this is what it means to be a woman

the other day i was riding down the street on my long board. a car full of dudes drove by and screamed 'get on the sidewalk you fucking bitch!' i responded by flipping both my middle fingers into the air and doing a little dance as i rode.

the 'you fucking bitch' part seemed pretty unnecessary to me. it seemed to allude to the fact that these guys didn't seem to think it's acceptable for a woman to be riding a skateboard.

most of you will probably stop reading several words into the next paragraph. but i suppose i challenge you to consider ideas you might not have possibly considered otherwise.

from the time we're born, everyone is told by the media, by our parents, by our social and cultural norms, how we should behave. both men and women. for women, there's a pretty specific yet rather contradictory set of rules that we're supposed to follow in order to be women. we should be simultaneously strong yet nurturing. soft and curvy yet physically fit with 6 pack abs. we should have large breasts that we're supposed to show off (but not too much cuz then you're a whore) and tiny wastes. we're expected to be monogomous but sexually knowledgeable. our magazines give us such pertinant information as '10 ways to please your man and he'll be yours forever!' we need to know how to cook, clean, be smart (but not too smart), and have a career where we will automatically make less than a man because of our gender while we raise the children.

my friend kochis and i had a debate about abortion a while ago. he argued that we use abortion as a form of birth control and that we're not responsible for the consequences of our actions, ie if you have sex you should expect children. i argued that for centuries, it has been socially acceptable for men to have sex regardless of the consequences. it was deemed natural for them to fuck whoever they wanted and weren't expected to stick around to help raise the children. biologically, men are not physically constructed to be responsible for their actions. they are not the ones with the overies and the uterus. when a women gets pregnant as a result of having sex with a man, she is the one left solely with that responsiblity: the life of another person. the advent of contraception again made it the man's choice to impregnant the woman or not. he's the one who can wear the condom or not. he has that choice. i guess you can argue that the choice the woman has is whether to engage in sex or not. but often times that doesn't seem to be the case. whether through direct pressure from the guy or from social pressures that this is what we're supposed to do, sex is something we're supposed to simultaneously want and yet abstain from. not too little, not too much. seems either way we're fucked. but i digress.

the option of abortion puts control in the womans hands. she has the final say as to whether or not she will raise a child. it levels the playing ground. it allows her to take the same stance as the man, decide why she is having sex, and have a child or not. she is in control in a game we have little control over.

my favorite matt finley cartoon was about the plan b debate. it said plan a: and had a drawing of a shark on a stick. then it said plan b: and had a drawing of a coat hanger. plan c was a noose. at the bottom there was a little asterisk that said *you're beautiful baby

we're raised to think that sex is something we should want, and something we should give men. i saw something on dateline about girls in elementary school who are giving blow jobs because it makes boys like them. parents and teachers are appauled and shocked. i'm not so shocked. it is a product of our social structure, and we have created these little girls. we have raised them to think that this is what they should do. this is what it means to be a woman.

i grew up playing with legos and dirt. i ran around in the woods and got bruises on my legs. i played with dolls, but not barbies. i played 'house' with my cousins. i was never specifically told what it was to be a woman. but late elementary school into middle school, my peers made it abundanlty clear that whatever it was that i was doing, that i'd been doing for my whole life, wasn't it. i was made fun of for not wearing a bra even though i had nothing to put in a bra until my junior year in high school. the notion of a 'training bra' amuses me to no end. 'training.' we didn't talk about sex or 'womanly' issues when i was growing up. i remember the first time i asked my mom if i could shave my legs, becuase i was the only girl in gym class with hairy blonde legs, she flipped out telling me i didn't need to shave my legs. i just wanted them to stop making fun of me.

becky told me one day in middle school a group of girls, probably the same 'popular' ones i tried so desperately to be friends with and fit in with, stuck a bunch of pads to the outside of my locker. she removed them before i could see them. to them, i was not a woman.

i remember starting to like boys, and they wanted nothing to do with me. my first boyfriend broke up with me because his friends told him i wasn't pretty enough. i was heart broken. i thought there was something wrong with me. i realize now it wasn't me, it was them. to them, i did not comply with their notions of what a girl was.

i've never been with a man who i didn't feel was objectifying me in one way or another. it's never been about me. it's always been about them. always.

there's been this wave of sexual liberation in the wake of the sex & the city thing. we exclaim, 'it's my body and i'm gonna sleep with whoever i want and have sex and that's what makes me happy!' and as a concept, that's great. the idea of a sexually liberated woman who can essentially view sex as men have for centuries is awesome. but it's practically speaking, it's impossible. no matter how much control we think we have over the situation, we are never in control. because in the end, he can walk away and we are left with the consequences of our actions, emotionally and physically. eventually, we will feel dirty and used. and we blame ourselves. i don't know if we can ever be truly sexually liberated in the same way men are.

today jamie and julia and i were talking about how biologically, we're constructed right from the start to 'not be whole'. we are literally structured to be a receptical, and we are then socially constructed to be emotionally and physically incomplete without a man. not another person, a man. because he is the only one that can fill our void.

i very recently learned about the word heteronormativity. it means: Those punitive rules (social, familial, and legal) that force us to conform to hegemonic, heterosexual standards for identity. The term is a short version of "normative heterosexuality." i listed the definition because if you try to look it up in the dictionary you won't find it. i wonder who writes the websters dictionary? so not only should we be all these things as woman, but you're automatically assumed to be straight, though that goes for women and men.

our language is extremely gendered. we call something we don't like, or something we think is stupid 'gay' because gay is bad. gay (in men) means effeminate, and the feminine is always less than the masculine. my sister says gay all the time and fails to see this, no matter how many times i try to explain this to her.

i looked feminist up in the dictionary, and mr webster told me that a feminist is an adjective and is of or relating to or advocating equal rights for women. so at least they got that one right. but socially, it's to declare ones self as a radical hater of men, and is definitely not seen as a good thing to be calling yourself.

the other day kat and i were talking about our childhoods and how cruel kids can be. i guess it's a natural product of the development of the id, the part of us that is only capable of thinking about our own worlds. can we hold these kids responsible if their behavior is directly tied to their physiological development? i don't really know. i guess it would be nurture fighting nature...

i watched cartoons with my young cousins when i was home. i realized that i didn't ejoy these cartoons nearly as much as i did the ones we watched when we were kids. they're extremely fast paced, all the kids scream and they have extremely uninteresting story lines. i can still watch the cartoons that i watched when i was a kid today. we talked about the themes we see in cartoons today: violence, super powers, and slapstick humor which i guess aren't a far cry from what cartoons have always been. none of these cartoons seemed to be saying anything of substance. i wondered what if there was a cartoon that taught kids not to be cruel to each other. what if through entertainment, we could educate them on how to be kind, caring, and generous, though i guess this is what things like sesame street try to teach. but that target audience is too young... we need something 'cooler' for older kids. i said 'kat, i smell a comm design project!' and she said she was done with those and she couldn't wait to have someone tell her what to do. she's ready to be a mac monkey for a while, and i don't blame her. but i digress...

i guess my idea kind of reminds me of the nicktoon 'doug'. he was just a normal kid with an imagination doin normal kid things. i wish the media were more socially conscious. we have this tremendous vehicle for disseminating information and instead of using it to free each other, we use it to bind and oppress. this is how you should look, act, walk, talk, wear and if you don't, you're outta the club and we're gonna laugh at you. adult-hood isn't a far cry from childhood. i want to use my knowledge of design and advertising to infiltrate the crap with good stuff!

if you've read this far, and i can assume most have stopped after the third paragraph, you're probably wondering why i'm 'bitching' about all of this. i've had a lot on my mind lately. and i hope that my words and my actions spark at least some kind of thought. challenge the stereotypes and constructs that are ingrained in us and inspire us to speak up about whatever it is that we believe in. in the end though, i think we all want the same thing: a home where we can be loved and accepted, and a greater web of a community that also accepts and loves us while accepting us as individuals as well. nothing will change if no one does anything. i guess that means you and me...