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I don't feel like ranting blog-style or even writing at all, so I'm trying to figure how to word this as shortly and sweetly as I can.
When I was 13 or 14 or so and seriously angsty about I'd say ehh... 90% of my friends aside from my eventual girlfriend and the anime crowd were males, and growing up I was told things like, you know, "Don't be one of those stupid girls who doesn't care about science and stuff, and just prances around all vain and shit". It wasn't really "enforced", I mean I wasn't text-book-thumped or anything, my personality just kind of happened to turn out such as that I wasn't very feminine, and when I was, I was still awkward and misfitting.
Then I got a little older and songs started coming out like, Pink's "Stupid Girl" and Amanda Palmer's "Map of Tasmania" (Stupid Girl is, in a nutshell, Pink saying what my family said, Map of Tasmania was about how shaving off pubes is weird and kind of insane when you think how a modified version of a woman is "the norm".)
Fast-forward to the past year or two. While that kind of stuff was my early introduction to I guess a sort of puritanical, radical feminism, now I was being introduced to pro-sex feminism, like Madonna prancing around all naked and saying it's okay, and it is, I guess. But it gets old. I've got to defend her right to do that, at the end of the day, but over-sexed just gets boring to me. I even see girls in the SW industry get tired of it every now and again. But I'm depressed and too lazy to get hardcore into knowledge the way I used to be able to do, easily.
And Pink's "Stupid Girl" mocks bulimia and vanity, which is wrong, and "Map of Tasmania" says women who choose shaving are less of grown women, which is also wrong.
It's got me all confused.
I had to put a world's worth of distance between myself and most of the reddit/chan boys I used to associate with because ultimately they don't understand or respect the experience of being a woman, and, we're like, marginalized, so at the end of the day I've got to stand up for the right to be vain and superficial as you please,
But at the end of the day I still yearn for intellectual stimulation, y'know?
I guess my ultimate point I'm trying to make here is that there's no communication between different communities, and so
Most of the "intellectual" (if you want to call them that, pseudo-intellectual might be a better term for some of these places) communities and such are just so....... weirdly antiquated.
I haven't tried MENSA because I'm scared I'll be rejected, but most of the online ones, I mean. And the little cliques and shit.
I mean hell, take Dawkins, for example. Brilliant ideology, but our only (or at least most) well-known member is a raging misogynist, and it makes waves in the community.
There seems to be a sense of yearning for intellectual stimulation among some areas of society, but I almost never see it expressed without whorephobia or misogyny or racism or some kind of micro-aggression against some group as an undercurrent.
I don't know why I'm writing all this out here. I'm knees-deep in feminism, but we don't have it all figured out yet, either.
It's an answer that I feel like I have to figure out. I think maybe it's part of my purpose. Maybe I should make a shitty documentary or something, eh? I dunno. To answer the question of how society can inject some intellectualism back into itself without being forceful, pretentious, or antagonistic to progressive ideas and movements.
It's so weird how society is so old but we haven't figured that out yet.
In other news, happy "Best Friend Day" to all bestie couples out there, and to my Elli, to my Earle, my Caleb/Issy, and more recently, Kylie. None of them will see my lowkey shout-out I added at the end here, and...
And I did not see any of them today. And I'm depressed, and relapsing. I'm not going to elaborate, but I'm slipping down a slippery slope. I'm trying to busy my mind with actual thought instead of ruminating about how life is dull and sad, ahaaaaaaaa.
But then my thoughts do this shit and it drives me insane. I just want to think of some silly stupid shit, but I wind up trying to solve a puzzle haha.
I'll probably restart my Blogspot blog tommorow for more open-ended questions. I'm really just too god damned lazy, and I'm very sorry about that. I don't have a twitter, an instagram, a tinder, an okcupid, anything like that, a youtube channel for videos, snapchat, none of that all because I'm too anxious and lazy to get the ball rolling. xD
So ehhh. Iunno. I hope this helped somebody out in some way I guess.
Most beeps have identity issues at some point in life, it seems. Pardon my over-generalization.
But again, happy BFD to all here, if you 'ave a good pal, even if they're worlds away or on hiatus.
True best friends can come together after not speaking for a long time and it's not even weird, ahaaa.~
When I was 13 or 14 or so and seriously angsty about I'd say ehh... 90% of my friends aside from my eventual girlfriend and the anime crowd were males, and growing up I was told things like, you know, "Don't be one of those stupid girls who doesn't care about science and stuff, and just prances around all vain and shit". It wasn't really "enforced", I mean I wasn't text-book-thumped or anything, my personality just kind of happened to turn out such as that I wasn't very feminine, and when I was, I was still awkward and misfitting.
Then I got a little older and songs started coming out like, Pink's "Stupid Girl" and Amanda Palmer's "Map of Tasmania" (Stupid Girl is, in a nutshell, Pink saying what my family said, Map of Tasmania was about how shaving off pubes is weird and kind of insane when you think how a modified version of a woman is "the norm".)
Fast-forward to the past year or two. While that kind of stuff was my early introduction to I guess a sort of puritanical, radical feminism, now I was being introduced to pro-sex feminism, like Madonna prancing around all naked and saying it's okay, and it is, I guess. But it gets old. I've got to defend her right to do that, at the end of the day, but over-sexed just gets boring to me. I even see girls in the SW industry get tired of it every now and again. But I'm depressed and too lazy to get hardcore into knowledge the way I used to be able to do, easily.
And Pink's "Stupid Girl" mocks bulimia and vanity, which is wrong, and "Map of Tasmania" says women who choose shaving are less of grown women, which is also wrong.
It's got me all confused.
I had to put a world's worth of distance between myself and most of the reddit/chan boys I used to associate with because ultimately they don't understand or respect the experience of being a woman, and, we're like, marginalized, so at the end of the day I've got to stand up for the right to be vain and superficial as you please,
But at the end of the day I still yearn for intellectual stimulation, y'know?
I guess my ultimate point I'm trying to make here is that there's no communication between different communities, and so
Most of the "intellectual" (if you want to call them that, pseudo-intellectual might be a better term for some of these places) communities and such are just so....... weirdly antiquated.
I haven't tried MENSA because I'm scared I'll be rejected, but most of the online ones, I mean. And the little cliques and shit.
I mean hell, take Dawkins, for example. Brilliant ideology, but our only (or at least most) well-known member is a raging misogynist, and it makes waves in the community.
There seems to be a sense of yearning for intellectual stimulation among some areas of society, but I almost never see it expressed without whorephobia or misogyny or racism or some kind of micro-aggression against some group as an undercurrent.
I don't know why I'm writing all this out here. I'm knees-deep in feminism, but we don't have it all figured out yet, either.
It's an answer that I feel like I have to figure out. I think maybe it's part of my purpose. Maybe I should make a shitty documentary or something, eh? I dunno. To answer the question of how society can inject some intellectualism back into itself without being forceful, pretentious, or antagonistic to progressive ideas and movements.
It's so weird how society is so old but we haven't figured that out yet.
In other news, happy "Best Friend Day" to all bestie couples out there, and to my Elli, to my Earle, my Caleb/Issy, and more recently, Kylie. None of them will see my lowkey shout-out I added at the end here, and...
And I did not see any of them today. And I'm depressed, and relapsing. I'm not going to elaborate, but I'm slipping down a slippery slope. I'm trying to busy my mind with actual thought instead of ruminating about how life is dull and sad, ahaaaaaaaa.
But then my thoughts do this shit and it drives me insane. I just want to think of some silly stupid shit, but I wind up trying to solve a puzzle haha.
I'll probably restart my Blogspot blog tommorow for more open-ended questions. I'm really just too god damned lazy, and I'm very sorry about that. I don't have a twitter, an instagram, a tinder, an okcupid, anything like that, a youtube channel for videos, snapchat, none of that all because I'm too anxious and lazy to get the ball rolling. xD
So ehhh. Iunno. I hope this helped somebody out in some way I guess.
Most beeps have identity issues at some point in life, it seems. Pardon my over-generalization.
But again, happy BFD to all here, if you 'ave a good pal, even if they're worlds away or on hiatus.
True best friends can come together after not speaking for a long time and it's not even weird, ahaaa.~
-
Mom and I have errands to run this morning. She said we can get sushi for lunch though. I go back to work today. What are you looking forward to this weekend?
-
Quick, before the evil MONday gets here! Let's climb those mountains, dance in the meadows, dip our feet in the ocean....Okay, so most of us won't be doing any of That. Sadly. But today can still be a great day!The area behind our back fence is on an incline, with less than two feet on even ground at the top. I don't balance well enough for the incline, but our mower guy mows that...
I ended up in a few situations where it was literally in my face "youm tawk funny, youm do!" And even in my mid 50s I know how far I am from the norm.
But over the years you "find your tribe". Sometimes you think you found a fellow traveller and it's not so but eventually you get there.
Being younger is harder because you will find a number of people who are also finding their way and that means their orientation can suddenly change or they are sort of pretending and again that means there is an element of sometimes unintentional deception which is upsetting.
In my day (a phrase I will start using increasingly as I descend into a faux dotage) was that if you wrere isolated and those around you seemed equally confused was to find good books or music (and that usually didn't mean anything that was particularly mainstream). I'm not sure I trust the net - that's not some kind of reactionary view but one that is from hard learnt experience. I've no idea what those books were because I was different again and didn't read so much.
Not sure if that helps. Need to go outside to shake my fist and shout "get orf my lawn".
I think the gender issues will work themselves out in time. You don't really have to "decide" that right this minute. Just let things flow naturally.
You are going to have to step outside your comfort zone to find your peers - your intellectual peers.
Honestly, it's interesting because I am, like, OLD, haha - I did not 'come of age' in the 60's but my older siblings did and I remember thinking, at one point, where the HELL did this sudden ideological/behavior change come from?? Everyone chanting and getting high and protesting things....free love, communal sex, etc - I 'know' it didn't come out of Nowhere but, Really??
Point is, I've recently begun to encounter young people - your age, more or less - who are equal 'aberrations' in today's free and promisciously-embracing society - youngsters whose Parents drink, party, do drugs, etc
And the Young People are like, really, Mom and Dad? Can't I just be virginal, and go to Church, and not Have to have a glass of wine or whatever just because YOU think it's the thing to do??
...I'm rambling.
Point again, is - role reversal. I hope you do not have to wait until you are nearly 50, like I did, to notice that the world itself is Shifting, Voltaire, and 'intellectual/higher thinking' is coming IN, while trashy promiscuity for no other reason than fun' is going OUT.
But not without a fight. sigh. You be who you Are, and I hope your environment can expand so that you DO encounter more who think a bit more about things that are interesting to You. They're out there. :)
I'm sure it would take some time, but I'd bet there is an amazing therapist out there who could help talk you through so many of the things you discuss. Unfortunately sometimes it takes getting into a big city to find it.
Mai- The way I see it, everyone else in the world fits in, just not me. I know that isn't true, I know it's my black-and-white thinking, but....... I think it's a lil bit true to be honest.
I don't care what anyone says about y'know, everybody having to find themselves, for some people it's just never been hard to do. Some people don't give this kind of thing a second thought. It's a luxury to not have an existential crisis every other day (pardon my melodrama).
Honestly I hope my brain cells die with time so that I stop wondering about this stuff, because it drives me batty.
CuriousFish- I've seen. Well, you tend to come off a little blunt. I thik blunted affected is an autism spectrum trait, but pardon my ignorance if I'm mistaken. I think I fall somewhere in the autism spectrum.
A lot of people with autism (if somebody tells me they're autistic, I'm going to believe them, it's a hard pill to swallow to wonder if you might be) self-diagnose or self-diagnosed before getting DX'd by a pdoc.
I'm not saying that you did, I just wanted to clarify that I haven't been Professionally Diagnosed with falling somewhere along the autism spectrum yet, so I might refer to myself that way anyways sometimes, I hope that doesn't piss anyone off.
Fish we've clashed at times, actually a lot. We both have kind of a blunted affect. But at your best, you're quite charming and funny and sweet.
You mean people mocked a speech impediment? I'm sorry. That's so rude. I don't talk right either and I'm paranoid of people saying something. I deleted a video off of facebook yesterday that I made because my voice irritated me.
I have a friend named J who stutters and someone at work mocked him for it a couple days ago. I heard about it after-the-fact. I would've punched the motherfuckers.
There was a study done on stuttering children, pointing it out and harshly criticizing it increases anxiety, which actually makes stuttering exponentially worse. l:
I'm so sorry that anyone mocks your parlance. It's so uncalled for, honestly. The way most "normies" (I guess?) speak anyways is so grating, I don't know why anyone thinks stuttering is annoying or a thing to laugh at.
ANyways sorry *rant over* it just upset me that somebody made fun of your manner of speaking.
I'll make my own, probably. I just don't have the confidence yet. Every tribe I follow ends up seeming batshit crazy in retrospect.
I wish I had the patience to read books *sob* I really don't, honestly.
But nowadays there are Kindle tablets, so.
Orf? You're Brit? Haha. At least you have a lawn to stake claim to! I have a 10x10 ft area of sort-of-grass-mostly-dirt with a giant trash can.
Thank you Lilly! I've taken a bunch of college. I can't stick with it currently because of my physical health and mental disorders. I just don't have it in me right now.
Most of the cooler courses, like I dunno, liberal arts, theology, philosophy, even ASTROPHYSICS (Disability Office Guy's wife had a PhD IN ASTROPHYSICS which blew my mind) are kind of..... This is harsh, useless-ish degrees to have these days.
It's very difficult to be a breakout success in those kinds of fields. You've got a better shot at being a doctor or a lawyer, which, I want to be a doctor, but again, the school thing. It's very difficult to do right now.
Thinking about college makes me sad because my uncle and my aunt (brother and sister, not husband and wife) graduated from Southern Polytechnic and Kennessaw State, respectively, so I'd have a hard time uh... living up to the Joneses, haha.
I've considered Kenn State and Agnes Scott Womens' College, but my GPA sucks, attendance records have sucked for a long time, and I have a GED. Some uni's care whether it's a high school diploma or a GED, some don't.
Uni scares the shit out of me. It's so easy to fuck up your grades, and so hard to do it right.
My aunt and my successful friend both say it's as simple as "Locking yourself in your room and studying, studying, studying, working, working, working, forcing yourself to master the subjects and the material", but from personal experience, none of that works or matters unless you're in the right place in your mind and life.
You're right about stepping out of my comfort zone. And thank you for letting me know that pressure's off. c: I'm worrying less about that these days. I know a lot of people with extremely complex gender identities, makes me feel a bit better. I joined a Transgender and Genderfluid Support Group on facebook so, it's helped a bit.
MaryAnne- hmm. That's interesting.
Well. Idk. I think there always has been both a dichotomy and a grey-area of prude-vs-slut, or, whatever, I guess, haha. A loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of beepers switch between the two often, I sure do.
I guess maybe so, but also the party parents' kids want the responsible, which picket fence family, the kids with the vanilla parents want the kind of parents who are really more of friends than life guides.
Nobody needs to choose between being chaste and being a slut. You can be both depending the day, week, month, or year.
It boils down to just one concept, yearning for that which lacks.
Though, I wholly defend the right for people my age to be prudes, and it is hard for them, to be a nearly sexless (or seemingly so) person in a sea of sex babes.
(Again I am GROSSLY over-generalizing for the sake of example)
It's weird as hell to me though that quiet, shy, mousy, not-particularly-sexy people are the ones who are over-looked?????????? I always kind of........ wonder what's behind the shy facade, I guess. It's intriguing.
Being overtly sexual makes it too easy to pigeon-hole somebody. Which is WRONG, and you and I and everyone shouldn't like, do that, but........ it's hard to see things as a different way. First impressions have residual inertia.
A lot of the people I was introduced to as asexual at some point started to become quite sexual, and it shocks the hell out of me every time. I don't care. I don't mind.
I guess it surprises my first impression of them; it doesn't actually surprise me, per se.
But it's only reinforced my belief that orientation is not black and white and any person reserves the right to change their personality or their presentation at any time.
I'm glad I have both admittedly slutty friends and very very mousy bookworm-type friends who don't care about sex at all. I love them equally, they've opened my eyes to the world and the ways of humans, and all of my companions fascinate me so. I devote myself among them equally.
So in short I guess I can see the generational thing, but Idk. I don't know what my parents did, then. I don't want to know. xD Yikes. I've heard the 60s and 70s were kind of wild.
In my opinion the 70s and particularly the 80s were tacky decades that don't interest me, but hey! But hey. I wasn't there looooool, so I don't get a vote. xD
(for the record I don't agree with exposing children to sexual stuff though even if it's only mannerisms, because they have no sense of that kinda thing and shouldn't. this is the protective mama bear in me talking.)
But there's no reason for trashy promiscuity to go "out"? *frowns*
Neither is inherently bad or good, and as I've said, I don't usually vibe well with the modern-day intellectual.
For some reason it's so closely tied to misogyny and cultural appropriation (fedorabros thinking they're the intellectual shit, and free-thinker-free-spirit types, respectively) that I've been turned off from it.
And even though I don't like, take interest in attention-seeking behaviors, trashiness, promiscuity (or do I?), there's nothing wrong with them.
The attitude that overt flamboyance and vanity and sex are bad is extremely harmful and inextricably tied to antiquated attitudes about life and things.
So like....... what I'm sayin' is we gotta like,
Find a way to yearn for intellectualism without trying to shove people who "just wanna have fun" (and sex and attention and whatever else) (I guess????) out.
They have just as much of a right to continue existing as the people who are tired of them.
There needs to be solidarity between the dichotomies of society; then people will realize that most fall into the collective grey area.
Phew! I rambled. Sorry 'bout that MaryAnne.
This is why I put off replying for days or weeks to comments. xD I end up writing for an hour.
Sensitive- !!! Sadly I've applied at the local Barnes and Nobles many, many, many times. Never got a call back. Everybody and their mother and brother wants to work at that damn book store.
Also ehhhh they're a little bit snobby. Or maybe I'm just a ~casual~ with my book reading. xD Probably the latter.
But yea! The book store makes me calm and happy. But I'm sick often and they're always knees-deep in job applications to work there.
I'm about to explain in a separate post about the therapist thing. Sigh. There's been another set-back.
Jenn S- I'm sorry. Did you make peace with not fitting in eventually?
I'm so old, I knew "Lucy" when she was young! Please excuse me if I get it wrong. I think it's a matter of self confidence and finding your nitch in this world. This would be very hard being BP because of the tendency to isolate, paranoia...on, and on. And to be as smart as you are I can see your issue. And to top it off the biggie gender issues. Now who the heck are you with hormones BP and SMARTS.
Dear you answered your own problem you are "MODONNA WITH CLOTHES AND A BRAIN".
I do charge for my services...lol
Go figure. lol, now THere's a combination that should have knocked the socks of more than just guys (...or girls) with Penthouse in the bathroom. ;)
Yes, ftr, it's fine to be both....other thing is, you're Right - you're Not "like anyone else". Neither am I. We're not like each other, really, and I Don't say that to sound like those cliches....I've Never felt like anyone else.
I've probably said it before, Voltaire, but when I was 15 I joined MENSA to see if I could "find my kind". Didn't take. I Liked 'em, they liked me, but I'm weird. In my opinion.
In 2006 I joined bipolar DS to see if I could "find my kind". I like 'em, they like me, we have bipolar in common, you know? But I'm weird, in my opinion.
Last year I joined an empath group to see if I could "find my kind". I like 'em, they like me, we have empathic traits in common, but I'm WEIRD, in my opinion.
...When I was in the homeless shelter in WA in 2011, I felt (seriously) again that I was hoping to find "my kind". I liked 'em, they liked me, but they were at least Open and Honest when they said to me, "We like you! But you're Not one of Us."
We're all just Individuals, like maitray said, searching for connection, Voltaire. We meet people, we like 'em, they like us, but we're Always going to be Weird. Like fish says, "we'um tawk funny, we'um do" - and we Think funny. :p
Can we live with that? I can - FINALLY. *sheesh*
There's an interesting line between "spending too much time in our heads" and "becoming our own best friend". One of 'em leads to insanity, pretty much; the other one leads us to a Best Friend that is there, like, 24/7.
:)