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Just Like a Woman
Apr. 9th, 2007 08:30 pmContinuing the ranting theme:
1) Forget food miles. Even for refrigerated items like milk, the carbon-impact of transport must be miniscule compared to rock miles. Recent road works here have embedded quite a bit of granite into the street. Granite from China. WHAT THE FUCK??
2) Feminists (myself included) love to rant about society's double standards regarding men's and women's sexualities. But recently I've been noticing just how deep these double standards go.
It's not just about promiscuous men being 'casanovas' and promiscuous women being 'sluts'. It's the very paradigms behind words like 'slut'. I've often heard people admonish women for calling each other sluts, skanks, etc, because "It just makes it okay for guys to use those words." But this explanation has never rung true. For one thing, when it's your whole society that prohibits certain behaviours, the gender of a particular insulter doesn't really matter that much. The real problem with words like 'slut' is that by using such terms, we validate the whole idea behind them.
More and more, I'm beginning to think that this whole idea of 'sluttiness' is connected with the way we ('we' as a society--not me, and hopefully not you, either) view the sexual power-relations between men and women. Every time a man has sex with a woman, he is seen as having somehow gained something--men 'get' laid. Conversely, women apparently lose something--and not just when we 'lose' our oh-so-precious virginity--we 'give it up' when we "let" men have sex with us.
Well I'm sorry, but I REFUSE TO SEE MY BODY IN THESE TERMS. I deny your "morality" and your paradigms. Suck my balls.
Because you know what? If you think about it, women ought to be the ones who are seen as 'gaining' something from het sex, seeing as we are the receptive partner and all (except in pegging--but that's a whole 'nother perversion of roles). Really, though, surely the best way to understand sex is simply as a fun thing that people do together. Above all, it should be about mutual pleasure, with none of this infuriating power play (as distinct from the sexy, kinky sort of power play--but again, that's a separate issue :-P).
Hokay. Ranting over. I'm all out of steam. I had an hour and a half's sleep this morning.
Yes, that's right, an hour and a half, and all in the AM time. Because despite my long, lonely and boring week in Albany Park, I didn't manage to even start writing my Kant essay (due at noon today) until Sunday night.
I spent most of last week trying to read the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Sometimes reading certain things is like banging one's head against a stone wall. This was like nothing so much as approaching said wall, pressing one's forehead against it, and trying to walk through it. I felt quite vindicated when one article I read called it "possibly the most impenatrable piece of prose ever written". Nice to know I'm not the only one who thought so.
However I did finally manage to take my bike 'round to the repair shop. They told me I'd have to get an expensive new handle to fix the gears, so instead I tried fixing it myself. Despite the fact that I know next to nothing about bikes, and what little I do know is hardly applicable since this bike (an old 3-speed) has a gear mechanism I've never seen before (some sort of drum). It was necessary, though, since it seemed to be stuck in its highest gear, making it far too slow and dangerous to start from stopped, besides being a bitch to pedal uphill.
But I was successful! ...kind of. The gears do shift now--sometimes--but sometimes you think they've shifted when really they haven't, or you accidentally shift them walking the bike or something, and suddenly the pedals stop operating the chain for several strokes until something clicks into place, and the sudden jarring start of pressure hurts your bad knee... and all of this happens right as you pull into the roundabout... :-[
Aww, my bike is crap. I love it, though. It is old and awkward and bent and broken, and I love it with all my bent and awkward heart.
So anyway, I got back to Hall on Saturday, and proceeded to do exactly no work on my essay for a few hours. Then I had a small emotional breakdown. This was nothing to do with the essay, but a realisation that hit me quite suddenly. No, I'm not going to go into details here. Ask if you want to know more. I cried that night, for the first time since Christmas. Which shouldn't be a big deal, except for all the times I've come close to tears these last four months, and found myself unable to release them. But that night I cried, and I prayed. For real prayed, with words and everything. I can't even remember the last time.
Sunday had a weird sort of 'morning-after' feel to it. Then panic, essay, confusion, more panic, and a very small amount of writing. I wrote the bulk of the essay this very morning (that is, after my 1.5 hour slumber). I hope it's not as dysmal as I think it is. I talked about robots a lot.
1) Forget food miles. Even for refrigerated items like milk, the carbon-impact of transport must be miniscule compared to rock miles. Recent road works here have embedded quite a bit of granite into the street. Granite from China. WHAT THE FUCK??
2) Feminists (myself included) love to rant about society's double standards regarding men's and women's sexualities. But recently I've been noticing just how deep these double standards go.
It's not just about promiscuous men being 'casanovas' and promiscuous women being 'sluts'. It's the very paradigms behind words like 'slut'. I've often heard people admonish women for calling each other sluts, skanks, etc, because "It just makes it okay for guys to use those words." But this explanation has never rung true. For one thing, when it's your whole society that prohibits certain behaviours, the gender of a particular insulter doesn't really matter that much. The real problem with words like 'slut' is that by using such terms, we validate the whole idea behind them.
More and more, I'm beginning to think that this whole idea of 'sluttiness' is connected with the way we ('we' as a society--not me, and hopefully not you, either) view the sexual power-relations between men and women. Every time a man has sex with a woman, he is seen as having somehow gained something--men 'get' laid. Conversely, women apparently lose something--and not just when we 'lose' our oh-so-precious virginity--we 'give it up' when we "let" men have sex with us.
Well I'm sorry, but I REFUSE TO SEE MY BODY IN THESE TERMS. I deny your "morality" and your paradigms. Suck my balls.
Because you know what? If you think about it, women ought to be the ones who are seen as 'gaining' something from het sex, seeing as we are the receptive partner and all (except in pegging--but that's a whole 'nother perversion of roles). Really, though, surely the best way to understand sex is simply as a fun thing that people do together. Above all, it should be about mutual pleasure, with none of this infuriating power play (as distinct from the sexy, kinky sort of power play--but again, that's a separate issue :-P).
Hokay. Ranting over. I'm all out of steam. I had an hour and a half's sleep this morning.
Yes, that's right, an hour and a half, and all in the AM time. Because despite my long, lonely and boring week in Albany Park, I didn't manage to even start writing my Kant essay (due at noon today) until Sunday night.
I spent most of last week trying to read the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Sometimes reading certain things is like banging one's head against a stone wall. This was like nothing so much as approaching said wall, pressing one's forehead against it, and trying to walk through it. I felt quite vindicated when one article I read called it "possibly the most impenatrable piece of prose ever written". Nice to know I'm not the only one who thought so.
However I did finally manage to take my bike 'round to the repair shop. They told me I'd have to get an expensive new handle to fix the gears, so instead I tried fixing it myself. Despite the fact that I know next to nothing about bikes, and what little I do know is hardly applicable since this bike (an old 3-speed) has a gear mechanism I've never seen before (some sort of drum). It was necessary, though, since it seemed to be stuck in its highest gear, making it far too slow and dangerous to start from stopped, besides being a bitch to pedal uphill.
But I was successful! ...kind of. The gears do shift now--sometimes--but sometimes you think they've shifted when really they haven't, or you accidentally shift them walking the bike or something, and suddenly the pedals stop operating the chain for several strokes until something clicks into place, and the sudden jarring start of pressure hurts your bad knee... and all of this happens right as you pull into the roundabout... :-[
Aww, my bike is crap. I love it, though. It is old and awkward and bent and broken, and I love it with all my bent and awkward heart.
So anyway, I got back to Hall on Saturday, and proceeded to do exactly no work on my essay for a few hours. Then I had a small emotional breakdown. This was nothing to do with the essay, but a realisation that hit me quite suddenly. No, I'm not going to go into details here. Ask if you want to know more. I cried that night, for the first time since Christmas. Which shouldn't be a big deal, except for all the times I've come close to tears these last four months, and found myself unable to release them. But that night I cried, and I prayed. For real prayed, with words and everything. I can't even remember the last time.
Sunday had a weird sort of 'morning-after' feel to it. Then panic, essay, confusion, more panic, and a very small amount of writing. I wrote the bulk of the essay this very morning (that is, after my 1.5 hour slumber). I hope it's not as dysmal as I think it is. I talked about robots a lot.
