365Duckie

Things my book has as of today: physical form, and some (frankly excellent) jacket copy:

Hanging out with Chris was supposed to make Lorelei’s life normal. He’s cooler, he’s older, and he’s in a band, which means he can teach her about the music that was forbidden in her house growing up. Her grandmother told her when she was little that she was never allowed to sing, but listening to someone else do it is probably harmless— right? The more she listens, though, the more keenly she can feel her own voice locked up in her throat, and how she longs to use it. And as she starts exploring the power her grandmother never wanted her to discover, influencing Chris and everyone around her, the foundations of Lorelei’s life start to crumble. There’s a reason the women in her family never want to talk about what their voices can do. And a reason Lorelei can’t seem to stop herself from singing anyway.

“Elizabeth who couldn’t even defend herself”

Do you mean…

Elizabeth who improvised a weapon when pirates invaded her bedroom

Elizabeth who could have run for the exits but instead went straight for the swords

Elizabeth who demanded to speak with a pirate captain and then used the leverage she had to get him to agree to her demands

Elizabeth who CAME AT BARBOSSA WITH A GODDAMN KNIFE and then fucking STABBED HIM when she couldn’t get away

Elizabeth who was trapped on a tiny island with nothing but crates of rum and a man she couldn’t stand and who used those supplies to summon a rescue party for herself

Elizabeth who made a rope out of sheets and climbed down the back of a ship to save the day herself when no one would listen to her about how dangerous the pirates were

Elizabeth who snuck onto the Black Pearl, knocked two cursed pirates straight off their ship, and rescued Jack’s entire crew

Elizabeth who rowed straight back into danger without any backup instead of running away with everyone else

Elizabeth who came to Will’s rescue with a blunt object and a one-liner

Elizabeth who proceeded to team up with Will to take down all the remaining pirates in the cave

Elizabeth who – without being asked or told what was going on – faked unconsciousness to create a distraction for Will’s rescue of Jack

Elizabeth who stepped in front of a ring of muskets, successfully protecting Jack and Will from being shot or captured

Likewise, if men moved en masse to bedeck themselves in sparkles and make-up, then suddenly you’d get a bunch of editorials talking about how classy they look.

None of these things are inherently masculine or feminine; none of these things inherently elevate you or drag you down. But whatever women are seen to do is automatically seen as being inherently more frivolous than anything men do. And shaming women for not pigeonholing themselves into a narrow range of acceptable “masculine” behaviours is just going to result in the goalposts getting moved once again.

This is literally what happened to basically every field women have entered. The opposite happens when men enter. Computers used to be a “woman thing” until the guys who did it got really mad about how badly their job was viewed and realized they could fix it by forcing out women.

Also happened/ is happening with the fields of biology and psychology….

I honestly wonder how much of the backlash against public education in the last generation has been due to teaching becoming a woman-dominated profession.

Fashion used to be a men’s thing. Then women got involved in the late 17/1800’s, so men went the other way because it came to be seen as “frivolous” and “anti-intellectual” to care about how you looked. Add in the homophobia that arose around that time, bam, staid bland dress. Ditto leggings/tights, that are now called attention-whoring when on men they were required to show you cared about your figure and had the money to pay for such a fitted item. 

People want to say misogyny doesn’t exist, that male privilege doesn’t exist. Look beyond “living memory” and you’ll find that’s what drives the “inexplicable reversals” society seems to make on many things. Hell, just look beyond your own society, and you’ll find out that what’s considered “for men” elsewhere is held in high esteem while here it’s scoffed at purely because it’s “for women”: 

Skinny jeans are the height of masculinity in several east Asian societies, rather than being seen as “gay” in the USA because of their association with femininity. 

Medical fields in Russia are valued like kindergarten teachers are here, because it’s women who are the doctors instead of men.

Love and romance are highly valued in eastern countries, because men are interested in it too—of course they would be, surely you want to share your life with someone? Here, it’s strictly a women’s subject.

The field of anthropology as a whole illustrates this.

Significantly higher proportions of females compared to males are currently entering the fields of archaeology and biological anthropology, and as this occurs, the prestige, funding, acceptance as valid kinds of science, etc, are fading quickly.

This has already occurred with linguistic anthropology and cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology in particular went VERY quickly from being seen as a manly, scientific discipline (e.g., Franz Boas, Bronisław Malinowski) to being seen as a touchy-feely female thing.