2009-11-15 11:12 | Feminism in daily life.

I'm trying to type this out on low coffee.  A blanket "I hope you know what I mean" should be applied to this post.  Feel free to poke if you don't.

Last night, my boyfriend Josh and I were nattering about the word "slut", for whatever reason.  (I honestly can't recall how it came up.)  He was arguing that in his experience, the word is used in a gender-neutral sense.  I argued that not so much in mine.  (Reclaiming words did come up, but this post is long enough as it is.  *wry*)

I eventually found some words for it, explaining that in American culture, it's generally expected that men will have sex, whereas it's expected that women (the "good" women, anyhow) will not, so much.  Women are supposed to wait until marriage or love, and aren't generally supposed to be the pursuers.  Men are supposed to be the pursuers, to have the sexual experience, and so forth.  See also the difference in meaning between a woman being a virgin versus a man being a virgin.  So if men are expected to have sex whenever they can get it… how on earth would "slut", the pejorative term ("you have sex a lot and that's bad and you're bad for doing it"), even apply to men?  That seemed to get through.

Josh: But I'd really prefer it if it were gender-neutral.
Me: I'd prefer it if the word were meaningless.  Because seriously, why the fuck should anyone care about how much sex someone is getting?  I sure don't.
Josh: …point.

He made mention, disclaiming first that he didn't want to offend me, that you know… there are better things to get angry about than this.  (And yeah, I was getting angry.  "Sometimes it's frustrating, arguing for oppressive bullshit to be recognised.")  I didn't take offense, because I knew what he meant, and he wasn't trying to tell me not to be angry.  I responded with two things:

1) I understand that it doesn't seem to make sense on the outside to care so much about, for example, sexist terms, when there are larger things in the world that need addressing.  However, I believe that it is just as important to pay attention to fixing the small things as well as the big things.  It's like the difference between massive landscaping and pulling out some weeds.  Pulling out the occasional weed might not seem like a lot when compared to landscaping, but it's just as important, goddammit.  Teaspoons.

And in the case of sexist terminology, how can it possibly be unimportant to address language, which is not just how we express our thoughts, but how our thoughts are shaped?  (Chicken/egg, yay.)  Goodness.

1a) Not to mention, grassroots stuff helps me feel useful.  I'm one person; I cannot single-handedly stop rape from ever happening again.  I barely feel powerful enough to help change laws on even a local scale, for heaven's sake.  But I can poke at language and assumptions in those I talk to, and sometimes I'm heard, and sometimes there's change.  And that pleases me.

2) Okay really, like I can't both be concerned about sexist terms and work towards fixing the world on a larger scale?  C'mon.  Him: "Yeah, fair."

Josh: I feel like I just walked into the middle of a Livejournal conversation!
Me: *cracks up*

–

Related to point 1a:

So, Josh and I were sitting outside the bar, and one of the regulars came out to pop across the street for something.

Him: What's up, brothers?
Me: I've got tits.
Him: …what?
Me: I'm not a brother!  I'm like right here!
Him: *cracks up*  All right!

Later, he saw a couple that he was friendly with, so he went up and said "My brother, my sister, what's up?".

Me, to Josh: Hey, it worked!
Josh: He tends to pick up on things.

Poking at language stuff isn't always "Let us stop the conversation and consider the terms you chose to use".  Sometimes, joking does work.

–

And completely random:

Me: I use Spike TV as an example of how feminists couldn't possibly hate men more than men do.
Josh: *snorts*
Me: Sometimes I think that men get all shirty about feminists hating men because we're horning in on their market.

It was some commercial for a show on there, about some stunt guy that basically gets shot, rides his motorcycle at full speed into a wall, and so and so and so forth, before it went back to that one sport where two barefoot guys beat the shit out of each other.  Uhhh-huh.

2009-08-17 08:29 | A brief snippet.

Josh (local partner) and I were walking from my place to his friend's place, a 27-block walk.  (1.4 miles, according to Google Maps.)

X: I'm glad for this.  I've been wanting to go on a walk for ages.  Sucks that I'm more likely to do it with you around.
J: *sighs*  Yeah…
X: On the one hand, it makes things easier.  On the other, infinite kitty-rage about having to have you along just to go on a walk without being accosted.
J: I knew what you meant!
X: Oh yeah, I know, I just wanted to say "infinite kitty-rage".
J: *snort*

What's pleasant today is, I totally know he knew what I meant.  He's good like that.  I just really wanted to say "infinite kitty-rage" just then.

—

In random other news, it occurs to me all of a sudden that between original tags in LJ, all new tags in DW, and completely different tags in WP, crossposting will become a bit of a pain.  For people who don't like to organise.  Luckily, I do not know these people.

2009-05-11 15:21 | Marriage.

I had a mildly longer post typed out on this topic, but it had so many loose threads that would have needed addressing (privilege, disclaimers, &c) that blah.

Anyways.  The short, short version*.

My boyfriend and I briefly re-nattered about marriage yesterday.  We confirmed that yeah, neither of us are particularly interested in getting married.  Pragmatism may change our minds (finances, health stuff, his family), but yeah, not so much.  For much the same reasons, even – a general dislike for societal/patriarchal expectations.

Pleased cat is pleased.

* Entertainingly, a quote from Spaceballs, during the wedding scene.

2008-09-14 16:29 | Feminism does not exist to make me *happy*.

So I'm at the bar, and the DJ-person for karaoke is doing What U Gon Do by Lil' Jon & The East Side Boyz.  Every time the lyrics called for "nigga", he'd say "brotha" or "bitches".  That once that the lyrics said "faggot", he broke out and said "I can't even say that".

"Bitches" and "hos", though, were perfectly valid.

*sigh*

2008-04-03 20:45 | Planned Parenthood.

A brief note – if you're poly or bi or otherwise not-normal-by-societal-standards, and you need services that're provided by Planned Parenthood, I recommend the one at SE 50th and Franklin.  I went in for STI testing, since I'm dating someone new and I hadn't done it in a while.

• Their intake form has things like "What pronoun do you prefer?" and "What is your biological (at birth) sex?", which is amazing.  There may be better ways to phrase those that I'm not aware of, but they're a far cry from "Mr. or one of the three different titles for women" / "Male/Female", respectively.
• There's a sign on the wall next to the check-in desk that has "If you need an interpreter, please point to your language and one will be provided" in… 20? or thereabouts languages.  And it's not just for show: a family came in and requested Spanish, and the check-in person switched to fairly decent Spanish.
• The doctor was considerate – she helped me feel as comfortable as could be expected, she could tell when I was getting tense and checked to see whether I was okay ("I just get jumpy, it's a known issue"), and we had a nicely distracting conversation about the fact that they had a poster of the beach on the ceiling.
• …they had a poster of the beach on the ceiling.  I am still cracking up about that.
• No one batted an eyelash about my being poly or bi.  The lab person had to ask a new set of questions (aside from the intake form), since I was getting an HIV test done.  (Negative, by the way – woo!)T: How long have you been with your current partner?
  X: … Partners.  About 4 years each.
  T: *writes "4 years each" on the form*
  X: Heh.  I was worried it'd be weird…
  T: *laughs*  Nah, we've pretty much seen it all.
  X: Yeah, Portland, right?

  In fact, one question was whether I had a support structure, I suppose in case the result was positive.  I said ayuh, heh, the folk I'm dating.  She said that's definitely a huge benefit to dating multiple people.

  Yee!

Overall, a very pleasant visit to the local PP.  I approve, and am recommending them to (local) others.

2008-03-16 14:01 | Follow-up.

I spoke with bartender 2 yesterday.  She also says that said asshole is otherwise on the up-and-up.  I told her that "on the up-and-up" and "persistently unwilling to hear me say 'go away'" are mutually exclusive, to me.  I advised her that this guy she knows has a tendency to be an ass when he's been drinking, and that that is not okay.

I don't recall having seen this guy before.  However, now I'll know to look for him in the future, the better to avoid him.  We'll see.

2008-03-12 23:10 | Apparently, "no" is a negotiable statement.

I went out to the local pub for a bite to eat.  My partner is… elsewhere (Texas?), and this guy I've been dating wasn't in today, so I almost didn't go.  I'd been sick, though, and wanted a bit of company and something-like-food, plus I'd just locked myself out of the house, so I went to the pub.

While there, I got hit on by this drunk guy.  He would repeat that I'm gorgeous, I'm gorgeous (after which I'd say "Thank you"), but he didn't go much of anywhere with that.  I asked him straight-out what he was looking for.  And so (assume long gaps between his lines and mine; he was very drunk):

G: I think you and I could have something together.
X: I don't think so.
G: Why not?
X: I am… not particularly interested in you.  If nothing else, I'm already dating other people; I don't think I'd have the time for it.
G: You know… that's bullshit.
X: Which part?  The interested part, or the dating others part?
G: The last one.
X: You're absolutely right.  I am not interested in you in that way.
G: [after fifteen years of him saying "But I'm good-looking!"] That's still bullshit.
X: How so?
G: I think you're interested.
X: Er… no.
G: See, you just smiled!
X: *eyeroll*  At any rate, my food has finally cooled down, so I am kicking you out so I can eat.

This prompted him to resist being kicked out, by any means necessary.  I could hear him gearing up for the "You don't own this table!" argument, with the backups of "You shouldn't be mean, I'm a nice guy!" and maybe "I don't mean nothin'!".  Erg.  So, I grabbed my food and coat and moved to another table.  He followed me.  I said: "I am done with this conversation, I would like to eat my dinner, and I have asked you several times to leave.  I am done, so please go."  He made some stupid "Awright, jeez" motions and moved off.

I asked bartender 1 whether she knew this guy.  "Oh yeah, was he drunk and talkin' shit?  Oh damn!  I'll have a word with him next time."  I decided that… I should not substitute her trust for mine, and I still didn't trust him.  It's not a slam on her, rather I still felt off about it all, and I deny enough things without doing it again.  While eating, I saw bartender 2 grab a guy and go to the side door (where the asshole'd left), and I saw said asshole standing there.  I couldn't see what was going on.  I wanted to ask the bartender, but they were busy, so.  (I asked the guy she dragged with her, who said that he thought they'd have to kick him out, but that wasn't the case.  He seemed sort of confused.)

I left out the side door (it was closest, and it had been 10 minutes), and I got a few yards away when I looked back to check for traffic and saw him waiting at the front door.

…

I called my partner and had him be on the phone with me.  I waited on someone's partially obscured front porch (one-way viewing effect) until he went back inside, then I went home as quickly as possible.  I am still mildly freaked out.

Things from this:

* I am very proud of myself for being direct and not feeling like I had to play nice to the guy.
* Regardless, I could do better.  As much as it galls me to say it, the asshole was right to call bullshit the first time – I wasn't interested, and my dating status has nothing to do with it.
* I also could've stopped being polite earlier on.  I knew where it was going, after all.  Stupid habits.
* I did not substitute another's trust for mine, and that is five kinds of awesome.
* I should have asked the second bartender what had been going on.  I could have waited, but I wanted to get home while I could.
* Go the hell me for not going directly home until I saw that he'd gone back inside.

Tomorrow, I will get incredibly enraged that this is socially acceptable behaviour.  I will also have plenty to say on the ways he could have got me, if I were younger.  Likely, I will also include a bit about how he is absolutely not some statistical outlier.  Today, I'm going to go take some NyQuil and pass out.

2008-02-20 13:08 | IRL o'clock.

I'm a good feminist today, rah rah.  I was talking with my coworker about the case I posted about yesterday, where a guy killed his 17-year-old ex-girlfriend, then himself.

C: Well, that's hardly surprising.  Look at what society tells us – to want more than we can have, to be jealous…
X: …that women are less…
C: No no, I mean back from that.
X: How can you go back from that?  Jealousy is wanting to keep what you have, right?
C: Yes.
X: Well, part of the societal message is that women are, among other things, property.
C: But you're breaking it down too far.
X: No, I'm not.  Part of the message is that women are less.  It's not some sort of after-thought.  Besides, I'm female, I can't exactly not pay attention to that part*.

And then we moved over to discussing how marriage only became about love in roughly the 1950s.

* W-ell, technically, I could, but you know what I mean.

2008-01-28 02:48 | Two snapshots.

I was going to get defensive about not immediately baring my soul here.  But you know, I'll post or I won't, no sense beating myself up over it.  Because seriously, since when has giving myself infinite shit over something ever worked for anything other than making me feel guilty?

Right.

1) I was reading the Sandman GN The Kindly Ones today.  It is my least favourite in terms of art, but I like the story itself, and this GN is the penultimate one in the story arc, so I reread it anyways.  There's one scene, where there are three older women and one younger (sort of) one, exchanging stories and such.  One panel is a close-up of a rose, with speech around it – to indicate, I suppose, this conversation is happening, but come, let us focus on this rose.

I stopped reading for a minute, and just looked at the rose.  For all that I dislike the art in this GN, I found myself unable to look away, because a thought entered into my head and wouldn't go away – so.  There are graphic artists, as it were, who sketch and ink and detail these images.  And I'm wondering… well.

All the work that went into this rose, I could see it – people bent over desks and those drawing tables, sketching the scenes, inking the lines, making sure everything is in place.  But there's this one curl, in the leaf on the rose stem, and I wondered, in all this designing and finishing and work, did someone else look at this and see the perfect beauty of that curve?  Did someone deliberate over that, was someone aware of the potential, in that one curve of leaf?  At any point, did someone stop and really see what they were drawing and inking?

This is a common theme, in my head, wondering if people really see things.

2) My partner's cat, Peaches, is very sick, and today, his sister and I (he's in Boston for work) drove to Vancouver to take Peaches to the vet.  Background: I am easily overwhelmed by stimuli – it's like I have a difficult time prioritising input, so it's all important; alternately, or simultaneously, too much input creates that feedback like you'd get from a microphone, and I short out.  Regardless.  The radio is on, Peaches is meowing sometimes and shifting often, Robin is on the phone, and there are the sounds of the highway, and I'm getting nauseated from all the input.

I note that this is a personal weirdness thing, not a fault thing.

So we're driving down this unlit quasi-highway, and I'm breathing, trying to let the input wash over me and not let it touch me.  In my desperation, I look out the window, and I see…

I see that we're driving alongside a body of water.  Where we are is dim, but across the way is a city; there is eerie light on the water.  The trees, bare and bereft, are reflected in the water.  It is a perfect moment – the trees and the light, the water and the dark.  It holds such… promise, and nuance, such depth of feeling, that all I want is to pull over and sit by the water.  To accept the dark and the light, the noise of the highway and the fear of the dark.  Take it all in, let it wash over, let it go.  Exist, in that perfect moment.

It occurs to me, on occasion, that I don't make enough time for beauty in my life.

2007-12-31 00:36 | There may or may not be further thoughts on the morrow.

I got to meet a bunch of bloggerfolk, including Jill from Feministe.

…

*fansquee*

2007-05-28 10:22 | In which I rant about rape.

Somehow, the subject of feminism came up yesterday when I was chatting with B, my live-in partner.  (That makes him sound like a sofa-bed.)  He asserted, partially tongue-in-cheekily, that the world is run by a small group of rich white men, and he's not one of them.  There's The Top Of The Pack, and then waaay later on the power scale, there's men, women, non-whites, and so forth.

Somehow, this turned into me ranting about rape.  I broke it down to chat style for ease of reading.

X: Recently, there was an item in the news wherein which a woman who was throwing up due to being so drunk was prevented from leaving the building and was gang-raped.  The responses to this were normal – "She probably deserved it.  She got herself drunk.  She got herself raped.  Oh, those poor boys!"

X: Like the Duke lacrosse thing – a bunch of frat boys hired a prostitute for their kegger, she files rape charges, and all anyone can talk about, aside from at the feminist blogs I read, is oh, those poor boys!  Meanwhile, her personal information – her full name and a picture of her – is plastered in the media.

X: And what other crimes are there (crimes that involve two people, I mean, a victim and a perp) where the victim is told that they were probably lying, or they were asking for it, and oh those poor perps?  I mean, if we left our front door open and we were robbed, we'd be called fucking stupid, but we still would have been robbed.  It's still a crime.

X: FURthermore, about the lying part, you know what the stats are for "those crazy bitches" lying about rape?  The same as any other two-party crime.  In the same range, anyways.  But oh, those lying bitches.

X: And where is this coming from?

B: … I hope you don't expect me to answer that.

X: I think that was rhetorical.

–

* Rape — Sexual Assault at the US DoJ's Office for Victims of Crimes site.

* Sailorman at Alas, A Blog has a neat breakdown of types of rape charges.

* Of course, when the victim in question is male, rape is suddenly a traumatic event.  To quote a commenter, "Afterall, rape of a man is a terrible, traumatic crime. Rape of a woman/gay man/child is your average Tuesday."

* That item in the news I mentioned.

* And to end this on a really terrible note, from London: "A teenage girl who claims she was gang raped by three 13-year-old schoolboys was overweight and would have been "glad of the attention", a barrister told a jury."

…

Okay, I can't end there.  Check out the cutest kitten in the world.

2007-01-07 12:55 | Free-floating pissed-offedness.

I'm dubious about the idea of reading copious amounts of feminist literature when PMSing hard.  I'm also a bit annoyed with myself for using the phrase "PMSing hard" ever, but today it is true.  Oh well.

Mostly, after a day of reading almost nothing but feminist stuff (apart from email, LJ, and SQL help forums), I find that I'm a huge mix of frothy rage and conflicting feelings.

The rage manifests itself in all sorts of ways.  I want to spend a year only experiencing female artists.  I want to become a full-on lesbian and never again let a man within twenty feet of me.  I want to replace everything I own with equivalent woman-made items.  I want to set people on fire for ever suggesting ever ever that a rape is the woman's fault ever.

Yesterday, I passed a guy on the way home from the store who called me a bitch because I didn't respond to his "Hello!".  I didn't hear him – I was, in fact, reading my book – until a split second before he got vituperative.  (Tasty delayed hearing.)  When I was in NY with my boyfriend for my girlfriend's wedding, I got catcalled when walking around the neighborhood near our hotel, and yelled at when I didn't respond positively.  I ended up having a conversation with a nearby male pedestrian, who explained that they were only being friendly.  I didn't have the time or the inclination to get into it, but my two responses to that sort of thing are:

1) In what fucking universe is shouting dirty things about my body considered "being friendly"?
2) Why do they feel entitled to my attention?  Why is it an expected thing that I should respond?

And I want to do something to express my feelings about the fact that men will never understand what that feels like.  It feels like my purpose in life is to be on display for men, is what it fucking feels like.  What's worse is when the occasional man will get pissy with me about feeling unsafe around men: "It's rude of you to assume that Joe Random might be a danger to you!"  I used to argue with said men, but nowadays, I'm more inclined to say, "If you listened to women for a half-second, you'd know precisely why we feel this way.  So fuck off."

In a world where a staggering percentage of rapists are men, where all harassers I've ever encountered are men, I'm just not that interested in feeling sorry for them.

The worst part about all this is that I don't feel hatred, I feel incredibly sad.  When someone says "Don't tempt men by wearing a short skirt!" (or idiocies to that effect), I'm angry that people actually think that, damn straight, but I'm also sad that the speaker holds men in such low regard.  I don't think that most "But men are dogs!  You should know better than to tempt them/trust them/come within 50 yards of them!" people realise that what they're doing is vastly insulting men.  They're essentially calling them incapable of being civilised.  And yet, feminists are the man-haters.  It's fucking terrible.

(Of course, then there's the irony that the people who spout the "Don't tempt them!" garbage are usually also the ones to get upset that women feel unsafe around men.  Mmhmm.)

The silliest thing makes me sad, though – I read a lot of science fiction, and a decent chunk of that is about first contact situations.  The thought that always runs through my head when reading these stories is, "Half of our species routinely ignores, oppresses, rapes, and kills the other half just because of our gender, and we think someone else would want to talk to us??  Fuck!"

Assume generalisations where you feel it's necessary to do so.  It's a rant, I'm not always interested in being meticulous in my most/some/not all language.