Posts in category "Thoughts"

Why Assume Evil?

I read an arti­cle about a giant snow penis being erect­ed and the con­tro­ver­sy it cre­at­ed. The arti­cle dis­cussed the way the entire joke was tak­en by some of the women on cam­pus. Some of the female groups felt that “such a dis­play is demean­ing to women”, and that “women do not need to be remind­ed of the pow­er of the sym­bol of the male gen­i­talia.”

Although I agree that such a pub­lic dis­play is inap­pro­pri­ate, I com­plete­ly dis­agree with the rea­sons these women put forth. I’m will­ing to bet that the males who erect­ed the sculp­ture were not think­ing, “Hey, let’s cre­ate a huge dis­play of male gen­i­talia so that women know that their place in the world is below men”, but rather, “I’m bored. What can we do?” As one of the builders said, “We built it for fun”. I don’t believe that the motives behind such an act are sex­ist. Sometimes peo­ple just do stu­pid things.

I find that this has been a great trend in cer­tain groups of think­ing, such as part of the fem­i­nist move­ment. Sometimes mem­bers take things the wrong way. For exam­ple, I know of peo­ple who com­plain about com­mer­cials for house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts, and state that it’s sex­ist to have a woman being the token spokesper­son. They believe that the cre­ators of the ad have the mind­set that the main duty of a woman are the house­hold chores. When I see the com­mer­cial, I ask why a male isn’t the spokesper­son, why they show a male as being infe­ri­or to a female in doing the house­hold chores. And since both sides see things in an oppo­site man­ner, I decid­ed to ignore it com­plete­ly.

After all, we take offence to how we see things, not to how they are.

The idea of women being remind­ed of the pow­er of the male gen­i­talia is an exam­ple of this. In the world, there are many, many phal­lic sym­bols. Take almost every type gun as an exam­ple. This can even be broad­ened to just about every pro­jec­tile weapon. Sure, these things are reminders of the penis; they look the same, they serve a sim­i­lar pur­pose, even the actions are the same. But not every sin­gle fuck­ing object that holds a point is a phal­lic sym­bol. I don’t look at the Washington Monument and say, “Oh yeah, I have a penis. Aren’t penis­es great and supe­ri­or in every way to vagi­nas?”

There seems to be a great over­sen­si­tiv­i­ty still lurk­ing from the PC move­ment that swept Canada in the 90’s. Things are tak­en the wrong way many times, when there was no inten­tion of insult­ing any­one offend­ing any group. I wish peo­ple would­n’t place so much mean­ing in what oth­ers do, espe­cial­ly when the world is so full of sequa­cious peo­ple. Then again, the blind do lead the blind.

The only way I would be able to place some blame on the erec­tors ::ahem:: of the stat­ue would be if there was some sort of sub­con­scious sex­ist mind­set that they had. This means that the cre­ation of the snow stat­ue was not a con­scious deci­sion to men­ace the women on cam­pus, but rather a sub­con­scious exten­sion of their sex­ist ideas.

But some­how I doubt that.

Confusion

Confusion is some­thing that has always struck me in the worst cir­cum­stances. Yet it’s some­thing that’s very dif­fi­cult for me to under­stand at the time. I am usu­al­ly very unaware of my con­fu­sion. I find that it usu­al­ly takes about six months for me to come full cir­cle, and come to a full com­pre­hen­sion of what has hap­pened. It’s as if I can’t see what’s going on in the present, but I have an idea of what will hap­pen in the future, and a knowl­edge of the past, like the damned in the Divine Comedy.

I under­stand that it takes time to be out of a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion and to be able to free one­self of the bonds or con­se­quences of deci­sions made dur­ing that time. Sometimes it just feels like the only thing that mat­ters is for the con­fu­sion to go away, so that one does­n’t make an incor­rect choice or deci­sion.

Confusion was an aide to me once in a rela­tion­ship. It caused me to see things clear­er, and I end­ed up in a bet­ter place because of it, although I did­n’t real­ize it at the time.

I just wish I felt like that was true.

Inferno: Canto III, Line 9

I always won­der who reads this. I try to nev­er write for any­one else; after all, the things I write about are things that both­er me, that I need to get down. It puz­zles me some­times when I read peo­ple’s jour­nals, and they start to talk to their friends about some­thing, or to some phan­tom audi­ence. I can under­stand why one would do that though, since the point of some are to inform friends of how one is doing. More often than not, how­ev­er, it seems to be an exer­cise in nar­cis­sism.

I won­der what some­one would think of me, if they were read­ing this with­out ever meet­ing me. Would they be able to see all sides of me? Would they be able to under­stand who I real­ly am? Most of the time, what I write is out of neces­si­ty, and ends up being some sort of com­plaint, rant, or con­fu­sion.

I think most peo­ple would believe that I’ve lost hope. It’s quite the con­trary real­ly. Ever since the sum­mer, I’ve gained hope to a degree. Of course, I’ve often stat­ed that hope is a bad thing, and I still feel that way to a degree.

What I’ve come to real­ize is that I should pos­si­bly try to hope for the future, but not get my hopes up. The dif­fer­ence between the two is in length of time. Getting one’s hopes up has a more short-term con­no­ta­tion for more tange­able ideas, where­as hop­ing for the future is thought of as hop­ing for some­thing that is cur­rent­ly unknown. If the future is ever to become the present, I’ll try to keep myself more ground­ed.

And if the present were to come to fruition?

Maybe it would be a good thing.

Imbalance

I think Dolly may be inter­est­ed in hav­ing anoth­er cat around the house. I’ve been play­ing some cat sounds, and no mat­ter where she is in the apart­ment, she’ll com­ing run­ning into my room. A sec­ond cat is some­thing I only start­ed to con­sid­er this term. Last term it felt as if I would­n’t be able to han­dle the chores, let alone dou­bling my annu­al vet­eri­nar­i­an bill. Sometimes she seems lone­ly though, like when she imme­di­ate­ly starts to cry when I walk in the door after a day of school, her protest­ing only being soothed after pick­ing her up, and being replaced by a low purr. I’ve always seen myself as a one cat per­son; I think I’d feel a lit­tle imbal­anced if I had more than one. If I do decide to get one, it will def­i­nite­ly be after I grad­u­ate, def­i­nite­ly after I find a sta­ble job, and pos­si­bly after I can pur­chase a con­do. It would be more for Dolly than for me though. I can’t imag­ine find­ing anoth­er cat that is as well-adapt­ed as she is, so the idea scares me a lit­tle.

One time I dis­cussed with Pita whether he would ever con­sid­er get­ting two dogs. He said that he could­n’t, not just because it would be much hard­er to han­dle, but because he would feel more favourable to one or the oth­er.

The idea of favour is one that I haven’t been able to under­stand. How can par­ents love all their kids with­out lik­ing one more than the oth­er, espe­cial­ly when one fol­lows the desires of the par­ents more close­ly. It might be some­thing I don’t under­stand, being an only child. If such a bal­ance is pos­si­ble, would­n’t polyg­a­mous rela­tion­ships work as well? I think part of the mis­un­der­stand­ing stems from my con­fu­sion of rela­tion­al love and parental love as well.

For love is the root of my imbal­ance.

5 am vs. Acceptance

A while ago, I tried to under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties I would face in hav­ing chil­dren. I see now that a very fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with the entire con­cept is that I haven’t accept­ed what I’ve become yet. Such an inabil­i­ty is rel­e­vant inso­far as the fact that I haven’t accept­ed who I am cre­ates fur­ther dif­fi­cul­ty in accept­ing some­one else.

The same sort of prob­lem aris­es out of rela­tion­ships, but in an inverse man­ner; how could I expect some­one else to accept me, when I haven’t done so already? I feel that such a dif­fi­cul­ty is prob­a­bly the most promi­nent obsta­cle in my rela­tion­ships. Another would be the fact that I’m not sure if I am strong enough per­son to prop­er­ly take care of some­one else. Relationships are sup­posed to be mutu­al­is­tic, and it feels as if I’m not ready for them yet.

I’ve been think­ing this for quite a while now. So many things seem to be point­ing me to this fact. I’ve been slow­ly accept­ing it, and it has very slow­ly been work­ing.

Yet some­one is tear­ing my rea­son­ing apart.