The Truth Of Wolves, Or: The Alpha Problem

A very interesting blog post regarding “Alpha wolves” and why biology just-doesn’t-work-that-way. As someone who majored in biology (although I’m specialized in molecular biology and genetics), I find myself cringing every time I read the same paranormal tropes about this now subverted ideas about wolves. Please authors, go and read an updated paper on the subjects before you start writing about “hierarchy” in the animal kingdom. Science may try to be objective, but scientists are still human beings, full of biases and prejudices.

shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows

Regardless of what historical epoch their populations and culture are either based on or situated in, epic fantasy landscapes tend to be populated by a very specific subset of animals: big cats, horses, wolves, bears, deer, birds of prey, European livestock (cattle, sheep, chickens), domestic pets, rabbits, and dragons. Though you might occasionally find some ferrets, snakes or crocodiles to spice things up, generally speaking, there’s a profound Eurocentrism to the kind of animals you’ll encounter in fantasy novels, partly because the default fantasy environment is itself Eurocentric; and partly because, once you’re using less common animals, there’s the joint question of how to describe and reference them if their English names are either very clearly colonial or derive their meaning from a clearly real-world scientific canon (Thompson’s gazelle, the red panda, the Pallas cat, for instance); but mostly, I suspect, because we view such creatures as being universally generic…

View original post 1,649 more words

Thanks (but no thanks…)

Thanks (but no thanks…).

Zoe Smith, you are awesome and I love you. *Ahem* This comes from someone who refuses to buy into the “inherent female weakness” paradigm.

[Zoe Smith eres genal y the amo. *Ahem* Esto viene de alguien quien se rehusa a creer en el paradigma de la “debilidad femenina inherente”.]

Behaving Like A Man

Basically why I cringe every time someones accuses a woman (or a female character) of being too “manly”, “too much like a man” or “one of the boys”.

Dusk Is Falling

For thousands of years any time a woman did something a man thought inappropriate she was accused of wanting to be a man, of being too mannish, of being unwomanly. We are still fighting this same battle today, ironically backed up by liberal progressive pseudo-science that agrees there are ways of really behaving like a man or a woman.

When we examine the history of this struggle, we find it written about in curious ways. There will be innocuous sentences like, ‘in the past it was thought inappropriate for women to work outside the home, but gradually greater numbers of women became accepted into the workforce’. This is not an actual quote, you understand, but a stand-in for thousands that I’ve read just like it. Not only does it obscure the agent (just WHO thought it was inappropriate for women to work outside the home) but it also obscures the…

View original post 656 more words

This is a blog post that really spoke to me, in many ways, not just in relation to the Butch/Femme discussion, which I really don’t feel like addressing right now, because I don’t considerer myself with enough knowledge to do a proper commentary.

I’m someone who struggles with her identity everyday. While I do like some thing that are considered “feminine” (in a sort-of arbitrary way, why things have to be categorized?) I always refused the feminine gender role assigned to me, trying to foolishly be just “myself”. Some people think that any woman or girl who doesn’t conform is less of a woman, is trying to be “one of the boys”, is just a “man with boobs”, is a “misogynist” , they simply can’t fathom the idea. I have been called  names again and again by supposed “feminists” and “allies”.

This may not have to do much with the discussion at hand, but I’m sick and tired of people complaining about women who just don’t care to perform, I’m sick of having to excuse myself because I simply don’t want to have kids or get married or even have a partner (Bitch! Woman-hater! Marriage is a natural female occupation didn’t you know?*).

Just need to get that off my chest.

*Yes, I once got into an argument with someone that apparently thinks that any woman who doesn’t care about marriage is a misogynist. Good times.

Dear neckbeards:

Just because you are married to a woman (and I have my doubts about that) doesn’t mean that you know everything that is to know about women. We are persons, individuals. We aren’t aren’t a monolith. Claiming that you are “half a lady” because you have a mother doesn’t make you witty or smart, rather the opposite.

So, just shut the fuck up.

No Love.

A woman.

The world is full of neckbeards

I rarely join forums or other “social” sites. I’m a rather abbrasive person, so when conforted with things such as sexism I easily explode, let’s not start talking about my pacience with ignorant individuals such as neckbeards. Truly, the only reason I joined this particular site was because I got my eye on some of those mods so I can’t tell them how much of a dipshit they are, which aren’t accesible unless you are an “approved” member, but I digress.

Funfem is a waste of time.

http://rose-lemberg.livejournal.com/236997.html?view=1848005#t1848005

This is exactly why I don’t identify with mainstream feminism anymore. “Men-with-boobs”, “Honorary-males”? I guess to them any woman who happens to have a body or a hobby outside the norm/”feminity” is just trying to be like those men! You Bitch!

Oh, and the OP [comment OP]? Doesn’t even identifies as a “woman” or, like he said, as a “Female”. I smell a neckbeard.

Also, those people seem to have even less comprehension skills than me, and I’m not even a native speaker. Figures.