Reading over my last few posts I have to conclude that I'm a bit of an arse. Oh well, don't pretend to be what you're not, I guess.
I have a new blog!
I'm still keeping this one as a journal/diary. The new one is more like what a blog should be.
Friday 25 June 2010
Monday 21 June 2010
Stuff
It was always assumed that I would just go straight on into university, and that my brother and sister would too. Now that they've decided not to go my parents act as though it's some ponsy thing to go to university. I hate that. And I also hate the transition from having a good conversation every day with people you like to coming home and finding no one has any idea what you're talking about. As soon as I even mention a book they all switch off, no matter how much I skirt around it or dumb it down. It's incredibly frustrating and I feel like I'm surrounded by idiots some times. And that's saying something because I'm not exactly the brightest tool in the box. Well, maybe I am in this box.
I'm doing my training days at the moment for a school placement that starts on the 29th. It's quite good and I've met someone who's placed at the same school as me so that's pretty good.
I'm supposed to do a presentation tomorrow and after spending an hour and a half gathering together pictures on the computer to use for it my mother came along and deleted the lot. Then I spent the same time again trying to find the pictures that she'd lost and I go to print it out only to find that the ink's run out and we have no replacement cartridges left. Now it's almost 10pm and I have nothing so I'm going to have to wake up at 6am in order to use the library printers and get my stuff together before presenting it all at 9.
I'm doing my training days at the moment for a school placement that starts on the 29th. It's quite good and I've met someone who's placed at the same school as me so that's pretty good.
I'm supposed to do a presentation tomorrow and after spending an hour and a half gathering together pictures on the computer to use for it my mother came along and deleted the lot. Then I spent the same time again trying to find the pictures that she'd lost and I go to print it out only to find that the ink's run out and we have no replacement cartridges left. Now it's almost 10pm and I have nothing so I'm going to have to wake up at 6am in order to use the library printers and get my stuff together before presenting it all at 9.
Thursday 3 June 2010
Home
I've been home for less than a fortnight and I already feel sick. Having my family around me makes me emotionally weak and ill. I hate it and I know I just have to put up with this gnawing feeling in my chest and throat because I've got another 4 months before my lease in Plymouth begins. It's not that I don't like seeing my family, but prolonged contact isn't good for me.
As well as this sick feeling I'm being driven up the wall by my sister nicking my DVDs the whole time (I'm a little anal about my books and films and she doesn't look after them), my mother keeps yelling at us and my brother is being a royal twat at the moment, calling me a bitch and a slut to his friends on the other end of his computer microphone. And my brother's the sibling I do get on with.
Hardly any of my friends are around until mid June/early July and although I do have another month on the lease of Penrose Street, I don't really want to share breathing space with Matt and Kim again. When I was there I couldn't wait for the year to be over so I could get away from them and I'm still glad I don't have too see them any more, but I don't really want to be here either.
Sometimes I want to just burn all my stuff. To set it all alight because I'm too attached to it and it holds me back. I'd like to keep my books (and my films if I could but primarily my books). I want to up and leave everything behind, but I've got too many attachments, and that's more to places and 'stuff' than to people, but still I feel like I couldn't just leave it all, because I have emotional connections to it (guess it probably says something about me that I feel more connection to objects than to people). Perhaps this Summer holiday I will go through my stuff and throw away anything that I don't want to keep, then I could at least limit my things to a few shelves and boxes, because when it comes down to it, I don't think there's that much that I value outside of my bookshelves.
I just really don't want to be one of these people that nests, that surrounds themselves with things instead of experiences. I just want to get on a train and get off at some random stop up North and then walk. Just get completely lost. It's not like I'd be leaving anything important behind, because everything that I need, and I mean really need would easily fit into a single (although probably large) backpack.
As well as this sick feeling I'm being driven up the wall by my sister nicking my DVDs the whole time (I'm a little anal about my books and films and she doesn't look after them), my mother keeps yelling at us and my brother is being a royal twat at the moment, calling me a bitch and a slut to his friends on the other end of his computer microphone. And my brother's the sibling I do get on with.
Hardly any of my friends are around until mid June/early July and although I do have another month on the lease of Penrose Street, I don't really want to share breathing space with Matt and Kim again. When I was there I couldn't wait for the year to be over so I could get away from them and I'm still glad I don't have too see them any more, but I don't really want to be here either.
Sometimes I want to just burn all my stuff. To set it all alight because I'm too attached to it and it holds me back. I'd like to keep my books (and my films if I could but primarily my books). I want to up and leave everything behind, but I've got too many attachments, and that's more to places and 'stuff' than to people, but still I feel like I couldn't just leave it all, because I have emotional connections to it (guess it probably says something about me that I feel more connection to objects than to people). Perhaps this Summer holiday I will go through my stuff and throw away anything that I don't want to keep, then I could at least limit my things to a few shelves and boxes, because when it comes down to it, I don't think there's that much that I value outside of my bookshelves.
I just really don't want to be one of these people that nests, that surrounds themselves with things instead of experiences. I just want to get on a train and get off at some random stop up North and then walk. Just get completely lost. It's not like I'd be leaving anything important behind, because everything that I need, and I mean really need would easily fit into a single (although probably large) backpack.
Speculations on Gender
In sociology classes we get these lectures on feminism, and so much of it I think 'bullshit, that's rubbish'. A lot of it I honestly can't see, or if I can see then I can think of an equal argument for discrimination against men. I think you have to be careful with feminism, because people tend to see it everywhere and it's easy to make tenuous links. But sometimes, I wish I hadn't been born female, and I have to wonder why that is. Maybe part of it is that men are naturally, physically stronger, but then I don't think that's everything. Part of it is poetry. When I think of poetry, I think of men. A lot of people see it as a feminine activity but I've always seen it as masculine, and sometimes I feel like a poet with a woman's name wouldn't be taken as seriously, which may or may not be total rubbish, but it's just a thought, and when being objective about these things, you have to at least take subjective feeling into account.
Emotion, as well, I feel is somehow less when it's female emotion. Women are expected to cry, to display their feelings, and I don't really do that, but when I do I feel like I'm being 'girly' and that my feelings would somehow mean less. When I'm writing characters as well, I focus on male protagonist and antagonists because their emotions are more interesting to me. I feel that whatever female character I may write would end up seeming weak and not a little pathetic, and then if they didn't display their emotion it'd seem like I was trying too hard to make them more masculine.
I'm not sure if I think men and women are unequal in society, but I do think that the gender divide makes things difficult and confusing, and in popular culture that divide just keeps getting wider even though differences in opportunity are narrowing. Men are objectified just as much as women in society, but I guess when you're female it's easier to see the objectification and exploitation of women. I don't really think that exploitation is there anymore, and society is increasingly less patriarchal, although it's mostly men in charge, I don't think that really shows anything significant. It's gonna take a while for women to get into positions of power because it's to do with socialisation and they have to work their way up there. You wouldn't want a woman in charge just because she was a woman if she wasn't competent at her job.
I never used to see myself as feminist, I would have called myself a 'masculinist', because I always hated how people could say things like 'men are only thinking of one thing' and 'men are all pigs' and then moan about the marginalisation of women and how we're viewed negatively by men (and thinking about it, why should women be defined by how men see them?) But recently I've realised that feminist and masculinist means, or at least should mean the same thing, so I could say that I'm a feminist too, because it's about equality and the study of gender differences. I might not make 'studies' of it, but it's one of the things I think about, although I don't mention it much in conversation because feminism has a bad press, and when you start talking about it it makes you seem like a twat, even though it's a 'big issue' in society and these points are perfectly valid points to make.
Emotion, as well, I feel is somehow less when it's female emotion. Women are expected to cry, to display their feelings, and I don't really do that, but when I do I feel like I'm being 'girly' and that my feelings would somehow mean less. When I'm writing characters as well, I focus on male protagonist and antagonists because their emotions are more interesting to me. I feel that whatever female character I may write would end up seeming weak and not a little pathetic, and then if they didn't display their emotion it'd seem like I was trying too hard to make them more masculine.
I'm not sure if I think men and women are unequal in society, but I do think that the gender divide makes things difficult and confusing, and in popular culture that divide just keeps getting wider even though differences in opportunity are narrowing. Men are objectified just as much as women in society, but I guess when you're female it's easier to see the objectification and exploitation of women. I don't really think that exploitation is there anymore, and society is increasingly less patriarchal, although it's mostly men in charge, I don't think that really shows anything significant. It's gonna take a while for women to get into positions of power because it's to do with socialisation and they have to work their way up there. You wouldn't want a woman in charge just because she was a woman if she wasn't competent at her job.
I never used to see myself as feminist, I would have called myself a 'masculinist', because I always hated how people could say things like 'men are only thinking of one thing' and 'men are all pigs' and then moan about the marginalisation of women and how we're viewed negatively by men (and thinking about it, why should women be defined by how men see them?) But recently I've realised that feminist and masculinist means, or at least should mean the same thing, so I could say that I'm a feminist too, because it's about equality and the study of gender differences. I might not make 'studies' of it, but it's one of the things I think about, although I don't mention it much in conversation because feminism has a bad press, and when you start talking about it it makes you seem like a twat, even though it's a 'big issue' in society and these points are perfectly valid points to make.
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