the bigger picture

oh, it's all so fucking exhausting.

being a Good Feminist™, i mean. after all, there's so much to be *angry* about! and i mean that genuinely - there really is so much to be angry about. i have a lot of friends that spend exorbitant amounts of time reading feminist theory and being angry. seriously, it's amazing they have time to do anything else!

and it's all true. i hate living in a world where so much of the way i'm perceived by others has more to do with the boobs they see than what i'm like as a person. i hate living in a world where i have to wonder if i'm not being undervalued in my monthly paycheque. i hate living in a world which thinks the single most salient characteristic of my personhood is my chromosome set, and markets everything around me and to me based on what they believe that chromosome combination Should Mean.

i hate having to constantly second guess the motives and historical and patriarchal influence behind everything and everybody - including everything *i* personally think and feel and do. i hate hate hate it.

see? there really is so much to be angry about!

and that's before you get to all the intra-movement in-fighting about priorities, and strategies, and scrabbling for scarce resources, and slights (imaginary, unintentional and real), and who speaks for whom, and the contingent who believe they have the moral imperative to tell you You're Doing Feminism Wrong.

who has the energy for all of that?

i mean i do, a lot of the time. i used to have more - it's easy to get and stay all good-and-riled-up when you're fresh out of uni with few other responsibilities or demands on your time. not so easy when you're nearing forty, but i'm a hot-tempered bleeding-heart liberal by nature so it's easier to keep my juices flowing about all the injustices in the world.

but goddamn, sometimes i just want to tell all those young idealist women who spend all that time being angry, that eventually you have to step back. that being that angry all the time will drain you dry. that as you get older you realise that Being Right isn't always the most important thing. (and as heretical as the idea seems, sometimes there isn't even a Right or Wrong!) that seeing the world through whatever the opposite of rose-coloured glasses is, tints everything with the same bleak hue.

and that for all there is to be angry about (and there is a lot of stuff to be angry about! a lot of stuff worthy of good, honest anger honed to a razor sharp edge of righteous indignation!), there is also so much more to life that is joyful. there is love and beauty and kindness and warmth. for every injustice worth railing long and hard against, there are also things worth celebrating - and some of it is even part of the kyriarchy.

you've got to choose your battles in this world. and all Good Feminists™ should fight the fight, and never stop fighting. but sometimes you concede the battle in hopes of winning the war. and sometimes you have to step back and look past the battlefield entirely, so you can see the trees and the mountains and the whole beautiful goddamn thing that makes living worthwhile in the first place.

i still want to be a Good Feminist™, but i'm finally brave enough to know when not to fight, i'm learning that there isn't always a Right or Wrong, and i'm hoping like hell to step back from the anger and exhaustion more often to see the big blue marble. i've got a world to change... but more importantly, i've got a LIFE to live.

I'm Holding Out For a Hero

I caught the last half of Juno this weekend. I think Lifetime was running a movie marathon featuring preggo teens because Where the Heart Is was on just after it. I was reminded of the scene in Juno where Jason Bateman's character gives the baby-bellied Juno a copy of a comic featuring Most Fruitful Yuki, a Japanese manga/anime superhero that "Leads with the belly and follows with the sword." He gives it to her to kind of tell her she can still be cool even though she's sporting the most lame teen fashion accessory ever.

There have been a handful of movies that deal with the human as hero theme. I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Kick-Ass and really liked them both.

How nice it would be if more of our super hero imagery was linked to things more typical than being accidentally disintegrated in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor. I know I tend to focus on my areas of weakness rather than where I excel. I fight a sometimes losing battle to see myself as the sum of my strengths rather than a laundry list of failures. Can organizational skill be a super power? Can dinner party prowess repel evil forces? Can baking save the planet from certain destruction?

I don't shoot spiderwebs out of my fingers, I clean them out of corners. I can't change the earth's rotation, but I can plan a successful marketing plan and tell with 99% accuracy whether my ten year old is lying. I can't catch a bullet in my teeth, but I can do things that knock my husband's socks off without fail. I'm working on controlling my negative thinking, focusing on my strengths and putting my mind to something and doing it. I used to be really good at this but some where along the line I just got out of practice. I'm working on what my hero looks like, not like super moms, trying to do everything perfectly and effortless. Rather the real me, fierce and capable. When I start to see myself that way, I act from that place and the universe conspires to lend me a hand.

Are you a super hero?

Do you have extraordinary abilities, super powers or relevant/advanced equipment?

A fly costume?

A sidekick?


A secret identity?

A secret hideout?

A back story that explains your motivations?

Enemies?

Space

“So it looks like we’ll more or less live separately but continue to see each other”, I tell her, “I’m fine with that, in fact, it’s always been my fantasy although I’ve said it to any partner, and now it just looks like it’s going to happen without fuss”.

We’ve just rented a flat in the city 30 mins  drive from my home in a village, ostensibly for nights out and a place to stay for my partner after a particularly exhausting shift in A&E, but it’s real purpose is quickly becoming apparent.

“Funny how that’s a fantasy for so many women”, she replies.

Is it?  I’ve known quite a few women who nodded in absolute agreement whenever I’ve mentioned it, even a few women who managed to achieve it.  Is it a woman’s fantasy?  Actually, I have tentatively suggested this possibility to previous partners. They always took it badly, as rejection.  It doesn’t seem to be a fantasy among the men I’ve lived with up till now.

I love my partner, but living with him kills it stone dead.   There’s endless resentment about who does what in terms of chores.  Conflicts about how to organise the house.   Sleeping and energy level incompatibilities between one who works shifts and another who has no imposed timetables.  Endless directions on how to do things I’ve been doing fine for years without his help. 

“He told me how to cut sellotape yesterday, and I just snapped”,  I told another friend.   “Do you think it’s a particularly Spanish trait?” she asks me, as her Spanish partner tells her unnecessarily how to drive to a particular street in a city she has lived in for 20 years.

I feel suffocated.  I can’t even wash salad without unsolicited advice.  For someone whose husband has been unfaithful, this probably sounds like small fry.  In my case, my previous partner was violent, but even so I am in no way thanking my lucky stars right now to have found someone who limits himself to advising me on how to cut sticky tape.

Jen’s post about losing fear of separation hit home.  Separation becomes just another chore.  But there’s also the loss of flexibility, in my case, at least.  Been there, done that, ain’t ever going to do it again for anyone.  But unfortunately, that anyone isn’t part of the process, the process predated them.  So they just meet a wall rather than the pair of us slowly working out a compromise.

I have no idea how this is going to work out.  I feel guilty because this is not “for better or worse”, it’s trying to take the good side only.  And it’s very much pandering to individualism rather than trying to find common ground.  And it’s a solution that depends on income*.  But for now, I’m just grateful for a little space.  And I’m sick my resentful thoughts about the day’s conflicts smothering my sexuality.  This is new.  I have hope.  On the other hand, hope has always been my worst enemy in the past.

* The flat is very cheap because it was filthy and abandoned beyond belief, and that’s where the last three weeks of my life have gone.

Footnotes

(I've actually had to use footnotes for this post. OK, I didn't have to, but I remembered a dirty joke in the middle of writing this and just worked it in as a footnote. So there's just one footnote. I love dirty jokes. Clearly.)

_______________________________________________

"What a fuckin' lump."

I couldn't stop thinking it.

That poor woman.

She was sitting on my couch heartily barfing her emotions out in the middle of a completely hysterical breakdown about the fact that her husband was fucking one of her coworkers.

Her face in general = bright red and heavily perspiring

Her eyebrows = so heavily knit together that I actually had a rather complete discussion with myself about whether a uni-brow is a hair pattern caused by genetics, or is simply a sign that someone has once had a breakdown during which they shoved their eyebrows together so tightly that they just...stuck

Her hands = wringing in her lap or thrown in one fashion or another at her face to cover it when she was belching out a new round of sobs or needed to wipe perspiration from her lip or deal with all of the other various and sundry other moments and fluids we have to take care of when we're having a breakdown

Her ass = shifting forward on the couch cushion if she was in angry mode, off to the side of the cushion as she suddenly swung into despair(1) and stared eerily off into a corner of the ceiling of my living room, tucked into the back of the cushion if she sat up straight and got all righteous about how great she was and how terrible her husband was and blah, blah blah. Oh, and her ass also kind of got all sideways and almost up in the air a few times when she was so overcome with emotion that she had thrown herself onto a pillow or another couch cushion.

I was something like 23-years-old and barely over a year out of heavy drug use that had started when I was in 6th grade. In other words, my head was approximately 1/32 of an inch out of my ass.

She was something like 45-years-old, had been married for over 20 years, had two teen aged boys she was rightfully very concerned about because of all of the marital upheaval, and had things like a career, savings account, more than five days worth of clothing and more than two pairs of shoes.

The problem was that I was renting (along with three friends) the house that was two doors down from hers. It belonged to her best friend who had just moved to Colorado. She had been used to coming to that very house - the house I was renting with my friends - every single day after work and having a breakdown about her husband fucking her coworker before she went home to be as present as she could be for her boys.

That poor woman. She just wanted her friend. I sat there and felt more and more ashamed of myself for not knowing what to say or do. For not knowing how to stop resorting to my angry stance of blaming her for me not knowing what to say or do. For thinking of her as a "fuckin' lump".

She eventually pulled herself together and thanked me for my time. She told me that, more than anything, she simply missed her friend. She told me she could tell I was uncomfortable and would not be back.

God bless her hysterical, devastated ass for that.

After she left I stopped feeling ashamed of myself and, for once, just accepted there were some things a person whose head is only 1/34 inches out of their ass is simply not prepared to do.

Like be a good friend.
Or deal with hysterical people.

Today you could come to my house and tell me you killed someone, have a breakdown about your husband fucking your coworker or have a breakdown about you fucking one of your coworkers, and I wouldn't bat an eye.

I would probably even tell you a dirty joke (or two) and share a little bit about how my mind works.

Obviously.

I mean, just look at that footnote shit down there. Jesus.

______________________________________________

(1) One of my favorite jokes is about the word despair.
A woman has a party and tells everyone to come dressed as the color of an emotion. Someone shows up in red for anger, another person shows up in green for envy, and so on. Then some guy shows up naked save for the pear on his dick. The conversation then goes like this:
Party Hostess - What emotion are you?
Guest - Despair.
Hostess - Despair? I don't get it.
Guest - Why don't you suck dis pear offa my dick.

(2) No, you didn't miss the little (2) somewhere up there in the post. This isn't really a footnote. But I just remembered another dirty joke that I love and am just pretending that this is a footnote.
Q: How do you make a woman scream twice?
A: Fuck her in the ass and wipe your dick on her curtains.

(3) I'm not going to end up with some sort of burning cross of feminism in my front yard over telling jokes about sucking pears off of the ends of dicks and women getting fucked in the ass, am I? Sometimes I've gotten into "trouble" with women for telling these jokes. I'm not sure if I care. OK, I don't care. Not one fiber of my entire being cares. But, then again, I do. It's confusing being female and as dirty minded, obnoxious and bawdy as I am.

(4) Have I ever told you I'm really good at doing things like writing little thank you notes? I also set a lovely dinner table, bake beautifully (especially things of the pumpkin variety), and can attend high-end formal events and fit right in in every single way. I even have extra special underwear I wear for those types of functions.

(5) That extra special underwear thing made me think of how people will talk about being "dressed up to the nines" when they are seriously formally dressed. But, I'm wondering, since I do that extra special underwear thing, shouldn't I say I am "dressed down to the nines"?

(6) I always have to say shit like I just did in (4) to make up for the fact that I just told those dirty jokes in (1) and (2) and the fact that I said I didn't care in (3). It's my way of trying to prove I'm not really that bad when it comes to being a woman.

(7) I hope I'm never mature enough to stop telling the jokes in (1) and (2), but continue to be mature enough to never tell either one of them at one of the high-end events I mentioned in (4). Unless I've been at one of those events for longer than 3 hours. At that point I usually find myself way out at the edge of the parking lot behind somebody's car, smoking a cigarette, and being at very high risk of telling one of the jokes in (1) or (2) to the first person who walks up.

(8) You really can tell me if you've killed someone. I've already had it happen once, and I handled it very well.

Would You Rather...

I've always been a something of a slacker. Even in elementary school I just did enough work to get by. Of course, elementary school was easy. Once I hit high school and had to take Latin and algebra I had to use my brain a little more.

In college my boyfriend and I sat down with the catalog to find me a major that required no math whatsoever, and that's how I ended up with a BS in communications. Writing was the perfect solution--no muscle required except the big one on top of my neck.

Ambition has never been my guiding light. I'm content to do my job, get along with my colleagues, gossip in the kitchen, play solitaire on my computer, collect my paycheck and go home.

I guess you could say I've never been on the "boss track."

But I've had a lot of bosses in my day. Some great, some that were vomited onto earth when a chasm leading straight to hell split apart for a nanosecond.

The great ones were all men. The worst were women.

I don't think I'm the only woman out there who prefers a manly boss. They're unemotional. They don't comment on your hair or hold grudges if you forget to inquire how their son's oral surgery went.

They don't laud you one day and seemingly loathe you the next.

Men are just easier to deal with. I have a woman boss now, and after a very trying year we're finally in a good place. But I trust her about as far as I could throw her size 6 ass. (The same ass she describes as HUGE.)

I think it's harder for women, especially when they're near the same age, to operate on a boss/employee level. It's just easier dealing with a man.

Men don't want to be your friends. They don't want to share recipes or makeup tips.

They just want to get the job done.

But I open the question to the floor:

Would you rather work for a man or a woman?

(And yes, I realize that the answer is that you don't want to work at all.)

not the worst thing

we were in paris, on holiday with the in-laws, when i first said the words, whispering in the dark across to the other uncomfortable sofa where he lay.

"i think we might need to get a divorce."

he got up without a word, got his pack of cigarettes, went out onto the balcony. i joined him, watched the red glow of the cigarette as we gazed down together at the boulevard below. suddenly the will to stand drained out of my legs, and i collapsed, weeping so hard i felt i might turn inside out. all the disappointment and frustration and anger i'd been storing for months and years, rushing out of me in wracking, violent sobs. and below, people laughing, cars passing. and me thinking, how is it possible the world hasn't come to a screeching, crashing halt? surely that would be appropriate.

nearly seventy percent of second marriages end in divorce. i think i must've read that before, but i never allowed the reality of it to penetrate my consciousness. naivete. denial.

i don't know yet, if my husband and i will split. but in the weeks that have passed since that night in paris that ended with the two of us desperately clutching each other on the balcony, trying not to drown in the waves of sorrow, i've come to know why that 70% figure is so true.

even a "good divorce", an amicable divorce for all the right reasons that makes you both better, happier people, as mine was, leaves you scarred. even a "good divorce" is hell. it rips any sense of security out from under you, makes you confront the possibility of being completely and utterly alone, drains every ounce of foolish fairytale right out of your head. a divorce, even a "good divorce", is the death of your shared dreams for home, family, and future. it's a death, and you mourn it, and carry guilt and shame over it for a long while.

but as time passes and you begin to emerge from the blast-shadow the explosion left behind, the world begins to right itself. time moves on, and you tuck away the lessons learned, and you stand a little straighter knowing that you have survived the worst that love can throw at you. you think yourself stronger and wiser, as hemingway would say, "strong at the broken places".

it's dangerous knowledge.

it is dangerous knowing that divorce is not, in fact, the end of the world. that however painful the experience of a shattered marriage was, that however much it hurt to walk through those shards and pick up the pieces, that *you were okay*. dangerous how that "d" word, that word you thought you could never bring yourself to utter, that word that choked you for so long before you could finally, actually say it (because to say "divorce" out loud was to admit that it was really fucking happening)... it's dangerous how close that word sits to the tip of your tongue after that.

divorce, which was once the very worst thing that had ever happened to you, is now no longer the worst thing that can happen to you.

more to the point, it's not the worst thing that can happen to me. even with all the tears, even when to untangle my life from his would feel like flaying off my own skin, i know this much is true: it is not the worst thing that can happen to me. however bad it gets, i'll be okay.

and somehow, that just makes it worse - the knowledge that the world will keep turning, people will keep laughing on the boulevards below. i will once again face the fears and learn the lessons, adding one more statistical failure to the punchline of life, but emerge and walk on stronger and wiser,

i know what i'm in for, and i know how unthinkably excruciating the dissolution of love can be. i know all this, and still i know it will be a hundred times worse - because i loved him more.

Happy Anniversary and Shit

So 19th Amendment, Happy 90th Anniversary and shit. Sorry I forgot a gift, but I have voted in every national election since I turned 18, so thanks for that. Sure black men got the right to vote in 1870, I was kind of pissed about that. Not that they shouldn't get to vote but fifty years? It took fifty years to come to with the conclusion that maybe women should get the vote too? I guess I know where I stand in the ole hierarchy.

Still, I have to give mad props to Woodrow Wilson, thanks for not thinking we will destroy the nation with our "opinions". Thank you for not recommending we get like, half a vote or something stupid. Thank you also to the House of Reps, but Senate, seriously Senate, fuck you. Thanks also to the men who voted against those anti-suffrage Senators up for reelection in 1918. We couldn't have done it without you, literally, because we could not vote. Thank you for believing in your daughters and wives and sisters or maybe you just didn't want to get locked out of the honey pot. I guess it doesn't matter why you did it because you did, and it was a good thing.

I need to also say Happy Anniversary to the bitches that made this happen. It's easy to ask for things now, I have grown up used to demanding that things be more equitable or pointing out when it isn't. But for you guys? How unequivocally brave to demand to be heard. Taking a stand probably resulted in a lot of uncomfortable family arguments and people saying crappy thing to you and even threatening you. Thank you for taking this first, most important step that helped us to secure everything else later through the voting process. Thank you for bringing our voices to the debates, for allowing us women a chance to shape the nation in which we live. Thank you for making me a patriot in the truest sense, for making me believe that we can always be better and do better.

So thank you Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Lydia Taft, Genevieve Clark, Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose. You have my most earnest gratitude Margaret Fuller, Mary Ann M'Clintock, Lucy Stone, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis, Abby Kelley Foster, and Susan B. Anthony. To you Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sojourner Truth, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Julia Ward Howe, Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, Victoria Woodhall, Belva Lockwood and Lucy Burns, I am indebted for your efforts. You are names now but you were real people, who did something important.

Happy Anniversary 19th Amendment.