New Mantra: You Are Caramelized Onions

So I met this lovely guy and upon our first meeting things got physical.

Afterwards, we talked for a while, realized, who knows, this could be a real thing, lets exchange numbers and hang out sometime.

And for a week he pestered me to come over.

Why don’t we go out, get tea or something?

Or I could come over. Late.

And I kinda lost it.

I told a friend the whole story.

He has already had the greatest dessert in the world

and wants seconds

before dinner

To which my response was:

THANK YOU

With a teeny tiny side dish of “WHY MUST MY PERSONALITY BE THE BROCCOLI AND MY VAGINA BE THE ICE CREAM?!”

I’m pretty sure my friend thought I was mad at him. I’m not mad at him, I’m mad that I made the same analogy in my head.

I think that every dating person (maybe just every person) has a thing that their lizard brain is afraid of, your body is the only part of you anyone has ever loved all the way up to you’re too ugly/fat/short/tall to be deserving of love. A thing that lurks there in the back of your mind leeching that feeling into your body and waiting for words to put to it. And as soon as you feed it such a phrase it grows to 5 times it’s size and takes up residence in your inner ear, flooding your brain with it’s particular brand of sweet sweet nothings.

My personality isn’t broccoli, my vagina isn’t ice cream. All of me is caramelized onions, delicious in every way.

But when I scream that at the lizard she doesn’t cower, I need a sentence that can put the lizard back in her cage. I’ll never be rid of her but I can learn to be louder than her.

The lizard is your friend, but a little scary, too. She lurks deep within, operating on millennia of aggregated evolutionary knowledge, so she remembers a lot. Like how for thousands of generations, women required strong relationships with strong men in order to simply survive. How, without someone to protect them, our foremothers were vulnerable in every way. How dearly so many of them suffered for it.

So when a liberated modern gal such as yourself contemplates leaving a romantic relationship, even a middling-to-shitty one, the lizard feels she is honor-bound to make you stop, to get right up in your face and scream stuff like you’ll never do better and you’re not getting any younger and you’re lucky to have anyone at all and any man is better than no man and THESE ARE FACTS DAMMIT!

Now, given what she’s seen, her reaction is completely understandable. But it screws up your life, too! Because she ensures that even here in the future that is now, and even when you know you’d be far better off on your own, it still feels like the act of breaking up might actually kill you.

… it slithers up from the the dankest sub-basement of consciousnes and demands our attention whether we like it or not. And if we want to be able to operate rationally in this realm, to have enough faith to let go of bad stuff so we can find better stuff, we have to learn how to handle it.

Thankfully, this can be done! How? You just never let the lizard be in charge. She is trying to protect you in her loving creepy way, so hear her out and be sweet to her and maybe give her some nice bugs to eat. But don’t forget that she is willing to make tradeoffs that you are not. Really awful tradeoffs. For her, any man really is better than no man, and that is bananas!! So listen to the lizard but decide what to do with the rest of your brain. Never ever let her get wet or eat after midnight or take control. [x]

Smile Blokes

I know this guy who looks like kind of a grump. Who would fall under Resting Bitch Face if he was a she.

Guess how often he’s told to smile.

Not.

When asked specifically how much of the framing of “smile” is inspired by modern misogyny, show runner Melissa Rosenberg laughs before responding, “Let’s see. 100%” Rosenberg continues, “This is a character who is not defined by her gender. But those of us of the female persuasion, our lives are certainly informed by our gender and the misogyny around us.

I can’t wait to get a chance to watch this show.

Unlearn White Skin Being The Default

 

I’ve been looking at this and loving it for a while. I’ve been putting off posting it because I don’t know what I can really add to it.

But I think the answer is that I don’t have to add to it. I’m white, I’m gonna default to listening to others instead of thinking I have all the answers.

Oy Trump Oy

I just read this article about Donald Trump treating Megyn Kelly like shit at the debate and I’m fuming. Unfortunately I have absolutely nothing to add to the article, it’s perfect just the way it is.

I know nothing about Megyn Kelly, I heard her name for the first time after the debate had already aired. But are we really surprised that Trump decided he had an issue with the one woman in the room that was, god forbid, questioning him? Did no one else see that coming when they turned on the TV?

The article breaks down Trump’s answer into 5 main components, each designed to dismiss the true nature of the question.

Step 1: Claim that the complaint is an exaggeration in order to imply that the complainant can’t be trusted

Step 2: Dismiss demands for respect and equality as mere “political correctness”

Step 3: Insist that this complaint is too minor to bother with when there are more important things to worry about

Step 4: Say it was just “fun”

Step 5: Pretend the complaint is really just about personal animosity [x]

This is a perfect recipe for dismissing valid claims and it works perfectly all across the country every day.

All I can say is be vigilant. Now that you know how the opposition plays you can have a more secure defense.

Believe Women

I just literally gasped and teared up during a YouTube video about female ejaculation.

The question isn’t if female ejaculation is real. It’s why you don’t trust women to tell you.

I don’t have a personal investment in female ejaculation. I can’t do it so what do I care? But I do have a personal investment in people trusting women to describe and report their experiences.

I’m tired of people not believing women who report rapes. I’m tired of doctors not believing women’s own accounts of their symptoms and timelines.

Believe women. Believe them in all things.

Yes, a tiny number of people lie about being raped, but almost all rapists lie about raping.

–Believing Victims Is the First Step to Stopping Rape – NYTimes.com

 

Such A Prime Example

A good male friend of mine was talking about kink the other day and it took until now for me to realize what bothered me about what he said.

He told me that he was into getting caught. Fine.

He liked having sex in somewhat public places, threesomes, things where other people might see her.

But never with his girlfriend.

Only with women he didn’t care much about.

Women he didn’t care to care about.

Women he could choose to not care about because they were women who weren’t his.

I guess that’s what he meant when he called himself a Masculinist.

 

Dear My White Privilege

Part of being a feminist is confronting my own privilege where it exists.

For every male privilege checklist I get behind, I have to acknowledge lists about my own privilege.

1) #YesAllBlackPeople contend with whites dictating to us how we should talk about racism, instead of taking our lead in the conversation. (Yes, that includes Tim Wise.)

2) #YesAllBlackPeople encounter multiple anti-black indignities on a regular basis, regardless of how rich, educated, or powerful we are.

3) #YesAllBlackPeople are tired of having our lived experiences with racism undermined by white feelings, despite our decades of informed protest.

And acknowledging when conversations about race, which are not my responsibility to lead, but to take part in nonetheless, make me uncomfortable, and to live in that.

Like Crosby in that really great Parenthood episode, I have to recognize and defer to people who know the short end of the racism stick better than I do and listen to them.

Also, that movie looks hilarious and amazing.

Fridays Against Anti-Feminism: True Womenhood Edition

Alright, woman against feminism, lets take a look at your argument here.

First off, I’m going to do you a favor and excuse your grammar, because that would be a low blow. Maybe you are multiple people. Maybe you have a split personality disorder. I don’t know your life, I don’t know your choices. You (plural) love to cook for your men (plural) in your singular house. That sounds like a lot of dishes to me but hey, it’s your ruined manicure, not mine.

You believe that you don’t need feminism because you’d rather be a homemaker. Ok, I see your logic.

The current status quo is more than happy to let you continue languishing at the stove and sink, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

But I must ask, do you have any interest in voting? It’s great that you’ve found something you like to do (cooking and cleaning for all your men) but what if one day you get fired from that job and have to find a new one. Or perhaps there isn’t enough money coming in and you are forced to find employment outside your home. Perhaps you’d like, say, the ability to be hired at a job you’d enjoy only slightly less. Perhaps feminism could help you out there by ensuring you’re not unfairly discriminated against, so you can land a job. Or by ensuring that you’ll be paid as much as your male counterparts. Or simply by elevating the social status of your housekeeping (yes, that is a part of feminism) so that when you do have to get this hypothetical job the potential employer sees your past at home as valuable.

So really your placard should read “I need feminism because my society sees me as a second class citizen for making life choices based on my desires while having a vagina.”

Point number two: Enjoying cooking and cleaning makes you more of a #TrueWomen than me? You consider yourself a woman and I consider myself a woman. That’s all it takes to be a woman. I do not see your leap in logic there.

Playing Guitar Without My Vagina

Musical lady badassery.

 

Woman Lives Her Life, Doesn’t Care About Your Stupid Boner

I hope there are some other people (in addition to myself) who think this is the best thing ever.

Now that I’ve subscribed to Vagenda Magazine’s twitter I can tell you how much I’m in love with them.

The best part is that most of these “stories” could be retitled “Woman leaves house, doesn’t care if you want to have sex with her.” Which basically describes the lives of every woman I know.

And that feels damn good.