You Sound Like A MAN
Here's that post that I kept promising to make...
You Sound Like A MANReally? Do I? Let's test your ability to identify real men - and real women - simply by the words coming out of their mouth.Disclaimer: I have pulled these quotes from various sources. I've tried to keep away from quotes that might be easily identified ("I have a dream..."), but there's always the chance that you'll be able to say, "Hey! That's Bruce Willis!" or something like that.
These quotes, by the by, are all from cisgendered people - at least, as far as I know. Some are quotes from those I know personally; some are things I've found online. There's going to be variation, from personal to formal. I've tried to make sure there are between 50-100 words in each clip in order for you, gentle reader, to best determine the person's gender.
No webcheating!aaaand....
BEGIN!
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1. I'm not going to do a massive update of my life and how it's changed since my last post because that positively reeks of effort. That's not a road this LJer is going to be taking anytime soon. No sir! Instead I invite you, the reader, to figure out what's changed in the past nine months. By the way, you'll note that nine months and change is just long enough a span of time for me to have had a child and sold it on the black market for a tidy profit. Just saying.
2. In the run-up to Australian Prime Minister Howard's re-election, the Times noted that he had "made the alliance with Washington a key element of his tenure." The Times was hopeful that Australia would be as pathetic as Spain, noting that "with al-Qaida threatening reprisals for the country's support of the United States in Iraq — a war that most Australians opposed — is Australia poised to become the next Spain? Will it become the next country to abandon President Bush?"
3. What is physical attraction then, if not "how much I want to have sex with this person"? Maybe aesthetics? Yes, but looking at someone beautiful without considering the elements that make them human reduces them to a walking magazine ad - a beautiful object. And if you don't KNOW the other elements that make them more than a beautiful object (their compassion, their sparkling personality, their cutting wit, whatever), then you ARE reducing them to object status. Objectification.
4. I think there are more Black films being made now. The last time they were making this number of films was during the Black exploitation era. The challenge is how do you navigate this world where we're still relegated to those three ghettos. You don't see movies about Sojourner Truth or Matthew Henson or Black science fiction or a Black thriller. The studios say, We're not buying that. They say, do you have something with drugs or a rapper, something we can put Nelly in?
5. These are the sorts of books where I decide on one word over another based on which has a funnier sound in the mouth -- and let me tell you, it's a whole lot easier to scare people or make them cry than to make them laugh continually. These were the hardest books to write of the seventeen. That said, I think humour is a vital part of what makes us human and should be in everything. You can't have constant tension, constant horror, constant drama -- it's too emotional for the reader and a real drain on the writer as well. There has to be a release of tension.
6. I was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1962 and moved to the United States in 1966. I grew up in the States and returned to Canada at age thirteen, moving to Toronto with my family. I have four sisters. I worked as an electrician for five years.
I work as a counselor with the Developmentaly Hadicapped now as well as write. I share five cats with Tanya Huff and a chihuahua she says is only mine. I make origami as a hobby and love reading books on English geography. My favorite toy is my riding lawnmower, and my favorite playmate is my God-daughter Holly.
7. To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?
8. It was pretty close...the man pulled me back though.
I got Craig and his girlfriend to come to my church picnic which was cool, but also a little awkward. I’m a Mennonite, but I have no way of telling Craig..."As cute as I find it, nuzzling your girlfriend is probably not the thing to do when in a church service."
I'm also on a hunt for whatever has been causing me breathing problems in my house. Every morning for the last week has been me waking up gasping with a lingering tightness in my chest that dissipates during the day.
9. Sometimes while I'm struggling to finish a book there are moments of fear and doubt. But that is true of thin books too. There are days where you hate everything you've done and days where it's the most brilliant thing you've done. I see it as part of the writing process. So far I'm still very enthused by the series and I will wrap it up in six books, so it won't last forever. It will be a massive story for certain. But with the cast I have and the direction I'm taking, it needs to be massive.
10. It came about in part because I had a real desire to de-mystify India. The India of the British Raj, of Maharajaz and beautiful Princesses surrounded by abject poverty just does not exist anymore. I wanted to make a film about contemporary, middle-class India, with all its vulnerabilities, foibles and the incredible, extremely dramatic battle that is waged daily between the forces of tradition and the desire for an independent, individual voice.
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So? What do you think? Stats will be in a seperate post, maybe on Monday.
Bisexuality and Mothers
I've been lazy about collecting quotes for my big planned "You Sound Like a Man" post, so instead I will write about my bisexuality.
I know that there are people out there that are biphobic. In the gay community, in the straight community. After all, we're the bringers-of-disease, we're going to run off with a straight person and get married, we're promiscuous sluts that will cheat on you at the drop of a hat. If I were straight, I could give up 99.999999% of men and you'd never have to worry; if I were gay, 99.999999% of other women... but somehow, it eludes me - that capability to give up on 100% of all women and 99.999999% of all men (or vice versa).
I mean, it's just not possible.
...I know, intellectually, that people that believe this are out there. (One of the TO queer magazines recently had an article about it.) I'm pissed that it's out there, but - in some ways, selfishly - thankful that it's never really touched my life.
I figured out that I liked girls when I was about twelve. (I blame Sailor Moon.) Boys came shortly afterwards, and kinky after that (13, 14-ish). I had a pretty supportive online community that was made up mostly of other lesbian and bisexual girls, so there wasn't a lot of shaming going on. Overall, I was pretty comfortable with who I was, there.
I started coming out to friends around the same time - maybe a few months after figuring it out myself. I was prompted by two things: one, another friend coming out as bisexual, and two, having a massive crush on my best friend. My school friends were all supportive, too. In fact, I prompted a
third friend of ours to come out (at least to me and the original comer-outer; I'm not sure if she ever told anyone else).
My best friend gently turned me down. (In fact, all through high school, best-friends-I-wanted-to-date was the norm. One was straight, one was bisexual but not interested in me at the right time [I was about a year too late], and one - the only guy - I dated for almost two years.)
I think the worst reaction that I got was a boy who went wide-eyed and pretended to back away from me in fear. I made fun of him, he figured out he was being an idiot, and that was pretty much the end of that. No other negative reactions, no slurs, no injury.
Family came next, in my mind: dad first, because I was always closer to dad. (It helped that my parents were divorced; dad got to shirk a lot of the nastier parts of being a parent, and so got a lot more of the affection. Even beyond that, though, we've always gotten along better.) This was a lot scarier than coming out to friends. Friends, you could always make more of; I only had my one dad. (Well, and my stepfather.)
He took it remarkably well, overall. Said, "Well, I've never been attracted to men, so I can't really tell you what it's like... but I still love you" (this was more in response to my fear, not 'I love you even though'.) He mentioned, briefly, that it might be a phase, but he didn't think it was likely.
Well, score. One parent out of three down (I didn't - don't - really care what my stepmother thinks.)
My mother... well, she was harder. I think at one point she must have found my love letter to my best friend, because she would bring it up at inappropriate times - say, in front of my extremely conservative grandmother ("why do you want to do a romantic horoscope? Is it for you and X?") or telling my sister that I was a lesbian.
This pissed me off a lot. Because it wasn't true. She was making assumptions about my sexuality without coming and talking to me about them. My mother - who had always been quite informative about sex - was suddenly being uncommunicative and talking about me behind my back, or throwing my words - words which she should have never seen, if she hadn't been snooping - in my face.
So I shut down. To this day, I haven't told my mother the truth; I've simply denied any untruths she utters, rather than correcting them. ("Your sister is a lesbian." "No, I'm not." Not: "Actually, I'm bisexual.") I figured - if she wants to know, really know, she'll ask.
This was compounded when - remember that boy that I mentioned earlier? The one I dated in high school (and first year university)? Well,
he's bisexual too. And, after we broke up, he briefly dated a couple of guys. I mentioned this in passing to my sister - in front of my mother. "Are you saying he's gay?" "Well, he's bisexual."
Well, she nearly had kittens. For about a week afterward, in conversation, in e-mail - she told me he
couldn't be bisexual, not if he hadn't had sex with boys.
Two things to note here: my mother was a virgin when she first married, and she was a sex-ed teacher for a while.
So I tried to point out to her the absolute ludicrousness of this position. We argued it in circles, round and round. No, she insisted: you had to have had sex with someone of the same sex to claim lesbianism/gayness or bisexuality.
Despite the fact that straights didn't have to "prove" their sexuality.She was especially angry that I'd told my sister that my ex was bi. After all, my sister was "only fifteen".
Not that I was 12 when I figured it out or anything. Not that my sex life - despite the fact that all my sexual experiences with girls have been less interesting than those with boys,
and yet I still want to fuck girls - has confirmed what I knew at 12, 13, 14. I mean, it would be awful if my sister got the idea that being bisexual was normal, OK, good - maybe at a time when she would
need to know that.
My sister knows, now. My mother? I'm probably going to wait until I'm officially moved out of her house, because I couldn't stand the heartache of passing her every day in the hall, or calling her for a pick-up, and hearing the underlying refrain of
badwrongsinfulshamefulterribleawfulhorriblehowcouldyoubethisway?It's the only real incidence of biphobia I've experienced - and it comes from my mother.
A little bit more about me.
Since people are taking the time to come on over and take a look at this, I figured I'd let you all know a bit more about me.
I am a suburban white girl that just finished four years of university at
the University of Waterloo, and I'm going back to school next year for a post-graduate diploma from
Humber College. I have a degree in English with a minor in Psychology (primarily focused on sexuality, abnormal psychology/clinical psychology, and social psychology).
I am also bisexual, kinky, atheist, and female (although I don't really think of myself as a girl/woman). Dating a guy, currently, though anyone who talks to me for five minutes knows I'm bi.
So in some arenas, quite privileged; in others, not so much (although, to be perfectly honest, I seem to have personally sidestepped a
lot of the shit that others seem to catch in the bisexual-kinky-atheist-female arenas, thankfully).
In terms of feminism and what I know about it... aside from one philosophy course on "Gender Issues", I have little formal learning in the area. At the time of the class (in first year), I most closely identified with "i-Feminism", although nowadays it doesn't cover what I believe. I'm closer to the sex-positive, socialist feminist ideas. (To be perfectly honest, I prefer the term egalitarian, simply
because of the fact that oppressions feed into one another; therefore, bringing people to an equal place is my goal.)
Politically, as a Canadian, I fall somewhere between the Liberals and the NDP. I think
all our political parties need to look harder at what's going on with our Indian (First Nations) communities, and at what's going on with our minorities in general - despite the fact that it seems otherwise on the surface, Canada still has a problem with economically promoting (or at least supporting) White Anglo men, whereas (for example) Iraqi men are making about 63% of the average income, and some of the women (especially in our Indian (South Asian) communities) are making even less. And, of course, women across the board are still not economic competitors with men, save in select few circumstances (Iraqi women, I believe some of the East Asian groups).
I am a perennial worrywart.
I thought for a while that I was trans, but I have come to the conclusion (for now, anyway) that I am mentally "not"/androgynous (inasmuch as I can be, anyway). I'd be the sort of person that would gleefully buy pills that let you change physical sex for a certain amount of time.
I like to think that my parents were pretty good about not forcing gender roles on me - I wore blue and black (still love them), played with trucks and robots, was a monkey at the jungle bars, loved plays and musicals, and excelled at most of the arts in school. (I pissed my mother off once by telling her I hate math and science. No one ever told me girls were
bad at it or that I shouldn't like it; in fact, all my science and math teachers save three were female (out of twenty-two). I just hate both subjects, with some specific category exceptions.) Nothing in my past strikes me as particularly forcing one way or another.
I love reading, so if anyone out there has recommendations for books I should be reading - well, hand 'em out; I can't promise I'll get to them any time soon, but I'll keep it on my list!
I'm also a roleplayer (in the non-kinky sense).
I think that's pretty well everything that people might want to know. So. If it's not, ask; I'm generally open about myself.
Next post: either my one major (ongoing) experience of queer oppression - from my mother; or a "test" based on antiprincess'
recent question: what, exactly, does a man write like? or a woman? or a genderfluid person, or a trans man or woman? And can you tell, just based on reading?
I'm gonna collect up a few quotes - I figure fifteen or so - and it'll be a game of "spot the man"...
First Posts, Necessary Evils
Hey all. This is my first post, put here because, well, I don't want this to look like some abandoned blog (which I hope it won't become, but my track record... well).
Mostly, this will be me writing about feminism stuff, mostly that I read about on the three blogs to the right (more will be added as I start branching out).
...ta!
