Technical Difficulties

Carl Brandon Society: $140
Scarleteen: $150
JMFMBE: $140

Thank you very very much to everyone who bid. You are all awesome, and I am beyond pleased that we've managed to raise more than a hundred dollars for each of these three causes.

vompirr, timefortea, and mykfreddy, email me at semonette (at) sarahmonette (dot) com with your shipping information. And if you want your ARC personalized--to [name] [some sort of message, depending on what I can think of] from Sarah--please (a.) say so and (b.) tell me what name to write. Assuming I hear back from you, the ARCs will go out tomorrow. It is entirely up to you whether you make your donations now or wait until you have the ARC. All I ask is that you do make the donation.

Again, thank you. Thank you all.

Okay. Here is the plan. I have decided to auction off all three of my ARCs.

One will benefit the John M. Ford Memorial Book Endowment.

One will benefit Scarleteen.

One will benefit the Carl Brandon Society.

As March 7th is the T-minus one month and counting anniversary of the official release date of Corambis, that is the day I want to take these ARCs to the post office and ship them out.

Therefore, the auctions will take place, concurrently rather than consecutively, beginning tomorrow, March 5, 2009, at 12:00 p.m. CDT (i.e., high noon my time, which increases the likelihood that I will be awake to start the auction) and end March 6, 2009, at 12:00 p.m. CDT. Doing them consecutively seems like it might end up with the last ARC's price becoming ridiculous, and while I obviously want to raise as much money as I can, I also want as many people as possible to feel like they have a chance. You may bid in one, two, or all three auctions; however, in the stunningly unlikely event of one person winning more than one auction, I'm going to ask that you take only one ARC and let the next highest bidder in the other auction(s?) win.

Each ARC will be signed and hand-corrected by me in, yes, purple ink (Lamy purple and a Lamy Safari Vista Clear, for them as like to know these things). I will also personalize the ARCs if the winners so desire, but will leave that up to them to decide.

Yes, I will send ARCs anywhere in the world, so long as you make your donations in a form that the Library Foundation of Hennepin County, Scarleteen, and the Carl Brandon Society can accept (I believe they all take PayPal).

No, you do not have to have a LiveJournal account to bid. I ask, however, if you do not have an LJ, that you sign each bid with an email address.

Please feel free to announce this auction on your blogs.

ETA: I would also ask, although this is a REQUEST, not a demand or requirement, that if you receive an ARC, you blog about it. That holds whether you like Corambis or not. And as I said, it's not a requirement and I won't go checking up on you or anything. It'd just be nice.

If there's a concern or question I've forgotten to address, please ask in the comments to this post.

So the excellent Heather Corinna (she who makes me look beautiful in my author photo) runs a site called Scarleteen, a sex education site for teenagers and young adults, which aside from all its other strengths is GLBT inclusive. Scarleteen is having a fundraising drive, and I have to say I think this is the best possible gesture to mark St. Valentine's Day, which in modern American culture might as well be called Heterosexist Disinformation Day.

1. The commercial exploitation of Valentine's Day enshrines the heterosexual romantic relationship as the be-all and end-all of personal achievement. (Ditto its even more nauseating and artificial clone-daughter, "Sweetest Day.")

2. Likewise, it yokes together romantic love and conspicuous consumption in such a way as to make it seem as if love can only be expressed through material objects.

King Lear believed this. And we know how well that worked out.

3. It perpetuates the sexist double standard that MEN buy gifts--expensive, impractical gifts--for WOMEN, and WOMEN accept gifts from MEN as their due. Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

4. Strongly implied is this follow up: in return for these expensive, impractical gifts, the woman will reward the man with sex.

5. Leading us to a conclusion that we really need to think twice about: women only have sex because men bribe them.

6. This is reinscribing a whole host of horrid sexist ideas and practices, and is at least as unfair to men as it is to women.

7. Since also strongly implied is the obverse face, that if it wasn't for Valentine's Day and the advertising blitz, men would never buy presents for women at all. Or do anything nice for them.

8. Furthermore, it teaches women that a gift is not a gift, but an obligation. Because he wouldn't get you anything, you know, just because. He wants something. And if he wants something, it's your responsibility to give it to him. Because he gave you a gift.

9. Obligation is not love. Not the obligation to give a gift, not the obligation to reciprocate.

10. And then there's all the people this paradigm leaves out in the cold, starting with gays and lesbians, the intersexed, the transsexed, those who are asexual, those whose sexuality just doesn't fit into this One Man One Woman nonsense. Yes, those who are not heterosexual and monogamous can reinterpret Valentine's Day to suit their needs; my point is that THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE TO.

11. Last November, I voted against the sanctity of marriage.

12. And I'd do it again.

13. And still. I'm straight and monogamous and married and in love with my husband, and I hate Valentine's Day. I hate the way it simultaneously overemphasizes and cheapens love, the way it tells those people who are not in a relationship that they're somehow unworthy, not as good, doing something wrong. I hate the way it MANUFACTURES social pressure. And I hate the way--thank you, LiveJournal, for your hideous pink and red hearts--it tries to camouflage its social pressure in being "cute." I hate the way it lies.

14. Everyone deserves better than this crushing, trite reinforcement of a bogus paradigm.

To donate to Scarleteen, click here.