Katelyn’s Comments (group member since Jan 07, 2016)

Katelyn’s comments from the Our Shared Shelf group.

WildfireLookoutTower wrote: "So who's in charge of this book club? Emma, the club members and moderators, or Vogue's editors? Is it really that important that we have mainstream media participating in our book club? What have ..."

Emma is certainly in charge of the book club. I'm not sure why you are concerned about Vogue's involvement? They're not influencing the book club itself, it's simply the outlet that Emma was able to use to organize her interview with Marjane Satrapi. Each interview that has been conducted so far has been organized a bit differently, which allows for different target audiences and types of exposure in addition to the members here on Our Shared Shelf. If nothing else, I think it's great that mainstream media outlets are providing a voice for the issues, authors, and books we are discussing here!

Hello all,

We're implementing a new system for recommending books!

How To Suggest a Book

1. **Check if the book you would like to suggest is already on the shelf.** It will make moderators' jobs easier if you do us this favor before making a suggestion, and we would really appreciate it. You can do this by clicking Bookshelf in the top right corner of the group underneath the logo and searching for the book using the search bar in the top left corner. If the book is already on the shelf, it will appear faded in gray.

2. Comment on this thread with your book suggestions with title and author. Please do not recommend an author's entire body of work without specifying titles for us.

3. Moderators will check this thread regularly and add member suggestions to the bookshelf.

4. Comments will be deleted from this thread as the books suggested are added to the shelf in the interest of keeping the thread easy to navigate and sort through.

Rules for Suggesting Books

1. We ask that members only suggest books that reflect the mission of Our Shared Shelf. This includes books that are about gender, sexuality, women, or feminism itself. This is, of course, subjective. Moderators have final approval for all book suggestions, but we plan to include all suggestions on the bookshelf unless blatantly unrelated to the mission of Our Shared Shelf.

2. In keeping with the group rules of Our Shared Shelf, as well as Goodreads policy in general, authors are prohibited from suggesting their own books under any circumstances. Any such suggestions will be removed without warning. This goes for publishers and other professionally related entities as well.

The Book Suggestions folder will continue to be in use for threads that organize book suggestions by genre, topic, etc. Before you create a new topic for book suggestions of a certain type, please check to be sure that there isn't already a thread for that genre/subject/topic by either scrolling through the threads in the book suggestions folder manually or by using the search bar to the right of the discussion board.

Thanks so much to Astrid for maintaining the old Master List that predated the use of the bookshelf for suggestions. We appreciate your work!

Kharoll-Ann wrote: "I also have been told to pick a topic in which there are work opportunities. Do you have anything to recommend for me about that? I'd like to study something related to sexualized violence and race..."

It really depends on your discipline and field. Jobs are scarce in academia these days no matter what you are researching. It's tough to strike a balance between doing something new and different that can make you an attractive candidate or being too radical in a way that those hiring may not want to take a risk on. As well as job availability: The more mainstream your discipline, and the more flexibility within that discipline, the more jobs available, but also the more people competing for those jobs. On the other hand, a less popular field will be less competitive but also have fewer jobs to go around.

Definitely take some time to meet with your mentors/advisors/professors, because they would know best about what is going on with your discipline once you're finished with your studies. But like I said, it's tough out there no matter what! I'm starting a PhD program in the fall and it's definitely a risky pursuit. I wish you the best of luck!

James wrote: "Ross wrote: "James Wrote: "friends who didnt care for it and they have nothing to do with the MRA and such. "

Still some (a lot) do and I suggest it might be nice to stand against such silly prej..."

There's a bit of a difference between voting for president based on gender and seeing a movie out of support for an anti-MRA agenda...

I think Ross's point was more along the lines of, if you are at all interested in seeing the movie, it is extra incentive to be one supporting a movie that has been opposed largely because of its all-female cast. If you have the money to spend on a night out and there's nothing else jumping out at you, go see the movie to stick it to the jerks who are avoiding it for sexist reasons. I don't think Ross said to go so far as to praise the movie just for these reasons, especially if you genuinely don't enjoy it.

Along the same lines, bashing a movie before seeing it, whether for sexist reasons or otherwise, seems disingenuous.

Evelia wrote: "It is still a bad movie and I feel sorry for the actors involved in it. They deserved a better movie. There are better movies out there to see."

Have you seen it? I've heard it's been getting pretty good reviews! I haven't had the chance and probably won't be able to see it in theaters but I'm looking forward to watching it when it's on tv in the future.

Hi Martin, thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Because there is already an announcement post about the Caitlin Moran interview videos, and the videos themselves have comment sections along with them, we recommend you share your thoughts in those areas. In the interest of organization, this is considered a duplicate topic. Please do repost in one of those areas!

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Moved to Miscellaneous

In order to keep those limited 6 spots for Announcements open for more recent info from Emma and the moderator team!

That's an interesting point, that sexual fantasies can exist independently of sexual orientation, which I think also lends itself to an understanding of sexual desire that goes beyond the standard binary construct. What does it mean for a cis het teenage girl reading slash fic to be enjoying those stories and fantasies despite the fact that she is not, and never will be, a gay man? Perhaps it lends itself to the development of more fluid sexualities (or at least a more fluid understanding of them).

That said, there are statistics that show higher than usual rates of LGBT membership on fanfiction and other transformative fandom websites. Specifically, as quoted in the OP, the percentage of members identifying as genderqueer on AO3 is higher than those identifying as male. That is pretty unusual!

Hey all, let's keep this more on topic, for example the direction that Robert and Ross are going in, talking about fandom in general, is more what I had in mind, rather than talking about interest in a specific fandom or celebrity (as much as we all do love Emma!).

I think there's (maybe?) a greater impulse to find community and additional media for those who do not see their own image or interests reflected in mainstream TV/film/literature... So I think that's a big reason why women and LGBT folks are more common in fanfiction and other transformative fandom activities.

Hi all!

This is a topic close to my heart! I have always felt that fandom was a radical space for women, LGBTQ, and other non-heteronormative communities... So to me, this is both an affinity interest issue and a feminist (intersectional) issue.

Vox is currently publishing a series on fandom: http://www.vox.com/2016/6/8/11889396/...

I've just read the article "Why we're terrified of fanficton" and it says a lot of things that have been on my mind with regards to fanfiction for a long time.

A couple of quotes that I appreciated in particular:

"Young women are so attacked for loving the media they love that it is a radical act for a young woman to love something unashamedly. And transformative fandom is the most radical act of all, because it reverses that 'lady thing to respectable thing' process. It takes a piece of media that may not have been designed for young women and makes it for young women."

"Transformative fandom is still overwhelmingly dominated by women; Archive of Our Own found that more of its users identified as genderqueer (6 percent) than as male (4 percent). Men who are involved in fandom are more likely to participate in curative fandom. They end up on Reddit, ranking every Doctor on Doctor Who. Women who are involved in fandom are more likely to end up on Tumblr, dream-casting a racebent version of Doctor Who."

I think there's a lot to discuss :) I'd like to keep this topic about issues and concepts of fandom IN GENERAL rather than talking about particular subfandoms specifically. Obviously examples are helpful and welcome.

Any other fangirls (or boys! or folks!) out there?

Welcome, all! We're glad to have you here! We hope you can join us for our July/August read, which was the first book to be chosen by members by a poll that Emma created. See the Announcements folder for more information!

Kenna: We're glad to have members from different age brackets around! New perspectives are wonderful. I think you'll find some other teenage members around and about, as well.

MeerderWörter wrote: "I think what we see, read and hear forms our behaviour, so I count sexuality as well. It is interesting that the Harry Potter fandom has so many fanfictions that are about sex, slavery and many thi..."

I'd argue that while there isn't any "on-screen" sex in Harry Potter, I think there is a very strong undercurrent of sexuality and hormonal urges, especially in Book 6.

And idk if I'd say that in fan fiction only the bad characters get to have on-screen sex. I've read plenty of steamy good character fanfics ;)

Although I do agree with Bunny in general that this is a pattern that we see in fiction in the wider arena.

One thing that is especially great about fan fiction is that it provides a space for non-heteronormative fiction writing. I think that's incredibly important and valuable.

Just wanted to pop in and remind everyone that there is one day left to vote in the poll!

We have almost 8,000 votes as of this time :)

Hi there!

There is already a post for Toronto meet-ups here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Please be sure to do a quick search using the bar to the right of the discussion board before posting to check if there is already a thread for that topic.

Additionally, I noticed that you posted a similar thread here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
In the interest of organization, especially in a discussion board for such a large community, we ask that members refrain from cross-posting, which can be considered spam. Please post new topics only once in the correct folder.

Thanks for helping us keep this community welcoming and navigable!

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Hi there!

There is already a post for Toronto meet-ups here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Please be sure to do a quick search using the bar to the right of the discussion board before posting to check if there is already a thread for that topic.

Additionally, I noticed that you posted a similar thread here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
In the interest of organization, especially in a discussion board for such a large community, we ask that members refrain from cross-posting, which can be considered spam. Please post new topics only once in the correct folder.

Thanks for helping us keep this community welcoming and navigable!

Locked and archived

If we didn't want to discuss some issues that are not immediately identifiable as related to feminism, we wouldn't have a Miscellaneous folder! ;)

Everyone's made a number of great cases for how this relates to feminism, anyway, and I think is very relevant for a number of other reasons, as well. Mainly the issue of xenophobia and immigration as disproportionately affecting women and children.

Moved to Book Suggestions folder

Frances wrote: "Katelyn-how does this work? Are all the add-on books also up for voting, or just the original ones? Also, why hide the results? If there were a few front-runners and my original choice was clearly ..."

Hey Frances! All the options, including the write-ins, are up for voting! Emma specifically enabled write-ins so that she can hear from all of you. Feel free to add your own, we just ask that you check the entire list for your idea, as we will remove duplicates.

As far as the results being hidden, I don't have a definitive answer for you. What I will say, though, is that because this is our first time holding a poll for our book choice, Emma is attempting to get a full picture of what members are interested in reading, so in that sense, she's enabling write-ins but also hiding the results so that people vote for what they actually want to read. It will inform our future voting process and perhaps inspire Emma's future picks as well! In any case, your input is valuable, and we will certainly take it into consideration when organizing our next vote, whether it's for Sept/Oct or a future choice.

I hope that answers your questions :)

I thought you all might be interested to know that we currently have over 5,100 votes in the poll for our July/August book selection. I don't think members can see the count, but it's pretty exciting so I wanted to share!

Let your friends who are part of the book club know to stop by and vote (I realize a lot of our members aren't necessarily active and may not log on to Goodreads very often)!

Hi there! Welcome to Our Shared Shelf!

Thanks for the recommendation. In the interest of organization, we do not allow individual threads for book suggestions. You can suggest it for the group by following the directions here: How to Suggest a Book

Additionally, you can suggest it in relevant book lists in the book suggestion folder. Those lists are based on subject matter, genre, etc. You can start your own list if you don't see one for a particular subject or genre already, but please check first, as we will remove duplicate threads.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on approaching graphic novel reading. I think that is very valuable advice for all of us here! Please feel free to post these ideas elsewhere in appropriate threads in the Persepolis discussion folder.

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