Irmelin

So, after a great amount of sleep dep, I finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Phew. If anyone else is going through the same and craves support...

But. Earlier today, while I was still pouring over the pages, I realized that I had an emergency need for chocolate if I was to continue. Unfortunately, panic attacks and similarly silly things had been impeding my mobility as of late, and though it had subsided to a manageable state again, I still did not feel toppers leaving my house without my "armour"--that is, black trench coat, spiked collar, dark sunglasses, hefty boots, etc.

Let's face it: being a woman and a feminist can be rough. While it isn't easy to write about the challenges and frustrations we face, we do seem more eager to jump to the pen with those things. So let's focus on a different truth: being a woman and a feminist? IT ROCKS!!!

Because the world ought to see just how much it rocks, I put this before my fellow bloggers: write an entry about an occasion where you had a FANTASTIC experience with your feminism or your womanhood! Did you attend a powerful protest? Put an authority figure's foot in their mouth? (I don't know about you, but I love that.) Have a successful debate in which you opened someone's mind? Did you just experience a miscellaneous, empowering moment in which you had to stop and tell yourself, "Wow! I love being a woman!"

Out with it! Tag "AGA Roll Call: Something Positive"!

If you ask my opinion on cosmetic breast implants, I will go off on an angry rant about how ridiculous it is that women with perfectly healthy, symmetrical, functional bodies are emotionally worked into a physical standard so unrealistic that they go stuffing saline solution into their busts. Ask me if I'd ever get them? Don't bet your life on it, unless a car wreck severs my left breast tomorrow.

...But what am I thinking in the dark, alone, at home, when there are no crowds, no one to debate with, and no one to stand tall-and-feminist-strong for?

I'm looking at my breasts and aching, Wouldn't it just be so much easier TO get implants? Wouldn't I /feel/ so much better- wouldn't it just be a total load-off? And in moments like these, when I fantasize about what it would be like to have fake plastic breasts, I realize how much energy I spend on NOT having fake plastic breasts: because the idea of having them sounds like the suggestion of releasing a cramped muscle. It sounds like, Hey, you don't have to hold your breath anymore.

When I imagine all the things I could do with the energy I now spend helping myself feel good about my natural breasts, I feel like I could /learn a new language/, /write a book/, /get fit/.

No, really. Take a read of this conversation.

I know, I know, it starts out with some of the pretty familiar, by-the-script banter, but it gets "better".

Dad: "We [Jehovah's Witnesses] don't have anything against homosexuals."

Me: "But I mean, if I wanted to become a Jehovah's witness- what, God would just lift the desire out of me or something?"

Dad: "No, you would have to do what many in our religion already do, and refrain from having sexual relationships. Or choose to get married heterosexually. No one is going to question a decision of celibacy; many who are NOT homosexual already do so that they can serve Jehovah better."

Me: "So you, on the virtue of being heterosexual, would get to experience the wonderful joy of being in an intimate relationship with someone, but I wouldn't?"

Dad: "Jehovah made man and woman to be together. That was his original intention, with Adam and Eve.

This is probably going to be the shortest entry I have ever written. Unfortunately, my internet access is currently very limited... sporratic... and goodness gracious my "spelling instincts" are completely crooked because I am thinking in Norwegian at the moment, and all spell checkers on the computer are in NORWEGIAN, so forgive me forgive me.

I just wanted to make some comments about the state of feminism here in Norway.

Dead.

No, seriously. Dead. The bad sort of dead. Sexism is rampant and not a word is said. Kvinnekampen er slut, they say. The battle is over; won. The only thing they are even remotely vocal about is the problems being caused by a relatively new law that states 40% of all persons employed in high up boards or something of the like must be women. The problem being that they simply do not have women to fill that requirement because there are no women further down in the system climbing that high. So they're complaining about the law... with absolutely ZERO understanding of where the problem actually comes from, which is of course the societal structures, circumstances, and frankly time passed since women could even enter the system at all. They see that a lack of women in the system is a problem, but they don't grasp that a lack of women in the system is a problem! The entire feminist understanding in all of Norway seems so PRIMATIVE!

"Women will not become more empowered merely because we want them to be, but through legislative changes, increased information, and redirection of resources. It would be fatal to overlook this issue." –Gro Harlem Brundtland

Kick-starting your political career by lobbying for abortion rights—in the early 70’ies, no less—isn’t exactly begging for a promotion. Gro Harlem Bruntland, however, did exactly that, and went on to become Norway’s first female Minister of Environment, and soon after Norway’s first female Prime Minister—not to mention the youngest ever elected, period. Not too shabby.

I was speaking with a friend a couple of days back who told me, “I really need to work on my body.”

Work on your body?

“My boobs have gotten smaller and my hips have gotten bigger. I need to fix that.”

Maybe you need to work on your Body Image.

“No, this isn’t a body image thing. There are just certain things that I don’t like on bodies in general, and now it has happened to me, so I want to change it.”

I told her that she was misunderstanding the idea of body image. But when prompted to explain, I found that I really did not have any words to voice what I meant. So I left the conversation as was, deep in thought.

I have the words now.

Hello AGA; I am back from an 8-day trip to Washington and finally have a moment to sit down, breathe, and collect myself. It was quite the whirlwind, but probably one of the best weeks of my life. Some highlights: staying at Heather’s for four days, taking a bath in an actual bathtub, meeting Dani Filth, seeing—no, experiencing Cradle of Filth live, hangin’ with AGA blogger Elizabeth, giving a bone-crushing hug to my brother Andrew again, seeing The VAGINA Monologues (“Hoohaa” my ass), and pretty much spending four days in the queerest college town I’ve ever set foot in. Seriously, I felt like I’d walked into some 1970’ies butch-n’-femme bar. I’ve never had so many crew-cut women open doors for me.

Anyways. With the exception of that little intro, this is going to be a cross-over blog to help with the Scarleteen Fundraising. So if you want to hear me talk about my sex-life, read on. : P

"Law and justice are not always the same." -Gloria Steinem

No doubt you have all heard about the young lady who was put in jail right after her rape and denied EC because the medical worker at the jail claimed the pill to be “against her religion”. When I spoke with a family member about this case, I received a very disturbing narrative.

I debated with myself whether it was appropriate to share this highly personal information. But then I realized… Her anonymity is not just protected by my refusal to mention her name, but by the sheer commonness of her experience. The brutal mistreatment she received is something endured by women the world-over every day, and no doubt there are others with similar (if not the same) stories, possibly by the same persecutors.

I was really surprized this morning when I posted this quote to my MySpace:

"Because women's work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we're the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it's our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we're nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we're nymphos and if we don't we're frigid and if we love women it's because we can't get a "real" man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we're neurotic and/or pushy and if we expect childcare we're selfish and if we stand up for our rights we're aggressive and "unfeminine" and if we don't we're typical weak females and if we want to get married we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're unnatural and because we still can't get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can't cope or don't want a pregnancy we're made to feel guilty about abortion and...for lots of other reasons we are part of the women's liberation movement.

— Author unknown, quoted in The Torch, 14 September 1987"

and received the following response from a good male friend of mine:

This is a triggering entry.

Every time I think about writing this entry, I just feel insanely uncomfortable. The kind of uncomfortable that borders on painful; the kind that feels like standing with your pants around your ankles in a room full of laughing people from some bad sort of dream.

Ever since my recent relationship was terminated, I have been looking back on it, analyzing, trying to see its shadows and understand its form the way that I could not when it was close to me. The sexual aspects of course receive a lot of thought, and I find that I have… very mixed feelings.

“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.” - Freda Adler

Yours truly apologizes for her absence, and offers up an explanation involving pain, sickness, jubilation, overdrafts, and tiny electrical impulses. But first!

The title of this entry is “taboo”, and it was thus chosen because in my fevered, nausea-hazed exploration of the should-I-laugh-or-cry Logo channel, I began to notice a pattern within the more mainstream-popular shows that they aired (such as Queer as Folk) and other media I had observed in the past. This pattern is simply: It is more taboo to show lesbian women *in a serious context* than it is to show gay men.

This is a pretty disconcerting entry regarding pornography and rape. Pass it up if you know it's not for you.

I am one of those who has no problem with the creation of images, videos, or stories about human sexuality with the intention of inspiring arousal. That inherent commonality in all pornography/erotica does not, in and of itself, strike any negative moral chords with me.

What can cause me to bare my fangs, however, is the sort of material one may encounter in the vast world of pornography. I think that any woman who has ever typed an X-rated search in Google will know how difficult it is to find any “erotic” material from which a woman can derive any pleasure, as most of the stuff out there is vapid, misogynistic crap that just barely borders on violence.

This past weekend, I found something that crossed the line… and worse.

"Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." -Picasso

I take a huge leap off a nearby cliff and float back down to earth on the bat-like wings of my massive black cape. And I feel smug for figuring out how to land without breaking my nose the second time around.

Through an excess of roleplaying, cookies, expensive tea and anime`, I am finally beginning to feel halfway conscious again. And I am writing this blog entry in a flurry as I put off the flabbergasting amount of housework that must be done before my now ex-fiance` arrives to stay the week... most likely the last occation I will ever see him face-to-face.

"I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough." - M. C. Escher

Downhill so fast. This is a very long entry.

It has been some time since my last journal entry. At the last point I left off, I was making some major realizations feminism-wise and was taking some time out to truly formulate my thoughts into a coherent entry. Now, I feel completely discouraged from writing on that subject.

Currently, two of my friends are killing themselves with drugs.