Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl. There are only fake geek boys. Science fiction was invented by a woman.
Specifically a teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.
Isaac Asimov.
yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point
If you want to push it back even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole – oft credited as one of the first scifi novels
Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms)was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide “Isaac Asimov” reblogs and stick it
even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could have even cited Poe or Jonathan Swift has a case but Asimov?
PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelly as the mother of modern science fiction you didn’t even do a frickin google search For Shame
And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.
Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:
Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.
Even Isaac Asimov ain’t having none of your shit, not even posthumously.
You know what else was invented by women? Masked vigilantes, the precursor to the modern superhero. Baroness Emma Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905.
The character would later inspire better known masked vigilantes such as Zorro and Batman.
Got that?
Stick that in your international pipe and smoke it
I have literally been telling people this for over a year.
the first extended prose piece – ie a novel, was not, as many male scholars will shout, Don Quixote (1605) but The Tale of Genji (1008) written by a woman
The first autobiography ever written in English is also attributed to a woman, The Book of Margery Kempe (1430s).
The day may come when I find this post and do not reblog it, but it is not this day.
Ppl be like “ I want an actual male gem, not just Steven.”
Jeez, it’s like having only one character
to represent your whole gender
in a group composed all of another gender
is a bit upsetting huh?
I wonder
what
that’s like
no really
can you
even imagine
what this lack of representation
MUST
FEEL
LIKE
This
post
isn’t
long
enough
none of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either
it’s actually physically impossible for me to not reblog this post.
I want to say I’ve reblogged this before, but I’m reblogging again for the brilliant addition of, “None of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either” because FUCKING THANK YOU.
mmmmmhm.
Every time I reblog this, there are new shows on the list.
Wow
it’s almost
as though
this happens
almost constantly
But normally you don’t notice, because it’s not about you.
Must be nice to be a man and feel absolutely zero guilt or concern while you sit on your arse in front of the tv as your wife frantically runs herself into the ground with the never ending grind of holiday cooking/cleaning/gifting/wrapping/decorating/tidying/arranging/crafts/familial politics
it always bewilders and offends me that at family gatherings all of the women are up cleaning, cooking, clearing the table after dinner, bringing snacks out, etc., and all of the men are just relaxing and sitting around. I’m also up cleaning, clearing peoples’ plates, etc., because I’m expected to do that as a female, while my male cousins get to sit around and chill. Even the male relatives that I like just sit around and chat and don’t seem to notice that my sister and I are constantly being called into the kitchen and they’re not.
so anyway yeah if you’re a male you should seriously try to pay attention to who’s doing all the work and who’s allowed to sit and chill (probably you) and maybe like, get up and insist on helping…
I’m sure a LOT of women (if not most) can relate to the experience of loving the holidays as a child only to be unceremoniously snatched up into the kitchen one year, after someone deemed you old enough to join the women.
I was so excited, once again, to go to my grandparents’ for Thanksgiving; my brothers and I knew everything we would do: watch the parades on TV (as usual), play board games or play outside (as usual), get cleaned up five minutes before sitting down to be served dinner (as usual), then excuse ourselves after the pie and go watch the animated tv specials until it was time to get in the car and fall asleep on the way home (all as usual).
I will NEVER forget the painful shock of being taken by the shoulders that day and steered into the kitchen, where I spent the holiday prepping the meal and serving the meal and cleaning up after the meal, while my brothers had no change in their holiday schedule.
I was 11 years old.
Don’t forget to show the children what it takes to put on a meal (and who’s doing it).
We never even fucking questioned this in my house. I’m so done with it. Never again.
My boyfriend’s extended family has Saturday night dinner every week, and I remember one time his grandfather announced that everyone was going to start cleaning and helping clearing the table instead of their grandmother doing it. And right after that, all of the men, the grandfather included, sat on their asses as all the women got up and started helping.
I’m getting fed up with this whole “feminism as an identity” thing. Time for “feminism as an action.”
So instead of asking “can a feminist do x?” ask “is doing x a feminist action!”
Can a feminist take her husband’s last name? Mu. Null. Question un-valid, please un-ask question.
Is taking your husband’s last name a feminist action? No it isn’t. It doesn’t challenge the patriarchy in anyway, it is the status quo thing to do, it is what is expected of women, and it carries a lot of historical baggage about ownership and shit like that.
But that’s okay, your life choices don’t have to be 100% dictated by your politics unless you want them to. And it’s okay to really want to take his name while recognizing that you also want to do the feminist thing and keep your own, and it’s okay to feel conflicted and have a hard time making the choice. But no more of this enabling “as long as I made the choice myself it is a feminist choice” -bullshit. Own your choices, even the ones that aren’t informed by your feminist politics. You are still a human being and people do shit that contradicts their politics and even interests all the time. Just stop pretending that everything you do is feminist because you are a feminist, that’s not how it works.
When you make feminism an identity, the identity becomes the ideological excuse by which you tacitly support the institution you are seeking to change.
This is part of the problem with white feminism.
This is part of the problem with liberal feminism.
When you differentiate action as feminism, your feminism moves beyond the ideological and it becomes possible to exist and live within the institution without tacitly supporting it.
At Target this lady told her son he couldn’t have a Wonder Woman doll because “that’s for girls” and then bought her daughter the same one. It got me thinking about how often I see people bar young boys from appreciating girls/women as protagonists and heroes, and my own experience with it as a kid.
lmao @ joss “i regret calling myself a feminist because now everyone expects me not to produce sexist media” whedon (x) don’t let the door hit you on the way out
“I’ve said before, when you declare yourself politically, you destroy yourself artistically,” he said. “Because suddenly that’s the litmus test for everything you do — for example, in my case, feminism. If you don’t live up to the litmus test of feminism in this one instance, then you’re a misogynist. It circles directly back upon you.”
this jackass lmao
translation: “it turns out that if you call yourself a feminist, people expect you to actually do feminist things, and I’m disappointed because I want praise for applying a label to myself without putting in any actual effort”
why do men always say “chill out” whenever girls express a little bit of emotion? sorry y’all are heartless beings but that doesn’t extend to all of us. get better soon
Question of Smoke 