notes on some things

[truepenny]

1. The new bread pans work very nicely. They're a little shorter (length-wise rather than depth-wise) than my old ones, so I get these very tall majestic loaves. They do, however, definitely need greasing, at least around the top.

2. Also, the new bread pans are deep red. My bread mixing bowl is golden-yellow. Our counters are bright blue (so not our choice). As I said to matociquala yesterday, I feel like I've wandered into some trendy yupster magazine article on baking your own bread.

3. Stuff I'm working on right now, at least hypothetically: (1) A Reckoning of Men: matociquala lobbed the ball back and it's awesomely cool, but I have to figure out how to play it. (2) Shadow Unit: "Hope Is Stronger Than Love," which gave me something this morning which should be OMG TEH CREEPY if I can make it work. (3) "Doc Holliday Makes A Deal": I hope this will consent to be a short story, but otherwise it's the first chapter of Doc Holliday, Demon Hunter.

4. Saturday night of Penguicon, mirrorthaw and I were flipping channels (we don't have cable, so this is a sort of weird special occasion thing when we stay in hotels) and we found a college women's fast-pitch softball game, Tennessee vs. Alabama, and Tennessee was getting shellacked. mirrorthaw can confirm that I turned into the most geeked out, fangirliest fangirl EVAR, because OMG there are women playing sports on my TV. I'm totally the same way about women's basketball, even though basketball is not a sport that does much for me, so IMAGINE MY GEEKITUDE. And not only was it women playing baseball (under the generous definition of baseball, yes), but, unlike with women's basketball, these were not women built like supermodels. This is totally not a slam against the women who play basketball, but their sport selects for women who are tall and willowy and thus fit right in with the cultural image of what sort of women you see on your TV. Fast-pitch softball does not select for tall and willowy; from the evidence of the Tennessee and Alabama teams, it selects for women who are short and stocky and strong. Women who are built like me. I can't even explain how awesome it was. I also loved the breakdown of the dichotomized performance of female gender roles: these are athletes, visibly powerful women (Alabama hit several home runs while we were watching), wearing softball uniforms (and Tennessee with that terrible orange, too), and they've got the black bars under their eyes to cut the glare, and yet the Tennessee pitchers have all done their hair the same way, with the French braid along one side and the pale blue bow at the back, and I love the way that they're doing both, that they can be serious athletes and yet still make choices about their gender performance--they can code themselves along a spectrum of femininities*--and they can by god play their sport and mean it.

5. I want to say thank you publicly to Penguicon's concom and staff, who did a wonderful job this weekend--especially but not at all exclusively Yanni Kuznia, who was running the literature track. Thank you all very much!

---
*pitselly objected to my using the butch/femme dichotomy/continuum to talk about this, but the suggested replacement of masculine/feminine is wrong, because it implies that there's only one way to perform femininity, and that is NOT AT ALL what I mean. It also implies that the women who didn't go for the braids and pale blue bows were being, or trying to be, like male athletes, and that is equally not what I mean. They're all women athletes, and what I love is the fact that they have a variety of gender performances without being stigmatized as quote-unquote masculine (those girls are just trying to pretend they're men) or stigmatized the opposite way as quote-unquote feminine (those girls, they can't cope with a real man's game). And there isn't a lot of vocabulary to talk about that.

Comments

[pitselly.livejournal.com]

Butch/femme is not a choice of clothing, but something much more intrinsic; the implication that it's just what kind of clothes you're wearing or how you do your hair is kind of offensive to people who identify that way on a much deeper level. I think what you mean is 'the masculine/feminine dichotomy' rather than 'the butch/femme dichotomy'.

Also, you know what's not really common to see on TV? Any kind of women playing sports, regardless of their body type.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that masculine/feminine is what I mean, either. However, I will agree that in trying to find the right words, I may very well have used the wrong ones, and will correct it.

And, yes, I know seeing women playing any kind of sports on TV is rare. Hence the fact that, as I said, I get geeked out about women's basketball, even though basketball is not a sport I'm particularly fond of.

[pitselly.livejournal.com]

Probably not, but butch/femme is very specifically a term pertaining to lesbian culture. Taking it out of that context is problematic, especially when you were just referring to how they dress. Butch/femme is a lifestyle, and an identity.

I'm sorry to call you out on this, but it was just something that really bothered me when I read it; I'm glad to know you didn't mean any purposeful harm by it.

...Also, while I have you here, do we have a date for your next book yet?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I have seen the terms applied more widely, and I have found them extremely useful in breaking down stereotyped gender roles and ideas about gender performance, specifically because they're talking about a continuum of gender performance within a gender. What I was trying to talk about here is that, in a context where gender performance is automatically coded in ways that are STEREOTYPICALLY non-feminine--"stereotypically" because, of course, they're women, everything they do and every choice they make is "feminine"--they are making and performing choices that reject that stereotype, not by being "feminine" but by choosing the degree of coded-femininity they want to have. And the clearest way I know to talk about the performance of coded-femininity is butch/femme. So I used a shortcut which I probably shouldn't have.

I don't for a minute think that most of those young women think about it in those terms (although at the same time, I'm not going to assume that they don't), but I still think it's really cool.

---

And, no, no pub date yet. Believe me, when I know, I will not be quiet about it.

[pitselly.livejournal.com]

Oh, I figured it was something along those lines. It's a sad wall to hit; there aren't a lot of words to describe what you're trying to describe that don't come from someone else's context, or are pejorative. Oh, the kyriarchy!

Then I will continue to kick my feet and wait, and possibly stew a bit. My summer reading list is sadly short, this year.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

"Girly" is a horrible word.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Fast-pitch softball does not select for tall and willowy; from the evidence of the Tennessee and Alabama teams, it selects for women who are short and stocky and strong. Women who are built like me.

Nod. One thing that has endeared me to downhill skiing is that apparently the same phenomenon holds true there as well--as I discovered when one of my colleagues was talking about her willowy, ski-racer daughter wanting to be about 5'8" and 160 lbs--because ski racers are stocky, powerful people (but not necessarily short). I said something about this to my massage therapist, and he commented that he knows someone who's worked with Picabo Street--and she has very strong, powerful thighs.

All I know is that when I'm bashing my way down a steep slope, I'm loving the powerful feel when I pull against gravity to hold the turn.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Along with all the annoying things ESPN does, they do good coverage of women's sports, especially college basketball and softball as well as professional golf and tennis--I think they do the WNBA as well. Where they go, FoxSports and the regional sports cable channels seem to follow.

And I love that thing that you observed about the hair, and similar little touches I've noticed.