prison for jerks

For the last four weeks of summer quarter, I'm taking an upper-divsion anthropology class called Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective. It's pretty interesting, on the whole, though due to the short session we have to move really quickly and not cover some things as deeply.

Today's session was largely a discussion of sexualities -- the social construction thereof, the different ways they're constructed in different cultures, the ideas of homophobia, compulsory heterosexuality, and heterosexism in U.S culture. From there, we also talked about some general LGBT issues before moving on to watching part of an interesting documentary on FTM transexuals who've gone through transition.

Here is the thing: I have talked about these issues all before, some more in depth than others. However, the places I've had these discussions before are, basically, the internet (a small section of slash fandom in particular), SRC (a tiny liberal arts college) and Evergreen (another small liberal arts college). So all these discussions have been held in extremely queer-friendly, queer-visible environments.

So the context of this discussion was ... different, and in some ways really uncomfortable to me. Because on the one hand: yeah, education is really important. But on the other, even though the discussion went to some really interesting places, it's hard to shake off this weird feeling that "we" -- assumed to be the straight, educated class -- need to be taught and learn and respect this totally exotic other.

This feeling was possibly increased by the fact that apparently during the 10-week (rather than 4-week) sessions, there's a day when the professor brings in a panel of lesbian, gay, bi, trans, etc., people to sit in front of the class and answer questions. Um.

I suppose the lesson here may just be that I have been lucky to have been in a lot of environments up to now where the heterocentricism wasn't quite as obvious.

Anyway, like I said, upper level anthro class, so it wasn't so much an issue of so much sexism or homophobia (though there were one or two remarks that made me wince) as more of an underlying feeling of creepiness. Meh.

On to fandom stuff -- last night I played the game called "Let's open up photoshop and fool around aimlessly!" Fun times.

( The results involved 2 Vecchio screencaps from Heaven & Earth )

While I'm still abusing photoshop, I thought I would post the last covers for stories I've made. Everyone loves covers, right? Um. One of them I made a couple months ago and never got around to posting, for cesperanza's Flying Blind, which is a very lovely due South Quest story she originally wrote for the Necking Challenge on ds_flashfiction. The other one I finished today, and it is for minervacat's Slings and Arrows story from earlier this month, there's an art to the laughter (there's a science), which is awesome and full of crazycakes Geoffrey Tennant.

Both of the pictures link to the stories if you click, and you should go read and leave feedback.

( Flying Blind )

( there's an art to the laughter )

Okay, two things.

First, I have now promised my first child to Slodwick, because HOLY CRAP. Do you SEE that? I am a lucky lucky girl.

The second thing is this book, which -- SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE. Please tell me one of you has read this -- or better yet, OWNS it! I need to know these things! I need excerpts (horrible ones preferred, but all kinds welcomed)! MY CURIOSITY IS NOW AROUSED.

Two more covers, both for lalejandra.

( For Surviving )

( For Comfort Zone )

You know, I never had an ear infection once in my childhood. Apparently my body is making up for its mistakes in my infancy! Next thing you know, I'll be getting chicken pox.

(Please insert the necessary knocking-on-wood there yourself, okay?)

On the subject of things that are not me whining -- and yet still in lieu of actual content in this journal -- I continue to spend large amounts of time fooling around and experimenting with images. This weekend, I also reread one of my very, very favorite stories: cesperanza's Passion. This is approximately the eight millionth time I have read it, and the first time I have bawled all the way through it. I have a great many woobie Fraser buttons, and this story hits all of them and then some.

I made a cover for it, which you can find behind the cut tag ( here )

In my continuing adventures with exploring my image program, last night I made a cover for You and I Are ____. And now that nifra_idril has seen it and likes it, I can share it with all of you. Yay!

( Behind the cut tag )