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Nov. 22nd, 2008 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solitary_summerFirst snow. Last family birthday before Christmas, my father's. Spent yesterday evening making another Schwarzwälderkirschtorte. (Incidentally, six months today until my next birthday; half a year gone already, *sigh*.) R. called in the afternoon, sounding quite desperate, she wants/needs to return the second cat she adopted since he doesn't get along with the first cat, or just doesn't get along full stop, and could I drive her/them there tomorrow? G. wants an article proof-read. My mother is a saint and fixes the belt of my belly dancing costume. Stress. My bike has a flat tyre and I've no idea when to bring it to the shop whose opening hours coincide with my own work hours. More stress.
~
On a completely unrelated note, reading Ruth Klüger's weiter leben I came across the following passage:
How much of a hyperbole is that? Or is it a hyperbole at all? Truer in 1992 and before than today? On the whole it doesn't seem so very farfetched to me, because it took me a while to notice my own deeply ingrained misogynistic streak that made me almost automatically pick books written by male writers or the works of male artists. That changed to an extent over time, but it really was fandom that made me aware that the male perspective isn't necessarily... the neutral state, the default, the norm. A longish while ago I wrote an jl entry wondering whether men identify with female characters in novels as easily as female readers, or at least female readers of my generation and older who were brought up on the classics, identify with male characters. Admittedly it's probably not a universal experience; my (ex-)therapist didn't really understand when I tried to explain that, and the thought clearly hadn't occurred to her before, but I'm not completely alone either since I distinctly remember reading someone's lj-entry describing much the same thing; maybe people in slash fandom are more likely to notice and talk about these gender related issues? (My sister, when I asked her, said that in her experience men just didn't read a lot of novels. Now, is that true?)
On a completely unrelated note, reading Ruth Klüger's weiter leben I came across the following passage:
Ich bestehe auf diesen Unterscheidungen, riskiere bewußt, wenn auch ungern, die Leserin (wer rechnet schon mit männlichen Lesern? Die lesen nur von anderen Männern Geschriebenes) durch Belehrungen, die noch dazu teils von Laienpsychologie abhängig sind, zu irritieren oder gar zu brüskieren [...]
(emphasis mine; roughly translates as 'Who's counting on male readers? They only read things written by other men.')
How much of a hyperbole is that? Or is it a hyperbole at all? Truer in 1992 and before than today? On the whole it doesn't seem so very farfetched to me, because it took me a while to notice my own deeply ingrained misogynistic streak that made me almost automatically pick books written by male writers or the works of male artists. That changed to an extent over time, but it really was fandom that made me aware that the male perspective isn't necessarily... the neutral state, the default, the norm. A longish while ago I wrote an jl entry wondering whether men identify with female characters in novels as easily as female readers, or at least female readers of my generation and older who were brought up on the classics, identify with male characters. Admittedly it's probably not a universal experience; my (ex-)therapist didn't really understand when I tried to explain that, and the thought clearly hadn't occurred to her before, but I'm not completely alone either since I distinctly remember reading someone's lj-entry describing much the same thing; maybe people in slash fandom are more likely to notice and talk about these gender related issues? (My sister, when I asked her, said that in her experience men just didn't read a lot of novels. Now, is that true?)
