My house has been water-free for the last 8 or so hours. Something has been causing the pump that brings water from our well into the house to short-circuit. We tried playing around with the circuit breaker, but with no luck. We knew that the original owners had difficulty with the well before, so we dove into our filing cabinet to pull out the original paperwork our realtor gave us on the very first tour of this house.
Homeownership is a complicated business. We learned just how expensive it is to heat a house and just what can go wrong with a house. Combine this with a mortgage payment that is higher than your rent ever was (even while in the Boston area) suddenly you realize that there's a lot more to owning a home than essentially acting all the Re/Max commercial.
This is something we've learned pretty quickly in the 9 or so months we've owned a house. We learned within the first month just how frustrating it is to try to work alongside "professionals" when it comes to your house (hello, painting fiasco). We adore this house, we love the town and the neighborhood, but, getting a house is a lot like a puppy: way higher maintenance than you could possibly fathom.
Getting out those old papers, however, reminded me of how things felt "way back when". It was roughly this time last year that we started hitting the paving, looking for a house. And, much like homeownership, we started out the search not realizing just how tedious it can be -- and how, once you find the house of your dreams, just how frustrating the mortgage people can and will be.
And I remember our realtor sending us the link to this particular house. I remember adding it along with the five other houses that had just gone on the market to our Excel spreadsheet. And I remember how I kept coming back to it, even though we had house-tours scheduled for the next two weeks. I remember going to our first for the first time, walking around someone else's house with someone else's belongings and furniture, and knowing that I was home. Knowing that, despite the gaudy decorations and questionable wall colors, this was it. I remember looking at that packet a million times over, looking at the picture of the house in the far right corner, knowing that we were barely a few months away from calling it our own.
I stood outside our house this afternoon, chatting with the electricians who came over to fix the problem. I was in the corner of our lot that is opposite our driveway, which meant that I was looking at my house at an angle I don't usually see on my day-to-day. But it was roughly the same angle we saw our house when we pulled up that very first time -- far from the personal driveway of the people who owned it, and behind the SUV of our realtor's. It was a good reminder that, warts and all, we absolutely love this house and this was absolutely the right investment for us. It might not feel like it sometimes, when we're refilling our oil for the 3rd time that winter or we're shoveling out the driveway yet again, but this is exactly where we need to be. There's a reason why we looked at 50+ homes, never satisfied, until we found this place.
If anything, this little fiasco could serve as a reminder that I need to step out of my daily routine, walk to the opposite side of our property, and really appreciate what we have. I know we lucked out -- faulty well pump and all -- and it's about time to spend more time recognizing that.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Day 268 of 365: Bleeding Heart Libertarian
This blog and my ramblings might beg to differ, but I don't consider myself a political person. It honestly feels like whatever knowledge and level of opinions I have should be the bare minimum to be an acceptable human being. To me, I'm not scouring CNN and watching congressional hearings and reading every single line from every single bit of legislation, therefore I'm not "political".
My lack of fervor might be due to the fact that there is almost no political party I actually adhere to or root for. I root against what the modern-day GOP has turned into, but I'll delve more into that in a moment. I'm socially libertarian, but my poor bleeding heart cannot handle the more radical ideas of libertarianism. I believe in capitalism, but I also believe that "trickle down economics" is b.s. and that unregulated capitalism will eventually subvert democracy (and, if you've read up on the new Princeton study, it already has). I believe in social services, but I also believe that we handle hunger and homelessness inefficiently and in a way that is a breeding ground for abuse. I recognize our government is bloated and incredibly inefficient, but I also recognize that solving the problem is going to be a lot more complicated than just "voting for the other party".
So what does that make me -- bleeding heart libertarian? Can such a thing exist?
It frustrates me that politics have become a package deal. You can't be pro-gay-marriage and pro-second-amendment. You can't be against the gun ban as well as against an abortion ban. Much like you can't be a moderate and have strong opinions about things. Well, you as an individual can, but God bless finding a single candidate who'll even hint at the more moderate or mix-n-match attitude.
I love my blue-stated Massachusetts. I love that we were the first state to legalize gay marriage and to introduce the idea of universal health care (don't get me wrong; Romneycare is just as flawed as Obamacare, but that's for another time...). But I don't love the overpaid state politicians and bureaucracies for the sake of bureaucracies. I don't love the attitude that a gun ban will solve everything (because apparently no one sees a link between that idea and what happened with Prohibition).
But what really ticks me off is that I feel -- especially now that I live in a swing state -- that I have no choice but to vote "not that guy". I voted for Obama purely because he was "not Romney". I voted for Kerry because he was "not Bush". The same way people voted for Romney or Bush. It's to the point that we vote out of sheer spite for the other guy, not recognizing that the person we're voting for is only a slightly less smelly form of bullshit.
These days, even the hardest of hardcore Republicans tend to stay away from the GOP. Why? Because the party is a parody of itself these days (the Democratic Party isn't exactly a shining emblem of stability either but that's for another day). Gone are the days of fiscal responsibility. In its place is a conservative party, ready to wage war on whatever marginalized population they feel is interrupted the right way of life.
Which, if I were a Republican (and, in some ways, I am: apparently my attitudes on the government are on par with Republicanism circa 1960s), I'd be pissed. There are few things are fiscally irresponsible as saying, "I will spend countless hours and tax dollars making gay marriage illegal." From what I gather/remember, the old idea used to be that the government shouldn't concern themselves with people's personal lives. And yet that seems to be all I hear about these days when it comes to the GOP.
So maybe, someday, we'll see an emergence of smaller political parties -- new faces, new ideas, new platforms. And not just in the form of a libertarian running as a republican or a Green Party candidate running under the Democratic Party. Because what we have right now is a parody of what government should actually be, and you have to wonder just how long it can hold out.
My lack of fervor might be due to the fact that there is almost no political party I actually adhere to or root for. I root against what the modern-day GOP has turned into, but I'll delve more into that in a moment. I'm socially libertarian, but my poor bleeding heart cannot handle the more radical ideas of libertarianism. I believe in capitalism, but I also believe that "trickle down economics" is b.s. and that unregulated capitalism will eventually subvert democracy (and, if you've read up on the new Princeton study, it already has). I believe in social services, but I also believe that we handle hunger and homelessness inefficiently and in a way that is a breeding ground for abuse. I recognize our government is bloated and incredibly inefficient, but I also recognize that solving the problem is going to be a lot more complicated than just "voting for the other party".
So what does that make me -- bleeding heart libertarian? Can such a thing exist?
It frustrates me that politics have become a package deal. You can't be pro-gay-marriage and pro-second-amendment. You can't be against the gun ban as well as against an abortion ban. Much like you can't be a moderate and have strong opinions about things. Well, you as an individual can, but God bless finding a single candidate who'll even hint at the more moderate or mix-n-match attitude.
I love my blue-stated Massachusetts. I love that we were the first state to legalize gay marriage and to introduce the idea of universal health care (don't get me wrong; Romneycare is just as flawed as Obamacare, but that's for another time...). But I don't love the overpaid state politicians and bureaucracies for the sake of bureaucracies. I don't love the attitude that a gun ban will solve everything (because apparently no one sees a link between that idea and what happened with Prohibition).
But what really ticks me off is that I feel -- especially now that I live in a swing state -- that I have no choice but to vote "not that guy". I voted for Obama purely because he was "not Romney". I voted for Kerry because he was "not Bush". The same way people voted for Romney or Bush. It's to the point that we vote out of sheer spite for the other guy, not recognizing that the person we're voting for is only a slightly less smelly form of bullshit.
These days, even the hardest of hardcore Republicans tend to stay away from the GOP. Why? Because the party is a parody of itself these days (the Democratic Party isn't exactly a shining emblem of stability either but that's for another day). Gone are the days of fiscal responsibility. In its place is a conservative party, ready to wage war on whatever marginalized population they feel is interrupted the right way of life.
Which, if I were a Republican (and, in some ways, I am: apparently my attitudes on the government are on par with Republicanism circa 1960s), I'd be pissed. There are few things are fiscally irresponsible as saying, "I will spend countless hours and tax dollars making gay marriage illegal." From what I gather/remember, the old idea used to be that the government shouldn't concern themselves with people's personal lives. And yet that seems to be all I hear about these days when it comes to the GOP.
So maybe, someday, we'll see an emergence of smaller political parties -- new faces, new ideas, new platforms. And not just in the form of a libertarian running as a republican or a Green Party candidate running under the Democratic Party. Because what we have right now is a parody of what government should actually be, and you have to wonder just how long it can hold out.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Day 267 of 365: Weather and Plans
I had a photoshoot scheduled for today. Everything was set: the location (the picturesque Crane Beach in Ipswich), the time, the theme, and so on, and so forth.
And then, weather dropped to barely above freezing.
Even though the shoot entailed jeans and yoga gear, the cloudy weather, the threat of rain, and the cold air called for a rescheduling. Part of me was less than thrilled: as someone who is more or less self-employed, every deal that gets rescheduled is essentially one gigantic raincheck on the, well, paycheck. But, by 10:30 (aka when I would've had to leave for the shoot), it became apparent that not having the shoot was probably the best thing I could do. From trying to get on top of coursework, to trying to keep housework at bay, to just feeling all around icky (I think I've been battling a micro-cold for the last two weeks. Not enough to make me stay in bed and eat soup all day, but enough to give me a slight fever and just drain my energy), being at home instead of the beaches of Ipswich was a surprising Godsend.
So I'm choosing to look at this cancellation of a gig as an opportunity to get a lot of stuff done this week. It's been and will continue to be a busy week. From workshops to classes, to the classes I teach. And then there's that pesky half-marathon coming up in less than a month, where training to hit 13.1 in under two hours seems to have ground to a halt (I went on a 6-miler a few days ago with favorable results, so I'm hoping whatever lag that is going on is coming to an end). I'm appreciating the change in plans.
You can't control the weather, the same way you can't control if or when you get sick. Sometimes you just have to have faith that the things you can't control will inevitably act in a way that is vital for you. Or something like that.
And then, weather dropped to barely above freezing.
Even though the shoot entailed jeans and yoga gear, the cloudy weather, the threat of rain, and the cold air called for a rescheduling. Part of me was less than thrilled: as someone who is more or less self-employed, every deal that gets rescheduled is essentially one gigantic raincheck on the, well, paycheck. But, by 10:30 (aka when I would've had to leave for the shoot), it became apparent that not having the shoot was probably the best thing I could do. From trying to get on top of coursework, to trying to keep housework at bay, to just feeling all around icky (I think I've been battling a micro-cold for the last two weeks. Not enough to make me stay in bed and eat soup all day, but enough to give me a slight fever and just drain my energy), being at home instead of the beaches of Ipswich was a surprising Godsend.
So I'm choosing to look at this cancellation of a gig as an opportunity to get a lot of stuff done this week. It's been and will continue to be a busy week. From workshops to classes, to the classes I teach. And then there's that pesky half-marathon coming up in less than a month, where training to hit 13.1 in under two hours seems to have ground to a halt (I went on a 6-miler a few days ago with favorable results, so I'm hoping whatever lag that is going on is coming to an end). I'm appreciating the change in plans.
You can't control the weather, the same way you can't control if or when you get sick. Sometimes you just have to have faith that the things you can't control will inevitably act in a way that is vital for you. Or something like that.
Monday, April 28, 2014
Day 266 of 365: The State of Education
As part of my yoga training, I've been taking a few online courses. The primary one has been on yoga anatomy, which I cannot praise enough. Anything that breaks the movements down into hard science and uses that to say, "There's a lot of bullshit things yoga teachers say. This is why you shouldn't say them," is a-okay with me.
But I've also been taking a few supplementary classes -- free courses that are "highly recommended" but not required. Of course, the required courses aren't free, but, hey, such is life. One of these courses is through Princeton University, called "Buddhism and Evolutionary Psychology". I finished the last lecture last week and have been dragging ass on doing the final. But don't let my procrastination fool you: this class was incredible and I'm a bit sad to see it end. The class affirmed a lot of the stuff I've been saying for years about the human mind (but had nothing scientific to actually back it up). It was also net as all getout to learn a little more about Buddhism, as my yoga training tends to eschew any religious connections or affiliations (because, for all of the criticism that yoga has become too "western", people still assume you have to practice Hinduism or Buddhism in order to actually do yoga).
Another course is on the brain and the neurobiology of everyday life, through the University of Chicago. Again, I love when I'm given empirical data -- this situation creates this reaction and a release of this chemical -- when talking about things like yoga. Show me the lobes of the brain that get activated during certain breathing techniques. Tell me more about what sets off the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. Let's have a nice long chat on operant conditioning and synaptic connections and neural pathways. Give me this shit, because like hell if my hypothetical students will care if I prattle about chakras and third eyes.
A lot of schools have been doing this, posting courses online for free, allowing unlimited downloads of lecture slides. In the age of information, a lot of these schools -- especially the top tier, supposedly exclusive universities -- are going, "No, y'all need to learn some shit."
It got me thinking about the state of education right now. There's this really weird dichotomy in place now: thanks to the internet, you can learn downright anything. If you're curious, there's a tutorial, an essay, a free course -- anything. Granted, the self-learning comes with the lack of someone to tell you when you're veering off course, but that piece of information doesn't seem to bad when you look at the other side of this coin. There, you find what I call McBachelor's -- schools that bring in and churn out students like a factory. These kids go through a high school career with an inefficient education and inflated grades and then put into whatever college will take them to get that necessary bachelor's. Classes that are taught by professors who barely speak English, papers that are graded by overworked TAs who just want to get the damn thing done. Suddenly, you're essentially teaching yourself, only with the added bonus of not knowing what grade you'll get (because we've all had the professor/TA who grades inconsistently and arbitrarily, and you genuinely don't know if you got them on a good day or a bad day).
Obviously there's a good amount of middle ground between the two, but it's still worth noting that, in a world saturated with college education, the emphasis seems less on "education" and more on "college". Can you take some tests, apply for student loans, and hold onto a piece of paper that will do nothing more than keep your résumé out of the trash bin for 5 more minutes? Who cares about what you've actually learned; who cares if your professors actually cared about enriching your brain or if you got a McEducation.
I could rant forever about McBachelor's and the state of learning these days, but this post is long-winded enough. Besides, there's a final exam that I desperately need to do and it's about time I actually did it.
But I've also been taking a few supplementary classes -- free courses that are "highly recommended" but not required. Of course, the required courses aren't free, but, hey, such is life. One of these courses is through Princeton University, called "Buddhism and Evolutionary Psychology". I finished the last lecture last week and have been dragging ass on doing the final. But don't let my procrastination fool you: this class was incredible and I'm a bit sad to see it end. The class affirmed a lot of the stuff I've been saying for years about the human mind (but had nothing scientific to actually back it up). It was also net as all getout to learn a little more about Buddhism, as my yoga training tends to eschew any religious connections or affiliations (because, for all of the criticism that yoga has become too "western", people still assume you have to practice Hinduism or Buddhism in order to actually do yoga).
Another course is on the brain and the neurobiology of everyday life, through the University of Chicago. Again, I love when I'm given empirical data -- this situation creates this reaction and a release of this chemical -- when talking about things like yoga. Show me the lobes of the brain that get activated during certain breathing techniques. Tell me more about what sets off the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. Let's have a nice long chat on operant conditioning and synaptic connections and neural pathways. Give me this shit, because like hell if my hypothetical students will care if I prattle about chakras and third eyes.
A lot of schools have been doing this, posting courses online for free, allowing unlimited downloads of lecture slides. In the age of information, a lot of these schools -- especially the top tier, supposedly exclusive universities -- are going, "No, y'all need to learn some shit."
It got me thinking about the state of education right now. There's this really weird dichotomy in place now: thanks to the internet, you can learn downright anything. If you're curious, there's a tutorial, an essay, a free course -- anything. Granted, the self-learning comes with the lack of someone to tell you when you're veering off course, but that piece of information doesn't seem to bad when you look at the other side of this coin. There, you find what I call McBachelor's -- schools that bring in and churn out students like a factory. These kids go through a high school career with an inefficient education and inflated grades and then put into whatever college will take them to get that necessary bachelor's. Classes that are taught by professors who barely speak English, papers that are graded by overworked TAs who just want to get the damn thing done. Suddenly, you're essentially teaching yourself, only with the added bonus of not knowing what grade you'll get (because we've all had the professor/TA who grades inconsistently and arbitrarily, and you genuinely don't know if you got them on a good day or a bad day).
Obviously there's a good amount of middle ground between the two, but it's still worth noting that, in a world saturated with college education, the emphasis seems less on "education" and more on "college". Can you take some tests, apply for student loans, and hold onto a piece of paper that will do nothing more than keep your résumé out of the trash bin for 5 more minutes? Who cares about what you've actually learned; who cares if your professors actually cared about enriching your brain or if you got a McEducation.
I could rant forever about McBachelor's and the state of learning these days, but this post is long-winded enough. Besides, there's a final exam that I desperately need to do and it's about time I actually did it.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Day 265 of 365: Frozen and Fetish
I finally saw Frozen a few days ago. That movie embodies the concept of "infectious": I watched the movie, enjoyed the story and the music, but walked away not getting the hype. Within minutes, I'm YouTubing the various songs. Twenty-four hours later, we buy the soundtrack. Seventy-two hours later, "Let It Go" is blasting from our speaker system. This is just one of those clever and intelligent movies that makes me have faith in the future of entertainment.
I was talking with my best friend about Frozen, which quickly morphed into our generation's ultra-fascination with Disney. We're not talking about owning the Frozen soundtrack or paraphrasing Mulan whenever it's time to get shit done (1. Get down to business. 2. Defeat the Hun). We're talking about friends who become Disney princess fanatics, who unironically shop at the Disney store (if you ironically shop at the Disney store, you also have issues, but for different and douchier reasons), who save up to go on group vacations to Disney World and get their picture taken with Cinderella (again, unironically).
In short, they fetishize Disney. And why? Because all of this is the childhoods we never had. Most of us had comparatively good upbringings (none of us had to escape to the city to avoid getting kidnapped and forced into child armies, so, yay for that). But they weren't perfect. They were far from perfect. And this less-than-perfect upbringing only gets compounded when we go into the real world and recognize how exhausting and frustrating and tedious it can be sometimes.
In this situation, you have two choices: you can reconcile with the past, deal with the present, and strive for a more productive and healthy future -- or you can idolize childhood and essentially relive it every chance you get.
I'm not saying that every person who is nuts about Disney is fetishizing their lost perfect childhood (that kind of sweeping gesture is better suited for the Freuds of the world), but it is interesting that a whole generation that has been lost and devoid of proper meaning has this hyper-fanaticism to something meant for children. This ties a little bit into my "not gaining meaning just from traveling the world" attitude, but turning to all the trimmings that childhood can offer isn't going to assuage much. At the end of the day, you're still going to have to pay the bills, deal with unfair bosses (or clients), sit in traffic, and come to terms with whatever happened in your past. Getting your picture taken with a guy in a Goofy outfit is not a solution. It's not even a band-aid.
Regardless, Frozen has proven to be more intelligent than half of the movies out there for adults right now in the first place. And Idina Menzel (or, depending on how many quaaludes you've taken that evening, Adele Dazeem) is absolutely flawless; one of the few singers who could sing me the phone book and I'd be hooked. I'm impressed by Kristen Bell's ability to belt out a note and I'm always happy to see Josh Gad getting work (1600 Penn was an underrated show and unjustly canceled, thank you very much). But I recognize that, even with "Love is an Open Door" playing for the 1,000th time, I'm still an adult and it'll eventually be background music as I send out yet another query or yet another email to a potential student who'll probably never show up for a class anyway.
I was talking with my best friend about Frozen, which quickly morphed into our generation's ultra-fascination with Disney. We're not talking about owning the Frozen soundtrack or paraphrasing Mulan whenever it's time to get shit done (1. Get down to business. 2. Defeat the Hun). We're talking about friends who become Disney princess fanatics, who unironically shop at the Disney store (if you ironically shop at the Disney store, you also have issues, but for different and douchier reasons), who save up to go on group vacations to Disney World and get their picture taken with Cinderella (again, unironically).
In short, they fetishize Disney. And why? Because all of this is the childhoods we never had. Most of us had comparatively good upbringings (none of us had to escape to the city to avoid getting kidnapped and forced into child armies, so, yay for that). But they weren't perfect. They were far from perfect. And this less-than-perfect upbringing only gets compounded when we go into the real world and recognize how exhausting and frustrating and tedious it can be sometimes.
In this situation, you have two choices: you can reconcile with the past, deal with the present, and strive for a more productive and healthy future -- or you can idolize childhood and essentially relive it every chance you get.
I'm not saying that every person who is nuts about Disney is fetishizing their lost perfect childhood (that kind of sweeping gesture is better suited for the Freuds of the world), but it is interesting that a whole generation that has been lost and devoid of proper meaning has this hyper-fanaticism to something meant for children. This ties a little bit into my "not gaining meaning just from traveling the world" attitude, but turning to all the trimmings that childhood can offer isn't going to assuage much. At the end of the day, you're still going to have to pay the bills, deal with unfair bosses (or clients), sit in traffic, and come to terms with whatever happened in your past. Getting your picture taken with a guy in a Goofy outfit is not a solution. It's not even a band-aid.
Regardless, Frozen has proven to be more intelligent than half of the movies out there for adults right now in the first place. And Idina Menzel (or, depending on how many quaaludes you've taken that evening, Adele Dazeem) is absolutely flawless; one of the few singers who could sing me the phone book and I'd be hooked. I'm impressed by Kristen Bell's ability to belt out a note and I'm always happy to see Josh Gad getting work (1600 Penn was an underrated show and unjustly canceled, thank you very much). But I recognize that, even with "Love is an Open Door" playing for the 1,000th time, I'm still an adult and it'll eventually be background music as I send out yet another query or yet another email to a potential student who'll probably never show up for a class anyway.
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Day 264 of 365: Man, Am I Tired
I'm rounding the final lap of this project. I'm basically 100 days away from finishing of 365 posts.
And boy, am I tired.
Some days, I am filled to the brim with opinions and shit that I just gotta say. Other days, I'm just trudging along to write something and call it a day.
Today is one of those days.
Maybe it's because it's been a busy weekend. Maybe it's because of the dreary weather. Maybe I'm still exhausted from submitting to the ABNA contest and releasing my ebook (and attempting to finish my third manuscript -- I'm three chapters away, dammit!). Who knows. All I know is that I had to kick myself into actually writing something before leaving for a UFC fight night with my friends.
But yet, here I am. Butt hath been kicked, words hath been written. They're not always going to be winners, but as long as I actually get something out, I'm doing my job. It's why we do these writing exercises in the first place. Rewiring our brain, reminding ourselves to let the words flow. Getting rid of the contrived and going straight for the genuine (or trying to, at least).
So, yeah. Words. And sentences. Grammar and spelling and syntax. Tomorrow is Day #265. Keep on keeping on.
And boy, am I tired.
Some days, I am filled to the brim with opinions and shit that I just gotta say. Other days, I'm just trudging along to write something and call it a day.
Today is one of those days.
Maybe it's because it's been a busy weekend. Maybe it's because of the dreary weather. Maybe I'm still exhausted from submitting to the ABNA contest and releasing my ebook (and attempting to finish my third manuscript -- I'm three chapters away, dammit!). Who knows. All I know is that I had to kick myself into actually writing something before leaving for a UFC fight night with my friends.
But yet, here I am. Butt hath been kicked, words hath been written. They're not always going to be winners, but as long as I actually get something out, I'm doing my job. It's why we do these writing exercises in the first place. Rewiring our brain, reminding ourselves to let the words flow. Getting rid of the contrived and going straight for the genuine (or trying to, at least).
So, yeah. Words. And sentences. Grammar and spelling and syntax. Tomorrow is Day #265. Keep on keeping on.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Day 263 of 365: Human Behavior
If you invalidate gender inequality by pointing to women calling other women "bitches", you don't know the first thing about human behavior.
There are a few go-to responses when talking about gender inequality. Some include outright denial of any gender inequality (even though women still making 75 cents to every man's dollar). Other include extreme takes on what equality means ("If women are the same as men, that means I can punch women in the face, right?"). But one of the most popular responses is, "Well, look at how women treat women! Obviously women are to blame for this problem."
People who turn to this woman-against-woman behavior are people who either have no clue how human behavior works (or is willfully ignorant of it). Woman calling other woman bitches, enforcing impossibly beauty standards, even undercutting each other at work in front of their male counterparts, is just one tiny example of the oppressed turning in on itself.
You see it everywhere, from places of extreme poverty to reservations -- somewhere along the line, some of the prisoners start doing the job of the guards. Somewhere along the line, things that were started by the captors are perpetrated by the captives.
And why? Because, at the end of the day, our brains are wired for survival. It can be as overt as fighting for food and it can be as subtle as turning on the weak link in a meeting. There is something downright instinctual about inevitably throwing whoever it is that we need to throw under the bus. So suddenly, we get women calling other women sluts and whores. We get women who are the first to point out all the reasons why a woman "deserved" her assault. We get women who are quick to reinforce what it means to be attractive in our society. We get women who will be the first to step up and talk about how they are not like "other girls" (which I've ranted about already).
And the killer is that no one wakes up and decides, "To save my skin, I am going to cheerlead the confines that society has put on me!" It's much subtler than that. It's always much subtler than that.
Which is why I make such a fuss about all the subtle shit. Calling women "girls" and saying, "we're not like other girls." Because we don't see the reasons when we go broad. We can't see trees because the forest should be made of something else entirely. We don't recognize that we are products of our environment and the tiniest little things enter our schema and shape an entire way of doing things.
It's just exhausting to hear people brush off inequality, citing this as their very reason, not getting that all they're doing is reinforcing the locks on the penitentiary, all the while denying there are guards in the first place.
There are a few go-to responses when talking about gender inequality. Some include outright denial of any gender inequality (even though women still making 75 cents to every man's dollar). Other include extreme takes on what equality means ("If women are the same as men, that means I can punch women in the face, right?"). But one of the most popular responses is, "Well, look at how women treat women! Obviously women are to blame for this problem."
People who turn to this woman-against-woman behavior are people who either have no clue how human behavior works (or is willfully ignorant of it). Woman calling other woman bitches, enforcing impossibly beauty standards, even undercutting each other at work in front of their male counterparts, is just one tiny example of the oppressed turning in on itself.
You see it everywhere, from places of extreme poverty to reservations -- somewhere along the line, some of the prisoners start doing the job of the guards. Somewhere along the line, things that were started by the captors are perpetrated by the captives.
And why? Because, at the end of the day, our brains are wired for survival. It can be as overt as fighting for food and it can be as subtle as turning on the weak link in a meeting. There is something downright instinctual about inevitably throwing whoever it is that we need to throw under the bus. So suddenly, we get women calling other women sluts and whores. We get women who are the first to point out all the reasons why a woman "deserved" her assault. We get women who are quick to reinforce what it means to be attractive in our society. We get women who will be the first to step up and talk about how they are not like "other girls" (which I've ranted about already).
And the killer is that no one wakes up and decides, "To save my skin, I am going to cheerlead the confines that society has put on me!" It's much subtler than that. It's always much subtler than that.
Which is why I make such a fuss about all the subtle shit. Calling women "girls" and saying, "we're not like other girls." Because we don't see the reasons when we go broad. We can't see trees because the forest should be made of something else entirely. We don't recognize that we are products of our environment and the tiniest little things enter our schema and shape an entire way of doing things.
It's just exhausting to hear people brush off inequality, citing this as their very reason, not getting that all they're doing is reinforcing the locks on the penitentiary, all the while denying there are guards in the first place.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)