Boys & Books

Warning: Oddly, this is the first post I've written that I'm actually self-conscious about, and the first to come with apologies. What am I apologizing for?

Oh. Nevermind. Got it.

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What I love about having an amazing, brilliant, driven, ass-kicking bunch of friends is that I can go, “So… Law School, what do you think?”

…And Jenn the Ph.D. social psych student goes, “Yea, I have a study book for that. Let me have my friend send it over.”

…Alec the I-just-finished-a-1500-page-novel- and-now-I’m-going-to-grad-school goes, “Thought about doing that. Read Scott Turow’s One L. It’ll give you an idea of what the hell you’re getting into.”

…Ph.D. Bill (ever cynical), “I used to oversee those on test-taking days. Most of the people who take them are idiots. You’ll do fine.”

…And Ph.D. candidate-at-Oxford Julian, “As long as you’re not doing it to be a scum-sucking lawyer, but pursuing it for academic reasons, I think you’d be really good at it. Really.”

…And MA-Stanford-just-accepted-kick-ass-writing-job-at-Bioware (Yea. Neverwinter Nights. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. That gaming company) Patrick’s sister has taken the LSAT and he’s like, “Are you good at logic problems? No? Better work on that. “

I just love these people.

So I’m reading Turow’s One L. At this point, I’ve decided to take the LSATs in June as a definite. That’s all I actually have to decide for now. The rest can wait until after the results. From what I’ve heard, if I even want to get in anywhere OK, I need to score in the 90th percentile.

You can fail a fifth of the test and still get in the 90th percentile.

The plan is to spend Sunday mornings going over LSAT practice tests, and teaching myself logic problems; which, yes, I suck at.

Like this:

Buses 1, 2, and 3 make one trip each day, and they are the only ones that riders A, B, C, D, E, F, and G take to work.

Neither E nor G takes bus 1 on a day when B does.
G does not take bus 2 on a day when D does.
When A and F take the same bus, it is always bus 3.
C always takes bus 3.

Traveling together to work, B, C, and G could take which of the same buses on a given day?
(A) 1 only
(B) 2 only
(C) 3 only
(D) 2 and 3 only
(E) 1, 2, and 3

My buddies tell me the trick is scratch paper: make a diagram. Write it all out. I’ll be spending the next five months getting over my trepidation regarding questions like this one.

I tend to think I’m bad at testing, because what they’re testing is how you’ve been taught to think, and I need to teach myself to switch modes when I’m test taking, and - if I score well - when I’m in law school. Because I don’t want to become a scum-sucking lawyer.

This is a tool. I’m pursuing an education, another language, not making this my way of life. It’s a tool and a language created by old, white, rich men, and not knowing it or how it works when they’re using this tool to tell me and my friends what to do with our bodies, and how others use our bodies, pisses me off.

That’s the passion that’s driving me toward it.

I have no illusions: I know they’ll try and beat all the passion and fire out of me, and get me down to cold, logical fact, and I know I’ll have to portion out and box off the cold/rational side and box off the “me” side just to stay sane. But if I can get through this test, and the admissions process, and the first year of law school… then I’ll know another language, I’ll know that heavy-handed, coldly logical language that people use against me when I go off on my tirades, and I’ll be able to speak back to them in that language.

That’s the drive.

It’s funny, because thinking about testing got me to thinking about my lazy academic history.

I remember that it seemed to take me forever to learn how to read. I was incredibly impatient with it. I was always in the second-level reading group in the first grade, never the first, and it frustrated me. My mom says the reason I was so frustrated was because I was ready to learn how to read long before I was finally taught to.

My parents both worked, so our social time together was reserved for dinner and nightly movie watching, and though I have some fond memories of being read to, it didn’t happen often, due to the sheer logistics of getting everything else done to make the household run.

Though I do have some memory of my French grandmother reading to me, she’s always been really self-conscious of her accent (one of my biggest regrets is that my grandmother didn’t speak to us in French the entire time we were with her during the day – she was trying so hard to be a Good American, and was so intent on speaking English well that the only French I learned from her were the cuss words), so that didn’t happen often either.

Instead, I struggled over impossibly dense marks on the page in the first grade, fretting and fuming at my brain’s inability to make the groups of letters into sounds, and the sounds into words that made sense.

That was when Matt came into the picture. Matt was admitted at the beginning of the school year into kindergarten and then bumped up a grade a couple weeks later because he could already read.

When we had one of those “story-reading-times” in the first grade, it wasn’t the teacher reading to us – it was Matt, this little kindergarten kid who was reading us a fourth-grade level book.

Oh, you better bet I was drawn to him.

Matt and I became good friends in the 3rd grade, when we were both put into an “experimental” 2nd and 3rd grade “split” class. The idea was to put these really “smart” 2nd and 3rd graders into one class and have them work together to be better.

By then I was a 3rd grader, reading at a 7th or 8th grade level. The first thing my dad said when we went to the orientation about this “experimental” class was, “This sounds more like you’re putting really smart 2nd graders with 3rd graders who’ll teach them. How can they be at the same level? The 3rd graders will fall behind.”

The class only lasted that year, likely for above-mentioned parent complaints, which were reiterated by most of the other 3rd-graders parents.

But that’s when me and Matt got attached at the hip. I found the smartest person in the whole class and just sort of imprinted on him. He, and most of the other students in the class, were already taking “Gifted” classes, these “special” before-class classes that only brilliant kids who tested really well “got” to join. I was always very clear that these classes weren’t for me, likely because I felt that I’d had so much trouble learning to read (once I learned, there was no going back, but I can still feel the frustration about it, to this day).

After writing up yet another story about something-or-other in my spare time, for fun, and showing it to my teacher, my 3rd grade teacher recommended that I take the “Gifted” test.

I remember being flattered at the idea, but secretly not believing that I was that smart. After all, that would mean I was as smart as Matt, and that was, like, impossible.

So I went to this big middle-school cafeteria in the area with about a hundred or so other kids, and took the kid-version of these sorts of comprehension tests.

I remember that I had fun doing it, because it was sort of this, “I’m not as smart as those Gifted kids, who cares how I do? This is fun,” thing. I wasn’t really all that invested in it. As much as I wanted to be on par with Matt, there was this part of me that believed the dynamics of our friendship would suffer, as if me being as smart as him (or, fuck, smarter?), would mean he wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore.

Funny, how early you pick up that idea.

When we got the test scores back, they looked really high to me. My parents went over them with my teacher. In the three areas, I scored 95th, 96th and 90th percentile (90th was in math).

My teacher, however, explained that, as the letter regretfully informed us, getting into “Gifted” classes meant you had to score in at least the 98th percentile in two categories and the 96th in the third.

I will never forget that piece of paper (though I’ve since thrown it away, thank god). I just sort of stared at it like, “Well, I’m a lot smarter than I thought I was, anyway. Just not brilliant.”

And there was some relief in that.

Back to hanging out with Matt.

We’d go into the library, and he’d just pull out books at random. I seriously think he’d read every book in the library.

“Have you read this? You should read this. Have you read this one? It’s about aliens on Mars. Have you read this? You have to read The Phantom Tollbooth. What about this one? Do you know the Redwall books?”

I couldn’t keep up with him. It was great.

As we got older, kids started making fun of me and Matt for hanging out together (“Are you guys going out? Why aren’t you going out?”) and he was a little, dorky guy, so the passive, effeminate "not a real boy" thing came up. By the fifth grade, he’d ditched me for playing kickball with the boys. I tried getting along with some female friends, but they turned their backs on me and made fun of me for reading too much… and then Aryan Adam started paying attention to me.

He was new my 4th grade year, and I was nuts about him the whole time. He actually noticed me in the 5th grade, when I was no longer hanging around with Matt. He liked reading my stories, he enjoyed my book recommendations, he was even willing to hang out with me and, like, talk to me. When I bumped into him years later, he described us as being “friends.” This was the guy who dated every girl in the fourth grade but me. The guy who announced he was “going out” with Angela the new girl.

“She just transferred here two weeks ago,” I said, “you don’t even know her!”

“Well, yea, that’s why I’m going to go out with her.”

So I spent a year being a beautiful boy’s intellectual whore.

There are worse sorts of whores to be, I suppose.

I switched schools between the fifth and sixth grade, and sixth grade was pretty much just the worst thing ever. Ever.

I started putting on puberty weight, discovered I needed glasses (too much reading), was advised that I had an overbite that needed to be corrected, and got hooked up with braces and headgear, and… entered a new school. The one I’d been to before was the one across the street from my grandmother’s house, slightly more diverse than the one in rural Battle Ground where I ended up once my parents deemed I was old enough to stay home on my own and look after my younger brother and sister.

All of the sudden, I was surrounded by Apostolic Lutherans (when the women who follow this religion turn 16, they get married and drop out of school because it’s God’s will that women bear as many children as possible – they have a big colony out in Battle Ground) and lots and lots of white trash boys who would later grow up to work pumping gas at the local Texaco.

Being smart was a liability.

I had a horrible misogynist of a teacher three years away from retirement who found the fact that all the boys in the class teased me to be really funny. I had chew and Tabasco sauce dumped in my hair, and had story notebooks and regular books stolen by these amazingly asshole boys who thought watching me run after them was really fucking funny, and the one time I stood up for myself and tripped a guy who was playing catch with one of my personal items (again, all of the male teachers ignored this “boys will be boys” behavior on the playground), I was summoned to the principal’s office and berated for my “lack of remorse” when confronted with the bruised knee of the asshole I tripped.

You better bet your ass I had a lack of fucking remorse.

I was disappointed there wasn’t any blood.

I launched into a really tearful, passionate, pissed-off response to the vice principle about the lack of supervision and discipline from asshole male teachers, to which she responded with an equal lack of remorse for my predicament. Over and over again, I was told that I shouldn’t have taken matters into my own hands. I should have told the teachers. But I did tell the teachers, I told them over and over and over -- but I was the smart fat girl that everybody made fun of, and those male teachers had made fun of girls just like me when they were in middle school. They could give a fuck.

I got detention.

The first time I’d ever been in trouble at school in my whole life. I was terrified to tell my parents. But I had underestimated my parents:

They were very proud of me.

So I had my year of hell, the year when you’ve got a teacher who treats you like a fat idiot and couldn’t give a shit about encouraging you to do anything.

And then I got into the 7th grade, and started to meet my people.

Like all turning points in my life, it started with a boy and a book…..

In this instance, it was Ryan the beautiful ADD boy who was always nursing some injury he’d gotten in his karate class. I got assigned a seat next to him and spent the entire class trying not to look at him, he was so damn pretty. When I broke out my copy of Mariel of Redwall, it was all over.

His eyes lit up. “You like Brian Jacques? He’s great! I met him once!”

After that, Ryan never shut up, and we traded Redwall books back and forth. He drew up the map for the first fantasy novel I wrote. Through him and a bit on my own, I found Renny the redheaded wanna-be theatre-diva, too smart and cynical for her own good; Heidi the math wiz who planned on being an architect; Jon the wanna-be comic book artist; Shannon the Smart Christian; Nicole the Smart Mormon who could verbally dominant anybody; and the Other Ryan, the one who mostly seemed to hang out with us because he was hot on Heidi.

And we had a gang.

I started to take refuge in not being smart. That is, not trying to excel in class. I picked up lessons from Heidi, who was very careful not to talk too much about the fact that she was acing all of her classes without really studying. Like me, she was too tall and carried around too much weight to be fashionable.

So I learned to be quieter, to not be so obvious that I’d rather spend my recess reading. And I avoided the threesome of “dorky” guys who headed up the chess team and went to this school’s version of Gifted classes. Best to just shut up. I wasn’t really brilliant anyway, I figured, just drawn to really brilliant people.

As for high school, I didn’t really go to high school, to be honest.

And yes, I’m happy about that.

The first year of high school I discovered the drama department, and boys. I also discovered that classes were boring, everybody was an idiot, and none of it really interested me. So sophomore year I got a magic, undated “Pass” from my theater teacher that I’d present to all of my teachers. It said, basically, “Kameron is needed in the theater this period.”

Easy, easy out. I don’t remember much of my sophomore year, at least as far as the actual classes are concerned. I spent the whole year at the theater, bullshitting, working on sets, practicing lines.

At the end of Freshman year, I was playing “The Chancellor” in an adaptation of a Twilight Zone episode, and condemning a librarian to death for crimes against the State. The guy they brought in to play the librarian, Psycho, was somebody I’d heard about around school. In fact, I heard his name so much I assumed he was one of the popular kids. He tried out for the play on a lark, and I later learned he stuck with it because he saw me auditioning for The Chancellor and was totally hot on me and wanted to act opposite me.

He was a year ahead of me, turned out to be captain of the chess team, on the debate team, and involved with pretty much every single academic-minded club in the school. He was always bragging about IQ tests, and how stupid jocks were.

He was also an absolutely atrocious actor, could never remember his lines, and caused me extreme irritation. I’d walk off the stage and not give him another thought. I was full of my own promise. People told me I oozed theater talent. I was much lauded as the next theater diva.

In the mean time, this being high school, and theater, there were runarounds with boys. I got the expected offer from the resident male theater slut, whose “mission” it was to sleep with all of the incoming female freshman who were still virgins (seriously). Then there was EK, who I was pretty certain was actually gay, but who cornered me backstage one day to profess his undying interest and attraction to me, and though he was physically my type, he had absolutely no drive or passion for anything at all, and I found the idea of going out with him really boring.

Psycho, however, was slowly making inroads, offering to drive me home, asking if we could practice lines together, bragging about all of his accomplishments, enlightening me about the nature of the universe and the complexities of this, that, and the other thing. He had also just been adamantly rejected by a dishwater blond with the IQ of a sponge.

He would later marry a redhead with the IQ of a sponge. They are well-suited. Funny, it was just the sort of person he was looking for.

Anyhow, seeing how much time I was spending with Psycho, a good friend of mine, Jem, hauled me out behind the theater, burst into tears, and declared his undying love.

How, exactly, does one deal with this?

I actually admire him for doing it, now, ten years later, because it was a really brave thing. He was terrified that if he told me, we wouldn’t be friends anymore, but he was so crazy about me, he went for it. Well. We stayed friends. Unfortunately, he didn’t give me up, and several years ago he gave me a really, really sweet speech about how you’re supposed to marry your best friend, and I was his best friend, and blah blah. Sweet. But, again: he had no drive, no passion. Hanging out with him just didn’t fire me up to be better, to live. So we’re still friends. He has since married a woman who is a much better fit, and they’re doing very well.

Psycho, however, being a psycho, had lots to say about passion, and living, and Great Things and Great Deeds. Problem was (and because I was very, very young, I didn’t know any better) that I didn’t know how to differentiate the talkers from the doers. I was always very clear as to what I wanted in a partner, and I learned later that he’d clued into that from the start, and created a whole other person to woo me (yes, he admitted this). This is the guy who brought me to his house and opened up the book of Greek art and said, “Real women look like this. This is what you look like.”

Warning! Warning!

Unfortunately, by the time I realized how fucked up he was, I was too physically and emotionally invested.

By the time I realized that he had a deep and abiding hatred for the women in his family (his mother, his grandmother. Which explained why he needed to pretend I was a goddess and not a real woman, as he hated real women. Biggest lesson learned from this relationship: never, ever get involved with a guy who hates his mother), I didn’t have the strength to fix things.

I should have known better.

Anyhow, by the end of sophomore year, I had taken and passed a college-entrance test to the local community college, which would offer me both high school and college credit. So I ditched high school my junior year and spent it at the community college taking classes with one of the best bunch of history teachers I’ve ever met. They were amazing.

By January of my senior year, I had enough credits to graduate, and moved up to Bellingham with Pyscho. I applied to get into Western Washington University, and went to speak with a councilor there who told me, frankly, that no, I couldn’t get in because I was missing a math class. I’d taken the SATs without studying, without much thought of any kind, and randomly answered pretty much all of the math questions. I ended up with an 1130, which wasn’t great (to be honest, I was just amazed that I “passed”), but was enough to get into a local school, so I didn’t bother retaking it. I felt it was the right sort of score for me: intelligent, but not brilliant.

So I ended up at the local community college in Bellingham for a semester. Due to Life Bullshit, poverty, and stuff already discussed here, I returned back to Battle Ground, alone, after about 6 months, and then spent the next year recuperating, finishing up my Associate’s Degree at the community college, and applying to colleges in Alaska.

Alaska.

2.5 GPA to get in.

Ha. Ha.

No, I didn’t stress about college. I wasn’t there for the fancy degree. I wasn’t brilliant, after all.

And two days into the semester at U of Alaska in Fairbanks, a cutie down the hall walks into my room, looks at the books on my shelf and goes, “Dude, you read Robert Jordan?”

We were connected at the hip for a year. He was the anti-smart guy. He was a slow but eager reader (dyslexic); a motorcycle riding, beer drinking, marijuana smoking (biggest bone of contention between us), big-hearted guy who lusted after me knowing full well I wasn’t the marrying kind, and we had too little in common to base anything long-term on. Still, we had our brief affair, decided to be friends, and then spent hours on the indoor climbing wall at the rec. center. He taught me how to hotwire a car, taught me companionable silence, and taught me never to get involved with a guy who has a girlfriend, cause when she moves up to Alaska and finds out (a year later), that you had a brief affair with him, she’ll threaten to kill you, and you’ll never see any of them ever again.

Good life lesson.

Most of my other obsessions that first year in Alaska revolved around that circle, revolved around me pretending not to be smart, dressing down, drinking a lot of beer. Being too smart scared those Alaska boys, so I shut up a lot, and enjoyed hoping on motorcycles, and considered getting a leather jacket, and learned how to roll cigarettes. Working on a fishing boat sounded really fun.

All of this wackiness culminated just before the girlfriend’s death-threat, when I was drunkenly pawing after one of the boys’ circle, and he said, “You realize how much better you are than us, right? You’re so much better than us.”

And, as much affection as I have and had for them, and as much as I learned (I also spent a good deal of time with the girlfriend learning how to shoot a rifle – yea, she’s a better shot than me), I had to admit that it was true. They were my detour. They were my vacation. I could foolishly adore all of them, because I saw no long-term future with any of them. It was a moment.

I adore them still, for that moment.

Alaska grades were a 3.7 or 3.8 (there wasn’t much else to do in Alaska but schoolwork and beer drinking, punctuated by the occasional road trip and bike ride out to the pond). I didn’t graduate with any honors because my community college average was something like a 3.4 or a 3.2, and when they averaged grades from all the schools together, I came out with a 3.4999.

I really didn’t care. I was just amazed to graduate.

Then I went to Clarion.

I’d been rejected by this writer’s workshop when I was 18, and had no real hope that I’d get in this time, but I had a writing instructor in Alaska who encouraged me to apply, so I figured, what the hell, why not.

I was initially put on the “waiting list” for Clarion West… Which I thought was appropriate.

Smart, sure. Just not brilliant.

It fit my idea of myself.

Luckily, somebody else accepted to West decided to go to Clarion East, so I got into West.

Me. My writing. My brain. Whoever the hell I was, I got in there.

And then I met these fucking amazing people.

Everybody had some kind of graduate degree. Some guy had an MA from Stanford. Another just finished a BA at Yale. Everybody was in Ph.D. programs. One of them was a fucking doctor. We immediately began giving out book recommendations and talking about the authors who were going to be instructing us.

I felt like the biggest, stupidest rural hick ever to wander into Seattle.

I was standing in this room with these absolutely fucking amazing people, wearing my baggy cargo pants and dressing in layers like some kind of skater, telling people I was, uh, going to the University of Alaska. Uh. Yea. 2.5 GPA to get in. Ha. No. Didn’t apply anywhere else. Didn’t want to go anywhere else. When they all started comparing SAT scores in the 1430-1500 range, I quietly slunk out of the room.

But when they started talking, I could talk back. I could have intelligent discussions with them. Yea, I was out of practice cause I didn’t hang out with people like them, but you can’t change who you are. It doesn’t go away.

And when we started producing written work, I was keeping pace with them. This was the shit I knew. Writers? Yea. I do that. I know this. They had all of these amazing credentials, and I could keep up with them on the writing part. Sure, each of us was better at something than the others, and worse than some others, but we were well matched.

Julian (now at Oxford), in response to one of my week two stories, said “You just keep raising the bar, don’t you?”

I had never been in a room full of people who liked that I was smart. Who were secure enough in themselves and their own abilities not to care. I had never been in a room of people who were just as dorky as I was, but not in an in-your-face-captain-of-the-chess-club way. They were smart in a bookish way, in thoughts about stories, about people, about the way things worked. They were good at questions. At introspection. They were passionately engaged in an effort to know themselves, and, by extension, figure out everybody else around them.

Without any bullshit, I can tell you that was the biggest turning point for me. It was me, in week two, realizing I could hold my own with this incredible group of people. Amazing, amazing people. I’d spent my life learning that being smart got you tobacco spit in your hair and got boys to hate and menace you. I didn’t realize there were groups of smart people who’d actually accept me.

So when my grandfather suggested I go to grad school (and said he’d pay for it – I paid for undergrad with student loans) – I wrote to my Clarion buddies in New Zealand and South Africa and asked for advice (if I was going to continue with school, I’d do it overseas: a school’s location has always been more important to me than the school. There’s more to learn outside a classroom than in it). I wrote up a BA dissertation on student violence in South Africa, and decided that’d be where I’d go.

The best part about lobbing out that idea to this incredible group of people is that they didn’t laugh at me. They didn’t say, “You’re smart, but not brilliant. You can’t do that.”

They took it as a matter of course.

When I finally turned in my MA dissertation in South Africa, all I wanted to do was pass. I thought I was the worst student in the entire department. My buddy Julian, the department star, the Clarion buddy who would drag me into his room full of books in Durban and say, “Have you read this? Read this? You really must read this one. What do you think of this one?” read the diss. before I turned it in and said, “You do realize this is quite good, don’t you?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t.”

When the MA came back, it came back with a “First.” Everything above a 75% is a First Class mark. Granted, I got the lower end of that: the 75%. But sweet god, the dissertation got a fucking First! (I would later discover that because I’d done a half coursework/half dissertation MA, the grades for my coursework and diss. were averaged in order to get my overall MA grade – which was only a 72%. Still. A First on my diss.!).

When Julian’s diss. came back, I learned… he’d gotten a 75% too.

Par for the course.

3 points behind my brilliant boy buddy.

Perfect.

However, though I ended up with a decent mark, the experience on the way to getting that mark pretty much clobbered me. I had a violent aversion to one of the Old White Male professors who pissed me off (hence the reason my coursework marks weren’t as high), I was in a very, very foreign country (South Africa is not England) with a tropical climate (I’d just come from Alaska), I was truly living by myself for the first time (in a cockroach-invested flat whose owners were corrupt and didn’t pay their water bill on several occasions and whose tenets were often involved in domestic violence disputes in which the police were called), and I was poor as all hell and lived mainly on Indian pastries, peri-peri and rice, and bacon and egg sandwiches. As said, dealing with all of this stress meant serious binge eating sessions the likes of which I have not seen since, vast consumption of alcohol (this was partly social. South Africans are big drinkers), and an affection for those Peter Styvesant 30-packs of cigarettes.

And now I’ve stumbled into Chicago, fell here with just the same “hell, why not” attitude with which I’ve decided to take the LSATs. Chicago felt right, though it made no logical sense, no logical sense in the same way that none of my decisions ever make logical sense. And I’ve got Jenn here, another one of the amazing-wonderful Clarionites, and there’s this job that went from “temp” to “fly around the country working on these million-dollar projects” and work colleagues telling me that I channel god when I put in minimum effort and spend most of my day blogging.

And I suspect I have a shitload of uptapped potential that I’m not doing a damn thing with.

And the question is: what am I going to do about it?

Go back to the Alaska boys? Kick off to Canada? Or go to law school? And I’ve been sitting around waiting for some new kick in the gut, some push for the next thing, and just like everything else, I found it. The intensity of feeling, the Big Location Switch. For Chicago, it appears, there was a Girl and Books… (“Have you read this? I can’t live without books! I love them! They are my friends!”). For the next one, I have no doubt they’ll be another bunch of brilliant people and their books, a bit like a guidepost: ah, yes, you, this is where you’re headed, let’s go together. It’s an incredibly bizarre life that makes no sense….

And yet, when you pack your whole life together, it shows you where you’re going.

Mine is about being better.

And surrounding myself with people on the same road.

You've just got to find your people.

Break

I'll be taking a few days off from blogging, as I've got some personal stuff to work out.

I'll be by every once in a while in case the comments go out of wack, but for all intents and purposes, things should be mostly quiet on the new-posts front, unless we go to war with Iran, Roe v. Wade is overturned, or someone in my immediate circle dies.

At which point, I'll be blasting again in a public forum. For now, I'm going to go bitch to my private peeps forum about Life Issues.

See you all in a couple days.

Whu-pah

Ha. I was hoping this one would get a reaction from him...

Check out Brendan's take on being the son of a feminist. I keep wishing this guy lived in Chicago. We'd go watch fights at the Aragon and argue gender politics over Thai food, and he'd have a blast with Jenn's circle of psychology students...

Oh well. That's what blogging's for: finding your people, however scattered they may be.

Enjoy.

You Know It's Been A Shitty Workday That You're Glad to Have Over When...

...you glance over at the Everclear CD next to your computer and think, "Hey, I'd like to listen to that. But aren't I listening to it right now? What disk is in the machine?"

Well, no, Kameron, you wouldn't be listening to it right now because you're staring at it sitting on your desk.

My brain has died. I'm heading out to kickboxing.

Just Give Out the Goddamn Pill

Seriously gotta get this shit together. It's the fucking 21st century.

Fierce arguments have gone on inside and outside the Food and Drug Administration, which may decide as soon as this week whether drug stores can sell the emergency contraception known as Plan B without a prescription to women age 16 and older.

The cons?

Easy access to this kind of birth control might "encourage women to have sex."

Oh, wouldn't that be terrible.

Last May, the FDA rejected nonprescription sales of emergency contraception, against the overwhelming recommendation of the agency's own scientific advisers.

Your body is a battleground...

Randomosity - I Love People

Random rant from prettygirl

Clear. Blue. Not So Easy. Day!

Pregnant? Fuck!

You're gonna have to get outta town. If your Dad finds out, he'll have it taken away from you because he thinks you're dangerous. And if your ex-boyfriend finds out, he'll try to get custody. And with your record, he'd stand a hell of a good shot (You threw your mom down some steps).

When you get across the state lines, open a bar. Name the bar and the baby the same name. Gluggs. The bar will become your favorite place in the world.

Your dad, your ex-boyfriend, and the law are gonna come after you to get their hands on the kid. When they all die, it will be thanks to your son. He'll have killed them to save your life. That night, he'll burn down the bar and take off.

Though you won't have the bar anymore, you won't be sad. Because you'll know that somewhere in this country Gluggs lives on in the shape of your beautiful boy. All you ever wanted was a bar that would outlive you.

Happy Clear. Blue. Not So Easy. Day!

Frickin hilarious.

So Much Entertainment, So Much Time

I am so amused.

And, there's more.

In Which the Protagonist's Head Explodes From Boredom

Someday, I will have a real job. In the mean time, some breathing space:



"Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway."
- Mary Kay Ash

"Life is hard. After all, it kills you."
- Katharine Hepburn

"Let us not confuse stability with stagnation."
- Mary Jean LeTendre

"The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more."
- Colleen McCullough

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
- Anais Nin

But Boys Raised By Feminists Won't Get Laid. And Other Really Funny Bullshit

Actually, raising up boys to believe that women are people too is pretty fucking cool:

In the past several years we’ve seen a glut of magazine articles, talk shows and books like The War on Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Boys and The Decline of Males demonizing a simple term: feminism. How silly. Feminists are people who believe women deserve the same opportunities and compensation as men...

I believe feminists by their very nature imparted questioning minds to their sons, encouraging them to question stereotypes including those existing within our school system: jocks, nerds, freaks and snobs. They learned from us that name-calling is a critical part of alienation. We taught them to appreciate differences, not disdain them, to neither be nor seek victims.

We taught them to be discerning, to carefully evaluate influences, ranging from peer pressure to media input.

For feminists active in the business and political community, sons learned to interact with a myriad of individuals, from the powerful to the disenfranchised. They carried those experiences with them, and, I believe, profited as adults. I also think we imparted a sense of purpose in our sons, the knowledge that every life is part of something bigger and does make a difference.

Children of feminists know that every stand they take may not be popular. They may be subjected to ridicule or contempt as a result of their beliefs. But through the examples of their mothers, they know a worthy stand is worth the price.

Via Trish

Why Is It My White, Upper-Middle-Class Ass Doesn't Support This Administration, Again?

I got my quarterly or whatever stock statement yesterday. I put 3% of every paycheck into a diversified stock account, which includes stock in my own company. And my eyes boggled at the dollar amount.

In the last year, stock in my company has nearly doubled.

We're doing Iraq contracts, afterall.

I find it deeply ironic that somebody like me, the white, educated, working-for-the-man type who's financially benefiting from the presidency of George W. Bush is actually more anti-Bush, pro-taxes, actually-some-socialism-is-neat than the Midwesterner whose factory job has been outsourced to India who won't have any retirement (stock or otherwise) or social security benefits in old age and whose daughter's children he'll have to support because his vote for Bush was a vote against Roe vs. Wade.

Fucking hilarious.

Feminism? It's Hardly Begun

Interview with Gloria Steinem in The Guardian.

"What is frustrating," Steinem says now, "is being told that no matter how hard I've worked, it counts less than my appearance. Although if you're not considered conventionally attractive, that also becomes an issue: you know, you're a feminist because you couldn't get a man." Still, there is a part of her that doesn't like getting older. "You become less visible. You become a category rather than an individual - an Older Woman."

Thanks to my buddy Julian for the link.

You Know, I Think I Could Do This

And this was the moment when I realized it, musing through the LSAT center, law school websites, looking at requirements, cut-off dates:

The LSAT test day is over four hours long. Keep your pencil moving to help yourself stay focused. If there is anything the LSAT measures, it is raw determination and endurance.

And I thought... You know, I could do this. Hell, I mean, what else am I doing? I mean, besides the boxing, the work travel, the book writing... er, I mean, really, what else am I doing?

Spend 6 months studying for the LSATs? Take it once in June and again in October, if I totally crap it. It's not like it'll be the end of the world if I suck. Then I'll at least know, and I can do something else. Falling flat on my face doesn't bother me.

Took the morning to come up with a list of law schools in the northeast and a couple in Seattle. And the whole world just narrowed, and everything just lined up and came into focus.

This is why I took two years off from school. To find that moment.

I mean, I don't expect to get into Columbia or anything, but why the fuck not apply to 12 or 15 schools: if they all tell me to go to hell, so what? I have a bunch of other shit I've been wanting to do. No sweat off my back (prepare for: "and they all told me to go to hell - anybody want to go to Peru?" - I'm a realist).

I can rock out the personal essay and why I want to do it, the "South Africa" thing always peaks people's interest, and being another 40K in debt doesn't bother me. It's just money. You can't take it with you.

Fuck it. I've been chewing on it too long. I took a year and a half off to figure out what I wanted. It finally clicked. I can quit at any point in the process, and it gives me something to work toward. My brain is dying. I've been going crazy being out of school for so long. I need a challenge. This feels right. If I bomb the LSATs, at least I'll have given myself the challenge of studying for the LSATs.

It occurs to me that last night I had a conversation with Jenn that went something like this:

Me: "You know, I've been running really fast for the last seven years. I want some down time. I need to take some time to appreciate what I've got."

Jenn: "That makes sense. That sounds like a really good idea."

Me: "You realize that that's just my stance on it now, for this moment?"

Jenn: "Yea. We're the sorts of people who pile a lot on our plates."

That attitude lasted exactly one night.

I'm fucking hilarious.

Women, Like Black People, Are Just "Naturally" Stupid

Obviously.

Do you even want my commentary?

Repeat After Me:

My attraction to Yellow is based purely on looks and familiarity. Yes, motorcycle riding would be fun. Yes, he is a nice person. He is funny. He can be dorky. But he's not a real dork. He's the sort of guy who would take me out, but hide me from his friends, cause I'm not the sort of woman he "should" be dating (read, thin blond stewardess. Yes, he once regaled our group with news of a date with a blond stewardess who "wouldn't stop talking").

No, I am not batshit-fucking-insane about him. I do not angst over him. He doesn't read books. He is convienent to sigh over for about four days a month (what would we do the rest of the time?). So, what's the point? I'm fucking busy, not tossing and turning about him - I know exactly what the sighing's actually about: he's the only single guy of about my age and close enough to my type who I actually interact with on a semi-regular basis. He merely looks very pretty today, walking through the office.

I appreciate that.

Ah, hormones. Just that: hormones. Funny, how I still have that little social twinge: no, no, I can't just be sexually attracted to somebody, I have to pretend I'm romantically crazy about him.

Actually, no. I can appreciate that I'm not nuts about him. He's just damn pretty.

Social pressures on repressing female desire? If-I'm-hot-on-him-I-have-to-figure-out-how-to-marry-him? When that's absolutely not what I want at all?

Funny.

Worklife

"I fight for what I believe in. I am a mercenary, and I believe in money."

Batfuck

Just. Batfuck.

Make up your goddamn mind already.

Ninjas

I am easily amused.

via john rickards, my Secret Boyfriend

Best. Advice. Ever.

Unfortunately, I didn't write it:

"Listen up, you grain-fed honky dickweeds - not just you, WW, but every fucking honky out there needs to hear this. We're not alive for very long. Have you noticed this, dickcheeses? We do not have all the fucking time in the world to draw up cost-benefit analyses on potential long-term pairings. If you're not swept the fuck away by your lady, move the fuck on. If you're not gritting your teeth and biting the palm of your hand like goddamn Squiggy every time she walks by, get over it. If you're not having the best sex of your life - and this is when you do that, dummies, in your mid-fucking-thirties, this is your big fucking shot at great sex, or at least this is where it starts - if you're not blown away, freaking out, breaking out, thrilled, shivery, talking a lot, sending stupid fucking emails to each other, rolling around, sighing, bragging, buying dumb little gifts - then how do you think you'll feel in a few years when you're fucking old and creaky and you have three little doo-doo factories in residence? You fucking dumbass honky-ass losers.

This is how you find the man/woman of your dreams, stupids: You refuse to waste time on the man/woman of your loneliness-fueled spreadsheets. And if you can't get worked up over anyone... well, Jesus, what is wrong with you? Can you get worked up over anything at all? Here in LA, lots of people wax romantic about movies, but when it comes to their real lives, they're fucking numb and alienated and don't see the raw thrill, the breathtaking drama of every little minute. Blahblahblah boringcakes, motherfuckers! The girl who made you your coffee this morning has beautiful green eyes, and she paints weird portraits of her customers and keeps chocolate and rope stashed in her nightstand and she reads books about gardening and she knows what she wants. You could spend the next two months in bed, honkwinders, getting tied up and eating chocolate and watching old movies in the middle of the night. You could be swooning and sighing and feeling like the world is opening up like a flower. So why are you watching "Survivor" with that guy who bores the shit out of you, and pisses you off, and doesn't give a flying fuck about how you feel, ever, and mostly just wants you to get to the point and stop crying? Why are you heating up canned soup and wondering about the long-term viability of negotiating a reasonably satisfying coexistence with someone 3,000 miles away?

You stupid bitches. You're wasting your fucking time. Whenever someone really digs you, you go numb. Whenever you really like someone, you decide to just ignore the fact that they don't like you nearly as much. Or maybe you married someone, and now you give that person your worst possible self day after day, and then wonder why they look so crumpled and lame to you now. Go ahead, put it off, get back to work. Love is only the greatest fucking thing in the entire universe, but hey, you've got a presentation to finish, and besides, you can't really change anything, and only flakes and dreamers care about this shit.

Life is short, dippies. Today is the day to make your move. Buy some flowers, and a lottery ticket, and start to believe in the possibility that your life could be big and bright and pretty. As Frances McDormand says in "Almost Famous," "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid." Magic, honkies! Believe in magic for once in your narrow little lives. Give up on the mundane for a minute, and open up your hearts, and listen to all the dead people in your office and on the street outside, screaming the same thing: "Live, motherfuckers! Stop planning and fucking LIVE."

Read it all.

The 10,000 Hit Mark

Have passed the 10,000 hit mark. No, not a *day* but since September, when I started using sitemeter.

Thanks, all. Good to have all you obsessive clickers around...

Beat of the War Drum

Listening to too much from Emotive, particularly: Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums. It appeals to my dark, cynical, pissed-off side.

Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

Check it out.

Via Bitch Ph.D.

Everything's Better With Women

Well, you could try improving ratings by getting 52% of the population up off the bench.

No?

Better as spouses and cheerleaders?

Well then, crash & burn, baby. Unless you're going to market these couples as real people (and from what I've seen, they aren't. From what I've seen of the couples [they aren't selling this as a boxing reality tv show, but a "character" show "about" the boxers and their families], they're pretty gender-conformist), what you've got is a niche sport that you're only showing as being performed by less than half the population.

Ratings burn. Raise the bar, would you?

All that said, I intend to watch the first show. After all, I e-mailed Jenn from Denver and made her tape the latest installment of the puke-fest that is Battlestar Galactica on that King of All Misogynist Channels, Sci-fi. It's like an abusive relationship: you like the idea of what you could possibly experience, you're deeply invested, and you keep hoping it'll get better.

Like a rat and random electric shocks.

What's On My Mind

Woke up from a dream about going to New York with my sister, losing her and her son at a theater party held by an old high school friend of mine I once had a crush on, got lost on the train (numbers? colors? Does anyone remember what stop we got off at, shit, how does this system work? What street is this?), my dad flew in to check on us (insisting it was on his way to some pizza convention), which made me really angry, cause I'd already lost my sister and her kid (failing at my older-sibling duty), my plane ticket reservations were messed up, I had to call into work to say I was "accidently" in New York for a day, having screwed up my reservations somehow, I couldn't stay longer because my sister was going to room with some random guy she met at the party instead of splitting costs with me, my bank account was almost nil, I had just enough to change my ticket reservations, it was raining, and I was hovering near the phone, fuming from debating with the ticket people, and engaging in a furious internal debate about whether or not I was going to call Brendan and beg a beer during my last 12 hours in the city.

If that doesn't perfectly encapsulate all of my neuroses, I don't know what does.

Night Thoughts, Sunday

Sunday is prep day.

Collect the week's story rejections and send out new stuff, water the plants, get the groceries, cook up the week's chicken and broccoli lunches, clean the bathroom, pack for Monday's MA class, read the Tribune, hit Borders and coffee with Jenn, recover from a hangover if neccessary, roll over the week's goals, go jogging or put in my government-recommended 20 minutes on the elliptical machine, chat with my brother, bid Jenn off to her SO's, catch up on e-mail, grind coffee, slump off to bed, exhausted...

And then you roll it all over, and you've got your week again - and you bust through it on the way to wherever it is you're going, recoup on Sunday, and do it all over again.

I've got a novel that needs to be finished this year, another one that needs to do the "straight to publishers" gamble. I need to contact my recruiter sometime this summer and start looking for other jobs. I need to get to Glasgow in August. In autumn, I'm signing up for that French class, come hell or high water. By year's end I need to have done some serious thought as to what I'm doing after Chicago - Jenn will finish her Ph.D. next summer, and we'll likely be parting ways as she heads out to teach and I figure out what the next crazy leap is going to be. As much as I like Chicago and as cozy as I am, I won't stay here.

I'm incredibly lucky to have so many roads open to me, and I know it. Yea, there's stress in choosing what you want: go for a Ph.D., law school, give it up and go make a living on a fishing boat in Alaska? Work at a bookstore in Canada? Transfer to the company office in London? Backpack around New Zealand doing odd jobs and running from student loan debt?

For the last seven years, choice has never frightened me: what's concerned me is how I'm going to fit everything I want to do into one far-too-short lifetime. And, more recently - how am I going to fit all this in while allowing myself to enjoy it? When you spend seven years running, seven years piling it all on, trying to live up to your potential, trying to be somebody you want to be, you get to the end of that and you have to take a deep breath and go: yea. I did it. I'm doing it. It's OK.

Because at some point, you're going to get breathless, the scenery blurs, and though you'll still hit the water, you'll miss the view during the long drop, and anybody who's gone bridge-jumping into dark water knows that the "oh fuck" moment's the best part.

Chatting with Jenn over coffee today about books, life, job. She asked me if I had a copy of Herland, I said I had no idea, I might have given it away during one of my book purges. I had to ditch a lot of books in my move from South Africa to Chicago because I didn't have the money to ship them, and I had to ditch pretty much every book I owned back in Bellingham when I was 18, cause I needed the money. I sold the books when I pawned the VCR and the TV so I could pay my electric bill.

Seriously.

And I let myself have one of my moments tonight, thinking about my suit jacket, and Denver, and New York, and story sales, and book manuscripts, and I thought - yea. I did it it. Look at that. Look how far I've come from batshit nowhere, from the white trash path, from being able to look out over my whole life and know exactly where it would go, exactly who I would be.

Now I look out and there's this vast landscape, this incredible open sea of possibility.

It's gorgeous. It's fucking beautiful.

And then the moment's done, and you gotta get back up again, find another road, another bridge, another way through, on the way to where you're going.

Cause on the road to where you're going, toilets need to be cleaned, stuff needs to be packed, beds made and stories written and read, and that doesn't happen if you spend too long loitering at the crossroads.

It's a wacky life.

Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit: Here's What You're Missing, Dumbass - Historical Context and Social Pressure

Man, I keep trying to ignore these dumbfucks, but then the other feminist bloggers jump on board, and I have to bitch.

Here's the panic - I would say "latest panic" but they've been preaching "smart, successful women won't get married and have kids, and they'll regret it and spend their nights sobbing into their empty nest and eating bonbons, so you should get barefoot and pregnant straight out of highschool to a Big, Successful Guy who can tell you who you should be, since you won't have enough time on your own to figure out who you are and want you want," for thirty years:

Over the past 30 years, the fraction of women over 40 who have no children has nearly doubled, to about a fifth. According to the Gallup Organization, 70 percent of these women regret that they have no kids.

Uh, hold on there, buddy. First of all, we don't have a population crises in this country. Fewer kids from well-to-do whites (or well-to-do Romans, yea, I've read this argument before) is the real issue. Let's not pretend otherwise. He's really talking about well-educated white women. The Roman state used the same sorts of arguments to try and get upper-class women to have more children.

But these women were smart, knew what contraception was, and knew that pregnancy killed 1 in 4 of them. So they kept their kid-cap to two. The Roman state started offering tax breaks to men who convinced their wives to have more children, and husbands were told to keep an eye on her use of contraception. Keep out the people providing knowledge, get rid of the ingredients for pessiaries, and above all, keep marrying women when they're very, very young so they have as little knowledge as possible coming into a relationship.

Sounds fun.

Yet more women in the US today have children than did a hundred years ago - they just have fewer of them. How can this be?

Well, it's social math: having sex before marriage, being an "unwed" mother, was the Absolute Worst Thing that could happen to a woman. It was far more discouraged a hundred years ago than now. Do I need to say this? Some women were still able to get away with this - and of course most marriages were "the baby's due in 6 months" sorts of marriages. However, it was expected that a certain percentage of women would be "old maids" without spouse or children, due to an imbalance of men and women (a hell of a lot of men died in those world wars, the civil war, etc. There have been long periods of lots-of-women-who-don't-have-kids). Keeping that pool of childless women out there was a good way to cut down fertility rates, too. Nice way to curb female agency and sexuality, as well.

Women today, however, have more options. You can choose (oh, thank all your feminist orgs for that) when to have children and how many you want. You don't have to be married. Hell, you don't even need a steady male partner, just a sperm bank. This is a great thing. This is not Evil. This does not lead to Sobbing Over Bonbons, though a lot of guys sure seem to wish it would.

But there is also one big problem that stretches across these possibilities: Women now have more choices over what kind of lives they want to lead, but they do not have more choices over how they want to sequence their lives.

WTF? This guy seems to think that a woman has to stay home with her kids for the first ten years of the kids' lives, so she's only got a couple of ten-year windows: either she's gotta be married and punching out babies by 25 or 35. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

I'm not sure what planet he lives on. He's really obsessed with this idea of a woman's "most fertile years." Like if these women don't have kids, the world will implode and we'll all die (read Joanna Russ's We Who Are About To).

I've never been especially concerned about my fertility or having children or getting married. I'm one of those, "If I meet a cool partner who's in it for the long haul and have a kid sometime, that'd be cool. If not, even better: more retirement money for me."

The women in my family are incredibly fertile, just the sorts this columnist would love. We're the wagon train women who signed up to marry some random guy so we could go populate the west and dig out a sod hut and drive cattle. My maternal grandmother recently told me about her mother's mother, who was purported to have been married five times - once to an Indian - and spent most of her evenings in the local pub playing the piano and singing baudy songs. Rumor has it both my grandmothers did the "hell, we're practically engaged, let's get it on - hey, oops" thing and were nice and rosy for their weddings, and it wasn't thirty days after going off the Pill that my mom was pregnant with me. My brother was the famous "oops" baby - my mom was trying to wean herself off Pill hormones, and my brother was conceived despite the use of spermicide and a diaphragm (needless to say, I don't use either of these forms of birth control. Learn from the women in your family. This is important). And then there's my sister and my "oops" nephew, of course.

All we have to do is roll out of bed, and hey, hot damn, look at that.

There's really no need to stress about babies.

I don't know about everybody else's parents, but mine have always worked. They were lucky in that they had a great babysitter in my French grandmother, who took care of me, my brother and sister, and my cousin during work hours for the first twelve years of my life. Either my mom or my dad picked us up after work, we always ate dinner at home, watched a lot of movies, and having a two-income household gave us the opportunity to go on some great roadtrips.

Once I was twelve, I stayed home with my younger brother and sister and looked after them, and my mom finished up her MBA. Our job was housecleaning, which took some of the load off my mom (my dad just isn't big on the housework, it's true - their deal was that when my mom made more money than my dad, he'd take over cleaning the house. This has happened only once, because for 20 years my parents worked for a company that consistently paid my father $100 more a paycheck than they paid my mother, even though they had the same job. Why did they do this? Because, apparently, their boss thought that paying them equally would somehow disrupt my parents' marriage. So he got paid more and promoted first, all the way up the line: he'd become a manager, then her, then he was an area manager, then her, then he was VP Operations, then she got VP Human Resources. Yea. Fucked up. My mom still remembers the days when they'd pay the male burger flippers more than than female ones because "men are the breadwinners. They have to support a family on their salary. Women are just earning money on the side." :;snort:: My mom said that when she was 16, this made a lot of sense, until she actually stopped and thought about it. "Hey, but, wait a minute, we're doing the same work! And I'm doing it better than him!").

This guy's seriously suffering from a lack of imagination about the way the world can work. He's got a very small box.

So there are women now who, like my sister, can have kids and not be married or attached to anybody in particular and can live on their own with limited social stigma (depending on the circles). Mainly, they can do this because it's not only so incredibly common, but incredibly visible: you're allowed to talk about being a woman who has a kid and not a husband. Yea, you still get flack for it, but it's a serious option, as is buddying up with another woman, picking a friend or going to a clinic, and having and raising a kid together.

Options aren't bad things, and I don't believe that women who are over 40 and haven't had kids are really all that broken up about it: anybody who really, really wants kids is going to have them at the right time in their lives. You find a way to do it. What you're hearing from the Famous Over 40 women is them interrogating their lives based on studies like this, on panic-hysteria about how you're more likely to get killed by a terrorist than get married after 40 (total bunkum. Completely disproved. Read Backlash), and how you should be feeling guilty for not having kids, and you must be some kind of selfish bitch to have this free life, and don't you feel Hollow and Empty? Ask people this enough times, and they're going to start thinking they're weird for saying they're not.

They'll start questioning themselves, and feel bad or not-normal for their perfectly valid life choices.

I'm a woman. That doesn't mean it's my biological duty to have children. It doesn't mean that that's my ultimate purpose. Not everybody's here to have kids. That's a good thing.

Having and raising children is too fucking difficult a thing to do because you felt pressured into it, because you felt you had some sort of biological duty that you thought you were weird not to feel.

And I resent these studies that don't take the issue of women's social pressures to have children into account. The day we're given positive images of childless, single, Over 40 women who have lots of great friends, a great job, and perhaps the occasional lover in Paris or Milan, is the day when we might be able to ask women for real how they feel about being Over 40 and free of children.

He Was Asking For It, Your Honor. I Was Ovulating, and He Wasn't Wearing a Shirt. Biological Imperatives, and All That

I'm sorry, what was that? You mean if I find a guy sexy I can't beat him up, molest him, and go home? Dude, he was totally asking for it! He was wandering around after dark, looking drunk, and wearing a damn fine pair of ass-hugging jeans! I couldn't control myself!

I'm sorry, you said, I have to be able to control myself because I'm a woman? I can't just bash somebody around and take them home? WTF?

I wasn't going to link to this discussion about the well-trod "she was asking for it" argument about rape, because it's the same old story [oh, come on, you guys, most rape and abuse is actually from somebody you know, it's not about sex, it's about power, blah blah, I should have a standard post for this] until I read this bit, which I had to share:

prisoner6655321:

"Actually, I'm sorry to say that it's very likely that you DID hurt some people. Some guys no doubt looked at you and lusted after you. That brought them down a sinful path. What if some 21 year old guy looked at you lustfully? Encouraging a 21 year old guy to lust after a 13 year old is bad for the 21 year old guy.

Oh, and I really don't want to get into an argument about what is harmful or not harmful. I just want to let you know that some people feel that scantily clad women make their lives more difficult. The younger the scantily clad woman is, the worse (more illegal) the temptation could be."

Lisacurl:

"So, to review, ladies... once we hit puberty, and probably before then, we are responsible for the thoughts that men have when they look at us. It's our responsiblity to dress appropriately so that men are not troubled with lustful thoughts.

Now why does that sound familiar? Oh yeah, because it is what is generally taught in psycho misogynistic religious cults!

In short, prisoner6655321, kiss my feminist ass."

You know, I'm very good at dealing with my lustful thoughts. If said lustful thoughts get too intense, I can always get off the train, or stop looking. Thinking a guy is hot doesn't entitle me to force him to come home with me (yea, I know, rape isn't about "hotness" - but let's pretend, OK? Makes the psychos feel better).

If there were fewer scantily-clad men in the world, it would be a sad, sad, place. But I understand the dangers: women just can't control themselves. They're ravenous hormonal beasts. So if we need to put men in burkas in order to protect them from their own inherent hotness, well, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I'm sorry, who wants to live in that world?

via Ginmar

Women & Sport

Much thanks to Davina for sending me this link -

The Observer's got a piece about encouragining girls in school to enjoy PE and physical sport, as:

Health experts are now warning that the trend [girls shunning sport] has profound health implications for women in later life because people who do not get into the habit of being physically active as teenagers usually take little or no exercise as adults, and run a much higher risk of obesity, heart disease, infertility and joint pains.

I touched on some of this in my old sport post over at Alas. If men and women aren't encouraged to be physically active in equal numbers [in everyday life, in sport, in PE, etc], if women feel socially awkward participating, then you can't make accurate comparisons or assumptions about the differences in male and female strength - you've never got an equal playing field.

They found that 30 per cent of the girls surveyed did not like their PE kit, and 40 per cent were self-conscious about their bodies. One in five said they only took part in PE because they had to, 15 per cent did not enjoy it and 3 per cent rarely took part. One in five believed that being good at sport was not important for girls and that it was not 'cool' to display sporting prowess.

Worryingly, the researchers found that 30 per cent of girls did not think they would be physically active once they left school. They also discovered that girls become progressively more negative towards sport after the onset of puberty.

Completely unsurprising. Ah, puberty, that magic age when women suddenly, desperately realize they have to fit their minds and bodies into weird social boxes. No pretending anymore.

The great thing about this article is that they did a study, reacted to their findings, and got results:

However, the academics also found that girls' participation has risen steadily at schools which have made PE more female-friendly. Girls-only sports lessons, the introduction of aerobics, pilates and dance classes, and changing gym kit rules so girls can wear less revealing clothing such as tracksuit bottoms and hooded tops have boosted involvement...

Since the school introduced the changes in 2001, the number of girls aged 11-14 doing extra-curricular sport has risen from 35 per cent to 75 per cent, the number of female sports teams it puts out has increased from four to 25, and the proportion of girls pleading sickness or injury to avoid PE has fallen.

Very cool.

Shaolin Soccer

After 4 martinis and a black russian, Shaolin Soccer isn't a bad movie.

Saved! however, is fuckin' awesome. Get a copy. Share it with friends. I am moving drunkenly to bed.

Downer

Man, downer day. I was also kicking myself during pilates about my weight again, because we've got 2 walls of mirrors, and I'm exhausted, and have spent most of the week living out of a hotel.

So fucking frustrated, why's it take me a year to drop two sizes? Why do I have to wait another goddamn year to drop the last 2? Am I just some kind of lazy fuck? Why don't I just cut calories again? Why's it 10 degrees outside, I should go jogging... why can't I get this right? Why is this taking so long? I look awful...

I'm so used to the binge and purge cycle that I honestly don't know how to deal with just this: approaching eating and exercise not as a binge or purge time but an actual altering of my whole life, so I *don't* have to binge or purge again. No more binge sessions. No more crash diets. Just being better. And being that. Long term. No more bullshit. I'm tired. I'm too old to do this, and if I don't get a handle on it now, I never will.

And it's fucking hard to do when you *feel* like you're doing everything right, but society's benchmark to who you are, what you're worth, is how much fat you're carrying around on your body.

Jenn and I are about to head out for a birthday dinner, and I just put on my favorite brown jacket, the one with the third button that's too tight a fit to close down there around my hips -

- and I just closed it tonight without a hitch. No fabric stretching. Easy close.

Whooosh of relief --

Because the easy fit reminded me that I was right about my "set" weight point. I'm heading back there.

The women in my family have big hips, so when we're in good shape, our set point is about a 10/12. If I was smaller than that, I'd either be a serious athelete or dying of cancer. This means I've actually spent most of my life at a 14/16, which is perfectly reasonable for me and my frame. I'm currently a 16, same size I'm at in the profile picture (you'll note I included the full scectrum of life photos on my photopage).

This is not an unreasonable thing. It is, in fact, quite comfortable. It's just... it's just... I think I was just scared. I was scared that I'd treated myself so horribly that I couldn't get back into good shape, back into a 12 where I'm big enough to be intiminidating and fit enough to carry out the threat.

In the back of my head, forever, I think, is going to be this fear of backsliding. This fear of just giving it all up and reverting back to who I was once-upon-a-time ago, and though that's a good driving force to get me off my ass, there's a deep, gnawing fear that that awful person is who I really am, is my default. Do I see an increase in weight as being tied to being a weaker person? Well, yes, actually, I do, because the history of my (however short) life has seen the two biggest weight spikes at the two most turbulent, stressful times of my life. So I'm going to associate weight spikes and huffing and puffing up stairs with being a bad person.

I just don't want to be weak again. Physically, emotionally. It's like that deep fear just sits on your shoulder, leering. It's the same fear that sends me into mild panic attacks at the thought of forcing myself to go on dates (man, I've been on a dating kick, lately - it's midmonth, I'm ovulating. I'll be better next week):

You try and do that, and you'll be that weak person again. You know how you get. You'll fail. You'll backslide. That's just what you do. This is your life. This is how it has to work. Just like this. Add anything else to it, and the delicate balance you've got is going to alter, and it'll all come crashing down.

Is there ever a cure for this sort of thinking? I don't know. You just live it.

Some days are better than others.

Life is Hard.

After all, it eventually kills you.

Feeling a little off today. Went to my pilates class, but skipped boxing because Sifu Dino showed up, snarked off something that really irked me, and then hung around while the boxers were warming up.

And I just wasn't in the mood for him.

I have this bizarre reaction to Sifu Dino. I have no idea what's up with it. It's not an attraction thing - he doesn't do anything at all for me - but it's definately a physical reaction that sets me on edge. I hasten to add that this is a purely personal thing: he's a good guy, and lots of people - men and women - love working with him.

It's like every time I see him, I want to fight him. This is the stupidest thing ever, of course, cause the guy could rip both my arms off if I looked at him funny, and cripple me for blinking weird. And here my body goes, switching into combat mode when I see him.

I remember when I first started working for Blaine, and whenever he came up next to me, I expected him to hit me. Blaine's a big guy, about 6ft tall (I'm 5'9, but in heels, I can easily look him in the eye), and outweighs me by something like 50 or 60lbs. But he's also a big puppy dog, a sweet guy, who I actually haven't even ever heard raise his voice. I wasn't hit a lot as a kid, and though my ex threatened violence, and I got the same sort of hunched defensive reaction when Blaine would lean over me as I did when my ex screamed at me, my ex wasn't exactly an intimidating person - same height as me, and I outweighed him - so I'm not sure where this aversion for big, physically powerful men comes from (and, in fact, Sifu Dino's only like 5'10, but the way he holds himself, the way he's built, his attitude, is one that exudes some sort of danger trigger for me - not an attraction one).

Weird.

Don't Say Writing Has No Meaning

From Moorish Girl:

And I'll always be jealous of how he [my father] once spent an airplane ride shooting the shit with Salman Rushdie (during his fatwa years). When he got off, a police squad was waiting to escort Rushdie off the plane. My baba came home that night and told me, "Randood, don't believe when the donkeys say writing has no meaning. A row of police men in riot gear...for a writer! No meaning, my ass."

Men of Science

Just got my latest copy of Scientific American.

Why is it that whenever they do a story on "early man" the covershot is always, always, always a man holding a spear?

Because showing a woman's breasts on the cover (however artistically rendered) is scary? Or just because the idea of a female form standing in for "all humankind" is really scary?

I would love to see a woman with a spear representing "all of mankind."

It would be no more or less totally representative than this stupid "artistic" rendering.

More Weighing In on Dowd

Oh, good. Feministing takes on Dowd. My favorite paraphrase from this one has to be "Feminism isn't a fucking dating service."

That one's going on my quote list.

Amanda's got some good reactions as well, and links to others, who aren't so good. She points out that we're still seeing articles and "studies" with a focus on male desire, on "what men what." We've gotta find other ways of talking about this (in fact, the guy she links to, and the guy he links to, both Assume this Truth: there's no talk of equals, but What I Want, What Makes Me Look Good. I don't see any talk of partnerships or mutual affection in their rants, just assumptions that they should be patted on the head for dating women who have subscriptions to The Economist).

Sweet Home

Stumble home, unpack, pile up laundry, try and find a fourth frickin' quarter... turn the house upside down to try and find a damn quarter, nothing, fuck it, these kicking pants are clean enough, leave `um to air out.

Pack wraps, belt, shirt, towel, (boxing class tomorrow) ignore two coffee cups in the sink (at least somebody in this house is getting laid), grind coffee, stumble toward bed, find that my roommate left me a fucking birthday present, goddamn it. I hate this. I'm so bad at getting people stuff.

Find she's left me a dragonfly pin, oh! Excellent (long story)! Open other pacakge to find --

Holy fucking christ.

Golden States, by Michael Cunningham. His first novel. I have literally read and re-read The Hours over a dozen times. I bring it on trips with me, as comfort reading. I read it before bed on bad days. It's the book of the hours, of life, and I'm crazy about his other stuff too, but you can't get Golden States because apparently he absolutely hates it, refuses to have it reprinted, and doesn't even list it on his list of "books by the author" page.

Fuck, where did she get this?

"It'll Cost You More Money."

The age-old battle between the people on the ground and the people heading it all up from on-high:

When corp. comes in next and tells us how incredibly complicated we need to make things, we've collectively agreed to use this knee-in-the-gut retort:

"It'll cost you more money."

Gets `um every time.... Makes our jobs easier. Gets work done.

The end.

Blah, Blah, Continuing Bullshit

Man, I love it when other people tackle stuff that pisses me off, so I don’t have to.

I read this piece in the NY Times by Maureen Dowd yesterday. She’s pissed about the recent “study” that “proves” that men are “naturally” drawn toward subordinate women (again, I want to see the study where it’s biologically advantageous for women to be attracted to men who beat the crap out of them – we can put them right next to the “studies” that say that kids born to “mixed-race” couples are “naturally” stupider than those of “pure-race” couples), and I just sort of snarled at it and moved on.

Brendan, however, took it on, mashed up some other recent news bits with it, and has a good look at “guy culture” and society’s tendency toward assuming what’s happening in relationships right now and on TV must be “natural.”

He brings up a couple of good points worth chewing on, one of them being the fact that “equal” relationships are really fucking hard. When you look at the news media, at “guy culture,” hell, at Cosmo, what you’re going to see are the same things that Dowd sees – men looking for subservient mates, women trying to trick men into thinking they’re stupider than they are; insecure women dying to get married to just about anybody, especially Desperate Smart Women; insecure men who find the idea of a woman who makes more money than them unnerving.

Whether or not these things are “true” isn’t the point – governments spoon up “truth” every morning. That’s why we can send House representatives to Iraq who have no idea what it’s like for people living in Iraq. They’ve been given a different truth – and it’s not the real one.

When you grow up looking for an equal sort of pairing with somebody (or a couple of somebodies, depending on preferences), you’re not going to see many examples of it on television, in the movies, in books, plays, etc. You’re going to see a lot of unequal powerplays: evil scheming women trying to manipulate men, or evil scheming men trying to manipulate women, or subservient women trying to please evil men, or mediocre men, or men trying to please the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, so he can then marry her, own her, and show her who’s boss (my favorite. This is why I’m so fearful of being Greek-Goddess-Worshipped by men. The other side of this coin is. “I won her. She’s mine. Now I can show her who’s in charge”).

If you’re lucky, you’ll grow up watching real people in real relationships, and odds are that though some of them will mirror our media stereotypes, and a lot of them will be crappy, some of them won’t, and you’ll find one that intrigues you.

My parents were married just out of high school, my mom was 18 and my dad was 20, and they’d been dating on and off since my mom was 15 and he was 17. My relationship myth, growing up, was this magical romantic one: my mom met my dad in French class. He was the guy in the back of the class wearing the leather jacket, slouching in his seat. When the French professor asked him to stand up and introduce himself, my father did so – in perfect French. He was one of five children raised by my GI grandfather and war-bride French grandmother, and spent the first seven years of his life in France.

My mother was smitten. As the popular version of the story goes, she ran to her best friend immediately after class and said, “I just met the man I’m going to marry.”

There was a break-up, a jealousy play or two, and then my mom finally said to him, “Are we going to get married, or what?”

They got married.

They’ve been married for something like thirty years.

The trouble was, they got married too young, and they’ll be the first to tell you this. Every time they have an argument it’s like watching a couple of 18-year-olds. And I don’t know that some of their life goals corresponded as well as they could have. All my dad really wanted was to have kids, my mom really didn’t, she flirted with the idea of joining the Peace Corps. They waited five years, and had kids. Though they still share some core ideas about love and commitment - which has kept them together - it’s been a long hard road. Such is the nature of relationships.

So though I admired my parents and was really taken in by this Grand Idea of the One True Love, the One True Love idea got me sorta stuck in my first relationship, as I was basing my life on a set of mythos I learned from my parents, and that mythos isn’t gonna work every time, and especially not in high school, especially if you try to force it. I really, really wanted a One True Love, and a great “I fell in love with him right then” story, but I honestly didn’t have one. I had these two warring ideas in my head: the One True Love from high school whose love was so powerful it superceded everything else you wanted to do with your life, and what I was actually looking for…. Growing up, the place where I saw my ideal sort of “I want to live that kind of life, with that kind of person,” example was that of my Uncle Steve and Aunt Kris.

The popular mythos is:

They met as exchange students in Thailand. She was from Ohio. He was from Washington State. Should have been doomed from the start. How many people would you really fly halfway across the country to be with?

We didn’t hang out much, so my idea of their relationship has been formed in pictures, and the one that always clinched it for me was a picture of the two of them coming up out of the water in their scuba diving gear. They’re probably about the age that I am now, and they’ve got their respirators in their hands. As the water ripples around them, they come together into a fun, half-laugh, half-kiss.

And I remember thinking, when I saw that picture: that’s it. That’s what I want.

My uncle worked as a television news anchor for awhile, and in his study, there’s a picture of him in a flight suit, stepping out of an Airforce jet he got to ride in for a news story.

Here were these images of this life, of this way life could be, and something about it really connected with me. How truly egalitarian and buddy-buddy their relationship is now, I don’t know, but I remember those images, and that hope I had that yes, really, there’s another way for things to be. You can have a big, full life with somebody who wants to have a big, full, life with you. It’s possible. You don’t have to backbite and backstab and blame each other for everything. You don’t have to sacrifice your life in order to be with somebody you like.

And it’s that hope for another life that’s kept me happily single for so long. If that’s not what I get, I’d rather have nothing.

I’m an all-or-nothing sort of person.

And when you’re raised in a society that doesn’t encourage those sorts of relationships, they’re really fucking hard. Brendan says this nicely:

Perhaps the hardest sort of relationship to maintain is a true meeting of equals. All relationships have their own internal power dynamics, terms and quirks, but a relationship whose core substance is true regard for and communication with another person respected as an equal requires a level of emotional maturity and openness that's almost wholly absent from popular discourse in this time and place. We tell neither men nor women to seek these sorts of relationships as the/an ideal, nor give them the tools and encouragement necessary to enable them to develop and maintain them. What we have instead, in the broadest terms, is a usership culture around relationships- what can I get out of this other person. Sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it's status. In some respects this is also the child of marketing, in some ways the child of reductionist evolutionary explanations where a relationship is simply about fulfilling needs and obtaining resources and services.

The most equal buddy-buddy relationship I’ve had has been the one with my roomie – non-sexual it may be, but though we’d been friends for about five years, since the Clarion days, there’s a whole other dynamic involved when you live with someone, particularly somebody you really like and connect with on a lot of levels. One of the most difficult things for me to learn was actually how to tell her when I was upset about something, when something she did bugged me, to open up about why I was feeling down. I’m not a big talker (she calls me the “strong and silent type”), but she’s really good at asking questions and keeping open lines of communication so I don’t build up these huge resentments – against her or myself – and we can resolve conflicts pretty quickly.

She gets all the kudos for this. I’ve always considered talking about “feelings” to be a weak thing, and sometimes, I’ve even hated myself for feeling the things that I feel. I’ve just recently gotten to the point where I can go, “Jenn, I hate myself for feeling this way, and I know it’s adolescent and foolish, but this is sort of where I’m at with this, so if I seem down and snarky, know that it’s not about you, it’s just this stuff I’m trying to work out on my own.”

And she’ll go. “Cool. It sucks that you feel that way. You are a great person. Let me know if I can help you with that.”

It has made our domestic life much easier.

And it’s taken me a while to get used to.

Because I have a very guy-like mentality when it comes to talking and showing emotion. You get me and a guy who has the same guy-like mentality together, and bad things happen.

I didn’t have any existing framework of an open-communication relationship before, one where I was with somebody who was just as smart and capable as I was and didn't want to suck the life out of me (again, that "I worship you until you're mine, at which point I will destroy you!" mentality that a lot of women-worshippers have). Even with a lot of my old friends, there are things we Just Don’t Talk About. Sometimes I think we’re all trying to pretend that we’re a lot saner than we are because we’re afraid of what our friends will think of us. I know me and my best buddy Stephanie don’t talk about a lot of things, or slide over them very quickly, usually the Dark Teatime of the Soul things, though we’ve known each other for over a decade now.

I remember going out with her around Christmas, and we were sitting outside Moonstruck on 23rd in Portland, and she said, “I’ve been married for a year. I think I’m becoming boring and domestic. Would you still want to hang out with me if I was boring?” And though she said it with a half-joking little laugh, it was only half-joking.

I sort of looked at her, dumbstruck, and said, “You’re not boring. You won’t ever be boring. I don’t hang out with boring people. You know, there are these people in your life you want to know until the last breath leaves your body…? You’re one of those people.”

It’s funny, how we don’t have a social system that really teaches ushow to talk to each other, friends, lovers, relations. Unless you’ve got a family that teaches it to you, you won’t learn. You won’t get it from the media, or from school. You’re supposed to be looking at people as things, as what they can give you, instead of just people, the ones on this journey with you, the ones who have seen you through the shit and back again. The ones you want to see out to the end.

So when we talk about hetero relationships, and their inequality, I also find myself turning toward looking at other relationships, at how I’ve been taught to handle them, and I realize I come up lacking.

I don’t know that you can assign blame or fault for this: it just is. I have to be aware of what I’m getting fed from the media at large, and decide if one of the reasons I’m uncomfortable on a date is because what I want isn’t what’s being fed to me.

That’s not good or bad, it just is.

Realize that most of this stuff is bullshit, it’s somebody selling something. The minute you start interrogating these “studies,” they all unravel. It’s in the best interest of money makers to keep us unhappy. It’s in the best interests of the government for me to worry more about being smart or fat than who we’re bombing in Iraq and where all the money’s going.

It doesn’t mean that’s how we have to be.

Night Thoughts, Denver

"Yes, Clarissa thinks, it's time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families...; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagent hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows those hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

Heaven only knows why we love it so."

- The Hours. Michael Cunningham.

Living Out of Hotels

Put in almost 2.5 miles on the treadmill, without really getting tired. And wow, do I feel a lot better. They've had shitty food in our warroom the last two days, and the Boys are living on brownies, and I haven't done any exercise beyond get out of my chair for two days. Endorphins are great.

It's so funny, how your body gets used to stuff. When I first started doing these jogging days, I felt like I was going to die after barely a mile.

My record is still only about 4.1 or 4.2 (at which point I thought I was gonna die), so I'd like to average out at 3, but in the hotel fitness room, somebody had put the TV on CNN, and you can only read so many transcripts of the Michael Jackson molestation case before you get nauseous.

There are some images that not even a loud CD player can drown out.

You know, the FCC fined Howard Stern and kicked him off the air for talking about adult sex acts occuring between and among consenting adults, but CNN is blaring out all the lurid details about a teenage boy having his genitals rubbed by Michael Jackson, without penalty. Cause it's, like "news" or something.

Yea. Right.

Yes, we need to cover "news" - like the outcome of his trial. We don't need to read a kid's statement about being molested on prime time. That's the jury's business.

You want to talk obscenity, FCC? This is it. Bunch of frickin' hypocrites.

Anyway, I'm off to shower and heading out to the Mexican place across the street for dinner. Then to bed, to bed. Or maybe play a round of Myst IV.

Anything but watch CNN.

Right Cross to the Face

Feministe has a post up about the man-hating feminist myth and the “has feminism gone too far?” argument that men like to argue about – you know: feminism must be going too far not because we’re making more money than men or are able to keep tabs on our reproductive health without legal or social consequence, but because men aren’t sure if they should open the door for us or not.

This one tugged at me because one of the architects for the project here in Denver is - let’s call him Juan – the same guy who gave all the women in the office Belgian chocolates for Christmas and forwarded all of the women in the office a hysterical “women beware” e-mail.

He’s the sort of guy who does these little things that irk me. Just these little moments where it’s like he’s trying to remind me, “You’re different than me. You’re a woman. I’m a man.” Like if he didn’t remind himself, he’d forget. I don’t mind people holding doors open for me, because I hold them open for them – it’s a politeness issue. You treat everybody around you with respect, no matter their gender. And yes, if you really like someone you’re going to probably treat them even more respectfully than you would other people. What bugs me is when guys go out of their way to show me how different I am from them, like the world will implode if I don’t get told I’m pretty for a day.

Juan gave me and the other architect a ride to the office this morning for our hotel, and stopped the car in front of the door to our building. I thought he was going to back into a parking spot, so waited.

“You can get out,” he told me, “I figured I’d drop you up front so you wouldn’t have to walk.”

Um. OK.

The other architect, of course, did not get out behind me, but waited to park with Juan and came in later.

Did I jump and scream at Juan and tell him he was weird? No.

I realized that he’d been taught certain ways to act toward women, and I let it slide.

Did it bug me?

Yea.

Last night, at dinner, he made a “I get to be here with two beautiful women,” announcement. It’s a generic statement, he says such things around all women. There are guys who’ve been taught that being nice to women means speaking softly to them and telling them how pretty they are.

No, I don’t like it, but I don’t bitch to him about it. He’s operating on a different system.

Why does it bug me?

First and foremost, because we don't know each other well, I'm not attracted to him at all, I have not invited any sort of attention from him, and don't pretend that we're "close." His comments imply an intimacy that's not there, and I think it's rude.

And, more in general, when people give me “special” attention, or “special” treatment, I feel that they’re trying to highlight my difference from them. If this is a real physical difference – my graduate degree advisor was just over three feet tall, so I walked at her pace, made sure to put things within her reach – then so be it, but if it’s just a matter of, “I realize that I must acknowledge your womanliness by treating you differently than everyone else in this car with two legs,” then it feels condescending. It feels like some guy’s going out of his way to remind me that I might be taller and stronger than him, but I don’t have a dick, so I’m incapable of looking after myself.

But would I ever, ever snipe at somebody for opening a door, moving out of my way, or saying, “I’m so glad to be with such beautiful company tonight”? No. I wouldn’t. And if it was somebody I really liked and was attracted to, it wouldn’t bug me at all, because there would actually be a mutual respect and affection.

When I start bitching is when hands go where they’re not invited, and “beautiful company” becomes more explicit phrases heavily laced with sexual innuendo – or just outright sexual.

Then I’ll turn into a man-hating bitch.

In fact, I’d react to such unwanted attention in about the same manner a guy would –

A heated verbal tirade to combat the verbal violence –

And a right cross to the face the minute he touched me.

In Which the Protagonist Pretends to Work For a Living

I'm so incredibly bored. I'm an under-utilized resource.

The good news is: I'm being paid for it.

Sign Up in the Corp. Hallway:

"It is better to be careful 100 times than to get killed once."
- Mark Twain

I know I don't belong here, because I'd say:

"It is better to die once for something grand than to live a hundred years doing nothing."

I'm such the romantic.

"We Didn't Know How Bad It Was."

There are days when I’m embarrassed to be an American. Days when Americans with all of the best intentions don’t do their homework, and end up looking like idiots. Why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep going into places to “fix” things without doing our homework?

I was asked in a previous comment about whether or not “democratic” elections would improve the situation of women in Iraq. Women can vote in Zimbabwe: I don’t know that things are exactly fun and games over there. Women can vote in this country: have been able to do so for just over 80 years, but “getting the vote” didn’t immediately translate into more women’s rights. It’s taken 80 years just to get to where we are now, and we've gotten this far because we fought our fucking asses off tooth and nail every inch of the way, and continue to do so. Sure, things are better for women than in the 50s, but we’ve got a long bit of trucking to do, because we’re still trying to work in a system that says “men” and “male” are the norm, are equality, are what we’re striving for, and "men" and "masculinity" are just as fucked up and socially constructed as "woman" and "femininity."

So "equality" is a lackluster goal, when what you're comparing yourself to is just as socially constructed as you are. Not that I’ve got any sort of Grand Feminist Overthrow of the System Plan or anything. That’s why I write fiction.

In any case, “voting” doesn’t equal equality. Look at the civil rights campaign in this country. It took African Americans a hundred years to get anything like the right to vote - a hundred years after it was legally guaranteed. The people you want to control are the people you don’t let vote.

You can say a lot of bullshit in sound bites, on paper, but at the end of the day, it’s Iraqi women, not clueless Americans, who are going to have to stand up, run, fight, and come to grips with what they want. Yes, we should provide them support, open up dialogue, but you can’t tell women how to do it. You can’t tell them what they want. You go there to listen to them, not to preach. They’re likely going to be a fuck of a lot stronger than you know.

The huge Iraq problem is that it's an occupied country. You can't force democracy on an occupied country. This entire campaign has been so fucked from the beginning that I honestly find the idea of equality in Iraq as imposed by the US laughable.

It's the Iraqi women who are going to do it. But don't think for a minute that this administration gives a fuck about Iraqi women. The cluelessness of these legislators speaks volumes about what a Grand Fucking Priority the state of women in Iraq is to the United States.

The United States could give a fuck.

"WASHINGTON — It was billed as a trip to teach Iraqi women who are running for office the rudiments of campaigning. But for the members of Congress who traveled to the Middle East over the weekend, it turned out to be a harrowing lesson on the sometimes painfully high price of democracy.

The U.S. lawmakers brought with them banners, bumper stickers and T-shirts to share with their Iraqi counterparts at a two-day retreat with 20 aspiring female legislators. They quickly set aside the campaign paraphernalia when the Iraqis disclosed the grim facts of their political lives.

The biggest challenge Iraqi candidates face: how to avoid getting killed."

No shit. Who briefed these Congress members on the situation in Iraq? “Embedded” reporters working for CNN?

"In eight years as a member of Congress, I've never had an experience like this," said Rep. Kay Granger, a Texas Republican who led the congressional delegation. "These are some of the bravest women I have ever met."

Never been to an occupied country? Do you read the newspaper? Do you keep informed of how the hell the policies you’re voting on effect real people? Do you have any idea how women live in this country, let alone the one you’re cavorting around in? No? Then you should be fired. This is your fucking job.

The four House members who made the trip — three Republicans and one Democrat — came prepared to discuss the practicalities of political life: campaign tactics, and techniques for getting publicity and for getting out the vote.

They quickly realized that much of what they planned to tell the Iraqi women "didn't pertain to them," Granger said. Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., who brought along her favorite campaign giveaway — a sponge bearing her name — added that after hearing the women's stories, "it seemed kind of frivolous."

Yea. Frivolous. Who briefed you on this trip? Sweet fuck, and she’s from a goddamn blue state.

Under the law setting up the Jan. 30 elections for a national assembly, which was written under American supervision, at least one-third of the candidates on the ballot must be women. That provision has provoked bloody opposition. One female candidate, Wijdan al-Khuzai, was found murdered near her Baghdad home in December.

The one-third provision is a cool one, actually. They did this in South Africa. With a national assembly, you’re voting on a party, not a candidate, so the actual party has to then fill the seats with 1/3 women. South African women fought like hell for this provision – they originally wanted ½ of all seats reserved for women (makes sense to me…), and shut down talks by stubbornly singing freedom songs and refusing to move onto another item until they got what they wanted. In the end, they got 1/3 of the seats reserved for female candidates.

They’re tough fuckin’ cookies, those South African women.

Not unlike these tough fucking Iraqi women.

As Election Day approaches, many female candidates are sending their families out of the country, said Manal Omar, who directs a program in Iraq on behalf of Women for Women International, a non-profit organization established to provide financial and other support for women in war zones. Omar said she spoke to some of the Iraqi women who attended the meetings with House members and that they were "frustrated" by the American politicians' apparent naiveté. "They were amazed (the Americans) didn't know how bad Iraq was," Omar said.

Americans are uninformed. We listen to CNN, that feeds us bullshit in short sound bites, and are far more interested in our waistlines than foreign policy (I’m not any better, you understand – how many posts do I write about weight, and how many about bombing foreign countries? Yea). But you know what, these are members of the United States fucking Congress. It’s their goddamn job to know what the hell they’re walking into. I’m pissed off at their cluelessness. The media fucking sucks.

The only soundbite from this encounter I won’t snark about:

For the Americans, it was an emotional encounter… Said Granger: "We went over there to encourage them. I think they ended up encouraging us."

As well they should.

Waking Up to CNN

Turned on CNN, and found one of the Iraqi presidential candidates using all the catch phrases, "pockets of resistance," "free and fair elections," "cival war," "if Osama Bin Laden, Zalawi and Saddam don't want us to have elections, then we have to have them," etc. My favorite, "All we have to do is make sure that 50% of Iraqis can vote. That's the number of people who vote in most western countries."

Well, no, actually, that's the number of people who choose to vote. Choosing to vote and being able to vote are different matters entirely. And the scary thing is that the US and "insurgents" get to decide *who* gets to vote.

Bah.

I think they're working on the old premise of: if you lie long enough and often enough, people think it's true. Oddly enough, this does sometimes work. But there's a fine line between hope and delusion.

Next up after the break: the scandel that's rocking the world - Prince Harry dresses up as a Nazi for a party, and the government has new weight-loss tips to share with the American people.

Gag me with a spoon.

Is it any wonder I changed the channel to the cartoon network?

Interesting Stuff From China

Thoughts on fantasy fiction, from China Mieville.

Also, Vandermeer is back from hiatus, and blogging again. Yay.

And It's Just More of the Same

All day meeting (as a nice addendum to yesterday's desire post, I spent most of one presenter's speech deciding whether or not I'd go to bed with him. This made it really difficult to take notes), Blaine took off early, Yellow's not there, and the expected and much-hyped big drunken dinner is apparently big-wig invite only, so of the twenty of us in the room, only about 6 are heading out for client debauchery. The rest of us are on our own. Denver fucking sucks. I want to go back to hanging out with the Indy team. They were way more fun.

What the hell's up with a stingy dinner?

Well, a lot, actually, but I won't go throwing rumors in, cause you know how that work-blogging stuff goes. Suffice to say, dinner tonight has gone from high-class back-smacking to a couple of beers with me, Sarah the construction manager, and a couple of the architects from the Chicago office. Not as snazzy. Though Sarah's cool, once again, I wish I could have picked my own friends' list for dinner.

Oh well. Better luck at my 30th, when everybody's invited.

Shit You Don't Want To Hear From Your Pilot When You've Been Circling Denver For 20 Minutes After Being Delayed an Hour And a Half Because --

"Well, we still have zero visibility in Denver, but we think we might have figured out what's wrong with the equipment here in the cockpit, so we're just going to go ahead and attempt a landing."

At this point, you've just got to sit back, relax, and turn up your CD player.

In fact, the visibility is so bad here in Denver tonight that my cab driver got lost in the business complex where my hotel is.

Denver just isn't my city.