Happy leap year, now go home
This has been a weird week for me.
A snowstorm caused no one to show up to my father's 60th birthday party (6 people and food for 20). A film crew showed up unannounced for storytime; "No one told you? Oh well..." was the closest I got to an apology.
Then today I showed up for work only to find the library closed both to the public and to the employees. Apparently 6000 students threatened to occupy the library and my employers didn't want to risk it.
I took the opportunity to go shopping.
But what bothered me, oddly, was an argument about Twilight that I had with an acquaintance.
To be clear, I don't personally like Twilight and I don't agree with the values that it promotes, but I am getting increasingly uncomfortable with the vitrol with which many male geeks seem to treat this series. The reason was eloquently expressed by said acquantance. He told me that "Buffy is the same type of story, it even has romance, but both men and women can enjoy it." And I was too angry to say another word to him because what I heard was "Only what men like has value."
Twilight isn't the only kind of pop culture to suffer this kind of dismissal: romance novels, yaoi/boys love, daytime soaps, "chick flicks". Their association with femininity is enough to condemn them and I'm sick of it.
A snowstorm caused no one to show up to my father's 60th birthday party (6 people and food for 20). A film crew showed up unannounced for storytime; "No one told you? Oh well..." was the closest I got to an apology.
Then today I showed up for work only to find the library closed both to the public and to the employees. Apparently 6000 students threatened to occupy the library and my employers didn't want to risk it.
I took the opportunity to go shopping.
But what bothered me, oddly, was an argument about Twilight that I had with an acquaintance.
To be clear, I don't personally like Twilight and I don't agree with the values that it promotes, but I am getting increasingly uncomfortable with the vitrol with which many male geeks seem to treat this series. The reason was eloquently expressed by said acquantance. He told me that "Buffy is the same type of story, it even has romance, but both men and women can enjoy it." And I was too angry to say another word to him because what I heard was "Only what men like has value."
Twilight isn't the only kind of pop culture to suffer this kind of dismissal: romance novels, yaoi/boys love, daytime soaps, "chick flicks". Their association with femininity is enough to condemn them and I'm sick of it.