbalestier on problem novels, great suggestion in the comments about differentiating between "problem novels" and "lecture novels"
A whole blog about problem novels, although - hahahaha - their 2007 intro post refers to the "new trend" of problem novels.
Diversity Roll-Call: Problem Novels, which includes the cover to the problem novel (actually a short story collection) that might have been most important to me personally, Am I Blue?
Problem novel recs at The Englishist.

Cross-posted with comments enabled to http://labellementeuse.livejournal.com/324225.html. There may be further discussion in comments there.

So I usually submit a physical timesheet and invoice on Tuesdays, and then get paid on Thursdays. This Tuesday we got an email saying to send our invoices and timesheets electronically to our various supervisors. I did so, late in the evening (my instructions for timesheets had been 'by Wednesday midday' so I figured I was fine). Then on Wednesday there was a tangi (funeral) which most of the staff attended, so people weren't in the office for most of the day. Thursday, I don't get paid, my supervisor comes past to get me to sign my timesheet, I figure, hey, there was a tangi, everyone was away for a day, I'll be paid tomorrow. Friday: I'm not paid. I talk to my supervisor indicating that while I quite like my job, I don't do it because inactivity bores me. (That's what the Internet is for.) He calls around, says things are messed around because of the tangi (no kidding) and I should be paid early this week.

Today is Wednesday, I still haven't been paid, I consider it no longer early in the week. I write to my supervisor, he comes over and talks to me, says, oh, this has happened and that has happened and I really don't know where everything went but maybe if we get everything together now I'll be paid - but probably not tomorrow: Maybe Friday, or next week, but when this other staff member gets back in the office he'll be able to tell me for sure.

I mean, for fuck's sake. Being paid fortnightly is enough of a drag as it is. Being paid approximately once a month (and let me point out that I've been here nearly two months and have only ONCE been paid on anything resembling a regular schedule)? SUCKS.

On the plus side, maybe, having no trouble staying focused at work today, because every time I drift into staring out the window i get re-energised with a burst of intense fury.

This wasn't even what my angry post today was going to be about. (It was going to be about - what else? - John Key and his special, special ideas. 2010: Year of John Key's Really Dumb, Not Consulted Upon, Blatantly Obviously Bad Ideas That He Rams Through Anyway.I admit it's not a catchy title.) But that's been pushed to tomorrow, same bat-time, same bat-journal, your daily moment of seethe-inducing ridic from the government. (I actually work for the government, sort of, so this is even more apropos.)

1. "I think it's a kiwi." "Don't they only live in Australia or New Zealand?" *sob*

2. On "Ms." Not the magazine, the title. If I could make one single absolute change to the world, it would probably be Ms. Mrs. would be gone and Miss would be like Master - on the way out. I know that is a pretty bourgeois English-speaking problem, and obviously I could say, end poverty, hunger, violence. But I think those things are symptoms, not the disease, ad I think curing the disease is going to take more than one change. So: Ms.

Here are some of the things I think about Ms.

"Miss" implies this: You're a woman. You're unmarried. You probably don't have dependents and in fact might be dependent upon others. You're probably young = naive, and/or young = irresponsible, and/or young = don't need promotions/careers instead of jobs/pay raises.

"Mrs." implies this: You're a heterosexual woman. You're married. You're dependent (or codependent) upon others. You also have a good chance of having dependents, who might cause you to take time off work to go pick them up from school, look after them when they're sick, etc. This means you probably shouldn't get responsibilities in case you can't fulfill them because of that, even though you are more responsible than that Miss. You're dependent so you probably don't need that pay raise.

"Mr." implies this: You're a man and you're an adult.

Why would you let people who know, potentially, nothing about you than your name have all that extra information about you?

And these are only the most practical, boring reasons. For reasons that actually make me angry, check out a person paper on purity in language.

Re: Supernatural 2x13.

Dear world,

hey, so apparently you don't know that much about atheists. (Which, by the way, is what Dean is. I mean, I know you have him calling himself a sceptic and all, but he's straightforwardly atheist to me. For most of this episode, anyway.) I'd just like to let you know, world, that we're not all sad, and gloomy, and lonely, and drowning in evil. You know? And hey - it's okay to be atheist. You know this religious tolerance we're all supposed to have - I know a lot of atheists work quite hard at it. But if Dean had been religious, like, Muslim or Jewish or Hindu or even, probably, pagan, I bet you you would never have picked the ending you did.

So why is it okay to take away what makes an atheist, an atheist?

No fucking love,
Me.

PS: But I did like that version of Knockin' on Heaven's Door. (Um, and if anyone has it... I'd love a copy. I can swap for my version? This is the first song on SPN to already be on heavy rotation on my music players, I'm so proud. :P)

I know that when I say this,
I may be stepping on pins and needles;
But I don't like all these people
slagging her for breaking up the Beatles.
(Don't blame it on Yokey!)

-- Barenaked Ladies, Be My Yoko Ono

THE END.

( oh no, apparently I do have more to complain about )

Okay, let's review, shall we? New Zealand has a robust, bitchy Parliamentary system in which members will backstab, connive, pointscore, mudsling, in short, do anything to keep life interesting in the Beehive. The media usually stays far away from commentary on private life but everything else is open season.

May 2005, National opens up with accusing Labour MP David Benson-Pope of abusing his authority during his time as a teacher. B-P denies allegations (and mostly has the support of Labour); they remain fairly unsubstantiated (after he hit the news, there were plenty of students willing to come forward and say they'd suffered under his iron rule. But only after.) There was unbelievable rhetoric directed against him, including stuff that even if he did absolutely everything he was accused of doing it would have been inappropriate.

post-election, 2005, it is revealed that the Exclusive Brethren have been campaigning for National, spending up to 1.2 MILLION dollars advertising to support them; money that was not reported to the electoral officer. (This is way illegal because NZ parties have a certain amount they're allowed to spend, and no more.) It is slightly dodgy territory because they advertised using National's slogans - "Change the Government" - and EB leaders were transparent in support of National but they didn't actually put "vote Nats!" on the pamphlets BUT... anyway, you get the picture. More crucially, Don Brash actually lied about his knowledge of the pamphlet's existence. (there's a whole bunch of other dodgy stuff about them but anyways.)

There is a period of mostly quiet, which is nice for a change (anyone following parliament a bit more closely know much about what was going on here?) Jane Clifton describes it as a policy of "nuclear dirt-terrent."

Then this week, it is revealed that National leader Don Brash has been having an affair with a woman on the Business Roundtable. This is politically dodgy - not for the affair, for whom it was with - but it had been kept quiet by the media for about a year until, and this is important, National MPs brought it up in caucus and then leaked it to the papers. This really broke major NZ media taboos on commenting on the private lives of politicians; I was watching the news tonight and they came up with two examples of this happening before in NZ media (David Lange's affair, about twenty years ago, and Rob "I am an asshole and everyone hates me!" Muldoon's accusing a Labour MP of being gay thirty years ago.) I don't like this at all and the ONLY reason I could be even a little bit okay with this is that apparently the woman he was sleeping with has a lot of control over, for example, National party funding by the Roundtable.

HOWEVER.

Today? Someone (*cough* NATS *cough*) has started spreading rumours about Helen Clark's husband, Peter Davis being gay. Specifically, there is a photo of him hugging Ian Scott, a gay Labour supporter.

The problem for the smear campaign is that this photo was taken on election night. Labour had just won. Probably, if Don Brash had been in the room, Davis and Scott would have hugged him and it sure wouldn't be because of powerful sexual attraction, kids.

I just can't express how furious this makes me. It's bad enough that because Helen is PM, she's constantly being accused of being a lesbian. (The favourite conspiracy of right-wing jerkoffs in this country is the lesbian cabal running the country. Think the gay agenda, but with special political oomph.) But now, because it's been publicly revealed that Don Brash is having an affair, someone has to make these things up out of whole cloth? NOT FUCKING ON, NZ media. We're sinking to an international low, here.

The worst of it is, it detracts from commentary about exactly why Don Brash's affair might be politically (rather than morally or personally) dodgy. Apart from corruption, he's repeatedly campaigned on a platform of conservative marriage values, for example. But this thing frankly makes it all about the sex lives of our not-so-rich and powerful. Because the thing is, if Helen were a lesbian and Davis were a gay man, they'd a) still have a more functional marriage than Brash and both is ex-wives and b) they'd at least be being honest with each other and c) it still wouldn't affect Helen's fitness for office or Davis' fitness for, um, being professor of Sociology at Auckland University. Just like, in my opinion, Brash's affairs are not what's relevant to his unfitness for office.

Okay, I'm done.

I was thinking a few days ago, it's been awhile since there's been any really impassioned ranting hereabouts. I was wondering how to fix this; happily, although not really, today's Sunday Star Times front page gave me not one but TWO apoplexies this morning! I have been working up rants on them all day at work.

( Illegal Immigrant gets $500k liver transplant: clearly, kiwis are being robbed of healthcare! )

( OMG LABOUR DYKES ARE FORGETTING THEIR UNIONIST ROOTS, by rosemary mcleod aged 3 1/2. )

And now, feeling much better, I'm going to do my reading for English tomorrow. Mmm, Wordsworth.

ETA: ALSO. So, all this year I've been telling people that I'm doing a BA/BSc, BA in phil, BSC in maths. However, I'm in the middle of confirming some of my course changes and I checked my majors and apparently my BA major is... English. Phil and maths are my joint BSc majors.

This means two things.
1) At the beginning of the year, in some major spaz fit that I have since totally and completely and utterly forgotten, I changed my majors.
2)Um, I should probably be taking those two English papers, since apparently I don't need the science credits any more. Predictably, as soon as I realise this, I instantly decide Semantics looked much more interesting in the Wednesday lecture. *sigh*

Dear wider world:

"maori spirits": not universally evil, also, not often called spirits. Also, Maori do not have shamans or medicine men or live in teepees, and they never have. Ever. Kaumatua is not a difficult word to find and it would be so much better than shaman, thanks.

Also, enough of the soul-eating Maori monsters!11!!1. If you want to incorporate that aspect of Maori culture, great, good for you, but get it right. Otherwise, don't use it in fic, don't use it in fanworks, and DON'T, DON'T, DON'T use it in actual published work - and published only a few years ago, I might add - that you want to get money for. (*cough* Gotham Knights 16-17. The thing that pissed me off the most about them is that it was half-right- some (some) of the art was pretty good (and then some was awful. There's a whole goddamned wiki page on ta moko and it even has pictures! But it is fairly recent, so.)

And may I just add? I know next to nothing about Maori culture and history, I don't speak te reo and I don't even know my mihi. So if I can tell that it's appalling, so can everyone else. JUST SAY NO to using a culture you know nothing about.

NO LOVE
Me

This PSA was brought to you by Gotham Knights 16-17 (Devin Grayson, Roger Robinson), and then seeing it once to many times as a gimmick. And I really like GK, so it pissed me off more than normal. NO MORE EATING BRAINS, WORLD, OKAY?

ETA: THIS IS ME PUBLICALLY DEFENDING keymash's HONOUR, BY THE WAY. I was busy sleeping when she was being given the inappropriate smackdown by my brother and his friend, who are clearly unable to distinguish IRONY from LJ comments. So, *ahem*, I have known keymash for, like, at least over a year and she was so totally making a joke oh my god. A satire, even. *shakes head*

That said, I am sort of glad because that was very funny.

If anyone wants to take ten seconds to send a note to Meadow Fresh telling them not to ditch glass milk bottles for the South Island, the link is here. :( Glass milk bottles are better for the environment (because they're cleaned and reused), milk tastes better out of glass bottles, and they employ tonnes of people- kids with after school jobs & so forth. Glass milk bottles were already ditched for the North Island- stop them doing it in the South! Frogblog has a bit of information here.