There Are Four Lights

I read an interesting article, Why Feminism Is Also Dude-ism. I found this woefully true:

Every woman he knows has been talked down to by a man who wasn’t as smart or capable as she was. Almost all of them have been treated poorly or made uncomfortable by some dude at some point who saw getting into her pants as a prize to be won.

I imagine that most people, perhaps especially guys, would read that and think that a guy would really have to be a major jerkasaurus to act like that. But, sadly, I find those two things to be among my most common experiences. Sometimes it’s even from guys who would describe themselves as supportive of gender equality; I know one male friend who even does a lecture about female characters in storytelling who always made me feel like there was nothing I could say that could be convincing or credible when it came to ‘the big stuff’. Sure, if I’m going to ramble about She-ra (which, btw, I’m awesome at) that’s fine…that’s something I “should” know—-but I couldn’t possibly be taken seriously if I’m talking about cosmology, the laws of physics, the brain, the scientific method… Nope.

It also has never become easier to realize that someone you were hoping would be a friend and would be interested in you and your work was actually pretty much just interested in making out with you. If that’s not an option for him then you’ll probably stop hearing from him.

And to my fellow skeptics; You think it’s hard trying to communicate to someone evidence that they are wrong in a manner which they might be likely to consider it? Try attempting that when you’re a tiny brunette with giant brown eyes of whom nobody ever has a problem likening to a pixie. People stare down at you like they’re looking at a box full of kittens.

Cute. But nobody takes a box full of kittens seriously.

Homg, what?! You’re trying to tell me dowsing is due to something called the ideomotor effect? Whatev, I’m a super smart scholarly man who couldn’t possibly be wrong about anything (especially when it’s pointed out by a pixie!).

To be fair, women have dismissed me as well. But they’re usually wiccans and reiki masters who hate me because my words threaten their magic mother Earth goddess powers.

Nobody likes hearing they’re wrong, but apparently it’s especially annoying to hear it from me—-and much easier to dismiss me as well. Just admit it, people, if I was an old man with elbow patches on my sweater, you’d take my arguments more seriously. You wouldn’t be so compelled to lecture me as if I need to be taught a lesson because you wouldn’t automatically assume you know far more than me.

So, I guess I’m saying that I don’t necessarily mind if you look at me like I’m a box full of kittens as long as you listen to me like I’m old elbow-patch sweater man. Wait, no! Stop! Now you’re picturing a box full of kittens wearing elbow-patch sweaters! THAT’S EVEN MORE ADORABLE!

A few days ago, I wrote two posts addressing the topic of appealing to a female audience. One was about the Blag Hag guest post When Gender Goes Pear-Shaped and the other was Reaching a Female Audience: The She-ra Approach. My motivation for writing both of these posts was a concern that free-thought groups would begin to make ill-informed changes, based on intuition instead of facts, which would be well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful.

Then, I come across PZ Myers post about how men should shut up and listen to women:

Listen. To. The. Women.

I’ve got a simple suggestion for my fellow men. Learn to shut up and listen. Seriously. You want women to find your organization pleasant and interesting and worth contributing to? Then don’t form panels full of men trying to figure out what women want

Great. Well, you know what, dudeman? I don’t want men to shut up and listen to me because I’m a woman. I want people to shut up and listen to be because I’m effing awesome, mmkay?

First of all, the panel in question wasn’t a women’s issues panel made up of mostly men. It was an audience choice panel, where the topics were chosen after the panelists were chosen. My guess is that, like most panels on the topic of women in atheism, if the organizers had known in advanced that those would be the topics, they would’ve chosen more women to be on the panel. Secondly, men giving their views on women in atheism isn’t automatically sexist. In fact, I thought the discussion touched on points that may not have been touched on in your average women’s panel (like the fact that atheist gatherings are the only place to find like-minded partners). Guess what—-this wasn’t the only panel in history to ever talk about women in atheism, ever again and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted them to skip the subject entirely because oops there aren’t enough women on the panel. I’m not convinced that when it comes to the subject of ensuring groups are more female-friendly nobody relies on women members to contribute.

The entire point of my She-ra Approach post was to argue that if you want to create an atmosphere which is more inclusive to women then you need to make an atmosphere which treats everyone like people. People are complex and you can’t make assumptions about them because of gender, race, or age.

Don’t make assumptions about me, negative or positive, based on my gender. Listen to what I have to say because I’m smart, funny, and make solid arguments. Invite me to speak at your event because I’m an international award-winning mangaka and TED Fellowship member. The fact that I’m also a young woman and totally adorable might also be a nice plus! But, like She-ra, I’m not awesome because I’m a woman I’m awesome because I wield the effing powers of Grayskull, bitch!

But, if horror of horrors, I were to say something that someone could *gasp* disagree with…ha ha I know, ridiculous, but stay with me for the sake of argument…if I were mistaken then nobody should feel uneasy about telling me so. I don’t want men to be told to shut up and listen to women because a) I don’t want men to “go easy” on me when expression their opinions about what I say and b) I don’t want men assuming that I’ll have the same opinion as someone else because they’re also a woman.

Yes, presenting more women role-models is a good strategy. It’s probably helpful to remind organizers to seek a variety of content; it can be easy for all of us to stick to what is familiar. But, if women aren’t being chosen to speak or chosen to be leaders because of the fact they are women, then that has to stop. But don’t go around telling men they should listen to me because I’m a woman.

My Amazon universal wishlist is growing to be somewhat eclectic. I especially love this dress.

I’m back in northern Ontario in my little hometown, Kirkland Lake. I was in Montreal over the weekend as a guest at an anime convention called Otakuthon. I was a guest at the first Otakuthon, five years ago, when it was much smaller. This year’s event was fantastic and took place at the lovely Palais des Congress de Montreal. My first panel took place Friday evening which was my presentation “Skepticism Through Manga”. The talk went well, despite some technical difficulties; unfortunately I made the mistake of trusting my little HP notebook running Vista (why would I do that?!) as if it runs like my very trustworthy Alienware Area 51.

Quinton and I spent most of our time between panels at my guest table in the exhibitor hall, selling copies of my books and his 8×10 headshots. His first autograph session took place on Saturday and, unfortunately, had to be cut off at the end of the hour. He had a great Q&A session later in the afternoon, which took place right before my next panel, “Manga Storytelling: Writing and Illustration”.

My original plans were to head back to LA after the convention and then fly into Atlanta for Dragon*Con a couple weeks later. Unfortunately, after my last visit in the US, I was denied entry across the border; I’ve spent a lot of time visiting the US over the past year and that combined with my status as a freelancer made it possible for the border officer to deny me entry as an alleged intending immigrant.

I assure you the experience in secondary inspection was quite horrible—-I was in the waiting room separated from Quinton for over 2 hours without any indication of why I was there and once I was actually spoken to by the officer it was very emotionally distressing. But, alas, there isn’t much that can be done—-border officers can deny entry to anyone at their own discretion. Since Canadians don’t need tourist visas, it seems it can be easy for things to get messy (since you don’t actually have a visa to overstay). So, for now, I’m advised to postpone another attempted crossing for at least 6 months.

This means that my scheduled guest appearance at Dragon*Con won’t be happening this year. I was really looking forward to attending and being part of the Skeptrack. On the upside, it might sound really badass if you’d like to call me banned in America!

Dear parents/facebook users,

I know you are proud of your babies, but please stop using them as your Facebook profile picture. Babies are cute, especial your baby; I have nothing against babies. However, your baby is not a practical profile picture for your Facebook account. Please put pictures of your babies in photo albums, post them on your wall, or include yourself with your baby in the profile picture. My friend suggestion panel contains names of facebook users who appear to be babies.

I do not personally know any babies.

Obviously, I didn’t have the time or energy to blog about my TED experience while I was actually there. TED is a brain-melting experience that leaves you feeling amazed and overwhelmed at the end of each day. I’m going to have to refresh my memory when the DVD set arrives of all the great talks that were given within just a few days. As a fellowship member, I did a short talk on a mini TED stage to an audience of fellow Fellows. I took advantage of the chance to give a talk to talk about one of the things I love to talk about most—-Legend of the Ztarr, my new manga series!

As a Canadian in the middle of winter, just being in California was nice (though, apparently 12c is “cold”, lol). I was really thrilled to meet all kinds of amazing people; Of course, all of the fellowship members were extraordinary and simply the greatest group of people I’ve been fortunate enough to become friends with. Everyone is doing something amazing to change the world for the better from all corners of the planet.

Though my family was interested in hearing about whether I got to meet Al Gore or Robin Williams, instead, I was excited about getting to meet Dan Dennett, philosopher and one of the ‘Four Horsemen’ of atheism, Brian Cox, physicist at CERN working on the LHC, and Carolyn Porco, head of imaging for the Cassini mission to Saturn (links point to Flickr photos of them and myself). I’m extremely shy, so I probably freaked them all out a bit by being so quiet!

My Twitter followers count has quadrupled since the first day at TED and my inbox has exploded with emails. There are several invites in the works for various talks/workshops that organizations are interested in having me attend. Hopefully, this TED momentum will aid in my current goal of getting Legend of the Ztarr picked up by a publisher. If there’s one feeling that a TED conference leaves you with, it’s that nothing is out of reach, and any idea is possible. TED is truly an inspiring gathering of the worlds leading thinkers and doers, that leaves a lasting impression on the rest of your life.

If you’ve come across this little blog of mine, I invite you to read Legend of the Ztarr and spread the word about it. You can find my collection of TED photos on my Flickr account, follow me on twitter here, and look me up on Facebook/Myspace as well.

So this little blog of mine will serve as a place to write about my trip to Long Beach and my adventures at TED 2009 this week. As I believe I mentioned before, I was selected as one of the Fellowship members invited to attend TED this year. Lucky~!

I left North Bay for California on Sunday, but missed my connection in Toronto because of too much snow on the runway in North Bay which delayed my flight. Sunday afternoon was spent in the airport waiting for my flight to LAX at 5:30pm. So I didn’t end up at my hotel in Long Beach until around 9pm.

But the first day in Long Beach, here at the Hilton, was lovely! My Fellow roomate and I spent the afternoon by the pool. It’s so nice here, I don’t think I’ll be wanting to go back to the -40c weather up in northern Ontario. We registered and got our TED badges around 4pm and then got ready for the TED Fellows welcome party by the pool.

The welcome party was beautiful and everyone is so friendly and interesting. And wow, the amazing swag they had for all of us at the end–it was like being on Oprah, lol! “YOU get a car and YOU get a car!”, ok, no cars…but we all got gift bags with this neat little HD video cameras, and Nokia smart phones! Hadn’t I just been complaining that day that my phone was horribly annoying to send txts with? THANK YOU!

CBC Newsworld is playing Doc Zone right now with an episode called “Fly Me to the Moon”; “NASA’s 50th anniversary is marked in this documentary celebrating humans’ fascination with the moon”. But what’s with the sudden spoonfull of woo I’m seeing? They’re talking to an astrologer from Toronto (apparently the Moon represents ‘the woman’ because INSERT HIGHLY GENERALIZED STEREOTYPICAL FEMININE QUALITIES) and some guy on a piano is singing “Age of Aquarius”.

Oh, nice…next they’re talking to and about police, nurses, ambulance workers, etc., who believe that crazy(er?) stuff happens during a full moon. They could at least mention confirmation bias. sheesh.

Shame on you, Doc Zone, shame on you…

Heeey~! Let’s write a post about things in my room I like! Okee! Hmm, what do we have? Yes, that green cat is Cringer from MotU (I no longer have his Battle Cat armor). Apparently, he’s guarding a few copies of Shojo Beat; I haven’t had a subscription this year because I never got around to reading them very often. Though, I do like scanning through them when I get stuck drawing and need some shoujo inspiration.

At the top of one of my little book piles is Hamlet. If I’m not mistaken, this copy is from my highschool days and somehow was never returned. I really like the binding–oh, and I like Hamlet…though I think I enjoy MacBeth more (Cyrano was my favourite). There’s some manga at the bottom of the pile; I don’t think I’ve read any of them. I like the artwork in Kamikaze but have no clue what the story is about. I have read some of the Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden, but not lately. Wedged inbetween Kamikaze and my random copies of Secrets of Sorcerers is a Harry Potter book. I’ve actually only read the last two HP books (and by read I mean listen to Jim Dale read it to me). Now, here’s the really good stuff; my Carl Sagan books! Cosmos, Broca’s Brain, and The Varieties of Scientific Experience.

This book is definitely one of my favourites. It’s edited by Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan, and contains his talks from the Gifford Lectures. The subtitle is “A Personal View of the Search for God”, but there’s plenty more here than just religious debate. I think Sagan explains nicely why science clashes with religious and spiritual beliefs so often, in a way that is really clear for those, like me, who have no background in science. I’m reading and listening to a few of Sagan’s books so I tend to mix up what I’ve read from which book, but what I love about Sagan is how he can explain science topics simply while still sounding ‘magical’. I think that’s what some people find missing when listening to many scientists talk; it can seem dry or cold…like there’s no emotion involved in their work. Sagan talks about nature in the same sort of poetic way that new age gurus try too. If you’ve ever heard someone say, in response to science, that they just want to believe that “there has to be more than this“, as though they just aren’t sastisfied with the ‘plain facts’ and just want that magical feeling about the universe, then you should point them towards this book; Sagan makes the universe seem just as, if not more magical than any spiritual guru could, but he just so happens to have evidence for the claims he’s so passionate about.

Now, we can’t forget about my Sky-Watcher telescope! Sadly, I haven’t used it in awhile and probably would if it wasn’t stuck in my room. The nice thing about living in a small town is there isn’t a lot of light polution, so I can just take it out onto the back deck for stargazing. And it doesn’t take very long to drive out of town away from the street lights.

Man, I really dig Jupiter and Saturn! Jupiter was the first planet I saw when I first bought my scope. I was all “wthasdkfjwoeihosif~that big bright star turns into a PLANET in this thing homg! Magic!“. It has tiny lil specs orbiting it, awwww…so cute! And yes, Saturn and its rings still amaze me each and every time I see it.

I thought I’d write a post about my new manga series, Legend of the Ztarr. If there’s anything that I like to talk about more than Trek, Star Wars, and science, it’s my LotZ manga. It also happens to be the thing I get to talk about the least. The end of 2007 was the year that I finally started writting the script for the series, and in 2008 I did character designs, storyboards, and finally the first chapter, which can be read online at www.legendoftheztarr.com.

Legend of the Ztarr is the story of a young girl named Adora Ztarr who lives on a peaceful little planet called Teri with her adopted aunt, uncle, and cousin. Her father, the Great Kalen Ztarr, was killed in the battle to overthrow The Emperor of the Known Universe. The series begins when two off-worlders, still loyal to the House of Ztarr, come to take Adora away from her homeworld, so that she can replace her father in the prophecy which fortells that he will destroy the Emperor.

The sword of Ztarr but once shall slay and end The Holy Emperor’s rein.” – The Third Prophecy of Jillian

I really enjoy creating Legend of the Ztarr; I think because, like most of my creations, it’s a story that I want to read. I’m not concentrated on creating something for a specific target audience and deciding what kind of characters and plotlines that audience will like. These are characters that I love and their adventures tell a story that I want to hear. And it’s my favourite kind of story: swords & sandals in outerspace!

My DeviantART account has a few sketches from the series I’ve uploaded. I recently updated the theme of its website (though the drawing of the blonde man on the far right needs to be replaced as soon as I finish colouring Myren). I’m working on storyboards for the second chapter, so it won’t be complete for a while yet. Also, I’m organizing a proposal for the series to pitch to manga publishers; I don’t think I want to go down the indy path like I did for Secrets of Sorcerers (not that SoS hasn’t done really well, it’s simply too much for lil artist brain me to keep track of inventory and invoices).

So tell everyone about Legend of the Ztarr and check out my youtube channel as well for a little video of me talking about LotZ (and the audio version my friend requested of me).