Natalia A.

I think Bukowski’s overrated, but…

There is thing where I live, and I believe amongst all lower class people around the planet.

If the woman gets hit once and leaves, she deserves pity and help. I’ve seen and helped several woman myself when their man hit them for the first time. I’ve seen poor people take what little money they have to help the woman.

But if she stays the philosophy is fuck her. She must want it.

There is a look in a woman’s face when she doesn’t want to be hit. They look pissed, scared, and like they want to cry. But the women who stay and take it, they use it as attention, and don’t look like they are want to cry. You have to see it, words are not precise enough to describe it.”

I guess the part wherein abusive environments condition people into believing that they deserve bad treatment has gone completely unnoticed by the people this guy is talking about.

And folks are complimenting each other’s metaphors in the comments. I think they’re all guys too. Oh, man.

This post also made me wonder. When I was being molested, I thought I deserved it. In fact, it took me years to understand that I was not the guilty party, and even know I still have twinges of horrible embarrassment, as if I had caused everything. Guilt enables abusers, as well as the people who stand by and, even though they might notice something, will keep their mouths shut.

I don’t think it’s a class thing at all. I think it has a lot to do with the inferior position that women tend to occupy, and the cyclical nature of abuse.

His follow-up is also interesting,

“This is about people who use the threat of force to control. And anyway you look at it, that leads to nothing but suffering.”

I think the desire for power has a lot to do with it, but then again, you also have to look at what feeds said desire, insecurity. Particularly the way some men need to prove to everyone that they’re real tough, even though they’re quaking on the inside. So what do they do? They beat the shit out of someone who is physically weaker, usually a woman. And the woman stays, because deep inside, she feels like scum and thinks she has earned this treatment. And so it goes.

Decision of the Month

I think I want to write a romance novel. Not a traditional bodice-ripper or kink-fest, but a noirish kind of story, psychologically perverse, with murderers and strippers in the background. The leading man is inspired by someone pretty famous, but I’m not telling who.

I’ve been so hung up on writing “the next Great American novel,” that I stopped having fun. I need to go back to a state wherein writing is not so tedious and mannered.

Fuck Fashion

This model died whilst starving herself to gain acceptance by the likes of Anna Wintour.

The incident was not widely publicized in the U.S., and I found out about it more than a month after it happened, through a Russian-language Live Journal community devoted to feminist issues.

The fashion world thrives on its exclusivity. These people will turn around and sau, “so? It’s not for everyone. If she didn’t have the body for it [i.e. if she’s a fat pig], she shouldn’t have done it,” while completely ignoring the long-term negative effects of under-eating in general.

This woman was an adult, and nobody held a gun to her head, but these issues are symptomatic, and these “beauty” standards are bordering on the grotesque. There is a big difference between “gazelle-like” models and the obvious signs of an eating disorder which so many of these girls display. Make-up and re-touching can conceal and distort sallow skin, thinning hair, and protruding bones, but at the end of the day, you still have to live with yourself, and neither make-up, nor re-touching can obscure the way that desperate unhappiness has become a kind of commodity.

Even Miss Moss, my favourite “clothes-hanger,” has made a career out of looking grim. I don’t think Moss starves herself, I think drugs are the bigger issue here, but as much as I admire her certain photographs (particularly the nude ones), I don’t think it should be my duty, or anyone else’s, to look exactly like this woman.

Moss, I think, is beautiful. But so are other women who look nothing like Moss. She is not the standard, and this androginization of the female form, slicining off hips, butts, and anything else that might get in the way, should not be compulsory. Not even for the models themselves. Yep, that’s right. The fashion execs of Australia may be on to something here.

Some people will argue that beauty is beauty because it is exclusive and unattainable. I think beauty is beauty if you are in love with it. I think exclusivity becomes an issue when we attempt to package beauty and sell it, and position it as a standard rather than a quirk.

I also think there is a class issue buried in here. Remember, it’s the poor people in the West that are stuck consuming cheap, unhealthy food. And we must never look poor if we can help it, flirtations with ripped jeans notwithstanding.

Everyone is Innocent, Everyone is Guilty

A torched Church in the Middle East.

The Pope is now receiving death-threats, and perversely, the disturbing elements of his now-infamous speech are being proven right.

I’ve never been keen on the Papacy myself, viewing it as an outmoded institution that promotes sexism and has nurtured Mel Gibson’s deterioration from stud to sociopath, among other things. But the arson and threats essentially boil down to a “kill those who say Islam is violent” conundrum. Haven’t these people heard of irony?

Progressive journalists have pointed to the fact that millions of Muslims currently feel embattled, and that this latest knee-jerk reaction did not arise in a vacuum. I agree with that. I also, however, believe that everyone ought to be held responsible for their actions, including the Pope, and the severely marginalized folks. Burning churches and making threats is not the answer. People are perfectly capable of making their own decisions, and this kind of group-think is no better than the rah-rah “patriotism” of Ann Coulter.

These things do happen for a reason though, and I think that trying to understand what’s going on should not be equated with making excuses.

I am willing to bet that the demonstrations and the protests are being financed by people who trade in the “Islam vs. West” dichotomy. Who knows? Perhaps the Pope is on their bankroll as well, though the Vatican seems pretty well off as it is. The exploitation of war and fear is a powerful thing. The media makes it all the more easier.

While fingers are being pointed, I take refuge in the work of Dostoevsky. An interesting idea from The Brothers Karamazov has stayed with me now for several years: What if everyone is guilty? What if we are all in the same boat spiritually, and we owe it to each other to embrace and apologize for all wrongs? Dostoevsky wanted to apply this to the Christians. I want to apply it to the whole human race.

Who’s with me?

Tuesday Morning Poetry Club

Because last night I was preoccupied with the poetry of Joss Whedon.

When man
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth in pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashes their rivers.

This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach through
the curtain of God
and briefly they have,
though God
in His perversity
unties the knot.

-Anne Sexton.