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bookblogging
Jun. 24th, 2008 03:21 pmGraphic novels:
Sturm, James: The Golem's Mighty Swing.
Delisle, Guy: Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China
(Delisle occasionally struck me as a jerk in Pyongyang, but I was distracted by the awfulness of North Korea. China and Shenzhen sure as hell aren't paradise, but with their comparative freedom and openness and chaos, Delisle's discontent with his surroundings seems pettier and less profound.
Also more sexist. When he sees women wielding pickaxes on a construction project, he remarks that this is "the downside of women's liberation."
No. No it isn't, you smarmy dickwad. Women have been doing manual labor all over the world for as long as there's been manual labor. They've been doing this type of manual labor as well as domestic manual labor like cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and it's only ever been in select times and places where women belonging to the wealthy, privileged classes wouldn't have done any manual labor at all, and you can be damn sure that in those times and places and classes, their male counterparts wouldn't have been doing manual labor either. Throughout the history of the fucking human race, women have worked just as hard as men; this is not some kind of unforeseen side-effect of feminism that leaves Chinese women writhing with chagrin.
The shallow flippancy of that remark ticks me off, not least because in an earlier chapter, when Delisle notices a female hotel worker furiously scrubbing laundry by hand, his only reaction is that the washing machines he's seen must only be for show. But the intense manual labor involved in washing laundry by hand, carried out by a woman? Completely unremarkable. Women are there to do laundry; laundry is done by women, whether they do it with machines or by hand. It's not manual labor, it's just women's work.
Maybe this isn't Delisle's conscious belief. But it is an aspect of the cultural lens with which he views the cities he visits, and when something less appalling than a totally closed totalitarian state in his focus, the flaws of that lens are harder to ignore).
Hornschemeier, Paul: The Three Paradoxes
(reminded me a bit of Ice Haven.).
Manga:
CLAMP: RG Veda vol. 1.
Hidaka Yoshiki, story, Tsugihara Ryuji, art: The First President of Japan vol. 2
(talk about your fantasies of political agency, huh).
Mizushiro Setona: After School Nightmare vol. 5.
Sturm, James: The Golem's Mighty Swing.
Delisle, Guy: Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China
(Delisle occasionally struck me as a jerk in Pyongyang, but I was distracted by the awfulness of North Korea. China and Shenzhen sure as hell aren't paradise, but with their comparative freedom and openness and chaos, Delisle's discontent with his surroundings seems pettier and less profound.
Also more sexist. When he sees women wielding pickaxes on a construction project, he remarks that this is "the downside of women's liberation."
No. No it isn't, you smarmy dickwad. Women have been doing manual labor all over the world for as long as there's been manual labor. They've been doing this type of manual labor as well as domestic manual labor like cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and it's only ever been in select times and places where women belonging to the wealthy, privileged classes wouldn't have done any manual labor at all, and you can be damn sure that in those times and places and classes, their male counterparts wouldn't have been doing manual labor either. Throughout the history of the fucking human race, women have worked just as hard as men; this is not some kind of unforeseen side-effect of feminism that leaves Chinese women writhing with chagrin.
The shallow flippancy of that remark ticks me off, not least because in an earlier chapter, when Delisle notices a female hotel worker furiously scrubbing laundry by hand, his only reaction is that the washing machines he's seen must only be for show. But the intense manual labor involved in washing laundry by hand, carried out by a woman? Completely unremarkable. Women are there to do laundry; laundry is done by women, whether they do it with machines or by hand. It's not manual labor, it's just women's work.
Maybe this isn't Delisle's conscious belief. But it is an aspect of the cultural lens with which he views the cities he visits, and when something less appalling than a totally closed totalitarian state in his focus, the flaws of that lens are harder to ignore).
Hornschemeier, Paul: The Three Paradoxes
(reminded me a bit of Ice Haven.).
Manga:
CLAMP: RG Veda vol. 1.
Hidaka Yoshiki, story, Tsugihara Ryuji, art: The First President of Japan vol. 2
(talk about your fantasies of political agency, huh).
Mizushiro Setona: After School Nightmare vol. 5.