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Now this whole LJ-wide conversation⁰ that started as idealism in the microcosm smacked right up against the face of the broader realities of society but turned into a thoughtful and (in many cases) restrained conversation on the realities of oppression, discrimination, marginalization, the responsibilities of an empowered minority member¹, the things a member of a group with power can do to avoid exercising that power unfairly, and finally, the one that lodged in my brain and wouldn't come out until I said something about it -- the wish of the disempowered that someone in power, who has the ability to start change, would not just attempt to sum up the situation on their own and start change based on their beliefs of what change the disempowered need, but listen to the disempowered, attempt to understand the disempowered, and only after listening and understanding, then attempt to enact change in a way that won't screw the situation over far worse.

I hope I've been listening.

I realized somewhere in the comment thread about the male fear of false accusation of rape and the female fear of actual real rape, that I am not one of the people who needs to be speaking out about what needs to happen about female disempowerment and the fight for equality. By some mixture of chance of birth, innate skill, gene pool gambling, training and inclination, and gods know what else, I am sufficiently physically intimidating² to occasionally walk where men wouldn't want to tread (my old neighborhood at midnight), and also appropriately respected in a traditionally male field. I can talk about female disempowerment, but my current reality is hardly disempowered. I am a natural at the game of technical posturing that geeks play to find their place in the hierarchy, so I can't talk with any validity about a struggle to get where I am.

Likewise, I can't talk overmuch about social disempowerment. I started out with the advantages Well-To-Do and White. I managed to work my way from being a bullied outsider in a great many circumstances³, to actively seeking situations in which I was either an empowered insider or on my way to becoming one, or at least a respected member of the fringe. I suspect I'll never be fabulously popular, but I think I prefer not having that kind of nonstop attention.

So there I was driving along coming back from Writers Group, and suddenly what my supervisor at my night job was saying clicked with what's going on behind the scenes in volunteer-land right now.

At work, my supervisor is attempting to impress on us all that we are the experts, and the customers who email us are very likely not experts, as they wouldn't be emailing in for help if they were (for most of it) or if they knew what needed to be done (because they'd do it). And that clicked. Technical knowledge at this level is a place of power⁴. Granted, it's an odd place of power that does a lot of selection on merit, but it's still a very valid place of power.

This means that I, in my place of power, am responsible for not abusing that power. I think I'm doing a good job of that. I hope I'm doing a good job of that. It means I should be more vigilant, now that I am more aware. More than just hoping to not fuck up and stomp on people, I should be a little more active in my support of those who aren't empowered in the field that I am. I think I am doing well at work. I am good at user education, and I am good at making technology a little less scary for those who are frightened of it. There are strong constraints that bind my actions at work, so even if I were tempted to go out of line, I would be caught and reprimanded quickly. If I went out of line not realizing it, I would still be caught and reprimanded.

I do not have the same kind of oversight in the primary function of my volunteer position. I am essentially my only police. This means that I only get called on the things that I call myself on, or things that my technical peers call me on. That's not a good place to become complacent in. I should go back to some of those things that I was saying knee-jerk no to, and examine my reasons for saying so. Most importantly, I must try to not win an argument between someone who wants something to happen, and someone who doesn't want something to happen, by shouting harder, and (in my role as moderator as well as maintainer) tell my peers to quit it as well. I have the authority to say so, and I should use it more often, and with subtlety and beforehand⁵ rather than blunt force after the fact.

It's not up to me to decide what gets implemented or not, it's up to me to attempt to pull the core ideas out of people's desires and see if I can't make impossible implementations into possible solutions that could be worked into viable implementations by an engineer who knows the codebase.

Then I was thinking about my plans to go back through the older suggestions and see what I can gather that people have spoken in the past about liking.

At this point, that concept that I should not be so quick to shout something down went click in my head with the plan of going back through suggestions and raiding it for ideas based on what I see happening behind the scenes right now. See, I am all of a sudden hooked on the idea that finally, at last, we have someone with both the power to make things happen ... and the willingness to listen. And I've been working off my knowledge of what I know the userbase as a whole likes from what I've been seeing around. But. The place for this discussion isn't in my head with me, myself, and I. This discussion should be happening between me, who has the power to speak, and other users, who know what they want even if they don't know how it would work in LJ or quite how to say it ... and me, who has the power to listen.

Footnotes.⁶

0)^0.5 The Open Source Boob Project, natch.

0.5) I'm so geeky I start my footnotes with 0. That, and I'm going back through and adding more on an edit.

1) I'm thinking about that one discussion about "I am geek woman, what do I have to do around geek man to fairly represent my gender so as not to screw over the non-geek women following me?" in this case.

2) The capacity for berserker rage, and the knowledge that one's reactions in a fight-or-flight sort of scenario tend toward berserker rage, with enough muscle to back that up convincingly, is a great deterrent of the raff. And where a male with the capability of violence might be accosted by more of the same, the social imbalance works in the favor of a woman with the capacity to kick ass when angered.

3) My grade school years were not an utter disaster. Quite. The teachers were attentive and physical bullying didn't really happen. A very smart bookish kid raised without television is going to be an alien to the little hellions around her.

4) Which explains why a lot of geeks are so very hostile to more socially powerful people who behave in very technically uninformed ways: it's displaced revenge for longstanding powerlessness and some of the hassling that happens when people with a nasty streak realize that powerlessness means that they can't fight back. Newfound power means testing the limits of that power. Testing the limits of that power can mean turning that hassling right back around, sometimes with justice, and sometimes just continuing the cycle.

5) Like making a first-comment "I know this is likely to be an unpopular suggestion, so please be focused on the implementation of the suggestion as much as possible when disagreeing with it, and respect the person who made this suggestion." That way people who might lay into things without thinking will have a moment to think about it.

6) LJ-cut deleted because it was interfering with the footnote-linking action.

"When I grew up, if there was yelling, I was afraid I was going to get hit."

Dead silence followed. I had been telling a friend why I flinched away whenever she raised her voice. It came out rather bluntly, but that's what it all boils down to. I can't deal with certain expressions of anger when all my insides are flinching away in anticipation of a beating.

It was never hard enough to leave a lasting bruise, that I knew of. It was never on the chest, on the hands, on the face. It was just an old-fashioned spanking on the bottom with the palm of his huge hard hands. It was painful, and left us screaming in pain and fear. His temper and strength were fearsome to small children, especially when we saw him just lose control and throw toys in the stove and rip furniture apart. There was the very primal fear that perhaps this time, next time, he'd lose control all the way and rip us apart. Later, we learned that when he'd seen us cowering and shrieking in fear in front of non-members of the family, he'd stopped spanking us entirely, and left his destruction to objects. I don't know what we thought then. Perhaps we thought that we'd just gotten too big to be spanked. We were still afraid when he went into a rage, and that fear lasted a very, very long time. As I learned, I am still shadowed by it today.

We never feared Mama's spankings. Disliked, avoided, cried over, but never feared. I have given high-fives that have left a harder sting than one of Mama's spankings, but they served their purpose. We learned that certain behaviors would earn a well-deserved punishment from Mama. We learned that normal childhood bickering that wouldn't even earn a spanking from Mama might make him descend in wrath upon us without warning. Mama taught us the warning signs of his temper, how to watch for the warning rumblings of earthquakes so we could hide in time from the sudden eruption. Mama taught us that he was a good man, and tried really hard. Mama taught us to not provoke him.

When I was fourteen, I vowed that I would never have children. I recognized his same temper in myself and knew that I did not have the control necessary to keep it from bursting out. I vowed that I would never make his mistake and inflict myself and my temper upon a defenceless child.

When I was sixteen, I stood up to him. I had a temper of my own, a direct copy of his temper in a younger body with less impulse control and more stupid per cubic inch. My sister and I picked a sniping match over a batch of cookies, and he started to erupt. He marched over with the intent of destroying the object of contention, the cookie dough. He has always been a large man, and I was not a large teenager. I ignored this. I stood in front of him, got in his face, and scolded him in full cry like he was a spoiled five-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. I was so angry that I did not care if I got hit, even though he had not raised a hand to us in years. I stood my ground with hackles raised and spurs at the ready. I was younger, stronger, angrier, and absolutely right. I was not about to back down.

He deflated and slunk off to sulk outside somewhere. Since that moment, he never tried to intimidate me with his anger again.

I had hoped that being stood up to and stood down would have made a lasting change. But I later heard that he still used his temper like a bludgeon when I was safely away, after I left for college.

At length, I learned real control of my temper, rather than just temporary lava flow control. It was forced upon me when I became roommates with my heartsister and her small son, my virtual nephew the Little Fayoumis. I feel I could have a child of my own, now. It would be safe. It has ended with this generation.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: a week late
Current Location: 11th street and McDowell, Phoenix, AZ
Current Music: chattering ladies

In fanfiction, I will take any well-written interpretation of the material that I can get. I ran into a

hp_literotica story that depicts Narcissa Black as a diamond-hard, unbreakable woman. I read Narcissa as hard and brittle like spun glass, but diamond!Narcissa is a valid interpretation too. I like it when people write things that challenge my interpretation of the characters. I like it when people write things that challenge the canon interpretation of the characters. I especially like it when people write things that challenge the author's interpretation of the characters.

I don't read canon point for point and dig for details to make sure that the way I read it is 110% canon-compliant. I rather boggle at it when people do. At the end of the day, I'm not studying it for Battle of the Books, and I don't have to know it backwards and forwards like I do the literal words on the surveys I administrate at work. I find authorial intent in the HP canon interesting in a trivia sort of way, and it can certainly color the way I read the text after that, but there's a lot of unintentional depth of character that the author has no interest in exploring the same way I do. The author is very interested in some characters who I'd really rather skim. In some cases, the author thinks she's writing a book that is different from the one I wound up reading.

One of the things that gets hammered in almost any writing class is "Show, don't tell." You can narrate that Hermione Granger is a brainy bit of a thing until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't have half the power that showing her waving her hand in the air and jumping about to answer a question, and reading rather dull books does. If narration of character traits in text is disrecommended, how much less literary credibility does it have to have an author have to answer questions about how the characters were have supposed to have been portrayed? There are things that do fit more easily into the source text than others, but some things are better left a mystery.

Star Trek spoiled me for a One True Interpretation fandom. There are so many authors and alternate universes in Star Trek that it would be foolish to attempt to insist on One True Vision, though a lot of people do. Star Trek does the alternate universe thing a lot. It's far easier to mentally label canon inconsistencies as AU rather than OMFG BLOOPER. I like some of the book-canon that got Jossed better than I like the movie-canon. When you have so much canon to choose from, and so much that should be canon that isn't, it's hard to go back to a One True Canon universe with one visionary. So much was up to the different writers and directors and actors to fill out and interpret and occasionally go beyond Gene Roddenberry's vision. A few things were even intentionally left up to the watcher. Someone posted recently about the backstory behind the change in appearance in the Klingon race, how he or she had wondered about this. Finally, it was addressed in an episode, and Worf shut down the query. "We do not speak of that." A real universe has open ends like this, where no amount of authorial interpretation can replace the sweet mystery of not ever knowing for sure.

I first encountered the concept that fanfiction could go on a wild tangent that canon would never ever approve of, and have it still be good, when I encountered the Sith Academy. There has been good fanfiction that the creator would never agree with before and since, but that was my first, and perhaps even my favorite, encounter. The Sith Academy started with the simple and creative premise that Darth Maul had to have some training before he came up against our favorite Jedi, and this was part of that training. Darth Sidious has Darth Maul performing insane and stressful tasks that are of immediate familiarity to a modern audience familiar with urban life and life on the outskirts of government and campus activities. Darth Maul's first task is to learn to drive in Coruscant's insane traffic. The characters were writ large and boldly at first, caricatures of George Lucas's vision, but as more people joined in the project and Ewan McGregor's past characters were conflated into Obi-Wan Kenobi's own past, a certain subtlety and sense of hidden anguish informed the stories. George Lucas never would have approved, especially not the idea of a Jedi loving a Sith, but the general quality of the stories and the commentary they make on the Star Wars universe are very good.

I never before thought that I could wholeheartedly believe in something as patently ridiculous as a Sith and a Jedi falling in love, but the Sith Academy showed me how someone as snarling and badhearted as Darth Maul might eventually come to care for someone (albeit in his own cranky and cruel way). I had a bulletproof OTP in the X-Files (MSR all the way!), but the Sith Academy made me realize that I wasn't looking for a particular pairing that worked when I read romantic fanfiction, I was looking for good writing, good storytelling, recognizable characterization, and artful suspension of my disbelief.

In the world of canon, many things are impossible. Darth Maul does not actually drink that brand of beer, nor does he live in an apartment immediately adjacent to that of the man who will eventually cause his hips and his ribs extreme separation anxiety. Darth Maul would not actually attempt to get in bed with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Darth Maul would snarl incoherently and attempt to seriously make diced meat out of the Jedi. But if a fanfiction writer wants to take me to a place where Sith come to grudging terms with their softer side, without giving up their core of innate cranky snarl, and Jedi re-live their misspent youth with less drugs and more responsible sex, who am I to deny their vision? All I ask is that the writer show me how things progressed from the characters we know and love to hate into the characters that they're writing.

I don't have a One True Pairing in Harry Potter fanfiction. There are too many people of nicely diverse genders who can be plausibly hooked up. I've read too many people making an implausible pairing into a very scarily plausible pairing for me to say that it can't or shouldn't be done. The only time I have trouble with a pairing is when it's written badly or there is Scary Fan Drama associated with it. I do have difficulties with Ron/Hermione, largely because it is canon and this is causing an attitude of insufferable snottiness in certain factions associated with 'shipping it. You're right, you don't have to keep rubbing it in, the author agrees with you. Big whoop. Now STFU so the rest of us can read our fic in peace. Same goes for Harry/Ginny Weasley. Canon says yay. Canon says 'pastede on yey' when I read it, actually. I do wish that JKR had gone to the same trouble of selling it to the fans as some of the fan works take to selling a more implausible 'ship. She may have sold it to some of you, but she didn't sell it to me very well. I say that if a slavish imitation of canon is what you want, you're welcome to it. More for you. For me? Give me your slash. Give me your het. Give me your gen. Give me your rarepairs. Give me your angst. Give me your comedy. Give me your crackfic. (Oh, gods, yes, the crackfic. ♥) Give me your AUs, your OCs, your OTPs. Give me your best writing. I'm in a reading mood.

What I particularly fancy is when a fan author has taken some aspect of the wizarding world that JKR is perhaps overlooking and not treating right, and expanding and exploring this in their own style. The source material has errors and omissions and authorial oversights, as do most all works. There is so much rich magical technology to explore. There are so many interesting characters. There are so many supposedly cardboard characters who must surely have their own stories. There are so many missing pieces. JKR doesn't have time to explore all of this. There are so many different interpretations of the same character, so many that sometimes you have to wonder if we were all reading the same books. I already read canon. I read the book that I was reading. It was a spiffy story about a boarding school with magic in. I could go read it again, but it would be the same book. I want to read the book that you were reading.

Just sell me the premise of the story, the premise of the changes you made, and I'm yours.

Note that the state of awake has been degrading through the process of writing this, and so, therefore, has the clarity of the written word and the integrity of the essay format.