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“Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions. Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms. Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time. In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows: “The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.” In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as ‘too much’ by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts.”
—
PBS: Language as Prejudice - Myth #6: Women Talk Too Much (via misandry-mermaid)
Every EVERY women’s studies class I’ve been in has had this problem and failed to address it.
This video is getting big so I just want to add something-
This video is cute because millipedes are cute. They love nothing more than dirt, cucumber, and each other. They enjoy the walks of life and, even hesitant, continue to explore it. And they don't walk or crawl, they skip and gallop! Learn something from them and eat some cucumber, talk a walk, and maybe skip while you're at it.
Fugitive Telemetry really front loads you with a lot of juicy characterization for Murderbot that I’m only fully catching onto on my third reading, but now that I’m paying attention it’s lighting up like fireworks. The stakes here aren’t as high as something like Network Effect, so the characters really come into focus. This might be a multi part post while I get my thoughts written out
Okay so the drones. Mensah gets MB two boxes of intel drones after a press leak reveals its presence on Preservation to the public. Senior Officer Indah thinks it was to get back at her for presumably being the source of that leak; giving drones to the rogue SecUnit (the one her security team vehemently opposed even allowing on the station) was Mensah’s way of telling her to fuck off. MB thinks the drones were a pre-conceived bribe from Mensah in exchange for MB keeping quiet about the fact that she hadn’t gone to trauma treatment yet, and that this was why she already had the drones on hand when the press release happened. That’s all textual, and MB goes on to say, “[Indah] wasn’t wrong. Mensah’s really smart. She can sort of bribe me and tell Indah to fuck off simultaneously.”
But the implicit belief MB is operating on in both cases is that Mensah’s stated explanation for giving it the drones is not true. What was that explanation again?
“Mensah told [Indah] that it was a medical issue. That I needed them to fully interact with my environment and communicate.”
I think it says a lot that MB immediately discards this as a lie. MB is still fairly new to thinking of itself as a person at all, let alone what it means to be a person on Preservation. When has anyone ever cared about accommodating its needs? When has it ever had a chance to think of itself as a person in need of accommodations? We know (because MB knows) that MB feels more comfortable and secure when it has access to sec systems and camera feeds. But it doesn’t seem aware that its comfort is a high enough priority to be… well, a priority. This is a medical issue; MB does need some amount of external system awareness to fully interact with its environment and communicate.
To put it plainly, it sounds very similar to accommodations for autism. MB needs a higher level of sensory input to feel at ease, and it explicitly needs tools that allow it to avoid eye contact. It interacts with the world differently than other people. And from what we’ve seen of Preservation’s social values, the idea of accommodations is probably pretty second nature for them. The Preservation Aux crew in All Systems Red initially fucks it up, but when they meet back up at the end of Exit Strategy, we see them put up cameras in their hotel room seemingly just for MB’s benefit while it heals. Just so it can be included in a way it’s comfortable with.
So, I think Mensah bought the drones for the simple reason that she knew her friend needed them. Maybe she couldn’t give them to it immediately because of the ongoing negotiations, but she had them on hand. The press leak merely provided a good excuse, and possibly buying MB’s silence was a happy side effect. Three motivations, not just the two MB was aware of.
After all, Mensah’s really smart; she can help her friend, bribe it, and tell Indah to fuck off simultaneously.
Next, construct identity. MB has tried various disguises on its adventures (a human security specialist, privately owned bot traveling back to its owner, and contracted SecUnit with a fake human supervisor), but it hasn’t stuck to any of them any longer than necessary. It really doesn’t like to portray itself as anything other than a part-bot, part-human, rogue SecUnit, but that isn’t exactly easy either. By this point, MB has dropped its usual attempts to disguise its nature, so now we get to see it grappling with being itself openly.
And in a society no less!
We see this struggle up close when Station Security require it to choose a name for its public feed ID. Its real name Murderbot is obviously and immediately off the table. Aside from the practical reasons why the rogue SecUnit should not go around announcing itself as Murderbot, its real name is private information. But this is its reaction as it tries to pick another name:
“For a name, I could use the local feed address that was hard-coded into my neural interfaces. It wasn’t my real name, but it was what the systems I interfaced with called me. If I used it, the humans and augmented humans I encountered would think of me as a bot.”
“Or I could use the name ‘Rin.’ I liked it, and there were some humans outside the Corporation Rim who thought it was actually my name. I could use it, and the humans on the station wouldn’t have to think about what I was.”
It’s being faced with a choice here, and that choice is not necessarily between bot and human. The real choice is: present yourself as what you are, knowing that people will view you as something aberrant and dangerous, or present yourself as something you are not. And this isn’t a little one-off rescue mission with humans it will never see again. This is Preservation, where Mensah lives. It will have to live with this decision long term. It doesn’t think long:
“I posted a feed ID with the name ‘SecUnit.’ Gender: not applicable.”
The rest of the book is practically a thesis on exactly what complications and rewards come from this decision. While describing one of its discussions with Dr. Bharadwaj, MB says, “being on Preservation Station as myself, and not pretending to be an augmented human or a robot, was disturbing and complicated, and I didn’t know if I could keep doing it.”
But it doesn’t make any attempt to take it back or disguise itself anymore. It doesn’t even voice any regret for the decision, even while it complains. Because for Murderbot, the only thing more intolerable than being openly known as a SecUnit, is being known as something other than a SecUnit.
Last one I think - I want to talk about some real life parallels!
I’m noticing that MB’s experiences in Fugitive Telemetry mirror a few real world groups, most of which I’m not in a position to claim expertise in, but I think they’re important to point out. I’m thinking primarily of people with mixed racial heritage, as well as Black and trans folks.
With regards to mixed race, I think the parallels are pretty direct. MB is a combination of two things which most people treat as separate categories. ‘Is it a bot or is it a human?’ The answer is both, intertwined, and attempting to separate out the different parts is pointless and neglects who it is as a whole. It can also pass as one or the other, sometimes; but only at the cost of pretending large parts of itself don’t exist, and it has to spend the whole time maintaining the fiction and worrying what will happen if it gets “caught.” Same as in the post above, MB has to constantly work against pressures that want it to be one or the other, in systems that don’t know what to do with people who are both.
I’m also seeing parallels to Black experiences specifically. There is, of course, the fact that station security does not want MB to be on the station, does not trust it, treats it like a loaded machine gun, and at times, fails to treat it as a person at all. But there is also a smaller moment, when MB is talking to a bot at a hostel and trying to find information about the current murder mystery. A human supervisor comes into the room, sees MB, and asks the bot multiple times if it is okay or needs any help, while heavily side eyeing MB. The bot tells the human that it is fine, they are just talking, and the human reluctantly leaves. MB, exasperated, thinks, “I don’t know what they think I’m going to do to their bots. Teach them to hack?” And then adds, “It’s not like I didn’t know what the real problem was.” It’s the sort of casual, automatic distrust and suspicion that people of color, particularly Black people, deal with all the time.
Okay and then the trans parallels. Obviously MB does not ‘do’ gender, but either because of or despite that, I think there’s interesting stuff to dig into there. Like how MB has to learn how to ‘pass’ as human, which includes adjusting its mannerisms and altering its body configuration. MB’s “act like a human” scripts most often make me think of autistic masking, but now they’re also reminding me of the ways trans people have to consciously change parts of our mannerisms to better match people’s perceptions of gender. The part that specifically got me was this scene:
“Some humans glanced at me but obviously didn’t know what I was. The station security officer posted in the help area at the base of the ramp did and watched me walk down the floor toward the transport docks. I hate being identified like that. I had gone to a lot of effort to not be immediately identified as a SecUnit, and now it all felt like a waste. I grew longer hair and everything.”
The stress of passing/not passing, checking everyone you encounter to see if they notice, the particular experience of someone in authority watching you closely because of it… It makes me think of a person who is trying to get out of the stealth trans mindset and is struggling to get used to letting themself be visibly trans. I think someone who’s transfem in particular could have really fascinating things to say about MB’s treatment in this book, but I can’t pretend I’d be able to do it justice myself.
Personally, I would devour fan commentary on this series from any of these points of view. I think there’s tons of details and nuance to delve into, and I’m just one person with limited experience, focusing on just one book. Feel free to springboard off of any of this, and send it to me if you do!
(If you read this far, first of all holy shit but second of all thank you!)
Gosh, I love this analysis so much, especially the parts on how Murderbot relates to many real world identities.
I’ll preface this by laying out that I’m a black autistic anxious physically disabled genderfluid US American. This all shapes how I analyze and relate to this character.
I like that you pointed out that when choosing what to put on its feed ID (and really how to present at various times after it was bought by Mensah) is that Murderbot has to choose between presenting as what it really is, which will get it feared and hunted down, or hiding parts of itself to avoid that. This is the reality for pretty much any minority. Whether we’re black, Asian, autistic, female, trans, Muslim, bipolar, etc, whether or not we pass as some other identity or even can, we understand that being seen as those minority identities often means people are going to treat us terribly as a result. It is exhausting having to suppress a need to stim or to shift your dialect with different people or leave a culturally significant garment at home, but when not doing so can mean anything from teasing to losing your job to literal death, you just hide those parts of yourself.
In Rouge Protocol, when Murderbot failed to pass as an augmented human, when Don Abene and her team saw it as the secunit it truly is, two of those humans immediately turned on it, and less than a (Gregorian) month later, even more of its secrets were let out to the public and many more humans were after it and the humans it most cared about. Its belief that terrible things would happen if humans figured out it was a rogue secunit was correct.
I have thankfully experienced little of the all too common African American experience of being treated as inherently dangerous because of my race, but I have very often been the one black person in a (usually metaphorical) room of white people. And frequently Murderbot is in a similar boat (ship?) being the one secunit or even construct amongst humans and/or bots. And that can be frustrating and lonely, even when the folks around you do care about you. When you have been taught from the media and people around you and learned from direct experience that what you are is dangerous/worthless/something else bad, it becomes extremely difficult to believe that anyone who doesn’t share that identity would treat you well. And even when you do know they will be kind and caring to you, you still know they’ll never be able to fully understand. It can be upsetting sometimes when I’m talking to my white friends and they don’t get why I have the relationship that I do with my coily hair or how I could have had such a bad experience at a hospital they swear is the best. I headcanon that Murderbot’s anti-socialness, on top of being caused by it being abused and enslaved by humans for so long as well as it probably being programmed to be not very social, is partly caused by it being restricted from interacting with other constructs, by being forced to not have anyone it can relate to. (Really hope we get a bunch of Murderbot & Three interacting in future installments.)
And I really like your point about Murderbot’s drones being disability aids. For one thing, I just like this interpretation, adds richness to Preservation culture and Mensah’s and Murderbot’s relationship. But also, Murderbot rationalizing to itself that the drones are only there for it to protect others rather than for its own comfort and ability to function reminds me of the relationship many impoverished and/or of black folks have with mainstream medicine.
If you’re routinely barred from medical care because you can’t afford it or your issues are dismissed or your mistreated in the middle of trying to get help, then you may not even attempt to get the medical care you need at all or be aware of the full options that exist. I don’t know how many times I or a family member have had extremely distressing symptoms but instead of getting professionally seen, we just stayed at home and took something over-the-counter because we couldn’t afford a doctor’s visit or knew whichever doctor we saw would just be another white person who would see our hair and skin and brush off our concerns without even examining us. And we never even considered preventative or long term care, because taking a day off of work or school to check if we maybe had something wrong with us was something none of us could spare. And this can morph even further into not even recognizing when you need medical care. The aches and pains I felt on a daily basis and massive panic I’d feel just going up to a cash register I never fully registered or I treated as something I needed to fix alone because I had learned early on that I couldn’t get help for these things.
So often in the series, Murderbot is physically or mentally unwell (to be honest, it’s probably unwell for the entire series). Sometimes it remarks on this with a “this is bad but I’m just going to have to deal with it”. Other times it doesn’t even seem to notice when it’s bleeding out or experiencing high stress. Granted, it is a construct. It can withstand greater damage than humans and what ailments it could have don’t fully match up with those of a human. Part of it’s “don’t worry, I’ll be fine” attitude is definitely because of that, but I think it’s also because Murderbot has partially internalized the message that it is a tool and not a person, a tool that doesn’t get medical care or accommodations or the like. It believes it’s not going to get help unless said help serves someone else, so of course it would forget it had just been shot on the survey mission at the beginning of Network Effect. Of course it would deny that it needs therapy in Network Effect and System Collapse. Of course Murderbot would think Mensah was lying when she said the drones were for its own health.
There’s a lot more I could say on the subject (and maybe one I day I will), but that would veer this even more off topic.
This is really cool and thank you for sharing! I really love your point about medical unavailability/mistrust, I think that’s a really insightful connection to MB’s interactions with medical care. I’m gonna have to look at these moments with new eyes in the future because I think you’re exactly right
You made a lot of points here that made me nod and snap my fingers emphatically, like yes oh my god the fact that it’s never had a chance to interact extensively with other constructs is definitely part of why it hesitates to interact socially. I’m in a class right now where the professor really focuses on the importance of personal connection, and we’ve talked a lot about how queer identity development is something that especially requires you to have other queer people to relate to. Like, if you’re a little baby queer with absolutely no one in your life who is also queer, you’re going to have an awful time trying to figure yourself out. But if you can see other people who are living their queer lives, and maybe talk to people who are also figuring themselves out, you’re going to have an easier time of it. MB on the other hand, has so far had to figure everything out on its own, with absolutely no one and nothing that it can use as an example. Even in the media, rogue SecUnits are always unquestionably a danger and a threat, not a person. You’re right, that’s going to be absolutely fascinating to watch unfold with MB and Three in the future
As an Asian-American and second-generation immigrant trans person, I strongly agree with much of the analysis that op brings to the table, and as someone who's written about the parallels to the bicultural and immigrant experiences in Fugitive Telemetry, it's really gratifying to see my thoughts repeated and validated.
And plenty of others before me have talked about the trans parallels (did you know Tor published a whole series of essays by a trans woman on the Murderbot Diaries?) I'm also glad that @just-a-space-duck has chimed in with her thoughts from a Black pov- and yeah, there really is something uniquely lonely about being surrounded by white people as a POC no matter how supportive they are, about not being able to connect with people who experientially get you, isn't there? I think it's fully a valid read that much of MB's dysfunction as a person and as a construct stems from not having even that amount of contact like Three has, that amount of bot culture that JollyBaby has, to be affirmed by.
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Something I do find lovely about the first 4 Murderbot Diaries books (can’t yet speak on all of them) is:
Murderbot chronically finding new scientists/travellers to claim as “clients” (whether paid or not) like one of those sheepless herding dogs that goes around finding sheep (or anything else they can herd like a flock of sheep). Like it clearly has a protect humans instinct and a desperate need for enrichment.
Given its general lack of self awareness and unreliable narrator status, there’s no way in hell Murderbot is aware it’s doing this.
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