fishingboatproceeds:

deadgaypoets:

fishingboatproceeds:

The second chapter of The Fault in Our Stars. If you enjoy hearing this story read in the completely dissonant voice of a grown man, you can preorder the TFiOS box set. If you prefer reading books, consider preordering TFiOS at your local independent bookstore. You can also get it at B&N, Amazon, or wherever books are sold. 

SO GOOD. But come on John Green, V for Vendetta is NOT a boy movie! Silly gendering of films!

Just to be clear: I do not think V for Vendetta is a boy movie.

Listening to John Green read the second chapter of The Fault in Our Stars was my reward last night for finishing an essay that has been kicking my ass for the past week.

I’m not really one to get into online debates (not because I don’t think they’re interesting, but because I tend to separate that kind of thing from this blog). But I did want to just talk about for a moment how many people are jumping on the line where Hazel says that V for Vendetta is a “boy movie. I don’t know why boys expect us to like boy movies, we don’t expect them to like girl movies”. I’ll admit that for a second my skin prickled as I heard that — but then I settled back down to listen to what is promising to be a wonderful novel.

I’m a feminist. I think that people say they’re not feminists is because by and large women in particular have been made to feel like the feminists movements of the suffragettes in the early 1900’s and the next big feminist movement from the late sixties to eighties where women burnt their bras were “extremists”. Or maybe people feel like they’re glad someone went “too far” in order to secure them the rights they now enjoy, but want to appear feminine or moderate. Or perhaps they feel like acting a certain way is “acting out” and that it’s only for a period of your life — like in university, maybe. As far as I’m concerned, if you want to have all the rights a man has, you are feminist. Maybe what we need is a new term for it, I don’t know. But the reality of the situation is that whether or not you’re made to feel like women are equal to men in our contemporary society, this is still far from the case. Women still earn significantly less than men do for doing exactly the same job and women are less likely to get a job if a man is as competent and interviewing. “Women produce half of the world’s food and word two thirds of the world’s working hours, yet only earn 10% of the world’s income and own less than 1% of the world’s property” (ref: Womankind Worldwide UK). And that’s just to do with money and employment. Look at the politics of almost any country in the world — how many women are MPs, or representatives? How many women mayors? Even in universities and colleges, the hub of knowledge, there are fewer female professors to their male counterparts, they earn less, and are less likely to be promoted. 

None of that is okay. All of it needs to be changed, and we all need to care.

However. We need to distinguish between what a character in a book (who is a teenager, let’s not forget) says, versus what a man in his mid-thirties who is writing the book thinks. They are not the same thing. Writing about zombies doesn’t make you a zombie, writing about immigration doesn’t necessarily mean you are an immigrant, writing a sentence in a book through the point of view of your character does not make it your opinion.

If John said something like that in a video, speaking as himself, we should of course point out that that’s wrong. But he’s not speaking as himself. It’s easy to confuse when he’s reading the words out loud, verus when you read them yourself, but: characters and their authors are distinguishable. This is just the beginning of the book, we have no idea as of yet how that’s even going to be explored. 

That’s my very long two cents on the subject.