Feminist Monday, June 18

Good morning, y'all. I hope your weekend was a good one. Mine was. :) I got to write at a coffee shop, do some vintage shopping (and found some good things), and I saw Solo with Dane. I enjoyed it quite a lot.[1] There were multiple women characters with agency--and even though two of them were romantic prizes as it were, one of them wasn't at all. In fact, she was a black woman who then starts the Rebellion. I loved that. I really liked Chewy and Han's meet cute too. Overall, well done. It may even be one of my favorite StarWars films. IT WASN'T ABOUT THE DAMNED DEATHSTAR! W00t! Okay. In other news...today's videos...

Literary/Entertainment: And Hallelujah! At E3, video gaming's bigots have lost. I'd feel sorry for the booth babes losing their jobs...except I don't--even though they aren't the ones at fault. Thus, I'd feel better if the dudes that hire them were penalized, but I'll take what I can get. Next up, a great article about empire and colonialism in literature. The Storytellers of Empire. From the article: "I recently asked a friend with a quite extraordinary voraciousness for nonfiction related to the 9/11 Wars—the term is Jason Burke’s—for the names of writers other than Anderson who managed to successfully engage with perspectives that weren’t American. He listed more than fifty books around the 9/11 wars before pausing to draw breath and said, “The thing is, female western writers have dealt well with the Other. Sarah Chayes’s The Punishment of Virtue and Ann Jones’s Kabul in Winter are both excellent to name only two of the best. But the men haven’t really dealt with the Other.”" Next, No Native American novels in “The Great American Read”. Meet the artists behind 'Declaration,' a queer Revolutionary love story. Okay, I'll be honest. I bought the first issue and...I was disappointed. I wanted more story. The first issue is all this fast-forwarding to depict bits of American history we all know from High School history class and next to nothing on the personal level for the characters--except they kiss and say I love you. That's fine, but it's not a story. We don't know why Hyram was invited over. We don't know who the characters are outside of the clothes they wear. We don't know how they met. We don't know anything, really. I may give it another issue. We'll see. I want it to be good. Now, have Nisi Shawl's article on sports in SF. Future Alternative Past: Kicking it around. And Lionel Shriver is wrong. Penguin’s push for diversity will translate into better books. Sigh. Come on, white women. We must be better at supporting other women for one thing. For another, let's not be bigoted assholes. Okay? And speaking of, Toxic Fandom Is Killing 'Star Wars'. Next, Reading While White. 

General: What’s Really Happening When Asylum-Seeking Families Are Separated? If you are okay with kids being separated from their parents and being dumped into cages, then I seriously have to ask What the Fuck is Wrong with You? Seriously. The GOP has stopped being even remotely about democracy. And if you continue to support it and Trump, you're a Fascist. Also? Here's the truth behind those "positive" job statistics that Trump is bragging about. From Forbes. You know, that oh so liberal (not) business magazine. Forbes. Have an article about racism: Skin Feeling. Next up, Record-Setting NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson Retires. And because the Republicans can't leave well enough alone, Trump's new Title X plan requires ineffective birth control most women don't want. 
'Implicit bias': The problem and how to interrupt it. Plus, the beads test. 

--------------------------------------------------
​[1] Eventually, we'll even get to the point where actors from more than one marginalized group (or even the same one) with speaking lines can appear on screen together and not have a conversation about white cishet men on a regular basis in SF/F films. One can hope. Watching the black actor with a speaking part being killed off before another black actor with a speaking role could appear was rather...disturbing.