Dating for revenge?

Check this thread out over at Jezebel

Basically the post is about people dating outside their race as a form of revenge. Which is something I've never thought about- probably because my parents are of the "anyone but a republican" persuasion. I've dated lots of people out of spite, but not for this reason.

This is a weird thing with me... I don't like to date the WASP's so much. And I hate it when people say "Oh, I don't like this group because I've had some bad experiences and therefore they're all..." I don't want to be a person who does that. But there are some cultural factors at work.

I can deal with machismo better than I can deal with a guy who won't walk me home at night. I can deal with a guy who punches someone in the face for talking shit about me better than I can deal with someone saying "oh well, there are two sides to every story, and he has a right to his opinions."

I'm Italian- which in some ways, qualifies me as an "other"- culturally at least- particularly in Chicago where there aren't too many of us. It is, in some ways, an ethnicity that has been hyper-sexualized, or percieved that way by people who are a little bit whiter. Like, an Italian guy, or anyone darker, isn't going to think that I'm just some whore simply because I'm not some tiny, demure blonde who can milk a cow and eats wonderbread. That's not considered the end-all-be-all of femininity there. And maybe that's just my own paranoia or something, but it's the way I feel a good deal of the time. And it could just be the fact that I date a lot of asshats - I'm not saying that isn't a possibility.

I'm not trying to make sweeping statements, and I'm not saying that this is the way all these WASP dudes are, or that this is the way that they feel. I'm saying that this is what I feel, and that I have to examine that- because I think it's important to be aware of my own prejudices and possibly wrong ideas about things. If I ignore them and pretend that I don't have these feelings, I can't do anything to change them.

Happy Birthday Mum!

Today is my mother's birthday, as you may or may not have guessed from the title of this blog entry!

She's quite a bit more awesome than anyone, ever. It's a fact.

Let me tell you a story. In highschool, when I was having some ridiculous 16 year old freak out over something stupid, she refused to let me address her as Mom, and insisted I call her Tupac. Which is brilliant, because it's awfully hard to take yourself so seriously when referring to your 50 year old mother as Tupac.

Thank god for that, really, because, with my disposition, I very well could have been someone who takes themselves waaaay too seriously.

She used to say she'd prefer that I smoked pot rather than drink because drinking was what the "straight people" did, and it was corporate, or something. She discouraged me from harder drugs by pointing out all the people she knew who had become Jesus freaks after getting off of them ("Scratch a Jesus Freak, find a junkie!," she always says)

She didn't raise me with any fucked up notions about what it means to be a woman. Which is the single greatest thing anyone can do for their daughter. I'm damned lucky to have been raised by a feminist. Even if most of the time she's so 2nd wave about it ;). I am so fucking glad that it doesn't even occur to me to sit there and be demure and let the boys talk. Back in my organizing days, even among radicals (fuck, especially among radicals- see, because they usually consider themselves "exempt" from sexism, which makes them 80,000 times worse)- I was usually the only woman talking at meetings. And no matter how hard it was to get a word in edgewise, I did it. And it just has never occurred to me that what I have to say is any less important because I have lady parts. I have my mother to thank for that.

In my life, I have never met anyone as funny or as smart as my mother. And I'm not just saying this because I love her and she's my mom. The woman is freakin' brilliant. She can solve the Sunday crossword in pen in an episode of Law and Order, and thinks nothing of it.

Because of my mother, I don't just throw my opinions out there without being able to back them up. I learned how to know my shit.

People love my mother, because she makes them feel important and interesting. She actually finds everyone interesting- I wish I did, maybe it will come with age, I don't know. Like, this one time when she was at the Barcelona Olympics, I think, she met this Mormon kid (and, by the way, my mother is quite the athiest), who ended up writing to her the whole time while he was on his mission. I'm serious, people just absolutely love her.

I am trying so hard to not let my anger get the best of me. I am trying to not, as she says I have a tendency to do, make sweeping generalizations, and theorize everything.

The best thing about my mother is that she always makes me want to be a better person.

:)

Stuff. And things.

I am ridiculously full right now. I just went to High Dive with a dear friend who I haven't seen since her birthday party back in like, February. An event which set about a freakishly irritating chain of events in my own life (which of course, had nothing to do with her, I love her guts)- and I literally cannot believe that it was that long ago that it happened. Weird. Anyway, it was a swell time.

Oh! But do you know what's amazing? Best search term ever... straight from Glasgow, Scotland... "How does a toilet seat work?"

What I want to know, is how can someone who can even spell the word toilet not know that? What does that even mean? Toilet seats don't work, you just sit on them. That's like asking how a chair works! My mind is blown and boggled simultaneously. Is this maybe Scottish slang for something I don't know about? I just truly do not know what to say.

I have had that freakin' "Valkyrie, Valkyrah... my knapsack on my back" song stuck in my head for two days.

And yesterday I bought two amazing pairs of shoes for $5.

That's about it. I don't feel especially creative right now.

Television will be 80,000 times better!!!!!

Hello All!

My dearest friend, and occasional contributor to this blog (as The New Jan Brady), Miss Pandora Boxx needs your votes to get on RuPaul's Drag Race!

In defense of my bad self

I went out last night with a friend of mine who likes to refer to me as Evil Robyn- to differentiate me from another Robyn he knows (oddly, I think I have the more complimentary name, but that is beside the point). He claims that I have no sense of morality.

Au contraire! See, I admit that I am a bad person- freely- but when I say this, I say it with my toungue firmly in my cheek. It's not that I'm bad, it's just that I am very, very honest. With myself. I don't mean to say that I've never lied, because of course I have, everyone has. But I could never be accused of "being-in-itself" or "being-for-others"- or of having bad faith.

If I am not concerned with convincing others that I am in fact a good person or a nice person, I am more free to be a good person than I would otherwise be. Does that make sense? I like to be on solid ground. I would rather know that someone has a problem with me, and start from there, rather than have them pretend to like me so we all get to be in happy happy land where no one is a jerk. And the thing is- I have the worlds most well-developed bullshit detector. I know when someone is blowing smoke up my ass. And I would rather they did not. For instance- I would vastly prefer it if a guy coming on to me at a bar said "Hey! I have absolutely no interest in your aesthetic opinions! However, you have got a swell rack there and I'd sure like to do ya" rather than feigning interest in anything I have to say (ie: "being-for-others"- acting in the way he thinks I want him to act). Because then we start from solid ground. I am allowed the privilege of making my choices based on facts rather than bullshit.

I don't believe in "niceness"- I believe in "kindness" and I believe that there is a difference.

This, I guess, is where my weird feelings about committed relationships come into play- which, I believe, is the primary reason for my friend thinking I'm evil. Because basically, I've always been irritated by the idea of people being in relationships just to not be alone, rather than because the idea of being with another person makes you nearly physically ill and you do not personally want to do it. Like, I get what people are trying to say when they say that, well, in order to feel that way about someone you have to commit yourself to them first. I don't feel like I do. I am like, awesome at multi-tasking. Like, I've never been able to wrap my head around the concept of cheating, because... well... if I wanted to get with other people, I wouldn't be in a committed relationship in the first place. But then again, I am an especially entertaining person and thus have no issue about being alone. Unfortunately, in order to get anyone to go along with me on this trip, I pretty much have to make them read "Being and Nothingness." Which, you know- is honestly not that great of a time.

I don't feel like I owe people things. I really don't. Maybe I'm deficient in that way. Maybe we just all assume people sort of think like we do- you know- like how if you don't lie, you don't expect other people to? I don't want people to ever feel like they owe me anything. That makes me uncomfortable in the worst way. It's like, I would rather people be decent to me because that's their personal choice, rather than something they feel they have to do.

(Full disclosure- am PMSing and have taken codeine... so this may not make nearly as much sense as I want it to.)

Neither bloody nor bowed

"There is something about that woman -- that woman! -- that refuses to bend, and something about a large portion of this country that despises her for it."

You know, I actually think Clinton might cut your face if you called her "Poor Hillary" to hers.

That's what I would do. And at the end of the day, that's why I'm still gunning for her. I am that woman. At first, my support of HRC was primarily based on the fact that it would annoy the largest numbers of people I can't stand. I'm a big fan of schadenfreude and ball busting. And it's still partly that. I'm not exactly the worlds biggest fan of the Democratic party- I don't think they're all that different from the Republicans. At all.

But this is the thing- the main thing. People feel the same way about Hillary Clinton as they do about me a good deal of the time. There is just something about being that sort of woman that gets under people's skin, and I see it all the time. It drives me crazy, especially because it's usually coming from other women. And I get why she's staying in the race. I totally get it. Because, whenever I'm in a political argument, the more "Oh my god, will you just shut up and go make some cookies!" vibes I get, the more I am determined to continue.

The two criticisms I hear about myself most often are the following:
- I talk too much
- I am too opinionated.

Think back now, and try- just try to think of time when a man has been described in those terms. I can't think of one. Men have opinions, women are opinionated. Men are talkative, women just won't shut up.

And when they say I'm strong, it always has that tinge of resentment to it, a bitter aftertaste I can smell on their breath.

And with Hillary Clinton, this whole "Oh! It's cute that you tried, now go home to your family and let the boys play their game" thing gets right under my skin, and if she did bow out without fighting it to the end, I'd be fucking pissed.

This whole "Poor Hillary" thing is nothing but a perverse desparation to always see women as victims. It's a place where people are comfortable, and that disturbs me on a very deep level. If people can put you in the category of victim, it makes you much easier to deal with. Because the opposite of victim is victor. And no one likes losing to a woman.

I don't know how to act like a victim. It's just not in my bones. My mother is not a victim so I never learned how. We have too much pride, the women in my family. I would fall down dead before I manipulated anyone with tears. Even to get out of a ticket. Which is why I know she wasn't faking that day.

What does it say about our society that we are more at home with women cutting themselves, and starving themselves than fighting? Or being president. Why do we need women to be pathetic? Why do we need to insinuate that need onto a woman that does not need, ask for, or want our sympathy?

...and though to good I never come,
Inseparable my nose and thumb.

In which I take issue with Madame Butterfly.

(I would issue a spoiler alert... but I'm sure you don't really care)

I fucking love Madame Butterfly. I do. Seriously, everytime I listen to Un Bel di Vedremo, I sob. And I am totally not a cryer.

Ok, so let me get this straight-Butterfly is "married" to this douche nozzle Captain Pinkerton who is all "Sweet! I'll have a good time when I'm here with Butterfly, and then I can just dump her ass and not even have to officially divorce her!" And that's what he does. He leaves her ass for 3 years, and doesn't come back until he finds out she's had his kid. He comes back with Wife 2.0, a fellow American, and then they demand that she give them the baby. In fact, at first, he just sends Wife 2.0 over to get it, because he's too much of a pussy to do it himself.

And then instead of cutting their faces, she gives them the baby! She changes the kids name from "Sorrow" to "Joy," and then she kills herself.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Totally don't get it. It makes me sad, yes- but I totally, in no way, understand the logic behind it. I do not know how that thought process works. I am right now making the face that I would make were some asshat actually have the balls to act like that, and then demand I give him my fucking kid. It's not pretty. It's very incredulous looking. I can't fathom the day when anyone would even have the cajones to try and pull that shit with me. Balls on a silver platter, motherfucker.

I have just seen the trifecta of awful

At Dominicks. Guy in his late thirties wearing shants (you know, the big pants cut off into capri-length shorts?), a fucking shiny flame shirt, and a goatee, with soul patch. And it was pointy. And I bet you he was probably planning to grow it out so he could braid it. I'm also sure that somewhere there were tribal tattoos.

Sad. Clearly, 1997 was a momentous year for this man. I've decided to think of him as a modern day male counterpart of Miss Havisham. He was probably stood up by the love of his life at a Limp Bizkit concert or something, and decided to stop time. Like, I bet you he has a ton of kitschy clocks from Spencer gifts around his house all set to the time when she was supposed to be there. And blacklight posters. So many black light posters. And inflatable couches galore. And one of those weird lightning globe thingies! You know what I'm talking about? Like you touch it and all the crackly light goes to where your hand is, and then your hair is supposed to stand on end? He totally has one of those.

I have like, such a giant fear of becoming that, though- I'm pretty vigilant about it. You know, like I still see women with those teased up hairsprayed 80's bangs... and it's so sad, really. It's as though they're still clinging to the time when they were on the cutting edge of life. On the other hand, I don't want to like, be in my 30's or 40's and still trying to be super hip. Because that's pretty sad as well.

When I was 22, I dyed my hair bright pink for the last time, officially. Because I told myself- you know, this is the last time you can do this without looking like some giant weirdo desperately clinging to 17. And I haven't done it since.