7 posts tagged “pop-culture mythologies (and the deconstruction thereof)”

I hate the end of January. It's dreary, the weather sucks, I have to go back to school, and all the idiotic anti-choicers come out of the woodwork to whine and cry about the evils of abortion (while conveniently ignoring the plight of poor children who are, you know, actually born). Today, the New York Times asks Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome? and does an excellent job of exposing the hypocrisy of the rhetoric of "Silent No More," "Operation Outcry," and other anti-choice groups that try to use a few women's negative experiences with abortion to justify re-criminalizing it.

Evidently, a women who was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused by her male family members as a child and teenager who went on to experience various drug addictions, a string of abusive relationships, and a handful of abortions as a result is infallible proof that Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome exists. Never mind the fact that the Reagan and both Bush administrations have poured millions of dollars into psychological/psychiatric studies that have all turned up inconclusive, that Congressional hearings have never turned up any proof either, nor have those conducted by a number of American medical associations and journals. In fact, the only studies in existence that do show evidence of so-called "Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome" have highly flawed methodologies (most of them rely on extremely tiny, cherry-picked samples that aren't representative), are conducted by researchers or institutions with an obvious agenda, or both. Oh no, we should never let reality get in the way of a good masturbatory hand-wring over those cruel, callous women who kill their babies and cause irreparable emotional damage to themselves.

I am so, so sick of the hypocritical attitude that so many people have towards abortion rights. I am so unbelievably tired of hearing people say things to the effect of "Oh, I hate abortion and think it's cold, vicious, cruel, and totally the wrong decision, but I guess it's better than letting those poor, irresponsible, slutty women breed babies that the rest of us will have to take care of." If you think abortion is mean, vicious, cruel, or whatever else, that's your business, but for the love of god, can you please stop raining condescension and moral judgment down on women who are already dealing with enough? Having an abortion isn't always an easy choice, and until you know every single woman who has ever had or ever will have an abortion to the core of her being, you have no right whatsoever to criticize her; I don't care how many warm, fuzzy feelings you happen to have about fetuses.

The only thing that those attitudes does is legitimate the anti-choice view that all women who have abortions are evil whores (and the  "logical" conclusion: that the pregnancy and future child are adequate punishments for promiscuity) and contribute to a cloud of shame and silence that surrounds the women who chose to have abortions, possibly causing a number of the "symptoms" associated with "Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome." While the women who have abortions may not regret their decision, years and years of verbal abuse at the hands of self-righteous asshats can take its toll, especially when even the most reasonable among us are joining forces with heinously misogynic anti-choicers to condemn them. And where does that leave women?

I really recommend that everyone read the rest of the article. It's quite well-written and informative.

About ten months ago, my mother decided that I should try internet dating. It made sense: I'm an introverted nerd, the internet is full of introverted nerds, and maybe an e-romance website would help me find an introverted nerd of my very own. This is fast becoming a new entry in my running list of advice my mother gave me that I never should have taken, because damn, people are seriously crazy.

You see, I'm not just introverted and nerdy. I'm also fairly attractive. This is a problem, because other introverted nerds see the conjunction of relative nerdiness, intelligence, and hotness and start acting creepy, which freaks my introverted self the ever-loving fuck out (in addition to making my inner radical feminist throw temper tantrums). You would not believe some of the weird-ass things people have actually said to me:

1. "Have my children." Not only has this actually happened, it's happened multiple times. Ew. Gross. While you can argue that dating is ultimately a quest to find a suitable person to combine DNA with (unless you're childfree, I guess), it's definitely not one of those things you mention on the first date, much less on an internet dating site. Seriously. What on earth would possess me to mix my awesometastic DNA with that of a freaky pervert who happens to be older than both of my parents (42 and 45)?

2. "Be my sub [or insert any other variety of recipient of freaky sexual preference]." Thanks to the internet, I have reaffirmed the fact that I am a freak magnet. I'm really not sure how or why that's happened, but I really wish it would stop. I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but seriously, folks, discussions of weird sex practices shouldn't happen until at least the fifth or sixth date (or whenever you determine that there is a realistic possibility that sex will actually occur). Hardcore BDSM is not an appropriate springboard for a conversation, unless you are on a special forum for that kind of thing. Asking random strangers on the internet to dress in head-to-toe latex so your fiberglass ropes won't chafe them is not cool, daring, edgy, or sexually arousing (even if I were into that). It's creepy.

3. "Have a three-way/poly fling with me and my girlfriend/wife." This really bothers me for a couple of reasons. I think a lot of this is the direct result of me making the grievous error of honestly stating my sexual orientation (which is really unfortunate when you think about it). Once again, unsolicited sexual propositions (outside of appropriate forums) are sketchy. That said, people really need to get it through their thick heads that being queer is NOT the same thing as being polyamorous or into three-ways or other forms of group sex. To assume something like that is really obnoxious (and kind of offensive).

4. "Hi, I'm (at least) fifteen years older than you, think your profile is 'deep,' and want to date you!" I can't think of any not-sketchy motivation that someone that much older than me would have to want to date me. I'm fairly mature for my age, but I'm still twenty-two, not finished with undergrad, and think I know everything. I'm pretty sure I'd drive anyone from that age group up a tree, and yet they still insist on hitting on me. Ick. Bonus creep-out points when they're older than my parents (which isn't difficult, since my parents had me at fairly young ages).

5. "Hi, I am a hard-core Christian Republican who hates everything you stand for. Will you have sex with me?" I really love it when people with blatantly misogynist opinions hit on me. Really really. It's like, "Oh, you hate my ideology but you'll grace me with your sex because I'm hot enough to meet your dubious standards-- but only until you find a Nice Christian Woman to take home to your parents and eventually marry?" And they always seem to think that I'll be more than happy to hop in the sack with them and get completely offended when I inform them that I don't have relationships of any kind with sexist cretins who don't respect me. I've kicked guys out of my room for being anti-choice before, and I'll do it again. It's not negotiable. The entitled attitude that they have makes me ill.

6. "I just got in from Iraq and I'm a WAR HERO. It's your patriotic duty to nail me!" See above. Once again, I'm not sure what would possess a DECORATED WAR HERO to hit on me, an ultra-liberal pacifist who has opposed the war in Iraq since well before it even started-- except for the prospect of hot sex with an easy liberal chick. Sorry, Bubba, it doesn't work that way. I hear they sell confederate flag bikinis down near the Country Music Hall of Fame. You can find you a nice woman there.

This is just the short version.

I'm still keeping my account. The LOLZ it's provided me with have been invaluable in times of stress, and I've made several really cool friends from it as well. I'm not really interested in romance at this stage, anyway. And when I get interested again, I'll hit the bars, because they're way less weird than the internet.

I can't believe I'm writing this.

Seriously, people, in what alternate universe is calling sexual assault, which is not only an act of extreme brutality, it's absolutely horrifying and soul-shattering to experience, "surprise sex" acceptable? I'd kind of like to know so that I can send you there, never to return.

I'm not a big fan of the whole "OMG I RAPED THAT FINAL" or, conversely, "Boo hoo, that final raped me and left me in a metaphorical dumpster with my underwear torn and duct tape around my wrists! *kutkri*" routines, either. Call me crazy, but you really can't sexually violate an exam, nor can one sexually violate you. If you studied and did well, great. If you didn't study and did well anyway, really great. If you didn't study and failed, ha, sucks to be you. But for the love of freaking god, rape is not an acceptable analogy for any of these processes. It's not cute, it's not clever, it's not funny.

All it is is really fucking offensive and all it does is make me hate you and not want to talk to you ever again.

Especially those of you who know full well what I've been dealing with lately. Screw you.

First of all, it's not little. It weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve pounds which, for a laptop, is freaking enormous. Especially when you consider the horrible weight distribution that laptop carrying cases provide. Imagine carrying that through airports multiple times in a single school year (I went to a school in Southern California my freshman year), and you'll see why I have quite a bit of pent-up hostility directed at my laptop, which I have resolutely refused to name. It's not worthy.

Secondly, it worked more or less fine until literally one week after its warranty expired, at which point everything began to break. Grr. My current list of grievances against it includes:

-Taking forfreakingever to do anything, despite repeated hard drive consolidations, defraggings, and deletings of my extensive library of Beavis and Butthead (don't judge me) and Daria episodes along with sundry music videos.

-Instigating a holy war with my printer that has resulted in me being unable to keep the two connected for more than a few minutes at a time. If they're linked up for longer than half an hour or so, they both crash and become paperweights just long enough for me to have a multiple-artery coronary only to spring merrily to life again. Not. Funny. At. All.

-Randomly deciding to link the functioning of the 1 key to the 3 key. If I want to type 1 or !, I must hit and hold down the 3 key or the shift and 3 key first- and then go back and delete the one. I would C&P, but the control key on that side is broken as well! Ain't computer owenership grand?

-Not automatically deleting temporary files. What a pain.

-Killing off the ethernet port for some reason entirely unknown to me. I am now wireless-dependent. This isn't a problem at school since my residence hall has wireless everywhere, but it really sucks at home because I have to use my mom's computer and she doesn't enjoy my 3AM AIM conversations quite as much as I do.

-Innumerable suicide theats.

So much for computers being the wave of the future that will save us all countless hours of productivity. I'd have been better off with a typrewriter. I'm going to visit my dad over Christmas and have him do a system restore (after I borrow his external hard drive and stick all the crap I still need on it) and see if that helps anything. I need this computer to make it 'til May.

Lesson Learned: When I finally get the money to replace this thing, I won't be purchasing a Dell.

Bible Beaters around the nation will be pleased to know that they won't have to worry about little Malachi Isaiah or Mary Elizabeth engaging in morally questionable activities like dealing drugs or hiring prostitutes while they're shooting up major cities anymore. Instead, they can gun down unbelievers in the name of god in freshly-released Left Behind: Eternal Forces, which takes place in post-Rapture New York City. Based on the infamously poorly-written yet unbelievably profitable drivel spewed by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins for twelve painful installments, Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a first-person shooter in which the player may either join forces with the Anti-Christ (although they can never win on that side, of course) or start a band of "Freedom Fighters" that runs around ordering people to convert at gunpoint and killing them when they refuse. And here I was thinking the Crusades ended several centuries ago. And what's that I heard about Muslims being an evil religion for "Converting people by the sword"?

"It's an incredibly violent video game," said Stevens. "Sure, there is no blood. (The dead just fade off the screen.) But you are mowing down your enemy with a gun. It pushes a message of religious intolerance."

Right, then. Bring on the hypocritical hand-wringing:

Left Behind Games' president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose "spirit points" every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them. They can earn spirit points again by having their character pray.

As my mother would say, "How conveeeeeeeeenient."

As I would say, "What utter bullshit." Although it is pretty hilarious that praying after you kill an unbeliever ups your spirit points in the eyes of god.

It gets better. Behold the xenophobia writ large:

The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics. 

When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner said the game does not endorse prejudice. But "Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ" -- and thus can't be on Christ's side in the game.

Because all Arabs are Jesus-hating Muslims. Although I suppose it is good to see my father vindicated (he once told me that I was morally obligated to have children because otherwise the Muslims will outbreed us all).

If you're interested in sending outraged letters of protest, the game is being carried by Wal-Mart [big surprise there], Sam's Club, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, GameStop, EB Games and various Christian stores.

Source.

Back in another life when I was a creative writing major, one of my professors told me that my work resembled this story. I looked it up on Google, and what I read has stayed with me ever since.

After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, an elusive gaping worry. You don’t try to explain it, filled with the knowledge that it’s nothing after all, everything filling up finally and absolutely with death. After the briskness of loving, loving stops. And you roll over with death stretched out alongside you like a feather boa, or a snake, light as air, and you . . . you don’t even ask for anything or try to say something to him because it’s obviously your own damn fault. You haven’t been able to—to what? To open your heart. You open your legs but can't, or don't dare anymore, to open your heart. It starts this way:

You stare into their eyes. They flash like all the stars are out. They look at you seriously, their eyes at a low bum and their hands no matter what starting off shy and with such a gentle touch that the only thing you can do is take that tenderness and let yourself be swept away. When, with one attentive finger they tuck the hair behind your ear, you— You do everything they want.

Then comes after. After when they don't look at you. They scratch their balls, stare at the ceiling. Or if they do turn, their gaze is altogether changed. They are surprised. They turn casually to look at you, distracted, and get a mild distracted surprise. You're gone. Their black look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared.

Looking for meaning in something inherently meaningless is a waste of time.

It's a long-running joke between my friends and me that Vanderbilt does not admit ugly people. Of all the nine colleges and universities I've applied to, it's the only one that has required a photograph on its application. The ostensible purpose for that is to publish a "new faces" book for incoming freshman (this was pre-facebook, mind you), but we're nevetheless convinced that they also used these photographs to weed out ugly people. Ugly people do not look good in group Greek photos (no one wants to see an ugly Theta in pasties [yeah, that happened at Vandy]). Ugly people do not grow up to be successful politicians, businessmen, lawyers, and trophy wives. In short, ugly people ruin the Vandy image. We're supposedly the best and the brightest, yes, but we also have a reputation of being ridiculously wealthy and impossibly attractive to uphold as well.

I'm not kidding about this. I can count the number of truly unattractive people I've seen on this campus on one hand, and, in a school of six thousand, that's depressingly impressive.

I haven't decided to what extent it's a good or a bad thing. In terms of visuals, it's nice to not have to stare at ugly people day in and day out, but I'm not sure how I feel about the culture of Pledged that perpetuates it. Something like 50% of the student body is Greek (about 60% of the women and 35% of the men), and the prevailing influence of that isn't always positive. I know Alexandra Robbins got lambasted by critics for being overly sensational in Pledged, but in my opinion and experience at a super-Greek school, her depiction of sorority life was, once again, depressingly impressive in terms of its accuracy. While I never went Greek myself (I fail at the kind of conformity that most of the Vandy sororities require: they can order you to wear specific clothing, wear your hair a certain way, and all manner of other crazy things), what I've heard firsthand from my friends who went Greek, my friends who dropped out of the Greek system, and secondhand from the campus rumor mill confirms just about everything that Robbins wrote. Vanderbilt has a huge culture of superficiality and the eating disorder rates to go with it.

This brings me to three weeks ago. I've been on a quest to lose weight since May of this year, when I made the unfortunate discovery that my tendency to eat cheeseburgers for lunch every

day and consume an entire sleeve of Trefoils while writing term papers had consequences. Namely, my skin looking like total hell and me being medically obese. I figured the solution was easy enough: only eat healthy foods and start exercising. It worked over the summer, in which I lost about thirty-five pounds, but once school started back and I didn't have time to exercise, I began to gain weight while eating even the "healthiest" food Vanderbilt has to offer. I decided that, rather than begin monitoring my calories obsessively and only eating lettuce, I'd start making time to exercise. I started out jogging in the park with SymphonyofSound, but the weather's turned nasty lately and our schedules don't always line up. I'm not comfortable with running in public parks by myself, so I had to make the ultimate decision: to start working out at the Rec.

The Rec is a Vanderbilt institution of utter self-hatred. One goes to the rec to socialize, to be seen in skintight workout clothes, full makeup, and pearls (I'm not making this up), and to purge what few calories one has consumed in a Ro*Tiki salad while listening to Paris Hilton on one's iPod and reading trashy magazines. Every machine is set up in front of a mirror- ostensibly for motivation, but all it does is maximize self-loathing. Who wants to see themselves, red-faced with runny makeup huffing and sweating underneath fluorescent lights? Even the impossibly-skinny sorority girls look god-awful, and I can't help but feel sorry for them. Most of them are rail thin, if not outright emaciated, and yet they elliptical in such a frenzy that you'd think wild dogs were chasing them. And they look so miserable.

There are a couple of girls I see every time I go. One is always wearing a sweatsuit, even though it's autumn and the heat is on (making it hotter than the hinges of hell in the Rec). She sweats buckets, and that can;t be comfortable or healthy. I'm convinced that another one is there all day; whenever I arrive, she's already red and puffing and exhausted-looking (to the point where she looks like she's experiencing intense pain). I'm there for at least forty-five minutes to an hour, and yet she's still going strong when I leave. I've seen her calorie counter- it's well over a thousand every time. And there's no way she's consuming enough calories to make up for it. She's par for the course; most of the women who exercise there look miserable. The self-hatred on their faces is evident.

It's so depressing. I went to a high school where eating disorders were epidemic, and I've witnessed (and experienced) firsthand how devastating they are. But at least Webb gave lip service to healthy eating and exercise habits (even though nothing was ever said to the girls who were obviously ill). Vandy doesn't, not really, and everything about it, from its hyper-emphasis on Greek life and all the craziness that goes along with it to the raging hookup culture to the prevailing mindset of "It's impossible to be too rich or too thin or too fashionable" encourages them. I try to tell myself that I'm the normal one, but it's really hard when I'm surrounded by hordes of blonde, skinny, made-up Vandygirls-- and I know full well that the beauty standard in this culture is them, not me. And when you have to be ill to fit into your culture's fucked up notion of beauty-- well, that really sucks.