Flameheaded Harlot

Feminists: Hey. We'd like for women to be treated as equals. 
Society: Oh sure. You want "equality" but then you expect men to open the door and pay for meals, is that it? That's not equality! That's special treatment!
Feminists: Um, no not really. You don't have to open the door and pay for our meals. We can do that ourselves. 
Society: *gasp* What? You don't want men to open doors for you? Why do you hate nice people? No wonder chivalry is dead! You'd yell at a man for just being polite and opening the door for you? 
Feminists: No! We're just saying you don't have to do it just because we're women!
Society: And while we're at it, how come you don't protect male victims of abuse and rape, huh?
Feminists: Actually, we think it's really terrible that men are forced to stay quiet about their abuse because they're worried about not being taken seriously. It's this Alpha Male myth that causes it. Men are abused and raped and they're not helped because men are supposed to be tough and able to handle it. This also goes for men not being able to express emotions. 
Society: Oh, so you just want men to be a bunch of pansies then, huh? You hate men for wanting to be strong LIKE NATURE INTENDED THEM TO BE. You'll be sorry when you end up married to some weak, simpering fool who likes to talk about his "feelings"!
Society: Also, you can't have equal rights because women aren't aggressive enough to want higher pay and stuff.
Feminists: HOW ABOUT YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON? 
Society: Jesus, calm down. No need to be so aggressive.

Adventures in knitting

My new winter project is learning how to knit. I figured it would be a great way to take my mind of things relationship-wise and I’m getting cool stuff out of it! Plus I can never just sit still and watch my shows on tv, so now I have something to occupy my hands with. My mom has taught me the basics and it’s going pretty well, only I don’t know how to undo any mistakes I make, like when I drop a stitch. But I’m sure I’ll master that as well eventually! I started knitting a very colorful scarf, in red, orange, pink and yellow, and so far, so good! I’ll post a pic of my progress tomorrow. Next project will be a pacman scarf for my nephew! :-)

Unlurking once again!

I’m not sure how long I’ve been on Tumblr (2 years? 3 years?) but I’m almost always lurking, instead of writing. My aim is to change that. What has brought this on, I hear you ask. Well, getting dumped after 6 months of bliss might have something to do with it. And I need something to focus on to help me get through the pain. And I do like writing, though I need to do it regularly to keep me focussed. So once again, hi all! I’m looking forward to talking to you all again! :-)

My favorite horror novels, in no particular order.

Halloween: it’s the time of year when lots of lists pop up, full of recommendations for books and films that’ll scare the pants off of you. I figured that this year I’d join the fun and share my top 10 (in no particular order) of horror novels I thoroughly enjoyed. When I was creating this list I discovered I have an apparent love for books about haunted houses, according to almost half of the titles on there. You learn something new about yourself every day!

1. The House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski. Yes, this is a book that demands hard work. A story within a story, and about a billion footnotes? Typography that goes mad halfway through the book? No way to find out what you should read first, and what information is important? I’m not surprised many give up after 50 pages. However, if you stick with it, this story about a house that is bigger on the inside (and then some!) than it is on the outside will reward you plenty.

2. Skeleton Crew - Stephen King. No horror list can be complete without a Stephen King book on there somewhere. I decided not to go with ‘The Shining’, ‘It’ or ‘Carrie’, even those are great horror novels, but instead I would like to recommend this book of short stories. It contains some of my all-time favorite King stories, such as ‘The Mist’ (Fog will never look the same to you), ‘The Raft’, which made me even more afraid of swimming in water where I can’t see the bottom, and ‘Gramma’, about a grandmother with a payoff that gave me nightmares.

3. The House Next Door - Anne Rivers Siddons. Let me warn you: this book starts out so innocently, so mundane, and almost…boring, and then it brings out the creepy in bucketloads. We are used to haunted house being old, but what if the house was only just built, and not on an Indian cemetery? The story draws its strength more from telling than from showing, but that does not make it any less compelling.

4. The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty. What can I say about ‘The Exorcist’ that you haven’t heard a million times? Perhaps that it’s not wise to quote the movie when you’re not absolutely sure your audience has seen it: you’ll get some strange looks when you blurt out ‘Your mother sucks cocks in hell’. Anyway, the book, about a young girl who is possessed by a demon (who at first goes by the deceivingly innocent moniker ‘Captain Howdy’) when she plays with an Ouija board (is there anyone around who would touch such a thing?) and then has to undergo an exorcism is even better when you read it in dark, alone, preferably during a thunderstorm.

5. Hell House - Richard Matheson. I discovered the genius of Richard Matheson only a few years back, when I found out he is the author of ‘I am Legend’ (a book that’s not on this list, but perhaps should be). I quickly remedied this error on my part by reading everything I could get my grubby little mitts on, and was it ever worth it! ‘Hell House’ is about Belasco House, which appears to be haunted by its former owner. A previous expedition to uncover its secrets ended in slaughter, with only one survivor who now returns for a second go. Psychics, mediums, nudity, demonic attacks: this book has it all!

6. The Woman in Black - Susan Hill. I read this book because I heard it would be turned into a movie starring Daniel ‘Harry Potter’ Radcliffe, and I have this thing about always reading the book before I see the movie. I like to make up my mind about the characters before a director shows me what they are like. The story uses plenty of classic horror elements: hostile villagers, mysterious visions, a skeptic main character who starts to believe in the end, and a twist at the end that actually made me go “Aww, HELL NO”. In a good way.

7. Let the Right One in - John Ajvide Lindqvist. I guess it isn’t a horror list until vampires show up somewhere along the way, so I might as well include them with this excellent book. What I like about it is that it’s not your standard ‘vampires are evil, stake stake STAKE’ fare, but instead the evil lies elsewhere: school bullies and pedophiles, for example. Definitely one of the first books that made me root for the child vampire. Plenty of gore included, which is always a plus!

8. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is the queen of implicit horror. Her short story ’ The Lottery’ is a deserved classic. ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ is said to have inspired ‘Hell House’ by Richard Matheson, but I think the comparison is mostly superficial. Yes, this book also deals with the investigation of a haunted house by people who claim to possess psychic abilities, but the haunted house here is subtle instead of obvious, and tries to scare people away instead of brutally mutilating or killing them. Just one tip: never watch Jan de Bont’s movie version of this book, ‘The Haunting’, because it sucks so very hard.

9. World War Z - Max Brooks. I wasn’t sure if I should include this book on my horror list, as I would rank it as a post-apocalyptic novel. That’s not to say that the two genres don’t overlap occasionally (see ‘The Stand’ by Stephen King, for instance), but this is not a book that frightened me. Then I figured: it’s about zombies, and it is one of the best zombie books I have ever read, so I should share it! When the zombie apocalypse starts, you will be very glad to have read this book, as it details the way it will likely go (well, if we end up with slow, can-be-killed-by-taking-out-the-brain zombies. You never know what might happen). The book consists of a number of witness accounts, from the first manifestations to the all-out war. Max Brooks has an eye for detail, and he thinks of every eventuality. Really, even if you hate zombie stories: just read this one. It’s definitely worth it.

10. Rosemary’s Baby - Ira Levin. You are probably familiar with the story: Rosemary moves into an apartment building with her husband, and they get friendly with the neighbors. But her husband starts to act mighty strange, and the friendly neighbors might actually be part of a satanic cult! When Rosemary gets pregnant, she starts to suspect she is carrying Satan’s baby. And that’s when the shit hits the fan! I really love this book, although it was very nearly ruined for me when I read its sequel, ‘Rosemary’s Son’. Now I just pretend that it does not exist, which is for the best.

So that’s my list. Have any recommendations for me? Did I miss out on some genius horror? Let me know!

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.

“

—

Melissa McEwan, of course, on the terrible bargain. My life as a woman, as a queer person, as a fat person, is not your thought experiment. (via sanitywatchers)

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)

muralgirl:

TEST: How well do you see color?

thelefthandedwife:

I got an 18. It’s just blues and greens I have problems with apparently.

NOT BAD AT ALL.

That was so cool!! I love arranging things by colour. I got an 8. My problem area is also right in the middle of the blue/green.

I got an 11! I also sent it to the rest of the office: the women scored between 11 and 28, the men between 11 and 38. You go kinda crazy after staring at the little squares for more than 10 minutes though!

Oh yeah, my skates have arrived: aren’t they the coolest?!

Verrrry excited!

On Saturday I discovered that my town finally has a roller derby team! So of course I immediately emailed them to ask if I can train with them some time. Next Wednesday I’m going to my first ever training! I used to live on my roller skates when I was younger, so I hope I still know how to do it… I’ve ordered some awesome skates (blue with flames on the side) and a bunch of protective gear, so even if I fall down a lot I should be fine. Still have to get hold of a mouth guard though! Anyway, I’m really stoked to try roller derby, it seems like a really fun sport and is a perfect way to exercise without having to go to the gym (which I usually can’t be bothered with). Now I only have to think of a name! Maybe I’ll stick with Flameheaded Harlot, I don’t think that one’s taken yet…