woah that’s sick
There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil’s advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women’s Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that’s so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.
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This really struck a chord. Even my boyfriend, feminist that he is, can have this reaction when I’m in tears after an NPR story. This is my fucking life. Excuse me if I can’t remove the personal. (via curiousgeorgiana) I reblogged this before, but I like it a lot so I’m reblogging it again. This whole thing is the reason why confrontations with people that I consider friends always leaves me crying. Like, I get so angry and so flustered because it’s not just some stupid game to me, like it is to them. It’s something that’s real and personal. (via liquidiousfleshbag) “Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that’s so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.” This has been my entire problem/experience with grad school. I go to a university known for their emphasis on critical theory and political theory. But the men in my classes, for them, there is nothing at stake. They’re great on class issues. They’re all intense Marxists who fully understand why we’ve gotten to where we are, but none of them have read critical race or gender theory. In all honesty, I’m starting to think that it’s because class is something that you can disown or hide away that you can’t with race, gender, or sexuality. I’m not saying class is escapable or class is fakeable. But my personal hypothesis (this is backed by nothing more than trying to figure out why intelligent, sensitive, critical human beings cannot talk about race or gender) is that I think it’s easier for them to be critical about class than about race or gender because class is something they know they engage in but that they can concretely change. Try talking to them about gender, and what they hear you saying is you’re trying to talk to them about how they, personally, have fucked up towards the women in their life. Class is material! Class is systemic! Class gets us all! And yet they can’t perceive of anything else as systemic without hearing a personal attack on themselves. Anyway, that’s the place I’m at with the manarchists and brocialists in my institution, if that made any sense. Class behaviour seems more mutable and lets them excuse themselves more because CAPITALISM! but them? They would never be racist or misogynist. One last thing to add: there’s a reason why the closest friends I have in my grad school are either female, POC, queer, or some combination of the above. (via lau-ra-sau-rus) |
Delurking to ask this very important question
Today at lunch a discussion about racism devolved in the age-old question ‘why can’t we use the n-word, if black people are allowed to use it?’. I tried to explain as best as I could (you know, the whole ‘racism is prejudice + power’ bit, what it means to reclaim a word, I even brought out ‘why the hell are you so insistent on your right to be a racist’) but I don’t think I was getting through and people were getting very defensive (the Dutch are on the whole very defensive when it comes to race issues). Can anybody point me to some online ‘racism 101’ articles that I can send to the people I had the discussion with? I did a google search but the articles I found had a lot of context or assume you already know how not to be a freakin racist, and I think I really have to start at a low level here… (I know some of you might say they are a lost cause, but I’d like to give it my best shot) (thank the lord we are in a reorganization so a lot of them will be fired soon)
Oh and I just saw your post about toe-stop running - plates are hardy, and I'm 200ish lbs and do it ALL THE TIME. If your plates break, they were crappy plates and you should get new ones anyway.
Great, thanks for this answer! It’s what I figured: I have new skates with Invader plates, so I’m guessing that they can take my weight, and I haven’t had problems so far! Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions! :D
maritsa said: I would tell her that it makes you uncomfortable for her to try to set you up with frank and to stop it. I would tell your cousin. Maybe ask her whether she thinks your cousin feels the same? Maybe reality will make her look at what she’s doing.
I’ve asked her if my cousin feels the same, but while she says she doesn’t know I get the impression she thinks that he does… So I think I will contact him and give him a heads up, before he has her standing on his doorstep! I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to break up a marriage, so perhaps this will help her come to her senses! Thanks for the advice! :D
Tumblr, I need your advice
I know you are all very good at giving advice, so perhaps you can help me with this:
I’ve been friends for years with a couple. We go on holidays together, we have frequent movie nights, dinner parties, etc. etc. The guy in this couple, who I will call Frank, is easily my best male friend in the world. The girl, who I will call Anne, is a great friend as well, although she has had jealousy issues in the past so our relationship has been slightly rockier. Note: nothing has ever happened between me and Frank. Anyway, this summer we went on vacation to France, where part of my family lives. My cousin will take over the family farm and is now living there again as well. The vacation was great, lots of wine, cheese, the good stuff. Then, after we get back, I get a visit from Anne. Suddenly she drops this on me: she tells me she has fallen in love with my cousin during our holiday. I’m slightly stunned and ask her if he feels the same way. She doesn’t know, she hasn’t talked to him about it. I ask her if she wants to leave Frank. She says not, she wants to fight for her marriage and has been feeling awful. Ok, I think, they’ve been together over a decade and I understand things can get stale after a while, and it’s really not unusual to develop feelings for another. However, just three months back she was talking about having children with him and everything was peaches. She told me she had talked about it with a lot of friends (which strikes me as a bit disrespuctful to her husband, seeing as they have a lot of mutual friends and its basically something between them, and she has told many people who don’t really know her that well), and I advice her to talk to a professional, maybe go to couples therapy: try to discover where these feelings come from and what is to be done.
Well, this is where it gets dicey. In between saying she hated herself and really loves her husband, she kept hinting that maybe I should get together with Frank, so she wouldn’t feel so guilty (WTF?). Then she said she has this plan of visiting my cousin next spring and work on his farm (double WTF?).
She told me she has told Frank about everyhting, so I figured I should talk to him as well. He told me that she constantly points out other girls to him and says ‘maybe she is right for you’, and she still tries to foist me on him as well. Also, he has the feeling that she is waiting until he says ‘enough’ so she can leave him in good conscience. Although she has discussed therapy once, she hasn’t followed up on it. I get the strong feeling she just wants out and go to my cousin, marriage be damned.
Now, I don’t want to meddle in this and I have tried to stay out of further discussions, but I have to say that I’m a bit pissed off. My cousin doesn’t know about any of this, and I really, really, really don’t want her going to him and dropping this bomb on him (for the record: I don’t think he feels the same, Anne told me that when she emailed him holiday pictures he signed off with ‘give my best to your devoted husband’, so perhaps he knows she has a crush on him and this is his way to tell her to back off), and I definitely don’t want her in my family. But should I say something to her about how disrespectful it is to Frank and me to try to set us up while he still wants to save their marriage? And to tell her to shut up about all this to their mutual friends? Or should I just keep quiet and hope it blows over? We had plans to go back to the farm next year, but whichever way this turns out, Anne is not coming with us, that’s for sure… Tumblr, please advice!
Weird injuries
Last week I trained very hard at roller derby practice (plyometrics training and running included), and the next day I noticed a lump on my right calf. It’s about 3 cm in size, and I’m able to move it around a little. So this is probably a muscle tear of some sort, right? I’m trying to rest my leg as much as possible, and I definitely won’t train as hard this week, so I figure it should be better next week or so. If not I’ll go see my doctor, but she will probably tell me the same thing. I wish I could just shut up the little voice in my head that goes: what if it’s NOT a calf muscle injury? I really hate that hypochondriac side of me…
I guess I’m back?
I think I’m ready to start posting again, after a few months in which I had a pretty bad case of anxiety attacks. Not surpisingly, after a year in which a number of people I was close to died, but really, really frustrating all the same. I thought about therapy, but then I figured it would probably get better in time, and thankfully it did! So now that I’m feeling a whole lot better I’m ready to post again! I’ve kept up with Tumblr, so I have a pretty good idea of what is going on in your lives, but I want to get involved again. So this is a tentative ‘HI’!
I can only talk about roller derby now, apparently
But I’m wondering if anyone can help me out with this: a girl from my league told us on Monday that toe-stop running is not recommended for anyone over 85 kilos (or 170 lbs, something like that), because it can cause the plates of your skates to break. Is this true? I’ve been googling my ass off but I cannot find this anywhere! I’m going to buy real derby skates in September, and right now I’m trying to find out what skates to get, so maybe I can buy skates that make it possible for me to try toe-stop running….(I’m waaaay over 85 kilos, so right now I’m terrified to try it)
