Equal Rites finished; Neuromancer started; Neil Gaiman in Tuscaloosa

Equal Rites was my favorite in the Discworld series so far. It's the story of a girl who is a wizard. In the Discworld women become witches and men become wizards for no reason other than that's the way things have always been. Which means, of course, that a change will require nothing less than a paradigm shift.

Feminism is definitely a major theme. One of my favorite moments in the book is when Esk's Granny Weatherwax faces off against a wizard, and they have a confrontational discussion about wizard magic (which is showy and powerful) versus witch magic (which is practical and useful - and also seldom used because psychology often works better). The conversation reminded me of nothing so much as what an argument between a doctor and a nurse might be like in an age when female doctors and male nurses were less common, with the nurse pointing out that while the doctor has his big important degrees and surgeries and diagnoses, the nurses are the ones who do all the work of actually helping people (which is true today as well, even though the fields are more gender-balanced).

It's very funny, and I think Pratchett was getting really comfortable with the Discworld and its possibilities at this point. Unlike the previous two novels, Equal Rites had a specific plot direction; the girl wizard Esk needs to get into the Unseen University, the school for wizards. I think when I originally began reading the first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, I gave it up because the story was sort of a sprawled out thing (that, and because I was reading numerous things at once). I had a hard time focusing on the story. My second reading of The Color of Magic was far more rewarding, but it is nice to read a Discworld story that takes a more direct approach from beginning to end.

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I've decided to break from the Discworld series for now, and I've started Neuromancer by William Gibson. This is yet another one of the books that I'd tried to start reading at some point prior to taking on this project, and stopped reading because I didn't get into it. Upon taking it up again, I read the first 60 pages of it in one sitting. This is a very good start considering the speed with which I normally read. It is also the result of trying to burn an audiobook to iTunes while in a library, and learning that the laptop needed me to load some critical updates or else it would insist on crashing repeatedly all day long. It just goes to show that if you want to get a lot of reading done, all you really need is 3 hours in a library and a computer that requires 4 restarts and a number of downloads before it decides to cooperate with you.

Also, I think there is a lesson to learn from all the books I half-read before and have now started again to find that they are actually interesting. The lesson is that I don't multitask as well as I think I do.

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I got to see Neil Gaiman on his recent visit to Tuscaloosa, where he read several short stories and did a Q&A. He even read one story that I am not familiar with, which is impressive because I tend to be on top of these things. I don't think I could sum up the evening as well as he did, so I'll just provide this link to his blog, and note that he's right, we do read and we do need more authors to visit. We especially need him to visit again, preferably with a signing next time.

Faster than a Speeding Blog

I finished The Light Fantastic, and I'm now half-way into Equal Rites. I am reading faster than the speed of blog.

I don't have much to say about The Light Fantastic. It was good, it was funny, it made me want to start the next book in the Discworld series, and so I did.

I think I will have a bit to say about Equal Rites, especially regarding how it reminds me of Good Omens, the book that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman co-wrote. Perhaps also regarding feminism, which has been on my mind a lot lately.

Specifically, Neil Gaiman was quoted, perhaps incorrectly, by the New Yorker as saying that he was "nobody's bitch". This resulted in him being accused of using a misogynist slur and of being a part of the "rape culture", which led to lots of emails sent to Gaiman explaining that "having used that phrase undid all the good I'd ever done by writing positive women, supporting RAINN etc, because it showed that I was minimising the horror of rape and revealing my underlying misogyny."

In the world of the Internet, it's a dead issue. It was talked about over a week ago, and in Internet time that's about 6 months. I bring it up now not in the hopes of you all rushing over to the apparent source of this mess to add your own comments, but because it's an intro to my own essay, titled What the Hell has Happened to Feminism?

Actually, "what the hell has happened to feminism?" is the title, the introductory statement, the full argument, and the closing statement of my essay.

I've used the "not your bitch" phrase a few times in my life, and I've never been accused of perpetuating the misogynist culture. I'd be really offended if I was accused of that. I don't think you can rightly accuse one person's words of determining another person's actions.

Mostly, I keep wondering if we feminists don't have better things to do. This seems like a classic example of a group being so busy arguing amongst themselves that they never accomplish anything. Here in America, women still don't always get equal pay for equal work. Prison sentences for rape are still ridiculously short. I think the important issues are the ones where you can actually change the way things are. I am also not into the whole "changing the dialogue" method of feminism, because that's just a touchy-feely way of saying "changing the way people talk," which is just a friendly way of saying "speech and thought control." Change laws, and hopefully a few people will stop to ponder why it was important that they be changed. Tell people what to think and say, and they will only get pissed off at you.

Not to mention, if feminism wants me to choose between them and free speech, they are going to lose me.