The nineteenth issue of The Carnival of Feminists is out today at team-blog Figure: Demystifying the Feminist Mystique.

Posted by Alisha, the introduction reads:

"Welcome to the 19th edition of the Carnival of Feminists! It has really been a pleasure to read all of the nominations and to discover some new blogs we knew nothing about.

Our theme for this Carnival is 'Feminism and Career' and we definitely came across some exceedingly interesting posts on the subject. This happens to be a topic that we here at Figure: Demystifying the Feminist Mystique hold near and dear to our hearts. However, we also wanted to recognize that a career does not necessarily have to be an office job…"

Click through to read the issue.

Next Issue...

The next issue of The Carnival of Feminists will be hosted by Kactus at Super Babymama on August 2nd. The theme to issue 20 will be poverty and class.

You can submit nominations via the Blog Carnival submission form.

To find out more about the carnival, how frequently it appears, and to read past issues, visit the official Carnival of Feminists blog.

To volunteer to host an issue, please contact the Carnival Organizer, Natalie Bennett.

This is not a movie review, but a general complaint. Is it possible we're living in the 21st century? Not judging by the stories we're telling, which recycle the same staid gender roles. I'm taking about the summer blockbuster movies Superman and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

I was pretty disappointed with the characters written for women in both films. This is not an indictment of either Kate Bosworth or Keira Knightley (Superman and Pirates, respectively). I'm sure both actors were doing the best they could with the material they had. But have you ever seen a worse Lois Lane? I didn't feel she was a crack reporter, driven to nail a story down - she seemed to be there as the damsel in distress. Yes, Margot Kidder fulfilled the same role in the Superman film of 1978, but at least there were gestures towards her career: the balcony scene where she gets out her pad and pencil for the scoop on Superman, and the general indication that she had drives and desires, and led an autonomous life.

In fact, having recently viewed Superman: The Movie, I was stunned by a scene I'd forgotten: there's a long sequence where Superman and Lois Lane fly above Metropolis at night, just after the balcony scene mentioned above. The audience gain access to Lane's thoughts during an unrushed monologue where she muses on what is unfolding before her. This places the whole audience in sympathy with Lane, and places our subjectivity squarely on a female character's shoulders.

I got the sense from the 2006 Superman script that it could've cared less what Kate Boswell's thoughts were, or what drove her, besides the socially sanctioned love for her child. Speaking of child - how boring is it to have her kid be male? For God's sake, at least take a bit of a risk and make the child female - that way we would've had more interesting ideas raised about gender and the whole "superman" mythology. But, no - they had to keep that whole Christian Father/Son thing chugging along.

In Pirates, there's a wonderful moment where Keira Knightly, as Elizabeth Swann, is aiming a gun at some barrels of gunpowder. You think - yes! - they've given her some action, something interesting to do. But the inclusion of her fiance on the barrels, along with a swaying boat which, in her female incompetence, she is unable to contend with, means that the satisfaction of blasting the Kraken's tentacles is left to the ever-shaky Johnny Depp. Yawn, sigh. Well, what was I thinking - they'd let the female character actually do something?

The Pirates script even has a promising set-up where Swann has to disguise herself as a sailor and work on a ship incognito. The writers could've taken this in any number of interesting ways, having fun with the role reversal, undermining gender expectations, etc. But her passing as a male member of crew is left largely unexplored. Disappointing.

Am I too optimistic about gender roles crumbling in this new century? Hollywood seems stuck in reverse with its unexamined assumptions about men and women, endlessly recycling the same old stories…

Blur penned these lyrics in 1995:

This is the next century
Where the universal's free
You can find it anywhere
Yes, the future's been sold

Every night we're gone
And to karaoke songs
How we like to sing along,
Though the words are wrong

It really really really could happen
Yes it really really really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you
Well just let them go

I share Blur's thinly-veiled skepticism. Chances are, the plum roles will continue to be written with men in mind, until more women move into directing and producing. Then maybe we'll have a fighting chance of having complex, interesting leading ladies: in short, humans, not cardboard characters.

It really really really could happen.

Lyrics: Blur, "The Universal", The Great Escape

Issue number 13 of The Carnival of Feminists is out now!

Terry of I See Invisible People is the host and editor of lucky number 13, and she's done a great job of rounding up some of the best of the feminist blogosphere.

Do stop by and leave a comment if you think she's produced a good issue - comments are like applause for Carnival Hosts. ;)

Cross-posted at Sour Duck

I'm spreading the word about the call for submissions for the next issue of The Carnival of Feminists.

From Terry at I See Invisible People:

The 13th issue of The Carnival of Feminists will be hosted on I See Invisible People on April 19.

The theme of the issue will be “Feminism and Challenges - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.” Possible topics including: self-determination in health and mental health care, disability issues, transgender issues, issues of aging, integration of religion and feminist beliefs, economic issues, etc.

The issue will not be limited to the theme, though I hope to get a nice collection of posts fitting it.

Please feel free to nominate a post of your own, as well as those by other people.

Posts written after 5 April 2006 will be eligible. Nominations will close at midnight 17 April.

Nominations may be sent to ISeeInvisiblePeople AT gmail.com or submitted through the online form.

Hope you all submit something!

The Carnival of Feminists, Issue 8 has just been published in all its glory at Gendergeek.

The theme for this issue is "Babes in Geekland". Intriguing...

The editors of Issue 8 are Emma and Emmy - do stop by and leave your thoughts and feedback. If you like what you see, let them know! Comments are "applause" for carnival hosts.

Then race right back to Mediagirl.org. There's always something happening here. ;)

Technorati Profile

The BlogHer 2006 online registration system is live, as Elisa Camahort has just announced at the BlogHer website.

If you mised it last year, the BlogHer conference is a gathering of women to meet and debate their favorite blogging interests. Men are invited as well!

Here is a snippet from the announcement, please visit the BlogHer site for further details about the mission and ethos of BlogHer:

We are a two-day conference, and we are allowing people to register for individual days or both days, as they so choose. Remember, Day One is techie and hands on. Day Two is culture, conversation and community...

The organizers are calling for speaker proposals, so now's your chance if you're interested in presenting a topic for debate or a presentation.

(Okay, Media Girl - you've had fair warning, no excuse not to attend now... :D ;))

Hope to see you all there!

Related links:

Save These Dates: BlogHer '06
Hotel Room update: Get 'em while they're hot.
Day One Schedule and Call for Speakers (and the Clarification)
BlogHer Vission, Mission and Position Statement

Issue 6 of The Carnival of Feminists is hot off the press!

A very good issue, hosted by Jenn at Reappropriate. Race over to read it, then return here to MediaGirl, of course!

And your praise and feedback in the comments section is always appreciated by the host, I can vouch for that! ;)

The next issue of The Carnival of Feminists will appear January 18th, hosted by Lauren at Feministe. Send submissions (yours or other people's work) to web[at]feministe[dot]us with the subject title Carnival of the Feminists by midnight, January 15.

Warning: game spoilers.

Beyond Good & Evil is one of the few games that features a hero who just happens to be female. Whilst the feminism is cloaked, it can be argued that this game is much more subversive than it appears.

Overview

Beyond Good & Evil is an action-adventure game available on a wide array of platforms. Despite good reviews, it did not sell as well as expected.

Beyond Good & Evil has an emphasis on plot, but not at the expense of action, with plenty of fighting and scouting around the otherworld landscape. The setting is a peaceful mining planet called Hillys. There are plenty of puzzles and obstacles, and the game rewards stealth, patience, curiosity, and perserverance. You can can access maps, which help you navigate the Hillys world and find hidden areas, and you are able to buy and carry items and food. While the game is driven by a narrative, there's plenty of time to explore the world and pursue auxiliary quests.

Stylistically, the game is well-crafted. There are beautiful landscapes and vistas, although not all the environments are pleasant: there are some dark and creepy settings as well, particularly as the game progresses. Jade and other characteres are well-rendered, and the musical score is used to great effect, in terms of creating a fantasy world and heightening the drama.

The most unique aspect in Beyond Good and Evil is that it features a main character who just happens to be female.

Meet Jade

The hero and main character—the character that you closely identify with and the only character you're able to control from beginning to end—is Jade, a young woman who lives in a lighthouse orphanage.

The narrative is constructed from Jade's point of view, and generally we learn new information when she does (although the game leaves clues that the savvy player can pick up on). Jade's parents are deceased, and she has only her Uncle Pey'j as family. However, while other characters are important, they are subordinate to the character of Jade.

This is quite a switch for action/adventure games, where central characters are usually male.

You're not The Woman, but a woman

Jade isn't surrounded by male characters, either. The Governor of Hillys is a woman (what's more, a black woman), as is the Museum Director, who pays Jade for the photographs she takes of new life forms. At least one character of a underground rebel cell is female (a cat woman) as well.

Although the proportion of female to male characters is still weighted towards the male, female characters are placed in positions of status and power and, more importantly, risk.

Tension between traditional and modern narratives

Some elements of the narrative provide tension between a more traditional female role and a more modern, feminist understanding of Jade.

Firstly, she's given permission to rebel, sleuth, break rules, and explore through a traditional "protector mother" narrative. She's doing this all for the children - that is, the orphans at the lighthouse.

This is a non-threatening role for a female character, as it gives her special license to act up and act out, in a way that women usually aren't allowed. Think Sigorney Weaver's maternal motive in "Alien 2", or, more recently, Jodie Foster's character in Flightplan. Audiences are more comfortable seeing women as acting upon the world when their motivation is child-based.

And yet Jade-as-protector turns out to be a pretense that is dropped fairly quickly. Sporadically, she thinks of the orphans, but this motivation is on-parr with her need to know the truth. While the game appears to cater to conservative views of gender roles, it is actually some pretty thin wallpaper. The real puzzle, for Jade and the player, is:

Under whose control is she living?

This is the core of the game.

No Love Lost

Additionally, Beyond Good and Evil is equally notable for what it leaves out: the "love narrative." Jade's quest is not to be subsumed by a love interest, nor is she to be the object of someone's desire. Those stories usually imply that the most interesting thing about a female character is how men regard her, and what happens in her personal life; but Jade's story is larger than that, extending to governments, underground political groups, and military forces.

This is a significant departure, given that in the gaming world the female character is usually assigned a stock love narrative, and that is all that is done to develop her character. It is significant, then, that Jade is first and foremost a person, who is solving a problem that is larger and more complex than her personal world.

What does she look like?

The physical form of Jade is conducive to a woman-as-person-not-sex-object reading. Bear in mind, the gaming world brought us Lara Croft, which was wildly popular. In comparison to Croft, Jade is more human and less feminized. While she wears some sort of lipstick, it is green , not red or pink, and this slightly undermines the erotic meaning attached to lipstick. Her anatomy is matter-of-factly female: the breasts are just there - a part of her like every other part. She wears military green combat trousers and a lightweight t-shirt with a green jacket. The clothing appears comfortable and functional. Her headband, too, emphasizes practicality rather than a concern with looks.

All in all, judging by how Jade dresses, I would venture that Jade regards her body as a tool, and as long as that tool functions properly, it serves her well and she is happy with it.

And her body is very important for the progress of the game.

Beyond the Physical: Jade the Framer

The opening of the game establishes (in a comical way) Jade's poor economic status. In fact, Jade belongs to several lower-status groups, assuming that Hillys does not differ too much from modern first-world countries:

1. She is a woman (assuming Hillys is patriarchal).
2. She is young (the website states 20; playing the game, I guessed 18 or so).
3. She is poor.

Because Hillys operates under a capitalist system (and the market stalls and businesses in and around the Pedesterian District all suggest it is), Jade bears the stigma (and implied ineffectual position) of poverty.

Not that the game makes much of it; there's no self-pitying on Jade's part, and a chipper, determined can-do attitude about her. It all serves to emphasize the power imbalance between her and the powers that control Hillys. Those powers are militaristic and governmental, but there is a great degree of slippage between the two. Jade battling Domz alien.

Jade's use of the camera (obstensibly to earn money, later to effect political change) is obviously signficant. She is the framer of this tale. Either somebody's been reading Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (see opening chapters) or I'm reading too much into this. But the camera does position Jade as the looker - and not the "looked-at".

Conlusion

While the writers and developers of this game adhered to some traditional gender roles, for the most part these elements are underplayed. Instead, Jade's agency is emphasized. This positions Beyond Good & Evil as a subtley—and not so subtley—feminist game. The feminism is through the back door.

Related links:

• Beyond Good & Evil Official Website
• Girls & Game Ads series, Part 1 & Part 2, by Andrea Rubenstein, Official Shrub.com blog

Note: I meant to incorporate Nietzshe but never got around to it. Incidentally, both entries at Wikipedia for Beyond Good and Evil and Friedrich Nietzche need polishing up and expansion. If you're knowledgeable in these areas, please consider contributing.

I'm pleased to announce that Issue 3 of The Carnival of Feminists has just been published.

Come on over and take a look!

What is "intelligent blogging"? Kameron Hurley inspired me to further examine this idea when I read "Thoughts on Intelligent Blogging" at her blog. Here I take a personal and cultural view, with a nod to events at the recent BlogHer conference.

I found Hurley's piece puzzling because, while it's titled "Thoughts on Intelligent Blogging", it doesn't explicitly state what "intelligent blogging" might look like. She seems to set up witty, argumentative analysis as "intelligent blogging" and brief, angry blogging (especially of the feminist kind) as "negative" "reactionary", and, by implication, unintelligent. I have some problems with this, but first I want to examine the idea of "intelligent blogging", and the implications of this as a guiding standard for my own blog.

So, what is "intelligent blogging"?

• Is it similar to what we consider intelligent on printed paper (say, in books and academic papers)?
• Is it identical to what we deem to be intelligent on paper, but with the addition of embedded links?
• Is linking intelligent? Is more linking more intelligent?
• Are intelligent posts longer? Or shorter?
• Does intelligent blogging use a cool, dispassionate tone?
• Does it strive to show intimate knowledge of an opposing argument, to prove that the blogger is writing from a position of credible knowledge on a subject?
• Does it seek to be "balanced" and "objective"? Is that more intelligent?
• Do intelligent bloggers revisit topics? Or do they deal with an issue and then move on?
• Does limiting yourself to just one subject (e.g., feminism) mean you are limited person, and therefore not intelligent? Do you have to present yourself as a well-rounded blogger in order to gain credibility with your readers?
• Do the really intelligent people blog, while the marginal thinkers use LiveJournal?
• Can there be spelling mistakes in intelligent blogging, or does this undermine all the intelligence going on?
• Is an intricate, laborious post that the blogger obviously had to take some time to research and write more intelligent than a short, incisive post fired off from a place of anger? Is anger some sort of acid that eats away all intelligent writing?

Okay, so some of those questions are tongue-in-cheek - but some are earnest. Should we all be striving towards "intelligent blogging?" I thought the idea behind blogging was that it allowed individual expression and encouraged experimentation, and that (here's the best part) there were no rules. Striving towards one standard - in this case, the culturally defined concept of "intelligence" - would result in one bland, monolithic directory of blogs - and that doesn't sound very fun to me. Some of the best posts are by authors not necessarily concerned with presenting a consistently intelligent blogger personae.

Middle-class Mania for "Intelligence"

Striving towards intelligent blogging usually means using an academic model of intelligence as a template. I've used that template in my own blog. Using an academic template, while it may have worked in an academic setting, can limit expression on the internet, especially in blocs, and marginalize those who haven't mastered the guiding rules of academic writing. If that kind of intelligence is used as a yardstick, white middle-class voices get lauded as "intelligent bloggers", while non-college educated, non-white voices get largely ignored.

In other words: those who define and reward intelligence are the ones already in power.

Patriarchy, anyone?

In the 21st century, intelligence is still gendered as "male", and intelligence in women still jeopardizes their femininity. The academic world is rooted in male privilege and glorification of male thought, although that is changing. Do I really want my blog strings pulled by this conservative "knowledge"-producing factory? The same institution that was highly resistant to mixing personal issues into theses, academic presentations, and essays? Even though, for most people, personal motivations drive them toward certain areas of study?

Okay, so I'm going to break down here and do something terribly academic: quote someone at length who is generally recognized as having attained some knowledge and authority, in order to legitimize and give weight to My Assertions. Typical of my blog reading patterns, though, I didn't find these quotes as a result of diligent research; no, I stumbled upon this through fairly arbitrary clicking. In the comments section to a post at the Blogher website, Melanie McBride (aka Chandrasutra) writes, "The main thing we have to watch out for is thinking and evaluating blogs according to older models - media models mostly." I would add "academic models" to that. She goes on:

"- blog content is blog content:

not news content, not journalism, not anything else. therefore it shouldn't be measured against old media. we're not trying to be journalists, we're not looking to speak for *everyone* and many of us are not looking to *cover* all sides. just our own voice, our own perspective and that's it."

I read this and am mentally adding "not academic" (although academics certainly blog, and use blogs to present their thesis-writing struggles and completed works). In the same comment, McBride also notes:

"- 'personal' isn't a dirty word:

we need to resist the old media's (and indeed a patriarchal sexist paradigm) contention that the 'subjective' or 'personal' view has less value that a so-called 'objective' (if there even was such a thing) or 'authoritative' view. the personal IS political. blogging is the first time in history of information when ordinary people have the opportunity to join the larger discussion of ideas and culture. in the past, having a voice and the means to broadcast that voice was the domain of the powerful, the elite or those otherwise *authorised* to have opinions - usually by their privilege."

Sour Duck: Intelligent Bird or Stupid Fowl?

Basically, this post is an attempt to dismantle my own loyalty to the concept of "intelligent blogging", as I find it's linked to a definition of intelligence that I no longer subscribe to. If I'm constantly trying to prove my intelligence at this blog, while it may raise the level of my writing, it will also inhibit many posts because I'm afraid of looking the fool. There's one post that's been sitting in my drafts folder for so long now, I fear if I don't publish it now I never will; I'm worried it contains some glaring oversight that someone will pick up on.

Perhaps my "Sour Duck" description should read "Even intelligence is political." Or, why not cut the cord completely? "Intelligence: it's overrated."

(All emphases in quoted text by Sour Duck.)