Academic Round-Up

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer



Oxford-based Lashers are SO PSYCHED for this lecture series starting next week - open to anyone who can get to Oxford for 2pm on a Wednesday:



Before Oscar: Reading Gender & Sexuality Pre-1880

"Crossing period and national boundaries, this lecture series will introduce the pleasures and dangers of reading pre-twentieth century literature through a queer-studies and gender-studies lens."

More exciting queer academic events below the cut!

Men, Women, Chainsaws and Why I Still Miss Buffy

Posted by Lilka

[Trigger warning: Use of misogynistic language, in the post and the links. I discuss sexist portrayals and violence against women in the horror genre, including sexual violence, and have embedded a video that depicts some of these things. Some of the film descriptions I link to may also be disturbing or triggering. At least one of the linked videos is NSFW (the others, it may depend on where you work!).]

[Spoiler warning: I potentially spoil some minor plot points in The Vampire Lovers, Shambleau, Jenifer, Deadgirl, Carrie, Teeth, Misery, and Bride of Frankenstein. Major ending spoilers for Perfume and Martyrs. Some spoilers for Supernatural, especially in the embedded video, but nothing from the last couple of seasons. Almost all links contain spoilers.]


So, I'm a fan of horror. Movies, books, comics; anything that promises me a creepy doll, a supernatural menace, an eldritch abomination or just a really good scare, I'm there for. And I feel sympathy for people who raise their eyebrows when I mention this. One friend said to me, “Oh, I'd like to get into horror fiction too. It's just so hard to find the good stuff that isn't all blood and rape,” and I could only agree with them. While I would say horror is no more prone to Sturgeon's Law than any other genre, horror's usual subject matter means that the crap is often, well, crappier; more violent, more gratuitous, more enraging, more difficult to read or watch. Horror fiction is by its nature often reactionary – it's about the intrusion of the abnormal into normal life and (usually) the eventually re-assertion of the status quo. That being the case, it's not surprising to find the annals of horror fiction littered with bad guys who are in some way othered: demons dressed in S&M gear, predatory lesbians (link NSFW), really offensive metaphorised representations of people of colour.... And of course slasher movies are particularly infamous for the tendency of the victims to be black, sexually active or generally behaving in non-societally approved ways.

Besides the general kyriarchical mess, though, there are two things that make it tough for me specifically as a female fan of horror, and it's those that I'd like to talk about more in this post.

The Curious Case of the Multiplicity of Watsons

Posted by Sebastienne





The internets have been roused, and they are very angry.

What can have caused this, you might think - has the US senate passed SOPA, legislation which could destroy the World Wide Web as we know it?

No - the unthinkable has happened.

Some TV execs in the US have decided that what the world needs now is another take on the Sherlock Holmes mythos... and they've cast an Asian-American woman in the role of Watson.

So obviously, the comments under every news article are full of the vilest kinds of misogyny and racism. It's even been summed up in Impact font: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/a-note-to-cbs-on-casting-lucy-liu-as-watson-in-the

Ah, Doctor Watson. Sherlock Holmes' "one fixed point in a changing age". A solid and stoic counterpart, sometimes mistakenly represented as unintelligent, but always as devotedly faithful. As the narrator of most of Conan-Doyle's stories, he is the audience identification figure, the "everyman" who provides us with a window on Holmes' unique world.

Academic roundup

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer

Information for students and academics in the fields of gender and sexuality.




Lecture: Hard, Bold, and Wicked: Masculinity and Liminality in Lewis and Tolkien.
7 November, 5:15
Seminar Room A of the English Faculty Building, Oxford University (directions)
Dr Anna Caughey, College Lecturer in Old and Middle English, Keble College

"In Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the boundaries between adult and child identities are at once blurred and reinforced. Childhood, and boyhood in particular, is presented as a state that can be both transcended and retreated to when necessary, while full physical/social adulthood is generally marginalised. Using Peter Hollindale’s theory of ‘childness’ as a base, this paper examines the ways in which both texts use their fantasy settings to provide younger readers with access to material that emphasises the capability and autonomy of child/child-substitute protagonists while privileging the state of childhood." 

Conference and call for papers: Lesbian Lives
Friday 17 – Saturday 18 February 2012
University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland

"The Lesbian Lives Conference is not just the world’s only annual academic conference in Lesbian Studies, it is now a large international event that draws speakers and participants from all continents and hosts the best-known as well as emerging scholars in the field. The conference gathers together academics, activists, performers and writers who do not otherwise have the opportunity to address such large audiences or to network across international and professional boundaries. It is also a forum for political organisation on the levels of both community activism and established international NGOs."

Symposium and call for papers: Going Underground? Gender and Subcultures
7th September 2012
University of Northumbria

"Research of girls and women’s subcultural productions and engagements from queer, feminist and transgender scholars (e.g. Jack Halberstam, Doreen Piano, Susan Driver, Elizabeth K Keenan, Mary Celeste Kearney and Kath Browne) carve out a new territory for understanding the ‘subcultural’. Given this reevaluation, it is timely to re-engage with how ‘subcultural’ genders (both femininities and masculinities) are represented in alternative society and discuss how far this can be politically subversive. For instance, the revival, nostalgia and popularity of rockabilly style, burlesque, roller derby, Slutwalks, Ladyfests, fanzine/blogging networks, Suicide Girls, Guerrilla Girls, riot grrrl and the participation of girls in underground music cultures all point to the need for an academic engagement with strategies of cultural resistance to dominant identities and norms."

An Infinite Capacity for Love and Joy: Queer History, S/M and T.H. White

Posted by Anonymous Poster




Sometimes we find bits of our history in the most surprising places.

Have you ever heard of T.H. White? I won't be offended if you say no! On the other hand, it's quite likely that you've come across some of his work at some point, and just haven't registered his name. Anyone who is, like me, a fantasy nerd or obsessed with all things King-Arthur-related has probably come across his Arthurian series, The Once and Future King. You may also, if you misspent as much of your youth watching Disney films as most of Lashings did, have seen The Sword in the Stone, an animated version of the first and most-child-friendly of the books in the series.

[Description of image: A still from Disney's The Sword in the Stone. A very young King Arthur is shown about to draw a sword out of an anvil and stone]

Broadway and West End geeks may also have come across the 1960 musical Camelot, which is based on the more adult portion of White's work:

This clip is from a modern (2006) production, which seems to pick up on a lot of the themes I'm about to expand upon below. Also... hiiiii, Bobby Steggert :)

[Description of video: Mordred, King Arthur's illegitimate son, sings about how he enjoys being immoral while dancing around in a bondage outfit and a pair of high-heeled boots. Lyrics here.]

White wrote his four/five-novel cycle (there's a fifth volume which was never published during his lifetime) immediately before and during World War II. It tells the story of King Arthur, from his origins as an ignored and overshadowed orphan boy to the night before his death.

(What does all this have to do with kink? Don't worry, we'll get there eventually!)