can't you see that you've made me wild like you

[timeripple]

Friends and sundry! I write this from a remote outpost in the mountains of California, where it is cold and misty. Quite frankly I would love to be tramping around in the woods wearing rain boots, except my rain boots are on the other side of the country and anyway indoors we have muffins and tea.

It has been an eventful week! Friday was graduation, which involved a lot of standing around in an uncomfortably short dress wearing robes and a silly hat. cadragongirl bravely took the afternoon off work to attend graduation, and she brought me PIG-RABBIT as a present! TWO PIG-RABBITS! One for my phone and one for general hanging around. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (I think, between this and when I was blathering about neurotransmitters to a4yroldfaerie as we made purple pita bread, I may qualify as the dorkiest person ever.)

We got dumplings in Chinatown to celebrate my supreme dorkiness, and also graduation and cadragongirl having survived the semester from hell.

I flew out to California the next day, and spent most of the trip contemplating how much more airplane space men's bodies occupy than women's. In my experience, many men tend to slouch, take over armrests, let their knees splay into other people's leg room. Women don't. Some men don't. But many do. I find it annoying when people are blithely unaware of the way they occupy space in relation to other people, because I'm constantly aware of where every part of my body is and how it's moving or not moving in space. (Mostly because if I let that awareness lapse, somebody or something gets accidentally smacked. This is probably why I have always sucked at things like cartwheels, where various parts' relation to other parts changes drastically.) My unwillingness to say "Excuse me, could you please move your knee" or "keep your damn knees to yourself!" has to do, I think, with this (no doubt unreasonable) notion that people should keep track of their bodies at all times with a view of not inconveniencing other people. But it also has to do with ways I've been conditioned to think about gendered behavior, and ways I've been considering gender and personality lately.

I do believe that gender is a social construction. And I frequently feel guilty that a large number of my personality traits line up with patriarchy-approved expectations for the gender I get identified as. Which is ridiculous. Gender does not need to be a binary. It doesn't even need to be a one-dimensional spectrum. I do not need to feel guilty about being who I am. That is not the point of feminism as I believe in it. Frankie Landau-Banks can just take her "it is always better to speak than to be silent" and shove it. There are many ways of speaking, and just because mine does not involve a bullhorn does not mean I am not also free and independent. (Which might actually be the book's point. I haven't decided.)

Anyway, the point is, people are complicated, I guess.


Since arriving in California, I have learned that pumpkin chocolate chip cake is actually delicious (much to my surprise), tiny old yoga ladies are hardcore, and that even though I still don't like the US cover, Sarah Rees Brennan's new book The Demon's Covenant is excellent and funny and addresses one of the major problems I had with The Demon's Lexicon. Kind of.

Also, I made my dad watch the first episode of Troubleman and he thought it was hilarious. It's all in picking the right drama! *shoujo fists of victory*

I miss cadragongirl quite a lot, and I think I will go eat muffins now to console myself. Ever since we finished The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry, we couldn't bring ourselves to watch another drama because the ladies simply failed to be half as awesome as Shin-young & Co. So we've been watching random episodes of Ranma 1/2, and now I have the first season theme song stuck in my head. /tangent.

Ahem. Now, about those muffins...

Comments

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so happy I'm not the only one that a) sees the gendered behavior spread in this and b) tends to be pretty peeved with both the existence of the spread and the people who thoughtlessly discommode others this way. I have spent many airplane minutes fuming about this and being irritated at myself for not speaking up. In addition to my dislike of discommoding others, defending my territory seems petty, but being thoughtlessly crowded irks me.

Word also to your next paragraph.

Congratulations again!

Muffins clearly aren't sufficient to make up for the absence of the awesomeness of cadragongirl, but yay for baked goods anyway.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

This is why I like window seats--I can just smush myself up against the wall and have one armrest to myself without worrying about what's going on on the other side of it.

Thank you again! :D