My Legs, today

As a follow on from the last hairy post, here follows the precursor/catalyst of that post... I sat on my bed the other day, gazing at my legs, thinking 'how great am I? look at me, with me hairy legs' and then thought 'fuck, if I got a normal job, in a country this hot, would I still have the guts to rock these fluffy pins?'. Then I wrote this, except it was more poemy, but I'm too scarlet to print that.

My Legs, today.

My legs are pale skinned. I have pale white skin, I live in a cold country, and they rarely see the light of day. They are covered by very dark, fine hair. It has grown there from my youth, and despite concerted efforts over the years to remove it, it continues to grow.

My legs have many scars. I fell forwards over a tricycle when I was 8. I ripped a mole off at an outdoor rave when I was 20, I scratched mosquito bites while travelling Australia when I was 28. My legs have tattoos. The images they carry represent my passion in life, and my pride in my womanhood.

My pasty blue skin, dark hair, scars and tattoos reveal part of who I am, where I have been, and what I am proud to be.

Today, I will not struggle to make my legs bronze, silky-smooth and scar free. Today I do not aspire to the proscribed beauty standards of an advertising campaign designed to make me feel insecure about so many square inches of my skin. For another day, I will not try to erase my past, my present and my humanity to conform to a feminine ideal.

Hail Hairy, pits n face, the scorn is with thee.

Let's do some word association. You ready? Julia Roberts. What did you think? Did you think about pretty woman[1]? Maybe you thought about a lot of teeth? How many of you thought of armpit hair? Anyone else remember the furore when she showed up at something with fluffy pits? Her armpit hair was on the cover of every magazine... her armpit hair was on the fuckin EVENING NEWS!! People fucking FREAK out when a woman doesn't shave.

It takes significant courage to grow your body hair in a society that so frowns upon it. Only now, being in Australia and hanging out with a bunch of women who don't shave, and away from the eyes of those who's opinions I care about, have I become comfortable enough to try it. I'd say I'm a good six weeks now without dastardly depilation, and it's fascinating, watching my body grow into it's natural state.

I've tried to grow my armpit hair and leg hair at home in Dublin, but understandably, I give in every time. I get paro about other people looking at me, what my mates'll think, or whether children will run away crying when they see me. My good friend Seethreepeeugh, an ultra-cool winner of a woman, told me that more than anything she beats herself up about, it's shaving. She finds it so hard to reconcile having feminist values and removing 'unfeminine' hair.

Fuuuuuuuuck that shit...it's the most understandable thing in the world that most of us shave. We've all grown up in a society where women are held to one standard of 'grooming' and men to another. We live in a world where as women we are expected to look like hairless, poreless, fleshless ornaments. When we behave in a way that suggests we are entitled to be human and natural like men, we get a giant FAIL in Being a Sexeh Wimmin. We are consistently warned by advertisers, magazines, family, friends and strangers on the street that if we do not at least attempt to distinguish our physical presentation from that of men by manipulating our bodies with razors, tweezers, heels, chemicals and fucking Spanx, we will suffer consequences. The threat of being considered fat, ugly or unfeminine is enough to send most of us into mild panic attacks if we realise we left a shadow in the pits or a roll of flesh on show.

So, I'm testing myself. I'm seeing how long I can stick this out for. I've plenty of Irish friends in feminist activism who do it and after feeling curious and jealous for quite some time, I've finally joined their ranks (from across the equator). I can't even begin to convey how liberating it has been for me to begin this process. However, being in your natural, hairy state is not for everyone. Many of my friends love to groom and make-up and invest time in their appearance and wouldn't dream of growing their leg/armpit/errant facial hair. I completely understand why they do it (and I did it). But it must be remembered that they have it a bit easier than their hirsute sisters. In their attention to grooming, they are represented, nay glorified, in mainstream popular culture and advertising. By and large, society consistently reassures them that they're doing the right thing.

We must celebrate all women, 'feminine' or not. We must tell those who choose to break the mould how beautiful they are. We must celebrate women who won't pluck the stray hairs from their faces, and applaud the furry legged, bristly-pitted beauts. Beauty, as we understand it today, must be redefined to include women who choose to be different and rebel against oppressive patriarchal standards. HAIL HAIRY!

Ps: Check out Honororia's post, also with token Julia Roberts reference, over at the great Anti-Room

[1]if you thought about Erin Brokovichthchrhhxz that means you're a supercool feminist number one

Superwombin' Breech Style

About a month ago I climbed down from my crucifix, and handed over my sash and my Martyr of the 21st Century crown of thorns (Category:thesis). Then I went to Australia for a while.

Australia is cool. Seriously.

I might post something soon! xx

It's a thin line between empathy and egotism

If you knew how privileged a life I've had, you'd probably want to sock me in the brain, I'm extremely lucky. I've been born into love and happiness and pretty much stayed there ever since.

But, sometimes a door into the hearts of other people opens for me to take a quick glimpse in. I get the deepest, heaviest sadness in my soul when I see what people around me have to go through. It's a bizarre feeling. I've often had hippydippy mates talk about the feeling you get when you clear your mind of thoughts in meditation. It's incredible, but as soon as you notice it it's gone....'check it ouuutttt, I'm not thinki.... ah BOLLOX'.

I'm pretty sure the same thing happens to me with genuine empathy. I see or hear something, and something very deep wells up inside me. I react physically. My shoulders fall, my face gets hot and sometimes I get a tummy flutter. Then in my brain I'm like 'oh jesus, check it out, I'm feeling empathy, I'm so cool and soun.... ah tits'. Empathy does not happen when I go 'oh them peeoor folks, bless' and reflect on shit, empathy is how my entire being reacts, when the reality of other humans reaches in past my ego and touches my gulliver in ways over which I have no control. It's not just cruelty or sadness that momentarily disarms my ego either. One of the things that always gets me is people on their own doing stuff, for example a dude eating a sandwich in a park. It just makes me cry.

So what in jesus am I blathering on about? The reason I've hardly posted is because I'm engaged in research in which I am listening and reading over and over the stories of a group of women who have been through more shit in their lives than I can sometimes bear to even think about. It aches, on so many levels. Witnessing their pain, their strength, and my own reaction to these things is pretty much consuming all that I have at the moment. Formulating any kind of objective arguments about anything or making crap jokes aren't really feasible. I should be done in a week or two though. sniff.

Hiatus

I have to take a break for a couple of weeks.

I'm up to my boobulators in work, academic and extra-curricular committments.

I'll be back in September with diatribes, rants, jokes and musings on the flavour combinations. Watch out for:

Rapists: Stop Raping
Human Rights Crisis: Alarmingly High Rates of Forced Pregnancy in Ireland
Equalititis: Why the notion of gender equality induces chronic, vitriolic shite-talking in otherwise sound people
Why living in a patriarchal society is totally fucked for all of us
Knackers or Skangers/Travellers or 'normal' poor people: who do you look down on the most?
What to women, gay men, Travellers, trans-sexual people, intersex people, people with disabilities and people of colour have in common?

They just came off the top of my head.

Bear with me, and thanks.

If you read this you are gay

Me and my two good friends Cthulu and Xasthur were sitting around recently drinking mead and talking about sexyuality. Me and Xas have a lot of the same friends, but Cthulu is of another circle of friends....


Cthulu: so none of your male friends have come out then?
Me: no. You reckon some of em are gay but not out?
Cthulu: fuck yeah. My gadar goes OFF around some of those dudes
Xasthur: Wow, really? Why haven't they come out? We hang out with such a warm, friendly bunch of guys, right? They'd feel safe to come out, right?


-------squiggly lines, black and white shot.... bunch of stuff that suggests I'm flashing back to a conversation 5 minutes ago ---------------------



Xasthur: Yeah, and it PISSES ME OFF the way people call stuff gay, like gay means shit, y'know?
Me: I don't care if some gay lads somewhere think it's ok, they don't speak for all of gaydom. It's fucking rude and offensive. Especially coming from a straight person.
Xasthur: And our mates are the worst culprits for it. It's fuckin relentless! Gay this, faggot that, blah blah blah. I really just want to tell them to shut up.
Cthulu: It can be very alienating, y'know?



-------screenwash ... our anguished faces.... bunch of stuff that suggests I'm coming back to the present conversation ---------------------


So me and Xasthur, having just contemplated, like dopes, why none of our other male friends had come out as gay or bi, look at each other, gobs slightly ajar, eyes rolling up to heaven, guilt already beginning to eat our souls....

Me: If I was a bloke, questioning my sexuality, I would NOT want to be hanging out with our mates
Xasthur: God. I never even thought of it that way. I genuinely thought because we're not assholes, because we're a nice bunch of people, that any of us would feel comfortable exploring our sexuality. We're a fairly progressive, left-wing, accepting bunch. We like abortions! We hate Bush! We couldn't possibly be homophobic! It just never quite occurred to me how alienating that thoughtless use of language could be.


This is it, you see. Someone uses 'gay' around their mates or family because it's fucking hip or whatever, and they think 'hey, they're not a gayer'. But isn't it possible that someone they love might be gay, bi or questioning, but because they live in a heteronormative sexdudegirl mecca, that they just haven't come out? Crimminy, even if a person can be 1 million percent certain the people they use this insult around are straight as fuckin Jack and Vera, there's a good chance that at some stage, they'll fuck up and use it unthinkingly around someone who'll get hurt because of their thoughtlessness. I've done stupid shit like that. I once did the tongue in the chin 'special' face to a woman with a son who had mental disabilities. I was joking about something else and forgot about her son. It was a horrible thing to do. As if the woman and her son don't have enough prejudice and bullshit barriers to deal with without me ridiculing people who are mentally disabled. I even have two family members with quite serious mental disabilities too. (hey, I'm not racist, some of my best friends are black!).

You think you'll never do something like that, y'know? And then you do. I've since tried to educate myself a little more around mental disabilities so that I don't just have stupid stereotypes rattling round my head. I don't do that shit on the sly with my friends anymore, so it's not a habit of mine. I try very hard to remember the humanity of every group it seems easy to ridicule. They become less funny then. OH TRAGIC. WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF MAI HILLAERIOUS JOKES ABOUT GAYS, IDIOTS and RAPE???HOW WILL I IMPRESS MA FRENZ?

Anyway, I digress.

This isn't very cerebral. I'm not even talking generally about why it's just not cool to use words like gay, faggot, pussy, sissy etc pejoratively. I'm talking about how in real life, right today, using this language could really hurt someone in your life, and could genuinely fuck their shit up. The world is homophobic enough, y'know? This may not be the biggest fucking barrier to equality, it may be a small thing, but it's still a thing, and it still SMACKS of homophobia, whether you like it or not.


There's plenty of other funny words in the urban dictionary.

You don't get it.

Once upon a time, I was hanging out with a couple of mates and the conversation got round to how we’d all been feeling pretty crappy of late. One of us in particular, let’s call em Lex, was carrying a very heavy load at the time, and started talking about feelings and sensations that I had not experienced. Stuff about dark places, fear of not coming out the other side of something, fear of causing serious damage to their body because of what was happening in their mind. My other friend, let’s call em Bob, who was with us had talked to me about these experiences at an earlier time, and I genuinely, at that time thought I had understood where Bob was at.

As Lex talked that evening, I could almost see Bob and Lex reaching out and connecting brains in a way that I couldn’t understand. I realised that it was because I hadn’t been down that road, that I couldn’t really get in there and share their experiences. Don’t get me wrong, like anyone, I’ve gone through some rough times, but you know what? It doesn’t mean I can claim to understand Depression. I don’t get it. I’ve known this theoretically before, I really have, I’ve known that I can’t claim to understand states of mental ill health unless I’ve been there, but I’d almost convinced myself that I could 'get it' because I’ve studied mental health, worked with people who have Depression, been friends with people who have it and even been pretty low at times myself.

This was shit of me, because it took away from the gravity of the experiences of people who suffer Depression. Did I convince myself I could understand it because I felt a little bit left out of the Depression gang? Did I think I could understand it because I had an egotistical desire to be ‘understanding’? Did I try to get in there with them so I could try and explain away other problems I had myself by flirting with the idea that I too suffered from mild depression? Whatever the reason, I was preoccupied with how the state of others related to me, and I wasn’t really, genuinely trying to see where they were at. I wasn’t trying to listen to them, and to see what support I could offer them in future. I was pretty much usurping their experience for my own ends.

I realised that day that it was only by momentarily shutting up and listening to Bob and Lex share their experiences, respond to one another and watch how they offered to help each other that I could get an idea. I came closer that evening than I ever have before to understanding something I hadn’t been through myself. It was a fucking revelation and I will be forever greatful that those two people trusted me enough to discuss it so openly in front of me and with me. Since then, I’ve been pondering the conversation and where it went. Did I speak too much? Should I have even mentioned my own stress in the conversation at all? Did I completely undermine their much more serious, frankly heartbreaking experiences by saying ‘but I get sad too’ at the end of the conversation?

Eh, yes. Yes I did. I’m an insensitive, arrogant shit.

But I'm going to learn from it.... (cue lesson learning, epilogue music...)

To be honest, I don’t mean to get into issues around mental health too much on this blog, as I am very lucky to have pretty much consistently good mental health myself and I don't really have many professional skills or knowledge of the area. I did want to share that experience though, because I think it’s helped me to understand a little why I, in my position of many privileges, might fail to understand the shit people have to go through who are subject to various negative experiences that I’m not.

I don’t understand what it’s like being Depressed. I want to bring this learning to other things that I don't get. I don't understand what it’s like having a disability. I haven’t been on the receiving end of discrimination because of my ethnicity, my skin colour, my sexuality, my education level or my postcode. I have repeatedly heard others say that it happens to them, but I haven't experienced it myself. Now, if I am anything other than utterly arrogant and in denial of my own privilege, it is my job is to BELIEVE people when they say that they experience bullshit or negativity because of their skin colour, disability, sexuality, economic status or whatever else, and SUPPORT them in whatever way they see fit to address the problem. If addressing the problem of racism involves me being told I’m a racist asshole, I’m gonna have to go ‘really? Shit? I’m so sorry. Do you mind talking to me about it, so I understand, so there’s less of a chance of me exhibiting racist assholery in the future?’

It is also my job not to ignore them when they highlight the issue, not to tell them what their problem actually is, not to tell them how they could make it better, and not to tell them how to do a better job of challenging others. It is my job to listen, and if asked, give my opinion, experience or advice.

Now, the old Superwombman twisteroo: You know what other form of discrimination this applies to? It begins with a G, and ends in and Ender, that's right! When a woman says something is sexist, try believing her. She's a human who has feelings and experiences, and knows what she's talking about. Contrary to what you imply when you say ‘that’s not sexism’ or ‘you don’t get the joke’, she’s probably not a humourless plank, a misguided fool or a lying harlot. Although you may not have intended it to be sexist, what you said was sexist- not you, you're not a big old sexist, but your words were. All these 'isms' have an uncanny ability to disguise themselves to those who aren't subject to it or actively trying to be aware of it, I understand that, most people do. That's why I reckon I'm gonna try to listen a bit more, believe a bit more, and try shit-hard to be aware of my priveleges over others.

So, in summary, if someone has an experience that you haven’t, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If someone says that something is crap, and you don't see the crapness of it, it doesn’t mean that they are wrong or misunderstood, it means you haven't looked through their eyes. If you have had a mildly similar symptom or experience to something they describe, it does not equate your experience to theirs (not being able to go somewhere because your foot hurts isn't the same as not being able to get into a pub because it's not wheelchair accessible.) If someone calls you on your shit, don't take it personally. Most of us aren't utter pricks, but we all make mistakes. It's how we behave when those mistakes are pointed out to us that matters. Be brave, take your right-on medicine and show some humility with your privilege.