don't cross the streams

[prophetic]

I just sent the email below to some RL friends, because we were talking about stuff.  I'm in the midst of freaking out about it now, like, did I really just tell these people who I know FROM CHURCH about all this stuff?

/o\

I am uncomfortable about this much overlap between these two areas of my life.  I think I'm moving in the right direction--

Comments

[tempore]

I like the way you are introducing it, because it puts fandom on the table as being a valid platform of expression-- and an outlet. I think that where you mention that women in our demographic aren't particularly persecuted, this is true, but we are providing our own safe haven against something for which we are persecuted: our sexuality. Fandom is less about gay sexuality than it is about being a place in which women have the chance to express that sexuality -- especially young women who don't want to be confined to the stereotypes of Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears, molded by society into a teenage Madonna/whore. Strange, too, because I don't see the equivalent with males-- boys are not pushed into being the Jonas Bros (most boys, I think, would find them lame) or the Backstreet Boys or whatever boy band is the thing nowadays. Because women are marginalized very much into good girl/bad girl stereotypes, especially in high school and early college perhaps, where as the worth of heterosexual males are not held up to quite the same

[prophetic]

:) :) :)

I'm happy you approve! And I love what you have to add. You are absolutely right about the women's sexuality stuff, and also about everything else fic deals with.

boys are not pushed into being the Jonas Bros (most boys, I think, would find them lame)

Bwah! I have a funny Jonas Brothers story, but I'll have to save it since I need to go to work now.

Thanks for everything you have to add!!

[tempore]

Okay, but at some point, you have to tell me the JoBro story. :) And I'm totally overgeneralizing there, I know, btw, but I do think there is a different standard for boys than there is for girls.

[prophetic]

Okay, I had to do some research to fill in the relevant details of this story--I just happened to see it on TV one night, and it cracked me up like nobody's business

hot topics

[evangelysta]

Well, I am in the middle of taking notes on a great book about how feminist discourse has generally failed at figuring race in its discussion of woman's oppression. The point of the book is to try to think race and gender together because they

Re: hot topics

[tempore]

Jumping in, hope you don't mind, because I do think it interesting, to build on what you were saying re: Dionysus (or also known as Bacchus) and the dryads and satyrs-- the women were, in the myth or retelling of it, generally depicted as insane with their lusts and desires. They are desire unchecked, and so female sexuality carried a sense of negativity with it, that these women were out of control.

Re: hot topics

[evangelysta]

Yes, true true. Women and their wandering wombs of antiquity. Can't argue with anything you say there. Doesn't mean they didn't have fun, though!

Re: hot topics

[tempore]

Oh, I'd have been happy to be one of Bacchus' wild women. :)

bloody hell!!!????

[benneer]

If Jesus isn't a Quaker OR a liberation theologian than what the hell could he be?

((just kidding))

Re: bloody hell!!!????

[prophetic]

Hee!

D. J., my advisor at ESR, had this great story about being at . . . some big 'ol conference about religion and stuff, where Gustavo Gutierrez was present. He was speaking, and everyone was hanging on his every word, of course, and he began, "I do not believe in liberation theology--"

And the whole room was dead silent, holding their breaths, thinking he was recanting on his previous thought and was going to proclaim some fantastic new discipline of theology right before their very eyes--

Gutierrez continued:

"I believe in Jesus Christ."