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May. 1st, 2007 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
syredronningNew carriage is on the trailer and in the garage of mother-in-law. Holy cow, this thing is heavy! Completely made of steel. I'm really not sure if I'd manage to help my husband getting it down from the trailer again. Guess we need to get a trailer for cars or something ;)
Then I finally read the Why fanfic makes us poor posting everyone links to and some feminism/writing/career debates following it, and feel slightly miffed, for various reasons.
a) Miffed by the idea that women absolutely SHOULD have to play "with the boys". After having spent 10 years at the university ending with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry (a field with very few women in Europe), I not only decided against a further academic career because of wanting to be with my husband (buuuh, I put my happiness above my business career), but also because I got enough insight into the mechanics of how to get a professor position in the German-speaking countries - including the ass-licking and the bowing, the greasing of the right people, the years of having extreme work with little pay and unsure outcome - that I didn't WANT to pursue it. I didn't want to play in that kind of world. Why do men submit to the regime? I don't know. Maybe they are more obsessed, more determined to make a name and position...but there are lots of losers who never reach the top, and they are male and nobody remembers them, only the male professors. It's not a system that's particularly bad for women, it's a system bad for most people involved.
b) Miffed by the idea that fanfic writers absolutely SHOULD have to move on to writing their own books. Oh, I can list all the business-relevant things I learned from fandom. I make money with my English and translations, get zines for free for art and have done some illustrations for a book we'll publishone day soon. And I still like my dry, extremely structured technical writing BECAUSE I found fanfic as an outlet for my writing creativity. But I think it's annoying and demeaning to get told that whatever activity you've fun with should be the one to make money with. Chemistry was my hobby before I started studying it - making it my profession took the fun out of it. If I started writing pro-novels now, I'm rather sure it would take out the fun of novel writing. And there are many men who do things that are not paid or paid very badly, and they still do it (independent music, filming, software...). IMO either people understand the appeal of doing things for the fun and personal impulse, or they do not. Trying to explain it to them is probably lost time. Money is necessary in our world, but the amount of time spent on gathering it should be balanced with the happiness in your life. Doing what you want to do means you are RICHER than the person next door who's forced to run in hir treatmill day in, day out. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" does have a true core. I'm no fan of being poor, I was that long enough. But I wouldn't want to sell out my freedom for earning more money than I need.
Phew. Maybe I write more later. Probably not, though. This feminist debate makes me itchy. I found many women who succeeded in natural sciences studies (including me) are not very open to the debate, because, well, I guess we subconsiously see our achievements as incorporating more feminism than most of those women who spent years on debating about it without going anywhere. Which is half right, half not, I guess. Sigh.
Time for another round of English grammar...
Then I finally read the Why fanfic makes us poor posting everyone links to and some feminism/writing/career debates following it, and feel slightly miffed, for various reasons.
a) Miffed by the idea that women absolutely SHOULD have to play "with the boys". After having spent 10 years at the university ending with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry (a field with very few women in Europe), I not only decided against a further academic career because of wanting to be with my husband (buuuh, I put my happiness above my business career), but also because I got enough insight into the mechanics of how to get a professor position in the German-speaking countries - including the ass-licking and the bowing, the greasing of the right people, the years of having extreme work with little pay and unsure outcome - that I didn't WANT to pursue it. I didn't want to play in that kind of world. Why do men submit to the regime? I don't know. Maybe they are more obsessed, more determined to make a name and position...but there are lots of losers who never reach the top, and they are male and nobody remembers them, only the male professors. It's not a system that's particularly bad for women, it's a system bad for most people involved.
b) Miffed by the idea that fanfic writers absolutely SHOULD have to move on to writing their own books. Oh, I can list all the business-relevant things I learned from fandom. I make money with my English and translations, get zines for free for art and have done some illustrations for a book we'll publish
Phew. Maybe I write more later. Probably not, though. This feminist debate makes me itchy. I found many women who succeeded in natural sciences studies (including me) are not very open to the debate, because, well, I guess we subconsiously see our achievements as incorporating more feminism than most of those women who spent years on debating about it without going anywhere. Which is half right, half not, I guess. Sigh.
Time for another round of English grammar...
