My friend Becky successfully made over a long-term boyfriend by using positive reinforcement. “He was a great guy — I loved his heart and soul but not his style,” she tells me. “He had a cheesy perm and used to wear cardigans tied over his shoulders with pink polo shirts.”
So she changed his style, made him over into something else. But it backfired. She “made him too cool and attractive to other women” and he ended up sleeping with someone else. That’s what happens when you try to change someone, I guess.
I just don’t understand this idea of people wanting to change their significant others. If a man was telling his girlfriend that she should dress more sexily or to not wear specific items in her wardrobe, it’s being controlling, but when a woman hides a man’s t-shirt in the bottom of his hamper so he doesn’t wear it, it’s totally fine and cool. It’s not like The Frisky, the part of CNN I read this blog on, is a good reference for someone to read, but putting this out there just makes people feel like it’s appropriate.
I know we’ve all read about Caster Semenya’s gender testing because of allegations she’s not truly a woman. Read the article if you have more questions about that. It just brings some issues up with me about gender and sex that really bother me.
It seems that events like that that are segregated for men and women are done so because women cannot compete on the same level as men physically. While I agree this is usually true, there are plenty of women who can. I’m not advocating changing events or trying to prove that women and men are physically equal because we’re not (and btw, in my view as a feminist, when I express that women and men are equal, I mean rights-wise because we sure as fuck aren’t emotionally, mentally, or physically) and I am completely accepting that breaking genders up into groups is akin to breaking up wrestlers into weight classes. But the problem is that gender is not binary. I know, I know, old news, right? But where do we draw the line? Let’s say that Semenya has the body of a woman but for some reason has an XY chromosome. She is born as a woman, identifies as a woman, and is a woman. I feel like, and this is speaking from my opinion, not hers obviously, that trying to prove she is not a “real” woman is taking away from her identity.
As we know now more than ever, the way your external genitalia expresses itself is not always what is going on internally, genetically, or mentally. I also feel like it’s always women who come under this pressure, not men. Feminine men are not usually put under suspicion of possibly having too much estrogen.
Forgive any ignorance in this blog entry. Just trying to express myself in some way about how much it irritates me but I know I still don’t know enough to give an educated opinion.
There’s not much I can say about this article. I just wanted to link it because of the great comments. It’s another situation where I have to rage. The hospital system, for lack of a better word, uses some sort of one-size-fits-all thing for labor in which all women should be on their back, epiduraled up, and cut open if there’s any slight chance they need a c-section.
I also fear the idea that acting “erratically” could cause you to have your rights taken away from you. It’s child abuse because you didn’t immediately do what the doctor’s thought was best for your child. And the kid was perfectly fine! I could understand if the child was injured or died, but otherwise, I think I’m gonna have to go with allowing women to make their own decision about whether or not they need to have a giant hole cut in their bodies.
A woman in New Jersey refused a c-section during labor. She gave birth vaginally, and the child was healthy. But the baby was taken away and placed in a foster home, because the woman allegedly “abused and neglected her child” by refusing the c-section.
There are very few gender stereotypes that don’t make me mad, but there’s one that literally makes my blood boil: when a 28 year old woman sexually molests at 14 year old boy, that that is good for him and he should be proud. Nothing in that link says anything like that, but from my friends I have heard things like, “I need to know first: is she hot?” or “I just couldn’t consider that abuse.” This infuriates me because the opposite is considered awful, the men are sexual offenders and molesters, and they manipulate the girls into doing it.
I know I’m not stating anything new, but every time this comes up, it makes me mad. Fourteen year old boys are no more mature than fourteen year old girls. Women who have sex with young boys are no less of pedophiles. It’s not even this case specifically, because obviously I would wants to go on a case by case basis, but just the general concept pisses me off.
You cannot say “a 28 year old woman with a 14 year old boy is okay” meaning that the boy is mature enough, without also making all other permutations of this relationship okay. But wait, even if you just say that boys are mature enough to handle sex with a much older person at 14, then you must also agree they are mature enough to be with an older man. I still haven’t seen anyone okay with both older w/younger m and older m/younger m.
Some actresses pride themselves on their capabilities to act. Some use humanitarian skills. Some, like Megan Fox seem to just spend every article I read about them talking about their sexuality and how horny they are and their fantasies.
It’s a valid response, since sex sells, but even Angelina Jolie occasionally talks about the state of the world in crisis and not about how she is “ubersexed” and constantly horny. I don’t see Megan Fox as trying to push anything about herself except her role as some kind of horny young girl.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Women seem to have an issue with you. Do you get that impression?
MEGAN FOX: Sure, for the same reason they didn’t like me in high school. I come across as confident and they assume that means that I think I’m hot s—. And that makes them feel bad about themselves and so they hate me.
From her interviews, she seems to be the kind of woman who thinks she’s hot and has an ego about it, and then pretends that she doesn’t. That quote right there, the run around about how people hate her because she’s so beautiful or confident that they feel bad about themselves, is kind of amusing to me. She pretty much says, “I don’t have an ego, but people feel shitty because I seem so awesome.”
I also really dislike Angelina Jolie. I will be honest as to why: it’s because I am jealous of how beautiful she is. I hope I don’t lose any cred for that. She is the kind of person who is intelligent, beautiful, sexy, a humanitarian, and possibly a little bit crazy, and that is the kind of woman I am jealous of, not an egotistical little girl who pretends she’s anything but a pair of tits for a magazine.
Fox’s not a horrible person because she’s beautiful. I don’t look down on her for being that thing. It is something that must exist, a pretty face with nothing behind it, but when that pretty face knows what she is and pretends to be something else because she isn’t happy with the fact that all she is is a face, I lose respect. Sorry if that makes me a shitty feminist or moral relativist or whatever.
At the Speaking of Marcao, Ender says that Novinha solicited beatings from her deceased husband in order to atone for her adultery. Marcao wasn’t really a violent person, you understand, since he never hit anyone but his wife. How false and ugly that seems to those of us aware of the truth about abusive behavior, which is that abusive people will take out their frustrations on anyone — woman, child, dog, or elderly parent — who doesn’t have the power to fight back. In this central chapter, meant to help us understand how speaking the truth heals a community, we see only a new lie traded for the old. Marcao may not have been the great guy we pretended he was, but hey, it was all his wife’s fault.
First off, I wanna start this off by saying, on an unrelated note, Godwin’s. But moving on from there, let’s talk about moral relativism. Again.
I haven’t read Speaker of the Dead. I may at some point, but that’s hardly relevant. What is relevant here is that this character, Novinha, was said to have solicited, which means asked for, beatings from her husband in order to atone in her own way. She chose them, and Marcao did what his wife requested. In this scenario, I believe that Marcao is not a misogynist, as Elaine Radford posits in this article. He is only fulfilling the wishes of another person. She wishes to be beaten; therefore, he is beating her.
I don’t wanna argue the rest of the article because I literally cannot be arsed to read it, but this point annoys me. The issue here is Novinha: she believes the beatings are the only way to atone. In a way, he is giving her the power, not taking it away from her. He is giving her the ability to even atone in her own way. She may be misguided by some standards, but it is her right to choose.
Different society, different rules. Stupid article.
There’s not much I can say that Stephanie hasn’t already said in this blog.
I can’t believe that a movement with the name “pro-life” goes around murdering people against them. I think about how many people are pro-life and pro-death penalty. Arguing how pro-life vs. war isn’t really the issue, as you can make a different argument about saving liberties and etc., but murder is murder is murder is murder in the way that you believe that all abortions are murder, you’re murdering. Murder. Why the fuck do I talk so much about murder on my blog?
Again, moral relativist speaking here. It’s hard for me to understand people who condone one behavior flatly without considering the individual situation, and yet, when it comes to a similar action, consider that immoral.
Is it because a baby is “innocent” and a criminal is “corrupt”? What is innocence? What is corruption?
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About As a poet, I feel like any photography I do will always be a reflection of the words I use. When I think, I think in words, not images, unlike visual artists. This site houses a minimalist dream log, my poetry including poems from You May Waltz To Your Doom In Sanguine Stained Shoes, my photography, and a blog with Let's Play related entries.
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