[Miscellany]

It finally happened, thank god, my dreams have come back. Perhaps it's been the loud music infecting my brain of late that finally unclogged the drain. Of course, it was a school anxiety dream. I have a lot of these. I'm back teaching in the classroom with the lovely preps but I'm wondering who on earth has taken over the art room. In a fit of pure idiocy I decide that the class will be okay for a few minutes on their own while I run across to the other side of the school to check it out. In the art room they've put the world's most incompetent know it all. You know the kind of person I'm talking about - talks a good game but that's about it. She's not even doing art, she's just doing craft projects with an educational slant. I am standing around watching her teach when suddenly I see Prin walking towards the art room. Damn, I'm not supposed to be here, I should be teaching my class.

cue mission impossible music

I'm jumping over fences, peeking around corners, army crawling my way back to the classroom all while trying to pretend I'm not actually in a hurry. I beat Prin back by about a second.

Then I wake up.
With a huge headache.

Meh, not much but at least it's something

**

I've been thinking a lot about how I must be crazy or insane. Hear me out. I've always thought I was a normal everyday kind of girl. I think thoughts that real girls think. I do things that real girls do. I'm a girl after all. But in the past year or so I've felt like I'm so very different to other women. I don't think I've ever felt this way in such a marked form as when I've started reading blogs on blogger.

Suddenly so many women are amature porn stars who drink cum for breakfast and think that high heels and g-strings are waaay more comfortable than normal cotton undies. High heels are sooo comfortable and men are always and ONLY really really nice to women and women are always really bitchy to men (except me, of course except me I'm never bitchy to men ...just the rest of the women in the world are bitchy to men ALWAYS).

Do people make shit up for the benefit of an audience or is this for real?

In my everyday experiences with women it's a lot more normal - in that I know E for instance wears heels everyday and loves to do so and yet also feels like she must do that in order to be taken seriously in what she does - she's honest about this and I can appreciate that. She also does it because she knows that men like to watch women who wear heels too and that it changes the way she walks and she knows that men like that. She's honest about it. She also knows that she has foot problems that have developed in the past couple of years (25 year olds take note, it happens in your late 20s) and that she knows are a direct result of wearing heels everyday. She's not going to stop wearing heels but she's not walking around saying they are the best and most comfortable shoes either.

I compare that with statements on internet blogs about heels which go something like this: I love wearing heels. They make me feel sexy. I wear them for me.

I don't think I've ever actually read that on a blog ENTRY but I have read it on a shit load of comment boxes, usually answering a question posed by a male blogger. I find the whole thing both interesting and preplexing.

Is this true - women say one thing for the benefit of men and say another when in the company of only females?

Nowadays there's the old fall back that I hear women using a lot "I do this for me". I realise that we MUST say this in order for us to have any credibility at all. What are we going to say instead? I do it for men? I do it for my mother? I do it for my boss? What can we say? Exactly - now you know what I mean. Sure, there fore "I do it for me" works in that context.

Do you know what I do for me? I have a bath and stuff my face full of chocolate or something absolutely disgustingly fatty or sweet. I watch shitty movies until I cry or laugh. I am thinking of entering the self-love olympics (I shall bring home gold!). I daggy dance to disco while wearing my ipod when no one is around. I read a book. I go to the movies..sometimes alone. I wear my pjs all day and no bra or undies or make up, or shoes! The stuff I do for me I do because no one else is going to see it. I have done a few dodgy things TO myself, that's for sure but when I did those well let's just say there weren't any men around then (or possibility of if you know what I mean. lol) - but now that I look at those things I wonder if I truly did them for me or because of curiosity - perhaps more the later, who knows? It doesn't have to be that way but it often is. Hey, this is why I'm writing this right now - I'm beginning to think I'm so far removed from womanhood that it's not funny and I need some perspective. Am I so very different from you?

Everything is a bit more normal with the real life friends. We talk frankly about when we are treated nice or treated badly by men. We talk frankly about our experiences on the town, our experiences of being a woman. We never say it's all bad, nor is it all good. Being a woman means that we experience things that men probably do not. A few times I've had conversations with men and realise that they have never given a thought to what it's like for a woman in certain kinds of situations. I understand that from men. Maybe it's a case of they don't live it. They don't know.

I don't know if it's just women that blog that only have these weirdly skewed experiences about being a woman (like living the life of what sounds like Bettie Page's) or whether everyone tells lies in order to keep up with the Jones' but sometimes I'm reading a comment on a blog (and it's more the comments not the actual entries that do it) and thinking that is absolutely nothing like me and then because everyone comes in and agrees with that person "yeah, I LOVE wearing sexy underwear everyday" and really think hang on! WHAT? EVERYDAY? WHAAAAAT? In any case sometimes I read about how women act and then all these other women agree with that or someone is applauded for finally "being honest" and I wonder how my experiences and thoughts can be so different from those women around me. How can I not be being honest when evidently I am being honest?

I am not a fembot. I am a real woman. I am not trying to be sexy 24/7 and most of the women who blog that I read aren't trying to be sexy 24/7 either - they're just real. But sometimes I read comments on other blogs - comments written by women - and it sounds like they're ALWAYS being sexy or ALWAYS trying to seduce and be coquettish or ALWAYS feminine. I do want to make clear that I'm not really thinking so much about female bloggers I read and comment on - this is more about a lot of female bloggers whom I don't necessarily read but who comment on male blogs that I do read. How can all this hyperreal femininity be manifest on blogs and not in reality? Men realise this is not reality for a woman to actively be sexy all the time, right? That's not reality. You may find us sexy but that doesn't mean we are ALWAYS trying to be sexy. Right? Maybe I'm wrong. God I'm so confused I don't even know what's right anymore.

I just love those posts where women admit to being daggy (tragically uncool) or they just do embarrassing stuff. It's normal. Doesn't everyone MEN TOO just get up, put their stuff on, go to work, have a day and then do other stuff? Why is it women then, that always say "ohhh I'm feeling so sexy today because I was wearing my g-string". I admit, some days I feel sexier than others but who cares? Why aren't men blogging about how they feel sexy when they shave, or when they grow a mo or when they wear Ralph Lauren? When do men feel sexy and why aren't THEY on every blog comment around talking about how sexy they are? Why is it always women who are doing that? Is being sexy just a woman thing?

Anyway, this blog entry started off as something completely different to what it's ended up as. Never let it be said I'm well thought out and organised. The point that I was thinking of before I wrote this was me wanting to ask you girls a few questions. Boys, you might know the answers to and I'd love your opinion on matters of gender in blog land actually..but girls - please indulge me. Feel free to email me* or post anon if you don't want your name published. I'm certainly not about to judge or reveal long lost secrets. This is for me I want to know just how different I am from you because it's come to my attention that hey maybe I'm that numeral sitting somewhere outside the venn diagram. I want to know why it is that when I make a statement which I find to be general and true for most women and not even necessarily specific I get the 'oh *pat head* that's not quite true now is it?' In otherwords you didn't hear it, you didn't see it, it didn't happen. Are they trying to convince me (themselves?) or am I trying to convince them?

Questions:

Girls have you ever in your life been groped or other by a man who you didn't necessarily invite to grope or other you? I am NOT talking about sexual harassment (I'm not talking about that because that has specific connotations - I'm talking about everyday stuff. Whether this everyday stuff is sexual harassment is another post entirely and I don't want to go into politics exactly). So, I mean, an UNINVITED or UNKOWN someone
- maybe someone pressed themselves up against you to SQUEEZE PAST but wait there was a hell of a lot of room for them to go another way.
- maybe someone actually groped you - they might have been drunk at a nightclub. No biggie?
- commented on your breasts uninvited.
- yelled at you from a car window or construction site.
- pinched your arse
- made a proposition to you just straight out - no kissing first, no drinks first, no dinner..just the proposition that seemingly came out of the blue.
- been told that you have nice tits by a father of a boyfriend or someone like that (someone who you should trust to be respectful) at a family dinner (this didn't happen to me but it happened to a girl I know).

Have you ever felt scared walking alone to your car at night? Do you try to drive with friends or try to park reasonably close to the venue if you're alone especially if it's a dodgy part of town? Do you walk faster when you're alone?

Has anything like that ever happened to you or worse (you don't have to detail)?

I want to make it clear that this entry is not about saying 'ohhh being a woman is bad'. It's about saying girls, is ONE of these even just ONE part of your experience in life and of being a girl? You might not even think twice about it happening - it's just there. Some of this stuff may have happened and you just think - yeah, whatever - like I care? Not a big deal, just everyday stuff. I mean it just rolls off your back right? Or maybe it doesn't - everyone is different in this regard. For me, it doesn't roll off my back but for my good friend E for instance it's not a big deal. That's not what this is all about. I just want to know - Am I the only woman in the world to have experienced these kinds of things? Am I so different from you?*

* email addie in profile if you prefer.

* okay I also realise that when women say anything remotely negative like "I was groped by a guy in a nightclub and I didn't want it to happen" people tend to come out of the woodwork and say 'ohh you're exaggerating' or implying that you're the only girl in the world to have that kind of experience. This is why I wrote this post. I wanted to know whether I was really the only girl who had dodgy experiences.

Labels: dreams, dumb entry, questions, silly rabbit, what men don't see, women, wonderings

posted by M at 5:57 pm 38 comments