I work in a School of the Arts at a university. My building houses studio art (my department), music, art history, and theatre. And the theatre kids are constantly driving me nuts.
Just now I was sitting here at my desk and could hear screaming in the stairwell. It didn’t bother me in the slightest. I just assumed there was a theatre kid in the stairwell, looking for attention. I sure hope no one was getting stabbed or something. Continue reading “suddenly i realize why Glee sounds entirely unappealing”
President Obama has drawn both praise and criticism for meeting with groups on both sides of the abortion issue and attempting to find “common ground.” One of the things I like about Obama, that I think many people like about him, is that he seems the type to listen to people with whom he both agrees and disagrees, and then try to come to a thoughtful conclusion.
The one problem with all this common ground on abortion stuff?
People who think that making abortion illegal will end or even put a dent in the number of abortions performed annually are wrong.
Yep. A new report from the Guttmacher (I always see this word and think gut-muncher for some reason) Institute found that
While the incidence of abortion is closely related to that of unintended pregnancy, it does not correlate with abortion’s legal status. Indeed, abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is broadly legal and in regions where it is highly restricted.
Making abortion illegal does not change the number of abortions. Period. We should look at people who want to overturn Roe v. Wade about the same way as we look at people who supported Prohibition. Continue reading “common ground on abortion?”
Come to think of it, using THIS sort of mace would probably be more satisfying. Image via Flicr user hyku.
This is just a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post about men who approach women in public places. I had a lovely day on the bus today. This morning, the bus was very crowded. I had to wedge in between two people in one of the few remaining empty spaces, and the space was really about half the size of a “seat.” And yet, perhaps because it was such a gorgeous golden morning, everyone on the bus was in a good mood. At least everyone in the first half of the bus with the two long rows of seats that face each other. We were all chatting, one lady talking about her upcoming two weeks of vacation, another about her daughter’s first birthday, another guy about his sister’s birthday party this weekend. I got off the bus with a smile and a spring in my step. Even this afternoon, the bus arrived on time (something it rarely seems to do on Fridays), it wasn’t crowded, I chatted with the 2-weeks vacation lady about her plans and our busy Fridays.
And then I got off the bus.
As I was crossing an intersection, a car slowed down as it got close to me. It was an Acura, full of “bro” looking dudes. They were hanging out the windows of the car, waving their arms, screaming loudly at me. It seriously startled me. I jumped and recoiled. I think I half expected them to throw something at me. I have no idea what they were screaming. It shook me up.
I have no idea why this happens to me so often. I have no idea why these men do things like this, though my theory is that they get off on intimidating women on the street. I think I’m going to get some mace or pepper spray for my keychain.
So apparently we bombed the moon. I’m not sure how I feel about interplanetary acts of aggression (though I imagine Marvin the Martian is PISSED), and I’m pretty sure this scheme was cooked up by a bunch of bored nerdy pyromaniacs at NASA, perhaps late one night when they were all a little delirious. OMGZ, I GOT IT GUYZ, LET’S EFFING BOMB THE MOON! IT WOULD BE SWEET!
All of this reminded me of another nerdy pyromaniac I know and love.
When I was a very small child, we lived in a house on Mulberry Street, a fact I have always loved because I have a soft spot for the Dr. Seuss classic To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street! The house on Mulberry Street had a tire swing in the back yard. I don’t have a lot of memories from those years, since we moved from that house when I was five, but I do remember the tire swing. And I remember my dad pushing me on it. And I remember squealing, SHOOT ME TO THE MOON, DAD! And he’d push me sooooooooo high. In retrospect, it was probably not all that high, but when you’re five, there seems to be a very real possibility that a tire swing really COULD launch you to the moon. I’d hang on and squeal and giggle and close my eyes tight, waiting for the big push that might one day really launch me into space. It was obviously a much sweeter shooting of the moon than the one that happened yesterday.
These days, I don’t spend much time on tire swings, but thanks to my dad, I do spend quite a bit of time looking at the moon. And the stars. My dad is a bit of an amateur astronomer, and is always calling me to tell me to go outside, IMMEDIATELY, and look at the moon. Or Jupiter. Or a meteor shower. Sometimes I’m the one calling him, like I did just the other day, because the harvest moon was just too big not to get excited with someone about it.
And even though I’m far away from my family, every time I look at the moon, I remember my little sister’s favorite nursery rhyme, which she said so often my mom eventually embroidered it on a quilt for her:
I see the moon and the moon sees me,
God bless the moon and God bless me.
I recently learned another verse:
I see the moon and the moon sees me,
The moon sees the ones that I wish to see.
God bless the moon and God bless me.
God bless the ones that I wish to see.
I’m pretty sure my tire swinging, moon blessing childhood self would have been pretty freaked out that we were bombing the moon. But I’m also pretty sure that my nerdy pyromaniac dad, who loves to make me squeal, would have said, BLOW IT UP! And I would have squealed, NO, DADDY NO! DON’T BLOW UP THE MOON! And then we’d have quite a giggle.
Shapely Prose has a particularly wonderful guest post up by someone with the handle Starling on the subject of men who approach women in public. You should go read it right now. It’s seriously so good I wish I could print out about 50 copies to carry in my bus-riding-tote and hand to every man I see on the bus. I’ve written about my experiences being harassed both waiting for and riding public transportation. Sometimes I wish I could wear a t-shirt with the words PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE emblazoned across the chest, but it’s probably not work appropriate.
One particularly wonderful thing about this post is the way it makes clear something I’m not sure male friends or even my husband fully understand: as a female in public, I’m constantly evaluating the threat level from others. Starling puts it this way:
The first thing you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”
Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is.
Starling notes that this may sound crazy, but she sites the statistical likelihood that 1 in 6 women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime as a major cause for concern. She also notes that based on rape statistics, 1 in 60 men is a rapist, and they don’t all look like creeps. She puts it much funnier:
These rapes are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion.
In fact, most rapists don’t look like mug shots of serial killers. They look like normal guys. Maybe even like friends, or boyfriends, or coworkers, or just someone you chat with in line at the grocery store. They look like “nice guys.” And so, women in public are on their guard, looking for signs that the guy approaching them in public might be approaching them in order to do them harm, and at the same time, women are sending out signs that let those who approach them know when to back off, if the approach-er is paying attention. Continue reading “wish i could pass this out like candy”
I haven’t done a post on the whole Roman Polanski thing, and I probably won’t be doing any sort of in-depth post on the subject, namely because so manyother greatwriters have already said it better, and because, if you follow me on Twitter, then you already know how I feel on the subject, which is basically that: 13 year olds can’t legally consent to sex with adults, ever. People who are intoxicated or under the influence of drugs cannot consent to sex. If you tell someone NO and beg them to stop, you are not consenting to sex. And whether the victim had been 13 or 30, she was under the influence, and she begged him to stop. He PLED GUILTY. And then he committed the additional crime of fleeing the country. He got what’s coming to him and I hope he receives a just sentence, and I am disgusted by his defenders.
ANYWAY. The entire jist of this is to highlight Kate Harding’s latest post on the subject, in which she ties in another rape controversy involving an adolescent girl: the filming of the movie “Hound Dog” starring then 13 year old Dakota Fanning, who appeared (fully clothed) in a rape scene. Harding interviewed the film’s director, who ended the interview with this:
“When you rape a girl, the problem is not that you’re taking away her purity — which is what gets religious right up in arms — it’s that you’re taking away her wholeness. And trying to keep her ‘pure,’ repressing her sexuality, silencing her voice, also takes away wholeness. It’s two sides of the same coin.
“I don’t want my daughter to grow up pure,” she said. “I want her to grow up whole.”
I’ve always been rather uncomfortable with the way “we” in a societal sense talk to kids about sex, particularly those of “us” (societally speaking) who support “just say no” abstinence-only messages. Kampmeier’s quote sums up how I feel about most experiences, sexual or otherwise. Does it make you feel more whole? More power to ya, I will cheer you on. Does it make you or others involved in the experience feel less whole? That’s not something I support.
I took this photo out at the beach last October. The cute little girl was a European tourist.
Charleston in the summer can be pretty brutal. The humidity in the air gets so thick you can literally see it in a haze around the moon. Temperatures rise into the high 90s and stay there for weeks. Months. At least we have the beach! we say. When friends from outside the South come to visit and marvel at the oppressiveness of our summers, the way the water in the air seems to cling to every cell of exposed skin, the impossibility that it’s not somehow literally steaming what with the wet and the heat. Oh but you should be here in October, we say. October is the best month of the year.
Last weekend it was 88 degrees and we were out at Folly Beach. But October was coming, sneaking up as leaves began to fall in fits and starts, one at a time from the trees. My dog Bessie snatches this falling foliage like it’s a snack, dropping like manna from heaven, but she also enjoys eating grass and vegetation of all kinds, so shes’s a weirdo. October was coming.
And indeed it did. On the verrrrry last day of September, the temperature suddenly cooled off, to the point that I had to break out a cardigan to wear on my commute. Right on schedule, October has arrived. And it is glorious. I feel like a Romantic poet all stirred and uplifted by the beauty of my environment. If I weren’t such an awful poet (truly), I’d be composing sonnets on what happens as September sets and October rises like a harvest moon. Instead I’m daydreaming about bike rides that don’t end with me flopped in a sweaty heap under the living room AC vent, the dogs licking the salt off my skin as I swat them away, laughing at their tickling tongues. I’m thinking about oyster roasts, as they say the season is finally back in full swing. I’m itching to go camping, maybe on the beach, maybe up in the mountains where we might actually see some fall color. I’m wondering when is too soon to bring the boxes of sweaters down from the attic, afraid of a last gasp of summer that might try to hang on, and keep me in sundresses and flip flops. I’m eagerly anticipating what fall goodies will be showing up in our CSA box, though slightly worried it might be an endless stream of mustard greens and beets. I’m watching for my tan, accumulated over beach weekends since April, to start to fade. I’m looking forward to October.
This is just a quick update to say there probably won’t be an update until after Wednesday. I have my first big bad grad school assignment due Wednesday, and I have to work, and we have family in town until tomorrow. Catch ya on Thursday!
I just read a post from Salon’s Broadsheet about a UK poll that found most respondents were having most of their sex while under the influence of alcohol, and the respondents said they prefer it that way. Broadsheet blogger Mary Elizabeth Williams mentions that a writer for the Independent suggested these women prefer sex the influence (SWI?) because of poor body image, and Williams also notes that we should consider the poll’s source, a feminine hygiene company. While I’d be inclined to agree that the type of women who find crotchular deodorants necessary for purchase may also have a tendency toward low self esteem in other areas, I sort of wonder if there isn’t another explanation.
At least in my observations of fellow young women, alcohol isn’t just a form of liquid courage to give us the confidence to get naked and down to business. It’s also a liquid excuse. Many young women pretend to be drunker than they really are as an excuse for doing things they wanted to do anyway. I’ve seen friends act completely wasted after one beer, because they seem to think drunk girls can get away with behavior “good girls” can’t. If you can say “but I was soooooo drunk,” you can excuse hooking up with a guy your friends (or you, by the light of day) disapprove of. In a society where good girls are supposed to say no to sex, alcohol becomes a handy scapegoat for our behavior.
I’m not saying I approve of excusing behavior by way of alcohol, first, because I think that we should be allowed to feel confident in our sexual choices, and to own them as proudly as we would stone cold sober, but second, because I’m wary of the level of consent anyone who is legally intoxicated can give. In many states, someone who is legally intoxicated cannot legally consent to sex, and I think men AND women should try to avoid having sex with drunk people to avoid thorny issues of consent-confusion.
Williams writes:
Lots of women drink. Lots of women have sex. Does it automatically follow that women need to drink to have sex? And is imbibing before bed the mark of a self-loather “looking for a boost in self-esteem when it comes to bedroom antics,” as Lakeland says, or simply an uninhibited sensualist?
I’d add that some of them are simply looking for an excuse for “bad girl” behavior. And either way, though I’m a fan of both moderate drinking AND sex, I’d encourage people who mix sex and drinking to make sure their partner is still capable of clear and enthusiastic consent.
I work in a School of the Arts at a university. My building houses studio art (my department), music, art history, and theatre. And the theatre kids are constantly driving me nuts.
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