Ok do not blame me for the standard of grammar and clarity of my last few blogs. Google blogs has been fucking up for me recently and I can't figure out why. It would help if I knew some basic web development but alas, no. I feel like returning to compulsive listing to procrastinate. I'll do a proper blog in the future. Possibly a catch up? I was talking to GiGi the other day and she said she was completely unaware of something I thought everyone knew. Maybe I don't talk enough. Mr. Zebra often says I don't talk enough. Actually, I do but always about random shit, like The Moomins or situations I make up in my head or about the town celebrity. Oh actually the last point is quite exciting. Perhaps only to me though. He's a Goth kid who was on a BBC 3 show World's Strictest Parents, which was amazing. I know, I love trashy T.V leave me alone. He lives in Winchester and hangs out in the Asgard tattoo studio. I see him all the time and get really excited. He must think I'm such a weirdo. What was my point? Oh yes- that I should probably make a contribution towards showing what I've been up to recently. Pha to that now though. I'm in denial about the past miseries of the past year and the looming colonoscopy. FUCKING, FUCKING colonoscopy. Again.
I was in Sainsbury's with Mr. Zebra the other day. I have to admit I am fond of saddling him up in his PVC riding gear and trotting down to the shops on him. Whilst buying noms for dinner we bumped into another medieval history student from his course. The standard small talk followed:
Joe's history person: Oh I see you got the double chocolate chip cookies. Those are good.
In my head I imagined how the small talk would proceed if Joe had happened to stand in the queue waiting to purchase a giant dildo.
Joe's history person: Oh I see you got a giant dildo. Those are good.
I laughed at this on and off for a day.
The promised list must proceed. This is the worth of my degree.
What I have learnt at university:
War is NAUGHTY.
Colonialism is NAUGHTY.
Dualism is NAUGHTY.
Religion isn't naughty but patriarchy & Co. often entice it to be.
Patriarchy is NAUGHTY.
Hurting the planet (Gaia) is NAUGHTY.
Consumerism is the source of all EVIL.
Power is NAUGHTY.
Kababs are EVIL.
Jager is EVIL.
Mainstream porn aka the consumerist manifesto of sex(which could be classified as violent porn because it uses the same symbolism of: Men= worker, Woman= meat) is NAUGHTY.
Red Bull is NAUGHTY, does not stop being NAUGHTY and would possibly need sedatives to stop being NAUGHTY.
Adjectives are NAUGHTY.
Semi-colons are NAUGHTY.
Corporatism is NAUGHTY.
Disaster capitalism is NAUGHTY.
Plus:
Global warming is elitist genocide. Looooong story.
I ate too many raisins last night blogging and I didn't get enough sleep because I went off on a textual rampage. I should change the name of this blog. I have never said anything witty on it. Also why does google keep fucking up my blog? What's with the random text sizes and change of font before I post.
Feminist blogs, the only place on the internet with grammer and spelling!
I have to admit that I originally spelt the word feminist wrong in the title. I have an excuse though. I'm attempting to gather notes for an exam on death, which is the last taboo only because it is so mind-numbingly boring. I know what the examiners are expecting from my answers and I already know I'm on the way to possibly fucking up my degree. This sounds like melodrama but the exam is unfair. They expect us to write at essay standard, including a bibliography. In their omni-benevolence (that wassarcastic melodrama) they have allowed us 900 words of notes to take in. That is definitely not enough for the amount of research required for two essays. Plus the extra one they recommend just in case. Right now I'm on about 3,000 words for two questions. I usually do about 3,000 words in notes for one essay. As it is an unseen paper every single quote I take in could be irrelevant. My plots to destroy my university’s reputation are not hindered by my personal bias against one of my lecturers. They failed to help me with an essay, despite the fact I was clearly having a panic attack. Then to take the piss they sent me resources I sorely lacked, it was a specialist subject, after the hand in date.
That was a tangent about my current situation. What I wanted to blog about was one of the few blogs I regularly read:
Jill's blog is sharp, witty, funny and intelligent; often I read each comment posted after the main blog. I find it quite reviving when I'm in a bad mood. This particular post I've linked to has introduced me to the term mansplaining, something I'm sure every female has encountered. My most frustrating encounter of this was with an art teacher who was female. This would usually eradicate any claims of mansplaining but it worked on a slightly similar power basis, in that I was a student and she was a teacher. Thus I obviously was stupid and needed to be talked at. After including feminism as a political theme in my art, she gave me a disgusted look and told me that feminism was defunct as WOMEN HAVE GOT THE VOTE. I was shocked to learn such a thing because I had only just found my true calling in becoming a suffragette and hiding in the House of Commons overnight to jump out on surprisedMPs. She then proceeded to tell me the ancient history of feminism, from Mary Wollestonecraft's time despite the fact that I am a feminist and she clearly was not. After being set straight, I tried to explain to her the idea of sexism in modern media and advertising because this was the focus of my work. After this she interrupted me to reply, "Lots of women work in the media now, there's been openings for women for a long time."
I have never wanted to scream FUCKKKKKKKKK in some one's face as much as I did then.
I think this smiley suits the memory :-|
Luckily I haven't experienced much mansplaining as of late. When I was single I often found that a lot of men found my height a reason to mansplain to me or patronise me in different ways. Example:
Man (thinking all women like cute nicknames): I'm sorry to hear that little one.
Me: Please don't call me that.
Later by text.
Man: How are you feeling little one?
Me: Can you stop calling me that. My brother calls me that and that's because to him I AM little, I'm his younger sister by 18 years!
Yeah I find quite a lot of cutie couple nick names kind of incestuous.
One fellow mansplained to me in such a manner that when I corrected him he'd manage to turn it around so it would look like he had actually invented the concept himself. If I ever showed that I knew more information about a topic he would change the subject instantly. Occasionally I would bring up things that I felt added to the discussion, such as death sex or feminism but he managed to gloss over that. To be fair they're not every one's cup of tea, most people avoided me when I was going through the fascination with cannibalism phase. I doubt he ever had any awareness that he was doing it. He was deeply in love with himself and his love affair will be eternally happy, as no one will tear him away from his true love. Or even better eventually he'll find a meek, gracious lady to talk at.
The next blog I'm linking to is also about mansplaining, it make me laugh enough to cause worry that I had woken my flat mate up:
"You may be a mansplainer if you have ever used evolutionary theory to justify the objection of women... 'But we have to look at tehboobiez! We EVOLVED to look at tehboobiez to find a mate!'."
This one I can particularly relate to:
"You may be a mansplainer if...
...when you are losing ground in a discussion, you divert the topic to your interlocutor's appearance. Tell her she's "not pretty when she frowns like that" or that she "looks like a dancer" or that you "know a real man-eater when you see one". Because you assume that for women, appearance (and your opinion of their appearance) trumps logic every time.
Double mansplainer points of you dismiss every point she makes as being illogical and then "thank" her for "challenging" you."
Triple points if you then go through a friend to ask for her phone number!"
Nothing is more insulting to me than having explained something with great care, receive a reply that dismisses me in every way, for instance, "You have pretty eyes." This reply is interchangeable with several others of a similar theme.
The most condescending mansplaining is clearly the classic female hysteria/hormones/menstruation ignorance is not applicable, unless they are somehow Victorian. Those Victorianssure did love their female hysteria. It is actually such a tired, sexist retort it's annoying because of its lack of originality.
Someone commented on the iblamethepatriarchy blog mentioning a passage in Franny and Zooey that Zooey has a breakdown in front of her boyfriend whilst he mansplains the whole way through. I had never seen it that way but she is right. I love that book by the way, more than Catcher in the Rye and I do not care that Joe (unicorn, zebra, boyfriend) is confounded by this. R.I.P to J.D Salinger. I had to do the obligatory clichéd mention.
I have had fun preying upon mansplainers. I met an open misogynist. He was unashamed and would announce this to anyone. If you're misogynist you might as well be racist and homophobic as well, the mindset and hate is the same. However it seems that misogyny is far more socially acceptable. After I told him that I am a feminist, he mansplained to me that feminists were Man Haters. I laughed in his face (oh I should mention I was drunk when this happened) and attempted to explain the concept of a stereotype. This appeared to shock him and spent about an hour trying to redeem him self by explaining his misogyny. The conversation went like this:
Him: I hate women because-
Me: You're a cunt.
Him: They always-
Me: You're a cunt.
Him: They've done bad things to-
Me: You're still a cuuuuuunt!
Good times, good times.
Today I was in a foul mood. The despairing sort where I want to brew bed for a week and not wash. These two blogs have given me high spirits as Sir Kate (spoon/ Field Marshal Kate) would say. Plus I had an impromptu chat with Beth, who is very, rather, rather awesome and who I'd like to be good friends with but y'know my social "awkwardness". We discussed sexism in Internet culture and where irony stops. She pointed out that the standard jerk on the Internet will use the most socially incorrect language possible. The two most common are anti-Semitic or homophobic. It's strange how I've never considered it in a broader way and worries me that people instantly proliferate this when there is anonymity available. Then we moved on to porn and then feminist porn. Feminist porn does not actually seem to exist we both concluded. Afterwards we pondered why. I have read about this for my dissertation but I won't go into that.
I've started my third year of uni and currently I'm living in a little flat in the centre of town, which I like to pretend is a New York flat, as it has no windows in the bathroom or kitchen. Despite being by a main road and having no living room, the flat is superior in almost every way to my last house.
Reasons my last house was a shit hole:
None of my housemates where ever there.
It was freezing and I had to pay to heat it by myself due to the above circumstances. Most of the time I couldn't afford to.
I was ill all the time, partly due to the above circumstances.
There was a hole in the kitchen "hidden" behind some MDF.
The water that came out of the taps in the bath had black specks in it and gave me conjunctivitis.
Water leaked through the kitchen ceiling.
The water pipes in the shed burst and flooded it because my landlady could not be bothered to insulate them.
There was no furniture, despite being described as a furnished house.
My bed was a second hand child's bed that was incredibly small. My landlady claimed it was new despite the "Steve" that had been marked onto the headboard.
It was always dirty because I was the only one who did any cleaning and most of the time I was ill.
My landlady was . . . Dubious. Several different names, fond of lying and was a hairdresser.
The house had a creepy atmosphere.
I'm also endeavouring upon a 8,000 word dissertation and 2,000 word rationale. My chosen genre is prose poetry and my topic is violent pornography. To reiterate the answers I have given to a few people recently; no I am not writing porn, no I do not have to watch violent porn as research and yes reading Crash is actually dissertation work. I wrote about a 1000 words and then realised I wanted to rewrite them all in a completely different style. I want a manifesto to back up the technicalities of my piece(s), not just the content. Que severe writers block. What I want is only slightly out of my grasp but nothing I do fits the prototype in my head. I'll come back to this topic later on in the post though.
On a tangent; facebook is a wonderful thing if you're a student. As soon as you have an essay to write it's there to provide the trivial distraction you crave. It does mean that I have accumulated some facebook friends from my secondary school, who were generally The Worst People Ever. They all have children (seriously, what birth control were they using? If it's the same as mine I want something better, sturdier. Please. It's scary shit.) and hate men according to their many statuses, consequently my news feed is incredibly depressing. Babies and text speak, two things I'm not so fond of.
Facebook has other downsides, such as being caught in conversations with people you don't think are too amazing. This happened to me the other day, someone I used to be friends with a long time ago started talking to me as if the horrible barrel of shit, sewage, blood, vomit and chewing gum he had poured over me had never happened. That's metaphorical, he never actually poured faeces on me. He talked to me as if in the past we rolled down candy land hills, threw flowers from wicker baskets and darned socks for the scouts together. I talked to him, being polite, slightly out of morbid curiosity or perhaps the masochist in me wondering if it was some sort cunning trick. My side of the conversation went like this:
Me: Oh I'm ok.
In my head: You are a DICK.
Me: How are you?
In my head: You are a DICK.
Me: Haha I had completely forgotten about that!
In my head: You are an absolute DICK.
Etc.
I have such a strong impulse to commit social death, more so, and write a note called, "All the people I think are DICKS" then tag lots of people in it.
Afterwards I was considering why I had talked to him and whether I blame him for some of the problems I have. For a while I became angry more at myself than him. I hated that he had polluted me and his filth had been ingested to become part of my mechanisms. For my dissertation my tutor has recommended amazing reading, things that are important to me in an intimate way, not just in an academic sense. Today I was reading more of The Angry Women anthology. It compiles interviews by and with subversive, taboo-shattering, powerful, artistic, intelligent wommin. A quote from an interview conducted by V.Vale and Andrea Juno conversing with Lydia Lunch was fitting, "Also, people propagate their own abuse. They get stuck in that pattern, it's all they know, it's what they can respond to, it's what they know how to deal with." I identified with this because I am weary of being trapped by my own sexual formation. Often I find it frustrating because it is like I've only recently embodied myself. I've only recently begun to know my body personally and I'm still developing.
I tend to feel like a child playing in her mothers high heels, pretending to be some archetype then tripping over my theatricals. I feel occasionally like I used to, that I'm small in my head, that I am a fragmented being, stitched together by bad and sometimes cruel needlework. Yet, despite the 12 year old self that I envision appearing to restrain me, I now recognise that at least it is not a gaudy mirage of sexuality. The vulnerability is intimacy the two are linked. Love has changed me sexually, it is similar to being innocent in the sense that I am learning everything afresh in a different way. Before I was a red slash, a centralised cunt, wielding deceit and manipulations. Numb outside with a bruised lining.
Now I am not sure what I am except that I am whole and no longer fractured. Re-envisioning myself at first made me want to run to carefully place the snares back in their original wounds. I fight the urge because it is a process that will create a more distinct me, free from my own sexual self-destruction. Lydia Lunch says, "The first key is to forgive yourself and take back yourself, reclaim yourself, and to heal the self-hate that these situations have forced you into. Because that's the biggest plague of our generation anyway: self-hate." I don't care anymore about people in my past because they have no influence over me now, continuing things that have happened is putting effort into hurting myself.
That was a ramble and a half. Honestly, the stuff I exude at three o'clock in the morning. I'm a bit like a plant; giving out pleasant oxygen in the day. As soon as it's night all the crazy carbon dioxide comes out.
I became a joint honours degree student at the beginning of my second year. I am now a theology and religious studies student as well as a creative writing student. I found that I am much more happier taking both courses and not under stimulated anymore. Theology students tend to be open minded, in comparison to creative writing students that meet lecturers questions in silence and shuffle away from me when I'm giggling in the corner.
Recently my Chinese religions lecturer was moving office and our seminar was amongst plastic boxes of his vast collection of books and trinkets. His appearance is almost quaint and pleases me, he looks as if he should be in a sepia photograph. A casual 1920's look, a black duck lick combined with a khaki knitted jumper, corduroy trousers and smart lace ups. One draw in his office is completely devoted to Chinese snack food and various types of tea.
A lady from my group was asking about the spoon jammed in his window. She had wondered about it every single lesson and decided to ask before he moved office. After it was explained the spoon temporarily "fixed" the window (apparently he is told not to mend things with spoons as it is a security risk) she asked what a spoon sticking out of his penholder was. He pulled it out to reveal a it had a knife for it's end. To my utter confusion the lady seemed sated and said, "Oh it's one of those." What could she have meant it's one of those? Since when have knife-spoons ever existed? I did not want to ask what exactly the knife-spoon was or why my lecturer had it in his office, because everyone else seem to except its existence as normal. It's ridiculous; it's the most dangerous eating implement I can imagine. It's inventors intentions seem equally as dubious, its specific purpose eludes me. Perhaps a knife-spoon is something that only certain types of people have a use for and I am evaded by this fellowship. I swear my reality is at odds with humanity's. Well, if that is so then you can keep your fucking knife-spoons.
Me: Here I have five pounds for you. Now will I be allowed to have a bath? Metre:BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP Me: Hurry up and except it. Metre: 45p for debt, £3.55 for emergency, £1.00 for gas. Me: What?! Metre: BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP Me: No don't lie I checked you before I went out, you had emergency left! Metre: Nom nom nom. Me: You fucking bastard!
As he pulls her she unravels. Soon she will be sparse. Two pieces of string, will be the remains in his hand. Nothingness loosens her knots fast.
I might turn this into a poem. I haven't worked out what to do with it yet. It's ok as flash fiction, only most of it does not do justice to the first line. Maybe I should leave post it notes in my notebooks for guidance when I plunder them for ideas. Actually if I wrote what I was reading at the time of writing I would be infinitely more successful in deciphering my own discordance.
Writing can be a bit like drowning in your own shit.
I'm up at about three in the morning writing poetry. My portfolio has to be 900 lines and I've written one and a half poems at this point. I would have done more work earlier in the day but procrastination insisted I shouldn't. They are not edited poems, they are lopsided creations that need shaping. I'm trying to be post modern. Despite trying new ideas, I'm still too fucking abstract. I have a notebook that I use for inspiration, mainly for poetry rather than short stories. The little things I collect from life, I write in there. It also contains poems I'm working on or premature ones that I knew not to finish. Plus several completely dreadful ones that I've scribbled out or scrawled profanities over. This poem is one I wrote after Tom broke up with me. Reading it now the feeling/emotion recreates itself in a stilted form, I do not understand it though. Neither do I remember what it is about. I think it may have been influenced by some philosophical theory I was reading. Or one I was delving into. Fuck knows.
Mantras and masochism
Spiritual animal I am, Seeking higher sensations. We creatures wading In mud to grasp a pure concept, Through the wiggling legs and arms and torsos breasts, both genitals. Hidden is my secret streak of feeling, That I take out to examine. A silk frayed ribbon, Coloured and beautiful, Like a bruise.
Actually now it vaguely resembles some of my thoughts on hedonism. I wish I had given it a title when I originally wrote it. Then I would have some clue to its origins and more importantly wouldn't have to give it a guessed title now.
Concentrate of reincarnated hedonist flapper, rinsed through punk, seething with feminist fury, reered by literalist, a hippie and cheap vodka. Condensed into the neurotic, dillusion baiting, artful-mess I equate to.
