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

[cadragongirl.livejournal.com]

perhaps it is also a result of the fact that here in the good old US of A, we are used to having more personal space in general (& are just larger), than let's say, people in europe or asia. not something i've really noticed, since i haven't flown overseas all that much, so i'm just speculating.

but yeah - it's always nicer to sit next to women in general, even on trains since they don't tend to spread out as much - though i have to admit there are some who insist that their bags & such need their own seats too. grrr... so annoying.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

It's true that both times on JAL I didn't feel like my personal space was being infringed upon, or that I was in danger of infringing on other people's. This is probably because there was more room built into the plane itself, but also I noticed that in Japan people seemed much more conscious about where their bodies were. Hmmm.

[edajaramsmom.livejournal.com]

Because of my size, I do feel uncomfortable on public conveyances - I just cannot fit completely in between the armrests with my arms relaxed. I have to squish my shoulders forward and together which makes it pretty hard to relax. The reason I prefer sitting next to women is that I am reluctant to let my body parts casually lean on strange men, where I don't worry that a strange woman will think I am coming on to her if my arm or leg touch hers, thus making it much easier to share the space. But I also do not hesitate to ask a man who is spread out to pull himself together, literally, to make room for me!

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

The actual amount of space a person's body physically occupies is another important consideration, one that I hadn't really factored into my thinking. I squish my shoulders forward too, especially on the subway where personal space is not generally a possibility. Sometimes I have an internal debate about it! I'll be sitting there with great posture, elbows at my ribs, and then somebody sits down right next to me. Do I maintain my posture and rub shoulders? Do I squish my shoulders and stretch my arms forward? But if I do that, then I'll have to brush their arms with mine on the way! Plus there will be cleavage! Are they staring at my cleavage? How do I feel about that? How should I feel about that? O_O Oh look, my stop at last! The Green Line! FREEEEEEEDOMMMM!

...oh crap, it's a Red Sox game night. >_