I am feminist fail?

I'm alive! My grandma drove me somewhere, and I'm alive (I just wish I was rich enough to own a car, so that she would never drive me anywhere ever ever ever ever ever ever again...).

I think she thinks that appropriate gears and speeds are for fascists, capitalists and/or the under-85s. Which she thinks are all the same thing. Like first and fourth gear, in fact.

Firstly, I have the most awesome tattoo ever in the history of the world ever.

I hope that's clear. I also hope it heals well.

I've been watching people descend on this blogger with the understanding that they are, in fact, Hermione Granger and she is, in fact, a house-elf (the metaphor, applicably, of that man pseudonymously named Hagrid).

When she says "You are not Hermione Granger and I am not a house-elf", they say "well... well... you're a SLUT! Ha! Yes, a SLUT! And a BITCH! HA!"

Thus ends my detailed analysis of "sex-negative" - no, wait, YES sex-negative, also incredibly woman-negative, the-porn-industry-is-a-monolith, feminism.

I refuse to share a label with women who are so bitterly, evilly judgemental of other women (racism, transphobia etc. in the movement are a thousand million other posts... hell, could be a thousand million encyclopaedias).

"Female Chauvinist Pigs"? If you're living under a rock, this is a fairly new, popular "feminist" book in which the author, Ariel Levy, does NOTHING but insult and belittle other women (and some transmen/transmale genderqueers, for good measure).

Classy. That'll end male domination, I'm sure. That's just as useful as fighting for employment rights or reproductive freedom, fighting against rape or female genital mutilation... etc. etc. Those issues will take care of themselves!

Sadly, the issue is as old as feminism itself - no, hang on, Mary Wollstonecraft never wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Some Women, and A Great Long Bitch About Others" - OK, then, at least a few decades old.

My introduction? I was 15. I was wandering through Waterstone's, having just had my lip pierced at a shop around the corner. I thought "aha, I have never browsed through the feminist section before, even though I am feminist - I am feminist because it's evident that women are equal to men in worth, and they (I thought "we" at that point) are hardly ever treated like that is the case".

The first paragraph I read in the first academic book I skimmed through? All about how women were JUST DISGUSTING for having body piercings, tattoos, etc, because they were TORTURING THEMSELVES for male approval.

Yup, I loved all that male approval that my gothy appearance procured! All those beatings from boys at school, and all the street harrassment!

I'd assumed that other feminists had my back, and I had theirs - but I had the sense just to laugh at that particular author and assume that most feminists were lovely people, dedicated to gaining women every freedom.

Well... fuck that belief. Royally.

I know some people would think that I can't speak about these issues - I'm disqualified as I "quit" womanhood.

Look. If a woman says/writes, "I believe this..." or "This happened to me..." I listen. Intently. I assume that that woman is telling the truth. I mentally file the information away for future use. If the statement is my first example, a belief, I check that it does not contain blatant racism, misogyny or any other ideology that only exists to hurt - if it does not appear to, I accept it.

If a woman says/writes "Women all think", "Women all do", "A real woman would never"... they fail the misogyny test. Just as a man would, if he expressed the same sentiments.

So... do I call myself a feminist any longer? What do I call myself instead? I particularly won't call myself a "trans-positive feminist" because that implies that hatred of trans women is an optional feminist extra, like peanut butter on toast. Is "womanist" vastly culturally inappropriate, as I'm white and English? "Trying not to be a dick to women" doesn't roll off the tongue.

A good cure for insomnia

I'm probably the last person in the UK to see Torchwood. I saw the first episode last week, and the second yesterday.

Now, I made the mistake of assuming that, because Torchwood is a spin-off of Doctor Who, whose new series have all been giant heaps of awesome, it would also be a giant heap of awesome. Perhaps it would be even more awesome, as sex was allowed?

It has been, so far, a giant heap of disappointment instead.

The first episode; yes, quite good. I liked the realistic reaction to an alien creature - "That's a good mask you've got there..." etc. I liked the "CSI Cardiff" quip. I liked the introduction of Captain Jack. It wasn't as good as Doctor Who, but it was a nice thing to be watching in its absence.

The second episode; bloody awful. When I'm watching a series written by Russell T. Davies, or... anyone good, really, I want them to use the best horror/sci-fi tropes in the correct places. When a storyline unfolds containing a trope that is mediocre at best, I want them to mess with it a bit. Add a twist, or some humour.

I don't want to watch the whole, predictable thing to its incredibly dull finale!

The best thing I can say about it is that they'd updated it a little bit. The pale young virgin posessed by the EV0L SEX FIEND now had previous sex partners; and there was some bleating about She's a Person! We Must Save Her! Look, Here Are Her Swimming Certificates To Prove It!

Well, no, because that storyline will never contain a person, will it? She's there as torture porn masquerading as Serious Drama, torture porn for hypocrites. Hmm, mysteriously she wasn't; anything other than classically beautiful, or over a young-looking 18, or a man, or non-white.

Well, now she's being slammed around by said EV0L SEX FIEND, with her blonde curls blowing about prettily.

Well GOSH, now she's doing seriously unattractive lesbian kissing, in no attempt to hook horny heterosexual males at all! Seriously unattractive, because the creeeaking of the plot was so loud, all you could do was point and laugh.

Well, now she's been rescued by the nice man. That's nice.

By then, I was holding my head in my hands, vowing to watch Firefly on repeat *for the rest of my life* to prove that sci-fi TV shows do not have to be this shite.

....wait, hang on, does the EV0L SEX FIEND *really* have to live off only male orgasms? Because female ones are rubbish, or don't exist, or something? Did it *really* just say that?

You know, I can't even be bothered with feminist ire here, because the episode was such an awesome cure for insomnia.

However, I do have a worrying picture in my head of Russell T. Davies masturbating along with Bram Stoker.

But... Davies is gay, right? But, but, why else would he write this crap?

Shame in the Park

London Pride and Manchester Pride get some of the biggest musical names in the country.

York Pride? A covers band called Jesus and the Felchmonkeys.

(The several over-fifties readers I know of might not understand the full implications of the name; to them, I suggest a nice cup of tea instead of brooding about it.)

Now, York University Students' Union, us, happened to have the largest banner, near the entrance. It really looked as if we were running the whole show, and people behaved accordingly.

So, when Jesus (an astoundingly wobbly man) of Jesus and the Felchmonkeys came onstage in a frilly bikini and a sink plunger, we laid our heads in our hands and cried.

When he mooned the audience, we died a little inside.

If I were allowed to choose a representative of the LGBTQI community, to wave about at the straight/cis passers by, I might choose... well, not him....

Anyway, we handed out some leaflets. They were good leaflets, if a little EXCITABLE!!! because one of our officers loves the humble exclamation mark, and the underline tool, and Caps Lock, a little more than is healthy. QUEER!!! Hooray!!!!

Anyway, Hagrid and I filled out some surveys about our sex life (which is astonishingly dull, if the questions are anything to go by - have YOU ever used poppers while receiving anal intercourse? I thought that was oddly specific, too).

Here are the first question, verbatim.

1) Are you a) a man, or b) a woman? This survey is for men only. If you are a woman, do not complete this survey.

The second question was "Are you a trans man?" which was nice. Of course, the rest of the questions demonstrate that they'd forgotten about trans men altogether, but meh.

------------------------------------

Incidentally, he's now on the phone to Kim, who works in Jorvik Viking Centre. Not Eboracum Roman Centre, say, but Jorvik Viking Centre, with all the big Vikings on the side and all the Viking stuff in it.

One of the visitors to Jorvik, in Jorvik, while Kim was wearing her Jorvik Viking costume, asked, sincerely, whether she was a Roman.

This was because she is female, and Vikings were all men.

Someone else complained that there were only two Viking re-enactors. There were four. Two had vaginas.

But... the Vikings were all men, godsdammit, and I with my Massive Penis of Saxon-Bashing will tell you so!

------------------------------------

I just wrote an ending to this post explaining that I now want to be a fireman when I grow up, with astonishing illogic.

I have the spine of someone sixty years older. I don't remember a life without constant back pain.

Career plan fail.

Education

My mother always said that I could do an English Literature degree with both hands behind my back. She is my mother, so has to say such encouraging things, but now I'm thinking that Gareth (whom I may henceforth refer to pseudonymously as Hagrid) could do the same.

Well, if he was less dyslexic and could therefore spell "literature".

Perhaps that's because we are utterly perverted.

Come ON, I got 100% in an A-level paper on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - and what did I write about, for four and a half pages?

Sodomy! Between the characters! In graphic detail! Explaining how I knew that the characters had been thinking about those graphic details.

I'm assuming that, at degree level, you get on to more complicated sexual acts. Like the Reverse Cowgirl, or whatever else you get in Cosmopolitan. Remember that I live my day-to-day life as an (insert derogatory term for homosexual male here) so I wouldn't know about that sort of thing.

Anyway, I'm convinced that Hagrid has significantly more grey matter than I. If I'm absent-mindedly deconstructing a novel at him, or if someone's talking about an author, or whatever, he'll look utterly bored... then come out with a comment of such relevance, perspicacity and insight that I can't quite believe that here is the man that tortured himself for an extra year to get an English GCSE.

I ought to have put my foot down when his parents said "He's going to university in October, despite having appalling A-levels", and he said (looking distinctly unenthusiastic) "My parents want me to go to university in October. They think I'll do well." But, I was only 15 and didn't want to interfere, so I kept my mouth shut.

How much absolute bollocks is this belief that kids with no obvious academic aptitude in school, where you're spoon-fed, will suddenly do OK at university? Seriously, fuck middle-class social acceptance. I knew he'd fail. Everyone knew - but him. He'd been told he'd do well, because... Because what?

He failed. He's got a student loan to pay back, and had no confidence in his own intellect.

He needed to be working. His job now gives him continuous confidence - he's good, and he knows it - he's even got a bit of smugness going on.

I think that what he does is a freaky arcane art. He thinks what I do is even more occult than that. He thinks Crowley would be proud.

This was, originally, going to be some adjectives to describe an archaeological degree, for those unfamiliar with the discipline:

• Difficult
• Very difficult
• Epic-level
• Hardcore
• Financial suicide
  

Yup. I'd say the majority of people on my course are able to go "Aah. That was so intellectually rewarding. Daddy - can I have a share in your multi-million-pound caviar empire now?"

The rest of us will end up knowlegeable and physically fit - to the extent that someone who can't afford food can be physically fit.

What other graduates live on minimum wage forever, and get real, actual trench foot?

Srsly, folks. Don't let your children do it! They have so much to live for!

It's like being a crack addict. Archaeology graduates are poor, whey-faced, and just living for their next fix of obscure pottery types.

Better do my coursework now.

Pants Down Friend

A post whose component parts are entirely unrelated. Yup, I'm back from Wacken, and my face, pimply at the best of times, looks like someone has puked on it (from my living on grease and mud).

Just thought you might like to know that.

1) I'm supposed to be reading the archaeological reports on Christ Church, Spitalfields. They are quite comical* - it's one disaster after another: Active smallpox virus has been discovered! A coffin has fallen on someone's head! Someone has caught a skin disease whose variety we have been unable to ascertain!

2) I might email my department and suggest that, before next term, they send round a message detailing the differences between a compliment and sexual harrassment. I'm treated perfectly well by the Hooray Henrys in my year, because I happily don't register on their radar as "girl" - but the pretty GTA last term was decidedly *not*.

It wasn't just feminist me and the girls that were cringing at their behaviour - it was a few of the other boys, too - the ones who hadn't been educated privately, incidentally.

Now, do we see how it's a *bad* idea to shut pubescent heterosexual boys up in a building with nothing but themselves and FHM for company? Then to unleash them on a world containing real females? Boys from families so wealthy that they feel entitled to "own" whatever they wish?

3) Ladies, gentlemen, &c. I give you (as we saw at Wacken)...
Corvus Corax!



I thought they were Corpus Corax to start off with... which also translates nicely.

*Runs off to start a band called Corpus Corax*

4) I'm gonna be harsher about the new Nightwish this time. Anette Olzon appears to be the exact opposite of Tarja Turunen. Turunen had apparently no personality, and an amazing voice. Olzon takes pains to demonstrate that she has a personality...

But she's not my housemate, my girlfriend or even an acquaintance. She's the lead vocalist in a famous band - incidentally, a band whose older music requires A SOPRANO. Someone who can hit high notes, at least approximately. Not a special new definition of "soprano", meaning "someone I would quite like to boink" - looking at YOU, mister keyboard-face.

If they weren't going to have one, if any vocal range would do, they might as well have given Blaize Bailey some employment.

5) To *sort of* tie together my comments about continental Europeans putting us to shame, and sexual harrassment (in this case, a lack of), I present to you: the most adorable proposition ever made to anyone, EVER.

Man: Vould you be interested in being my pants-down friend?

David: No.

Man (with expression of bitter disappointment): Oh.

Man (wanders off in another direction, waves): Vish me luck!

If you don't acquiesce to that, you must have a heart of stone.



I might do a SRS POST OF SRSNZ later. OK, I'll do a baby trans one now, as people seem to be actually interested in my haphazard Trans 101.

1) You can be as nosy as you generally are about the identity and history of a trans person that you know and like (no, not a random one off the street). Ask all the questions you like - as long as you make sure that person understands that their answers will not alter your perception of their identity. The average woman wouldn't mind telling you that she had a ginger beard once, if she really knew that your only, brief, thought on the matter was "That's Susan. She used to have a long ginger beard".

2) However, don't talk loudly about a trans person's trans "issues" in public. Talk about trans stuff, yes, sing a song about it if you like, but don't suggest that it's connected at all to your acquaintance. If you are talking about hir own trans stuff, keep your voice very low.

This is simply a safety issue. If you were sitting in a "white" bus during any apartheid, you wouldn't say to your companion "Well GOSH! Shall we talk about how you're hiding your BLACK SKIN?"

(n.b. the analogy doesn't work in any other way - it's just a point about personal safety).


*Maybe my definition of "comical" differs from yours, then.

Macs are for LOSERS!111eleventy

Robert Webb was voted 88th in a poll of the world's sexiest men.

David Mitchell, his coconspirator, was not on the list.



WHY, women of the world? WHYWHYWHY?

He will be gay now. And he will stay with me forever. Mainly because I've locked him in my wardrobe.

kthx

Wherein Olli is a hypocrite

Hokay, so - women who explain how you'll be SO GOOD TO YOURSELF and HAPPY and FULFILLED if only you think *just* like them...

Now, I know that the Powers that Be do that a lot, obviously, but it's somehow worse when given as friendly advice from people who should know better (supposedly feminist women).

Now, some could accuse me of hypocrisy - in the last year or so, I've told several women to leave partners/friends who were very obviously abusive. I haven't minced my words or abided by social niceties in any way.

Well, I might be a hypocrite, but I honestly don't care. There is a difference between women whose mental health is questionable owing to abuse, and women who are capable of making their own decisions. If you're the sort of "feminist" who doesn't agree, I will not start a dialogue with you, as *you* are deeply misogynistic.

So, Gareth and I are monoamorous, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Gareth's happy as he is, and I don't meet people as marriageable as him every day of the week. Or ever (if they were roaming the streets in dozens, we'd happily navigate a poly relationship).

Sexually, however, it's less clear-cut. If one of us wants sexual contact with someone, we have to gain both the consent of that person and our partner. If we don't get the consent of that partner, the other person must be immediately forgotten.

If I would feel jealous, I would say no. If Gareth would feel jealous, he would say no. If either of us didn't abide by a "no", we would be cheaters, the vilest of people.

If you think that you would sleep with EVERYONE IN THE WORLD in that kind of relationship, because it's AWESOME, you might be wrong... Our conquests each are seriously well in the lower half of single digits.

Because we don't fancy that many people.

And not many people fancy us.

And we both have lower than average libidos.

And we're both on the autism spectrum, so are unskilled in the art of seduction...

And we feel jealousy sometimes, like normal humans often do.

Now, we have rows and upsets. But they have never, ever been about anything to do with extramarital attraction, because we have the aforementioned arrangement, like, y'know, mature adults.

Why am I telling the world this? Because I don't want people to see me flirting with another human and think I'm cheating scum.

Because of not being cheating scum and all.

Also, I don't really like secrets - they resemble non-white lies too much.

On to this conversation, in which I have tried to break the arrangement gently to several people, all of whom have been women who are proud of being strong feminists who know their own minds:

"I wouldn't mind if Gareth slept with somebody else, as long as I'd consented beforehand,"

"Yes, you would. You would be hurt."

Well, as long as I know my own mind in this *purely hypothetical* situation that is, of course, *purely hypothetical* and has not been tested in practise in any way.

It always seems to be under a "we're all women here! And men are BASTARDS who will TAKE ADVANTAGE of you, ALWAYS, ALL MEN, ALL THE TIME, and you are an innocent little flower who couldn't possibly FIND THE IDEA ATTRACTIVE SOMETIMES because that would be like AROUSAL, and we're ACTUALLY IN EIGHTEEN-FIFTY-EIGHT" subtext.

And no, it's not different for me because I don't ID as a woman, and "gay men can do that sort of thing". Many women are consensually nonmonogamous! Many women are polyamorous! They are real women, not crazy loons who live solely in the imaginations of straight men.

Of course, females in poly relationships must have this nonsense much worse, and it must hurt worse because they're actually in love with their other partners. It's pure virgin-whore dichotomy patriarchal nonsense - and, of course, pure SEX! THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVAR! I WILL OBSESS OVER IT 4 U! disguised as "Honestly, these people are sex-obsessed".

Because we've *never* seen that attitude in sexism... homophobia... transphobia... everything that's bad.

On to happier subjects - we played D&D today, and had many encounters of the random (draconic) kind. And lots of food and good coffee. I need to do something nice for the people who made us all the food and coffee.