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elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 06:58 pm
Have not heard much from brother. Hate the telephone game. Did speak to my SIL's mother and have noted that, given that there have been complications all along in my SIL's pregnancy, the transport of the SIL to California may have been a considered and discussed plan between my brother & his wife. I'm recognizing from the calm tones of my SIL's mother that perhaps this has not been a panicked crisis, but something that my brother and his wife have been able to deal with with some sense of control.

I am beginning to sort all the communication on fact or conjecture.

I think the fact is they will likely loose their child, but all the assertions about what emotional dimensions are going on with my brother and his wife are conjecture.

We will visit them soon. They are jet lagged now.

--==∞==--

Work is dense and consuming. I feel terribly behind. I feel like i'm hurtling towards a wreck.

--==∞==--

We own a jeep. I think my colleagues are highly entertained by how excited i am to go camping. I feel such delight in the thought. Colleague at work says he thinks the 31" aren't tooo bad, even though they;re a little bigger than one ought to use. Odometer and speed readings will be wrong.

I'm pondering that the spare is not nearly as large as the rest of the tires (and is thus ornamental, best i can tell). However, a 31" and wide tires are too heavy to hang on the tail gate. So, i'm looking at new tire + new bumper + swing mount for spare. Christine wants to get the seatbelt replaced. None of these things are included in the mechanic's estimate of what needs to be done to improve the health of this twenty plus year old car.

It is a measure of how smitten we are that we don't blink. Commence sinking money into the car, now.

--==∞==--

I've seeds sprouting from my plantings over Memorial Day weekend. Finally!! I've been fighting the urge to dig up the seeds to see how they've changed, like the story i heard of someone's granddaughter. On the other hand, today squirrels were digging in my repotted geraniums with scarlet and cream nasturtiums. There are some sprouts though, so not all is lost. Still, grumble. We had a lovely blue-sky day, first in some days, and suddenly everything wilted. The stop of stretches of grey drizzle means the water toting season is back.
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 02:51 pm
My morning's musings were clearly inarticulate. I've skimmed two different responses (one LJ, the other DW) and they addressed completely different issues than what was itching my brain. I will try to redirect my writing. Let see:

Given

Story 1: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/01/the-hazards-of-duke/8328/
"A NOW INFAMOUS POWERPOINT PRESENTATION EXPOSES A LOT ABOUT MEN, WOMEN, SEX, AND ALCOHOL" where the exposed "lot" is a hook-up culture where women intentionally get drunk so they can be picked up by guys to use each other for sex.

Story 2: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/hard-core/8327/ "The new world of porn is revealing eternal truths about men and women," which is that, "A warring dynamic based on power and subjugation has always existed between men and women, and the egalitarian view of sex, with its utopian pretensions, offers little insight into the typical male psyche. Internet porn, on the other hand, shows us an unvarnished (albeit partial) view of male sexuality as an often dark force streaked with aggression"

and

the disappointing realization that i actually do know someone who can mix alcohol, firearms, and a national park and then be utterly shocked and appalled that by committing a felony* she is treated like a felon.

* Brother's legal advice on reading the email: Stop. Writing. Things. Down.

i find the heterosexual and gendered relationships and behaviors asserted as given or proven in the first two articles to be so unlike the behaviors that people i know exhibit**, so shallow, and yet so unquestioned in this mainstream magazine that i feel alien. Indeed, it is the shallowness of the relationships described in story one, the shallowness of the analysis in story two that makes my brain itch.

** Despite various and sundry delights or complete lack of interest in kink and porn and sex , and despite the varied and sundry variations of romantic and intimate relationships, despite various and sundry values about numbers and genders of partners and the numbers and genders of partners' partners....

I want to assert it's only in some bubble of privilege that can afford to be so shallow, and then my sister's friend demonstrates a different but similar shallowness: can i argue her connection to the bubble of privilege?

I'm not saying that i'm surprised there's porn on the internet (although i continue to wonder if the common wisdom that it's so easy to find accidentally is some sort of cultural fig leaf excuse so that everyone can excuse any embarrassing revelation with, "It was an accident! You know how hard it is not to trip over a porn site on the internet!").

I'm not saying that i'm surprised that there's violence in intimate relationships.

I am saying that the boundaries of experience that seem to make up the fodder for these two articles seem strangely drawn, clearly unwilling to go past anything other than the most binary understanding of gender, a sort of narrowly defined sexuality, some narrow premise about what relationships look like. I want to argue that the articles are flawed because the authors limit their review of The World to an Us and We that is caught up in power and status and wealth and success. Their conclusions (well, article 1's conclusions) might just be accurate for a community that is caught up in success measured by being seen in the right places with the right people and having the right type jobs: i wonder just how representative of college life in America the article is. Similarly, the observation that there is a lot of porn showing men subjugating others sexually therefore "male sexuality [is] an often dark force streaked with aggression" seems to be such an analysis fail on so many points, i wonder how it got published. (Is this an "eternal truth about men and women" or a clear result of the misogynistic messages in our culture? And shouldn't this author meet up with the failed academics who tried drawing some conclusions about female sexuality based on some cursory survey of slash and fan fiction?)

I suppose the real conclusions is that i shouldn't bother with The Atlantic but to continue to enjoy folks' Wiscon reports. And go to Wiscon someday.