Art

I have started doing art again. It is a good thing, even if it a slow process. There are a million ideas in my head, and I have been dreamin art for months, but it is only just now that I am starting to put things out of my head. Nothing spectacular so far, but it is good to be working again. Soldering links, wood burning, etc.

Spring Cleaning

This past year I've been seeing little glimpses of the road not travelled in my life, and there's parts of that I'm sorry about, and parts of it I'm really not so sorry about. 

I think I like my life. 

Amazing what remaking part of your living room can do. 

I found some good books in the cleaning:
Two on brain recovery and brain training that I'm going to send to K's Mom.

One for K:
'When you are the partner of a Rape or Incest Survivor'
about living with a partner who has PTSD, and the process of dealing with someone coping with it - I'm not kidding when I'm telling her I'm doing really well.  I'm in the second year of dealing with this stuff, and it's going well - tough, painful, hard, but well.

Two for me to read:
'The High Conflict Couple'
'Lesbian Relationships' - yeah I know, we don't all identify as that, but it's a good book

I've been watching Brené Brown's TED talks on vulnerability and shame and they're clearly heavily condensed versions of her academic work, but not only do I want to read her academic writing, I feel deep respect for her willingness to talk about her personal experiences.  It is, as she says, brave.

So,  I have marking to do, essays to write, readings to do, and space to do it in.

Dave Lizewski: How do I get a hold of you?
Hit Girl: [sarcastically] You just contact the mayor's office. He has a special signal he shines in the sky; it's in the shape of a giant cock.

So, feminism.

I'm teaching about masculinity this week, and the ways in which our culture enforces masculinity on boys and men, and the militarized masculinity which is sold in our culture as the domain of "the real man" and it's interesting, because in some ways it's a culture which we all idealize - women and men both.

I love violent movies - action movies in particular, adore knife fights, and well choreographed sword and gunplay.

I like MMA, although I am less certain that I like UFC, the participants of which are often engaged in homophobic, misogynist taunting, and the organization of which is engaged in a lot of "women as sexual object" entertainment policies. The problem is, that there is a lot of it which _is_ entertaining.

Boobies are pretty nice to look at, and hot girls in skimpy outfits are pleasing to the eye - do they always have to have post modern self-reflexivity to make that ok?

Ought it to be one's pre(pro)scribed role? no. Combined with violent testing of one's fighting prowess against another? is that necessarily bad?

On sobriety, and

7 things you don't realize about addiction (until you quit)

Sobriety is unpleasant. That's something that I've been struggling with, especially as I've been taking all kinds of medication, and especially since I keep having to get doctors to increase my pain medications so I can do more things.

I want to be more active. I am happier when I do more things, but the more I do, the more pain I am in.

Two weeks ago, I tried snowboarding. It was awesomely fun.  I screwed up my back. badly. i have been in pain ever since. i am only just able to do push ups again, and i still can't do as many as before.

the weather also hasn't been helping.  hovering around zero and humid is the worst thing for me. it's awful. pain and swelling, and not much else.
bah

Schools, bullying, Facebook and legislation.

Another teen lost to suicide because of bullying

So, my homelife was really variable - sometimes wonderful, sometimes horrendous.

My school life was also variable. I loved schoolwork, enjoyed many of my teachers, and liked being challenged.

I had no friends most of the time.  I was odd, fat, initially christian fundamentalist and strange, poor, MPD, and not always hiding it well, and living in my head to cope with trauma a lot.

My best friends were from books, and starting at about 8 I wanted to be a vulcan so I wouldn't have to feel anything.

I was bullied.

JK- Gr 1 -  Her name was Elever, and she bullied me in the Christian school I went to.  When I left, she told me she didn't hate me.  I had no idea.

Grade 2 -  I went to a school I could walk to when I was 7, I was chased home by bullies, Chris and some other guy, who kept me from getting into my building, and beat me up.

Grade3-7 I was bullied by the gym teacher, and a rich girl named Heather at the gifted program I was bussed to. She and I had a rivalry, but she was clearly better, and we both knew it.

Grade 7, my one friend left, because the people in the school were jerks.

Grade 8 I got sent away (which is the subject of another post, maybe, someday), but I came back to a girl-disaster in my school, and re-friended a best friend from years ago.  We spent the year being chased to the bus, getting mooed at, and being ostracized.  The group accepted her back, but not me.  Maybe it's because I don't forgive and forget.

Grade 9 I survived on auto-pilot, with no friends, attending a "group" for students with difficult home lives - an emancipated minor, two siblings whose parents beat them, and a few others I don't remember.

Grade 10, I switched to a private boarding school - I was the wrong kind of person, not christian enough, and again everyone hated me, but I met my best gay friend who kept me alive for the next 15 years.

Grade 11 Half a year at the boarding school, I try to kill myself, and am expelled, then out to a public school, this time an Academy, so uniforms, and try to get out as fast as possible.  I join the SAC, get some credit for university.

Grade 12 - keep my head down, pass unnoticed, get out. No one hates me, and I make it out.

I used to escape onto the BBS network, and talk to people online.  I used to escape into books.  I used to escape into making friends from other schools, who didn't know the people who were hating me.  I didn't have many, but a few who didn't know what a freak I was.

If I'd had a Facebook with all the hate and rage and bile from the people who were maing my life miserable available not only during my school life, but also all the rest of the time, as well as for the entire world to see, I am not sure I would have been able to compartmentalize things well enough to avoid ending my life.

I attempted suicide once, and almost succeeded.

I self-harmed, I had eating disorders, I hated myself.

I can't imagine having available to me a public forum for other people to help me hate myself.  Especially as a teenager when I was already so incredibly vulnerable.

As a society we need to teach our youth to be better people.

The culture of difference, of "othering", of sameness and conformity, and media bombardment by imagery of perfection - these are all contributors to the issues causing bullying.

Girls gain status in social realms through possessions, boys and bullying each other.
Boys through sports, achievements, possessions including girls and money, and violence.

This is the problem.

Girls are still left with very few "legitimate" avenues of gaining status in our culture, particularly teenage culture, and bullying is one of the ways to gain status.

Achievement needs to be a way to gain peer status among girls. Whether at sports, intellectual pursuits, or other skillsets.

The commodification of "girl power has been a horrifying phenomenon, as it has eliminated the essential ideology behind the original message which was the egalitarian ideology that girls are as good as, and as valued as boys. Girls have the same innate abilities, and the same potential for achievement, and that it is possible to be a girl, and to achieve whatever one wants to, in whatever way one wants to.

The concept of "girl power" has become little more than a motif to be emblazoned with a few flowers onto a toddler t-shirt.

It is appalling.

Girl power needs to be rethought, and re-empowered as the potential for change within adolescent female community as something to create powerful social networks without status deliniation, without harmful class and race boundaries, and without the necessity of gaining power at the expense of another.

The lack of intersectional anaysis including the powerless nature of femaleness and childhood becoming adulthood leaves a gap where lives are slipping through.

Can we legislate the gap away? close a loophole? Put the lid onto the pandora's box opened by the internet's ready availability of blogs, facebook, free hosting, and all the tools available to legitimate authors, as well as those with the intent to do harm?

I don't think so.

I don't know what we can do.  Some people are suggesting work camps, harsh(er) sentencing for bullies, loss of privilege, school sanctions.

I know that when bullying was brought to the attention of the school in my case, they held a "talking circle", and the bullies promised to stop, later threatening me and the other girl with renewed violence in the event of further reporting.

In most cases, it never occurred to me to report it. Bullying was a fairly constant part of my school life, and it was easier to avoid other students than to report it or deal with them. Reporting it often exacerbated the situation, as schools are powerless to deal with violence off school grounds, and parents are reluctant to become involved in what is seen as"normal."

Perhaps in the age of Facebook, where these things are documented, there is greater accountability.