Speaks for itself:
via IAMASDAMAN
WTF is wrong with America?
Reply
Tag Archives: politics
It Was Easier to Give in Than Keep Running
I saw this today on Reddit, and realised I could easily write my a list of my own youthful experiences of what it was like to grow up female, and it would be a similar list of being imposed upon treated a certain way on a thousand different occasions, simply by virtue of my gender. I can completely related to this, and no doubt it is just as relatable to the experiences of so many girls/women. The very fact this all reads so ‘normal’, is the very reason we still need the feminist movement constantly striving for equality.
“In first grade, a boy named John— a notorious troublemaker—systematically chased every girl in our class during recess trying to kiss her on the lips. Most gave in eventually. It was easier to give in than keep running. When it was my turn, I turned and faced him, grabbed his glasses off his weasel face, and stomped on them on the hard blacktop. He ran to the principal’s office and cried.
In fifth grade, I was asked to be a boy’s girlfriend over email. It was the first email I ever received. He actually told me he wanted to send me an email, so I went home and made an AOL account. We went to a carnival and he won me a Garfield stuffed animal, and then he gave me a 3 Doors Down CD. A few days later, he broke up with me, and asked for Garfield and the CD back. I said no.
In sixth grade, a girl in my year gave head to an eighth grader in the back of the school bus while playing Truth or Dare.
In the summer after sixth grade, I kissed a boy for the first time at sleep away camp. He was my summer love. During the end-of-the-summer dining hall announcements, where kids usually announced lost sweatshirts and Walkmen, an older girl stepped up to the microphone, tossed her hair behind her shoulders, and proudly stated, “I lost something very precious to me last night. My virginity. If anyone finds it, please let me know.” The dining hall erupted into laughter and cheers. She was barred from ever coming back to the camp again, and wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to anyone.
In seventh grade, I told my brother I decided when I was older wanted a Hummer. What I really meant was I wanted a Jeep, but I didn’t know a lot about cars. My mother overheard and screamed at me for “wanting a Hummer.”
In the summer after freshman year of high school, I went to sleepaway field hockey camp with many of my close friends. One of them, named Megan, I had been friends with since kindergarten. One night when I was showering, she ripped open the curtain and snapped a photo of me on her disposable camera. I screamed. She laughed. We both laughed when I got out of the shower a few minutes later. After camp was over, her father took the camera to the convenience store to get it developed. When he gave the finished photos back to her, he said, “Your friend [Anonymous] has grown up.”
Sophomore year of high school, one of my best friends Hilary had a party in her basement while her mom was away. We invited some of the guys in our grade and someone’s older brother bought us a handle of vodka. One of the boys who came sat next to me in Spanish class. His name was Thomas. I remember playing a simple game, where we passed the bottle of vodka around in a circle and drank. I remember being happily tipsy and having fun, to suddenly being very drunk. Thomas and I started chanting numbers in Spanish, and he leaned towards me and kissed me. We kissed in the middle of the party, with all of our friends cheering. Then we went into Hilary’s bedroom.
Hilary’s bedroom was in the basement, on the ground floor, with a large window next to her bed. When someone went outside to smoke a cigarette, they realized it was a front row seat to what was happening in the bedroom. It was dark outside, and the light on was in the bedroom. They called everyone outside to watch. I don’t remember getting undressed, but apparently we were both completely naked in Hilary’s bed. A friend of mine told me later she tried to open the door and stop what was happening, but Thomas must have locked it. They said they pounded on the door. I don’t remember hearing them pounding. I don’t remember seeing everyone’s faces outside the window. I remember Thomas holding my head down, and shoving his penis into my mouth. I remember trying to resist, pulling back, but he held his hands firmly on my head, pushing my face up and down. That’s all that I remember.
The next day, my friends and I went out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants. I couldn’t eat anything, and it wasn’t because I was hung over. Every time I tried to put food in my mouth, I felt like I was choking. Anytime a flash of the night before appeared in my mind, I felt like vomiting. My friends sat with me in silence. Then they told me a girl named Lindsey, who had briefly dated Thomas freshman year, had stood outside and watched the entire time. Even after everyone else stopped watching. My friends said they didn’t watch.
On Monday, Thomas and I sat next to each other in Spanish. We didn’t speak. We didn’t make eye contact. I went to the girls bathroom and threw up. I hear Lindsey and Thomas live together, now, ten years later.
Junior year of high school, my teacher for Honors Spanish was named Señor Gonzales. Señor Gonzales had all of the girls sit in the front row. Señor Gonzales called on any girl who was wearing a skirt to write on the chalkboard. Señor Gonzales asked a friend of mine, who had broken her finger playing an after school sport, if she broke her finger because “she liked it rough.” Señor Gonzales was a tenured teacher.
Senior year of high school, I got my first real boyfriend. His name was Colin. He was on the lacrosse team with Thomas. He told me that sophomore year, Thomas told everyone on the team what happened that night at Hilary’s. Everyone cheered. Colin said that, even then, he had a crush on me. Even then, he wanted to punch Thomas.
Colin and I lost our virginities to each other. Colin said if I got pregnant, he would make me have the baby. He didn’t believe in abortion. Colin said if I got pregnant, he would make me have a C-section. Colin said that if I didn’t have a C-section, my vagina would be too loose for him to ever enjoy having sex with me again. Colin said that he wouldn’t let our child breastfeed. He said his mother gave him formula, and that he turned out just fine. I didn’t get pregnant.
Junior year of college, I lived in Denmark for the spring semester and studied at the University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen is one of the safest cities in the world. Guns are illegal there. Pepper spray is illegal there. One night, my friends and I went to a concert at a crowded club in a part of the city I didn’t know very well. I brought a tiny purse with money, my apartment key, and my international cell phone. For some reason it made sense at the time to put my purse inside my friend’s purse. Maybe I didn’t feel like carrying it. We were both drinking. My friend left the concert to go home with her boyfriend. One by one, everyone I was there with left the concert, until I was suddenly alone and I realized I didn’t have my purse, or any money for a cab ride home.
I started walking in the direction that felt right. I walked for a long time. I had no idea where I was, and didn’t recognize the area. It was almost 4 am. I was on a residential street when a cab pulled up next to me. I asked the driver if he could drive me to an intersection down the street from my apartment.
I don’t have any money, I said.
I really need your help, I said.
I will do it for free, he said.
Sit in the front, he said.
I sat in the front. We drove in silence for some time, until he pulled over on the side of a dark street.
I don’t want to do it for free anymore, he said.
He locked the car doors and reached across the center console and slipped his hand up my skirt. He grabbed my vagina. Hard. I pushed his hand away and unlocked the door. I ran down the street and realized he had taken me a block away from the intersection I wanted. I walked to my apartment and threw rocks at my roommate’s window until she let me inside. She yelled at me for waking her up. I escaped. Nothing happened. I was fine.
The summer after I graduated college I helped Hilary find an internship. She was an art major and wanted something for her resume besides waitressing. We found a posting on Craigslist to be a studio assistant for a painter in the Bronx. It was listed as an unpaid internship. The toll for the George Washington Bridge was twelve dollars, plus gas, but she got the internship anyway. She wanted the experience.
The artist was a 38-year-old Canadian painter named Bradley. Hilary was 22.There was another intern there, an art student from Manhattan named Stella. Bradley needed assistants to help him make bubble wrap paintings. Stella and Hilary would take a syringe and fill the tiny bubbles with different color paints until it formed a mosaic. Bradley always had Hilary stay after Stella left to clean the paintbrushes and syringes. He told Hilary she was beautiful. More beautiful than his wife, who he only married for citizenship. He told Hilary they had a loveless marriage. He told Hilary he wanted to have her beautiful children. They began an affair. He told Hilary has wife knew and didn’t care. He told Hilary he was going to leave his wife soon.
Everyday Hilary drove to the Bronx, cleaned Bradley’s paintbrushes, and had sex on the studio floor. Everyday she went home with no money, and everyday she paid the toll at the George Washington Bridge. She needed the internship for her resume, she said. It was too late to find a new job, she said.
I could go on. I could tell you a lot more. About the whistles on the sidewalk, the kids who sat at the bottom of the stairs in high school to look up our skirts, my friend who was a prostitute in South Carolina, the men who’ve cornered me in parking lots and bars calling me a tease, the unwanted grabbing on the subway, the many times my father has called me fat, the time I traveled to the Philippines and discovered Western men pay preteen locals to spend the week in their hotel, the messages on OKCupid asking to “fart in my mouth.” About how I wasn’t sure if I had been raped because I was drunk and kissed Thomas back. How he raped my mouth and not my vagina, so that must not be rape. How easy it was for me to escape the dark street in Copenhagen, and how that made it not matter since “it could’ve been worse.”
Men have no idea what it takes to be a woman. To grin and bear it and persevere. The constant state of war, navigating the relentless obstacle course of testosterone and misogyny, where they think we are property to be owned and plowed. But we’re not. We are people, just like them. Equals, in fact, or at least that’s the core of what feminism is still trying to achieve. The job is not over. We’ve made great progress. There are female CEOs, though not very many. There are females writing for the New York Times and winning Pulitzer prizes, though not very many. There are female politicians, though not very many. But these advances are only on paper. The job won’t be over until equality permeates the air we breathe, the streets we walk and the homes we live in.
I think back to how easy it was for me, in first grade, to feel fearless and strong in my conviction to stomp on John’s glasses. I felt right in reacting how I did, because John’s behavior was wrong. But his was an elementary learning of the wide boundaries his gender would go on to afford him. For me, it would never again be so easy.”
– Anonymous, age 25
Beijing – Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City
This morning after an iffy night’s sleep at the Novotel Peace Hotel, Beijing, we head down for breakfast which is included in our accommodation. To be honest, I was expecting the sort of continental breakfast that you get when you stay at most Australian, UK or US hotels – muesli and cereals, toast and muffins, a couple of danish or croissant if you are lucky – and discovered the most lavish buffet breakfast I have ever seen. Waffles, eggs done three different ways, bacon, sausages, chicken, turkey, vegetables, cereals, porridge, Asian breakfast foods (rice, pickles, radish, tomatoes, all sorts really), yoghurts, juices, seven different pastries – you name it, they had it. Which would have been lovely if my stomach weren’t doing flip flops from whatever weirdness they served us on the China Eastern Air flight yesterday. They kinda had us captive all day so we were forced to try it, and whatever the ‘fishy noodle’ was … it disagreed with me. So breakfast was one egg, half a piece of bacon, and toast. Then we were picked up by our tour guide extraordinare, Kelli.
First stop Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square is the largest public square of its type in the world – at 44ha it is enormous, and we were told there would be around 500,000 people there today given it is summer holidays for all the Chinese schools so we were warned not to lose sight of the group. God knows once we got there she was absolutely right – it was packed full of people. Large school groups from the countryside come to the big city to see the sights, families on vacation, I’d say if there was 500,000 people there today, about 95% of them were Chinese touring in their own country.
The Square itself is only 70 years old, built right next to the ancient Forbidden City. Directly front and centre is Chairman Mao’s imposing mausoleum designed according to feng shui principles and apparetnly supposed to look like a chop (name seal) though not being tha familiar with Chinese chops, I couldnt’ see it. Directly outside the tomb was a line of Chinese tourists waiting to go in to see an effigy of the famous leader – it’s not him of course, and you can’t touch it or take a photograph of it, but the line up to go see this effigy snaked for literally kilometers back and forth across the square. It would have taken hours to line up to go in, just to have a look at the effigy of this contenious and divisive political figure. Anyway, we weren’t doing that!
To the right of Chairman Mao’s enormous tomb is a monument to fallen soldiers – a simple and stark brick monument designed to remember ‘all the heroes in heaven’ from the wars China has fought in, but most particularly WWII and the war with Chang Kai Chek (sp?). Most of the local tourist seemed to barely pause at this monument even though it represented the lives of millions of their countrymen, and yet were willing to spend hours waiting to see an effigy of Mao… I found this rather odd. Overlooking the entire Square is an enormous portrait of Chairman Mao on the outer gate of the Forbidden City, and he seems to be watching you as you walk around the area. According to our guide, Chairman Mao never step foot into the Forbidden City, due to being superstitious. He was a Water Dragon (I’m a Metal Boar/Pig according to Chinese horoscope) and he felt going into the Forbidden City would tempt fate as the Emperor’s were all traditionally from the mountains and were Clay/Earth Dragons. Apparently Earth controls the Water, and Mao who wanted to set himmself up as some sort of God, did not want to risk being controlled. Or something silly of that ilk.
Anyway – we were going into the Forbidden City. Us and about 250,000 Chinese tourists, all following people with flags on poles. 🙂 As you do. The Forbidden City was built in 1402 and covers over 7ha by itself. It has 9999 rooms that the Emperor needed to conduct his business, house his family and very importantly, house his 3000 concubines. All the buildings of the Forbidden City have yellow clay roofs – yellow was the colour of the imperial family because it represented good fortune and good luck (incidentally blue represents privacy and secrecy and pink was reserved for the concubines). Other walls and various beams and doors were red to represent happiness and longevity – making for a quite striking and colourful complex. The very outside gates were called the Upright Gates, and only people of good character were allowed to pass.
As we passed through each set of gates on the way into the centre of the Forbidden City, we walked by enormous red doors covered in huge brass studs. Our guide told us we should touch the brass studs for good luck and even though personally I kinda though it was more a ‘touch the brass studs for a dose of Hep A’, we did it anyway. Through the next gates as well, until we entered the Third Gates, also called the Phoenix Gates and we found ourselves in another large courtyard. This was the Execution courtyard, where the Emperor had his prisoners executed, his ministers wait before being allowed in for audience, where petitioners waited for meetings, and where eunuchs were made. Inside the third gates was the Hall of Supreme Harmony – the Emperor’s main digs. The building holds over 3000 people – it had to accommodate his ‘family’ (including his concubines) for weddings, birthday and Chinese New Year events. So is quite the impressive building considering it is now 600 years old.
The Hall of Supreme Harmony rests atop three marble plateaus, representing the earth, the humans, and heaven. The Qing Dynasty Emperor was the last ‘proper’ emperor to reside here. The Qing Dynasty died when a once loyal General got angry at the Emperor for taking his beautiful wife as a concubine. He decided to get even by allowing the Manchurian army into the Fobidden City and the Manchurians then made themselves supreme rulers. (There is SOOO much history omitted here for the sake of brevity and not wanting to get my dates etc mixed up – all of it fascinating).
Behind the Hall of Supreme Harmony was the Emperor’s Office where he conducted most of his official business near the Home of Mental Cultivation. Opposite the Emperor’s Office is one of the treasure’s of China – a 7000 year old Jade disc that represents the Heavens, set within a square granite block carved with 8 dragons. The Emperor himself was meant to represent the 9th dragon (many things here come in 9s). It was so placed, such that the Emperor if he started to lag in his work, could be reminded of how he was the connection between his people here on Earth and the Heavens.
The next area we went into was the visiting space for the concubines. With the Emperor being just one man and having 3000 women to choose from every night, each lady had a ‘business card’ made out of gree and white jade. On the green section of the jade was the concubines name, on the white section an artist would paint the concubines likeness. Many of the concubines would bribe the artists to make them look even more beautiful on their portraits than in real life in the hope of securing the Emperor’s favour – because seriously, given that the Emperor was choosing only 3 women every night, that meant each concubine would only get a look in maybe once every three years… and pregnancy was her only way to elevation. There were 9 levels of concubine, and each concubine was entitled to a certain standard of living. If she was favoured and bore the Emperor children, her little household entitlements grew as did her status within this world of women. If however she didn’t recieve the Emperor’s favour, she was at the mercy of the higher ranking concubines forever. If chosen, eunuchs would fetch the women, bathe them, make them up to the Emperor’s liking and bring them to this meeting space naked. They would wrap the women in a silver quilt and carry them to a room to await his visit. The nakedness was to ensure they weren’t carrying any weapons – not everyone was happy about being chosen to serve the Emperor as a concubine. With three ladies every night, he might choose all or none to lie with, so getting pregnant had pretty slim odds… that and the Emperor had his favourites who he would visit with regularly. Not much of a life if you ask me.
After this we went into the private Royal Gardens of the Forbidden City. Nothing like Japanese gardens at all. This garden was full of enormous pieces of ragged limestone, which had been imported from the South of China and was an ostentatious display of wealth – to be able to pay to have such large rocks moved. There were also large juniper trees and pommegranate trees and every tree was specifically selected according to feng shui desing principles. The paths were made of tiny rock mosaics, apparently the work of bored concubines who had nothing else to occupy their days but to linger in the gardens and make the pavements pretty. The Forbidden City was very impressive, and I could not help but wonder that it was an ulimate expression of what could be achieved with unlimted wealth, manpower and other resources. Just incredible… though it would have been truly a sight to behold when it wasn’t swarming with sweaty tourists.
After this we went for lunch at a 300 year old restaurant, the name of which I am unable to pronounce let alone write. We had traditional Chinese lunch, and I am sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that is it nothing like the sweet, over-MSG’d food that passes for Chinese food back home. There were fish dishes, two chicken dishes, a mushroom dish, some chicken dises (one, complete with disconcerting chicken head), a couple of pork dishes and a unique pear soup that this restaurant has been making for hundreds of years – the pears are boiled for five hours and distilled somehow to end up tasting like a sweet pear mead. Very unusal, and of course with such a banquet laid out and so many dishes to try, and free beer, the guys all got stuck into it. Me and my delicate stomach were rather less adventurous than one should be on such occasions. But what I did try was absolutely delicious.
Once everyone had their lunch and had a chance to visit the ‘Four Star Happy Room’ (Forbidden City have Two Star Happy Room and Four Star Happy Room, you want wait if you can hold on – yes, the Happy Room is our guide’s euphemism for the bathrooms)… we made our way to the Summer Palace, so named because the Imperial Family (Emperor, Empress, children, favourite concubines) would move there for the long hot sticky summer months – we which can attest are postively putrid. It was so hot today, that everyone was sweating like pigs, and struggling to keep hydrated. Anyway, I wasn’t quite sure how the Summer Palace which is by all accounts not that far away from the Forbidden City, was going to prove so much cooler. But it turns out the Summer Palace is three times larger than the Fobidden City and 80% of that space is taken up with an enormous lake. So you have Forbidden City which gets breezes off the land, with a huge lake on the other side of it, and the Summer Palace across that lake – which means the prevailing wind there is coming off the lake and naturally very cooling.
The Summer Palace had many of the same rooms and layout as the Forbidden City, but not as large or grand. Emperor’s living quarters, Empress’ living quarters, meeting rooms, concubines rooms etc. There is also a Confucian temple where scholars came to study – there were up to 3000 students at any one time and only 72 ever excelled. To become a Confucian student, you had to provide 20kg of rice and 20 kg of pork, though I am not sure why… tuition I guess? Those studying the Confucian systemp were considered to be ‘believer’s of that system and it was very much treated like a religion. There was also a Taoist Temple and Buddhist temple in the Summer Palace, but all the religions got along fine.
The most striking feature of the Summer Palace was the 750m long covered corridor that follows along the lake’s edge. It was long and elegantly decorated – some 14,000 individually painted pieces – with some covered gazebos spaces along its length. Walking through there, even though we were surrounded by Chinese tourists who seem to want to stare at short blonde people almost as much as the Pakistantis in Islamabad did, was extremely pleasant compared to the close, fetid air of the Forbidden City. You could certainly see why they built the Summer Palace there and I can imagine it was once a beautiful lakeside garden of much quiet contemplation and refined entertainment. I could just imagine what living in this Palace would have been like 600 years ago – though knowing my luck, I would have been a slave or a concubine. :/
After exploring the Summer Palace we took a Dragon Boat ride back to our bus and there endeth our exploring of Beijing for one day – everyone was tired, sweaty, footsore but happy. So many beautiful sights. Back to the hotel for a swim in the wonderfully cool indoor pool and then to hunt down a light dinner… After lunch, it’s a wonder if any of us want to eat!
US Supreme Court decides on same sex marriage…
So, here we are Down Under, about 10 years behind half of Europe and 12 years behind Canada and watching the US – ultra conservative right wing nut job land of the freeee, and home of the brave – finally legalising same-sex marriage. Or as I like to think of it, they’ve decided to stop the fucking legal discrimination against people for no good reason.
Total side note: We saw the Empire State Building lit up in rainbow colours the night that Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church carked it – we just happened to be at the observation deck of the Rockefeller Centre when news of his passing was released.
Social media of course has been having as much of a field day with this decision as the main stream media has…
So I guess the big question is: What’s up Australia?
Where the hell is our rainbow coloured legal decision? It’s pretty damn obvious by all the polls that approximately 75% of Australians support marriage equality, but no, we have a government prepared to IGNORE over 15 million people on this particular topic. Nice job… and a lot of it coming down to that bane of our existence the ultra-conservative Tony Abbott. How this arse clown got voted in, is completely beyond me. How he continues to stay in the top job when so many of his part publicly distance themselves at every opportunity likewise astonishes political onlookers. Seriously, we are just about the last to the party on this. So much for that famous laid back, happy-go-lucky, laconic Aussie image.
If my friends list is anything to go by, (and it’s probably not because my friends tend to be unusually intelligent and understanding by anyone’s standards), there are so many rainbows floating around, you’d swear we’re all gay or bi or something.
Personally, I believe any consenting adult should be able to enter into any marriage that makes them happy – whether that is a traditional monogamous religiously sanctioned marriage, a civil union, a same-sex marriage, religious or otherwise or a polyamorous multiple partners swinging from the chandeliers on weekends, love-in. We seriously need to get out of each other’s bedrooms and mind our own business.
Open Letter to Fuckwit Abbott
AN OPEN LETTER TO TONY ABBOTT FROM THE EDITOR:
Look, I know open letters are a bit April of last year, but I’ve been worried about you, Tony. Since the Leigh Sales interview when you were unable to articulate exactly who you are, I’ve been worried.
It’s a question most Australians are asked every now and again – in job interviews, by partners, by caring friends rolling around on the back lawn after one too many G&Ts, sometimes by our therapists. And as the Prime Minister and a man with more than a fleeting interest in spirituality, I’m sure at some point you’ve asked yourself the question, “Who the hell am I? What do I really stand for?”
But at 7.48 or 7.52 that evening, Leigh’s question seemed to rattle you. You became evasive. So in case you find yourself fumbling for an answer in the future, here’s who I think you are. (Feel free to quote me).
You’re a Christian guy. You’re the Christian guy who, when faced with appalling facts about the ongoing abuse and psychological torment of innocent children in our detention centres, chose to viciously attack the messenger rather than reflect maturely upon the incredibly sad and sensitive contents of the message. You’re that guy.
You’re the guy who condones shoving terrified women and children fleeing rape, persecution and death, (much of which we helped fuel), into little orange boats in the dead of night, sending them back into the darkness and uncertainty they’ve somehow managed to flee, hopeful of our shelter. That’s you with your whole “Australia isn’t for everyone” Jesus thing.
You’re the guy who’s been trash talking the economy for so long, most Australians are afraid to buy a pine-lime Splice let alone a car or a house. And it was you who in opposition said the so called ‘Carbon Tax’ would wipe towns off the map – something about a python squeeze not a cobra strike – when you knew that simply wasn’t ever going to happen. Is it all coming back to you, Tony? You’re that Henny Penny guy.
You’re the guy with the gay sister who stubbornly refuses to change his views on same sex marriage, despite her personal pleadings and the firm belief of most Australians that equality is long overdue. Represent, Tony! Step up! They mean you no harm. And if it’s about saying one thing before an election and doing another after… honestly, let’s not imagine anyone’s going to be too upset or surprised.
While we’re on that, you’re the guy who hounded the previous government TO DEATH over one supposed lie, promising an all adult, no surprises government of your own. I swear it was you boldly proclaiming you can’t say one thing in opposition then do another in office, before making brutal cuts in literally every single area you said you wouldn’t. Ringing bells, Tony?
You’re the guy who says he’s intimidated by the burqa then gets around in a bright red banana sling.
And forgive me for delving into personal irritations, but you’re the Rhode scholar guy who has to repeat everything twice, sometimes thrice, buying yourself time to formulate your next sentence. It’s an old orator’s trick Tony, but every frickin’ sentence?
While I could go on, I’m sure the electronic graffiti artists will be happy to continue this letter for me. And hopefully, next time Leigh asks for a little personal reflection, you’ll have a better idea of who you are. You’re that guy.
(from: https://www.facebook.com/ABCNews23/posts/784248744998717 – author’s name conspicuously absent… probably an LNP backbencher)