Interesting Links for 08-01-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Why so many people are wrong about Susan in the Chronicles of Narnia

(tags:women narnia )

2. Finding the will to transition.

(tags:transgender LGBT society )

3. Wil Wheaton assures you that he is a fully functional human with a backstory and everything.

(tags:celebrity )

Comments

[cmcmck]

2.

Oh lord! I remember those dreams but I also remember having the will to end up as a female teenager and that's something I've never regretted for a moment.

[simont]

#1: the title was really confusing, because I couldn't tell whether it was the first-order complaint ("hey, there was nothing wrong with what Susan was doing, not fair excluding her!") or the second-order one ("hey, you're all missing the point about what was wrong about Susan"). Or for all I know some third-order term of this power series of rants that I haven't encountered yet.

#3: the title was really helpful – thank you for putting it into the third person and adding the author's name! One of my least favourite things about link aggregation (which I mostly associate with Hacker News for some reason) is the tendency to just repost a link with its original title, while taking it out of vital context that the title assumed. E.g. I've often seen HN links titled "We have made a new release" or "We are discontinuing our operations" or what have you, and you have to click through the link just to find out who "we" are in each case.

[andrewducker]

I can understand the rule on HN, where otherwise the standard would be to heavily editorialise in the title.

But it definitely goes too far the other way sometimes.

[calimac]

1) Kat Coffin is absolutely correct, and she's only one of many who have made this argument, including Andrew Rilstone.

But what's come to interest me in recent years is not debunking the misapprehension, but asking why, if Lewis is so clear about what he meant - and he is - why do people persist in misreading it? I have ideas on this.

3) And that's why I don't accost celebrities I happen to see. If I run into one at a social event, I try to find some other topic of mutual interest to talk about, instead of gushing over their work. (It's even more embarrassing when I talk with personal friends who are noteworthy people - in my case, mostly authors - about their work and start gushing over it.)

[andrewducker]

I think that the modern, surface, reading is to assume that criticism of "nylons and lipstick" are coded criticisms of interest in sex.

Which I don't think they are at all. I think they're criticisms of focusing on looks/surface rather than depth.

But I can understand that people who have been attacked for being interested in such things by people who *were* attacking them for an interest in sex might take it as that kind of thing.

[drswirly]

3. But is he programmed in multiple techniques?

[andrewducker]

He Knows Kung Fu.

[greenwoodside]

1) Yes, when I was hanging around fandom -- hmmm -- fifteen years ago? I remember a lot of outrage about Susan stoked by Rowling's and Pullman's comments. Was never able to share in it since my brain has never said: nylons and lipstick === sex and sexuality. No more than a heart-shaped box of milk chocolates from a petrol station === love. They're just consumerist, capitalist representations of them.

Though I know I will fail at a Marxist reading of Narnia, so won't try! : )

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. No point ruining your enjoyment of something by critiquing it to death.

(I try very hard not to think about republicanism during Lord of The Rings for that reason)

[greenwoodside]

Likewise!

[doubtingmichael]

The Lord of the Rings contains giant spiders, true kings and rings of invisibility. I take them all as entertaining elements in a fantasy story.

[andrewducker]

Pretty much. If I'm going to accept Eru then I can accept the divine right of kings.

Narnia and the Bechdel test ?

[bens_dad]

1 I'm not sure what to make of the Bechdel challenge Every Narnian chronicle also passes the Bechdel test and you find me another children's book series from the 50's that also does that.

Was the 50's worse than the thirties or forties, or would they satisfy Kat ? Of the top of my head I'm thinking Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons (1930-45), Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine stories (1943-78).

From what I remember, Enid Blyton's "Adventure" series probably pass. I don't know the Famous Five or the Secret Seven, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do too.

EDB's Chalet School and the other Girls Gone By series "obviously" don't count because they are girl's stories not children's ?

Re: Narnia and the Bechdel test ?

[magedragonfire]

The Bechdel test is a really low bar to pass, and purposefully so. It's more for highlighting the sheer amount of both modern and historical media that don't pass. Twilight passes. I'm pretty sure that, going further back than the fifties, all of the Anne of Green Gables series does, too (even before Anne herself is old enough to be counted as a woman).

It's a little bit of an odd gotcha for her to bring out when the rest of her point is salient without it.

Re: Narnia and the Bechdel test ?

[ckd]

You know what else passes the Bechdel test?

The spoken introduction to Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back".

Re: Narnia and the Bechdel test ?

[magedragonfire]

A shining example of feminism! :P

(Still a fun song, though.)

Re: Narnia and the Bechdel test ?

[ckd]

Also useful for setting up logic puzzles. "Sir Mix-a-Lot likes big butts and cannot lie. His identical twin brother likes small butts and cannot tell the truth. You meet one of them on the road one day and can only ask one question - can you determine which brother you have met?"