The Tradëscan Codex

So I've just read Messiah CompleX. My main thought?

Just this: "Why are the Cuckoos wearing suspenders?" Which, I recognize, isn't a new outfit--it's the variant cover to the first issue of Phoenix: Warsong, which I'm pretty sure I have iconned at some point--but it's the first I really noticed the suspenders.

Although, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen the Cuckoos since Warsong? So having a data-point as to what their characterization is like after those events is actually really, really useful. (Apparently they still talk a lot about boys, and now also about how girls are better--which warms any femslasher's heart.) But really--suspenders?

Oh and Layla Miller (Madrox): still awesome.

( excerpt )

remixredux08

femslash_minis

• It fits into, and makes references to, comics canon.
• Mal, Zoe, and Jayne are all still alive, so nobody calls Kaylee "Captain."
• It's Inara's shuttle, rather than Serenity herself, which crash lands into Earth.
• Zoe is among the crew who appears on Earth, and Saffron is not. Mal and Jayne still don't appear in the story (even though in this 'verse it's because they're still on Serenity and not because they're dead).
• It extends the story to cover the return of the Serenity crew to their own universe--which means, sadly, that River and Dawn are broken up in it.
• It's told from Caridad's POV. (The original alternates between River's and Dawn's.)

In the comments of hannahrorlove's post attacking slash goggles, peasant_ and I somehow found ourselves in a conversation about the metaethics of radical feminism. Specifically, she asked:

If you reject relativism as uncomfortable, and you reject an exploration of belief formation as uninteresting, what has led you to believe in the near-universal radical nature of the problem?

I would say that radical feminist metaethics is of a deeper intuitive type than "ethics." The latter, generally written from one of several (but basically the same) patriarchal perspectives, works out of hidden agendas concealed in the texture of language, buried in mythic reversals which control "logic" most powerfullly because unacknowledged.

[. . .]

There are, of course, male-authored, male-identified works which purport to deal with "metaethics." In relation to these, gynography is meta-metaethical. For while male metaethics claims to be "the study of ethical theories, as distinguished from the study of moral and ethical conduct itself," [she cites Titus and Keaton's Ethics for Today here as the source of the quote] it remains essentially male-authored and male-identified theory about theory. Moreover, it is only theory about "ethical theories"--an enterprise which promises boundless boringness. In contrast to this, Gyn/Ecology is hardly "metaethical" in the sense of masturbatory meditations by ethicists upon their own emissions. Rather, we recognize that the essential omissions if these emissions is of our own life/freedom. In the name of our life/freedom, feminist metaethics O-mits seminal omissions. (12-13)

I can see three possible responses (and this part of the discussion is familiar to me, because I explained this part point-to-point to my London roommate in a hostel bar in Austria in 2004). The first is existential commitment, which is basically to refuse to answer the question. Now there are some things that existential commitment is good for, not least of all acting as a stopgap explanation as one works out a more detailed metaethic. "This is where I stand; I can do no other" is a principled position I can respect, but it ideally shouldn't take the place of critical dialectic and self-exploration.

Now obviously someone working from a position of existential commitment can make normative claims; there's nothing stopping them, after all. But they can't quite give an account of why other people should take them seriously, so they're only useful in modifying the behavior of other people who share those commitments. This strikes me as a rather weak and silly sort of radical feminism (but perhaps describes the traditional, "real" radfeminists of the 70s quite well!).

The second option would be some sort of foundationalism. But as you note, foundationalism isn't really compatible with the core premise of radical feminism, that systemic injustice runs all the way down. (Although nowadays I would probably want to hedge on it a little and say something like it might run all the way down, and if it doesn't it still runs down pretty darn deep.) To locate supposedly "feminist" ethics in reason, language, or culture would be to merely reinscribe masculinist domination.

When I was in undergrad, it seemed to me the process was simple: you let feminist ethicists do their thing, and then we feminist metaphysicians and theologians would apply the results to metaphysics, epistemology, and theology. (Aesthetics always seemed to fit very uncomfortably into this system.) The idea of deriving ethics from religion still sort of gives me hives, but it's obvious that the system as I was thinking of it just isn't tenable: it throws way too much burden on the feminist ethicists. Standpoint theory has too many implicit metaphysical and epistemological assumptions to be able to do what it does and be logically prior to those disciplines. Appointing ethics as queen of the science isn't ultimately a meaningful change, any more than demoting metaphysics and putting epistemology in its place, or doing the same with philosophy of language, had been. As long as the sciences have a queen, we have a problem.

Ultimately, then, I think the only workable option is a dialectical one. Reason (and I'll use that as a lump term for metaphysics/epistemology/theology) and ethics always have to be in dialectic to each other, with neither (or, in another sense, both) being logically prior to the other. (So, gritting my teeth, I have to accept that it is sometimes acceptable to turn to Scripture in order to learn about ethics--but this turn to Scripture will always-already be informed by a certain ethicism.) The limits of liberal democratism are built into itself and reveal themselves in history, so that there is a sort of imperative built within reason, language, and culture themselves for it to progress into radical feminism.

January

Claiming
Buffy, Tara/Dawn, PG-13. After "Chosen," Dawn must follow the Slayers into the world of dreams, and Tara is waiting for her.

Towards Zero
VMars, Keith/Veronica/Mac, NWS. A story should tell the journey to Zero Hour.

WGA vs. Zombies
Jossverse RPF, Joss & Summer, WS. You can't stop the signal. Not even with a devastation of zombies. Or, the one where Joss Whedon finally manages to get into Summer's hotel room, but ends up not having sex with her anyway.

Homework Helper
Buffy, Fred/Dawn, NWS. It began, innocent;y enough, with a very frustrated Dawn searching out Fred to help her with her calculus homework.

February

The Eyes of Love
Buffy, Amanda/Dawn, Kit/Carlos, WS. Amanda has difficulty making eye contact.

By Her Side 
Buffy, Buffy/Giles, NWS. Giles takes Buffy to a library to relax. At first, she sees something wrong with that sentence, but is persauded otherwise.

Le Retour à la Mère
The Parent Trap, Hallie/Annie, NWS. Hallie has no intention of sleeping in a different bed than her sister.

Sibling Revelries
X-Men comicsverse, Celeste/Mindee/Phoebe, NWS. The Three-in-One makes love to itself.

March

Shelter 
Buffy, Faith/Giles, NWS. Frenzy is dangerous when Ethan's magic still hangs in the air, pregnant, and a crash of thunder from the demon storm provides the downbeat for Faith's every thrust

Tiens, Voilà Dix Sous, pour la Salle-de-Bains
Buffy, Buffy/Darla, WS. S6 AU. Taking care of each other is what this world is about.

Left Behind
Doctor Who, Reinette & Lucy Saxon, WS. The women behind the Time Lords, annunciationless.

• That racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc. are systemic, subtly and ubiquitously embedded in our society in places both obvious and invisible, and about as deeply as one can get, in our language(s) (and in our unconsciouses which are structured like a language), in a superstructure which I alternately may call "patriarchy" or "systemic injustice." Remember the word radical comes from a word meaning "root": systemic injustice infects society at its very foundations.
• Thus, that most if not all economies, governments, cultural forms, languages, etc. do in some way flow from this patriarchal root.
• That racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and many but possibly not all other forms of systemic injustice are, if not quite equiprimordial, at least so deeply interconnected that it's never quite clear where one starts and the others end. This is a change in position from my teens when I saw all other forms of injustice as symptoms of sexism in a very second-wave sort of way.
• As a corollary, that it is extremely unlikely that racism could exist in a truly non-sexist society (since there is a sense in which racism is always-already inherently misogynistic), and vice versa. It's even harder to imagine sexism existing in a non-heterosexist society or vice versa. This doesn't mean that once we stop sexism, racism will magically fix itself so much as that we won't be able to stop sexism until we've cleaned up our act on race issues as well. On the same pattern, stopping sexism won't heal the ozone layer, but I have no doubt that the anti-environmentalist urge which impels us to harm the Earth in first place is linked in some way to and motivated by misogyny.
• That the various brands of privilege--white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, cisgendered privilege, etc.--exist even as they are so often invisible and taken for granted.
• That while men are the beneficiaries of male privilege and have certain responsibilities as a result of that, they cannot be "blamed" for patriarchy in any unproblematic way. Indeed, that the urge to blame is itself a patriarchal logic.
• That talk of reverse sexism or other "reverse discriminations" ignores the systemic character of real sexism, racism, etc.
• That male and female are not essential categories but instead the complex interaction of self-identification, behavior, and social interpellation; that the division into male and female is ultimately the result of patriarchal logics.
• That traditionally female values, behaviors, and spheres have been artificially devalued by systemic injustice and need to be reclaimed.
• That being anti-sex (and this includes the passive-agressive "sacralization" of sexuality sometimes found in some religious traditions) is always-already being anti-female and misogynistic.
• That pornography and sex work, while prone to abuse, are not inherently evil, and to view them as such can be misogynistic.
• That there are radically liberatory possibilities in female writing and female pleasure. (Cf. pretty much any French feminist.)
• That there is value in female safe spaces.
• That in a fallen world "pretty good" sometimes has to be good enough; heterosexual sex (or, for that matter, homosexual sex) as practiced by most couples may not be immune to patriarchy or be radically egalitarian and consensual but that's hardly a reason to abstain so long as one is giving it the college try. That even problematic instances of autonomy must be encouraged and celebrated from within the patriarchy, and that to erase this trace of autonomy is to be cooperative with the patriarchal logic.
• That one must use the master's tools to take down the master's house; i.e. patriarchy can only be dismantled from within, and it is possible to use its structures (e.g., "Christianity" or "the romantic comedy genre") against it. This will always necessarily require temporary compromises and cooptations, but can result in demonstrable improvements in both the short- and long-term (at least using the liberal feminist measuring stick). But there is no other choice: il n'y a pas de hors-texte.
• That government legislation is a sometimes necessary but rarely if ever sufficient remedy to systemic injustice.
• That the works of mercy needed to improve the lives of women under patriarchy are important as well as the social action needed to end it. (Cf."the two feet of justice" in Catholic social teaching.)
• Silencing the voices of women and other members of other oppressed groups is never a good thing.

• That dissent, discussion, and dialectic are healthy. Many objections are not stupid and showing that one can respond to them can be a powerful persuasive tool.
• Not getting things completely wrong is almost always a useful and valuable endeavor.

Does anyone have a copy of the now-deleted comment in which Dissenter lists the tenets of what she claims to be radical feminism?

Anybody who has no idea what I'm talking about, Goddess bless you and count yourselves lucky.