(no subject)

Well, I'm a day late, but:

Happy birthday, Wild Elf. :-)



And now to the thicker stuff:

We Are Crushed by Five Thousand Years of Hatred

What did we do to deserve this? To 'deserve' this?


I'm reading Naomi Wolf's Promiscuities.

Oh. My. God.

...

Her chapter on "a brief history of the Slut"...

It knocked the wind out of me.
Litterally.
I was shaking like jelly by the time I was even half-way through it.

I found myself thinking this:

How can anyone live under the weight of that crushing hatred?


This was followed by the chilling realization that... I live under that crushing hatred.

It's what makes me think things like this:
"More than half of my female friends have been raped, at least once in their lives, often more than that. I am the lucky one."

As opposed to:
"More than half of my female friends have been raped, at least once in their lives, often more than that. They have been terribly unlucky."


I mean... it's like lying by omission... It's... condoning this violence and this cruelty and this evil[1]. Yes, I said evil, and I think it's a perfectly appropriate word.
It's condoning this evil by refusing to do anything about.

I don't think anyone would suggest that a woman who had a glass of wine too many deserved to have her fingernails pulled out. Or to have her feet broken. Or to have cigarettes ground out on her back.

But if a woman has a glass of wine too many and gets raped... well. She deserves what she got. She had it coming to her.
She deserved that pain and that terror.

She Deserved To Be. Tortured.


I got sexually harrassed on the bus a little over a month ago.

Some guy suggested that I might like to take him home and have sex with him.
He wouldn't leave me alone.
He put his mouth right next to my ear to talk to me.
He had food in his mouth and I could feel his spit on my skin.
He tried to kiss me.

This is not, in any way, the first time some guy on a bus, some guy I don't even know, has tried to do this.

I didn't move away.

You know why?

Because I thought that moving -- that expressing my disgust -- would be showing fear.
That it would be giving this fucker some sense of power over me if I showed that what he was doing -- his agression, his self-entitled invasion of my space, his assumption that what he was doing was even remotely socially acceptable -- was bothering me, he'd know he was having some sort of effect on me.

I told him to piss the hell off (and got a smile for my trouble from some gal sitting further down the line).
He didn't stop trying though.
He didn't kiss me, but he kept trying to talk to me.

Maybe I should have given fuller voice to my disgust.

But I think, more likely, he shouldn't have done any of that to begin with.

How many people... would consciously agree with me, while unconciously thinking "well... you know men... only after one thing. Really, she should have been more careful"... do you think?


And we all live under this. The crushing fear that says: If someone hurts me, it will be, in some way, my fault. I shouldn't have been there, I shouldn't have worn that. I shouldn't have though I could trust Person X who is a class-mate, a relative, a friend -- clearly, I should have known better.
(Don't go off the path, Red Riding Hood. Whatever happens to you will be your fault. You'll get what's coming to you. You'll get what you deserve).

I remember reading second-wave feminist stuff in high school and half of me thinking "right on, sister!" and half of me thinking "dudes, don't you think you're kind of, like, over-reacting?"
They weren't.
I am beginning to understand their outrage.





[1] Evil: Intentional, unnecessary, cruelty. (And, frankly, cruelty is, I think, always unnecessary).

And now for something completely different...

Have been drooling over BPAL stuff again.

Ye gods, I've got something like... 30+ scents that I want to try.

That being said, I'm getting a better idea of what appeals to me and works with my skin as I narrow things down.

See: I like the sound of "Highway Man" (and Dee) but I'm pretty sure that the combination of jasmine, roses and leather, while it sounds lovely, would smell like... trying to wash burnt rubber off your gloves with really soapy over-scented soap. :-\

Whereas something like "Dragon's Milk" (dragon's blood, vanilla, and honey) not only sounds appealing, but would probably smell delicious on me as well.

I say this because of my experience with "Hell Cat", "Blood Kiss", "Dragon's Hide", and "Mata Hare".

"Hell Cat" is the very dessert-y one that smells like wurthers-original candies. Super-sweet, almost cloying. But I *like* sugary smells. :-)

"Bood Kiss" involves a lot of spices and something warm and faintly insense-y (which Shelley suggested might be amber... or something related to it).

"Mata Hare" is roses, roses, roses, and jasmine. Which sounds awesome. And smells like soap-soap-soap and chemical-roses on me. Yick. Most unfortunate.

"Dragon's Hide" was my freebee. It's a combination of Dragon's Blood, Smoke and Leather scents. On my skin this results in a combination of: Something Warm and Wonderful, paired with (unfortunately) burning rubber. The smell is much nicer if I use it to accent a slick of my body-shop vanilla perfume oil.

As such, I suspect that scents which combine resins (amber, dragon's blood, etc) with foody-desserty smells like honey, vanilla, sassafras, amaretto, etc. and possibly some spices (clove, in particular, seems to jump out on me, but pepper, nutmeg, and other warm-spices might work nicely too).

I should avoid heavily floral scents, though. If I want to give the 'leather' scent another go (without the 'smoke' scent to make it burn), I might try something like "Dee" which supposedly smells woody and bookish with a hint of leather. It might work on me (although it might also be too herby... like Morgause ended up being).

Anywhoo, that's my blather for the moment. :-)

- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)