#Of course the answer to why the women are excluded is misogyny but like- an in universe discussion around it would be nice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aboveallarescuer · 3 years

Note

I know you've gotten anons about the YMBQ prophecy recently but I was wondering in what context could it be obvious for the reader that Daenerys is the YMBQ if Cersei is most likely to die or leave KL once Aegon arrives and not Daenerys. Even if Daenerys takes KL later on wouldn't he technically be the one to take all she holds dear (her power as regent)?

First of all, Anon, I think it’s interesting that you say that Young Griff (rather than Arianne) would take all that Cersei holds dear in this hypothetical scenario (that most people assume will come to pass). asoiaf tumblr fandom loved (loves?) to take for granted that Arianne would be YMBQ (after all, it was/is taken for granted that she would marry Young Griff and become his queen consort) years ago. At the same time, though, I’m not sure if you’re implying that Young Griff might actually be the one to fulfill the YMB(Q) prophecy in this ask. I actually saw this theory before. So I’m going to make counterarguments to this theory first and then address your question about how and when Dany might be revealed as the YMBQ (and if that’s what you were specifically looking for, just skip to the end, though you might be disappointed by the fact that I'm not really providing definitive answers because I have a lot of doubts myself).

In a way, it makes more sense for Young Griff to fulfill the prophecy rather than Arianne. Let’s remember what Cersei wants the most, which is shown in the beginning of her very first chapter:

She dreamt she sat the Iron Throne, high above them all. (AFFC Cersei I)

Unfortunately for Cersei, she can’t ever actually sit the Iron Throne, which is pointed out several times:

Cersei shifted in her seat as he went on, wondering how long she must endure his hectoring. Behind her loomed the Iron Throne, its barbs and blades throwing twisted shadows across the floor. Only the king or his Hand could sit upon the throne itself. Cersei sat by its foot, in a seat of gilded wood piled with crimson cushions. (AFFC Cersei V)

Seated on her gold-and-crimson high seat beneath the Iron Throne, Cersei could feel a growing tightness in her neck. (AFFC Cersei VII)

Cersei sat beneath the Iron Throne, clad in green silk and golden lace. (AFFC Cersei X)

As the first quote states, only the king or the Hand can sit the Iron Throne, which is what Cersei wants the most, since, to her, it symbolizes almost unlimited power ("high above them all"). Indeed, I would argue that what Cersei holds dear is the chance to reign supreme (“The rule was hers; Cersei did not mean to give it up until Tommen came of age. [...] If Margaery Tyrell thinks to cheat me of my hour in the sun, she had bloody well think again.”), not “her power as regent” (as you put it), which is limited by nature. After all, the king’s wife and mother can’t sit the Iron Throne. This means three things to me:

Queen consorts like Margaery or Arianne (if she actually marries Young Griff, which is far from certain) can’t take all that Cersei holds dear.

Queens claiming power in their own right but who have no claim to the Iron Throne are excluded too. In other words, Asha or QitN!Sansa (another fan theory that’s far from certain and that’s accepted as future canon) can’t take all that Cersei holds dear.

Only a she-king (that is, a queen regnant) with a claim to the Iron Throne can take all that Cersei holds dear - that’s Dany.

But then, we have Young Griff. He is a king with a claim to the Iron Throne, so he could, in theory, take what Cersei holds dear and fulfill the prophecy. However, I find that very unlikely for a number of reasons:

GRRM doesn’t highlight men’s physical appearances or objectify them in the same way that he does with women, as a lot of people have already criticized him for. He makes a point of mentioning women’s accomplishments along with overpraise for their physical appearances (though one might be generous and chalk that up to social commentary about how their society objectifies women instead of giving them their due praise for what they do). He encourages his fans to speculate about who is the YMB(Q) and pit his female characters against each other based on their physical appearances (e.g., people have criticized how Sansa stans often mention the number of times the word “beautiful” appears in Sansa’s chapters to back up their belief that she’s the YMB(Q), but the way GRRM himself wrote the prophecy lends itself to this sort of analysis) because he uses certain tropes uncritically. He portrays fat women negatively in comparison to thin women (see: Cersei (who’s said to be gaining weight throughout AFFC as she becomes more unstable) vs Dany, Lysa vs Cat, Barba Bracken vs Melissa Blackwood, arguably Rhaenyra vs Alicent). He takes an almost voyeuristic pleasure in describing women’s bodies and women having sex with women (see how Dany and Irri’s or Cersei and Taena’s sexual encounters don’t give any depth to Dany’s, Irri’s and Taena’s characters and, as far as I can tell, are mostly written to fetishize them). Consider, for instance, how 13- to 16-year-old Dany is the most sexualized character of the book series, while I’m not even sure if her male counterpart Jon is supposed to be considered attractive or not (on the one hand, he’s attracted women like Ygritte and Val; on the other hand, he’s meant to look a lot like Ned, who’s regarded as plain in appearance, especially in comparison to the hot-blooded Brandon). All of this is to say that I doubt that a man will fulfill a prophecy that remarks upon the person’s physical appearance (“younger and more beautiful”). Considering GRRM’s writing problems, a woman is much more likely to do so.

Young Griff is supposed to represent a lesser version of Dany (note that I’m talking about Young Griff as a fictional character, not as a person). After all, unlike Dany, Young Griff didn’t get to have lived experience of poverty, he didn’t get to have his skills tested, he didn’t get to apply the lessons he learned along the way, he didn’t get to take action and make mistakes and gain valuable experience and wisdom, he didn’t get to choose to stay in Slaver’s Bay solely to help marginalized people who aren’t connected to him by neither blood nor lands (which would emphasize how he doesn’t view his birthright merely as something owed to him, but rather as a means to “protect the ones who can’t protect themselves”). He could have had this sort of character development if GRRM wanted him to, but he has a different role in the narrative: he’s a tertiary character who we’re not meant to know all that much as a person or about how he would fare as king because he serves as a foil to Dany. With all of that in mind, what would be the point of having this minor character, who was introduced in the fifth book of a seven-book series, fulfill this prophecy rather than the one protagonist who the author said was deliberately written as Cersei’s foil multiple times (more on that below)?

Which brings me to a point that @rainhadaenerys made in our upcoming Dany/Cersei meta... Cersei views women with contempt because she thinks that they can only attain political influence with “tears” and with what’s “between [their] legs” (as she tells Sansa). This informs why, for example, she projects the unfounded idea that a widow must have lovers on Margaery or why she herself uses money and sex to keep her men loyal (which ultimately backfires on her). Unfortunately, it’s true that “[Cersei’s] strength relies on her beauty, birth and riches”. Because of her internalized misogyny, Cersei can’t conceive of a woman who might rise to power primarily because of her intelligence and shrewdness… Except that there is a woman who successfully conquered three cities and ruled the third and freed thousands of slaves relying primarily on her actual wit, political savviness and leadership skills rather than on sex, birthright or money… Dany. Dany is the competent, selfless ruler who could overcome many of the patriarchal limitations that Cersei couldn’t (hence why Cersei is a tragic figure). If Young Griff were to be the YMB(Q), he would simply be one of the many men (along with Robert, her brother, her father and the other Hands) who Cersei thinks wronged her and prevented her from staying in power. If Daenerys were to be the YMBQ, she would challenge Cersei’s toxic beliefs about women, which prevented Cersei from even imagining that a she-king might be the one foreshadowed to defeat her or that a woman (that isn’t her, of course) could actually be able to earn her accomplishments (just like she can’t imagine that Jaime might actually betray and kill her). Now, someone might argue that GRRM is not “woke” enough to do this, but I would disagree in this particular case. There are valid critiques to be made about how he wrote his female characters (I’ve made some points myself on the first item), but it’s still true that Dany’s character arc was written with awareness of how her gender affects her experiences. If that hadn’t been the case, AGOT wouldn’t have initially set up several men (Viserys, Rhaego, Drogo) to be claimant to the Iron Throne/SWMTW/the protagonist only to reveal that these roles are actually meant to be fulfilled by Dany, a woman. If that hadn’t been the case, he wouldn’t have had Maester Aemon acknowledge that “no one had ever looked for a girl” when they pondered on who might be AA/PTWP. So I don’t put it past GRRM to make Dany the YMBQ as a way of challenging Cersei’s entire worldview.

Indeed, I actually think that’s likely to be what he’ll write. GRRM has stated multiple times that Dany and Cersei are meant to be compared and contrasted because they were consciously written by him (specially in AFFC/ADWD) as narrative foils:

George regrets that Cersei and Dany will not be contrasted directly. (x)

His biggest lament in splitting A Feast for Crows from A Dance with Dragons is the parallels he was drawing between Circe and Daenerys. (x)

Cersei and Daenerys are intended as parallel characters --each exploring a different approach to how a woman would rule in a male dominated, medieval-inspired fantasy world. (x)

While discussing how he writes his female characters, he also mentioned that splitting the books as he did this time meant we didn't get the parallel between how Danaerys and Cersei both approach the task of leadership, which is a bit of a shame. (x)

And that one of the things he regrets losing from the POV split is that he was doing point and counterpoint with the Dany and Cersei scenes--showing how each was ruling in their turn. (x)

I think Young Griff as the YMB(Q) is very, very unlikely. If it’s not Dany, then I think Brienne (who at least is a viewpoint character that we know intimately) as the YMBQ (though I doubt it because she can only take Jaime away from Cersei and, as we saw in AFFC, Cersei was willing to separate herself from Jaime once she realized that he would question and disagree with her decisions and, in her mind, threaten her influence and power, i.e., what she wants the most) or even Cersei herself (the basis of this theory is that a younger Cersei caused her own downfall by making the choices she made. It’s not impossible considering that Cersei’s unreliable viewpoint prevents her from ever taking responsibility for her actions. Still, I think it’s unlikely because she’s been positioned as a passive participant in these prophecies - someone/some people kills her children, some person takes away everything she holds dear, some person murders her. Just like there’s a valonqar to kill Cersei, I think there’ll be a YMBQ to defeat her) are more plausible candidates. However, as I said in previous answers, Dany and Cersei have lots of clearly intended parallels and anti parallels (hence why GRRM mentioned them at least five times publicly) that people don’t often appreciate (but that I don’t want to mention here because I’m saving them for edits and that long meta). I find it hard to believe that GRRM would lay all this groundwork to contrast these two queens only to reveal that a minor character is the actual YMB(Q).

Now, the question about “in what context could it be obvious for the reader that Daenerys is the YMBQ” is difficult because, IMO, I don’t feel like there’s enough information to give you a reliable answer. First, let’s recap the most common theories, which, while I don’t think should be accepted as canon just yet, are popular for logical reasons. Here’s what GRRM said about the future events in the initial outline and interviews:

While the lion of Lannister and the direwolf of Stark snarl and scrap, however, a second and greater threat takes shape across the narrow sea, where the Dothraki horselords mass their barbarian hordes for a great invasion of the Seven Kingdoms, led by the fierce and beautiful Daenerys Stormborn, the last of the Targaryen dragonlords. The Dothraki invasion will be the central story of my second volume, A Dance with Dragons. (x)

GRRM: Yes, three more volumes remain. The series could almost be considered as two linked trilogies, although I tend to think of it more as one long story. The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates. After that comes The Winds of Winter. I have been calling the final volume A Time For Wolves, but I am not happy with that title and will probably change it if I can come up with one that I like better. (x)

He said that in his original plan (when he wanted to write a trilogy) the Red Wedding would take place in book one, and Dany’s landing in Westeros in book two. Now he says that Dany’s arrival in Westeros will take place in book 5, A Dance with Dragons. (x)

From there he started to plan a trilogy, since there were 3 main conflicts (Starks/Lannisters; Dany; and the Others) it felt it would neatly fit into a trilogy (ah!), but like Tolkien said, the tale grew in the telling. (x)

“Well, Tyrion and Dany will intersect, in a way, but for much of the book they’re still apart,” he says. “They both have quite large roles to play here. Tyrion has decided that he actually would like to live, for one thing, which he wasn’t entirely sure of during the last book, and he’s now working toward that end—if he can survive the battle that’s breaking out all around him. And Dany has embraced her heritage as a Targaryen and embraced the Targaryen words. So they’re both coming home.” (x)

GRRM’s words seem to indicate that Dany will go to Dragonstone ("they're both coming home") and then King’s Landing in her campaign to take back the Seven Kingdoms before she goes to the Wall to fight against the Others.

And it is quite possible that she will clash with Young Griff. For one:

Hi, short question. Will we find out more about the Dance of the Dragons in future books?

The first dance or the second?

The second will be the subject of a book. The first will be mentioned from time to time, I'm sure. (x)

For two:

"It is dragons."

"Dragons?" said her mother. "Teora, don't be mad."

"I'm not. They're coming."

"How could you possibly know that?" her sister asked, with a note of scorn in her voice. "One of your little dreams?"

Teora gave a tiny nod, chin trembling. "They were dancing. In my dream. And everywhere the dragons danced the people died." (TWOW Arianne I)

For three:

Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire ... mother of dragons, slayer of lies … (ACOK Daenerys IV)

Now, here are my observations/questions/doubts:

The “cloth dragon” receiving a round of cheers from the crowd seems to indicate that a) Tommen will indeed fall from power when Young Griff (who’s already in Westeros almost ready to attack) invades King’s Landing and that b) Young Griff will inspire love from the population.

The more obvious possibility is that the second dance of dragons refers to a Dany versus Young Griff confrontation, especially since she’s prophesied to slay the lie that he represents (that he’s not Rhaegar Targaryen's son, but actually Illyrio’s son and a Blackfyre). However, since Victarion is currently in Meereen with a dragonbinder, it’s very likely that Dany will lose control of one of her dragons to a Greyjoy (either Victarion or Euron Greyjoy himself) and then will arrive in Westeros with only two of her three dragons. Or maybe Euron will use one of the dragons to attack Young Griff and that will be the second dance (though I find that unlikely since, again, Dany is prophesied to slay Young Griff’s lie). Or the second dance could actually refer to Dany versus Euron.

There are alternative speculations to consider. Right now, the consensus in the Dany fandom seems to be that there’s already too much in Dany’s plate for her (uniting all the khalasars and being hailed as the SWMTW; going back to Meereen; meeting Tyrion, Jorah, Moqorro and other characters; maybe going to Yunkai; going to Volantis; etc) to go to King’s Landing, which led to people assuming that only Cersei and JonCon will be involved in the city’s burning. It’s even theorized that Dany might actually skip King’s Landing and go to the Wall instead. These theories make a lot of sense and aren’t implausible, but it’s hard to reconcile them with GRRM’s initial intention with Dany (though it’s also been argued that he may have given part of her initial role to Young Griff). Additionally, I don’t think timeline issues are necessarily a guarantee of what GRRM will do with Dany. He made Tyrion travel much faster than reasonable back in AGOT to have him meet Catelyn in the inn at the crossroads and to be taken captive by her. So I wouldn't put it past GRRM to do something similar with Dany by having her arrive earlier in King’s Landing than she reasonably would just because he wants it to happen. And, as much as I don’t want it to happen and even though I criticized the theory before, I don’t think it’s impossible (though it’s not guaranteed either) for Dany to be accidentally involved in the burning of King’s Landing (though there is a recent counter-theory to that as well).

Re: Cersei, a lot of people tend to assume that she’s going to die when Young Griff takes King’s Landing, but I am not really sure. I do think that her parallels with Aerys II will pay off and reflect her ending. But that doesn’t prevent Cersei from surviving Young Griff’s invasion and meeting Dany later. Cersei could escape to Casterly Rock and they could meet there. Or Cersei could later attempt to retake the capital again in another impractical plan of hers, which then leads to King’s Landing burning. I don’t know.

Does Dany have to meet everyone to fulfill these prophecies? I’m not sure. Does Dany necessarily need to meet Young Griff and Stannis to slay their lies? Does she necessarily need to meet Cersei so that the readership finds out that she’s the YMBQ? Will there even be an actual moment that makes it “obvious for the reader that Daenerys is the YMBQ”? I don’t know, Anon. It may end up being up for people’s interpretation. Dany might end up burning the Iron Throne, if the theory about her accidentally burning King’s Landing actually happens. Dany might willingly melt the Iron Throne and install a new form of government that gives the smallfolk more political influence. Both of these possibilities could symbolize the end of Cersei’s desire for absolute power, even if Cersei and Dany don’t actually meet. I’m not even sure that there will be a moment that outright reveals that Dany is AA/PTWP/SWMTW (even though, IMO, the foreshadowing is way too overwhelming for it not to be her).

Speculating about Dany being the YMBQ is fun for me because it requires delving into her characterization, her parallels with Cersei and canon material in general. On the other hand, speculating about how this would actually happen is, IMO, less interesting (though I still enjoy reading what other people have to say) because it’s hard to accurately predict future plot points with the current information that we have (and I resent how fandom already accepts so many theories as unpublished canon). Dany has too many places to be and too many things to do and it’s not certain that she’ll be in King’s Landing when it burns (though I tend to think she will for the aforementioned reasons), the second dance of dragons can refer to different confrontations, it’s not certain that Dany needs to meet Cersei (or Young Griff or Stannis) to fulfill all these prophecies and it’s not certain that Dany is going to be explicitly revealed as the person who fulfills all these prophecies. We still have two books worth of plot development, so I really don’t think it’s possible to predict how the actual events will unfold. Sorry about not being able to give more definitive answers... I actually ended up making more questions. But that's kind of the point for now.

#daenerys targaryen #young griff #cersei lannister #asoiaf meta #asoiaf speculation #answered

50 notes · View notes

comrade-meow · 3 years

Link

After the heartbreaking family statements and accounts of Sarah Everard’s abduction and murder, it seemed unlikely a judicial summing up could exacerbate the distress. But somehow the judge achieved it.

Everard was, Lord Justice Fulford said, “a wholly blameless victim”. Ah. The other sort – the woman who contributes to her own death at the hands of a pitiless stranger – evidently lives on in the mind of the senior judiciary. Forty years after the police and prosecution virtue-rated victims of the mass murderer Peter Sutcliffe, the criminal justice system applauds a female victim who lives up to the highest patriarchal standards. Sir Michael Havers said at Sutcliffe’s trial that “perhaps the saddest part of the case” was that “the last six attacks were on totally respectable women”.

After Sutcliffe’s death last year, West Yorkshire police apologised for similar ugliness. But even in the 1970s women seem to have been spared the suggestion that some police officers were well disposed, personally, towards the murderer.

Turning to the mitigating arguments, Fulford acknowledged of Couzens that “some of his colleagues have spoken supportively of him”. We already knew that Couzens’s nickname, as a serving officer, was “the rapist”. We learned months ago that he had been reported for indecent exposure in 2015, then for twice repeating this offence days before the murder, remaining in his job. But only thanks to the judge did we discover that even after he was known to have kidnapped and killed, the depraved Couzens – with his prostitutes and violent pornography – enjoyed support from colleagues. Are they among the officers now being investigated?

There’s little reason, given recent police statements, to hope so. After months during which the Metropolitan police could have enhanced safeguarding, addressed risks and even been ready with a self-lacerating review, all it could contribute after the trial were lines about wrong ’uns and lessons learned, its own great shock and sadness and the correct procedure for women needing to distinguish between arrest and abduction. The kindest thing that can be said about Cressida Dick, given the evidence of employee mistreatment of women tolerated in police forces, is that this misogyny is so entrenched as to have defied any attempts she may have made to expunge it.

Female ex-officers have been speaking about the difficulty of reporting male misbehaviour, including domestic abuse, in this male-dominated culture and about the likely pariah status for women who try.

Women who value women-only spaces – where they feel safe from male violence – Lammy characterised as 'hoarding rights'.

As in March, when women gathering to mourn Sarah Everard were set upon by male officers, this harrowing case has aroused collective concern. Again, men remind other men, using the hashtag #shewasonlywalkinghome, what it must be like for a young woman to be always glancing behind her, recrossing the road, carrying keys in her fist. Again, there’s an appalled interest, for all the world as if it had been long hidden, in the decades of harassment that begin for women in puberty and cease only with middle age or police instructions (unmodified since Sutcliffe’s murders in Leeds) to stay off the streets when especially dangerous men are at large.

David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, was among the prominent men tweeting their abhorrence: “Enough is enough. We need to treat violence against women and girls as seriously as terrorism.”

Sometimes, you gather, it’s acceptable to discuss endemic male violence against women and girls and sometimes it’s not. Just before the Everard verdict, Lammy had angrily dismissed women exercised by this very subject as “dinosaurs”. Women who value women-only spaces – where they feel safe from male violence – he characterised as “hoarding rights”.

Lammy, along with some Labour colleagues, simultaneously denounces male violence, then, taking victim-blaming to as yet unprecedented levels, is furious with any women concerned about losing the few places that individuals he depicts as terrorists can’t access.

These single-sex spaces – from refuges to hospital wards and rest rooms – historically protected women by excluding men where women were particularly vulnerable. #Notallmen, of course, but that’s safeguarding. “Preventative measures,” as Professor Kathleen Stock writes in Material Girls, “are usually by necessity broad-brush. They aren’t supposed to be a character reference for a group as a whole.”

But there are now questions about their survival, partly because of their increasing, arbitrary replacement by gender-neutral spaces, partly because of possible changes to gender-recognition law. These could, as an unintended consequence, leave women – both trans and not – with almost nowhere they don’t have to glance over their shoulders. As Alessandra Asteriti and Rebecca Bull argued in Modern Law Review: “Opening spaces to those who self-declare their sex and who are perceived as males” will “embolden male opportunists to enter single-sex spaces, reducing their risk-mitigation role”.

But public debate has been minimal. Not least because some of the same people who, unsatisfied by “bad apple” excuses, demand to know what safeguards prevent the police from harbouring another Couzens, will also scorn any questions about what, in future, could prevent the same sort of opportunist from appearing in women-only changing rooms. The implications of everyday harassment, along with the data on male violence and killings such as Everard’s and Sabina Nessa’s, are liable to be ridiculed in this different context as invented “bathroom bogeymen”.

And some fears might, it’s true, be disproportionate. Some threats might be, if not ineradicable, made manageable. Maybe it’s easy to distinguish between decent and indecent exposure. Or, as Kathleen Stock proposes, the introduction of third spaces could be the best answer to conflicting interests around dignity and safety.

But first we need men like Lammy, with his admirable insistence that male violence against women and girls be taken seriously, to explain why, in that case, women’s interest in personal safety can be disparaged – in terms almost worthy of a Metropolitan police officer – as beneath his notice.

#Anglo.txt

2 notes · View notes

sapphicstemstudies · 4 years

Text

while I’ve seen this discussion on chemistry twitter, I haven’t seen anything on tumblr so I guess I’ll open that up now. Today (June 5, 2020), the Journal of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) published a peer reviewed paper by Thomas Hudlicky of Brock University, entitled “‘Organic synthesis - Where are we now?’ is thirty years old. A reflection on the current state of affairs”. This paper was then retracted without notice due to backlash regarding the content of the paper. In summary, the author used this peer reviewed paper as a dumping ground for all his misogyny and hatred towards essentially everyone who isn’t a white man in academia.

Some memorable quotes include: “An example of focusing on ‘underrepresented minorities’ can be seen in the recently established ‘Power Hour’ at Gordon Research Conferences. While this effort is commendable in order to increase the participation of women in science, it diminishes the contributions by men (or any other group). ... These issues have influenced hiring practices to the point where the candidate’s inclusion in one of the preferred social groups may override his or her qualifications.” as well as “it follows that, in a social equilibrium, preferential treatment of one group leads to disadvantages for another. ... The rise and emphasis on hiring practices that suggest or even mandate equality in terms of absolute numbers of people in specific subgroups is counter-productive if it results in discrimination against the most meritorious candidates.” This paper is nearly eight full pages of similar writing, and footnotes include anecdotes of how the author believes that students don’t know real chemistry anymore because of bad teaching and the university protecting student from the hardships the professors ask of them. This also includes a full paragraph on how chemistry and other disciplines have strayed from the “apprentice fully submissive to the master” mindset and model and how that’s damaging to the future of the field of organic synthesis. Essentially the author makes his case for why diversity is harmful to the field and unless things go back to the old way, the field of organic chemistry, and specifically organic synthesis will fizzle out and be lost forever.

while I recognize my privilege in academia as a white, able-bodied student, I also am a queer woman in mathematics and chemistry, so while I cannot speak to the experiences of every minority student in stem, I know that there are others with experiences similar to mine. To start off, let’s talk representation. I absolutely recognize that my position as a child was filled with much more stem outreach and representation of minority groups than many people, and even then, the frequency with which I met or even heard about women in science was infinitely less than hearing or meeting men in the field. Part of this has to do with the men in my family all being scientists, yes, but even still, it was not often that I heard of women in science. I greatly credit my middle school science teachers for exposing me to women in the field, and helping me get involved with stem outreach programs for girls. But even though I saw some women in science, I certainly didn’t see queer women in science, and a vast majority of the people I met were white. Moving into university, as a student in math and chemistry, I can count on one hand the number of female professors I’ve had (in all 2 years of classes, not just the science ones). Only one of them was in chemistry, and to this day, I have zero knowledge of a female professor employed by the department of mathematical and statistical sciences (this is not to say there aren’t any, but there are none that I have taken or friends have taken in undergraduate courses from 100 to 300 level). This certainly is interesting to me, especially when the university is so proud to promote female grad students and post docs in math, perhaps because there aren’t any profs? In the fall I was interested in this idea of representing women in math, and started counting how many female presenting students were in my math classes (full disclaimer that this is based on my assumptions of gender based on presentation and one cannot really know someone’s gender from just outward presentation). In my calc iii class, about 150 student, I counted 30. Now let me do some math for you, 30/150 is 0.2, or 20% of the class population. It was similar for my other classes, as being in upper level math tends to have many of the same students. My only knowledge of queer women in this department of students is only myself, as I am, in fact, not going to go around asking people how they identify.

So, why is my personal experience in math important? Every month (during non-pandemic times) I go to a school and we do stem outreach, this year we were placed with a grade 4 class. When I teach this class, I can see every girl engaged and interested because there is someone like them at the front of the room. My partner that I teach with and I do an experiment and answer questions. The first month we went to this class, they asked if girls could be scientists and how do you become a scientist (we of course said yes, girls can be scientists, and if you do science, even at home, even if you’re only 8, you can be a scientist if you so choose).

How often is it that we see women in stem being promoted? When they are promoted and have a platform, how often is it because of their work? And how often is it because this is a woman here have your representation and shut up about it? How often do we see POC in stem? How often do we see queer people in stem? Is it because of their work? Or is it because the majority goes “fine I guess”?

So in response to Professor Hudlicky, diversity in stem is vitally important in furthering science and human knowledge, and here’s why. We as students, as academics, as people, rely on each other for help and community. If we refuse to dismantle a system that gatekeeps and excludes people from this community then we as scientists have failed. We have failed to consider other people’s work we have failed to consider the intersections between academia and identity, and we have failed in creating a better and safer place for all people. By refusing to create space for others in academia and specifically in stem, we are digging the grave of diversity in stem, original thought, and innovation, and we are placing a finish line on discovery, when if we put in an effort to change, stem fields have nowhere to go but up.

#sorry this got super long #diversity in stem #women in stem #STEM #sciences #women in science #feminism #science #id post this other places but ive got family other places and they dont know im gay lol

29 notes · View notes

inmyarmswrappedin · 4 years

Note

There’s something that I’ve never really been able to square in my mind and I’d love your thoughts on it. I should start by saying that I’m not from Norway and I wasn’t around when Skam s2 was airing. But from what I have heard, the season was wildly popular locally and that sexual assault reports actually went up after that storyline aired (which is a really good thing, obviously). Since then, however, the general consensus across the fandom has +

become that s2 was really problematic and that it depicts a toxic relationship. So I guess the thing I have a hard time understanding is how that seemed to be missed in Norway in 2016? Are viewers there just not as “woke” as the wider international audience? Or do the people now looking back on it just have the advantage of hindsight, not to mention how much things have changed culturally over the last four years? Not that four years is a great deal +

of time, but we are post-‘Me Too’ now and things like misogyny and sexism are called out much more freely and loudly in the year 2020. I definitely feel that I’ve certainly become more attuned to the problems with the way that female characters are portrayed in recent years. Anyway, if you feel like it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hi anon! ✨ This is a really good question, and while I will try to answer it to the best of my knowledge/educated guessing, I have to say that I’m also not from Norway nor did I live there in 2016 to be able to speak about the nuances of feminism.

I do think that, to a certain extent, Norway has a very casual approach to safe sex. As far as I understand, girls and women are expected by their sexual partners to be on the pill or some other kind of birth control. As a result, condom use isn’t great. Community transmission of chlamydia is so common that Norwegian 7-11 made an advertising campaign advising tourists to buy condoms, because having sex with locals would likely lead to getting it yourself. Hence the Skam girls constantly talking about chlamydia, William and P-Chris gave them chlamydia, Vilde is afraid of getting chlamydia in the eye, Linn has had chlamydia tons of times... One of Josefine’s (Noora) projects after Skam, Dear Condom, was meant to promote condom use, and lack of condom use in lovleg leads one of the characters to need an abortion.

So, to start with, someone like William who goes around pressuring naive girls into condomless sex and then discarding them (someone who might have even given chlamydia to half the school, as the Rad Girls speculate about him), can still be a romantic lead in Norway, because the attitudes are different. Like, he’s not the problem, Vilde is the problem because at 16 she’s not on birth control, you know?

I also know that the reaction to William was mixed even in 2016. Julie Andem once gave an interview to an (I believe Swedish) outlet, sometime after Skam aired, and she mentioned that in Sweden, where Skam was also available, William was not popular and she’d get very negative feedback about him after certain clips became available.

But ultimately, I think the reason that Norway was more receptive to William in 2016, than fandom has been of him subsequently, is that international fandom became aware of William once Isak’s season started airing. And the thing about Skam is that both NRK and Julie were willing to do a very different show with each season. Eva’s season is less romantic and more rooted in self-affirmation, a self-help show if you will; Noora’s season is a Wattpad bad boy/good girl enemies to lovers romance; Isak’s season is a LGBT escapist fantasy; and Sana’s season is more concerned with Russetide and who it excludes and how, than the romance storyline. So when people found Skam during Isak’s season, they thought the entire show was like Isak’s season, but it’s not, really. Isak’s season wasn’t going to necessarily appeal to straight Norwegians, just like Noora’s season wasn’t conceived to appeal to sad gay people worldwide. The thing is, NRK/Julie weren’t afraid of switching gears with each season, because rather than make a show with the most mainstream appeal (like some remakes), they were trying to make seasons that would appeal to the people who they felt needed to heed the messages therein. (Of course they fucked it up in s4, but you know.)

And essentially, the people who needed to heed the messages in Noora’s season were girls who weren’t woke. Who didn’t know what had happened to them was not normal, or their own fault for blacking out or not being on birth control or because they had sex too young or not saying no when the guy got too rough or... The list goes on. And how do you get those girls to watch the show? You give them a bad boy/good girl enemies to lovers storyline that rivals even the American TV shows Gossip Girl (it’s not a coincidence that Eva namedrops it), One Tree Hill or The OC in plot twists and good-looking people making out. Cause if you remember, NRK asked Julie Andem to develop Skam because older teens were watching American TV shows instead of Norwegian ones.

In stan language, Isak’s season appealed to (white, mlm-centric) fandom because it was about two white dudes in love. But Noora’s season was made to appeal to locals. And it did. Even in 2020, bad boy/good girl borderline toxic/abusive storylines are popular (see: Euphoria, Nate/Jules shippers), because regardless of #MeToo or public consciousness struggling with sexism and misogyny, these dynamics keep appealing to women. (Same with Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, etc.) Both because not every woman is part of this conversation, and because sometimes people just want to turn off their brain and enjoy some trash.

As for Noora’s season, while I get all of this, my personal issue is that by mixing the fun trashiness with the educational messaging, while it did do good and led to an uptick in SA reports, Skam ultimately couldn’t keep the trashiness outside of the messaging. That’s why Nora’s season is the only good Noora season to me.

#ask #skam #Anonymous

13 notes · View notes

theathenianinspector · 7 years

Text

Sometimes the achievements in philosophy in the ancient world are worthy of applause, the methods and thoughts of Socrates and Plato come to mind. But other times, classical philosophy has been used to oppress minorities and justify political inequality. Aristotle’s work has been immortalized…for all the wrong reasons. His thoughts were used to defend slavery and created the doctrine that women deserved fewer political rights, despite them being equally as competent citizens as men.

Even before Aristotle, women and men had segregated social roles. Homer’s Iliad describes women as weaving at their looms and warming the beds of their husbands/masters. While fifth century Athens had women covering up and being confined indoors; sound applicable to a particular country today? Ancient Greece society was not known for women’s empowerment and Aristotle’s ideas were hardly novel at the time. He probably only intellectually formalized the misogyny of the period.

Athenian woman washing clothes.

His logic was simple:

Men and women are physically different in nature.

One is stronger, the other weaker respectively.

This difference is translated into segregated gender roles.

Men are warriors and citizens. Women are housewives and mothers.

Men are citizens and therefore have a role in defending the state. Therefore, they deserve political participation.

Women’s roles are confined to the house and they do not risk their lives for the state. They do not deserve political participation.

Everything natural is right.

Thus, women being prevented from political participation is right because their gender differences justify it.

This line of thought is flawed in many ways. Firstly, Aristotle derived his notion that women exclusively belong in the house from a false premise:

‘With all other animals the female is softer in disposition than the male, is more mischievous, less simple, more impulsive, and more attentive to the nurture of the young…The fact is, the nature of man is the most rounded off and complete, and consequently in man the qualities or capacities above referred to are found in their perfection. Hence woman is more compassionate than man, more easily moved to tears, at the same time is more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and to strike. She is, furthermore, more prone to despondency and less hopeful than the man, more void of shame or self-respect, falser of speech, more deceptive, and of more retentive memory.’ Aristotle, History of Animals 9.1.

So, women are just naturally softer and more compassionate than men, because nature decreed it be so? I don’t think Aristotle knew about the fact that hyena packs are led by females, or that female lions have been observed to grow manes to trick threatening males or the fact that elephant herds are led by a matriarch. While I don’t blame him for not knowing about the social structures of hyena communities, he probably should have done a smidge more work before trying to prove female docility and subordination through wildlife. He’s also wrong to think this applied to humans, there is evidence of women being just as courageous as men in the ancient world: think of Artemisia of Caria, Tomyris or Telesilla. Each of them was credited to have performed valiantly in their respective battles. Aristotle did observe that ‘barbarian’ cultures did allow women into military and political leadership roles, but he claimed this was damaging to their societies and failed to mention that Greek women not fighting wars may have had something to do with them not being allowed to.

Notice as well that women of course are more cunning and prone to treachery, because men are never like that are they? They would never deliberately trick cities to open their gates to slaughter or build a deceptive Trojan Horse to totally eradicate a city from the map. Aristotle’s gender roles not only victimize women, but they cause problems for male behavioral expectations: men’s souls are more complete, but they have less compassion. I’d say compassion is a pretty important value that shouldn’t be excluded. Compassion in war is called mercy. Even warriors shouldn’t be exempt from basic human decency and kindness. By excluding this quality from the male sphere, Aristotle is just giving male aristocrats an allowance for being arseholes. These social expectations are damaging to men, even to this day.

Furthermore, men’s souls being perfect and complete, but women’s having incomplete ones is a common theme in his philosophy to rationalise women’s non-participation:

‘And all possess the various parts of the soul but possess them in separate ways; for the slave has not got the deliberative part at all, and the female has it, but without full authority, while the child has it, but in an undeveloped form.’ Aristotle, Politics 1.1260a.

‘Hence it is manifest that all the persons mentioned have a moral virtue of their own, and that the temperance of a woman and that of a man are not the same, nor their courage and justice, as Socrates thought, but the one is the courage of command, and the other that of subordination, and the case is similar with the other virtues.’ Aristotle Politics 1.1260a.

‘those who enumerate the virtues of different persons separately, as Gorgias does, are much more correct than those who define virtue in that way. Hence, we must hold that all of these persons have their appropriate virtues, as the poet said of woman: “Silence gives grace to woman”, though that is not the case likewise with a man.’ Aristotle Politics 1.1260a.

He believed that the female soul is incomplete because it lacks the command aspect that men possess. Therefore, women must be relegated to command’s logical opposite: subordination. As we have already established, women can be in positions of leadership in the ancient world, this is even more evident in the modern world where we have female MPs and cabinet members. The metaphysical theorizing about the human soul is already incredibly abstract, too abstract to justify the deprivation of democratic rights. I’m certainly not proposing that men and women are exactly the same – but difference does not merit inequality. Especially when those premises of difference are themselves already empirically false or impossible to prove. Women can be leaders and warriors. Women can be braver and nobler than men. The idea that women can only have roles in the household and therefore they deserve no political representation apart from their husbands is leap of logic. Surely, women are still bound by the same laws as the state which prohibited their participation?

Aristotle, the intellectual father of misogyny.

But Aristotle’s logic was handed down and then a couple centuries worth of gender roles were cemented by his reasoning. Travel forward in time to the 19th Century when women were campaigning for suffrage and you’ll see these same arguments based on misguided premises being repeated:

‘The natural distinction of sex, which admittedly differentiates the functions of men and women in many departments of human activity, ought to continue to be recognised in the sphere of Parliamentary representation…The question: ‘Why should you deny to a woman of genius the vote, which you would give to her gardener’. You are dealing, not with individuals, but with the masses, in my judgement the gain which might result through the admission of gifted and well-qualified women would be more than neutralised by the injurious consequences which would follow to the status and influence of women as a whole.’ Henry Herbert Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1912.

This statement was issued in the House of Commons just over a century ago by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and British Empire, arguably the most influential and powerful man in the world. Misogyny wasn’t simply the belief of the uneducated masses who didn’t know any better. Asquith was a well-educated aristocrat and politician…who also coincidentally studied Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. It would not be unreasonable to say that he may have read his fair share of Aristotle. It was a genuine question that an educated woman lacked a political voice in comparison to uneducated men. And his answer is insufficient. An influx of women voting would not have destroyed the United Kingdom, because even working-class women would have had a similar standard of education as their male counterparts, who were actually politically represented. Just because they have different anatomical features, did not mean they lacked the same decision-making abilities as men. Asquith’s argument essentially can be boiled down to: Working-class women don’t deserve the vote because they are dumb, although working-class men are dumb as well, they get to vote. Also, surely it would have been more democratic to have allowed women the vote? After all, they were subject to the same laws voted through Parliament as everybody else yet had no say over their MPs. But Asquith was not the only voice against women’s suffrage:

“We believe that men and women are different – not similar – beings, with talents that are complementary, not identical, and that they therefore ought to have different shares in the management of the State, that they severally compose. We do not depreciate by one jot or tittle women’s work and mission. We are concerned to find proper channels of expression for that work. We seek a fruitful diversity of political function, not a stultifying uniformity.” Violet Markham, Social Reformer.

‘(a) Because the spheres of men and women, owing to natural causes, are essentially different, and therefore their share in the public management of the State should be different.’ Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League Manifesto.

Aristotle’s philosophy of depriving women of political representation was internalized by educated women as well to rationalize their own societal inequality. Whilst ‘political function’ should indeed not be uniform for every single individual; suffrage is a political right. Rights are by definition unvarying and applicable to all citizens, one of the reasons they’re rights. And all this stemmed from Aristotle writing in the fourth century BCE. All this from a false premise on female docility which ancient Greek society and gender roles either didn’t allow to be empirically disproved or exoticized it when it was. It took a world war before politicians in Parliament were persuaded that all women could perform the same traditional jobs as men in 1928.

Anti-Suffrage Propaganda, 20th Century.

Come to think of it, women as a collective have been able to vote for less than a century in the United Kingdom. Thus, whenever you hear people complaining that women are getting preferential treatment or they’re becoming ‘over-represented’ in politics and popular media because of a ‘feminazi agenda’. Just remember that until 1918 you couldn’t see a woman at a voting booth or at the dispatch box in the House of Commons. That wasn’t ‘ancient history’. The reason why they might be appearing too publicly prominent is because until now they’ve been invisible. Aristotle’s writings screwed over the lives of countless women from the 4th century BCE up till the 19th AD. But women and fair sense won out in the end, I suppose Aristotle has been defeated; this is progress, but not a total victory comforting though it is. Although there is much more still to be done, in our own countries and around the world, we’ve come a long way in a short time.

“And at Westminster, where suffragettes chained themselves to statues and hid in a broom cupboard on census night, the leaders of the House of Commons and the House of Lords are women. Black Rod, whose predecessor ejected suffragettes from the palace precincts, is a woman. A century ago the home secretary and director of public prosecutions were grappling with the direct action of suffragettes. Today, both those offices are held by women.” Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 2018.

Dan Tang

The Athenian Inspector

If you want to learn about the Romans, check out: https://romanimperium.wordpress.com/

The Aristotelian Roots of Anti-Suffrage Sometimes the achievements in philosophy in the ancient world are worthy of applause, the methods and thoughts of Socrates and Plato come to mind.

#Ancient Philosophy #Anti-Suffrage #Aristotle #Classics #Feminism #Misogyny #Opinion #Politics #Sexism #Suffrage #Voting #Women #Women&039;s History #Women&039;s History Month

0 notes