a penguin of very little brain

cake-light:

I don’t understand the desire to saddle every female character with children regardless of whether they want them as some lazy stand-in for a happy ending, particularly in sci-fi and fantasies. If you’ve earned that with sufficient backstory and evidence, like, FINE. Olivia Dunham and Donna Noble and Scully and Ripley canonically want to have children. Amy Pond, Hermione Granger, Kara Thrace, Katniss Everdeen - these women are all ambiguous about or uninterested in being mothers. So it’s problematic when a head writer or a fan art illustrator or a writer of fanfiction just sticks these women with children as though motherhood is always the inevitable and right and desirable end, even when their characterization directly contradicts that. 

Even River Song falls victim to this trope because that is the image Moffat chooses to close on in the Library episodes. River, a woman who has never expressed any desire to raise children or be a mother, someone who (if her arc had allowed for any emotional consequence whatsoever) would likely have had some deep-seated issues with nurturing and parentage and abandonment - is “saved” in a purgatory/afterlife where she is forever caring for these ersatz, computer-generated children. Because children are shorthand for happiness in women’s narratives. 

sinag:

Japan Urges the U.S. to Remove Comfort Women Memorial

foodiewin:

peaceshannon:

HT to reader gabriellelost

Okay, so this is the reason why I’m in law school and I really recommend that everyone looks into this issue. 

The Japanese government is playing a game where they wait out the lives of these women. Through the colonization of Korea, China, and then movements southwards into South East Asia, Japan’s sexual slavery camps have affected huge swaths of the population.

There is no number to this atrocity. Shame, death, censure, and a ton of other factors have kept women from coming forward and that is fine. But the Japanese government needs to do right by them. No textbooks in Japan mention this event. There are academics in Japan (thankfully only a handful) that say the women chose this or that it was a wartime necessity (see the works of Ikuhiko Hata [major trigger warning there] and contemporaries).

These women were kidnapped and tricked into this situation of utter exploitation and humiliation. 

There is so much I want to write about this right now but I really can’t do it justice. I have sources and stuff if anyone is interested. The U.N. Report on Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery, and Slavery-like Practices During Armed Conflict by Gay McDougall is really well-done. She’s brilliant and I love her.

Also to add a couple links specific to the Philippines: On Filipino Comfort Women and a briefer on some suits filed by the Malaya Lolas. Many of the petitioners in these suits have now died of old age, and those remaining are still denied justice.

moosedeevita:

Ignored by mainstream media, Asian Americans turn to online videos

hanguknamja:

Catch Kevin Wu’s latest comedy program on YouTube, and you might think he’s nothing more than a young Asian American talking to a camera in his bedroom. But almost each of his shows command at least 2 million views — rivaling the nightly TV audiences of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

A disproportionate share of YouTube’s top personalities are minorities, a striking contrast to the most popular shows on mainstream television, where the stars are largely white. These minority-produced, home-grown shows are drawing massive audiences — the top one has 5.2 million subscribers — enough to attract the attention of major advertisers.

“A lot of U.S. marketers are leaving minority audiences on the table,” said Seneca Mudd, the director of industry initiatives at the Interactive Advertising Bureau. “Advertisers would ignore that trend at their own peril.”

Among the 20 most-subscribed-to channels on YouTube, eight feature minorities. Most are Asian American. .. Nearly 80 percent of minorities regularly watch online videos, compared with less than 70 percent of whites, the Pew Internet & American Life Project says.

Wu, who ranks 11th among YouTube channels, said he does not intentionally target Asian American issues. But those viewers more easily understand his jokes on dating, stereotypes and the generational clash between parents and kids, he said. “I just tell my stories honestly, and usually Asian Americans will relate to me because they say, ‘That’s how I am and with my parents,’ ” he said.

For minorities, the medium offers a way to push back against stereotypes on network television, said Maureen Guthman, the head of brand strategy and acquisitions for the African American-focused channel TV One. Blacks can present themselves “completely unfiltered and without [someone] telling us, ‘You’ve got to be more this’ or ‘You’ve got to be more that,’ ” she said.