Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

The Farlander Papers

As for the current discussion...

My original foray into online fandom waaaaaaay back in the bygone era of 1996, I had a male username, male avatar, and acted like a male. After 2000, I stopped acting like a male. In recent years, people still mistake me for being male, because I chose a male-sounding username and I use a male avatar.

Though, for what it's worth, Zuckuss was played by a female.

 

You mean you're not actually a five-foot talking bug?

Not to turn this into one of those threads, but **** it - this is me.

I've used Tycho as my avatar for as long as I can remember, half because I'm a fan of Tycho, and half because for all the WHMs out there, there aren't a lot of blonde ones, so Tycho and I needed to represent.

 

Not five-feet-tall, at least. I'm 5'7".

 

Well, if we're all sharing now...

If I resemble any SW characters physically, it's somewhere between Atton and Jacen. Outside of Star Wars, Harry Potter.

 

So, anyone around here see that article about the female pilots that got cut from ROTJ?
http://kotaku.com/5967701/wow-there-were-four-female-pilots-cut-from-return-of-the-jedi/gallery/1

 

Yep.

It was discussed on Page 52.

 

Huh. I thought I read that page.

Sorry about that.

 

Is "bug" in this case a pejorative? Because in that case...check your human privilege, Coop!

Oh dear, this poor thread...

Shall we place bets on the diversity score for Scoundrels? Do you think Blackie will make an appearance? If so, which Blackie?

 

Gosh, we can only hope... He's really described as:

eta. Well, the first Blackie, anyway...

 

Technically, the term 'bug' accurately refers only to the members of the Hemiptera (the 'true bugs') and is therefore perjorative used outside of that context. As the provenance of the precursors to the various insectoid species in Star Wars is at best vaguely known (I recall some muttering by C-3PO that Verpines were related to Mantids and that's about it), evaluating the accuracy of the term is difficult. Still, Hemipterans are only a tiny portion of overall insect diversity, and the usage of 'bug' in English, is generally inaccurately deployed to cover a wide range of arthropods, many of which, such as Isopods (Pill Bugs) are not insects at all, so the majority of usages are likely to be at least unintentionally insulting.

 

Why am I suddenly reminded of that recent How I Met Your Mother episode --

(that dunce talking about "gypsies")
Ted: You know they actually like to be called "Roma" these days.
Dunce (laughs): And what do unicorns like to be called then? Fairies? Leprechauns?
Ted: ...you do realize gypsies actually exist, right?
Dunce: Really? I thought they were just made up, like Elves... or dolphins...

(or something to that effect.)

So what Mechalich's saying here is basically we should come up with politically correct terms for fictitious species (or in this case, groups of species). I see how calling someone a "bug" can be insulting. How about "insectoid"? Or is that too broad a term, seeing as how we don't go around calling humans, bothans, ewoks and everyone "mammaloid" or something? Also, does "humanoid" refer to the form only (i.e. number of limbs, heads, etc), so could we potentially call, say, a Verpine a "humanoid insectoid"?

And that's not even going into the matter of calling humanoids humanoids rather than, say, bothanoids; not to mention the whole "non-human" or "alien" terminology. IIRC this has even come up IU because it's hard to believe people in a diverse GFFA would never notice that there's something odious about these terms...

 

No way arround it

 

Nah, Mechalich, who happens to actually be an entomologist, is just exercising his right to be annoyed about the biggest of entomological pet peeves.

 

I'll just leave these here...

 

I recall Darth Plagueis using the term "Muunoid" once or twice where other books would use "humanoid".

 

So what do we call fictional versions of real peoples?

How woild you describe the various human hues, use coffee colors?

Really detaled descriptions?

Look at Kiera Holt, she could be seen as a latina, or arabic, northern indian, north african. I mean she wouldnt be cultraly any of them (she being from a galaxy far far away, and From a archapelego on a mostly oceanic planet. But how do you discribe her in a book?

 

And that is why James Luceno is better than most people.

 

On the Lego, some great points there(I know this boy, his name is Zach, his microchips are out of wack ).

"And there is nothing in the rest of the Lego Universe that would encourage girls to think outside the gendered walls of Heartlake City". By in large this might be true but I do want to point out a few things.

Several years back Lego started selling single packaged mini figures and it appears that roughly 25% of the traditional figures inlcuded in this line are female(at a glance 50% are male and another 25% are non gendered monsters or so). We have gotten cool figures such as Cleopatra, a cowgirl, a doctor, female pirate, female surfer, female metal band guitar player, Little Red Riding Hood, Cavegirl, masked female with guns, zoo keeper(with monkey), a fairy, a witch and many more - some good, some not so good(I'm guessing the shopaholic wouldn't be met with favorable reviews)

Also for years now the Star Wars lines have been including sets which have female Star Wars characters in leading roles. For instance Ahsoka Tano has had her own Jedi Starfighter set, Barriss Offee is the main figure in the Geonosian Cannon set, Luminara gets twin billing with Rex in the Battle of Geonosis set.

So while I like those videos I do think that Lego has been trying to expand its target audience, beyond the girls only line, over the past few years. I know I've gotten a couple sets for my daughter that had nothing to do with Heartlake city, that came with a mixture of male and female mini figures. There is definitly an ambulance set that come with a female paramedic and a police station set that comes with a female police officer. The Space Shuttle Expedition set comes with a female astronaught, on on.

Its certainly male dominated, and there are way more male mini figures and sets marketed at boys, but there are, and have been, regular lego sets that come with female characters.

Later on today I'm going to head down to TRU and check out the Lego section just to see how many sets are out there that I could get that have female characters in them. That will be the test. I will bring back the results.

 

Back from my Lego adventure, made a few observations.

First off, as mentioned in her videos, I looked at the Lego City sets. In some cases the exact sets that the host took issue with and pictured. Kinda interesting, one of the sets shown on the video - The Nasa styled rocket launching set, come with one astronaught - a female astronaught.(To be fair you can't tell this from the front of the box because she has her gear on). So that one kinda jumped out at me right away. Here was a large Lego set that according to the video isn't meant or marketed for girls, with a female rocket pilot. It also comes with three male mini figures as well, so not a good ratio, but the female figure does get the cool job of flying the space ship.

Next I looked at forest fighting playset which included both a male and female firefighters. Same deal with the Garbage truck set, both male and female garbage persons are included. There was a passenger plane with a stewardess, a automobile garage with two female customers, a boat set with male and female figures.

Most of the Lego City sets contained at least one female figure in each set(sometimes two depending on size) with the exception of some of the smaller sets. The four sets I saw at the lowest price point contained no female figure, only a lone male in each set. All in all the ratio of guys to gals is probably 4-1 or so, looking at all the sets, but there were a ton of sets to buy, both large and small, if someone was looking for female mini figures specifically to play with.

Other Lego sets like their space themed adventures didn't match up as well. saw only one of the space themed sets that came with a female figure at all out of maybe 20 different sets. So Lego fails there in an epic fashion.

What I didn't see was any ethnic Lego figures in bascially any of the sets, so Lego is not looking too good on that front either. I know the single packed figures do offer some different ethnicities, but it wooldn't hurt them to have those in some of their main sets as well.

 

SW Legos are pretty diverse at least The Jabba palace set has 2 woman (one of them Alien) and among the other 7 there is only one human male.

 

What I find so interesting about Lego, is that the blocks themselves are very gender and race non-specific, and nearly impossible to find in major retailer locations. I have access to a Lego store, where I can buy bricks separately, but just try to buy a box at Target, etc., and it's nearly impossible. For whatever reason, their business model has led them away from what I consider a great equalizer toy - played with by everyone - to these kits specifically targeted towards certain segments of the population.

 

I haven't read the story in question myself, so I can't be sure of the context, but anyone want to comment on the physical description part of this infobox?