The E-Newsletter of Goldeen Ogawa • Issue 22, September 2019

Originally posted for Patrons on September 6 on Patreon

What have I done?

Cleanups for “Sir Camilla” (The Camilliad, Book 4)
Released eBook of Driving Arcana Rotation Six
Interior illustrations for The Aubergine Spellbook (Felpz Volume III)
Dagrhi brush pen

What am I doing?

Cleanups on “Sir Camilla” (The Camilliad, Book 4)
Edits for “Star Walker”
Book design for Driving Arcana Wheel 2
Book design for Lucena in the House of Madgrin
BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS

Where am I going?

I’ll be at Rose City Comic Con in Portland OR, September 13–15 at Table R09 in the Artist Alley. I’ll have books and prints and merch and maybe (maybe) some commission openings.

Changing the Narrative

There is a video floating around the internet, which I can’t be bothered to find at the moment, that shows a small girl playing basketball with an extremely tall young man. She pulls a fast one on him and while he’s landing on his butt she makes a basket. He then rolls around on the ground clutching his ankle while his friends jeer and tease him, and the girl stands there, mute, obviously wondering if she’s going to get in trouble.

Which she might have. It’s possible, considering the toxic narrative our society enacts when a girl gets the better of a man in anything that is not heavily feminine-coded—in which instance it’s almost a point of pride that the man is bad at, say, folding the laundry. Namely: that for a man to be bested by a girl is emasculating. Shameful. He is now subject to ridicule. He is made less of a man.

All of which is complete nonsense. Not knowing how to clean and take care of your own clothes is nothing to be proud of. And losing a contest to a girl is only shameful if one has already made the mistake of devaluing the girl in the first place.

Let’s get back to the gentleman in the video. At the beginning he’s strutting, boasting, obviously disdainful of the little girl in pigtails holding a ball bigger than her head. So when she gets the better of him there is some poetic justice. But then his friends turn on him. And the comments on the video are in the same vein. They talk about how badly he got beaten. How he’s stupid. Or arrogant. Their actions justify the fear many men have of getting beaten by women and then being ridiculed for it. After all, it’s no fun to get beaten. Being teased about it is just salt in the wound. Or highly absorbent dressing being jammed into a gushing injury and then held there for ten minutes. Except that that might actually save someone’s life, and teasing a guy who got beaten by a girl doesn’t help anyone.

Let’s get back to the girl. Her opponent is bigger, heavier, taller and older than her. What does she do? She moves. She moves fast. She moves in ways you can’t move when you’re six and a half feet tall. She has clearly practiced a lot and she has practiced playing against people who are taller than her. She has practiced playing against people who underestimate her.

From this perspective, is it any surprise that she scores on the guy? From this perspective, it’s he, high on arrogance and societal expectations be be stronger and better at sport, who’s at the disadvantage.

From this perspective, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. He got beaten because his opponent was faster, more skilled, and specifically more skilled at beating people like him.

And yet he’s teased mercilessly by his peers. As he lies there, holding his ankle, one of them comes over and whacks it with his hands. “Ha ha, you got beat by a girl and now you’re rolling around in pain because you can’t handle a twisted ankle!”

It’s kinda funny. But only because we exist in a narrative structure that posits males as being universally physically superior to females, when in truth they are not. The problems are multiple and compound each other, but it starts with this fallacy, which we are presented as truth from our first days:

A man must be stronger than a woman, else he is less of a man.

So while it can be tempting to snigger when we see an arrogant man laid low by a cute girl in pigtails, it’s worth remembering that the reason it’s funny to us is because he has been brainwashed into presuming that he is inherently physically superior because of his gender. Which isn’t funny at all, once you think about it.

It’s good to point at the chauvinists saying that girls can’t play American Football or swim the mile or run a marathon and say “those people are wrong.” But it’s also important to look at the people who take the woman’s side, but also laugh at the men who are honorably defeated, and say “if you truly respect the woman, you will also respect her male opponents—especially the ones she beats.”

What’s coming in September?

Patrons can look forward to:

Saturday updates to the Sparks Gallery
Sunday updates to “Travels in Valdelluna”
The eBook of Bouragner Felpz Volume III and potentially Driving Arcana Wheel 2 as well!

ProTip

Beware of “rights grabs” in the TOS of social media and streaming sites, like Twitch, Instagram—even (especially) Twitter and Facebook. Oh, and Patreon, too. You’ll want to look under the “rights and licenses” area of the TOS. Specifically look out for words like “worldwide” and “sub-licensable” and “for any media now existing and any media yet to be invented.” Act accordingly.

This post has been generously sponsored by my Fellow Traveler patrons. Come join the party!