Feminism sucks
I can't stand feminism. It completely offends me. The idea that women are better than men, or that all men are wankers, it's just complete bull.
I know, I know, I've spoken about this many times before.
But things keep popping up around me that simply drive me crazy. Woman who insist that they get treated badly by men, and blame it on the fact that they're a woman. Men who get completely slandered by women for doing something nice, such as holding a door for a woman - even if he'd do that for anybody. And even women who get criticised by others for conforming to gender stereotypes, when all they're doing is being what makes them happiest.
Why use all these excuses for not performing to your best? Someone I know recently told me about her experience in business school - it was a mainly male dominated course, and two of the four women who took the course dropped out, because they thought they wouldn't be able to get by in a male dominated environment. That's a lame excuse.
The overall message I wanna put here is that, if you wanna do something where you are a minority, like a woman in business school, don't let the fact you're a minority stop you from doing it. And don't blame the majority for not letting you in, either. Just go out and bloody do it, and stop looking for things that could stop you.
Tokonatsu
Last weekend I went to Tokonatsu, and unless you don't follow me on Twitter then you knew that already. Tokonatsu is an annual, weekend long anime convention / festival where everyone who attends dresses up in costume, gets drunk and roasts marshmallows by the camp fire. It was a lot of fun and I met loads of lovely people, some of which I'd met before but not seen in a lot of years!
When I'm around large groups of people though, I'm generally a wuss. Anxiety creeps up and I found myself retreating to my tent for large portions of the conventions because I was a little overwhelmed by it all. I'd not been to an anime convention for a long time and wasn't really used to the mass of people. By Saturday evening, I'd plucked up the courage to sit and chat to a few people and ended up having a great time with a handful of lovely people. And so with restored confidence, I was ok for the rest of the weekend and made friends really well! Phew!
The best part about Tokonatsu was the atmosphere. After overcoming my anxiety fuelled panic, I realised that there was this amazing atmosphere that flooded the entire convention. Despite the fact that I only knew about 30% of the people, I felt as though I could just go up to anyone and chat with them, because we all had something in common - we were all sharing the same experience of Tokonatsu. I've not felt that before in other conventions, even with the same confidence boost that I'd had.
I feel as though I'd like to take that atmosphere and just install it into my head forever, so I always feel comfortable talking to people, regardless of where I am and regardless of who's around me, because we all have something in common anyway. So, thankyou Tokonatsu for letting me experience that and I hope you don't mind if I steal your atmosphere forever.
Lack of organisation
I've recently moved back in with my parents. I WAS living with Mike but felt the need to move back with my folks after experiencing a lot of stress and depression, and so now I'm back. Moving back in with your parents after living with a partner for 3 years is a bit strange. We treat each other like we used to before I moved out which doesn't work too well of course because I've grown up a lot in those three years, but somehow living here has transformed me back into the teenager (well, 21 year old) girl I was when I left.
Take my room for example. I'm not the tidiest person in the world and it's quite easy for me to get distracted because of some huge project I've decided I'm going to finish right now, which means my room ends up in a bit of a mess. It wasn't quite as bad when I lived here the first time round because I had the big room with lots of places to hide my rubbish and most of my stuff got put in drawers and boxes and cabinets, hidden away never to be seen. But now my room has room for a bed and a dresser and that's it. There's a small cupboard in there too, but that's full of stuff-that-isn't-mine and I can't really start putting stuff in there.
My solution for this so far has been my usual one - find a surface, any surface, and dump everything onto it. If it's off the floor, that counts as tidy. With the amount of paper, notes, scribbles and doodles I do on a daily basis, you can imagine what my room looks like. I need a new solution.
My new solution, which I'm slowly putting into action is this:
- Every week, sort through JUNK.
- Sort junk into two piles - "keep it" or "bin it".
- Sort through "keep it" piles into catagories and organise them appropriately onto Evernote.
- Review Evernote regulary! (Using my ipad, which will make life easier)
I'll let you know if this works.
This is about Mike
Mike, mid waffle
This is Mike, and he is cool. He gets embarrassed when I talk about him, but he doesn't stop me from doing so. He's also very expressive with his face, body and hands, so taking photos of him mid-conversation is quite good fun.
Here's another reason why Mike is cool: he's always coming up with ideas. Sometimes it's infuriating; we'll be watching a TV series when, half way through, he insists on pausing it to tell me his thoughts that have hit him like a lightning bolt. Most of the time though, I love him for it and you know you can rely on him to solve whatever problem you're suffering with.
This is why Mike needs a mentor. He needs someone who'll hear what he has to say and point him in the right direction to develop it, work on it, build it etc. I've started encouraging him to write his ideas down, but really, he's just talking to the wrong person. I'm a little reluctant to have him start talking to another person about his ideas; watching him "get his by lightning" and the look on his face as the electricity flows through him is one of my favourite times of the day (and it really is daily). Having someone else who he can talk to might mean I don't get to share those moments with him.
But, nevertheless, Mike needs a mentor. His ideas really do need to be unleashed onto the world, even if I do roll my eyes at half of them. So, this is my appeal to the world: lend him your ears and your advice, because he needs it, and perhaps the world does, too.
The parent-child relationship
A conversation with a close friend sparked this thought about the relationship we have with our parents.
Most people have generally felt, at some point in their lives, that they can't be themselves around their parents. For a some people, this is painful as their parents are a huge focus in their daily lives and other people just cut their parents out completely, seeing them at special events throughout the year, if that.
But what causes this distance we feel with our parents? For most people, your parents have known you your entire life. And you've changed a lot over the years. You loose contact with friends and other contacts, but physically speaking, your parents are always there. And that can be a bit of a problem, especially after the teenage years, when you're exploring the world outside of your own and developing a new identity for yourself. Parents aren't around for this change into the new you, and all of a sudden you're a new person talking to people who knew you before the change. It's like meeting up with someone you used to know - not sure how to act. But because they're your parents, and we love our parents! It's like trying to shove a square that used to be shaped like a triangle, into a triangular hole, and being horribly frustrated because it used to fit.
Thankfully, we can still build a new relationship with them. If you're honest about how you feel, and work out a way where you can both get what you want, a relationship is sure to grow. I'm a lucky soul, in that me and my parents sort of evolved into friends almost naturally. All thats left to answer is, what relationship do you want to have with your folks?
Confusion on Feminism
Feminism has always been a concept that has completely illuded me. It's something that I can't simply ignore, the world seems to be filling more and more with feminists and their individual beliefs are so stretched that it's one of those terms that just seems to be available to contort, bend and mould to the beliefs that suit the individual.
My interest in feminism comes more from an outsiders perspective - I've never once thought of myself as a feminist and the idea of a group fighting for equality just for themselves baffles me, as as a good friend of mine said recently "I don't support anything that promotes equality for just one group". But the term seems to haunt me, lurking in newspapers, conversations with friends and family, and I still haven't quite grasped the concept of it.
The majority of the women that I've met so far that call themselves feminists have actually appeared to be rather insecure, blaming outside forces for all the problems they see themselves having, and have decided that, because the rest of their friends have had similar experiences with men, that it must be "something that happens as a women", gotten annoyed with that idea, and decided "something must be done". In other words, feminism just hides the fact that all of these women are insecure.
Is this really how we want to evolve as women? Do we really want to completely out all men? I hear many women claim that "all men are bastards" based on the logic that several men have screwed them over in some way. Instead of thinking that "Maybe I'm attracting jerks", it's "All men are jerks, men should treat women better." Isn't that a little... I don't know... judgemental? And isn't that the sort of attitude that the minority of men have that feminism wants to get rid of?
Another thing I see very often is, women who complain that the "poster girls" on the cover of magazines devalue women and cause men to believe that all women should be like that. Here's the kicker - I've yet to find a man who actually believes that all women should be size 10, have huge boobs and whose only goal in life is to prance around to sexually please all men. I'm sure those men are out there, but they are the MINORITY! In fact, the only time I've actually heard that belief being said, is when women say it! Not only that, but it's not actually possible for another human being, who the only similarity you have to them is the right sexual bits and pieces, can effect the way someone views you. If you overcome your insecurities, get back to your core and be completely comfortable with who you are, its gonna change the way people look at you.
I guess my point is, instead of focussing on how other people are affecting your life, and how other people are causing you to look bad, why not try affecting your own life, get yourself out of your own insecurities and try and help the whole pie of equality grow, not just your own slice. Inequality effects everyone in their life somehow, and the only way we move forward with it is to help everyone grow, not just one part of it.
So, this is the end of my first post - I had no intention of breaking the ice with a big fumbly post on feminism, but there you go! Life is full of suprises. Maybe I'll post about something productive tomorrow, like, I don't know, actually getting this website full of STUFF? 
Hi, I'm Sarah and thanks for checking out my blog! I'm currently taking photographs of a Bunny sitting on various peoples heads, trying to figure out my life and blogging about it as I go! Join me for the ride, it should be fun :) You can learn more about me by reading my About Page...
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