Until recently it seemed like a cool project that wasn’t really going anywhere, but the author has been writing a bunch of production notes on his blag, and the Evil Hat folks are on board too. This look like it’s going to not only be a real, live product but also be the sort of professional, good-looking product we have learned to expect from Evil Hat Productions.

Check this summary out:

She is the strongest human being alive, her muscles super-charged by her own scientific processes. She’s fought dinosaurs barehanded and lived to tell the tale. But she can’t join any professional society for engineers, or even hold the patents for her inventions in her own name.

He is a supernaturally good poet. He can smell truth and lies from across the street. He’s saved the life of one president, two prime ministers, and a future pope. But if he goes out for a gourmet meal with friends, managers will insist he go in through the servants’ entrance.

Two men share a mystical union, pooling their health, knowledge, and magical essence. They bind demons and champion the falsely accused in courts on three continents. But if they ever once acknowledge the love they share along with their power, they’ll be disbarred and shunned by decent people everywhere.

The band of five fought in two wars for liberty, first against invading armies and then against tyrants at home. They free serfs, fight the architects of murder, and have twice stopped mad schemes of genocide. But they’re communists, and can’t even get visas to visit other heroes and scholars in the US.

Brother and sister are heirs to a millennia-old family tradition of serving justice and knowledge. Their ancestors commanded armies, delved into ancient tombs to lay ghosts—and worse things—to rest, taught the founders of new schools of philosophy and military strategy. But in the New World, he’s barely tolerated as a ditch digger—and she’ll be deported if she teaches English to other immigrants.

These are the other heroes, the ones who must fight for their dignity and liberty just as fiercely as they take on the challenges all pulp heroes face.

New Horizons is a new supplement for Spirit of the Century. Each chapter addresses a marginalized group from the pulps, kept outside by their sex, their race, their lifestyle, or their beliefs. In New Horizons you’ll find information about real-life heroic individuals and teams, the challenges they face and some of the solutions they find to the problems of dealing with 1920s society. You’ll also find heroes and villains ready for use, plot hooks, and ties to the mysteries around the Century Club. The life of heroes outside the mainstream may seem as strange as the secret language of Atlantis, but can be as exciting and powerful in play as a zeppelin armada.

So for some reason my friend Jen decided to randomly ask me a question about the intersection of feminism and queer visibility. I know I didn’t cover all the bases here, but given that I hacked this together in a few minutes while at work I think it’s a pretty good basis for further examination. What do you think? What would you add? What would you change?

Reposted with permission (unabridged), from a chat with a friend:

[2007-07-10 11:20] jen: jen has started a chat with you
[2007-07-10 11:20] da5id: oh hai
[2007-07-10 11:20] jen: why is women’s empowerment/strength associated with sexually ambivalent behaviour (drag, androgyny, bisexuality) ?
[2007-07-10 11:20] jen: hello :)
[2007-07-10 11:22] da5id: Because all of those things challenge people to consider the meaning of gender. If one denies the socially constructed nature of gender one cannot work to break down its socially rooted injustices.
[2007-07-10 11:23] da5id: And, um… “ambivalent”?
[2007-07-10 11:23] jen: my professor’s phrasing
[2007-07-10 11:23] jen: not mine
[2007-07-10 11:23] jen: what do you mean, by the way
[2007-07-10 11:24] jen: if you’re busy, it’s cool
[2007-07-10 11:24] da5id: Give your professor this link:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ambivalent
[2007-07-10 11:24] jen: will do
[2007-07-10 11:38] da5id: In order to address women’s equality issues (which drive the empowerment/strength stuff), one must first accept that such issues exist. In order to do so, one must ditch essentialism and recognize that gender is a social construct. A great way to do so is to break out of the man/woman binary and show that lines, if they exist at all, are blurry as all hell.
So: person X is bisexual, and this is accepted rather than treated as aberrant. Ergo, bisexuality is an acceptable and natural state. Ergo, there is no strict duality of MSW/WSM, nor is there even a duality of hetero/homo. Things are fluid, and it becomes a whole lot more difficult to pigeon-hole people based on sex and gender.
Also: person Y is a transvestite, and this is accepted rather than treated as aberrant. Ergo, clothing that is commonly seen as either feminine or masculine cannot be strictly associated with one sex. Gender constraints are eroded, forcing observers to relax or even abandon their notion of gender. This means gender is not an absolute. Ergo, it is a social construction. Ergo, it can be changed. Then we are drawn to examine it and ask how it can be changed for the better, leading us back to issues of female empowerment.
[2007-07-10 12:07] jen: sorry i was in a meeting – also, i am in love with you
[2007-07-10 12:07] jen: thank-you for the help
[2007-07-10 12:10] : jen has left the chat.
[2007-07-10 12:16] da5id: No problem.
[2007-07-10 12:17] da5id: Hey, is it okay for me to post this conversation on my blog?
[2007-07-10 12:17] jen: sure
[2007-07-10 12:17] jen: thanks for asking
[2007-07-10 12:17] jen: permission
[2007-07-10 12:18] jen: off to lunch and take care
[2007-07-10 12:19] : jen has left the chat.

There was an article today in the Toronto Star about Hollaback Canada, and about the wider issue of when it is and is not appropriate to ogle people on the street¹. The article was titled “When does looking become a leer?”, and touches on something I started writing months ago, and never finished. First, though, if you are a woman in Canada, I would recommend that you bookmark Hollaback Canada, and next time you’re sexually harassed send in a submission to shame your harasser. If you’re in New York City, visit Hollaback NYC, and if you’re elsewhere look for a Hollaback site linked from there. If there is no Hollaback site for your city or region, start your own!

One of the difficulties many men have with feminism seems to be a perceived attack on their sexuality. For instance, men who consider pornography an intrinsic part of male sexuality are likely to get pissed off when someone asserts that porn is wrong as a rule. On an even more extreme angle, some believe that fantasies involving rape, pedophilia or bestiality are perfectly okay, and that anyone who tries to suppress these “perfectly normal” urges is denying them an essential part of their sexuality.

What I want to examine is a milder, but similar, issue. The question I want to ask is: where is the line between sexual objectification and aesthetic appreciation? Somewhere along the continuum from sexual repression to sexual overtness, I feel, there must be an acceptable middle ground. It should be obvious that, at one extreme, externalizing every little sexual impulse we have by yelling “hey baby” at women we pass on the street is wrong. At the other extreme, completely denying our own sexualities² by refusing to look directly at women is unhealthy. Is there some middle ground where we can acknowledge our own sexualities without contributing to the environment of oppression and abuse of women that we live in? Is this continuum perhaps flawed in some meaningful way?

Here’s where I’m coming from: I am sexually active, in a committed relationship, and I enjoy looking at people I consider beautiful. However, I have a great dislike of making others uncomfortable, and I know that being checked out by a stranger does make many people uncomfortable. When I do look at someone in a sexual way I don’t (I think) do it in an objectifying way: I take care to not look at them as a sexual object, there for my enjoyment, but I do take advantage of the fact that they have certain sexual characteristics that happen to be where I can (visually) enjoy them.

So whenever I do feel like taking an eyeful of someone I am conscious not only of how I look at them and what I am thinking, but also of how I might be making them feel. I generally wait until they will not notice me looking, or else look away quickly. I also make an effort to keep other people in the area from feeling uncomfortable at having an ogler in their midst: I don’t want someone to think “ugh, that creep is staring at that person over there — will he be staring at me if I turn my back?”

So I go to all this trouble to reassure myself that my looking at someone isn’t misinterpreted as lechery and objectification. One might ask: is it really wrong to look at someone one finds attractive, intriguing or whatever? Well, yes and no. Or rather, it can be. The important thing is, as it often is, to take into account the feelings and reactions of everyone involved and to remember that, as in any social interaction, both parties are participating.

I spend a fair amount of time watching people watching people³, and a few things occur to me as ways to differentiate looking and leering, ogling and appreciation. I find it least offensive when the observer:

1. engages the other person. Rather than staring at a woman’s chest or rear as she walks by, it can be less threatening — and certainly less gross — when a guy looks her in the eyes and smiles a bit. This acknowledges her part as a conscious participant in the interaction (note that saying or doing something for the sole purpose of getting a reaction is not engaging someone meaningfully). Where this gets a little creepy is if the smile is too intense, or lasts too long (see point 2). The observer has to use his discretion and remain aware that the other person has feelings about the interaction, too.
2. doesn’t linger. Without reciprocation, a short glance is about the limit of respectfulness in most of North America. Beyond that we’re in the realm of staring, which is not only rude, but can send an “I might be dangerous” signal. I’ve seen people give a quick little smile, and I’ve seen people grin uncontrolledly. The second is creepy. The first can be kinda hot.
3. makes no imposition. In general, any speech falls into the category of imposition. Really, there’s no way to verbalize “I find you attractive” to a stranger that doesn’t come across as creepy or worse. This is doubly true of actions such as standing in someone’s way and forcing them to walk around you, and actually having the nerve to touch them is right off the chart.
4. has no expectations. Here’s the punchline, which a lot of people seem to ignore. Nobody is going to sleep with you because you looked them up and down on the street. No woman has ever been suddenly filled with a desire to sleep with a man who leaned out of his car and yelled something incoherent at her. And, perhaps barring the stupidest of the stupid, no man has ever thought she would. When it comes down to it, this sort of behaviour is not an expression of sexual desire, but of dominance. The only times I’ve seen people act respectfully while looking at others like this is when there is no implied expectation that something more might, or ought to, happen.

It is true that when someone gets dressed up to look nice, they are often pleased when they get some attention in exchange. Even if they haven’t put any effort into it (or perhaps especially so!) it can be nice to notice that someone has checked you out. But at some point when the checking out is persistent, lewd or otherwise inappropriate, it crosses the line to harassment.

So here’s where I’d like to hear from people. What, to you, is the line between looking and leering? What should one bear in mind, what should one take into consideration?

According to [Hilde] Lindemann and other feminist philosophers, “gender” is not just a case of biological characteristics. Briefly explain three other factors related to “gender”

Gender establishes an identity we can claim as our own to guide our interactions with others and with society. It establishes certain norms that we can try to live up to in order to fill our niche: certain descriptors such as “wears frilly clothes” or “has calloused hands” we can take to sketch out an identity.

Gender gives us a way of classifying others. If we accept that gender parallels sex exactly, and that sex is easily identifiable, we can assume a wide range of characteristics for someone as soon as we meet them. Whether they actually possess any of the qualities we ascribe them is secondary: gender gives us a framework for knowing things about people.

Gender provides socially defined and acceptable ways of interacting. If we accept gender as a useful thing it is possible to interact, even with strangers, in complex and socially useful¹ ways by following the scripts and guidelines gender lays out for us.

So how would you characterize gender? How would you describe, in a couple of sentences, what it is and what it does?

There have been discussions in various feminist spaces of “patriarchy hurts men too,” but this is a difficult subject to deal with seriously because it is so often used by MRAs, rape apologists and other distasteful characters to justify the status quo, attack people trying to address real wrongs, or undermine female victims of violence, especially sexual assault and rape. Still, there is a lot of good argument to be made in “PHMT” discussions, such as the idea that part of the reason there is so much violence around is that violence is built into the societal male ideal, and that gender roles are set up such that much of this violence is directed at other males. So I want to make clear before going any further that in discussing male victims of male-perpetrated violence and the harm that patriarchy does to men I do not aim to belittle female victims or imply that the fact that men are harmed somehow reduces the harm done to women. If anything I say comes across that way, please point it out to me.

Promotion of Aggressiveness and Violence

Boys are encouraged to be violent in the games and sports they play. Television shows and movies geared toward boys almost invariably involve violent conflict, and violence and aggressiveness is exalted in myriad other ways. Throughout adolescence boys are taught in various ways, explicitly or subtly, that they can use violence and aggressiveness to advance themselves. The way to win in various games and sports is to be the most aggressive, the strongest, and so on. Likewise, the way to get ahead in one’s career is often deemed to be through aggressiveness and dominance. This has been going on for as long as society can remember*, so that it has become normal for conflict resolution to be aggressive. If someone wants someone else’s resources, violence is probably one of the first options they think of (whether they’d seriously consider it or not).

Gender Roles and Aggressiveness

So we have a society that promotes aggressiveness and violence in men, while promoting submissiveness in women. This is supposed to get conforming men into positions of prominence, while making conforming women attractive as wives. Thus men are set up as the ones who accomplish things and who occupy the important positions in society, while women are a sort of support class. This is related to what people refer to as “andronormativity”: the tendency to act as though men are the ones who make up society, while women are “alsos,” in the sense that “there are also women.” Women, in this view, are a peripheral class**. So when women are in the workforce or otherwise taking part in society and “doing man stuff” they are expected to act in the same dominating and aggressive ways as men, since this is seen as the expected behaviour of those in positions of importance.

Gender Roles and Violence

Since society says that aggressiveness is a good way of dealing with resource attainment and conflict resolution, it is not surprising that violence is directed both at men and women. There are some differences between inter-gender violence and intra-gender violence, but overall they are very similar, especially in their cause: promotion of aggressiveness and violence as an effective tool to further one’s goals. This is a direct product of the patriarchical societies that exist today. That aggressiveness and violence are not only encouraged against women but also against men is not in spite of patriarchy but because of it.

Just as gender roles are often harmful to a man when he is expected to live up to some difficult or distasteful ideal, so are they harmful when another man takes his gender roles too much to heart and attacks those he deems susceptible to or worthy of exploitation. Part of those gender roles is “take what you want.” This leads to sexual violence when “what you want” is sex or sexual dominance, and it leads to street crime when “what you want” is drugs, money, or whatever else. So why are men not the only perpetrators of “take what you want” crimes? Because that attitude is more than just a part of a gender role: it’s part of what one does to get to a position of prominence, regardless of gender. It just so happens that getting to a position of prominence is also part of a gender role: that is traditionally something that men do, not women. A female mugger is as much of a breach of gender lines as a female CEO, after all.

Victim Gender

So when a man is mugged, whoever is mugging him is doing so because they see it as acceptable to dominate another person in order to get what they want. Sometimes the motivation is dominance itself: there are people who attack strangers simply for the fun of attacking them. The same patterns are seen in situations where women are attacked: either the attacker wants to get something tangible from the victim (possessions or sex) or they want to exert dominance over her. All these forms of violence stem from the same philosophy: “To get ahead, you must be aggressive; take what you want, when you can.” and this philosophy is entrenched in and intrinsic to patriarchy and any other system that encourages the exertion of power over those who have less of it.

this silliness inspired by a comment on FA

This post was going to be a response to nobadges in this thread, but it grew into its own post.

I wrote:

I would look at the [patriarchy] not only as [a system] that places men on top of a hierarchy, but as one that encourages men to oppress women.

nobadges wrote:

I agree that individual men do oppress individual women through the current system. Of course, individual women also oppress individual women, and every other iteration you can think of.

nobadges misunderstood me here. I didn’t mean “there are some individual men who oppress women.” I meant that all men, in being men, oppress women.

This is not to say that every man is a rapist, nor that there aren’t any men who treat women as equals. Thing is, though, by living in a sexist society men do things every day that oppress women — sometimes things that can’t be avoided even if we are aware of them.

For instance, let’s say I go into a bank with my female partner to get a mortgage. The person we’re speaking to might defer to me more than to the woman with me, asking me all the relevant questions. The assumption (perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not) is that I am the one in charge. So who is to blame for this? Well, certainly the bank employee takes some blame, and society in general is to blame for creating and maintaining a situation where the banker is likely to behave that way. I do not necessarily hold any of the blame in this situation, but my presence caused the oppression of my partner.

This is not a great example, but it shows the insidiousness of privilege. I don’t even have to be in the same room as a woman to cause her oppression: if I am one of two equally-qualified candidates for a job, and the other is a woman, I am more likely to be hired. The blame here is not mine unless I played up my maleness in the interview or something, but because my privilege caused me to gain to the detriment of the female candidate I am in a way taking her job opportunity away from her without ever meeting her.

So I as a man, I as a white person, I as a non-poor person, I as an able person and so on through all the privileged classes I am a member of, I contribute to oppression of oppressed classes simply by being who I am. I can’t or won’t change who I am, so instead I try to change in whatever way I can the structures that cause me to be an oppressor. Yes, it’s rather a sisyphean undertaking, but it is the right thing to do.

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It occurred to me that there are a few things of note, to do with the demographics and general politics of the show. If you haven’t seen any of it don’t worry — nothing I say here will ruin any surprises. Also, some of what I say here changes through the series. I don’t mention what to avoid spoilers. To see the spoilers (please only do this if you’re up to date!) see this post.

The show has deviated from regular TV fare in several ways, and makes the same old mistakes in several others. I have attempted to present as much coverage here as I could think of. If you see a flaw in my reasoning, or if you disagree, or if you see something I have omitted, please do comment at the bottom and let me know.

Premise and Characters

A plane flying from Sydney to Los Angeles crashes on a tropical island. There are about 40 survivors, who have to struggle to survive and find some way to get home. As of this writing episode 12 of season 2 has been aired, with the next one airing tomorrow (Wednesday) night.

The main characters are: Boone, Charlie, Claire, Hurley, Jack, Jin, Kate, Locke, Michael, Sawyer, Sayid, Shannon, Sun and Walt.

Sex

There are four female and ten male characters. This is a little disappointing, but the handling of them is better than in other shows. When Jack continually tries to control what Kate does, and tries to act like a Big Strong Protector for her, she doesn’t just put up with it. When he goes ahead and coddles her anyway it is shown that what he did was assholish. And while the strong female lead (Kate) occasionally gets weak and weepy, so do the strong male leads. And not in a pathetic man-crying way — it is clear that the men who get emotional are feeling weak and vulnerable.

That said, the other three women are not especially strong characters. Sun is very submissive to Jin (which is an artifact of growing up in Korea; I suspect their interaction is close to authentic), Claire is dependent on everyone else for everything, and Shannon is just a useless rich kid. One might say Shannon is useless because she’s a spoiled rich kid, but her brother Boone is a rich kid too and he shows initiative and gets things done.

Meanwhile, the male leads are almost all tough guys. Boone, Jack, Jin, Locke, Michael, Sawyer and Sayid are all muscly go-get-em types. Charlie sometimes acts tough but usually gives the impression of being a wimpy musician type. Hurley is not aggressive or anything; I think that he is the only male lead (apart from Walt) I have not seen in some sort of fight. Finally, Walt is a kid. While feisty and defiant, he is not a “tough guy”.

Update 200602010303: This show meets the Mo measure, by the way: conversations between named female leads are frequent and are rarely about relationships.

Race

There are two black, one hispanic, one iraqi, two korean and eight white characters. An okay spread, especially for primetime television. Funny enough, only one of the main characters is australian. While interracial issues are handled fairly well, if seldom, there are a few stereotypes that seem to be played up.

Michael, father of Walt, is black. His character is hotheaded, sometimes acting rashly and without seeking the co-operation of the others. He is often shown wide-eyed, flaring his nostrils, reminding me of every shitty stereotype I have ever seen. Also, he is toward the darker end of the skin colour spectrum. While this may not have been a conscious decision on the part of the casting people, it is something that has been done in past productions to hammer home the point that “this character is black”.

Similarly, I think Sayid (the iraqi character) is darker than most Iraqis (the actor is of indian descent). This may be an attempt to other him more, but the actor is so talented I am more willing to believe this is a coincidence. Sayid does not fit into racial stereotypes very much, once his background is controlled for. What I mean is that he used to serve in Iraq’s Republican Guard, which could play into the american perception of Iraqis as enemy combatants and terrorists. However, this background is necessary to the development of his character, and I don’t feel its inclusion is racially motivated.

Jin and Sun are a korean couple, and there is too much “the asian person is wise” stereotyping for my liking. We find out Jin is from a fishing village, so it makes sense that he is good at catching fish and other sea creatures. However, Sun has an unexplained aptitude with herbal medecine. There has never been any reason put forward for why she knows which plants do what, leaving us to draw the conclusion that she just knows ancient chinese secrets.

Finally, Hurley has less attention paid to his ethnicity than any of the other five visible minorities. While he is ethnically hispanic, it practically never comes up. In a flashback, he refers to his family members by spanish names (abuelo, for instance), and everyone of older generation than him has Spanish as their native language, but there are no hispanic stereotypes played on, that I can remember.

Sexuality

All the characters but Walt (who is nine years old) have had their sexual preferences explored to some degree, and none of them are gay. If any are bisexual, it hasn’t even been alluded to. Nothing much to say, I suppose, except that the writers had a chance here to do with a gay character’s sexuality what they did with Hurley’s size (see below): downplay its importance to the plot and counter the revulsion people feel about it. They could have created a gay character whose role is not to be the funny/lecherous/sex-obsessed/deviant queer but just another person.

Physical Appearance

The only main character who does not fit the ideal of beauty that television idolizes is Hurley. While not unattractive, he is fat and his hair is unstyled. Surprisingly, Hurley’s size is handled in a mature way whenever it comes up. A couple of times, someone has insinuated that Hurley has been hoarding food or otherwise engaging in underhanded activity because he is still fat after being on the island for weeks. Rather than siding with the accusers, the audience is led to sympathize with Hurley.

Hurley is pretty physically fit, as evidenced by the amount of running and jumping he does without collapsing, and although it is not said outright, it is implied that Hurley is naturally large. Of course, this is a difficult concept for many people. It’s possible that if Hurley were to say that he is naturally as big as he is, watchers would assume he was lying and side with the accusers. Still, it is good that Hurley is shown as an ordinary person, not a bumbling idiot or lazy hedonist like just about every other fat person on television.

All the female leads are thin and fair-skinned. None of them would look out of place on any other average drama or sitcom in the last fifteen years. Also, while six of the ten male leads are over 35 the female leads are all between 22 and 32. Unfortunately, no surprises here.