Point the first: I haven't forgotten this blog. Obviously; as I'm writing in it at present. Nor have I forgotten the story I was working on. I just need to set out some ideas and get that sorted before I carry on. Although upon reflection and a desire to rewrite (made more severe by the fact that it's already been made public in all its awkwardness) it may become another Abortive Piece of Florid Prose - I have innumerable quantities of those, shed at the wayside like so many colourless papery snake-skins.
Point the second: I am utterly bewildered by the fact that there are still visits to this blog, even though I have not added new material in .... many months. Like, who wants to see my old stuff, really? My most popular posts to date are still the one about pretty actors and the one about things I smelled in one day. I really don't understand people. At least most of them are not foolish enough to actually read the (similarly multitudinous to the Prose) Florid Poetry I have been so silly as to share here. The idiotic phrases one puts together in the gut-wrenching years of 18 and 19 - well, there's no harm in them, but why, oh, why, did I have to share them on the Internet? Foolish child I was, and still am, I'll admit.
Point the third: Pursuant to that last statement, let me explain, if you care to read, why I think I'm still foolish: I seem to frequently put myself into a state of maudlin melancholy, and what's worse is that I seem to do it on purpose.
I can't think why I do it, but the how is easy. Let's just say I have a partiality for certain types of love stories. Pride and Prejudice, Gaudy Night & Busman's Honeymoon, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew, for a start.
I've lately been home sick from work, so yesterday (as is traditional when a Klassen is ill) I watched the entirety of the A&E version of P&P. I know nearly the whole of it by heart by now, and can imitate Lady Catherine as she's telling off Lizzy about Darcy quite creditably. But the moment in Pemberley as Lizzy rushes back to Georgiana, ostensibly to turn pages for her but really to distract from silly Miss Bingleys and their references to certain Wickhams - and she and Darcy have an entire conversation with their eyes. Just kills me every time.
Then today I re-read Gaudy Night. Dorothy Sayers. I love that woman. And it occurred to me, on this re-reading, that I owe a fair number of my feminist opinions to her, because really, Gaudy is full of them*. But there are two moments in that book that just kill me too. The first, and actually more murderous of the two, as far as I'm concerned, is the scene when they've been punting on the river, and Wimsey's reading Harriet's notes on the crime and catches her perusing his face. The second, of course, is the bit at the end when he proposes for the umpteenth time and she finally accepts.
Now, I'm not entirely certain, but I have a good strong suspicion that my maudlin mood upon re-reading and re-watching these gems is solidly based in the fact that none of the so-called love stories I have embarked upon in my own life has ended well.
I do have an inner Mr Bennet (probably due to watching P&P so many times), who thoroughly laughs at the whole deal, with a hearty, "Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then," though contrary to what he thinks, taken all together, I rather dislike than like the experience. But then I read these stories and I have a little hope for a time, and then I remember that I've been living vicariously through Lizzy and Harriet for the last few hours and that reality is not often like books, and my hope bursts like little bubbles and I'm left with this sort of bittersweet melancholy.
Point the fourth: I'm sort of a little bit sorry that my first post back since January is full of emotional dreck, but it was what was on my mind that caused me to write at all, so, in Internet-speak, sorry not sorry.
Point the fifth: Goddamn loneliness. It's shitty.
*Also I came across some excerpts from essays by her on the subject a little time ago. Cast your eyes across these, if you will: http://hardheads.blogspot.ca/2010_10_01_archive.html - I particularly liked the section out of The Human Not-Quite Human.
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
31.5.13
In which Lizzi goes on a feminist rant. [long ranty post warning]
I had an exchange with someone this morning after I heard him complaining about the lady who had made him pasta for lunch. Please bear in mind, this is an adult male, forty-plus if he's a day.
"She's a real Italian," he said, "got a moustache and hairy armpits and hairy legs... disgusting."
At which point, I piped up and said that I have hairy armpits and hairy legs - so what? And then I explained that it's cold out still (oh, BC how I love thee), I'm covered up, so why am I going to care about something no-one can see when it takes an extra ten minutes in the shower and I could be doing useful things in those ten minutes like making a lunch or whatnot?
His response was that I disgusted him. That it's gross. That sure, I can do what I want to, but it's revolting.
I chose not to answer aloud. This is my answer.
I don't shave my legs or my armpits when I don't have to, but I don't know a single man who shaves his legs if he's going to be wearing shorts, or going swimming. There is no earthly reason why I am therefore more disgusting than my imaginary example man. I shower regularly, I wear clean clothes. I am not gross.
So why am I disgusting if I choose, for practicality, to abstain from an optional step in the hygiene procedure? And why is a man who chooses not to shave his face (oh, another optional step!) not equally disgusting?
Is it perhaps, then, that I am disgusting to you because you feel that I should conform to your ideals of what a woman should be like? Well, let me go back to an earlier post to remind you that no-one should come from a cookie-cutter. Just as we're different sizes, we're different people. My sister wants to be a homemaker, and doesn't want a career. I am not my sister. I'm actively pursuing a career. Neither opinion is wrong, even though they're nearly polar opposites, and I have to say, I don't always understand my sister's opinion, but I can allow for a difference. In the same way, just because you have a certain idea of what womanhood and femininity should be, doesn't mean you get to invalidate my understanding of what womanhood and femininity are for me.
Actually, if you think about it, men should have less opportunity to criticise these things, because they are not women. Let's put it in very ridiculous terms, overstating the concept for clarity.
Take, for example, an orange and a fish.
The orange could say to the fish, "You are not swimming properly. Don't they teach you these things in school?"*
Or the fish could say to the orange, "You're not juicy enough. Try harder."
Neither of these things make sense, because the orange is not the fish, and therefore cannot determine between proper swimming and useless flapping about in the water; but neither is the fish the orange, and therefore cannot see what difficulty it would be to change its very nature and makeup.
I use the analogy both ways, because women equally ought not to tell a man what manhood and masculinity are made up of, but the issue under scrutiny right now is chiefly men specifying womanhood and femininity. Because to be honest with you, I see the latter much more than the former.
And one of the things that really tweaks me the wrong way is the act of womanhood being defined on my behalf. I am a woman and therefore I have womanhood; I am a female and therefore I am feminine. My understanding of that cannot be thrown out as being outlying data. Doing so would negate the fact that I have a gender, whether or not my femininity is different from your perception of what it ought to be. And this holds true for every other woman you will ever meet, even if we all approach womanhood from our own angles and viewpoints, it's still womanhood because we are women. So even though my sister and I are very different in what we want from life, I cannot say she's more or less feminine than I, or that she's more or less of a woman than I.
Anyway. Wasn't intending to make this a full-on rant, but it sort of turned into one. My apologies. And semi-congratulations, if you read the whole thing. I won't judge if you didn't, though. Also, I didn't realise I was this emphatic of a feminist. Heh.
Oh, and for the non-redditors, yesterday's post title beginning with TL;DR - it's shorthand for Too Long; Didn't Read. You're welcome.
Toodles.
*pun very much fully intended.
"She's a real Italian," he said, "got a moustache and hairy armpits and hairy legs... disgusting."
At which point, I piped up and said that I have hairy armpits and hairy legs - so what? And then I explained that it's cold out still (oh, BC how I love thee), I'm covered up, so why am I going to care about something no-one can see when it takes an extra ten minutes in the shower and I could be doing useful things in those ten minutes like making a lunch or whatnot?
His response was that I disgusted him. That it's gross. That sure, I can do what I want to, but it's revolting.
I chose not to answer aloud. This is my answer.
I don't shave my legs or my armpits when I don't have to, but I don't know a single man who shaves his legs if he's going to be wearing shorts, or going swimming. There is no earthly reason why I am therefore more disgusting than my imaginary example man. I shower regularly, I wear clean clothes. I am not gross.
So why am I disgusting if I choose, for practicality, to abstain from an optional step in the hygiene procedure? And why is a man who chooses not to shave his face (oh, another optional step!) not equally disgusting?
Is it perhaps, then, that I am disgusting to you because you feel that I should conform to your ideals of what a woman should be like? Well, let me go back to an earlier post to remind you that no-one should come from a cookie-cutter. Just as we're different sizes, we're different people. My sister wants to be a homemaker, and doesn't want a career. I am not my sister. I'm actively pursuing a career. Neither opinion is wrong, even though they're nearly polar opposites, and I have to say, I don't always understand my sister's opinion, but I can allow for a difference. In the same way, just because you have a certain idea of what womanhood and femininity should be, doesn't mean you get to invalidate my understanding of what womanhood and femininity are for me.
Actually, if you think about it, men should have less opportunity to criticise these things, because they are not women. Let's put it in very ridiculous terms, overstating the concept for clarity.
Take, for example, an orange and a fish.
The orange could say to the fish, "You are not swimming properly. Don't they teach you these things in school?"*
Or the fish could say to the orange, "You're not juicy enough. Try harder."
Neither of these things make sense, because the orange is not the fish, and therefore cannot determine between proper swimming and useless flapping about in the water; but neither is the fish the orange, and therefore cannot see what difficulty it would be to change its very nature and makeup.
I use the analogy both ways, because women equally ought not to tell a man what manhood and masculinity are made up of, but the issue under scrutiny right now is chiefly men specifying womanhood and femininity. Because to be honest with you, I see the latter much more than the former.
And one of the things that really tweaks me the wrong way is the act of womanhood being defined on my behalf. I am a woman and therefore I have womanhood; I am a female and therefore I am feminine. My understanding of that cannot be thrown out as being outlying data. Doing so would negate the fact that I have a gender, whether or not my femininity is different from your perception of what it ought to be. And this holds true for every other woman you will ever meet, even if we all approach womanhood from our own angles and viewpoints, it's still womanhood because we are women. So even though my sister and I are very different in what we want from life, I cannot say she's more or less feminine than I, or that she's more or less of a woman than I.
Anyway. Wasn't intending to make this a full-on rant, but it sort of turned into one. My apologies. And semi-congratulations, if you read the whole thing. I won't judge if you didn't, though. Also, I didn't realise I was this emphatic of a feminist. Heh.
Oh, and for the non-redditors, yesterday's post title beginning with TL;DR - it's shorthand for Too Long; Didn't Read. You're welcome.
Toodles.
*pun very much fully intended.
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