wednesday linkspam

[sciatrix]

...in aid of avoiding the manuscript drafts lurking in wait. Or the playout shit. yeah.


I saw a flag with stripes of many shades of blue, and I looked up what it meant. Apparently it was proposed for gay men. Thanks, I hate it.
My old friend Siggy, who is theoretically the target demographic for this flag, about made me piss myself laughing with this one. (Personally, I view the lipstick lesbian flag as a helpful warning that I should either turn around and run briskly in the opposite direction or else gird myself for TERF wars, so I'm pretty sure I would feel the same way if I was over on his side of the fence.)

megascopes made ALL THE CAROL DANVERS ICONS. Excite.

Relatedly, I fucking loved beehammer's point about Carol Danvers not courting insanity when reaching for great power.

And I commune so much with kore's rage upon trying to hunt down AO3 fics in the Captain Marvel tag that actually in any way focus on one of the characters in Captain Marvel. Nrghrgh TAG THINGS BETTER, PLEASE GOD

More DW posting styling HTML links.

and... how to make your DW not suck for people who don't like your HTML style.

I've been enjoying Genevive Valentine's posts, as a total fashion neophyte--I have no idea what is going on, but it's at least entertaining, and there are pictures and sensible explanations.

Someone linked this book on estrangement to me somewhere with a lead piece that made it sound really good. I want to read it, but also: reading time is hard.

satsuma found some interesting evidence of an ace presence at '99 SF Pride.

Actually, It's About Ethics in Doctor Who Journalism, or Why I am no longer talking to Doctor Who fans about race

Comments

[writerkit]

I think the entire AO3 tag system needs an overhaul. I have been noticing a similar problem for years every time I try to find fics that aren't massive-multi-fandom-crossovers.

[sciatrix]

Oh, goodness, yeah. I often filter out particular fandoms or pairings, and that does help, but it's still obnoxious.

[satsuma]

Wayyy back when I was in the Supernatural fandom, it was almost impossible to ship Sam/Gabriel bc it was an extremely popular background pairing for Dean/Cas fics...which you couldn’t filter out because that was the most popular background pairing for Sam/Gabeiel fics. I just gave up and left, but I think the more dedicated fans mostly survived on exchanges and reclists

[brainwane]

I wanted to check whether you had seen http://tempest.fluidartist.com/can-we-talk-about-pronoun-declaration-best-practices/ which you might be interested in for its own sake and for a future linkspam.

[sciatrix]

I had not!

My general feeling with respect to student pronouns--the case in which I do the most thinking about these kinds of things--is that I would rather ask "What pronouns do you want to use in this space?" When I've had a nonbinary student, which I knew because they followed me on Twitter after they graduated from the class I was teaching but before they started working for me in my lab, I eventually casually asked: "What pronouns do you want me to use here in the lab, and what pronouns do you want me to use in the letter of recommendation I am drafting?"

Like... almost everyone I know who prefers nonbinary pronouns code-switches to some extent in personal vs. professional vs. family of origin life, and sometimes dealing with other people making a big deal of shit is not something people want out of a given space. Sometimes it's preferable to be seen rather to be able to move quickly through social interactions, too! Cis people do not seem to realize that pronoun preferences can be context-dependent or that educating or highlighting visible minority status can be fuckin' exhausting, but I have known people who are like "these are my public pronouns and these are the ones when I use at home when I am comfortable."

Also, I find it profoundly irritating and uncomfortable when people doing that kind of performatively woke thing wheel and stare hopefully at me when we are passing pronouns out. I'm visibly GNC/butch but genuinely prefer she/her, thank you very much--and I fucking hate dealing with straight cis people's hopeful expectations that I'll prefer something more exotic. So that's all influencing the way I try to handle the issue: asking "what do you want me to use for this social context?" lets me leave the question at the door without placing an expectation of anything more personal than anyone else has to divulge in the space. I want to not impose expectations on trans folks, and that includes the imposition of being picked out of the crowd and asked explicitly to Represent.

(If I'm hanging out in queer spaces, I just guess based on context cues if it's relevant and then roll with any corrections, which seems to be the standard of etiquette in my circles.)

Opinions outside of spaces I control/am acting as an authority are... mmm, huh, that is also context specific. I don't want to take on more of the weight of being Weird in that respect professionally, and that feeling is making me feel thoughtful and uncomfortable about the idea of keeping my pronouns in my email signature. On the other hand, I have them in my twitter profile and my MeFi profile and most other places on the internet where someone might check me out. I think my twitter and MeFi profiles are in something of a liminal space, where I am partly Erin and partly Sci, and generally I casually drop pronouns without batting an eye to anyone who knows me as sciatrix and quietly talk around queer shit with people who only know me as Erin.

god this stuff is complicated! What are your thoughts and feelings?

[brainwane]

Thanks for your comment - I emailed Bradford with a link to your comment.

I'm a cis person who once-in-a-while gets misgendered on first address by service workers in public or by strangers online, and who's been mistaken for nonbinary by a friend or two. I am affected by this issue way less than non-cisgender people and gender non-conforming people are. So I'm gonna err on the side of listening here and read discussion here and on Bradford's post. Greeting-and-meeting rituals are key first impressions when we meet strangers, and I'd like to be hospitable.

[sciatrix]

I mean, like... yeah, that is also more or less where I'm at re: my own gender shit; so don't view me as an Authority. I'm just rolling with what I have done and how I treat the issue for my spouse and I could be wrong! But.... yeah.

I want to be hospitable, too. I just also want to say: "you are welcome, but I don't want to stare at you or treat you differently from other guests or make a huge Thing about how welcoming I am; I just want you to be easily welcome. I want to make a social structure that does not ever make you feel alienated, neither fish nor fowl; I want to set up expectations that people do their best to make sure you have food to eat; I want to make sure that you are accommodated silently, not loudly, without your having to think much about it."

Of course, humans being human, this is not always the best guide. But I have had people staring awkwardly at me and expecting me to have some specific perspective they don't, usually the wrong fuckin' one, since I was a teenager, and that has left something of a mark. I don't want to do that to other people.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Yes on the code-switching thing. Also with being put on the spot to represent. I think "what do you want me to use for this social context?" is a better question. I also really want to know how my pronoun preferences are going to be used, and who will have access to them.

[jadislefeu]

Being put on the spot is really frustrating. My, er, very well meaning? uni GSA keeps demanding everyone introduce themselves with their pronouns at every meeting, and I had a thirty second hyperspeed existential crisis about what I actually wanted to say the first time. (Even more annoyingly, the next year one of the officers introduced me for me, when I had been intending to try out a different nickname. I'm still kind of mad at him about that.)

[writerkit]

See, I hate pronoun time because the correct answer for me is "I don't know". If I leave people to assume and they always assume she/her that feels different than *claiming* it, because she/her feels subtly wrong a lot of time, and then there are other times when it doesn't, and I can never think of one I like *better* even at the times when it does feel wrong, and most of the spaces asking this are both going to prompt me if I leave it out and not be equipped to deal with "I don't know". (I've sometimes responded with "pronouns... yes, I have those..." but that gets assumed to be another cis-people joke, and I feel like if I'm this confused about it I'm *probably* not really qualifying as cis anymore.)

:wanders in via network:

[fyreharper]

:wry familiarity with this problem:

I mean, if the question honestly were just ‘what words do I put in the pronoun slot when referring to you’, that would prooooobably be okay? I have a set that I am accustomed to answering to, via a lifetime of use! But then people are going to take that bit of data and use it to make assumptions about my gender. Which... is not actually necessarily the same thing! It is frustrating/a conundrum.

And the accustomed set is subtly wrong, but *so are all the other ones* ::hands:: and yeah, the difference between “I’m not going to correct you” and “I want you to call me this” is... a thing.

(Buuuut even though I hate answering the question, I hang out in spaces where it can be *really useful* to have an easy way to catch everyone else’s pronouns, so I kind of appreciate it and have anxiety/flails about it at the same time?)(but also wow there are a lot of other places where I’d rather the subject just never came up without my volunteering it...)

tl;dr: Yep. :fistbump of solidarity:

[wanderingnork]

Thank you for putting me onto Genevieve Valentine's fashion posts, these are great fun! I've never heard the term "statecraft of appearances," but WOW do I like it.

[jesse_the_k]

Valentine's put this insight to rewarding use in her novels Persona and Icon.

[wanderingnork]

Added to my to-read list!

[horusporus]

i've been hoping for a tiered tagging system for years, like you know, a primary tag and secondary (even tertiary) tags. so the tag clutter wouldn't be so bad!

[illariy]

Loved beehammer's post about Carol Danvers. :D

Thank you so much for expressing this

[jesse_the_k]

Also, I find it profoundly irritating and uncomfortable when people doing that kind of performatively woke thing wheel and stare hopefully at me when we are passing pronouns out. I'm visibly GNC/butch but genuinely prefer she/her, thank you very much--and I fucking hate dealing with straight cis people's hopeful expectations that I'll prefer something more exotic

just made useful fireworks go off in my brain.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Tagging ontologies are awesome if:
1. You're tagging your own stuff with your own system, or
2. You're a bunch of librarians with a masters degree that includes how to create and use tagging ontologies.

Outside of those two contexts, the hive mind of the interwebs can't come to a consensus as to exactly how those ontologies should be constructed.

[lokifan]

Oh man that blue flag... *winces* The lipstick flag says to me either 'wants very much to be inclusive, doesn't know much queer history' or, yeah, 'TERFy bullshit'. Ofc there's a certain amount of overlap there...

Oh yeah, I love Valentine's red carpet rundowns! Fun and fascinating.

[brigdh]

I love those fashion posts, thank you for linking!

The Doctor Who article was also a great read.

Advanced AO3 Searching Tips

[jesse_the_k]

...including a magical "otp:true" modifier when searching rare pairs.

From melannen

The secret OTP code: if you put "otp: true" in "search within results", the search will return only works tagged with exactly one ship. If you’re also filtering on a ship, you will get only works with only that ship and no others.

This is great when you want to read a pairing that is often tagged as a minor pairing on works that are mostly about larger ships. It’s also great for dealing with those "drabble collections" that are tagged with every ship on the Archive.

It’s not perfect, because it will also filter out stories where your ship is the major ship and a minor ship was also tagged, but it can save a lot of trouble on filtering out all the fandom’s other ships one by one.

Ten more quality tips at the link.