...Illogic. They has it.

I just read an article written by somebody who believes that the JET program should be scrapped. Not because they think that the job is being done poorly because of Japan's educational system, or because most people doing the JET program aren't qualified language teachers, or even because of generalized xenophobia. No, the reason they think it should be scrapped is because they believe a person can't properly learn a language without being immersed in the culture of the language you're trying to learn.

... *facepalm* Guess I should just give up learning Japanese right now, then, because I don't live in Japan.

The article advised people to go to English-speaking countries and communicate with the people there in order to get good English skills. I want to ask them if they plan on paying for all these overseas trips.

It's one thing to sit back and say that the only way to get real language experience is to go abroad, but it's quite another to even consider the realities behind such a statement. Children in Japan start learning English when, in junior high? Sometimes earlier, depending on their school and their parents and what other classes they may be enrolled in outside of school? And they get education on English pretty much until the end of high school? That's a lot of time to study the language. Granted, the system used isn't the best, and from what I hear, often leads to students who have memorized Shakespeare's sonnets but can't order a burger at McDonald's, but, well...

Isn't it cheaper to pay for one teacher per class to come and teach for a year, than it is to send all of those students abroad for "real language experience?" And wouldn't it be best if those who go abroad anyway have at least some basic knowledge of the language that will surround them?

I don't know... that article just struck me as foolish and ill-considered. There was a good point made in that people often do learn a language better when they're surrounded by it and have to use it on a daily basis. That's why here, there's the French Immersion program. It's not just one class a day of speaking French and learning vocabulary words and verb conjugations. It's all but a couple of classes a day speaking French. You learn math in French. You learn history in French. You learn the sciences in French. You really sink or swim, and plenty of students drop out because it's a hard thing to do, learning new concepts in a language that isn't your native one. But it can work.

I don't say it always works. I was in the French Immersion program until the end of high school. Got my bilingual certificate and everything. But I can't speak much French. I can read it decently, understand it less, and go mute when I have to speak it. But that's not the fault of the program. That was actually the fault of overbearing teachers who intimidated the hell out of me, combined with apathy and depression.

My point is that the article has a point, and that immersion is a solid way to teach language. But it's not always the most efficient way, and it certainly isn't the most cost-effective way. I could learn Japanese by going to Japan right now, and I bet you I'd muddle through long enough to get a good grasp on the language within the year. But I can't afford immersion. The people who can afford to do things that way are uncommon. More power to them if they can, but that shouldn't be expected of everybody.

Besides, scrapping the JET program without giving an overhaul to the way English classes are taught in general won't fix the problem. From what I hear, people who do the JET program spend their class time focusing on conversational English rather than rote memorization, and even if it doesn't make perfect the language abilities of the students, it helps them actually use what they're learning. Get rid of that, and you'll just have more students who can recite Shakespeare but who have no idea what it means. Pretty words don't mean much when there's no meaning.

I'm not going to make myself popular for this post, am I?

Why books by women aren't serious.

There are some interesting points brought up in this article, and while I can't say it was startling to read the facts and speculations contained within, it was something that I don't consider that often.

The comments, though, were what got me thinking the most. Particularly this one: I judge books by their covers. I cannot abide by silly, frivolous cover art with shopping bags or babies or big sunglasses or god-knows-what-other-things-that-men-think-women-love. I instinctively ignore books with these sorts of covers at the book store/library because, most of the time, I am not looking for a silly, frivolous book.

Part of the problem with female authors in general getting less acclaim is this. Not that attitude (though I admit that it doesn't help), but the way women's lit has become such a popular thing these days. We're entering a stage in our society where it's easier for women to not keep their mouthes shut about stuff that's on their mind, and yet there's still a pretty clear line drawn between the masculine and the feminine. Thus it's getting easier for women to write about womanly stuff, and there are women who want to read it.

This is nothing new, of course. I'm willing to bet that Jane Austen's books had more of a female audience in mind than a male one when they were written. Books writting by women for women are out there in the same way that books written by men for men are.

But here's the thing. Because of increased interest in feminism and identity and being PC, it's getting to the point where it's actually more culturally acceptible for women to write books for women than it is for men to write books for men. Men writing manly books, with no real attempt at putting in a strong female lead or anything that might interest your average woman off the street, get accused of being sexist. On the flip side, plenty of books by women exist that involve beautiful women who have a real interest in clothes and shopping and sappy romance, and where the male lead exists as little more than a pretty body that the main female can sleep with, and such things are not called sexist. They're called empowering, they're called revolutionary, but they're not called sexist even if they have nothing in them to appeal to "typical" males and everything to appeal to "typical" females.

But that's okay. It's part of society's obsession with retroactive payment. Men had their time in the spotlight. Now they have to sit down and shut up until women are done being in the spotlight for just as much time and in just the same ways, and heaven help any man if he thinks that equality should mean actual equality.

This isn't the case for everyone nor everything. But it's an increasing trend, and one that I don't like to see. It's now okay for women to do the very things they hate men doing, and it's okay because women didn't spend all of history doing it. Oppression is still oppression, exclusion is still exclusion, and sexism is still sexism no matter which side it's coming from.

Stuff like that is why I disgree with the statement that there is no such thing as chick-lit. Sure there is. There are books written solely to appeal to young girls, young women, bored housewives, or anything with a vagina. Just like there are books written for young girls, young men, or husbands. It doesn't mean that men can't like books intended for women or that women can't like books intended for men. But a book usually has an intended audience, and if that audience happens to be specifically women, then why can't it be called chick-lit?

Especially when you look at a book that has, say, a drawing of a pretty woman in a short skirt and stylish top, clutching bags from various stores she just went to, clinging to the arm of a very handsome man. The colours, of course, tend to be reds and yellows primarily, with touches of other colours for accents. Now how many people are going to look at that and think, "Must be a book for men," or, "Must be general-interest"?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

There's nothing wrong with writing books for certain audiences. I just don't think that so many people should complain about men writing "man-interest" books while there are so many "women-interest" books on the shelves. If women are allowed to read about shopping and getting married, why can't men read about racecars and tools and beating the crap out of stuff?

The problem does come in, yes, when books by men are taken more seriously than books by women, before anything else gets taken into account at all. It's a knee-jerk reaction and a stupid one, and believe me, I don't deny that. I'm one of those crazy people who thinks that a book should be judged by its content and not its author. (Weird, I know.) And there is a large disparity between male and female authors when it comes to well-received books. Sexism and prejudice do play a part in that, sadly, and I wish I could deny that, but I can't. It certainly isn't because men by default are better writers than women. I've read some awesome books by women and some real stinkers by men. What's in your pants doesn't determine how good a writer you are, and maybe it's time some people woke up and realized that.

Now, I'm not a woman, per se. But I have boobs and a vagina, and I have a serious dislike of sexism, so I'm going to assume that I'm just as qualified to make statements regarding this as the next person with boobs and a vagina. I wish that books by women would be taken more seriously, and it`s not solely because women write only unserious books. For that to be the reason would be like automatically assuming anything written by a man is doing to be full of blood and guts and bad lesbian porn.

That being said, there, though does seem to be a trend whereby women write the kinds of books that are described in the comment I quoted at the beginning of this entry. They don't only write those things, of course, but enough write them because they're popular that really, it's hard to see how such a book can be taken as seriously as a book that actually has general interest.

But I disagree with people saying that there`s no such thing as chick-lit, and that it`s terribly unfair for books written by women for women to actually be read primarily by women. Come on, that`s like complaining that the sky`s too blue on the clear and cloudless day you wished for. There`s dude-lit too, but for some reason it doesn`t get its own specual genre. Not sure why. Possibly because even though it`s freaking obvious by the covers, the description, and the writing, people are afraid of being called sexist if they state flat-out that they`re writing books for an intended male audience, filled with stereotypical manly things.

(Perfect example of the sexism thing being okay when it`s said about men but ultimately wrong when it's said about women? This article. If there was an article entitled, "What girls should wear in the autumn to not make us look idiotic," the backlash would be unbelievable. There'd be so much crap flung at the article within minutes that the servers would be screaming in fear. Even if it was meant in jest, people would be saying that unconditionally, such things should never ever be said as a joke because it offends too many people. But oh, it's perfectly fine for the very same thing to be said about men. And if a man gets offended at the implication that people think he exists only for the pleasure of women, well, too damn bad.)

Yeah, I know I probably haven't made myself too popular with this post, because I didn't immediately stand up and talk only about how underappreciated women are in literature and how the NYT should rave about a majority of women-authored books to make up for the attention men got in the past. But I can't do that. I like equality being equal, and I believe that there's a point where retroactive payment goes too far, and that some people like to get their panties in a twist. I won't say that there isn't a problem with sexism in literature, and I won't say that some reviewers don't need to get their heads out of their asses and learn that women can write general-interest too (or any genre of book, really). But people complaining that women real female-oriented stories -- complaining! -- just annoys the hell out of me.

There's male-driven sexism in lots of places, and I see it often. Video games that allow you to remove character clothes and in which the females are wearing undergarments that couldn't possibly support their breasts. Common media portrayals of females with unrealistic body types and the expectation that females must live up to those standards in order to be considered attractive. The idea that all women who are interested in sex are sluts but those who aren't are frigid. Believe you me, that shut is everywhere, and I hate it. I want to smack people who think that way, who act that way. I deal with a lot of -isms on a daily basis, and they blow.

But in the way that Twilight is not the next Great Expectations, I don't think that fluff books should be considered great literature, and that applies no matter who writes them! Maybe it's just that women tend to write more fluff books than men, I don't know. I haven't seen all of the statistics, but it wouldn't surprise me. YA lit seems to be female-dominated these days, or at least that's what all the bookstores in my area would have me believe, and a lot of YA is fluff. The romance section of most bookstores is bigger than ther history section, and I think that the 'general fiction' shelves are probably a bit more male-dominated, but in fairness, a lot of those are because there are some big name male authors who are pretty much a front for a gaggle of ghostwriters.

I don't think I'm saying things as well as I mean to, and there's a conclusion that I keep trying to draw from all this, but it all sounds like I'm apologizing for having an opinion that differs from what is rapidly becoming the norm. I'm tired of having to apologize for myself. I'm sure that a lot of fighters for rights of all kinds can relate to that problem. And once again, I want to stress that I'm not saying that there's isn't an unfair bias in the literary world. It probably doesn't help that most professional book reviewers for big publications are men. (A sharp contrast to the bookblogger community, actually, where the overwhelming majority are female.) But when people complain about books for an intended audience actually reaching that audience, and ignoring the fact that maybe men don't read that kind of book because they can't even relate to the characters (much like many modern women may not have an easy time relating to stories about burly beefy men tearing up the battlefield), I start to call foul.