Citizenship tests

I'm wondering what they actually accomplish, and if they serve any sort benefit other than causing existing citizens to feel assured immigrants have effectively signed a sort of 'maintaining cultural homogeneity' contract.

The impression I have gotten is a lot of the questions are whether people believe, or at least can express awareness of the myths locals express about who they are. And to discreetly enforce English as standard language (after checking, the resource book is claimed to be will be available in 37 languages [which I recall complaints about - that there would be any concession to people who are not fluent in English], but have not found any information about whether the test is available in other languages).

Thinking I should go and perform some research before (or at least while) pontificating on the subject, I just went to Australia's citizenship test website and took a practice version, and failed. Not by as much as I expected, but a lot of my answers were guesses, and relatively few covered things which I had even been taught in school to forget.

What does it matter, in the context of citizenship, in which year Donald Bradman broke most existing cricket records? I am an Australian citizen by birth and cricket has never mattered to me as anything but a rare way to pass an afternoon in the street. How does it pertain to citizenship to know in which year Caroline Chisholm arrived in Australia?

When I went looking for information a couple of paragraphs previous, the first thing I found was a Wikipedia article which listed some sample questions and answers. A lot of those seemed like useful information about political and legal, official details, so I thought maybe I was being too hard on the test. Maybe it would actually be useful for someone seeking to become a citizen to know when ey might be required to serve jury duty, where government is located and how it is organised... then I went to the actual site, took a sample test and was given a series of questions that struck me as nearly entirely lacking in merit or relevance.

I've now gone and taken the practice test at the government's citizenship site and those seemed more in line with the sample questions that had previously placated me a bit... but the same questions each time I try it.

I am a bit suspicious by this point. Is the other site out of date? Unconnected with the official test? Connected, and drawing questions from the entire pool? I suppose I shall have to get a copy of the resource book to see.

Skimming through the resource book it looks a bit better than I feared, although that is mainly on the basis of flipping through and asking "Does this appear to say stuff about law and government in Australia presently?" So, not exactly the most comprehensive review.

So, still suspicious, and there are things I dislike definitely, but at least there is one potential purpose served that makes sense to me, by informing in a cursory, shallow and not especially useful way of a bit of how the country says it works.

Mm, got a bit lost, me.

Science fiction?

Lately I have been noticing people arguing over what science fiction actually is. That is hardly unusual; such arguments are a major preoccupation of just about any interest-community of people.

It does seem however that a lot of people are talking about two different things when they say science fiction. Science fiction as setting, where the story takes place in a 'recognisably science fictional' setting (presumably space, something otherwise future, or alternate history in most cases [contemporary invention or oddity as term for others?]), versus stories which include a not-impossible, not-part-of-present-social-reality idea as a fundamental component.

I've seen a few people over the years frame it as "Can you reskin the story for a different setting or genre?" and if the story can be so reframed, it is not science fiction.

I was going to suggest a couple of things. 1) That by analogy with other genres this could be made to look absurd (frex, that a historical drama could be given a contemporary setting with an analogous set of conflicts, relationships and resolutions this would not mean the original piece never was a historical drama to begin with). 2) That there are likely very few, if any stories which absolutely cannot be made to work in an analogous story that is not science fiction.

After some thought about how to make those arguments I became less sure. What about mystery stories? If there is not a mystery to be solved, then we do not have a mystery story, even if the plot centres on, say, a crime and the people investigating it (although there are certainly mysteries which play with structure by making whodunnit not the central puzzle or sometimes not a puzzle at all - the mystery is elsewhere in those, yes?). And mysteries are very versatile in setting, can be combined with just about any genre and still work, so long as they still have that mystery, that puzzle to be solved. That's precedent. Maybe idea science fiction can work in that sense, requiring a core of genre that is largely untranslatable (with exception perhaps made for the sibling genre fantasy). As for point two, well, I just don't know if it is true or not, and don't care to try and establish either way definitively, although I suspect it is untrue depending how 'very few' is defined.

Now I am wondering if this might be the case for other genres too, that there are stories which are incidentally of that genre and stories which are necessarily of that genre, depending whether it can be successfully translated to other genres or not. I suspect we'd mostly end up with multi-genre blends if we tried that.

Mm. What obvious thing is next for rambling about?

Fiction 'feminisms'

Two sorts of things which have been bugging that I think are probably meant to be pro-women.

1) Sitcoms, where a male character expresses something sexist in the presence of women, either who gets mad at him or who the presentation of the show promises will 'get even' with him off-screen. A lot of the time it looks like not 'sexism is bad, don't be sexist' but instead 'everyone knows this but don't say it in front of women because they don't like it' with a side of 'sexism is okay so long as there is comeuppance'.

This dynamic tends to feed the idea that men are socially disadvantaged relative to men because women hold power over them primarily in the form of controlling access to sex (as if sexual assault and rape were not prevalent, and as if these shows do not commonly depict men harassing and pressuring women into unwanted sex and humorous in an 'it's funny because it's true' sense), but also depicting women as generally bossy, controlling and otherwise humorously abusive toward men - showing a social fiction where men are obliged not to express what they consider right and natural and true in the presence of women because women (in this imaginary world) dominate society via various channels of interpersonal coercion.

Despite sending the superficial message of 'don't express sexism', I don't think this is a very feminist depiction.

2) Webcomics, mostly fantasy webcomics in my experience, which seem to be attempting to establish feminist credibility by having characters encounter a bunch of men acting in a strongly misogynistic, derisive way and then having them shown up / beat up / whatever by the heroic leads, often women.

Really, if someone wants to make a feminist / pro-feminist fantasy webcomic I would rather see an example of a world in which sexism is not a problem than one in which our heroes keep beating up the occasional gang of louts who think they're hopeless. As much as it can be satisfying to see expressed sexism flung back in someone's face, I really want to see more examples of worlds where sexism isn't even a problem people have to deal with. Especially since a lot of the time these happenings feel to me, not insincere, but as if these are staged events to establish for us that either our leads are truly virtuous because they won't stand for sexism or, if women, to clarify that they are indeed Strong Female Characters.

It bugs me, and I am having difficulty expressing why. Maybe because when this happens with female characters the only reason they succeed at standing up to the Token Sexist Jerks is because they have some kind of elite ability, and the way the confrontation is framed any random woman would have been cowed or worse - 'confronting sexism is for heroic or elite women only' message. Maybe because I come away with the feeling authors who do this think all sexism is of the overt sort and the way to confront it is by having a bigger stick. Maybe because I get frustrated that so often it seems people can't imagine the idea of a society which lacks sexism, racism, ablism, queerphobia, etc. and thus the only way to have a remotely humanist sort of work apparently is with these staged, stark black hat - white hat confrontations.

Yes, this one gets crossposted to my journal and feminist_rage.