no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I mean I grew up hating people, ie the people around me, and I've worked on my curmudgeon impression for so long that it's weird to air the micro-managey hostess and social lubricant and stereotypically "womanly" side of me. But I realized if I wanted to be happy at my job, it had to have those things in it to some degree because connecting w people is what energizes me, gender roles be damned.

Whoa! I am kinda the same way.

Like, one of my favorite movies that I saw as a teenager was this 70s film called "Smile" about a teen beauty pageant, and one of the funny, eye-rolly bits is how in the interview segments all the girls either said (or were prompted to say) that their goal in life was to "help others" -- and now, in my current profession, I explain to friends, that one of the things I enjoy about it is that I work with people and "help them"

"Connecting with other people is what energizes me, gender roles be damned!" = you are an extrovert. Gender roles have nothing to do with it!

But this is the whole point of the thing! Personality, it is something that male people and female people and all other people have in all kinds of different flavours! Getting energy from people or not = A Thing. A Thing called Extroversion or Introversion. It is NOT "Women be chatty and social" vs "Men be strong and silent types" which is just gender-flavoured bullshit.

Exactly, but for me, at least, the extroversion and "helpfulness" associated with the "this is what women are like" gender role was something I rebelled against because of its association with the gender role and the other things about it that I found off-putting: breeding, meekness, always "thinking of the children" ... etc.

the other things about "this is what women are like" - traditional gender roles (if the above was unclear)

Yeah, I think I understand what you're saying. Like, you felt put off something you felt very drawn to, because you didn't want to conform to a shitty stereotype? When really, it was better for you to forget the rest of the stereotype and go "this bit is me! this bit is me, regardless of the rest."

I found it helpful to reframe "I like sitting in a corner by myself, fixing a thing" because I am introvert, rather than because I am a Failed Girl. But gender roles are used to punish people both for conforming to them (if you are a cis woman) and not conforming to them.

the extroversion and "helpfulness" associated with the "this is what women are like" gender role was something I rebelled against because of its association with the gender role and the other things about it that I found off-putting: breeding, meekness, always "thinking of the children" ... etc.

Yeppers. Also because when you fulfill certain parts of the role, men/people in power tend to write you off as not one of them and stop hearing you and start condescending to you, and THAT was sure an unappealing prospect. I'm past that now in a few different ways, not least that I've spent enough time sharpening my claws that I don't fear misogynistic dismissal or whatever.

know what else is kinda weird? i have felt, in the past, over the years, a kind of skepticism or maybe even a whiff of judgment from people who can't seem to reconcile that there can be very "trad gender role" impulses that have nothing to do with conforming to gender roles. in some ways i am extremely "feminine"; in other ways, i am the least feminine person of anyone i know. and yet i continue to exist? how can this be?

for example, the fact that i do all of the shopping, food prep, and cooking in my household. i don't do this because anyone has ever expected me to, or because i feel pressure to or because i feel guilty about not doing it. i do it because i enjoy it (most of the time) and mostly i do it because i am good at it! it is one of my skills, i should probably use it, right? but i've felt some latent hostility from various fronts over the years (not in my home but def in my friend circle) about whether or not this is equitable/feminist of me in spite of the fact that i have continued to be happy with the situation.

so any general effort to see that it's not all black/white and we don't all have to be the same way and that a person can accidentally conform to gender role expectations not because she is being oppressed but because it makes sense for her is a good thing. that was a terribly formed sentence but hopefully not confusing.

tl;dr - people are complex yay

We are all learning, and trying to live out our lives more freely of centuries of constraint; and resisting internalised misogyny (in whatever form it takes) is hard work.

On one level, "fuck judgement" because who has time for that shit, but on another level, if person find perself judging people guilty of "judgement" based on whiffs and latency, person is peself partaking in the same negative form of "judgement."

Person has a choice: person can start the judging game all over again, "judging you, judging me" in an endless cycle. Or person can work on judging others less perself, and trying more to forgive/accept/not sweat the people who may be overcorrecting for years of being judged perselves, and found wanting.

People are complex. Everybody is on their own journey. Those journeys will of course all be different.

And using "person" instead of pronouns makes me feel like fucking Yoda, but it's really helping *me* escape the tyranny both of "he/she" and also the ambiguity of you/I/we.

The pronouns thing is a cool move BB; I'm enjoying watching you grapple with it. I'm finding it awkward to read at the moment but I'll be interested to see if it gets to feel more natural, if you keep doing it.

I get the 'rejection of gender stereotyped activities thing' so, so much - it took me til my thirties to embrace things like baking and knitting, because of the overwhelming association of these things in my mind with my grandmothers and the WI, and I was *not* going to be some little woman who stayed home and made cupcakes. I was missing out on some damn enjoyable things :( so I look to the day when all of it can be stripped of genderisation so people can just do what they like doing.

Zora, have you read Woman On The Edge Of Time? (Where the "person" pronoun comes from) Because it's fantastic, it's the kind of Sci-Fi I think you might really like (and it grapples a lot with the boundaries between "insane person" and "sane person in an insane world" and also a ton of stuff we have talked about in person) and I wish it weren't a library book so I could lend it to you.

(I am having a lot of trouble with the ambiguities of the word "we" at the moment. Because as a word, it can mean both "me and you" and also "me and other people (who may not be you)" and when one switch back and forth between the former and the latter in the same paragraph, one can end up with jerk-faced persons who wish to discredit one's entire person saying stupid things like "what is this, 'the royal we'?" maybe because they are incapable of understanding the ambiguous subtleties of the word "we" but also maybe because they are just jerk-faces.)

((Is this subposting? I don't know, it might be. But I have been talking about pronouns here, so I'm going to put it here, as opposed to just randomly digging up a grammar thread to stick it on. I might go and put the "why I am using person as a pronoun" explanation on the genderqueer thread, but even less people read that then read this thread.))

It's funny, WRT knitting and baking, I know almost as many male persons who enjoy those activities, so it's almost like they've become un-gendered. (Thinking of Ed and per knitting-as-engineering-projects, which were great to watch.) I neither knit nor bake, but I've finally got to a place where I can say "well, it's just because I'm not very good at them, I don't have the patience to master them, and I'd rather spend time my on activities I am good at, like sketching or making curries" rather than feeling terrible about being a failed girl.

I haven't, it's going on the to-read list. I'm not sure how I missed that as it does sound right up my alley.

Oh it's so good.

E would you be at all interested in doing a book club type thread about it? Coz I have so! many! questions! and "how did Piercy *do* that?" I am dying to talk about, but not on this thread coz spoilers.

We are all learning, and trying to live out our lives more freely of centuries of constraint; and resisting internalised misogyny (in whatever form it takes) is hard work.

On one level, "fuck judgement" because who has time for that shit, but on another level, if person find perself judging people guilty of "judgement" based on whiffs and latency, person is peself partaking in the same negative form of "judgement."

Person has a choice: person can start the judging game all over again, "judging you, judging me" in an endless cycle. Or person can work on judging others less perself, and trying more to forgive/accept/not sweat the people who may be overcorrecting for years of being judged perselves, and found wanting.

cmon, i'm not a prescriptivist. i hope after...8? years here people understand that :(
i know you were working on pronoun usage, but it made me feel kinda misunderstood and generally bummed. it's not like i've changed my name 1000x.

which was not a personal dig btw!! i just haven't changed my name at all and was wondering why i hadn't.

i guess the flip side of this is that i have been totes undercover for 8 straight years! that's pretty awesome by itself.

anyway, wish i had never brought it up, the end.

I struggled a little to love your choice w/r/t all the food stuff, LL! I hope I always respected that it was your decision, but it took me a while to completely internally, like, understand it because I had never seen that role modeled in a way that didn't ALSO have a bad power dynamic. So I really learned something from you. Thanks for that!

glad to be of service :)

Lol the other day a female friend was telling me about how she used to joke that someone should invent a vibrator that's built into, like, a weighted pillow so it's like being in bed w an actual person, and I cracked, "Will it also ask me what's for dinner?" because just ugh.

OK, sorry, that was completely clumsy impersonal pronoun use. Because "person" in that sense was an abstract person, could be "you" could be "I" but just trying to say, like, judging goes round in endless circles and that's a bad and unhelpful thing.

Like, I feel like, as one of the loudest "gender is a social construct!" voices, like I'm included in the whiffs and the latency. And just trying to say that when it seems like I'm being really judgey (that was such a great memeword? whatever happened to judgey?) about people conforming to gender roles, it's coming from a deep place of gender confusion of "gender! what the fuck is that about, and why do people keep using it to try to beat me with?" rather than the "wow, girly girls are so fucking terrible" that it might be read as.

Girly girls confuse the fuck out of me, because I am so *not* one of them. I resist being made to be one, because that simply isn't who/what I am made of. But I also recognise that Gender Roles are used to universally beat women with, and "girly girls are terrible: don't be like them because gender roles are constructs" is just the other end of the bat which has always been used to beat me.

Like, we (specifically LL and me, but also every woman in the world) are arguing with a bunch of phantoms built from patriarchy and our own fears. And it's too easy to project those phantoms onto ourselves or each other. I was trying to say "I feel a bit hurt by that statement, but instead of having another round of projection and hurt feelings, let's put it into the general abstract instead." Guess I failed really, really badly at that, huh?

OK, I am going to get off ILX for a bit because I have had a really heavy session and I am feeling fucking frail like I am going to burst into tears for family-related reasons nothing to do with ILX, but I apologise unreservedly, if you thought I was having a go. I was trying to do the opposite of having a go, and ended up hurting you anyway. I'm sorry.

it's ok -- hope you feel better soon.

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/selling-shame-40-outrageous-vintage-ads-any-woman-would-find-offensive/

I told my mom tonight that I'm going to a casual event next week for an organization I applied to work for, so it may be that the event is like a pre-interview for me. She told me not to wear "that short black skirt that makes you look naked."

*wears skirt*

I love that skirt but I didn't really need her to tell me not to wear it to an envelope-stuffing party in a case where that is not a euphemism for anything.

ugh moms policing our outfits/bodies into our adulthood

how do mums rule & suck so much at the same time idk

IO from where i sit it seems like your mom is suuuuuuuper envious of you.

oh snap

Well?

I think that's probably very astute.

speaking of moms, just got off the phone with my mom and she told me that she heard my voice inside her head this morning when she was looking at a big pile of women's mags she had been stacking in the bathroom (a longstanding habit) and decided to throw them all away and not buy/subscribe to any more. she said they were "garbage". ha!

yes! i am so happy about this for so many reasons!

Aw that has made me pleased :)

awesome!

https://mobile.twitter.com/DrJanaFunke/status/426712817920913408/photo/1#tweet_426712817920913408

^^^^hope this link works bcz this is the best female orgasm ever

Woooooow.

Who is TINA?!

I don't know but she's electric!

awesome

On one hand it's sort of trippy and awesome but on the other, weird and inhuman and dangerous and off-putting...the all-seeing eyeball, really? I can't make out all the type but I did see something about only 30% of women having orgasms during "marital roles" lol.

i like the eyeball

eyeball reminds me of odilon redon, i love it

eyeball makes me think more of that inner full-on consciousness that I feel with an orgasm
but ymmv obv, interpretations subjective etc

Kinda Odilon meets The Residents. The best kind of surreal.

yeah!

love the pic
the caption is kind of great too
"keep going you are about to give me an all consuming nervous explosion which permeates the entire being both physically and mentally"

"Tina" + zaps makes me think
http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120317224227/lyricwiki/images/1/1a/Teena_Marie_-_Starchild.jpg

Whatup in grilz thread news for me: My therapist was like 'lol are you serious' when I told her nothing gets my goat more than when my boyfriend says during an argument that I am 'being irrational,' because it's not only untrue but also sexist. I was like 'don't you know the history behind men being rational and women being emotional and blah blah blah' and she was like, 'ok...everyone has their thing.'

I had kind of a stress mental breakdown a few months ago and he sometimes calls it 'the period of time where you were really irrational' and I ask him not to say that.

feelings!!!

Trying to figure out if I even like this therapist, if she's even helpful, or if she's just a person I can feel guiltless complaining to about work and my failed marriage of quite a while ago

that said it was like a funny moment between us, or maybe a real moment, because it was the first time anything I said provoked a reaction other than pity-empathy