no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I never read any Judy Blume, or much YA stuff at all really: my father was a single parent, and I mostly read his books. He had a few Steven Kings, which I remember liking (especially The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which I think inspired my lifelong hatred of nature). Thankfully I never read Carrie during puberty.

I read Carrie before puberty! I don't think it affected me much though tbh.

was suddenly v sweaty after lunch at work & came home. felt ok soon after though

it suddenly occurred to me that this might have been a hot flash? idk. i still get my period like clockwork. bleh. ladybusiness is weird

I gave up even looking at ILX for Lent (somehow looking but not posting is even worse than posting and getting shat on all the time?) but today is Sunday and I came on to look if there were any suggestions about how to pitch for a 33 1/3 book*, only to find out that the search is borken.

So here I am, girl thread, how are you? This is the only thread I ever find myself missing.

I read that article IO posted on twitter ages ago, and had ~THOTS~ on it but have forgotten what they were. As someone who has dated men and women and people inbetween, my only conclusions are that dating women and dating men both suck, but that they suck in different ways, qualitatively and quantitatively. It's not that dating women and people who aren't cis-dudes is totally free of all the patriarchal and looks-based bullshit; but it's a thousand times more crushing with cis-men. It's easier just not to do dating, so I'll stick my oar out of that one. Feeling at home in a body is a constant battle.

I don't know. With things like 'creepy', the scale and the power imbalance is just completely non-comparable. Yeah, I've totally been called creepy by dudes, and it's because Asperger's and lack of boundaries and sure. But then you compare that to the scale of the current breaking scandal of sexual harassment in universities which has been breaking in Britain over the past few months (and exploding across academia in the US, too) and it's like... You are comparing one or two individuals to a massive, systemic, endemic thing. It's like comparing blue moons and Mondays. One is a rare, exceptional, notable, random chance, once every few years thing; the other thing happens routinely, regularly and deliberately 52 times each year. Don't pretend like it's the same. It's not.

*I did a OWOB last year, and it was the weirdest experience. As much as possible, I deliberately left my name, and any links to my online presence out of it. (Partly because I didn't want to be self-promotey - why? Like, dudes never care if they come across as self-promotey and CHECK OUT MY BLOG Y'ALL. Probably because they don't get incessantly called attention-whores by dudes doing exactly the same thing, if they do. Partly because... y'know, stalkers.) And I had a total GitHub** of an experience over it: seeing it linked and promoted and RT-d by loads and loads of people, many of them men. Many of them men, formerly of ILX; some of them even actual men who had bullied me, dismissed me, rubbished me and my contributions to ILM. And yet when my writing is divorced from my name and my history, they're totally into it? And sharing it for feminist brownie points? That was such a head-fuck.

**Have we discussed that on this thread? Study came out this year, about public ratings for female programmers. The actual work of female programmers is consistently rated higher than average, but only when their identities as female is hidden. When coders use female names, their work is consistently rejected or rated lower. I mean, people have proved this stuff 100x over with CVs identical but for the names at the top. But this is ~SCIENCE!~ and it's hard to ignore that.

I mean, yeah, social media is such a weird echo-chamber, and you can't actually assume that they've even read the piece they're RT-ing. IS2G half the time people just share stuff because it's like a high-five to their bros, rather than they actually read it and agreed with it. But it's something that Roxy and I talked about ages ago, on here. Like, how to react, when someone is tossing around ideas they refused to hear from you. Should you be glad that the ideas have now become common currency? Or are you 'allowed' to have a gut-reaction of "you? YOU? Who spent two solid years harassing me on an internet forum, but now you're tossing around my feminist, genderqueered readings of electronic music? Really?"

Argh. Sorry. This is such a "stomp in, spew, stomp out" non-contribution to the thread. It just strengthened my resolve that I should write more. And try to get published more. And instead of stomping around going "Why is no one writing about X?!?!?" be the person who actually goes out and writes the piece about X. Because the piece that got all the RTs was actually something I was ranting about up earlier on this thread last year that no one had written about.

But ugh, pitching is like dating, but a hundred times worse. Because when they reject you... when you're dating, it's only your body they're rejecting, and my body isn't me. It's just a lump of flesh I use to walk around. But when someone rejects your writing, it's like... OH NO my writing really *is* me. I'll get completely broken and discouraged and not publish anything for a year again. But I look at the jerkwads who do get to do it, and feel the white-hot heat of fury, and that anger is the only reason driving me to publish anything, really. (Except I won't. My nerve will fail, and I'll screw it up like I screw up everything.)

Thanks for listening. I'll pop back in when Lent is over but this thread goes in such fits and bursts it's really blink and you miss it. Hope you are all doing well, girl thread denizens!

Sorry I wanted to add some links. The thing that got me thinking about this was this essay, about harassment and abuse in academia and the ~literary world~ and how it expands out to who gets to be gatekeepers for things. And how that affects who even approaches, let alone who gets through.

http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/45377/experts-in-the-field.html

And this response to it:

http://lithub.com/roxane-gay-aimee-bender-and-more-on-assault-and-harassment-in-the-literary-world/

In which someone raised the ugly points that these same men who do these things to young women, they are the ones who teach *how* to write, who teach even *what subjects* are considered worthy of writing about, and by whom. They are the ones who edit journals, and hold control over what gets published and what doesn't. So it's this double abuse: they abuse individuals, physically. And they abuse entire classes of people by literally (through literature) shaping What Writing Can Contain.

this thread is as good a thread as any to talk about women's hair and politics and this:

http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/shea-moisture/308785/

and

http://www.complex.com/style/2017/04/shea-moisture-nixes-ad-after-backlash

I think I have a summer crush!

Relatedly, I went to a local gallery/community space, and exchanged info with one of the women running it. She seems cool & I want more friends my age. I just feel like being blunt and emailing "let's be friends!!!"

dunno if we've discussed this before, but, I have a question --

I have a close friend who has a (pretty obvious, but unacknowledged) eating disorder. How do I best respond in the context of social media -- she posts a lot of selfies?

Idk if I understand the question -- are you unsure of how to react to her (possibly) alarming selfies?

do you need to respond?

yeah, I'm not sure how to react. Also, it'll be something like facebook memories will bring up a picture of us from a few years ago (before she lost a lot of weight), and I avoid posting them.

privately, maaaaybe a dm? but you would have to broach it delicately. And you would have to know her pretty well.

publicly: don't.

Yeah this is fraught. Could she be ill for example and not told anyone?

i'd avoid communicating via text about this-- if it were me, and i were very concerned for the person's life, a private safe face to face convo or nothing imo. (if the person is a close friend but doesn't live close enough to hang with, phone convo)

disordered eating is everywhere so i would only intervene if i were seriously concerned about her wellbeing.

In college when I cut my hair off and wore men's clothes my mother told someone bitterly that I was "trying to be ugly." How strangely right she was. I really felt like this article was speaking for me. #wheniwaspythia

https://catapult.co/stories/role-monsters-gorgons-medusa-women-beauty-ugliness#

Medusa lost her beauty—or rather, it was taken from her. Beauty is always something you can lose. Women’s beauty is seen as something separate from us, something we owe but never own: We are its stewards, not its beneficiaries. We tend it like a garden where we do not live.

Oh, but ugliness—ugliness is always yours.

yeah i feel that
i don't have a lot to say about it, but it strikes a familiar chord

i think it also applies to age
how much of the beauty routine is intended to stave off AGING
how much do you hate your neck? google "i hate my neck" and see the algae bloom of results

Oh, I like that article. Though I feel like it frames the issue a bit too much as if it is *easy* to take ownership of your own ugliness, when it really is not.

On a related note, this is probably my favourite Comet Gain song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ13rgmBjtQ

Particularly irate today at having to watch 5+ minutes of coworker's daughter's wedding video in which every single word, frame, vow, dress, etc, is lock-step gender norms & a certain kind of conventional. "You're my puzzle piece, and I will love you for forever and beyond." <-- I'm not sure you know what words actually mean but okay.

And it was at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden so it had to have been tens of thousands of dollars. What does a reception at BBG even cost? idk

The sound track for the wedding highlights is a song that goes "A diamond ring and a dozen roses, everything she ever wanted."

it definitely costs a lot

sorry your coworker's daughter is so boring :)

Usually I'm not so irate at the mere thought that people different from me exist but being smushed up against them at work all the time and having them assume I'm one of them...and the strength of their assumption that everyone is exactly the same as them...maybe it triggers my being from a small town neuroses and reminds me when I couldn't get out of my hometown fast enough. I'm sure their insistence on the correct-ness of their norms is related to why they're so mean to our immigrant families. Anyone a little bit different is treated like a space alien.

yup
also they probably lack imagination if they rely that heavily on cliche

feeling this so much. i'm not like, extremely manly or anything, but i don't like to play the game. my co-worker is all into it. pink everything. perfume. i hate perfume. loving to be married and talk about it all the time. super feminine voice/speech patterns. fake fake fake fake and it must be tiring just to exist. i'm so happy xxxx is away this week, i don't have to shave my legs! really? have to? does he not know your legs grow hair?

hahaha I'm starting to be okay with some pink things, but yeah, so much of this stuff I just don't go in for, exhausting (as you said) and expensive!!

Mother's Day also brings some of this stuff up -- like ads for "mother/daughter mani-pedis" -- uh, no thanks.

yeah I remember a colleague complimenting me on my short haircut and saying oh my husband would never let me do such a thing
and I was like, wait hold up LET you?
I go to the hairdresser and get whatever I want and I come home and mr veg says hey whatsup haircut and we just fuckin move on with our lives

sometimes I wonder if I'm doing marriage wrong and then stuff like that happens and I'm like, okay yes okay I'm fine

i went to a friend's wedding a couple weeks ago and it really made me not want to have a wedding

yeah I remember a colleague complimenting me on my short haircut and saying oh my husband would never let me do such a thing
and I was like, wait hold up LET you?

I'd ask her if her husband would stone her in the home depot parking lot if she spoke to a man who was not a relative.

I had a colleague hint that her husband wouldn't let her be Facebook friends with men he didn't know, wtf

...

That sounds abusive

mr veg says hey whatsup haircut and we just fuckin move on with our lives

<3

yeah it was a throwaway comment and I wasn't sure if she was joking :/

I met some cool artsy witchy ladies this month! They are planning a panel with Pam Grossman and Kristen Sollee, I AM SO PSYCHED FOR THIS.

Also, I went to an art event/party and made out with some dude, and he emailed me???

iirc some dude is married o_0

Ha, not that some dude.

And yesterday he told me he has a three year old. We hung out in town for a little bit, and he hasn't texted or emailed since, hmmmmm.

what is the hmmm?

There were quite a few emails and texts Saturday night and Sunday about how much he likes me, how much he really wants to hear back from me, how much he really wants to hang out again, and now not even a hey what's up?

maybe he really wants to hear from you (based on how much he really wants to hear back from me, how much he really wants to hang out again
idk
always hard to know what is going on in anyone's mind, i don't try to guess

I know, there's nothing stopping me from contacting him except my own silliness.

I'm not that used to someone being so forward and unsubtle with their interest!

making new relationships is difficult even (especially?) when romance isn't part of the picture

I am working on that as well this summer!

yeah me too
it's impossible to know what anyone else is thinking. once i have established that someone finds my company acceptable, my approach is usually to be straightforward (and I guess unsubtle too) because who has time to energy to try to read my mind? no one that's who :) being a wallflower has never worked for me.
i like to think of it as friendliness because i feel ok with being a friendly person.

time AND energy
woops

i don't have the time or energy to proofread lol

Yes, the ladies I have met have made it clear in their way that they like me and my style, so I am trying to reach out to them. Even if it is just to say that I really enjoyed the events they have organized.

I do have to stop myself investing too much time with the mind reading.

In other positive reinforcement news, I reached out to a friend this month, and now I am going to be a guest on her podcast. Do Not Listen If You Hate Me (or The Simpsons.)