Will Shetterly's Blog, page 141

walking to the Y on a cold winter night

Our car is dying, which is fine. We chose our neighborhood partly because we wanted to be able to go carless sometime soon. But I confess I had hoped it would die with the winter, not now.

Last weekend, Emma and I took the bus and the lightrail to see the Rollergirls in St. Paul, and that was nice, cheaper than driving and almost as fast. I've been bicycling during the winter, and that's generally fine when there's neither a lot of snow on the ground or a lot of ice.

Today, we got serious snow,...

walking to the Y on a cold winter night

 Our car is dying, which is fine. We chose our neighborhood partly because we wanted to be able to go carless sometime soon. But I confess I had hoped it would die with the winter, not now.

Last weekend, Emma and I took the bus and the lightrail to see the Rollergirls in St. Paul, and that was nice, cheaper than driving and almost as fast. I've been bicycling during the winter, and that's generally fine when there's neither a lot of snow on the ground or a lot of ice.

Today, we got serious snow, s...

Frederick Engels on equality

"... the real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity." —Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring

bourgeois ideology defined by Katrine Pilcher Keuneman

"Bourgeois ideology is an ideology which refuses to allow itself to be identified as an ideology by presenting itself as neutral, impartial, universal, objective and value-free." —Katrine Pilcher Keuneman, in the preface to Roland Barthes' Criticism and Truth

Dora Montefiore, a socialist writing in 1901, on feminism

"I cannot help regretting that the word “feminism” has crept into the debate. It is a word of which we have no need in England, and which we might very well have left in its native land, France, where it was coined by men to express the contemptuous lack of understanding of the Boulevard for a phase of strenuous belief on the part of some French men and women, that woman possessed other functions and aspirations outside those of sex; in a word, was a human being as well as a femal...

black holes are racist: outrage over a metaphor and a joke

inverting outing: the politics of reporting the suicide of a transgender scam artist / #JusticeForDrV

My take on trans folk is they're people just like cis folk: some are great, some are awful, and most are great or awful depending on the circumstances of your interaction with them.

But I'm fascinated by the way trans folk fit the identitarian model, something I first noticed when I saw an article about trans-inclusive feminism: do trans women and cis women share the same social identity? The logic of identitarianism usually says you are what society thinks you are, but trans folk want to be s...

on "author privilege" and the hierarchists of skiffydom

Yesterday, as I took a break from revising The Problem with Privilege Theory, I read Renay's You Got Your Industry in my Fanwork and Hal Duncan's brilliant response, You Got Your Privilege in My Face. If you'd rather read those without preconceptions, follow the links now, but I'll warn you that Duncan's will call for both time and thought.

First off, two of my beliefs:

1. Artists have no privileges and damn few rights, and that's how it should be. The audie...

Nine reasons to reject capitalism

I came on a simple-minded rightwing post, Ten reasons to reject socialism, and decided to respond with a simple-minded socialist list that addresses each point. Some of the points really have nothing to do with capitalism or socialism, but since the other writer thought they were relevant, I'm including them. I'm only doing nine because the other list includes religion twice.

1. Capitalism, fascism, and nazism are the same ideology.

Fascism and nazism are only extreme forms of capitalism....

in defense of Alan Moore (as if he needed anyone to speak up for him)

The Last Alan Moore Interview? and The Strange Case of Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, As Told By Grant Morrison have created quite the kerfuffle between Moore's fans and Morrison's. The quick version: Morrison has a 30-year history of being influenced by Moore while insulting him. The final straw for Moore was a Rolling Stone interview, Grant Morrison on the Death of Comics, in which Morrison said Moore was obsessed with rape.

Now, one could read Morrison's comics...