Feminism

Important life lesson #1: Stand up for what you believe in, however unpopular it may make you.

That’s why I chose this “inflammatory” title for my post. The F-word. Reminiscent of spinster suffragettes, short-haired, man-hating, butch lesbians, 1960’ bra-burning ceremonies, sexual liberation, and generally, what one would call an outdated and irrelevant ideology.

What need for a womens’ liberation movement, when we’ve already been liberated?

But that’s not what feminism is about. Of course we owe a great deal to the women that fought in the front lines of the civil rights movement, even that alone might merit calling yourself a feminist.
If you consider that women deserve to be treated with equal consideration in society and deserve to have the same rights and opportunities as their male counterparts, then, I'm sorry to inform you, you're a feminist.

Today’s feminism is about context. About being “the other”. We have won the right to compete in the arena of the world, but had nothing to do with making the rules of the game. The world is tailored to fit a certain type of person. That is, simply put: male (and straight, and white, and physically able, etc. – but that’s a topic for another day). This is reflected in everything from governance to religion.
Living in the world, you have to begin to converse fluently in male interests, adapt to male models (better yet, stereotypes) of leadership, strength, business and power, if you want to play along. The only problem is, that because we are female, and have been educated to be pleasant, sociable, inactive, non-violent, we are not starting at the same point in the race. We have to alienate ourselves from most of the things we were taught, become "butch", "unfeminine" (and sometimes be despised for it) in order to be able to compete with men. This is not equality, we just have the privilege to become men, and the misfortune of having to give up our "pleasant femininity" for it. At the same time, the burden of being female remains, in the traditional perspective most people have on family structures.

“Your husband helps you around the house? How lucky you must feel, you’ve trained him well!” Yes, terribly lucky. The luck of working two jobs (career & housework) and taking care of the children, and the unexpected bliss of someone stepping in, and sometimes helping out.

Even this scenario is uncommon. Especially in Romania, this is a deviation from the norm. In a country awash in patriarchal values, it is universally expected for women to accept housework as a natural component of daily life, as if it were naturally easier for them, because "they're good at it".
Another natural component of daily life for many women is domestic violence: 1 in 4 women in the western world suffer from domestic violence. The stats are roughly the same for rape: 1 in 8 women are raped during their lifetime. These are the real, current issues of being a woman.

I under no circumstances hate men. I don’t consider my gender superior. I just want to underline that my place in the world has confines that most men will never understand.

Examples?
Never walking alone at night. Avoiding eyecontact with men on the street. Avoiding groups of men by crossing the street. Watching what I wear, so as not to provoke helpless rapists from assaulting me. And if I get raped, not expecting the culprit to be found, much less prosecuted (96% of all rape cases go unsolved). Also shouldering the blame for the rape with the fact that I was dressed "slutty", had been out late at night or/and had been drinking (the outrage!). Ignoring every leering asshole who invites me to help myself to his genitals. Having to giggle at jokes concerning the stupidity of my gender so as not to appear “uncool”. Getting only ¾ of the salary a male colleague gets in an equivalent position (in the western world). Letting the media tell me that I'm only as good as I look, that whatever I do, I'll never be good enough, and that I have a pretty strict expiration date (about 30, when I should REALLY start considering breeding, cause it's getting close!). Living in a society where it’s not only acceptable, but expected that I live my life out as a passive being without hobbies or interests, only striving to eventually find someone to complement and assist, mostly in exchange for housing and various amenities (by this, of course, I mean marriage).

If I have strong opinions, I’m loud and unpleasant. If I voice my concerns, I’m hysterical. If I have a lot of sex (and actually love it) I’m a nympho/slut, if I don’t, I’m frigid. Shockingly, my vagina is reusable, and (to the utter astonishment of many men and women (!) ), does not stretch out due to excessive usage (because of the simple fact that it isn't a rubber tube, but a muscle, inside a real human being). Imagine that!

I always say that if I was born a man I would have probably never engaged feminism in this way. In the words of Simone de Beauvoir (in explaining why she wrote “the second sex”): “Men would never think of writing a book about men’s special place in society”.
It is easy to consider one’s privilege the norm. And it is also easy to look down on people that do not correspond to that norm. Once someone is in the slightest bit dehumanized (meaning: not considered a valid equal), it is easy to write them off as a category, call them (all) stupid, irrational, nagging, hysterical, sluts, golddiggers, etc. and casually exclude female family members ( usually mom, sisters) or some cool girlfriend ("honey, you're not like the rest") from that category, as an exception from the rule.

Every single person is an exception from the rule. We really are all different, and that includes men too. I really don't think that ALL men like sports, beer, cheating on their girlfriends/wives, being aggressive, dominant, dismissive, being "rugged", being called a "pig", being considered too "weak" to resist your own sexuality, etc. This is just a small fragment of the range of stereotypes that befall men. And (even though this is a very common misconception) these stereotypes are not coming from feminists. They are common conceptions about what it is like to be a "real man" nowadays. But the truth is, this is not a real man, it's a Carlsberg commercial.

Women that accept men "for what they are" according to these ideas, also have an altered perception of men, and in my opinion, are doing the complexities of men a great disservice. It's not that I think men are or should be "girly", but the picture of the testosterone blinded burping football hooligan is as insulting as the passive laundromat woman that can't drive or even count. Men are better than that, and so are women.

One of the major problems concerning women is the toxic culture we live in. Even though people most often use biology to explain the major differences between the sexes, on a biological level, these are almost neglijable. Women (slightly) multitask better, and men have (slightly) better spacial coordination. That's about it. Seriously.
Most other diferences are cultural. Starting with the fact that we are raised significantly differently. Girls get passive toys (dolls, dollhouses, fake beauty utensils, E-Z Bake Ovens etc.), passive roles (being nice, pretty, PLEASANT) and most often, "pretty" constraining clothing (dresses, skirts, tight fitting and in abrasive materials like lace or taffeta, that they should by all means keep clean, which is no hard task because it's hard to play anything remotely active in them anyway). Boys are encouraged to be active, play sports, play with technical and dynamic toys, which involve imagination and creativity, and most of all, they are encouraged not to be a "whining little girl", which does wonders in teaching misogyny early on.
After childhood, women, especially in more primitive cultures (no, I don't mean you, Norway) are taught that they are only as good as they look (that until they reach their expiration date). I don't mean that that's been formally told to them by "evil" men, but let's face it, 99% of the time a woman is portrayed in the media, she is either just a photo of a cleavage or an ass, or just simply rubbing up against Snoop Dogg. And even in most "serious" TV shows, the strong, independent female doctor is just some hungry, big breasted robot that falls in love with the ever-so-competent neurosurgeon on staff and gets married. That's about it for her career. And these are the shows for women.
Photoshop-ed women on the cover of men's magazines.
Photoshop-ed women on the cover of women's magazines.
Tits selling everything from burgers to insurance. Am I really so ignorant in thinking that women may also be buyers of burgers, insurance, or maybe even wafers (as my favourite Romanian wafer brand "Joe" insists, its products are for MEN, REAL MEN).
Yes, this is just the media, and yes, it IS important, because it really has a big role in our society, and, beside actively showing only dominant stereotypes, it is highly influential and the primary source of rolemodels for children, and even adults (see Gigi Becali).
I respect the right of women to want to become swimsuit models, singers (swimsuit models with a microphone) or actresses (filmed swimsuit models), but that's not the only thing you should be able to want.
Beautiful women in our society are sometimes rightfully called ignorant, because they are blinded by this false sense of power that comes from male attention. And they spend their lives cultivating it with torturous diets and beauty regiments, that range from the sensible (moisturizer) to the outright preposterous (imobilizing and to be totally frank, hideous fake nails that fall off at all the right moments in your salad and remind me of than Pam Anderson bending over a couch in the '80s).
"Ugly" girls have the privilege to spend their time looking at things other than a mirror or slobbering boys. But this really doesn't have to be this way.
I'll say it again: it's ok to be healthy and beautiful and groomed, but that's not what life is all about. Life is about your life, what you make it, and it doesn't begin and end in a beauty parlor, in a night club or in a retarded Snoop Dogg video.

And this never ending obsession of women with looks is also the source of another
stereotype: women hating other women. This idiotic sexual competition that plagues female relationships is also based on the fact that women value themselves only by their looks. They believe that's the only thing that matters to men, and in a society that tells you that the only thing that should matter to you is a man, they hate eachother for it.
Not many women would admit to this, but I personally guarantee that this is a real phenomenon. It may be subtle, but this IS the source of the female hatred of women, and why some of the most mysoginistic people are women.
They want to be considered the exception.

Ay dios mio, this rant is LONG!
Sorry for this, I'm in a phase. But instead of writing 10 little posts about feminism, I let the creative juices all flow right into this one.

Love it, or hate it, this is just the way I feel, and you know, sharing is caring, so there you have it.

aggressive passive

Reviving this dusty blog with a minor existential crisis.

After an interesting discussion I've had a few days ago, the extent of my problem became frightfully clear.
Because I'm not really one for criticism, I've denied the problem and was shocked by the accusation, but then of course secretly went to work on fixing it.
The truth is, I am a professional student. I do my job thoroughly and I may say well, but this career does have it's pitfalls.

Surprisingly, my problem is excessive free time.
Before you grab your tar and feathers and come over to lynch me, let me elaborate.
Like every existential problem, it all began in my childhood. Damn you, Freud!
Picture me as the one who was always too big for gymnastics, ballet or any other midget sport on the face of the earth. I was too old for tennis, too scared of phisical injury and downright humiliation for taekwondo. Riding horses was thrilling at first, utterly boring afterwards. The more outlandish options, like golf or female bodybuilding were boring, scary or inaccesible. Winter alternatives came to a grinding halt after my knee cried a sad farewell on a slope in Austria. I began playing several instruments, and was mindblowingly bored by every single one of them. They now are part of my interior design.
Familiy pressure was, frankly, minimal. The general attitude: Well, you're not joining the olipmic delegation any time soon, so you might as well read a book or watch a movie. Stop whining!
Adolescence went by in a haze of classical boyfriend drama, parties, boredom, and a light sprinkle of school work.
College was hard at first, then challenging, and then, slowly, there was nothing left to do.
Oh, but is't there the ominous responsability of the family company? Heritage? The problem is, I'm never around enough to do the really important stuff. I'm just an extra in a larger play. I'm the tree. Nice to look at, but expendable.

So here I am, floating around life like a bat on LSD.
My plan is to change all this, have structure, get involved, be proactive!
All this would be easier to believe if it didn't sound like something straight out of a self help book. And instead of having yet another rant on the virtues of change, I'll just be waiting to find a thing that I like so much, that it will blur out the rest, and keep me up at night.
No, not booze.

Creative writing. Not.

I wanted to write about a crossroads. About having to reinvent my life all over again. About new beginnings. The bitter-sweet taste of semi-motivational bullshit. Well, I've written that sort of aberations before, it's neither literary nor therapeutic. It's some placebo I hungrily gorge myself on to plump up my day to day with snappy sounding meaningful phrases.
Every door closed...
When life gives you lemons...
If you buy now, we'll throw in a set of hokkaido knives...
We search for meaning and if it's not there we invent some.
Just to make up for the existential insecurities we were all blessed with.
Happiness is a warm gun, they say. ( who would spit out such surreal shit? Lennon) what it's supposed to mean, I can only speculate. The deep, viscous satisfaction of revenge? The danger of blowing your own brains out with the Glock under your pillow? The fact, that whatever happens, hazard is always close and coziliy tucked beside you, but it's warmth leaves you oblivious?
Jesus Christ, what the freaking &@€" am I talking about?
Let this be a lesson that not everything that is writtrn down and posted in a public forum is of any value.

Tradition

Time swallows the world around me with every second that I'm here.
It may well be relative, but between my four walls, Newton still sets the stage, as he does for the rest of us.
Constance, rigidity, precision. Those are the parameters of our constraint.

What to fill the years with?
In the spectrum between nihilistic cinicism and hedonistic craze there are myriad of choices.
Like in an essay I will soon have to write (unfortunately): there is no right answer. You just choose a position and that's that. Then struggle with it until you hastily write a conclusion. Time's up. Pencils down. The end.

I'm an envious person.
Mostly, I envy mindsets.
I envy the people that would never think to write things like these.
Those too busy with the actual whirlwind of their existence.
I envy people like my father. He was a "go-getter", an "entrepreneur", a small-scale-central-European Richard Branson. Work ethic, honor and joie de vivre all compressed in one heartwrenching memory.

Until now, I just didn't turn out that way.
And I'm trying. I'm trying to not be like myself.
I'm trying to channel the life juice in my DNA, and give it a violent kick-start.
Cherry pick the good and mercilessly snuff out the bad.
Follow tradition.
I'm just work in progress. Thought I'd be finished by now, but, well, obviously not.

I'm the challenge of a lifetime.

An educated guess

One of the most helpful and basic Apps of the human brain turns out to need an upgrade.
The "educated guess", the undergraduate sibling of deductive reasoning seems to be a bad bet.
Society seems a perpetual victim of the "applied logic in spite of lack of information" idea.
The tendency to link cause to effect is an important asset, but can also lead to personal beliefs that have nothing to do with facts.

I love twisting words, and I just realised that I'm probably the only one that understands what I wrote up to now.
So, I'll try to elaborate, giving an example.

Homeopathy.
(* people often confuse homeopathy with herbal remedies, teas, etc. Well, it's not that - it's something else - see following, or even wikipedia)
The ingenious idea of "immunising" oneself by ingesting a molecule of poison, or harmful substance and strengthening one's organism in the process.
Seems basic enough, sounds interesting, and is, most of all, appealing to one's intuitive, "gut feeling" organ.

But it's wrong.

It's the same type of snakeoil peddling that's been happening for millenia.
Scientifically PROVEN to be bogus.
The higher the dilution, the more potent the concoction, that's the mantra. Until the "finished" product chemically does not contain any trace of the initial harmful substance.
Still, its marketers shove it down the necks of the hopeless, the deniers of modern medicine, the "nature" people.
Being "green" can equate being dead if you insist on denying science.

People are so numbed because of our modern culture that they sense the evil, the fake element in it, and associate it with technology, science. Every fact becomes doubtful.
If it's not branded "natural", "green", "bio" it's a danger.
Most of us don't see that the conspiracy is just another thing that is sold.
Another culture someone buys into.
An alternative product for an alternative consumer base.

So, as always, discern. Think about things. Inform yourselves.

Living for today

Oh, the attempt to theorise life...
Many have tried.
All have failed.

At the same time there's too much and too little to compound. Depends on your level of abstraction. And what you're looking for.

Meaning? Well that's one patented dead end.

Happiness? Too closely related to ignorance, and in a search for knowledge, that kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

And it also depends on your role and limitations in this society we live in.
On the amount of energy you want to spend.
And, yes, with the danger of sounding repetitive: on gender.

"It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question ‘who am I’ except the voice inside herself." (I don't know who)

I know so many women confined by their own minds. Most of them not even noticing the bars that bind them to their prison. Youth, beauty, and the illusions that come with them, fade at som point and reveal what had been previously hidden.
What was once a charming quirk, is now subject to riducule and , most often, correctly termed stupidity.

When your only value is the circumference of your waist and the glossy shimmer in your eyes, the trap-door will fall from under you.
No, it's not the one to Wonderland.
It's the one to early-mid-life-crisis-land. A region filled with all the sagging, fatty, hanging flesh you can imagine.
And there's no (remotely easy) way back.

So, start living for yourselves.
Cause, even though it doesn't seem like that right now, there may come a time when there will be no one to adore the flesh on your bones and that ignorat giggle.
Time waits for no one.

And after this menacing attack on all things known as charming and female, I just want to point out that I'm not a bitter old hag with nothing to do than give young girls the willies.
What I'm describing is just a form of life insurance.

Just want to make my contribution to the cause of making sure that a group of people I sincerely care about (yup, that's you, girls) have the chance to have a life well beyond their thirties.

Love,
Alexandra