some links (for which I cannot think of a clever title)

This post was somewhat delayed by illness and other ailments (I ask you, is it fair to be sick with a bad cough and be eating soup and have a tooth break? On soup? As Jubal Early would say, “Does that seem right to you?”)

Anyway, illness and so on did not diminish my squeee! at reading this news

Kristan Hoffman had a very good blog post called, “The problem with ‘no means no.’“.

Brian D. Buckley had a good post called, “Is Star Wars Sexist,” based on the Bechdel Test. As I commented there, I don’t think the test automatically makes Star Wars sexist, but one thing does occur to me about the “Princess Leia is a strong female character” argument.

Leia Organa is:a princess. She is intrepid, intelligent, and she tends to require rescuing. When she is requiring rescue (one time being held by a chain while wearing a metal bikini) she is defiant, but she doesn’t rescue herself. And she eventually falls in love with one of the rescuers, even though he is not of appropriate social station for her to marry.

So, she is in essence yet another of the Martian princesses who drive the plots of a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars books by constantly needing to be rescued.

The Lord of the Rings books fail the Bechdel test, too, but I’ll take Eowyn as a role model, thank you. 🙂

And Laura Stanfill had a really great event at Powell’s Books. You can read about it here.