Sucking the patriarchy’s… You know

I see the above phrase bandied around quite a lot these days. I’ve been thinking more and more about it – following this conversation with Kim (check out her blog by the way, it’s awesome).

I’ve always found myself recoiling from the phrase “real feminism”; people have told me that this has to do with the fact that deep inside, I know I’m “just another chick who loves the gilded cage [or some other, sexually-charged concept].”

*pout*

I’ve argued differently until I foamed at the mouth – I see nothing anti-feminist about accepting financial help from a male who’s money-savvy, for example – considering the fact that I’m about as money-savvy as a hamster. I’m people-savvy and lit-savvy – but I know my own limitations. I also don’t think this has anything to do with the fact that I’m female – if that’s what you’re thinking.

Since Kim and I were talking mainly about Tyra Banks – I’d also like to point out that I see nothing odd about women commidifying themselves in a commodity-driven culture. The culture itself may be pretty odd – but the people who live and die within that kind of structure – they will do the best they can to survive and succeed. “Life is sad, life is a bust, all ya can do, is do what ya must” – and all. Don’t blame Tyra, who at least has the guts to talk about cellulite (even though I consider her shows to be guilty pleasures), blame the world we live in. And even then – I believe things could be worse. Perhaps Natalia Vodianova is a better example here – is she better off as a supermodel, or as a poor chick living on the outskirts of Moscow somewhere? I asked this question to a group of girls who argued, rather meanly IMHO, that “models ought to know better.” After I raised the issue, you could hear a pin drop in the classroom, really. Not that I didn’t know where the girls were coming from – I did – especially since there are plenty of suffering Russian girls who do not possess Vodianova’s bone-structure, and really ought to have other avenues for success (and the Vodianovas of this world should have these choices as well, duh)… Nevertheless, the debate, at the time, struck me as one-sided and underinformed, and cruel, did I mention cruel?

I think that when we use the phrase “real feminism” – we often mean “perfect feminism.” I personally don’t know any “perfect feminists.” I know people who have striven to achieve this – the people who went on to embody another dreaded phrase: “former friends.” I think there is a very thin line between striving for perfection and turning facist, after all.

Of course, I speak from personal experience only. I’m just another fool. Speaking of fools – any one of them knows that feminism is a very diverse movement – with capitalist and neo-marxist members, with granola-munching lesbian grandmas and cookie-baking housewives and tough-minded business executives defining themselves, at least in some small part, through “the f-word.” And sometimes arguing over the definition.

Personally, I think the only people who trucky suck the patriarchy’s…. tee hee hee… are the ones who, deep inside, feel that women should be punished for being women. Like obscenity – you know these people when you see them. And you feel sad for them. At least I do.

with special thanks to Mark, who’s letting me use his computer, while the fate of my own computer hangs in the balance

Happy 11th Birthday

brother

To the bestest boy in the dark world and wide. May he grow up repeating none of my mistakes – and reaping only the benefits of our family’s genetic code. May he grow to be as wise as Gandalf and as cunning as Till Eulenspiegel. May he have good health, good friends, good beer, and infinite luck with the ladies (or one particular lady he may come to fancy).

I will never forget the day he was born – I saw him held up behind a glass screen by a grinning candy-striper, screeching out an aria – the day my life changed, our life changed.

Mnogaya leta.

Bash my clever little head in

pritikhlo

“It’s Quieted Down” by Nikolai Nikanorovich Dubovskoii. 1890. The State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow.

Before my eyelids come unglued – I know what the day will be like. If the day is bad, the pain in my head and heart start immediately, the second after the alarm clock’s depth-charge disrupts the blood-warm sea of sleep. If the day is good, my chest feels light, this means that no bird has perched on top of me all night – pecking at my mind.

I know what the day will be like – but I have no control over the way it may turn. The moment when the alarm clock goes off is all I have. A second of indecision on part of the gods. This sounds stupid – I can’t even explain it – and I wonder if Oedipus must have felt the same way at some point or another. I wonder if he was handsome – I reach out to touch him in my dreams. I wonder why he visits me so often – him and Job, and Sappho, and John Lennon, and the nameless.

I am blue. In principle, I like the colour – the blue of my father’s eyes, the blue sky over a field of rye. But when your soul turns blue, it’s sort of like when your skin turns blue – unhealthy. It’s not the blue of my father’s eyes, it’s not the blue sky over a field of rye – it’s the blue of hypothermia and frozen corpses at the morgue. I’m trying to help myself – but it’s like being stuck inside a swamp – which part of me do I pull out first? Does it matter? Can I even do it? The swamp squelches around me, and it holds me in place when the bird comes to peck. The swamp is my bed, my work-desk, my corner table at the coffee shop. I can’t seem to leave it behind.

I have horrible and beautiful dreams. Last night, I dreamt I inherited a house off East Campus. The house had many windows, doors, crooked stairs, cracked mirrors, tinkling chandeliers. The previous owner of the house left a secret – a code with numbers – crack the code, and you will find the house’s many hiding places, and what is hiding in them. The word for hiding place is tainik in Russian – it kept playing in my head, a one-word aria. The phone rang and a melodious female voice read out the code in numbers. Ask the voice to repeat itself, and it would turn monstrous, and go through the numbers again – but the implications of what it was doing seemed very different.

I said – “I don’t want to find this house’s secrets. I don’t want to know what’s hidden under which floorboard. I don’t want that voice in my head, saying 103 – 99 – 95 – 99 – 99 – 99! I want to the phone to stop ringing, I don’t want to listen.” But the phone kept ringing, and the numbers pressed on. I woke up and sang “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” to shake off this feeling of dread – and I noticed that when my face arranges itself into a genuine smile it feels sore and strange.

I’m an aspiring storyteller – but my yarn has grown tangled and worn. Nothing I write takes definitive shape – it’s like trying to chisel something profound out of a rock, and having the entire thing crumble at your feet. I want to take up knitting – if only to savour the process of creating something, anything really. My head is heavy with the weight of my own unpublished ideas – people reassure me and tell me that I’m still very young, but my head doesn’t respond, it still makes my spine crumple.

But I’m trying. I’m trying very hard. Even when I’m so sad that the day collapses onto itself, trapping me between its own extremities. I’m trying.