November 27, 2010

SF/F Commentary

TSA (Totalitarian Sexual Assault): My Thoughts on the TSA’s New Procedures and People in General

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(Warning:  explicit language and politics are below; ignore if you’re not interested in either) I’m going to take some flak for this post (at least, I expect to).  This is because I’m not going to say anything particularly kind about the TSA (or Totalitarian Sexual Assault, as I will now call it) or the large portion of my fellow Americans who have decided the new measures aren’t that big of a deal.  Of course, if you’ve been ignoring the Internet, or don’t pay attention to politics or the news, you have no idea what I’m talking about.  So, I should probably clear that up first. The TSA recently changed their search policies for the security lines in U.S. airports (Nov. 1st, I think) to allow the use of full-body scanners OR, if you refuse to be scanned or the image of your naked torso appears suspicious, TSA agents will perform a pat-down that includes a groin and chest search.  What does that mean?  It means that your options, should you be selected for the special TSA treatment, are to have your body x-rayed, allowing a TSA agent to see you naked, or to be sexually molested by a member of your own sex.  In the case of the first, the agent is supposed to delete the images, but, of course, the feds are particularly bad at that–that link also points out that the images that were leaked on the net.  In the second case, you literally will be subject to full groping of your private parts, whether male or female. All your testicles are belong to them. I first learned about this from this guy, whose story about his refusal to subject himself to the new measures at the San Diego International Airport resulted in a threat of a $10,000 civil suit and expulsion from the airport (you should read the full story to get the bigger–and more disturbing–picture).  Needless to say, I was pretty damn shocked.  I wanted to know how these new policies came to be and how we, as citizens, could sit idly by and let it stand.  Now?  I’m livid.  The body scanners and the new pat-down procedures are obvious violations of our rights.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that requiring Americans to subject themselves to sexual assault or body imaging in order to fly is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects everyone from unwarranted search and seizure.  Read the Amendment for yourself. The fact that the TSA sees these measures as acceptable is even more shocking.  They say it’s in our best interests–to protect us.  The terrorists, after all, are real resourceful, what with all those successful bombing attempts in the U.S. since 9/11.  Well, except for the fact that they haven’t been.  The problem is that I don’t feel any safer now.  I have no reason to be.  My rights mean jack shit in this post-2001 world, and my government regularly violates them in the interest of my “safety.”  To say that the terrorists have already won is an understatement.  Look at what we’re giving up.  We frequently claim that America is the freest country in the world, the one beacon of hope and yadda yadda in the world.  Except it’s not.  Far from it.  We’re allowing our rights to be stripped from us faster than a stripper takes off her clothes.  And we’re doing it because we’re told we should be scared.  The operating word in “terrorism” is “terror.”  It’s objective is to create terror.  I’m not going to go so far as implying that our government is a terrorist agent, but it would be fair to say that the terrorists we’re supposed to be fighting have already begun the slow process of destroying us.  The difference is that it’s happening from the inside–ourselves. Turn your head and cough, please… Child abuse in action. But more alarming to me is the fact that so many Americans have shrugged off the new TSA procedures.  Some Americans have even said that they’re worth it to feel safe.  I think those people are cowards.  Every one of them.  I also think they barely deserve the rights the Constitution grants them, since they clearly hold them in such low regard–you can’t think highly of something you’re not particularly interested in preserving.  Why have the Constitution if we’re not even going to uphold is laws?  I’m not willing to go so far to say that they should lose their rights.  I think everyone should have the rights we’re supposed to be celebrating every 4th of July.  (And don’t get me started on parents who allow TSA agents to grope their children.  Those people are committing child abuse, and how you expect to convince your four-year-old that nobody should touch their privates after allowing a TSA agent to touch them is beyond me).  But it makes me wonder if people’s opinions would change if the situation were different?  Maybe if the government decided you need to have your belongings searched before purchasing milk, because they’re afraid you’re going poison the milk supply, people would say something.  I don’t know.  It seems to me that so many people are crippled by the fear of something they can’t even properly describe, and, thus, are willing to give up anything just to have their pathetic little security blanket wrap them up and proclaim that they are safe. The reality?  You’re not safe.  Nobody is.  You could die tomorrow in a car crash.  Should we have checkpoints at every door in the entire country to make sure nobody drives while drunk?  You might also die of food poisoning, perhaps by your own action.  Should the government force you to let licensed cooks make all your food for you?  People seem so desperately concerned over something that is both incredibly unlikely, but also just as nameless and faceless as an unexpected asteroid attack.  The difference is that nobody is freaking out about the asteroids we don’t know about (oh, and

SF/F Commentary

Harry Potter: Would it still be big if Harry was Harriett?

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I can’t remember where I got the link to this thread at SFFWorld, but the second I saw it, I knew I had to talk about it here.  The thread was started by a user named Rilzik, who asked a very peculiar, but interesting question about the Harry Potter series.  Specifically, he or she asked: Would the books and movies be as popular and/or have made as much money if harry was a female and the supporting roles switched to reflect that. Would it have been more, the same or less popular? Could the story with a female lead have reached that sort of super stardom? Would/are females more willing to watch/read a male lead then males are of female leads? Is the audience the same as with twilight which does have a female lead? are these comparable? A lot of folks have said “it would be the same” to the first batch of questions and “no” to the very last question, largely because the series is not oriented toward sex appeal, for the most part.  Aside from the fact that nobody can actually know what would or would not have happened if Harry Potter were a girl, I think it’s great to see people seriously considering the place of female characters in the SF/F market, especially without some kind of controversy as the foreground.  There’s a kind of openness to a discussion that isn’t sparked by drama, and I think much more gets done and said that isn’t oriented towards making anyone feel bad about themselves and their mistakes.  If you read the thread, you’ll notice a great deal of people considering everything from the gender ambiguity of J. K. Rowling’s name (who we all know is a woman), how gender forms opinions about characters, and so forth.  The discussion, I think, needs to happen in this way so more people are exposed to the problems and progressions without forcing anyone to pick a side (and, thus, subject individuals to the penalties of side-choosing, which all serious political/social debates in the SF/F community have been oriented towards). In the case of Harry Potter–again, setting aside the unknowability of alternate history–I think there is something crucial that some individuals (with the exception of KatG) who have commented are missing:  namely that Harry Potter was centered at the dawn of YA fiction, which preceded the vast majority of the major YA fantasy series with female protagonists (such as Twilight and the dozens of other urban fantasy types that followed in its wake).  I would bet that if Harry Potter were Harriet Potter, the series would not have sold as well.  It’s possible that we could chock this up to sexism, but I imagine it would be much more complicated than that.  Today, the climate is different.  Female readers are more common than ever (visually speaking), and female protagonists are in greater numbers in the YA market.  But in 1997, when the first Harry Potter book was released, the reading world was a very different place, not just in terms of who was reading (which was largely the same as it is today, though more people are reading now than thirteen years ago), but also in terms of how books were marketed, what was being picked up by publishers, and so forth. That’s not to say that things are all peachy on the gender front–because they aren’t–but I think it’s absolutely crucial to note how different the climate is today from 1997 overall.  Switching Harry’s gender likely wouldn’t have gone on so well with publishers, and maybe the same is true for readers.  It’s not a simple task to switch the gender of a character, because to do so also means changing who the character is, how the character acts, and so forth.  Remember that Harry Potter is raised in a very specific kind of culture–ours–and that culture is one that frequently normalizes certain kinds of gender roles and gender constructions, even when individuals attempt to reorient their children toward more open forms of gender formations.  Harriett Potter undoubtedly would be an entirely different person; the result would be that readers would identify with the character differently and the books likely would not have become as popular as they are today, since it would not have appealed to the young male audience of 1997. But, again, this is all guesswork.  Without a time machine, I don’t think any of us can truly know what would and would not have happened if things were different.  We can guess, but guesses aren’t necessarily truth (they can become truth, though).  In the end, it’s a fun exercise, but not one that is productive on its own–the productive discussions are all those things people have pointed out in regards to gender and writing, which point directly to the middle questions in the quote above.  Maybe I’ll talk some more about those questions another time. So, what do you think?  Do you think Harry Potter would have been just as successful if the main character was a girl?

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