Life, Trends, Stupid Idiots
Current trends in my life at the moment:
-Goths
-Scissors, Paper, Rock
-Feminist debate
Yes Ang, I know you think this is worryingly close to schizophrenia, but I am not having referential delusions. There is no conspiracy. Just due to fashion/media attention/random conincidence sometimes things seem to pop up everywhere. And I like patterns. Patterns are pretty. So there.
Goths are a long, slow, not very frequent thing. There seems to be a kind of changing perception of goths, as somewhat maligned and misunderstood people who are really very nice and polite with great imaginations and a sense of humour, but who are pretty nerdy. I reference 'Heavenly Pleasures' by Kerry Greenwood, and last weekends article about goths in, I think, the Good Weekend. This book and article are major contributors to the trend, also Ang dressing up as a goth some time ago, visiting Newtown/Enmore, and revisiting Newtown, dressed as a goth, for the goth festival. And I have come to one, important, conclusion. Cloaks are fun. Also I can now apply eyeliner. Yay!
Scissors, Paper, Rock has always been around, but had resurfaced a while ago as a way of settling front-seat-in-the-car debates. It seems to be everywhere now, probably because of the Nova competition. More fun than eeny-meeny-miny-mo, so is all good.
Feminism an intense, short in timespan (so far) but scary development. Not feminism in general. Just that I was talking the other day about feminists who take it too far, and think sleeping with men is sleeping with the enemy and all sex is rape and stuff like that. Which I kinda thought was an exaggeration. But I read this interview in Spectrum today with a feminist who holds these views, and I changed my mind. It's pretty extreme, sexist toward men, impractical and to a degree unempowering toward women. I think you can shave your legs or not, your choice, sure there's social pressure but if you think it's oppresive, you don't have to. Not to me a symbol of male oppresion. Sure people take these things too far, and there are issues with female body image and ideals of beauty. But these affect men too, often to a lesser degree but I think increasingly. So to label all men as the enemy because of this seems ridiculous. And alot of advertising aimed at women is, if you look at it, downright offensive but I think that that doesn't mean that all beauty products are evil. And hey, some of us like dressing up. Isn't it a mark of freedom that we can dress as we wish? There seems to be a strong denial of female sexuality at the heart of some of these things which seems to me downright anti-feminist. More than all that, equality is not about beating the other gender. I would go on more, but I thought you had all probably had enough by now, so will stop. Only to go on to talk about the other outcropping of feminism: university. More specifically, in student politics. The issue over Spencer's iPod article seemed to be another example of the overreaction and general rage. Karoline's supporters literally turned shunned Tim, Bec and I when Tim said that we were in the Aardvark Party. A joke party, with no real policy, but labelled right-wing because people took offence over a humourous article. Well, it meant that they stopped hassling us to vote for them, and we got less pamphlets. But my thoughts about feminism at the moment are that it is very divided these days, and that after the acheivements of the 60s and 70s the militant branch seems out of place and the movement as a whole (if it could still be termed that) seems to be consuming itself in a ball of fiery anger. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but no-one will read it, right? Tell me if you think I risk being fire-bombed, will you?
Now to the Stupid Idiots of the title. This is simply road rage. Those who will beep at you when you make a mistake while driving, even though you are clearly wearing L-plates on your car, and who swear and call you an idiot when you don't start your car properly first go. O.k., so I've had my L's for a while now, and I should probably be past that, but they don't know that. It makes me really angry , that's what. Stupid idiots. I understand that my bad driving might be irriatating, but I was not at the time affecting them in any way, and I was clearly LEARNING. Therefore I make mistakes. It's indicated on the car, what do you expect? Grrrrr......
Well, that was some fun ranting and raging and typing. I will probably post alot now, since I am in Canberra and have assignments due. On the other hand, it is well nigh impossible to get near the computer. I do always have much random and uninteresting stuff to say... Mwahahahaha
And enjoy the holidays, those of you who have holidays.
-Goths
-Scissors, Paper, Rock
-Feminist debate
Yes Ang, I know you think this is worryingly close to schizophrenia, but I am not having referential delusions. There is no conspiracy. Just due to fashion/media attention/random conincidence sometimes things seem to pop up everywhere. And I like patterns. Patterns are pretty. So there.
Goths are a long, slow, not very frequent thing. There seems to be a kind of changing perception of goths, as somewhat maligned and misunderstood people who are really very nice and polite with great imaginations and a sense of humour, but who are pretty nerdy. I reference 'Heavenly Pleasures' by Kerry Greenwood, and last weekends article about goths in, I think, the Good Weekend. This book and article are major contributors to the trend, also Ang dressing up as a goth some time ago, visiting Newtown/Enmore, and revisiting Newtown, dressed as a goth, for the goth festival. And I have come to one, important, conclusion. Cloaks are fun. Also I can now apply eyeliner. Yay!
Scissors, Paper, Rock has always been around, but had resurfaced a while ago as a way of settling front-seat-in-the-car debates. It seems to be everywhere now, probably because of the Nova competition. More fun than eeny-meeny-miny-mo, so is all good.
Feminism an intense, short in timespan (so far) but scary development. Not feminism in general. Just that I was talking the other day about feminists who take it too far, and think sleeping with men is sleeping with the enemy and all sex is rape and stuff like that. Which I kinda thought was an exaggeration. But I read this interview in Spectrum today with a feminist who holds these views, and I changed my mind. It's pretty extreme, sexist toward men, impractical and to a degree unempowering toward women. I think you can shave your legs or not, your choice, sure there's social pressure but if you think it's oppresive, you don't have to. Not to me a symbol of male oppresion. Sure people take these things too far, and there are issues with female body image and ideals of beauty. But these affect men too, often to a lesser degree but I think increasingly. So to label all men as the enemy because of this seems ridiculous. And alot of advertising aimed at women is, if you look at it, downright offensive but I think that that doesn't mean that all beauty products are evil. And hey, some of us like dressing up. Isn't it a mark of freedom that we can dress as we wish? There seems to be a strong denial of female sexuality at the heart of some of these things which seems to me downright anti-feminist. More than all that, equality is not about beating the other gender. I would go on more, but I thought you had all probably had enough by now, so will stop. Only to go on to talk about the other outcropping of feminism: university. More specifically, in student politics. The issue over Spencer's iPod article seemed to be another example of the overreaction and general rage. Karoline's supporters literally turned shunned Tim, Bec and I when Tim said that we were in the Aardvark Party. A joke party, with no real policy, but labelled right-wing because people took offence over a humourous article. Well, it meant that they stopped hassling us to vote for them, and we got less pamphlets. But my thoughts about feminism at the moment are that it is very divided these days, and that after the acheivements of the 60s and 70s the militant branch seems out of place and the movement as a whole (if it could still be termed that) seems to be consuming itself in a ball of fiery anger. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but no-one will read it, right? Tell me if you think I risk being fire-bombed, will you?
Now to the Stupid Idiots of the title. This is simply road rage. Those who will beep at you when you make a mistake while driving, even though you are clearly wearing L-plates on your car, and who swear and call you an idiot when you don't start your car properly first go. O.k., so I've had my L's for a while now, and I should probably be past that, but they don't know that. It makes me really angry , that's what. Stupid idiots. I understand that my bad driving might be irriatating, but I was not at the time affecting them in any way, and I was clearly LEARNING. Therefore I make mistakes. It's indicated on the car, what do you expect? Grrrrr......
Well, that was some fun ranting and raging and typing. I will probably post alot now, since I am in Canberra and have assignments due. On the other hand, it is well nigh impossible to get near the computer. I do always have much random and uninteresting stuff to say... Mwahahahaha
And enjoy the holidays, those of you who have holidays.
posted by Catie at 12:06 am
2 Comments:
Excellent post-feminist diatribe. Good points well made all round. Yay for you. :)
why thank you. despite the fact that you've probably heard it all before. checking blogs at work *tut tut* maybe will go ang chasing now :)
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