Thinking about current issues is hard. Not the Barbie doll "Math is hard!" way, I'm plenty smart (by most measurements of that sort of thing anyway) and with the proper information I feel I can make reasoned judgements about many issues.
The problem is that thinking about feminist issues is a depressing, soul grinding affair, and I get angry. I've got a rather well developed sense of justice and at any point in time I am at most two steps away from becoming one of those "destroying the world to save it" super-villains.
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| The revolution will be televised - by Joss Whedon |
me: I've considered doing something in a feminism blog, but I think I'd end up poisoning the water supplyI see the things that go on around me and in the world at large and I get deeply angry, but when I finally open my mouth I find that I'm either preaching to the choir or losing respect for yet another person based on defensive or offensive responses.
friend: Poisoning the water supply? Howso?
me: Literally
It's depressing enough to know how bad the world at large is, but it's gut wrenching to open up about my beliefs only to find that people I choose to have in my life can't conceive of why I might have a problem with certain aspects of the world. Or worse: talk down to me as if I am overreacting and somehow "just don't understand" why something I have a problem with is actually somehow perfectly okay.
Eventually I had to make an active decision about how to move forward, which was in fact to not move forward at all. I don't have the subterranean real estate or the capitol to be Batman, so for the greater good (the greater good) I decided to ignore the news, popular culture, and people in general for a while in an attempt to avoid dealing with feminist issues.
The problem is, that doesn't really work so well, what with the whole, "actually living in the world" bit. Apart from the occasional article re-post I've tried to keep the feminist talk down to a minimum with all but a very few select people, and yet I found myself thinking about it at the oddest of times. The few people I spoke to have encouraged me to share with a wider audience, but I've always balked at the idea based on two things a) I get angry and b) people are REALLY mean on the internet.
I think I finally admitted "defeat" after I found myself idly contemplating how reactions to the rape scene in Pulp Fiction may or may not differ from reactions to M->F rape scenes. To be fair I *was* watching the movie, so this was not a completely out of the blue random musing... that would be pretty damn weird I think.
So clearly I'm thinking about it whether I want to or not *anyway*, so maybe instead of just making myself dyspeptic over things, I can use this blog as a way to get the thoughts out of my head, and hopefully a way to get them organized enough to make relevant statements that others may just understand a little better.
Maybe I'm just preaching to the choir, but at the very least a well tuned choir can make a some pretty compelling noises sometimes.
