Pie Lord

NIGHT- Ext.

ME

(run to the edge of a body of water, moonlit, and toss my phone into the dark)

*********************************

I have to get ready for work soon, and I am also putting off cleaning, because I don't feel like it. I feel like eating the blueberry and peach pie the Russian made yesterday and curling up with a book or a movie. But I like my job, and I like a clean apartment, so you see, I am at an impass. I have to start making lists again, and sticking to them. I feel off kilter, and I know it is from having my daily movements and routines dictated or commented on by someone else. Not that the Russian forces me to change, but everything is just less instinctual.

I miss my friends. I miss being the fifth wheel sometimes.

Sexssay

I have been reading a book by Catherine MacKinnon called Feminism Unmodified. It is the first feminist literature that has really made me think that perhaps my attitudes toward feminism are destructive, or at least passive in a way that makes me uncomfortable. It has convinced me solidarity, or a sisterhood of sorts, is important. I used to feel that how every woman constructs her sense of personhood, their sense of their own identity and her claim to dignity and respect from others is personal and private process. I am not sure if I feel this way anymore. I think that this is how it should be, but I am no longer sure if to just plunge ahead and live your life with no thought to how the world actually is, to how it has been, is the right thing to do.

I got to thinking about this because I was thinking about whether sex is a private or public thing, or both, and if it is both, how it works. On a personal level, I was wondering how it is that I can role play, and submit, and get to a place that is impossible for me to get to in a non sexual context because it would be harmful to my sense of self and downright degrading. I would never allow myself to be slapped or spanked or bitten or bound. I would have to be coerced. But if I put it away in a box labeled SEX in my brain, an entirely different set of feelings is provoked by those kinds of acts. Great feelings. So that exists. I exist and I do these things and feel the way I feel about them. I am one woman. There are others like me, and there are many more that are not like me. What we do in bed is really a private thing, and individual thing.

So, there’s that. But I also think that there are important connections between sex and dignity, sex and respect, sex and identity, sex and economics, sex and entertainment… and that these connections exist in a more direct way for women. I say this because there are far more women in sex work than men and because there are sluts and ho’s and the equivalent term for men either doesn’t exist or comes with a different set of baggage. I say this because the personal and individual act of sex speaks to a women’s sense of self respect, and respect from her partner, to her sense of dignity, to her identity in a pretty important way.

There are a mess of issues brought to mind by thinking about sex in this more public and general way. One, that if the connection between sex and all of those other things is more direct for women, they should have power over themselves as workers, over labels or what those labels mean, and over the relationship between sex and dignity and sex and respect. The problem is that they don’t. We don’t. Second, if we don’t have power and if sex is really connected to all of these things, than it is very difficult and very much not a given that women have control over or access to the process of self determination, or the construction of the self. This is not purely because of sex, maybe because of gender, but mostly it pokes holes in my thinking that sex can have its own little box and I can do what I want there and it doesn’t affect anything. Third, and this is a problem that I haven’t quite figured out how to communicate, has to do with the fact that the social world we all participate in changes us and affects how we perceive ourselves and so how we construct that self. Dignity and respect, for example, are not entirely individually determined things, and if sex is linked to them, then there is a public aspect to it as well.

So, as a woman, and an individual, is it problematic for me to think of my sexual activities the way that I do? It’s not as though what I put in one box ever really stays there and don’t inform other aspects of my life. Maybe that is what makes me nervous. I wonder what other people think. I'd like to know.

I have some other questions. Like, for instance, is it inconsistent of me to be grossed out by the Camp Bud advertising campaign but not by a strip club? This weekend, the Russian, his friend Pt from NYC, JL, and I went to a strip club and I was not uncomfortable in the least. I was actually thinking how much fun it would be to have a strip club, run in a non hierarchical way. Your game face would be a smile, because it would be fun to work there, not a pout or whatever it is that the strippers were doing while they were dancing (it was very poorly lit, so it was hard to even make out what they looked like). The Camp Bud advertisement, on the other hand, gives me the willies. The Russian says they both commodify women and women’s sexuality, which is true, but I feel as though there is something disingenuous about the Bud campaign. Obviously, it’s advertising, which is just that... It’s just that women in sex work are selling sex. They use their bodies to sell…their bodies. I guess that is what models do too, and yet, I feel as though a stripper knows what she is selling and the Camp Bud girl might not have gone into modeling thinking she was going to be rubbing herself against a sweating beer bottle. Or that she would be taking part in a subtle and pervasive system of using women’s bodies and sexuality to convince men that they can have access to those bodies if they drink enough Budweiser. Of the million and one problems that I see with that, one is that it removes the woman in question of any autonomy. It seems to say to the men that it is geared towards, this beer will give you permission, just in case you thought you might need it, to touch any titties you want, to access this woman in a red mini skirt or more frightening, any woman. That is what Bud can do for you. I am not saying that men don’t have access to women in strip clubs, or that it is the stripper who gets the majority of the money for that access and that that inequality is okay, but just that the transaction is straightforward, and I am much more comfortable with that.

Just for fun, and to mess up everything I've been talking about by posting a sexy photo:


And because Bby suggested I write a sex blog.

Things to...

not try at home: bikini waxing. Ow.

Baby Talk

NIGHT - Ext.

ME

I think I want to be a baby

YOU

That'd be alright

ME

I'd learn 15 languages but I wouldn't have to use them just because I knew them. I could just cry and gurgle and smile.

YOU

But no one understands that. Why do you think colic is such a headache and rage inducing mystery?

******************************************

What!? Another post? But Vnss, you have so many other things to do. This is true. I made a list of them this morning. But maybe I am not the multi-tasker I always thought I was. I want to think about this problem I have with not talking. Sometimes I don't want to talk, or I don't have anything to say, or I don't want to share what I have to say. I can understand how this can be difficult for people, and by people I mean the Russian. But for anyone. I think my sister finds it hard sometimes too. It must be, to know there is something and then to have it not communicated to you, as if I don't trust you enough, or it was mean, or that I am holding back, or I thought it was too stupid to mention. This must be difficult, namely because the other person doesn't know the reason I am not talking. It is usually as simple as there is nothing to say, or I don't think whatever it was that passed through my mind was worth it, but they don't know that.

In truth, sometimes that isn't true, sometimes I don't think it is worth the hassle of responding to something that I think is going to inspire a conflict that I don't think is worth having. Or if it is worth having, I am not ready to have it because I don't know how I feel about it or what I think of it. Simultaneously, I do feel something else. I don't want to defend how I respond to things. I don't have to talk about everything, or respond to everything just because people expect it or desire it, and I don't have to feel guilty about not meeting those expectations. I do, anyway, but...

When I was in Spain with my mother, I would often have this little dilemma in my head, about talking or not talking. And I realised over time, and this is what makes me think that I should communicate more, that people around me can sense that I am having this argument with myself, because the tension escapes me and affects them, through my body language, my facial expression and what I do say and how I say it. My mother is the same way, but with less control over her verbalizations. I didn't always want to have a hard conversation with her when we were walking but we would end up behaving as if we had had it anyway, except with no resolution. When you spend that much time with someone, in the end, talking always seems better. I guess it is the same with living with someone.

It's a question of judgment though, I think, and if I don't even have the to talk or not to talk argument in my head, I think I should be able to keep my mouth shut just because I want to.

Why do I occupy the fence all the time? How do I learn how to be bold and right or bold and wrong?

We made hamburgers, or the Russian made hamburgers last night, with Kettle Chips. Delicious. Though we had a lamb, pork, beef mix, and I think all beef would be best. Would have been better without fruit flies everywhere? Is it me that smells like overripe fruit or are there just way more fruit flies than usual? Gross me out. Such a busy weekend coming up. J sent me money for an Osheaga ticket to see Josh Ritter. Wow. Continually overwhelming. The Russian's friend is staying with us this weekend, as well, and it is Bby's birthday. We are having some peeps over on Saturday, as well, to housewarm.

Nice to be busy. But I should get to!

Deadgirl

I spent the day with J today, wandering around, very relaxed, ending up in the Old Port to have coffee with Bby and P. I drank a lot of different things today, finally found an excellent matcha smoothie which satisfied me. Met CM, the head of Forward House, this morning, and it was an excellent meeting. He has such an extraordinary capacity for speaking without expectation, for sharing I guess. I tried to talk about my recent desire to try and communicate on different terms with people, treating logic and reason, and emotion, as if they are equally valid and valuable. Not to say that I think people should run their lives ralphing their emotions onto others with no prep, but I do think it would create a kind of compassion and care for other people that is often lacking when you approach something from a rational and logical perspective only. I think it lends what could be an important and wrenching conversation a sense of detachment that is destructive or at least can obscure.

This didn't come out of nowhere, obviously. I was thinking of a conversation the Russian and I had about this movie we saw on Friday, Deadgirl. The plot is: two teenage boys, outcasts, who find a living, but unkillable nubile and naked girl chained to a table in an abandoned asylum. One wants to use her as a sex slave (and punching bag, as she can't be killed), and the other wants to free her, or save her, but is confused by the fact that this bad guy is his best friend. Goriness, rape, and violence ensue.

Granted, it is an awesome premise, and I liked the movie, I really did. But there was definitely something fundamentally disturbing about it. Beyond the rape, and the violence these boys inflict on this monster, who may or may not be a woman, or was once a woman, what really cut me was the way in which the movie completely silenced the female sex. The undead girl can't speak, she can only growl and hiss and fight back (not enough to free herself, but enough for the movie to have some intense and creative gore), and the only other female characters are a pretty, popular girl with no character except as a fantasy object for the good kid, and a woman the evil kid and another guy try to kidnap to create another deadgirl. The latter's brief appearance is actually awesome, but exists as a kind of aside to the narrative, or maybe, and this is what I hope, as a reminder that not all women are cum repositories or trophies, just in case anyone in the audience was getting the wrong idea.

This silencing made it much easier for me, as the audience, to accept the premise that the deadgirl was a thing, a monster, and not a girl, not a human. And this must have been even easier for male members of the audience. This, in turn, facilitated thinking about all the male oriented aspects of the film, and forgetting that they were all based on the subjugation of women. So I found myself talking about the teenage male social hierarchy and how the deadgirl becomes a means for the outcasts to improve their station, and how her body is a literal representation of teenage male desire/fantasy (or male desire more generally, regardless of age), male friendships, and the importance of power, dominance and ownership to all of these things.

I think the movie was pretty great in that I got a sense of all of those things. And yet, and yet, where are the women in all of this? Women are the people (and can I just emphasize that they are in fact, people, voiceless or not, vacuous or not) that those hierarchies are built on, they are the people being fought over and dominated and owned and fantasized about and desired. And that this does not define them, they are not defined against something else (a male something else). So when I was talking about this movie, I didn't want the Russian to relate to the deadgirl more than the teenage boys, I wanted him to relate to me. I wanted to be able to communicate the feeling of relating to the deadgirl, the fictional undead girl, instead of to the fictional teenage boys, and I wanted him to feel that. I didn't want to talk about it in way writing this demands me to, in a logical and rational way. I wanted to communicate that I didn't think it was right, that it didn't feel right, to talk about this movie the way we were talking about it. I told him that I wished I could slice open part of me and part of him, and press the raw parts together, and transfer the sick feeling the movie and the resulting conversation gave me. It was a feeling of voicelessness, not because I couldn't speak, but because the words were incapable of communicating what I wanted to say. I wanted to speak with something else.

The Russian said something really interesting, though maybe I am not remembering it correctly. It was about the impossibility of relating to another person or their experience or soemthing close to that. "Except, this movie did that." And it's true, it did, kind of, for both the teenage boys and for the feeling that I have had, sometimes acutely, and sometimes in a more foggy way, that as a woman, I am more accessible to men than men are to each other, as in, they think they have access to me that is their right, because they are male and I am female. Film is amazing that way. Or I guess, art is kind of amazing that way.

Anyway, it was a horror movie, and it scared me. Scared me good. I wonder what other women in the audience felt.

Ehm. Since the last post, I have traveled to Spain, met the Russian's family in Calgary, moved in with said Russian, been funemployed, gotten a job at Forward House, and graduated. Blanks to be filled in.

I have no time for a real post, but I love this video. She is so strong and small. Also reminds me of my sister dancing to The Emperor's New Clothes.

Countdown

YOU

But what about the normals? What about all the people that are just okay and not exceptional. What do they do?

ME

Don't know.

YOU

I guess being exceptional doesn't mean driven. Okay-ness could be coupled with ambition, and you could have exceptional people living in a 2 1/2 with only a blood stained mattress and a three legged chair to call their own, working for Mr. B-.

ME

You shouldn't focus on material possessions. They don't make you happy.

****************************************

Signed a lease with The Russian. It's official, we are moving in together. I know he doesn't have a good track record with the living together, and that I will be broke and jobless when I get back from Spain, and that we will have to live together for a month in his miniature den of filth (I exaggerate, a little), but it still seems like a good idea. And that is a comforting thought. Just have to make it through the five week separation without him, I don't know, not even sure what it is that I am afraid of him doing. But whatever it is, I hope he doesn't do it, because it will be a thing, a hurtful thing that will require reparation.

In other news, going to be a certified archivist in about two weeks, that's pretty exciting. But I am not so excited about it. I don't really feel capable of taking on a professional position. Iapply for them nonetheless, but so far Emory has sent me a polite letter telling me thanks, but no thanks, and I haven't heard from Washington, so I take they are giving their $6000 stipend to someone that is not me. But I will remain hopeful until Monday.

Something that is getting my juices flowing is thinking about opening up my own business. Not in the archiving business, but film distribution. Bby and I talked about it yesterday and it seems like an extraordinary amount of work, but interesting and worth it and something I could feel passionate about. I am going to research it more thoroughly to see if there is space for that kind of business in Montreal. I think the answer is yes, because I am always finding movies that I wish would be here and which never are. And if I like them, there must be other people who would like them too.

Anyway, it is an interesting time right now. Have to move, have to buy a bunch of stuff for Spain, have to finish all my school shit, and really all I want to do is read about film distribution, hang out with my peeps, spend days in bed with The Russian, and celebrate the little dude's birthday on Sunday with my family (The Russian is coming! Meeting the folks! Gah!).

I feel pretty relaxed, although I guess the fact that my eye has been jumping for about a week and I am not sleeping all that well probably means I am just not processing my stress all that well, but...

At least I don't have to think about Electronic Records Systems after next week. That'll be sweet.

I don't really have a good photo to post, but this is something that Bby forwarded to me the other day which tugged at my heart a little: http://www.billythekiddocumentary.com/