(no subject)

[minervasolo]

I've lost patience with my laptop, so I'm checking livejournal from campus. Which means 'not very often'. I think it's time to start preparing to wipe my harddrive and start over.

I have my own thoughts on the muslim veils controversy, but apiphile manages to articulate the issue so much better than I could. While the example isn't perfect, it is a good analogy. I can understand if someone's deaf or hard of hearing, being able to see the mouth is important. But saying you /have/ to see the face to communicate is to suggest blind people can't communicate. Also, as I understand it, the teacher was allowed to go without veil among the children (up to a certain age); it was only male colleagues she feels she had to wear it in front of. Surely compromise would be putting her with a colleague who was female, rather than firing her? At this point, I tend to start spluttering about how the government has no right to get involved and tell people what they can and can't wear. Also: how "We can't go on letting these alleged terrorists wander around the country; we need to charge them and lock them up" just makes me boggle. We ought to lock people up for possibly being terrorists? Oh dear. No wonder Al Quaeda is giving us nasty looks. I'm glad I'm not Muslim, right now, but I'm embarrassed to be British.

Oh, and on a completely differentt note, our kitchen is practically finished. Just needs painting now, really.



So, I was going on a journey with my family. And while in bed one night, I spotted a large spider on the top left corner of my covers. Small body,m really long legs. And it started to explain to me about how it was my parent. And then another spider turned up, a tiny zebra striped one. This was my other parent (mother?). It had come all the way from California, and this was why I travelled a lot too. The tiny spiuder then set off home again, very quickly.

I got out of bed, and then realised that, hey, there was a spider in my bed, so I freaked a little and shook the covers to get rid of it.

They journey I was on, it turns out, was to dance camp. I was excited, because DCE is now near where ultharkitty lives/d, though she would be in York. On the way, we stopped to take showers in the equivalent of a public loo at the side of the motorway. While I was taking mine, I was joined by a large, hairy older man. This didn't bother my particularly, but I was wary of washing thoroughly in front of him in case he took it the wrong way. I turned away a little, and when I turned back he was standing very cose to me. This made me squeal, which I then apologised for. He accept the apology, and left, having finished his shower. He was entirely un-pervy, I should add, something unusal for older men in my dreams, who usually turn out to be sexual predators.

So, showers over, we went on. And we went through the town where we'd found Elliot (of anime and Doug Soc acquaintance) the year before. I was for some reasopn not in the van at this point, and discovered that Harry, who was meant to be driving, wasn't either. He'd swapped with someone, a random someone off the street because mum isn't trained to drive the van. At some point everyone was out of the van and it was parked somewhere, andwe looked about for Elliot. We may have found him, i can't remember.

We did find my sister's godparents family. The oldest daughter, who's younger than either me or my sister (though in the dream I had it in my head she was only a couple of years younger than me), was pregnant. This was fine and normal and to be expected. At some point I remembered the age thing, but it was still okay, because Ally is a very mture, sensible girl. Plus, she was some sort of spy, I think.



Remembering the first part, I thought it was a nice little symbolic thing. Then I remembered the rest, and it turned out to just be a normal, fairly surreal dream, with all the usual details and lack of overall coherence.

Comments

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

That's a very strange dream :P

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

But saying you /have/ to see the face to communicate is to suggest blind people can't communicate.

FUCK ME but that's a good point.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

Trying to relay your analogy to a friend, I actually stumbled upon one that might encompasse some of the quibbles people commented with. If we switch from topless to full naked (for example, someone moves to a remote polynesian island, or somthing), and a society that places emphasis on the finer nuances of body language, you find someone being forced to strip on the basis other people might misunderstand them. Of course, the point of analogy was the shame and the reasons why one might not want to strip/take of veil, rather than the reasons someone should, but I thought it might help.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

It's good, honestly, but you've seen the mess - they'd probably just declare that the face isn't the same thing as the genitals and blah blah.

Gnnn. It's been a VERY frustrating two days. Honestly, I want to kill something.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

I can imagine. I wanderd over to the veil/high heels analogy you linked too, and halfway through the comments I just gave up. I wanted to sit and beat people over the head with the obvious, but looking at other's who'd tried, I realised most people were just going to dig their heels in and keep repeating their arguments, whether relevant or not. I'm still spluttering over the idea that heels are a positive thing for women to wear, that they show professionalism. Bad knees, backs, ankles, balance... yeah, those are such professional qualities, just so you can look people in the eye.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Yeah. How can you say that crippling yourself is a good thing? It's like - "Corsets are empowering!" NO. Corsets exaggerate your fragility. Using your sex as a weapon is saying that it's the only weapon you're allowed.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

I am about to ramble, on not necessarily well connected topics. I apologise.

There was a big debate about rape on my Flist a little while back. A lot of "well, you can dress to avoid it, therefore if you dress in certain ways you're asking for it." Drove me up the wall. A few months later, the same guy came across an article about male priviledge, and realised the way in which the things he took for granted and as normal were, in fact, sexist. Things like "we shouldn't need self-defence classes of women, we should have self-control classes for men" (which I don't like, to be honest, because it suggests men can't control themselves and thus aren't responsible for their actions, and is also horribly insulting towards men) - the realisation that the problem is with the attacker, not the victim. It doesn't matter what clothes we wear, we have the right not to be attacked, and however we dress, it is always the attacker's fault, not ours.

This, to me, seems blatantly obvious.

That there are things men may do that women can't, such as walk home alone at night, seems blatantly obvious. That any group of strangers of the opposite sex, no matter how apparently innocuous (or even acquaintances), can be a threat. That if I were attacked, I would have to defend myself from accusations about my lifstyle, my clothes, my route home, etc, when my attacker would only have to defend himself against me. To people who don't have to worry about these things, they don't. And it just baffled me, that these obvious things were going overlooked. Same goes of white privilege, and heterosexual privilege, and so on. People can't see the problem because they don't have one.

Most blokes who argue that heels aren't that bad? They don't wear them. They don't see the affects of wearing them. It is considerd so normal to wear heels, that to reveal that you find them painful and degrading suggests that there is something wrong with you as a woman, that you are abnormal, rather than that there is something wrong with wearing heels. Yes, trainers might be considered too casual for the office, but I spent sixteen years at school wearing smart black shoes, and I have no intention of changing now (even though they're bloody hard to find any more - when I had to get new boots for work I ended up with a pair with a wedge, because there were no flat ones).

Yes, long and rambly. Sorry.