You know how you hear a lot about ‘global warming’, ‘forest clearing’, ‘habitat destruction’, ‘over fishing’ of the oceans and waterways, the list goes on…
Well in among all of this gloom and doom is a bit of good news. According to media reports, women are not participating in these environmental atrocities. Apparently it’s all the fault of ‘mankind’, or that’s what the media imply when they say “mankind have destroyed the…”
That’s right! Since the media are using the gender typical term, ‘mankind’, instead of humanity, it can be argued that women are freed from responsibility for all disasters, environmental catastrophes, forest fires… everything.
Are you thinking “What is this rant?!?”? I shall explain.
In the 1970s there was a world wide movement called Feminism. Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities, and equal rights for women. It is a movement advocating social change to create a political, social and ethical environment where women are not represented or perceived as ‘lacking’ anything for not being male.
(Every time I write “lack” I think of Freud who wrote many great texts yet had the curious belief that because a woman has a vagina and not a penis she must have some kind of ‘lack’. Freud would have been better served to apply rigorous science, as opposed to spatial propaganda to his studies. An inward space, as in the case of the vagina, is no different to the cylindrical interior of the outward space, as in the case of the penis.
Leaving the ghost of long-dead psycho-analyst to ponder his own ‘lack’…)
There were many different ways in which societies attempted to achieve the social changes associated with feminism. One of them was the use of non-gender specific language. This means that all words that had “man” or “men” as part of the word should have been replaced by more inclusive words like ‘people’ and ‘officer’.
As this quote demonstrates the use of gendered-language, such has mankind, excludes women from being represented in the communication. Gender-neutral Language Matters
In 1972... some three hundred college students were asked to select from magazines and newspapers a variety of pictures that would appropriately illustrate the different chapters of a sociology textbook being prepared for publication. Half the students were assigned chapter headings like "Social Man'', "Industrial Man'', and "Political Man''. The other half was given different but corresponding headings like "Society'', "Industrial Life'', and "Political Behaviour''. Analysis of the pictures selected revealed that in the minds of students of both sexes’ use of the word man evoked, to a statistically significant degree, images of males only --- filtering out recognition of women's participation in these major areas of life --- whereas the corresponding headings without man evoked images of both males and females.... The authors concluded, "This is rather convincing evidence that when you use the word man generically, people do tend to think male, and tend not to think female" ([Miller et al. 1980, pages 19-20], quoted by Spertus) (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/style/gender.html).
If one applies the points made in this quote, it becomes obvious that whenever ‘mankind’ is used by news media – and it’s a LOT – women are not included and, therefore, not involved… and therefore not responsible either.
Tuesday 1 April 2008
Tuesday 29 January 2008
Just Call Me
Do you ever feel as if you are the only woman who does anything to help people … and that everyone else’s needs come before your’s?
Yes?
Recently I worked from home. “Great”, you might say. “Good, if you can arrange it,” you might think.
No, you’re so wrong!
It blurred the domestic and professional spaces and everything got mixed up.
There I was focussing on work, having a wonderful time, working on my own computer, my music playing… It was all going well until the telephone rang.
A friend – for whom I am something of a cross between a health attorney and foster carer – said, “Centrelink are going to cut me off because I wouldn’t take a job in a bar”. He, of course, was hiding his addiction to alcohol from both Centrelink and his job network provider – hoping to slip quietly from New Start to the Old Age Pension before too long. Or perhaps he is waiting for a doctor and/or psychologist to recognise his Korsakoff's syndrome?
Well, that’s not likely! Doctors could not recognise that my hips were crumbling and needed replacing. That took 4 years of investigations until I said, “I want to see an orthopaedic surgeon!!!”… but I digress. My point is that doctors are not likely to diagnose a problem when the only way to really diagnose it is to know the person and ‘understand’ their level of dysfunction.
Off I ran to meet him at Centrelink and talk to them with him. This involved telling him to “be honest and tell them what was really happening”.
I got home feeling slightly angry at having to leave my work to, once again, rescue the hopeless. It might help if I mentioned that we used live together and he was always disturbing my work then…by being drunk, hopeless and needing rescuing. Now, I look at him and am repulsed. But, as I’m his health attorney, and somewhat, compelled to prevent homelessness, poverty, starvation… You know, those “nasties” into which the hopeless slide as they claw at the sides of the moss, fungal covered, drain before being subsumed by the oozing mess of society’s repositories.
The next day I thought, “Yeah, no interruptions: work, finish early, go and collect dog at the airport”.
I did say ‘thought’.
The phone, again.
“Hello, it’s your dog’s mother here. I didn’t get the money for your dog’s flight and I can’t send her without it. Can you go to the bank and deposit the money?”
Not like I was doing anything!
Off I go and get money from my account and put it into her’s. The dog has to fly that day.
What’s happening to the money my partner transferred for the dog’s flight?
“Last time it took awhile to show. If you give me your bank details, I’ll refund it as soon as I get it.”
Yes, and I’ll just continue leaving my work to fix up after other people.
After this week, I value being AT work. I hear myself saying, “Gee, I’m AT work, I can’t help”.
Next time there’s a crisis it might not be a good idea to call me, I might be at work!
Yes?
Recently I worked from home. “Great”, you might say. “Good, if you can arrange it,” you might think.
No, you’re so wrong!
It blurred the domestic and professional spaces and everything got mixed up.
There I was focussing on work, having a wonderful time, working on my own computer, my music playing… It was all going well until the telephone rang.
A friend – for whom I am something of a cross between a health attorney and foster carer – said, “Centrelink are going to cut me off because I wouldn’t take a job in a bar”. He, of course, was hiding his addiction to alcohol from both Centrelink and his job network provider – hoping to slip quietly from New Start to the Old Age Pension before too long. Or perhaps he is waiting for a doctor and/or psychologist to recognise his Korsakoff's syndrome?
Well, that’s not likely! Doctors could not recognise that my hips were crumbling and needed replacing. That took 4 years of investigations until I said, “I want to see an orthopaedic surgeon!!!”… but I digress. My point is that doctors are not likely to diagnose a problem when the only way to really diagnose it is to know the person and ‘understand’ their level of dysfunction.
Off I ran to meet him at Centrelink and talk to them with him. This involved telling him to “be honest and tell them what was really happening”.
I got home feeling slightly angry at having to leave my work to, once again, rescue the hopeless. It might help if I mentioned that we used live together and he was always disturbing my work then…by being drunk, hopeless and needing rescuing. Now, I look at him and am repulsed. But, as I’m his health attorney, and somewhat, compelled to prevent homelessness, poverty, starvation… You know, those “nasties” into which the hopeless slide as they claw at the sides of the moss, fungal covered, drain before being subsumed by the oozing mess of society’s repositories.
The next day I thought, “Yeah, no interruptions: work, finish early, go and collect dog at the airport”.
I did say ‘thought’.
The phone, again.
“Hello, it’s your dog’s mother here. I didn’t get the money for your dog’s flight and I can’t send her without it. Can you go to the bank and deposit the money?”
Not like I was doing anything!
Off I go and get money from my account and put it into her’s. The dog has to fly that day.
What’s happening to the money my partner transferred for the dog’s flight?
“Last time it took awhile to show. If you give me your bank details, I’ll refund it as soon as I get it.”
Yes, and I’ll just continue leaving my work to fix up after other people.
After this week, I value being AT work. I hear myself saying, “Gee, I’m AT work, I can’t help”.
Next time there’s a crisis it might not be a good idea to call me, I might be at work!
Saturday 25 August 2007
I want to play too
Ah, she sighs and thinks ‘in my next life, I want to be one of them’.
A what? What is she thinking? Give up hard fought-for and hard-won power, to have it bestowed by the power of gender?
Yes!
Trade what psychoanalysts have called a ‘veiled sex’ for a dangly bit and two gelatinous round things in a sack of skin.
Why?
They have more time to play. The world just ‘goes on’ for men. Women organise the social events of their joint life – if they have a partner. If they don’t have a partner, there is usually a sister/cousin/mother/aunt who keeps them connected to the family unit and keeps things happening.
At work, men sprout ideas like mushrooms and there’s usually (a female) office junior who will come along behind them and assist with the detail. Even if men do manual work, they usually come home from work to a community where there are women (or at least a woman) who does most of the cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, filing/fucking etcetera (Those letters, when used as an acronym, form that evil word “WIFE”) .
This is not why I want to be a man in the next life. The reason is that men have more TIME. This is time that they use to “play”.
What do I mean by “play”? No, get your mind/s out of the gutter.
Time to read “tech-blogs”, build model toys, collect eclectic facts (factoids) in their heads. A man in a relationship, without children, usually spends more time luxuriating around the house – reading books, watching TV, playing computer games – than the female partner. She is usually organising shopping, social activities, doing extra work from home and other things.
Because of this work/leisure – brain down-time – differential, I would give up being a woman and become a man. I want to play too.
As is evident from the above: all the years of feminism and equal opportunity have not changed the ‘division of labour’ or ‘time spent doing domestic duties’.
There’s a long way to go.
A what? What is she thinking? Give up hard fought-for and hard-won power, to have it bestowed by the power of gender?
Yes!
Trade what psychoanalysts have called a ‘veiled sex’ for a dangly bit and two gelatinous round things in a sack of skin.
Why?
They have more time to play. The world just ‘goes on’ for men. Women organise the social events of their joint life – if they have a partner. If they don’t have a partner, there is usually a sister/cousin/mother/aunt who keeps them connected to the family unit and keeps things happening.
At work, men sprout ideas like mushrooms and there’s usually (a female) office junior who will come along behind them and assist with the detail. Even if men do manual work, they usually come home from work to a community where there are women (or at least a woman) who does most of the cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, filing/fucking etcetera (Those letters, when used as an acronym, form that evil word “WIFE”) .
This is not why I want to be a man in the next life. The reason is that men have more TIME. This is time that they use to “play”.
What do I mean by “play”? No, get your mind/s out of the gutter.
Time to read “tech-blogs”, build model toys, collect eclectic facts (factoids) in their heads. A man in a relationship, without children, usually spends more time luxuriating around the house – reading books, watching TV, playing computer games – than the female partner. She is usually organising shopping, social activities, doing extra work from home and other things.
Because of this work/leisure – brain down-time – differential, I would give up being a woman and become a man. I want to play too.
As is evident from the above: all the years of feminism and equal opportunity have not changed the ‘division of labour’ or ‘time spent doing domestic duties’.
There’s a long way to go.
Monday 6 August 2007
Don’t… Just Don’t Get Married
If you have read this blog before you will be aware that I am not in favour of marriage. This is not some theoretical opinion either, my partner and I actually got married in December 2006.
This meant that from February (when we announced our ‘intentions’) to December of 2006 almost every conversation with family revolved around the socially sanctioned ritual of transferring ‘ownership’ of, and financial responsibility for, the woman to the man. Why else do you think the bride’s (read “sacrificial woman’s) family pay for everything?
Ah sure, I forgot! We’re supposed to be living in egalitarian times where ‘his’ family share the cost. Good luck telling that to his separated parents who immigrated from England in the 1960s and lived as a pretentious, nuclear family in a major capital city.
I was aware there was a level of need and that his parents/family would need some support. For months before the event, I argued for them to have their meals provided for them whilst they were here – because I knew my family were capable and they weren’t. We didn’t only have to feed them: they had to be assisted to get here and accommodated whilst they were here.
The whole process displaces the identity and possessions of the woman. I gave up my bed and we moved into the spare room. Then, the night before the event/sacrifice, I had to leave my home and go to where my family were staying because HIS family were in OUR unit and my family could not ‘sleep-over’ so I could get up from my own place on the day of the wedding.
Everything was organised to within a second – and all of it organised by me. Yet his family have this “opinion” of me. To them – as has become obvious from conversations with them and things they have said about me: “I am the needy, ‘dependent’ woman with whom their ‘poor’ first born has fallen in love”. (Or, perhaps I am the evil, wicked disabled women who has “trapped their first born”…and they are waiting for me to die or for the spell to be broken.)
I do not imagine this!
His father asked, when I was going to meet him, if I needed “blended food” (Can’t trust those rampant spastic, potential in-laws, they might gag on the salad.). I should have lived up to his stereotypical, preconceived, view of me by drooling on him when I first met him. Instead, I calmly answered questions about “what I would ‘bring’ to the relationship” or “whether I was intending to ‘enslave’ his son as my carer”. I should have followed my instincts and dismembered him at the first meeting. Then he would not have gone on to ask “if [I] was having a colostomy bag put in?” when I had a pain relief delivery system put in for hip pain, or whether this “interfered with my ability to achieve pleasure?”.
You are not misunderstanding the text - this is what my partner’s father said!
Then I e-mailed; the rest of the family advocated; and he apologised.
But there remains this unspoken atmosphere around them and I just wait for the next member of my partner’s family to reject me because I’m “differently-abled” (Polite-speak for “use a power wheelchair”.).
I did not have to wait long. On the same visit to meet the father, we also met my partner’s sister, her partner and their two children. They were away on holidays so we had to drive two hours to see them, then have chips and water on the beach. Of course, we “couldn’t possibly go to [their] house because ‘there are steps everywhere’”.
Yet, when his sister came to see us, in the midst of our moving house, and my family cooked roast lamb, she invited them to visit and drop by for coffee in the “little coffee shop that is near by”. If this is not selective inclusion/exclusion I do not know what is?
As if two family members with their feet wedged in their throat were not enough…..??? No, no, there has to be more…until the last has fallen.
The sister overseas, who I have not met (Yeah, I escaped from one of them!) invited us to meet them in America for Christmas. The airfares alone would cost $10,000 and we have a mortgage. And, after the other incidents, from meeting/interacting with the rest of his family, I not in a hurry to meet another one. I’d rather protect myself from the “slings and arrows”.
Next it was the mother… My partner had been away for work for a week and my mother came to stay. This was partly because we had only just moved into our house and got the toilet seat to be something close to the right height. The shower still was not right and was almost dangerous for both me and my workers.
Oh, did I mention that I have workers who are funded by the Government? They do all of my personal care, cook meals, clean and do the laundry.
Yes.
So, when my partner got back from his work trip, his mother asked “How his respite was?”!!!!!!!!! OMG
No-one has ever been so rude and hurtful to me in my entire life.
This certainly brought out the family’s ‘real’ feelings about me. The brother even defended the mother and proved himself no more aware of his brother and my living situation than the rest of my partner’s family.
When challenged on her illogical thinking that her son is my carer and would need ‘respite’, his mother said that it was a logical assumption because she “does use ‘respite’!”. Let’s not forget that she and her aging husband also refuse any form of home-help that might make her life easier!
Then I tried to “build a bridge”. Now I just want dynamite!
I was chatting to her on-line and she said that I was her [wait for it] “Daughter-in-law” and that she would have never treated her “Mother-in-law” this way and that I should respect her as my “Mother-in-law”.
Aaaah! Aaaaah! Why would anyone want to get married? How horrid that people think they have a right to treat you rudely? Or that they would assume to dictate the way in which you should relate to them?
I have distanced myself from them and will not speak to his family again. But it still hurts. And they don’t see how much they are hurting my partner by utterly refusing to see me as a person – they only see my disability and construct untrue assumptions about our life together.
This is why people should not get married. If we were just “shacked up” they would not have any reason to make such invasive comments. I would not have felt compelled to relate to them and could have avoided them.
This is why we no longer tell people that we’re “m-----d” (I can’t bear to even write the word.). We just say we’re partners………..and, I’m giving the ring a rest in the drawer. The socially constructed expectations that are bound by the little jewel encrusted gold band are too odious to endure.
This meant that from February (when we announced our ‘intentions’) to December of 2006 almost every conversation with family revolved around the socially sanctioned ritual of transferring ‘ownership’ of, and financial responsibility for, the woman to the man. Why else do you think the bride’s (read “sacrificial woman’s) family pay for everything?
Ah sure, I forgot! We’re supposed to be living in egalitarian times where ‘his’ family share the cost. Good luck telling that to his separated parents who immigrated from England in the 1960s and lived as a pretentious, nuclear family in a major capital city.
I was aware there was a level of need and that his parents/family would need some support. For months before the event, I argued for them to have their meals provided for them whilst they were here – because I knew my family were capable and they weren’t. We didn’t only have to feed them: they had to be assisted to get here and accommodated whilst they were here.
The whole process displaces the identity and possessions of the woman. I gave up my bed and we moved into the spare room. Then, the night before the event/sacrifice, I had to leave my home and go to where my family were staying because HIS family were in OUR unit and my family could not ‘sleep-over’ so I could get up from my own place on the day of the wedding.
Everything was organised to within a second – and all of it organised by me. Yet his family have this “opinion” of me. To them – as has become obvious from conversations with them and things they have said about me: “I am the needy, ‘dependent’ woman with whom their ‘poor’ first born has fallen in love”. (Or, perhaps I am the evil, wicked disabled women who has “trapped their first born”…and they are waiting for me to die or for the spell to be broken.)
I do not imagine this!
His father asked, when I was going to meet him, if I needed “blended food” (Can’t trust those rampant spastic, potential in-laws, they might gag on the salad.). I should have lived up to his stereotypical, preconceived, view of me by drooling on him when I first met him. Instead, I calmly answered questions about “what I would ‘bring’ to the relationship” or “whether I was intending to ‘enslave’ his son as my carer”. I should have followed my instincts and dismembered him at the first meeting. Then he would not have gone on to ask “if [I] was having a colostomy bag put in?” when I had a pain relief delivery system put in for hip pain, or whether this “interfered with my ability to achieve pleasure?”.
You are not misunderstanding the text - this is what my partner’s father said!
Then I e-mailed; the rest of the family advocated; and he apologised.
But there remains this unspoken atmosphere around them and I just wait for the next member of my partner’s family to reject me because I’m “differently-abled” (Polite-speak for “use a power wheelchair”.).
I did not have to wait long. On the same visit to meet the father, we also met my partner’s sister, her partner and their two children. They were away on holidays so we had to drive two hours to see them, then have chips and water on the beach. Of course, we “couldn’t possibly go to [their] house because ‘there are steps everywhere’”.
Yet, when his sister came to see us, in the midst of our moving house, and my family cooked roast lamb, she invited them to visit and drop by for coffee in the “little coffee shop that is near by”. If this is not selective inclusion/exclusion I do not know what is?
As if two family members with their feet wedged in their throat were not enough…..??? No, no, there has to be more…until the last has fallen.
The sister overseas, who I have not met (Yeah, I escaped from one of them!) invited us to meet them in America for Christmas. The airfares alone would cost $10,000 and we have a mortgage. And, after the other incidents, from meeting/interacting with the rest of his family, I not in a hurry to meet another one. I’d rather protect myself from the “slings and arrows”.
Next it was the mother… My partner had been away for work for a week and my mother came to stay. This was partly because we had only just moved into our house and got the toilet seat to be something close to the right height. The shower still was not right and was almost dangerous for both me and my workers.
Oh, did I mention that I have workers who are funded by the Government? They do all of my personal care, cook meals, clean and do the laundry.
Yes.
So, when my partner got back from his work trip, his mother asked “How his respite was?”!!!!!!!!! OMG
No-one has ever been so rude and hurtful to me in my entire life.
This certainly brought out the family’s ‘real’ feelings about me. The brother even defended the mother and proved himself no more aware of his brother and my living situation than the rest of my partner’s family.
When challenged on her illogical thinking that her son is my carer and would need ‘respite’, his mother said that it was a logical assumption because she “does use ‘respite’!”. Let’s not forget that she and her aging husband also refuse any form of home-help that might make her life easier!
Then I tried to “build a bridge”. Now I just want dynamite!
I was chatting to her on-line and she said that I was her [wait for it] “Daughter-in-law” and that she would have never treated her “Mother-in-law” this way and that I should respect her as my “Mother-in-law”.
Aaaah! Aaaaah! Why would anyone want to get married? How horrid that people think they have a right to treat you rudely? Or that they would assume to dictate the way in which you should relate to them?
I have distanced myself from them and will not speak to his family again. But it still hurts. And they don’t see how much they are hurting my partner by utterly refusing to see me as a person – they only see my disability and construct untrue assumptions about our life together.
This is why people should not get married. If we were just “shacked up” they would not have any reason to make such invasive comments. I would not have felt compelled to relate to them and could have avoided them.
This is why we no longer tell people that we’re “m-----d” (I can’t bear to even write the word.). We just say we’re partners………..and, I’m giving the ring a rest in the drawer. The socially constructed expectations that are bound by the little jewel encrusted gold band are too odious to endure.
Monday 30 July 2007
I tried
Ok, I was determined I would not follow social norms. I would be polite and use my best communication skills, diplomacy and patience in all interactions with my partner’s family.
You know how you hear stories of ‘horror in-laws’… Well, I always thought people were being precious and slightly selfish for not getting along with people. I wasn’t going to be like these people.
However, as I’m not aiming for sainthood and as displacement of my personhood has always brought out the fighter in me, I realise that I cannot do it. I cannot get on with his family.
Oh, yes! I forgot to mention: I have a disability and, as no other people I have met before, his family have become FIXATED with this “physical” characteristic of mine. They see me only through the lens or, in their cases, lenses of disability. There must be enough “lenses” between them and me to stop a nuclear war-head. (I know that “nuclear war-heads” are now a bit passé and I’m showing my age. Perhaps I could up-date the metaphor by speculating that the “lenses” might even provide insulation from “weapons of mass destruction”). Thick……..these “lenses” are multiple and super thick!
One by one they have managed to do things that can only be categorised as anti-social. We’re not just talking the odd faux pas. No, no, these are major insults ranging from the fact that I might not be able to eat solid foods to a suggestion that my partner, when away for work, was away for ‘respite’ (Although I [through my workers] actually do most of the washing, ironing {that too} etcetera.).
So I have decided to say, “I tried” and to remove myself from all communication with them.
You know how you hear stories of ‘horror in-laws’… Well, I always thought people were being precious and slightly selfish for not getting along with people. I wasn’t going to be like these people.
However, as I’m not aiming for sainthood and as displacement of my personhood has always brought out the fighter in me, I realise that I cannot do it. I cannot get on with his family.
Oh, yes! I forgot to mention: I have a disability and, as no other people I have met before, his family have become FIXATED with this “physical” characteristic of mine. They see me only through the lens or, in their cases, lenses of disability. There must be enough “lenses” between them and me to stop a nuclear war-head. (I know that “nuclear war-heads” are now a bit passé and I’m showing my age. Perhaps I could up-date the metaphor by speculating that the “lenses” might even provide insulation from “weapons of mass destruction”). Thick……..these “lenses” are multiple and super thick!
One by one they have managed to do things that can only be categorised as anti-social. We’re not just talking the odd faux pas. No, no, these are major insults ranging from the fact that I might not be able to eat solid foods to a suggestion that my partner, when away for work, was away for ‘respite’ (Although I [through my workers] actually do most of the washing, ironing {that too} etcetera.).
So I have decided to say, “I tried” and to remove myself from all communication with them.
A Real Live One……
Blog post for the week of13 July… Woow Friday the 13th and it feels like it. Having been in hospital since Tuesday, today I had my suspicions confirmed: I was being treated for pain but the cause was poorly identified. Well, you could say ‘wrongly’ as different parts of the body are “different parts of the body”.
However, my doctor is good and believes in working with other people. This is how another doctor became involved. This was a “real live one” – someone who I met many years and who has had many, many, many years of experience treating people with my disability.
This doctor performed the gentlest examination I have ever had and declared the excruciating pain to be a bilateral copying of a condition I already had on the other side. Of course, this makes perfect sense to me as when the pain and degeneration started on the other, the symptoms were exactly the same.
Later in the day, the diagnosis was confirmed by x-rays. If it is possible, the x-ray confirmation of the “real live one’s” diagnosis was almost anti-climatic as I already relieved to have a diagnosis.
Knowledge really is power because as soon as I knew what was causing the pain I understood it.
However, my doctor is good and believes in working with other people. This is how another doctor became involved. This was a “real live one” – someone who I met many years and who has had many, many, many years of experience treating people with my disability.
This doctor performed the gentlest examination I have ever had and declared the excruciating pain to be a bilateral copying of a condition I already had on the other side. Of course, this makes perfect sense to me as when the pain and degeneration started on the other, the symptoms were exactly the same.
Later in the day, the diagnosis was confirmed by x-rays. If it is possible, the x-ray confirmation of the “real live one’s” diagnosis was almost anti-climatic as I already relieved to have a diagnosis.
Knowledge really is power because as soon as I knew what was causing the pain I understood it.
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