I’ve spent a lot of the weekend so far reading the comments from this great blog post by Yarn Harlot, about the double standards inflicted on female vs. male parents, especially when it comes to travelling for work. It took me a little time to realise why I was particularly entranced by this feminist rant out of the many feminist rants I read each week – but of course, I have Aussiecon coming up, at which I will be trying to balance the needs of my family with the needs of my career, with an added bonus guilt portion that comes from the fact that the “needs of my career” also happens to be, you know, awesome fun times.

That, and I’ve been starting to think of the actual practicalities of going to Swancon next year on my own…

Anyway, the post is great but the comments are even better. I am delighted to hear so many women (and some men) being vocal about having “non-traditional” family and work arrangements, about the negotiations that go with balancing domestic and paid and family work, and acknowledging just how hard all this stuff is, even with partners who are pro-feminist and supportive.

Some other links that caught my eye over the last few days include Kate Elliott on Authoral Intent in which she sensibly lays out the role of the reader vs. the role of the writer in fiction, in a post which has sparked off some great recent conversations. I particularly enjoyed Sarah Rees Brennan’s response on Twitter a few days ago, where she laid out the various “stories” people read in her Demon series, depending on their priorities as a reader.

It reminded me very much of a dialogue that went around the blogs earlier in the year, about how the reader’s default vision of who characters are and what they look like can often outweigh not only the author’s intent, but the author’s own words. This is particularly the case where characters are often assumed to be white unless the author beats their non-whiteness over the heads of the readers – but I’m sure there are lots of other examples of this happening!

The “women authors speak out about male privilege in literary reviews” story continues to spread, with Jezebel doing a piece on it. Nicola Griffith weighs in with a post about Books and Girl Cooties, discussing how her own work has been packaged and marketed.

And finally, my mother Jilli made a rare appearance on the blogosphere this week, showing off her garden as part of the World Kitchen Garden Day held in the little town of Cygnet last weekend. Checkout her homemade milestone, a replica of the one that sits outside her home town in Lancashire, only with a lot more miles on the clock.

Tags: authoring, feminism, linkage, mothering, nicola griffith, sarah rees brennan