Fancy yourself a feminist writer? Have an idea for a post? Want to cross-post something from your blog? I am always looking for guest/cross posters. Contact me with your ideas at youngfeministadventures (at) gmail (dot) com.
Unfortunately, I am going to be closing this site soon. I cannot afford to maintain a self-hosted site when I haven’t been posting that often lately. I have really appreciated all the support that people have given me in the year (+) that I have run this blog.
I have, however, opened up another blog through Wordpress. So I will be doing my future posting on my new blog, Fighting with the Sky. I have transferred all my posts over to that blog so you can read some old posts there.
So please change all you reader and blogroll sites to reflect this change. Sorry that I will not be able to maintain this one anymore. See you over there!!
I have recently started reading the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson. I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo probably about a week and a half ago now and became absolutely enthralled by it. And now I’ve finished the second in the series, The Girl Who Played With Fire. I can’t wait to see how the trilogy ends in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I was really impressed with the second book of this series…for a number of reasons.
Warning: minor spoilers for the first two books of the series (and please don’t leave spoilers for the third in the comments). I will not reveal any of the major revelations of the books, but I will discuss some of the aspects of the plot and character development.
When I first started The Girl Who Played With Fire I wasn’t sure how I felt about the character developments of Lisbeth Salander, the female protagonist (I don’t know if ‘protagonist’ is the right word for Salander). In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Salander came across as this incredibly brilliant, yet socially awkward woman, who didn’t take crap from anyone. At the beginning of Fire, we learn that Salander used a (small) portion of the money that she obtained in Dragon Tattoo to get a boob job. She spends the first 100 (or more, can’t remember) pages or so being self-conscious about not only her new breasts but her small body as well. I don’t know if this was some sort of development to make her more relate-able because, yes, everyone has body image issues. But all I saw was Salander going from this kick-ass woman to this whiny girl. I didn’t really care for it. Once we got past that part of the book, the “old” Salander seemed to come back with all her computer hacking and investigative glory. As she is described at some points throughout the book, Salander is a woman who hates men who hate women (a play on the Swedish title of Dragon Tattoo — The Men Who Hate Women).
While it did take a while a long while for the murders of this murder mystery to happen (about 200 pages or so), which we knew were going to happen based on reading the back of the book, I did find the lead up to the murders interesting (even though I was frustrated that they hadn’t happened yet — is it a bad sign when you are asking yourself when murders are finally going to happen, even if it is in a book?). The lead up to the murders dealt a lot with an expose of the sex trafficking industry in Sweden. I thought it was a very interesting approach in that it’s something that most people generally don’t want to think about (on a whole, even though it’s a really important issue). And I liked that they did focus on the victims of the sex trafficking industry, but they also looked at the financials of it and what pimps and johns gained from it.
I also thought that Fire provided an interesting look at mental illness. Salander was in and out of mental institutions in her teens and was uncooperative with authorities, so she had numerous reports of something being “wrong” with her, that she was unstable, and that she was a psychopath with violent tendencies (which, yes, she does tend to have violent tendencies, but only when provoked). During the police investigation into Salander, all they had access to were these reports, so they drew a picture of her being this crazy killer woman. It didn’t help that she didn’t have that many friends. But all of the people that they interviewed about her gave a completely different account of what she was actually like. Despite the interviews from her friends, the police were insistent for a good part that Salander was responsible for the murders because she has a history of mental illness and violence.
It was interesting to see this story line play out. As an audience, we have know that Salander had been in a mental hospital and that she was declared incompetent. But we also saw her as being able to handle herself, as a genius, albeit, socially awkward. We were just meant to believe that Salander had fallen to some bad situations that ended with her being in a mental institution (which doesn’t necessarily mean she has a mental illness — but there is talk in this book about the possibility of her having Asperger’s, but she has never been officially diagnosed). But in Fire, we see the character of Salander that we have grown accustomed to challenged by her medical reports and the police being insistent that there is something “wrong” with her. It also says a lot about the difference between reading reports of people (which are made through other people’s perceptions and biases — which plays a large role in Salander’s case) and actually getting to know the person, whether talking to them yourself or talking to the people that know her well (in the case of the book).
Overall, I thought that this was a great book. I can’t decide if I liked Fire better or Dragon Tattoo, because they have significantly different story lines despite having the same characters. In Fire, Salander and Blomkvist (the main characters) are never together except for the last page, so you don’t get too much of the interaction between them that you got in the first. And the investigations in each book are significantly different in nature — both murder investigations, but under completely different circumstances.
I will make a note at the end here though, that there are some major trigger warnings for both books. There are graphic descriptions of rape, violent scenes, domestic violence, and sex trafficking throughout both books. I thought that Dragon Tattoo was a little more graphic in its descriptions, but there are still some major trigger warnings for Fire.
That being said, I would highly recommend this trilogy to anyone, just be aware of these trigger warnings as I was not when I first started reading Dragon Tattoo.
So I’ve been gone from this website for a long time now. I think it’s time to start investing some more time here. I chose to leave this blog for a little while because I thought I was getting too wrapped up in the internet and not spending any time with my family and friends. Ok, well I was spending time with them, but I was more interested in having discussions with people online than face to face with people.
But I do have to say that I have missed the online feminist community these past couple months. I am going to try to be more present both here, on twitter (@YFemAdventures), and on tumblr (fighting with the sky). I probably won’t be back to the same extent as I was before my hiatus. I’ve been working a lot more lately which takes up a lot of time and leaves me exhausted at the end of the day. My posts will probably be shorter and less frequent than before…at least til I get back into the swing of things.
I also figured that I should work on this some more while I have the time. With starting grad school in the fall, I will not have a lot of time in August and September with getting settled into a new city and getting back into the practice of school…as well as working on top of that.
So, what have I missed while I’ve been gone? I’ve been trying to keep up with reading my favorite blogs, but it’s hard sometimes.
So I’m not a big fan of Saturday Night Live. So it’s no surprise that I never know who is hosting at what time. But if I would have known that Tina Fey was hosting SNL this past Saturday, I might have tuned in…if I wasn’t at an amazing concert. I personally think that SNL started going majorly downhill (it was already going downhill from the previous seasons) when Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon left the show. So I probably would have tuned in if I could have if I knew that Tina Fey was hosting.
But then I caught this clip of “Women’s News” from the Weekend Update that Tina Fey did. Oh Tina Fey. I sometimes I have such high hopes for you, but then you go and do things like this:
So, I didn’t want to add to the mess that is the Sandra Bullock/Jesse James scandal. It’s been beaten with a stick and yet we are still talking about it. And then Tina Fey had to go an add to it. For those who didn’t feel like watching the clip, Tina Fey basically blamed Michelle “Bombshell” McGee (and all mistresses basically) for Jesse James (and men in general) cheating. Because everyone knows that the men wouldn’t cheat if it wasn’t for those horrible women that lure them away. It’s not the man’s fault at all. I expected better from you Tina Fey.
Oh, and don’t forget how she made the judgments based on McGee’s tattoos. I, personally, don’t really like the whole body tattoo look, but that doesn’t mean that the people that have those tattoos are horrible people.
I know that the media in general have been blaming and slut-shaming McGee for this whole situation (even though it has come out that Jesse James had numerous affairs). But I was just shocked to see Tina Fey join in just to get a laugh. I’m very disappointed in you, Tina.
So, as you may have noticed, I haven’t really been posting much (or anything) lately. At first it was because I was busy, but now it has become more of a self-imposed hiatus from blogging.
I was using blogging and twitter and the online feminist community to kind of withdraw from my life in the “real world.” So, I have decided that I have to get back into said real world and hang out with people in person, get out of the house and do stuff.
Not that I don’t love you people, I do. I really enjoy blogging and fostering conversations about feminism with people all over the world. But I was spending a good amount of time thinking of things to write and then writing them and hanging out on twitter and tumblr.
I’m going to use this hiatus to reconnect with friends, catch up on my reading, and developing new interests and activities. I’m still going to post occasionally. I like to do the link love posts because it keeps me reading blogs as well. And I will still watch Lost every week, so I will probably still keep those up to date, but we’ll see.
This was the episode where we finally learned the story of Richard. From the commercials for it, I was expecting something epic and amazing. For the first half of the episode, I was a little disappointment. But in the second half, we actually learned some important things, even though they might not be the most revealing things to have learned.
We learn that Richard used to live on the Canary Islands with his ill wife. While trying to get medicine for his wife, he accidentally kills the doctor. Upon arrival home after the event, he finds that his wife has died as well. He is sentenced to hang for the murder of the doctor, but someone buys him as a slave because he speaks English for a trip to the New World. On said trip, there is a storm that leads them to shipwreck on the island. For about 10 minutes, we watch Richard struggle against his chains in the boats as everyone around him is killed. First, the officers kill the other slaves, but Smokey gets to the officers because they can get to Richard. Richard also sees his dead wife, who he believes was then killed by Smokey as well.
The Man In Black (MIB) later comes and frees Richard from his chains. He tells Richard that he can see his wife again if he kills the Devil — i.e. Jacob. He tells Richard that he cannot let the Devil even speak to him, because then it would be too late. As you may recall, this is the same thing that Dogen told Sayid when he tasked him with killing Flocke/MIB.
As Richard approaches the statue, where the MIB told him that he could find the Devil/Jacob, Jacob jumps him. Jacob explains to Richard that the MIB is not who he seems. The MIB believes that everyone is corruptible and that the only thing keeping the darkness contained is the island. Jacob believes that if the MIB were allowed to leave the island, that the darkness and evil would spread throughout the world. This is why Jacob brings people to the island, hoping to show the MIB that not everyone is corruptible. But Jacob doesn’t want to interfere with these people, he wants them to make the right decision on their own. But as Richard points out, the MIB is more than willing to interfere with the people that come to the island, so why shouldn’t Jacob? Jacob offers this job, the job of intermediary between himself and the people that he brings to the island to Richard. Richard accepts on the condition that he can live forever. He first wants to see his wife again, which Jacob cannot do, then he wants his sins absolved, which Jacob can also not do. So he settles on living forever so that he never has to pay for his sins.
Even though Richard chose to side with Jacob, the MIB told him that his offer still stands — that he could see his wife again if he sided with him and helped him escape from the island.
Back in present day, Richard has stormed off into the jungle to find where he buried his wife’s cross. He yells out into the jungle that he changed his mind and hopes that the offer (of the MIB) still stands. But then Hurley shows up. He says that Isabella, Richard’s wife, sent him and that she has a message for him. She tells Richard that it was not his fault that she died. She also asks him to stop the MIB from leaving the island or else they all go to hell.
So we’ve known for a while that Jacob and the MIB are connected — that the MIB cannot leave the island as long as Jacob is alive and as long as one of the candidates takes Jacob’s spot. But as of right now, there is no one that has taken Jacob’s spot, so the MIB is theoretically free to leave the island if he can find a way off of it. But they are also connected in that they cannot be killed unless they have not spoken to their killer first (did Jacob speak to Ben before Ben killed him?) and they have to be killed with a specific knife.
My lasting question is: who is really to be trusted, Jacob or the MIB? The show is obviously painting Jacob as the man to be trusted. But when the MIB was speaking to Richard, he painted Jacob as the Devil who was keeping people, including Richard’s wife, hostage. Even though the MIB is also Smokey and very obviously has killed many people, I still have this feeling that the show is going to pull the rug out from underneath us and it is going to turn out that Jacob is actually the “bad guy” and the MIB/Flocke is the “good guy.” I don’t know how they are going to go about doing this, but I just get this feeling that they are going to. There are many devious and questionable things that Jacob has done, but the show has always painted them as for the good of the island. But what if they aren’t?
I’m wondering if we are ever going to learn how Jacob and the MIB came to be on the island. How did Jacob get the role as the “protector” of the island? Was Jacob the first protector? Was the MIB that Richard met the original? Or has the MIB assumed many forms before that as well, as he has assumed the form of Locke? Will Richard eventually die before the season is over? Who is going to take the role of Jacob — if anyone?
Since I haven’t been doing a lot of writing this week, I have been doing a lot of reading. Here are some of my favorites! Also, check out some of the stuff that I have been posting on tumblr. Or you could even ask me a question!
I like Sandra, from the interviews I have seen with her – she seems like a woman that I would really enjoy sharing a beer with; however, the Madonna/Whore binary that this story is creating in her defence is harmful to ALL women.
Yet I must admit that this quote reverberates because it was one of the first things I thought when I heard a young girl was missing after going to run alone in a local park. Living in a rape culture which blames the victim, I recognize that even I, a feminist scholar and teacher, have had a “she should have” commentary beaten into my brain on a daily basis.
If women are going to continue to break down barriers and keep the fight of feminism alive, we have got to lay off the girl on girl crime. This is something that affects women of all ages. Several weeks ago in Salon Magazine I read an article by Martha P. Nochimson, an established former NYU professor and author, take down Katheryn Bigelow simply because she didn’t like her movie.
Because children come from privileged backgrounds are the ones who need to know the most about power, privilege, and access; in other words, it is a necessity for these children to understand the foundations of social justice education.
Actually, Ms. is a way of privacy. Ms. does not convey age like Miss might indicate youth and Ma’am might indicate experience. Ms. does not convey marital status like Miss implies single and Missus implies married. Ms. implies female, woman, lady. It allows a woman’s name to stand on her own, without being defined by social roles.
Oh, Sawyer. You’re so pretty to look at. Now, this was a story line that I actually found interesting. In the flash sideways, Sawyer is a detective with the LAPD and his partner is Miles. He also goes on a date with Charlotte, who works with Miles’ father at a museum. He tells Charlotte that he decided to be a cop because he got to a point in his life where he could either be a criminal or a cop. Was it Jacob pushing Sawyer (who goes by his real name, James Ford, in the flash sideways) to be a criminal? Did Jacob set the things in motion that made Sawyer choose criminal? Sawyer is still trying to hunt down the original con man Sawyer, the man who was the reason for his father killing his mother and himself. At the end, a car crashes into a car with Sawyer and Miles and speeds off. They catch up to the car, and guess who it was: Kate.
This brings up the issue again that maybe some things are just meant to happen. Maybe Sawyer and Miles are always meant to work closely together: as detectives in the flash sideways and in the Dharma initiative in the original time line. And maybe Sawyer and Kate were always meant to have a “tortured love affair”…gag me. Maybe James Ford Sawyer is always meant to kill con man Sawyer as a form of revenge.
On the island, Flocke sends Sawyer on recon mission to Hydra island to take a look around the plane that brought everyone back to the island. What he finds there are dead passengers and people with guns that take him to see Charles Whidmore, whose submarine landed there. Sawyer offers to bring Flocke to Whidmore in exchange for safe passage off of the island for everyone else. But when Sawyer gets back to Flocke, he tells him all about Whidmore so they can make a plan to surprise him. But he then tells Kate that they are going to make Flocke and Whidmore fight as a distraction so they can steal the submarine and get off the island…we’ll see how this all works out.
In other news, Claire attacks Kate for taking Aaron and Sayid just sits there and watches. Flocke pulls Claire off and tells her its inappropriate. Flocke talks to Kate about how he had a crazy mother which made his childhood difficult and Kate should sympathize because Aaron now has a crazy mother. This makes me think that Flocke’s mother was on the island with them and went “crazy” in a way similar to Claire and Rousseau.
I always like when Charles Whidmore is in episodes. I find him interesting because, like most characters, I don’t know what he’s really playing at. What is his end game? Why does he want to island so much? Why is everyone so scared of him? How does Flocke know Whidmore?
I’m really excited for next week’s episode. The teaser claims that Richard’s story is going to be told. I’ll believe that when I see it, but it should be interesting enough to see a little bit about Richard’s past.
Lady Gaga’s new video for Telephone has set of quite the firestorm online. Gaga appeared (pantsless) on my radar about a year ago as I noticed her being ripped apart by women-targeted fashion and gossip blogs, and the occasional feminist blog. Over time, things seemed to improve: she developed a reputation for being subversive, outspoken, gay-friendly, and arguably feminist. Her latest video has put a lot of us back at square one, wondering if we were kidding ourselves, if she’s messing with our heads, if this was just a fluke, if she jumped the shark, or (!!!) if it’s just a (NSFW) music video.
Jezebel has a Feminist Play List of five feminism-inspired songs, and they pick some good ones. But I know Feministe readers are primo Insufferable Music Snobs, so add your selections in the comments. And maybe the most fun thing about making this list? There are so many more than five songs to choose from. Feminism win.
Douglas attempts to unveil the contradictions in society, especially pop culture, that allows us, men and women, to believe we live in a post-feminist world but in fact do not. She fails to convince me, despite believing it, due to her contradictory examples.
But these shows don’t actually have any main character who straight up says “I am a feminist.” In Veronica Mars, the feminists are actually depicted as laughable figures; they are straw feminists of the worst order, honestly. “Woman power” is used as a joke line on Buffy, and I don’t see Dr. Yang calling herself a feminist even though she’s kind of a personal feminist icon, for me. Where are all the feminists on these feminist shows?
As we can see, the trend with wheelchair-using characters in this show is that they’re evil and must die at the hands of our charming able-bodied hero.
Doctor Arizona Robbins (played by Jessica Capshaw), introduced in the fifth season of Grey’s Anatomy, is one of my favourite women on a show which already has a lot of awesome ladies (like Chandra Wilson as Doctor Miranda Bailey, Sara Ramirez as Doctor Callie Torres, and Sandra Oh as Doctor Christina Yang). She was brought on board in the wake of the blowback about the gaywashing of Doctor Hahn as a love interest for Dr. Torres, but she’s her own character, not just a love interest, and she’s extremely awesome. There’s a reason she’s referred to as a fan favourite.
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