If Women aren’t attracted to Men, why aren’t there more Lesbians?

So according to this insightful post on Craigslist, Women aren’t attracted to Men.

So I am sitting around hating on idiocy, and the patriarchy tonight. In a right foul mood essentially. I have me a block of chocolate here and I am considering whether or not a bottle of port may not supplement the chocolate nicely. Then I get to read this sort of DRIVEL. Trust me, its not sweetening my disposition one iota.

I don’t buy the bull shit.
Heterosexual women dig on men. In the immortal words of my favourite minion “They Love TEH COCK”. If they don’t like YOU, then you are probably too big of a jerk to be worth a relationship, and not hot enough to be worth a one night stand. Deal with it. Make yourself nicer. Even uglee, poor, non-successful/popular boys get laid if they are nice people.
I mean, really nice people. Not just a self-pitying, deceitful NiceGuyTM thats gonna be my ‘bestest friend’ until I come out and you realise that you’re chances of getting into my pants are ACTUALLY NON-EXISTANT, and so you BLOCK MY IM YOU MISERABLE FUCK. (Er… so only a little personal bitterness sneaking out there)

There are some women that are not physically attracted to men. Its true. They are called LESBIANS, and they aren’t going to sleep with you for status or being popular either, you idiot.

The idea that wives are just prostitutes by another name seems to be an old favourite among many of the men I have had contact with over the years. I used to read a forum for Married Men who couldn’t get their Wives to Put Out. Essentially, the majority of them were absolute MISOGYNISTIC DOUCHE BAGS who were of the opinion that since they ‘kept’ their wife financially she was meant to have sex, whenever he wanted.

It doesn’t WORK LIKE THAT. If you think it does, then NO WONDER SHE WONT SLEEP WITH YOU.

A lesbian friend of mine recently said: “Damn it, I wish there were more bloody homo’s. I haven’t been laid in ages. Maybe we should start ‘indoctrinating’ school children like the right-wing nutjobs say we want to.”

So… You may not be alone in the opinion that too many women aren’t attracted to men, but trust me… LESBIANS DON’T AGREE WITH YOU.

I’m done ranting. I think I’ll go get that port now.

Retail Blues

So I’ve started work in a Newsagency… the money is good, the boss is flexible, and the work is light. I am also brain-numb from the mindless tedium of it, after only a shift and a half.

So my boss is a really ancient Chinese guy. I find him quite amusing, and he has taken a shine to me, which is good, since one of the other girls said he was really pissed about the employment agency sending a guy. O_o It was only when I arrived that he realised I was a female ‘Rhian’ not a male ‘Ryan’.
He is not a big fan of my short hair, and blokey polo-tops. I am meant to dress modestly… he told me so when I was hired… no ’sexy v-necks’, no ’short skirts’, ‘flat shoes, and a big smile’ are my uniform.
It seems I am also not meant to dress like a man either, I am meant to walk the impossible ‘demure but still attractive’ line. Frankly, I couldn’t be arsed.

So anyway the other girls employed at the Newsagency are all slim, extremely pretty, and have long curly hair. One has the prettiest strawberry curls I have seen in my life. He may only hire female ANU students, but he certainly isn’t racist, as one of the other girls there is a brown person of as yet undetermined descent. I think she may be aboriginal or torres straight islander.
Needless to say, I feel extremely awkward, and tall, and generally enormous, cumbersome, and out of place. My standard “Confronted by the Overwhelming Gender Conformity Expected by the Patriarchy, Oh Fuck I don’t Belong” feeling.

My last shift I just kind of distracted myself with dusting, and rearranging, and learning the computer system and such, and was blown out by Chin, my boss, offering me a store management position at the end of my first day there.

Today I was left to reflect. For hours. With nothing else to do except stare at the ‘18+ Male Interest’ section, and wonder why, oh why the YOUTH edition of LOTL was sitting next to Penthouse, and Playboy. Then I realised that it probably never occurred to Chin that a magazine about lesbians is for anything other than to please men, and he had probably never opened the mag to realise that there is no explicit content, and so no real reason to have it in the adults section.
I asked one of the other girls and she said that she had been slowly moving the mag across the section, and now it was on the outer edge, and she was hoping by the next stocktake to have it across in the ‘alt lifestyle’ section with the tattoo magazines and such.

So all in all, I am in a really bad mood tonight. I don’t mind being called sweetheart, and darling all day. I can deal with that, that is Australian Men after all. But enforced laziness. Standing, doing nothing, for HOURS?
I’ll go mad. I will. Every time I left my place behind the counter I was sent back. No dusting, or remerchandising for me today. Ooh no. My fragile little brain may not cope if I work too hard, or try to learn more than one item in a day. I should stand behind the counter and do nothing, to ensure I don’t get stressed out.
Seriously. They are only teaching me one thing per shift. So last shift I was shown the POS, which is a piece of cake, and I only had to be shown once, cos I have been in retail for 4 years, you know. Today they taught me the lottery POS, which a different but similarly idiot-proof system. Tomorrow, they might teach me… oh I don’t know… how the dry cleaning system works. (I watched the other girl do it today… its as simple as writing down the number of garments and tearing off the appropriate number of tickets).

So anyway, I liberated a copy of LOTL from the Porn Display, and plan on chopping it up to make pretty pretty posters for my bedroom walls. I wonder how long I will last in this job. I really can’t imagine it will be long.

Todays Random WTF?

So one of the search terms that has lead people to this blog over the last few days has been:

middle age male style advice

I find this so amusing. Ask any of my fashion-aware friends, and they will tell you I am the last person on the planet you should be asking for style advice.

Walking in the Dark

I walked home from a friends house the other night. I stepped out of the door at five minutes past midnight. There was no fluttering about me walking home alone. There was no instruction to message or call them to say I got home safe. There was just a hug goodbye and a farewell. A trust that I will get home safe, and that my own judgement about whether to walk or if I should get a taxi, was sound.

I am lucky. I have never been harassed or assaulted while outside at night. I have been harassed in daylight hours, on the street, and at work and assaulted in my own home, but ‘unsafe’ places and times have never caused me trouble. This puts me in the position of feeling quite comfortable walking around in the middle of the night, but avoiding certain places during the day. Outside I’d rather it be night than day, but at home sometimes I sleep with the light on cos I am afraid of the dark.

I know that one reason I have less trouble at night is because the way I dress and move is very masculine, so in the dark chances are people don’t even twig I am female, so I am not prone to the same harassment. In day light hours my gender is clear, and so I am open to harassment. I’ve even been kissed by customers while working at MAC1, or offered money for sex while dressed in my white shirt, and black pants at Dick Smith Electronics.
As for being assaulted in my own home… me and the other 2/3 of women that are raped by trusted friends or family members. I am not alone in that experience at all.

I sometimes wonder if being outside alone at night is really as dangerous as we are led to believe, or if this is just another example of trying to control women’s movement and freedom.
In my experience, the place I am unsafe is any place where there is someone that wants to hurt or frighten me. It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, or who else is around.

Feminst Men: Gay, Predatory or Whipped, right?

Hugo has a post up about the anti-feminist perspective of feminist men.

Anti-feminists assume several things about men in the feminist movement. Frequently, we’re labeled as “gay”. As any sociologist will tell you, “gay” is code for “not a real man”. To the anti-feminists, “real men” (whom they assume are all heterosexual) could not possibly embrace an ideology of radical gender justice.

Of course, if we do seem to be happily hetero, the attack shifts: we’re sexual predators, wolves in sheep’s clothing, using feminism as a tool to seduce vulnerable young women. Our feminism isn’t real, merely a facade.

If we’re married to a woman and evidently monogamous — and still committed to feminism — then we must be “whipped.” Sometimes I think folks hear me say “I’m in a passionately feminist marriage” and they imagine that I’m married to an emasculating tyrant who only stays with me because I’m her sniveling “yes” man! That’s certainly YM’s implication when she riffs about my following the “party line.”

This post struck home for me. I know men that are feminist, and was horrified the first time one of my dear friends was accused of being a sexual predator using his ‘feminism’ and his position of power to get laid. I reacted with a considerable amount of fury, and told the speaker not to ever utter that kind of crap in my presence again. It just never occurred to me that people can see it that way, and now to realise that its actually a common bit of crap slung about disturbs me. I have had a guy try to ‘fake feminism’ to get me into bed. It was amusing, and hopelessly transparent. I think that it is pretty easy to tell if someone is ‘faking it’ to get you into bed.

I hate that people think so little of men.
I get accused of man hating on a fairly regular basis… the whine of “I feel like you hate me, like you are lumping me in with NiceGuys(tm) and all the other arseholes out there” drives me nuts, and tends to come up in most new friendships with men that aren’t actively feminist. I’m not the one that says that men can’t control their dicks, that they will lie and manipulate just to get a girl into bed, that they are just overgrown children that need looking after, that they shouldn’t be allowed near children cos they are all predators.

I think that societies structure needs to change to stop teaching these lessons to men and women, about their ‘place’ in life. I blame the patriarchy, not men. And yet, the ones that blame men, and suspect men of all manner of animalistic evil aren’t the ones accused of man-hating and misandry. Feminists are.

National Novel Writing Month

So I have a recently implemented policy of doing new things. For example, singing Karaoke at the gay club, which was meant to happen last Thursday, but didn’t, so instead I made a public announcement from a pillar in the Canberra Centre. (Same sort of thing, yeah, public speaking, kind of).

It’s part of my plan for personal development. Defeating my fears, etc. So anyway, on the list for the near future are such things as coding an F/OSS application, and riding a bicycle around Lake Burley Griffin, (I am terrified of riding bicycles to the point of having panic attacks, so this one will be in the company of a trusted friend, me thinks).

SO ANYWAY, my mind has been littered with unfinished stories and novels since I was in primary school. SO I have signed up for NaNoWriMo.
They sent me an instructive email, instruction 3 is:

Tell everyone you know that you’re writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who’ve had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

So here it is. Awesome new book will be available for reading at the end of November.
I will probably spend the better part of December editing it, so Awesome, Edited new book will be available in January.
I’m using a story I came up with when I was a teenager, and never finished, and subsequently lost in a HDD failure. It will be a teen fantasy novel cos thats what I mostly read.
It will no doubt be waaaaaaaaaaaay less heteronormative than the original though. That love affair between the two chicks that I replaced by making one of them a boy is coming BACK. MWHA HA HA

Disjointed Feminism

There is a fabulous post about Feminist Identification over at Feministe from their wonderful guest blogger, La Lubu.

She has a comprehensive list of ways in which she feels a disconnect from the feminist movement, and it got me to thinking about my own identity, and ways in which I overlap with the feminist movement, and other ways in which I feel alienated from mainstream feminism.

I have privileges. I am white, and able-bodied. I conform to a mainstream beauty standard. I am relatively educated, and so have a greater economic and class mobility than average. Parts of the mainstream feminist movement that mean a lot to me include area’s relating to my career in business, reclaiming my sexuality, and fighting against sexual violence. I have the privilege of not needing to worry about various issues, such as the rights of the disabled, the very young, the very old, people of colour, including Indigenous peoples and immigrants, the very poor, the homeless, the ill-educated.

I feel myself growing more aware of the marginilisation of the minorities I belong to as time goes on. I am queer. I am pagan. I have a mental illness.
In turn it makes me eager to address issues that I have the privilege of ignoring, that I can leave invisible if I so desire, in empathy for those times when I wonder “What about lesbians?” in response to a post.

Here are the area’s of feminism that I would like to see more focus on in my blogging, because if I don’t… who will?

Queer Rights in Australia.
Myself and people like me can’t get married. I know some of my straight and bisexual friends have taken a stand and pledged to never get married until the legal rights within marriage are extended to all citizens, including same-sex marriages. The overturning of the Civil Unions legislation here in the ACT occured on August 13, 2004. Myself and a friend are planning a rally and a protest for the anniversary of that date in 2008.

Indigenous Australia.
I am not aboriginal. I am not close friends with anyone who is aboriginal. I am wondering if I personally know anyone that is aboriginal. Maybe not. Indigenous Australians get the short end of the stick here in so many ways. Communities in Central Australia are horribly marginalised and neglected. Health care and support for Indigenous Australians is a fucking disgrace. I honestly don’t know how anyone that knows of the issues facing Aboriginal Australia, and has power to help but doesn’t can sleep at night. So I’ll step up to bat to raise awareness. I’m ignorant… very ignorant, and I view their issues through the lens of my privilege. I want to help though, and try to help I will.

Children
I don’t have kids. i probably never will have kids. I like kids. Even teenagers. I have a few friends that are pretty young. I try to mentor the teenage boys I know, but I suspect they look at me and see breasts, not a big brother, so sometimes I wonder how effective I am.
Children are the least powerful, and most vulnerable members of any community. They deserve our respect, love, care and attention. I think that every adult in the community has a responsibility to ensure the safety and protection of children around them. The most hurtful thing I have heard from adults who were aware of my problems at home growing up is “We didn’t step in, cos it wasn’t our place”.
I know that people carp on about parental rights, but parental rights don’t exist. Parental responsibility does, and if it is not fulfilled someone must help those children, because most children cannot help themselves.

Links to blogs that deal with these issues are more than welcome in the comments, cos I am always after more information!
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, but simply three area’s that I am interested in focussing on for the foreseeable future. I will also continue blogging about sexual violence, the representation of women in comics and pop culture media, and other issues that Cheerful Megalomaniac is known for covering, this is just a reminder to me to cover things that are of great interest to me, but that I tend to neglect because information is a little harder to locate… after all, these are issues marginalised by the mainstream feminist community.

This post is also a call out to anyone that feels marginalised or invisible in response to a post. Call me on it. Make me see when I have neglected to address how you may be effected by the issue being discussed.

Reclaiming the Night: Aftermath!

Reclaim the Night was awesome!

It was pouring down rain, and so I was worried that no one would show up, but lots of people still came! I have many bad photo’s saved to my 2MP mobile phone, but thankfully Amanda has kindly agreed to let me have a copy of the photo’s she took with her much more impressive digital camera. I will create a photogallery and link to it from here.

Unfortunately the only name that I can actually remember from the panel of speakers is Kate Lundy’s. The panel was interviewed by someone from the ABC. An actress apparently, but unsurprisingly (given I don’t watch television) I didn’t recognise her. There was an Aboriginal Artist, a Islamic Studies researcher from the ANU, and the head of the Youth Coalition there too. I was really impressed by the artists words regarding recent interventions in the Aboriginal communities in central Australia. I felt she was the charismatic speaker, and found myself nodding along with everything she said. The other speakers were very good as well, although not nearly as memorable.

The march was great. The police accompanied us, and there was quite a lot of bystanders watching us. I was amused to see a guy trying to block his girlfriends view of the march. I watched them as I passed, with her trying to see around him, and him standing in her way, and trying to distract her attention. It made me extremely curious, and wondered what their story was.

Over all, a fabulous night. I made new friends, which always pleases my social little soul, and enjoyed myself greatly.

The Relay of Light for Reclaim the Night!

I was tagged to run in the Relay of Light for Reclaim the Night by Imaginif! This is part of the Alternative Energy Movement to End Sexual Violence, which I had actually not heard of until now, but I’m more than happy to participate, cos I think that it is a great idea!

Here’s the low down:

Join our relay to end sexual violence and help shine the light on an area of darkness:

Take a photo of your light and post it to your blog this evening (October 26 2007). Light up the night with a light march (it’s sort of like a light snack!).

Link to at least one other Light Marcher so that a relay effect takes place across the blogoshpere - a Light March.

Stumble or Digg this post, and yours, so that the Light March covers as much ground as possible.

Imaginif … there was a world without sexual violence.
WE can make it happen. I cannot do it alone.

So I am going to pass the baton to:
Arielladrake
Abyss2Hope

Baby, you’re not a jobseeker! You’re a HEAT SEEKER!

Ah, immortal words from “Love Theme for Centrelink” by The Bedroom Philosopher.

I thought that I would write a quick post to give credit, where credit is due. My job network provider is IPA, and I think they must be under new management because I have found them much more helpful than last time I dealt with them 3 years ago.

Job Search Training is usually the biggest waste of time, but this time the consultants all seem to be very keen to actually be helpful. There is a bunch of bureacratic bullshit that I have to put up with; for example cos my resume and letter writing skills are so good already I have to provide hand written copies of all my ‘drafts’ too prove that I am not getting someone else to do it for me, and I still have to complete exercises that involve me writing fake resume’s for people that don’t exist and so on.
However, the trainer is a lovely woman who gave me a long lunch break, and an early mark yesterday because she seems to agree with me that its pretty much a waste of my time being there. She is flexible about what I spend my time doing (for example, she actually allows her job seekers to apply for jobs while at training! ZOMG! HORROR!)

And now I am running late for ‘training’… Oh NOES no long lunch for me today.