VACAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!

well, it's vacation time at El Parador Califas. I will be tromping off to a tropical island til
August and then down South for some extended shenanigans. I'm not sure what my posting frequency will be, but I suspect the blog world will survive without me. I'll actually be writing, but I want to start that book I've been yapping about forever. I think I will probably post more than I think I will, because I do run a pretty chaotic schedule at home and look how often I have some stuff to babble about, and with all that vacay time who knows? I might just turn out to be really entertaining. But I doubt it-I think I'll probably forget I have a blog.

so the only thing that's really been on my mind is the sexual dynamics thing. Control, initiative privilege, etc. Because those things have always been a problem for me. Actually-getting my thing on with a sexually aggressive guy the other day I realized, I'm not aggressive in the sense that I want to overtake someone in the bedroom. Where I am aggressive is where it's not really acceptable. Socially. I have no problem choosing out, approaching, and seducing the guy in the room that I want-you know, provided he's willing. This is not something that guys really consider sexy or even okay. I mean, some of them like it, but the average guy it scares the shit out of. They either don't want to mess with you because it scares them or they think you're "crazy." It actually is completely socially deviant if you've ever been part of a mixed or courting group. It's not acceptable at all. Social protocol means the man has the initiative at every step-from selecting who to approach, controlling pace and activities, etc. Women (supposedly) have veto power, but our only choice really lies in saying yes or no to shit that he comes up with...on his time.

I spent years feeling bad, feeling shame, feeling out of step with other women, friends who would say things like "I want him to move back here, but if I want him to, I can't ASK him to. I have to drop hints and let him suggest it." Women who play the rules with a straight face and no frustration. But it always left me sort of wondering if the shame I felt or the way guys would talk crap to me about my attitude and forthrightness, had anything to do with the fed up feeling I always used to get in 7th grade when the boys talked over us in class even though our ideas were better and we knew more answers.

Initiatory male privilege keeps women from thinking about what they want organically. It keeps women locked into a set of prefabricated behavior patterns. It's hard to see out of those once you start playing by guys' rules.

Whatever, I'm going on vacation. I have rum and coconuts to think about, I can't be bothered. Yesterday was my last day at the job for 6 weeks.

Ha haaaa. Fuck work! way-way-wait: FUUUUUUCK. WOORRRRRK. this whole town can kiss my aaass because I won't be fully dressed until next month. I'm at the beach, fuckas! kiss it. kiss. it. I almost pulled out this rich soccer mom's ponytail out yesterday and the sweet relief was like "shut up. don't say anything. two more hours." ha haaa. ha. no more yuppie b-zs for like two months.

I just needed to say that. Aaah. if I had like one wish? I'd just want to travel around the world (you know, independently wealthy of course) forever drinking and conquesting and writing feminist literature. in miniskirts. well, I'm off to pretend until the fall comes. maybe someday..

I hope everyone has a lovely summer.

Romance v. Work

Romance is a f&^%#g vacation.

God damn it.

When I first started doing this Independent Woman thing, I thought I was getting the vacation. And it is, it is. It's way better. But I was thinking last night because I broke it off with the casual whatnot guy from last year-the entanglement, the drama, the escape (ooh) of being involved with a guy really distracts you from the cold hard proposition that is the adult world.

I don't know, it just is all about money. No fucking wonder people manufacture shit like this to boost male ego, female loyalty, and everyone's general sense that Romantic Love is what we're all working for. I think we're all working for car payments, actually.



love the giant phallic telescope and symbolic white matter in the galaxy she's ooohing over? winner!

I really should have put a Bollywood scene in. to me Bollywood dancing and acting are the biggest brainwashers out there. effin good luck with your feminism on Indian soil.

I don't know...I can't give any more heart to men. Bed time, okay. But my heart is done with all that. But then, looking around and examining what the world is without romantic love? Damn. It's almost like I'm really looking at reality. Maybe religion isn't the opiate of the masses after all...

more Raunch

well, I found a passage I really like in "Raunch Culture":

"Alyssa is not so different from most FCPs: they want to be like men, and profess to disdain women who are overly focused on the appearance of femininity. But men seem to like those women, those girly-girls, or like to look at them, at least. So to really be like men, FCPs have to enjoy looking at those women too. At the same time, they wouldn't mind being looked at a little bit themselves. The then is to simultaneously show that you are not the same girly-girls in the videos and the Victoria's Secret catalogs, but that you approve of men's appreciation for them, and that possibly you too have some of that same sexy energy and underwear underneath all your aggression and wit. A passion for raunch covers all the bases." (p.99)

it used to be two choices: even as recently as when I came up, in the 90s. seriously. it was good girl, bad girl. good girl was smart girl, girlfriend, college girl. whatever. bad girl was slut, skank, stripper, early mother, what have you. Now there are three choices, and I think that the third is what raunch women stem from. As women have begun to expect to perform at the same levels of financial (well, not quite) and career success as men, a third choice: man. Good girl, bad girl, or honorary dude. FCPs are the fuckable honorary dudes. I think that's what Levy's trying to say, but she never says it outright like that. At least that's what I get from it. And she's right.

Inclusion in the male workplace seems to be the root. It's very American, though, isn't it? I've read that European professional women do not equate masculinity and misogyny with career success-for better or worse femininity can definitely be synonymous with achievement. I mean, obviously you need a strong set of ovaries to enter the male industries wherever you are, but in terms of behavior, presentation, and image. Equating misogyny and masculinity with financial and social success and career success is very American. I mean, then there's the places where there's just no chance of having any of that if you don't have a dick, but I'm saying the places where women do have a shot.

The "postfeminist" world. Ooh! new topics. I read a lot of 2nd wave literature because I'm a hippie and I agree with a lot of that, but this is getting really interesting. (p.s. oh snippity-snap! p.103 Levy straight up starts calling these women Uncle Tom bitches...I mean, she's way too intellectual to say that, but she references Stowe's book and everything. mm mm mmm. Maybe if we all wore tiny dangly drop earrings and unstyled hair like her it would be cool? more on that later)

okay, I saw "Bruno" tonight and it was effing hilarious. It was really funny. I was not a fan of "Borat", maybe because most of the jokes were about women, (but apparently I have no problem with Baby Hitler jokes and giant dildo fight scenes) or I just thought it kind of fell flat but still loved his hair, but Cohen's batting lashes in this one were awesome. Awesome!

I typically don't like humor like his-but he's fucking funny, dude. it's the straight face. he has no tell. well, there's one scene. but he is the deadest pan ever. I didn't choose that clip because I hate black people-I don't hate black people. but it was the funniest part of the movie because some of the women in the supposedly serious audience were actually losing it because of his fucking deadpan. I was having seizures and the man next to us in the theater was ignoring us. I love how actually infuriated Cohen looks that anyone could be mad at him for purchasing an African baby with a U2 special edition red iPOD. fucking priceless.

I swear the cops come out in force around the full moon weekends. Are they called? Do they just patrol more? Drama.

I didn't think a lot about gender dynamics today-oh okay, I did, but it's not one of those real smart days.

I guess most of what I've been thinking about because I'm starting to date again, years after the ex-disaster, is what it's like to be someone with a healthy sexuality, a lack of male-induced shame, and a vagina. Recently I was having a conversation with someone I used to see, who I'm very casually seeing again and he referred to not being able to "keep up" with me in bed. It's not like this dynamic isn't something I'm aware of, between us or in my life in general, and I'm not bragging or being voyeuristic, but it set me thinking about all the choices I've made socially because I refused to reign in my sexuality as a woman. Just how I feel around guys in general and what it means to put your physical preferences first as a woman. And because I'm getting older-like older than tee-hee we did it age, and I've decided not to marry...like til death do I die, I'm thinking about what my sex life is going to be like as a single woman.

And I caught myself wondering if my late-twenties friends are getting married for the same reasons I feel a little more nervous. In groups, in public, in general. It's one thing to be 22 with no ring and some short shorts. It's another to be 29. I don't really like wearing a lot of clothes-I prefer tropical weather and being comfortable, not "modest," and I have a certain style. But I've noticed the last couple of years the vibe is different. And I've had to boost my confidence level and have some little talks with myself about the transition from late twenties to early thirties as a single gal. I've sat down and planned out when I want to have my kids, and how I'm going to deal with this or that, most of this being my ultraconservative and racist family members (I'm not really into white guys so kids probably will be "mixed," and that won't be popular), and just plans, things in general.

When I say I don't want to call myself a feminist, I don't mean fuck feminism. Although sometimes when bitches get in my face.. just kidding. No, but what I mean is, these are the things I really take to heart day by day. Some asshole talking to his girlfriend like a dog at the mall. The thirty-third fuckwad whose 20-ton truck has almost run me down this week. Figuring out how I am going to shoulder and balance with grace and happiness the emotional challenges of making personal choices in my own life that are contraindicated for social success in a woman-hating world. The facts I find most important to my happiness: the freedom to sleep with men I find attractive without some possessive freak breathing down my neck or living in my house, my awesome parenting skills and choosing to have kids on my own at some point, and wanting just generally to be able to travel and make career and social choices that aren't related to what some dude thinks. These are life goals, and while they sound small, I don't know anyone else in my personal life who has laid these things out in her future. We are still very much living in a culture of marital expectation. It is simply unthinkable to most men that a woman would want to plan her life around sexual autonomy.

I can't understand why women get married. And that sounds stupid coming from someone who was engaged 2 years ago. I couldn't go through with it. I still feel, when I think about my abusive relationship, that it was my behavior that caused the abuse. I said that to my dv worker and I had to scrape her off the ceiling. But what I mean is, I think that had I been more compliant, less mouthy (yeah, that's like a 15-time New Year's Resolution disaster), not tried to leave, gotten pregnant faster etc etc, he would never have hit me. I wasn't saying I sucked and i deserved it, though I may have felt that way in the dark pits of emotion that come with that kind of insane relationship, I was saying that domination engages at a specific point in rebellion, and it was my resistance and refusal that engendered his violence.

I feel marriage is still one of the biggest problems. It's not big and bad like violent rape, or really ugly like pimping, but it is the one thing that is supposed to be woman's greatest friend. I just don't see that as being reality. Romance and monogamy, the "benefits" of nursing some dude through whatever he needs to go through, I'm not interested anymore. I think about my personal evolution, and I realize that 5 years ago when I hooked up with my fiancee, I was a child. Mentally. I couldn't stand on my own, in terms of my thinking. Someone would insult me, or something would hurt me, and I'd be stuck in the emotions of the experience versus being able to reason out-um, this is why this happened, this is why it's not okay, and then move into solution territory. I'm not saying I've ever been weak, I mean, my internal process-the very deep self doubt that women experience below their functioning and behavior. I needed the support of a man in my life. I did not have a solid core, and the reality is, the abuse I endured was a big fucking catalyst to seeing what the dynamics in male female relationships are and it made me tough.

Especially the mental abuse. Someone can say anything to me now and I know that it's their shit-before I would secretly feel hurt and wonder if I needed to examine myself. Abuse fixes that. If you survive it, you learn to internally go "nope" when someone attacks you. Reflexively because it's the attack that's wrong, no matter what the person is throwing at you. I'm not saying women need to be hit or that it helps us have personal growth, I'm saying that when something really shitty like that happens you are forced to choose between growing and self destructing, so I chose the former. He didn't do me any favors. I created an advantage and insight out of his hatred and nonsensical shit.

Um, anyway. But I'd rather have gone through that than married some "nice guy" and be enduring 30 years of boring sex and him slowly silently sucking my soul to death. I'd rather have had out the blows and learned that relationships are a waste of time. And married women can say whatever, I'll feel that way til the day I die. I did my fucking time.

It just seems that marriage is really a waste of time. A waste of women's energies. But the weird part about choosing not to marry is that I observe my married girlfriends on their timeline. First of all, their fucking time is not their own. And second, there's all this boring and bizarre shit you have to do-change your energy so you're not "sexy," i.e. become some sort of professional caretaker with no personality. ugh. I've nannied for ten years, and I've done it in heels and push up bras and my kids love me. children don't need to be raised by women who have shoulder length hair and J. Crew fucking capris. I'm not saying sexiness is femme style, I'm not making a statement about patriarchal agendas and how they're empowering. I get it-i wear heels and I'm a tool of men's evil. Totally. not saying I'm fighting for the cause in my Wonderbra. but I do it because ultimately I like to get mine, and heels make it really easy to communicate to guys that I want to fuck. Realism. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is...god, I blog drunk a lot. you guys realize that, right?

The point is- men's sexuality is seen as a non-issue. it's present everywhere-in every fucking conversation, in the way they parent, work, play-there's no morality attached to it. it just is-allowed, unremarked on, clean, okay. male sexual energy is like, public energy. women, on the other hand. so we make it dirty, right? we're responsible for fucking everything. if you're going to dress sexy, it has to be that display sexuality that Ariel Levy talks about. it can't be, I have this desire, this passion for sex for its own sake-because that is dirty shit. not even prostituted women are allowed that! "whores" are just exploited male repositories. you know, theoretically. there is no role, no social outlet for women who have an enjoyment of sex. not of "their man," of SEX. it's either love to please, or love prestige (marriage-class)-it's never, love your life. it's a fucking travesty, and a bullshit order that can't be filled, and it's lame. do we really think that men have a stronger sexual drive? get fucking real. somehow, in this species, females have no sexual drive! but amazingly, the males that attend them are hypersexual. that makes so much fucking sense.

it's one way. it's a one way street. your desire is the norm, unremarkable. my desire, any signal I give, not only permeates the consciousness level of a room, but is taken as a sign of general availability even when my signals are targeted to one specific person. then I wind up fending off plumbers, businessmen and married perverts because they think that if a woman wants to fuck, she'll fuck anything! (fucking) idiots. one way traffic.

okay, I'm pissed off. I'm going to bed. I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. yelling-I'm basically yelling on the internet. But I'm definitely annoyed. Travesty. Some kind of travesty :) you know I like that word.

Full moon

i have a strange feeling.

the moon was really full tonight over the Bay. my friend commented on it, and the clouds below it as we drove across the bridge. even though I wasn't alone, I felt alone all night. I don't know if you can feel it too, but sometimes something opens up when the moon is full. Sometimes I feel it just as tears, or needing sex, but sometimes there's gap, an open door. you know what I mean.

I get the feeling I'm alone here sometimes. this...whatever. dimension. I feel like my business was finished a long time ago-something in my childhood. I feel like doors open sometimes, like very little is within my control, and like we-women, and me myself, are alone here to some degree. I've thought often that the spirits of the great, prepatriarchal women, and other benevolent spirits have grown tired of the face-of-the-earth antics long ago, and moved on. maybe that's why our world seems so forsaken. truly, maybe it is.

I know, more crazy Sonia b.s....but it could be, you never know. And what's a more fitting time to spin some crazy yarns than a full moon night?

I know there's a book in me, and maybe three, but most days I can barely muster the emotional investment in this world to care enough to try. ooh, pathetic, it must seem. I just really don't give a shit. what's a book going to do? we're all going to die anyway.

ha. ha ha. time to shut the ole mouth and go to bed.

Raunch culture pt 2

My second day of reading "raunch culture" is twofold: a) less agreement with Ms. Levy-I just simply don't share her opinions, and b) I actually like how she presents the evolution of the split-up of second wave feminism. Fascinating.

ultimately I still feel that both sex-positive feminism and an insistence on separatism are both a reaction to male dominance. I'm saying I understand that some women want to exclusively have sex with other women, and don't want to interact with men at all, but I think that the separatist aspect of wanting no interaction is a response to men being assholes, not men existing. "sex positive feminism" (sorry, I need those quotes because it's such effing bullshit to me), which seeks to incorporate women's subjugated sexual role as a part of their new freedoms, essentially affirming that they don't have to please men anymore (not quite true) but still want to. I think it's sad and lame, and ultimately really fucking unimaginative. Because for me, as a human being, at the end of the day? I'm interested in men pleasing me. I find that to be way more of a feminist statement than a fucking pole dancing class.

And whatever, feminism isn't the end all be all. It's not the fucking holy grail. "feminism" is a white middle class women's movement. It has never encompassed all, or even all the most badass of female logic. working class, women of color, hardcore Irish immigrant women. women of long long ago. lots of women have their wisdom, some magical, some political, some feminist. feminist should not mean the most free thinking, because often it's not. "feminism," the white middle class female assertion of (certain) freedoms, has fallen flat many times trying to speak for all women. there was virtually no woc leadership in the first and second wave feminist movements. it's just not the whole story of women, or female freedom. I just am resistant to thinking of one small group, one holy grail, one "answer." it's cultish, small-minded, and it won't work for everyone.

So I sort of have decided to stop using the word for myself. I mean, I think it's a good way of conveying to people that you give a shit about women's feelings, and inviting them to antagonize you, but I don't want to refer to myself as a feminist anymore. I want to spread the umbrella of my experience beyond a label. And besides, I've always felt that being a woman should mean a primary concern for the tribe of women. anything else to me has always just...heh heh. sucked.

oh, and randomly? because the book talks a bunch about Susan Brownmiller, and mentions a statement propagated by someone, maybe her, during the 70s, about women not being physically capable of vaginal orgasm? The female body is indeed set up to have orgasms during intercourse. And they're about 50 times better and more powerful than men's. Frequently women have out of body experiences and trance experience during them-this is true and it's a travesty if we don't know it. The sad fact that 70% of women don't experience this is probably due to the fact that men are socialized to fuck for their pleasure and women are socialized against being aggressive enough sexually to get what they need. If you've never had a vaginal orgasm, you need to get on top and utilize enough assertion to set the pace and angle to get yours. you need to assert yourself verbally and physically with whatever dude you are with and enjoy what is one of the most incredible experiences of your life.

anyway, the book is a good primer on 3rd wave sentiment, experience, and absolutely-a discussion of how raunch behavior becomes confused with liberation. The very fact that sexual things are considered "raunchy" or that free sexual play and experience need to have an exploitive aspect in this culture says way more about the overarching culture than young women peeling off their tops for Girls Gone Wild. women's choices occur within an everpresent, all-pervasive belief system. within patriarchy.

the end.

Book review

aiight. well. I'm reading Ariel Levy's book. "Female Chauvenist Pigs.."

I like her better than most "feminists" of my generation. I like her perceptiveness, and her understanding of original feminist concepts and how far raunch "feminism" is from the truth.

I was sitting in the carwash tonight and it was that thing where the big brushes are pushing past you and you feel like you're moving forwards. I was thinking about how it can feel so much like you're really moving, and look like it, until the brushes pushed past my frame of vision and I saw the mobile home park across the street and the palm trees above it and my perspective cleared. And I go, uh huh. Patriarchy is just like that.

In male culture, at times, there may be what seem to be advancements for women, but when I stop and look at what's really going on, I realize that women are often in the illusion of gained ground, but it only seems so because the structures of male power may bend and fold and move around us. It is their movement that makes it seem we've moved. (We do move, but I'm saying not a lot). Male dominance is the whole scenery, and it's near impossible at this point in patriarchy to have an objective perspective of it. We are so in it.

Anyway, Ariel Levy. It really brings up a whole range of thoughts on sluttiness. Ms. Levy uses the term "bimbo" without quotes in her book. I think from within mainstream feminism there needs to be an understanding that female sexual roles, all of them-develop from within a culture of hard-core male dominance-not just the "slutty" ones, but the ones that deem some roles as such. Women are always so focused on how we come off, what our behaviors are, what they mean within culture, that none of our behaviors are either self-motivated or stand for themselves. Even the idea that there would be no judgment about women's sexual choices, or even an environment where our choices weren't motivated by image, role selection, or financial welfare, is pretty far off. Definitely outside the scope of most feminism and all culture to date.

I like the book. There's some random factoids that are interesting. Playboy funded the ERA? effing really? That actually surprises me, and I"m not stranger to leftist pseudo-femifriendly male b.s....but that definitely deserves some research. I'm only like three chapters in, so I'll post more on it later. But it was worth the $6.

Ultimately, I think feminism oughta re-orient, and keep re-orienting, our perspective to empower women and critique MALE behavior, not female. It's my soapbox. I had to stand on it. Thanks for coming out.

And now for a post-halfassreview-tangent. I just have more to say about the fact that women's sexual choices are constantly in reaction to males. How can we understand female sexual behavior? Women are so freaking sexually/culturally battered, repressed, brainwashed, and zombie-botted out by the time we're 16-nay, 12, that we have no objective fucking stance on what choices women would "naturally" make within a light year from where we are. I think it's a testament to the awesomeness of human females that we manage to be as kick-ass as we are in spite of everything that we endure. We always manage to bring out some interesting angle, something to love, some hope when there clearly is none, some deep creativity-either art or a new life or a piece of unfractured soul from godknowswhere. Where do we find this shit? There's some infinite resource we tap into to keep ourselves alive. The surface world may be man's, but women live on the edge of something greater that keeps us partially whole despite our global trauma.

Is it incomprehensible that women's sexual choices to do not occur on some kind of slut/wholesome continuum? We are not making these choices without a deeply and powerfully embedded socialization that tells us we are objects for barter. It is impossible for women to make sexual moves without understanding the social consequences that are ever present for us. And these consequences are not a relic of the pre-feminist world that barely exist in the social psyche. These social penalties still exist. One thing that exemplified that this week for me, in an advertisement in Elle:

http://www.chroniclebooks.com/index/main,book-info/store,books/products_id,7844/title,Friend-or-Faux/


I know, that's what I get for reading Elle. I like clothing. And please tell me that book title speaks for itself to everyone who reads this blog. Not to be anti-woman, but the type of girls who would really ruin my life (quickly) is that book's demographic. Ugh. "Undercover sluts"??? I mean, I know there are women who seriously think like that, but I generally can't get anywhere near them because their blood diamond-encrusted left ring fingers blind my delicate eyes and their flatironed shoulder length WASP hair threatens the balance of my stomach acid.

Anyway, the ramble is almost over. But the degree to which we react to... oh fuck it. "Scrubs is on." I'll finish this tomorrow...

he he.