Thanks for the validation, Matt. I do think I could do a better job of explaining religion to my kids, which I see as a somewhat separate discussion from God.
And in odd segues, that Princess Leia crochet wig rocks my world. I love it!
but rape is just... it's not like anything else.
I'd quibble with that, I think there's also way too many depictions of torture and other forms of dehumanizing ultraviolence depicted in art these days, but then again I think I'm a cultural outlier with regards to my violence tolerance. I really am stupidly squeamish about watching violence.
That said, I'm reading Stiff right now and it's reminding me that dehumanizing ultraviolence has been part of entertaining the masses for centuries. At least nowadays it mostly just happens in fiction, we aren't gibbeting criminals or drawing and quartering people any more.
I just posted a picture of Jilli in an argument. Had to defend girliness. For some reason, it was being equated with all sorts of negativity, and taking pains with your appearance was equated with shallowness. Why is making the canvas yourself shallower than using a piece of fabric to paint on? It doesn't
inherently
mean you think you're better than anyone else. Good god.
There is nothing
wrong
with pink and glitter and lace and sequins. And nothing incompatible with mechanics and computers and guns and fighting and being generally, you know, sensible.
I think that if people handled rape in fiction like...RAPE, I wouldn't mind. Admit that wielded sex pollen is roofies is rape. Admit that men can be raped. Admit that prison rape isn't part of a jail sentence. Admit that it takes recovering from. Admit that no means no. Then I'd be okay. But that so rarely seems to happen.
it's just unusable as metaphor. It's radioactive; it mutates the entire story and all the characters and the creators and the consumers of whatever art attempted to use it to suggest anything but itself, and it has a half-life of approximately forever.
JZ- that is a great way to put it. It is just poison. And on Buffy the Willow/Tara stuff was handled so well, possibly because it was not a metaphor of any kind.
Burrell, are you enjoying
Stiff
?
I think my problem is I want Noah to go to Catholic school but not have any of the forced BS of non-actual-doctrine dogma that the Catholics force on people.
I don't care about whether or not he is an atheist. He'll believe what he believes. But I DO care that he knows the biblical stories, not necessarily that he believes them.
Burrell, I think most violence on TV is less insidious than rape is, so I don't mind it as much. But when you get to torture or abuse, I also get tetchy. Those are a whole different kettle of fish.
I'm setting off for Vegas and TAM tomorrow which should be...ugly. I think. I'm unsure. I'm completely stoked about meeting Phil Plait and Neil Grasse Tyson, though. I've never been to Vegas.
I was sitting in a cafe outside Vegas when you called me and asked me why I was late getting into LA. It's my only clear Vegas memory from the drive across the country.
Uh, completely unrelated to anything relevant. Just came to mind.
It was a cool cafe.
Oh, and the sexual harassment stuff was my only problem with Horrible Bosses -- lol, rape is funny when it's a hot lady perpetrator.
