Velvet Verbosity

I don’t think I’ve ever heard commitment described so well as LouCeel does here:

It can be awfully lonely, being on the outside looking in. And as for your fear of ‘getting comfortable’, committing - Have you ever stood on the side of the pool, thinking to yourself “Man that water’s going to be cold” and you hesitated to jump in for fear of the shock to your system? But you got up the courage and jumped in and it wasn’t so bad - the jumping in - and once in, you didn’t want to get out?

That’s what it’s like, committing.

Who doesn’t enjoy the pool once in?  Ok, maybe if there are imported sharks in the water, or there’s an 8 year old with a mischievous gleam in his eye and a yellow watery halo around him.

Image: “Arial of Woman Diving from Diving Board” framed photographic print by Rick Raymond, found at www.art.com

I told you, didn’t I? I always say how geeky is sexy and sexy is geeky, and when you put the two together, you have GEEKY-SEXY! Now the folks at TangoMag are finally catching up to what I’ve know for years. [Editor’s Note - I had previously stated The Huffington Post as the source for the following quotes. However, I was actually linking to TangoMag. When I realized my error, I thought maybe I was drinking at the time of this post, but no, it was all just a tad confusing. There was a blurb (on The Huffington Post) about the original article (on Tango Mag) and I didn’t realize I had linked out of the HP to read the full article even though ALL THAT PINK should have been my first clue (maybe I WAS drinking at the time). Seeing how I can’t yet afford a staff of source checkers, these kinds of things are going to happen from time to time.]

Don’t look now, but there’s been a paradigm shift, and the very stuff that used to be geeky—gadgets, technology, interactivity—is suddenly sexy.

We’re not talking “Revenge of the Nerds” here, where the geeks wage war against the jocks. Geeks are getting a lot of proper attention suddenly. It’s not really hard to figure out why. For one thing, in the information age they are the power holders, and everyone knows how hot power is. But in addition to power, they are generally more aware, attentive, and caring than their “cooler” counterparts. Add that up with power and that’s one hot equation.

Josh Herman agrees. “Geeks are obsessive about Stars Wars, The Simpsons, comic books—and love,” he says. “And not just in the infatuation stage. The same passion I bring to anything in my life, I also bring to my relationships.”

Case in point: “This girl I was interested in in high school wanted to go to the butterfly exhibit at the zoo,” Herman says, “but she complained that you could never get close enough to them.”

One Saturday, off they went. When they arrived at the Butterfly House, his date watched with a mix of curiosity and horror as he dumped the contents of the water bottle he’d been carrying all over his head
and arms.

“It wasn’t water. It was sugar water I had mixed up that morning,” he explains. “Butterflies attacked me.” He, in turn, waved the colorful swarm toward his flabbergasted date, who, lo and behold, soon became his girlfriend.

“Would a non-geek have thought of that?” Herman challenges. “Probably not.”

No, probably not. And in that, lies the Catch-22 of dating a guy who is one: it’s not for the faint of heart, but, in the end, the stuff a geek will cook up to win yours will likely make it flutter. For the long haul.

Aw heck, see how geeky and sexy that is? Geeky because the guy wasn’t trying to be suave or cool (well maybe in Geek fashion he was). He didn’t have the script and the moves. He kind of made a fool of himself. But oh-so-sexy because he didn’t have a script. He had a brain, he had ears, he had a heart, and he combined all of them to come up with a plan that wouldn’t make him “look” all that cool, but would melt the heart of his potential mate. What women wouldn’t fall for that?

If you think I’m just loving on the geeky-sexy because it’s my personal preference, think again. Hot women are throwing themselves at geeks at comic book conventions, science fairs and anywhere else the slender think tanks geek out.

When tonight’s headliner takes the stage, a hush falls over the crowd. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher, has got the geek chops, and yet he hardly acts the part of the quintessential nerd. Rather, he seems relaxed and affable, and with his first question, elicits a wave of appreciative laughter: “Who are all of these people,” he asks this evening’s host, “and why are they spending a weekday night in a science club?”

Why indeed? I ask Liz*, a willowy blonde artist in her early thirties, what brought her here. A tip from her astrophysicist friend, Ben, she says. “He’s one of the most famous astrophysicists in the world. He discovered a star when he was 22!” she gushes. But tonight Liz is here with a wingwoman—a cute brunette with a pixie cut. They came for the lecture, but, says Liz, “I have a fantasy of meeting a really hot science guy.” “Yeah,” her friend chimes in, “Geek guys are mad hot.”

Despite all the myths (mostly supported by the “cool” guys who don’t want this information getting out), geeks make good lovers and good mates too. Loyalty and a curious mind, believe it or not, can make for some pretty hot action in and out of the bedroom. “Great” as in great for both parties. Loyalty translates into proper attention, intense curiosity translates into learning about what really works, not just what the movies say works.

Christina Milano of Glee Magazine says it best:

Nerds Have a Much Bigger Hard Drive
Not only do nerds take the time to listen to their partners, but they also mentally take notes, remember and are able to retrieve the information at the most opportune moments. The best way to make your partner feel sexy, sensual, wanted and larger than life is to listen to him or her. Because most of the world rarely gives you its devoted attention, imagine how special you’ll feel when one individual does.

A hot body might get you in the door, but eventually, what meets the eye will fade. It’s important to add depth and substance to your personality. The hottest, most intense relationships are the ones with people you can really talk to, laugh with and learn from every day.

Geeks also know how to make their women feel secure, and that’s ultra geeky-sexy. As Ahmed Bilal points out in 12 Reasons Why a Geek will Steal Your Girlfriend in 2008:

Remove the source of a women’s insecurity and she becomes a much more fun person to be with - as geeks know.

It’s hardly rocket science, but leave it to the geeks of the world to figure it out. Geeky-sexy is IN, and just remember that you heard the phrase here first.

From one blog to another I discovered The Angry Black Woman, writings from a gender and race activist. I was a little surprised to see Gloria Steinem being raked over the coals so I had to go see what that was about. Turns out Steinem had made a faux pas in the way she said something, and managed to really piss some people off. I’ll get back to you on what side of this argument I fall on. I haven’t read everything in depth yet. At first glance though, it seems there might be somewhat of an overreaction. The tagline from this blog is “Why are black people angry all the time? Probably some dumb shit you did.”

This is why I never formally became a feminist. What I mean is, I didn’t want to go to meetings, I didn’t want to march in marches, I didn’t want to be involved because I didn’t want to live my life feeling angry. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t speak up about women’s rights, or expect and demand them for myself. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t sometimes feel incredibly outraged about some things. It’s just that I remember my first encounter with an open feminist, and it was brutal. My first year in college, I was invited to participate in a new leadership council for all the colleges in Vermont. There was this young woman there, and as soon as you were introduced she would immediately announce she was a feminist. She was on the defensive every second, just waiting to strike. During group workshops, no one could finish a complete sentence before she was standing up and calling someone a sexist pig or enlightening us about the evil patriarchy. If she had been right even half of the time, I might’ve been more sympathetic to the cause, but if a man was chosen to speak first she was on her feet. If a woman was called on to answer a certain question, she found evil intent behind it and railed. On and on it went all weekend without pause. If she wasn’t speaking, she was listening only so much as to hear anything that she could be angry about. She had what I like to call, “angry ears”.

This turned me off feminism for quite a while. Later, when I returned to college, I took a woman’s studies class. Oh lord, I thought I was going to hurl sometimes. About mid-semester, 9/10ths of my classmates were arguing for changing the language in all great historical literature, including the bible mind you, to be gender neutral. I was the only woman in the class arguing against this. It was a simple argument really. “Um, you can’t rewrite history. That would be bad.”

I spent the next four years at an all woman’s college where issues of gender and women’s issues were constantly at the forefront. You couldn’t escape it if you tried, and while I was still on board that women should get to vote, get to have a shot at leadership, be seen as equal, and so on, I sometimes felt tired at the endless discussion and anger.

The truth is, it’s hard to strike a balance as a woman. I spent most of my life not very angry about these issues. Mostly this was because I was raised to just believe that I had all the same rights, and to be treated as though I did. I was also blessed with many male friends who were incredibly respectful, intelligent, aware, and kind and there was very little “battle of the sexes” banter or joking that salts and peppers so many other conversations. For the most part, we were just “human” with each other, and respect was paid to our shared humanity. In other interactions, however, it was made clear (and became more clear with time) that most of humanity still engages in disrespect to other humans ranging from the subtle (seemingly innocuous) to the gross.

Earlier tonight, I believe due to having made myself ultra-sensitive through all of my recent reading, and a recent painful experience, I retaliated on a comment that “offended” me and my retaliation was sharp, quick, and cruel. I didn’t even think about it, it just flew out of my mouth, and I regretted it the second it came out. It came from a place of hurt and rage, and wanting someone else, someone from the other team, to feel what we women sometimes feel. So, while my conscience feels humbled and shamed for saying it, my intellect and my emotion feels vindicated. Typically, when women, or frankly anyone else who isn’t at the top of the heap, says, “Could you stop hurting me?”, they are told that they are just being too sensitive. So tonight I turned the tables. I didn’t plan to, I didn’t think it out, but there it came. Still, I wish I hadn’t said it.

I never really did believe that “an eye for an eye” was the best way to prove a point. I truly wish it wasn’t the only way that some people can hear your message. I had my “angry ears” on. Sometimes, it just gets so tiring to speak rationally, to spend exhaustive amounts of time and energy explaining just why some statements, some behaviors, some ways of thinking, at the very minimum support the relentless subtle disrespect of another’s humanity. Sometimes, when you’re hurt and angry enough, you simply dispense with the peace talks, and just push the red button to launch a verbal weapon of mass destruction (yes Bush and your lackies, I got me some of those VWMDs). If I had even stopped there, maybe I would have been justified. But no. The person was clearly stunned and hurt, and later when I wanted to apologize and I wasn’t allowed to talk about it, I said some more crap. In the end, I didn’t accomplish closing the gap, I managed to make it wider.

Tomorrow I endeavor to “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”, or to at least find the balance. I think that tagline, “Why are black people angry all the time? Probably some dumb shit you did.”, could be adjusted to any situation, only replacing the “some dumb shit you did” to “not being listened to, respected, and honored”. Yeah, when we don’t get that, anger sets in, and it fecking festers people. Even though I regret what I said, not only because it was cruel, it was unusual too, not to mention simply not true. But I was angry from all the times I had tried to rationally point out why some things are hurtful and had my feelings minimized or brushed off.

So here’s the lesson of the day. When you continually hurt and disrespect a woman, then tell her that her expressed wishes to be respected are invalid, overly sensitive, or some other poppycock, either through your words or actions, she is going to do one of two things. Tell you right where you can go, or she’s going to swallow her feelings and vomit them all over you, or someone else, later. This is the nature of repression. When the latter happens, it won’t necessarily be timely, correct, and it is sure to be stinky and unpleasant if not downright toxic.

Repression leads to oppression, and both make the repressed and oppressed angry. I wish I knew the antidote to this. I do actually. We need to treat all humans with respect and dignity in all of our thoughts, words, and actions. As I should have done. As someone else did with me tonight by apologizing for some jokes that, upon reflection, he thought I might have found offensive.

Lately my blog has taken a decided and sudden turn toward feminist issues. Let me explain. Some recent exposure to men who objectify women without batting an eyelash and as long as it’s not anyone they know, and “no one is getting hurt”, has compelled me to look for the evidence that this justification is ludicrous. Not only have I found sufficient evidence to confirm my gut feelings, I’ve found enough evidence to make my gut sick.Second, raising two children in a culture that is becoming rapidly disconnected as fast as it is connecting, and becoming increasingly media driven and pornified, I am reaching a point of ORANGE ALERT.

In my research, I found Sparkle Matrix, who has opened my eyes to issues I wasn’t even thinking about. Take this rape campaign poster that clearly blames the victim. Horrified as I was, still, I thought Sparkle Matrix’s interpretation of the intention was overkill. After all, Britain was trying right? Maybe their attempts were slightly misguided, but change and progress is a slow and painful process. Lighten up already! At least there WERE posters being made.

Then, because it was on my mind, I brought this up to a few people, and I was a little dismayed that they could not immediately see the connection between the message and victim blaming.

Still, I thought, we’re making progress, right? No. Not enough.

We’re not making enough progress when Harriet McCormick, a bright young woman who lives in the very same country that produced those progressive anti-rape posters, made the mistake of getting drunk and blamed herself, suffered for almost a year, before finally taking her own life. This woman would have contributed great things to society. She was already on her way to doing so. Instead, she took her life because she couldn’t live with the guilt, the trauma, or the conflict between the two. I wonder what her rapist is doing today? I wonder if he is giving his life in service to others? I wonder if he is racked with guilt? Somehow, sadly, I doubt it.

The thing is, Sparkle Matrix and others are right on this issue, and I see that now. Maybe one out of three rapes happen when a woman is drunk, but three out of three happen when there is a rapist involved. Why focus on the 1 out of 3? Why focus solely on the woman’s responsibility in the possibility that she will be raped? Why not focus on teaching men that rape is just wrong. It’s wrong. It’s always wrong. And you know what else? Women do NOT fantasize about being raped. Not the way real rape happens, but I will talk about that in another post. The reality is, it’s more like this.

What’s more, I did a Google search after reading the story of this girl to find the post I had read about the rape campaign posters. I found this one instead. Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive after reading about a young woman throwing herself off a bridge and plummeting to her death, leaving behind family and friends to pick up the pieces. Maybe I’m just being a silly woman. Maybe I’m just being an angry feminist.

Or maybe this ad is using sex to sell anti-rape. How else would you get a guy to look at it, right? “Must put a woman in panties on poster”.

When people think it’s no big deal that anti-rape campaigns use such misguided messages as these, please read her story. Read it over and over until you are sick with the idea that the message in our culture is still to blame the victim, and to still use women’s bodies to sell everything from deoderant to “please don’t rape us, it hurts”.

People, it is 2008. When the hell are we going to evolve? And women…it is time for the next wave of rebellion. Honest to goddess, it really really is.

Stay tuned for “A Letter to Men”, “A Letter to Boys”, “A Letter to Women”, “A Letter to Girls”. (John B., I’m talking about it.)

And if you’re not angry enough yet, read on here about how a convicted rapist of children was just buried with full military honors. If you are angry, sad, or otherwise moved, please share this, bookmark it, and talk about it.

From the BBC comedy Man Stroke Woman.

Are guys just jerks led around by their genitalia? Are strong women just bitches?

Yes. No. Neither. Both. Crikey, I don’t have the answer people!

But I did find this insightful post from a guy’s perspective. Touches on why men sometimes behave badly towards women, how some men do still want the dumbed down version, and illuminates why we women need to continue to be smart and whole, and all of that, but also why it wouldn’t hurt to be a little bit soft and a little bit nice.

Link here.

You might have guessed by now that I have been spending a lot of time perusing the internet. Firstly, my Dad (the one who was sooooo against the internet 10 years ago, and who now has 5 computers running simultaneously. In the same room.) turned me onto NetVibes, and I’ve gone RSS Feed wild! How positively excellent that I can sign in to one website and have all my favorite news, weather, blogs, etc. in one place, all categorized and tabulated, and as I want it! People, I am fat with information!

Which brings me to the second interesting thing I found today. A new book, “On My Own: The Art of Being a Woman Alone”. Wonderful. No, I mean it. It’s probably going to really save some woman’s soul. But the fact that we still have to write books like this for women rankles me. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we all need some guidance in learning how to be whole. I myself spend a lot of time sitting on a meditation cushion in order to discipline my mind into believing there is nothing at all wrong in the world. (Ok, ok, most of the time I ignore the fact that there is a whole meditation area in my living room, complete with chant books, candles, and cool incense. So sue me.)

What makes me snort like an angry bull about this kind of book is that it is a symbol, an indicator that women are still being programmed to believe that we are inherently incomplete without partnership.

Women, please, for the love of all that is good in you, just stand up and be whole already! With or without a partner. With or without children. We vote, we work, we enjoy sex, we even (according to the latest issue of Bust magazine) avail ourselves the pleasures of the cornucopia of young foreign hotties. So what. is. the. problem.?

Can’t help but to think that there are several adult men who need to read this just as much as the surly teenage boy living in my basement. That same boy whose head still smells like the day he was born to me.

The room was white peeling plaster
and yellowed wallpaper
that slumped and separated
from the walls
in great bubbles.
We sat
five of us to a sagging bed
passing around bottles of cheap beer.
A lightbub shone white and hot
over our bobbing heads –
Teenage angst,
lust and anger burned inside our skulls
making its way out our mouths
and down
to our loins
filling our narrow eyes with electricity
that traveled invisible across unseen wires
plugging straight
into our impoverished swollen hearts.

We were starved for love then –
like the little brown children
on the television with their staring eyes and flies
on their faces;
their distended bellies pushing out
as they stood in the dust.

We gorged ourselves on love affairs
thrown at our feet
like bags of rice, but we could not
absorb what was good in it.
It ran through us like dirty water
and we could only keep feeding –
howling at night in our beds
at the hunger pains burning.