D'Izzy Words

On Facebook a friend wrote (with grammatical mistakes included):

"The reason why parents do not allow their son to play dolls because they want to teach them that girls aren’t toys to play with."

I will admit that I have never heard this rationale/justification for not letting boys play with dolls. All of the ones I've heard have been related to gender-normative issues - "Girls play with dolls, boys play with G.I. Joe and aircrafts."

I don't think most boys will equate playing with dolls = playing with girls. I don't even know what kind of "play" this friend (a male) is talking about either. Emotionally? Physically?

I think it's kind of ridiculous to think that not playing with dolls will somehow let boys think girls aren't to be played with. I think actually teaching them to respect girls is better because it's active. I don't understand the kind of analogy people think works here. It's not like kids who play with stuffed cats and animals as a child will automatically play the same way with real life cats and animals.

Why would 4 people like this status and another say "waaahhh agreed!"? It seems, to me, a piss poor excuse for covering up cisgender-socially normative child raising behavior.

Saturday I and others left campus at 7:30am to drive up to Madison for practice GRE/GMAT/MCAT/other tests held by Kaplan. For the GRE, it was done on paper, and only the verbal and quantitative sections, no writing. But we did get back our results back quickly and, well, I did horrendously. No surprise considering my last math class was calculus II in 2007. Three long years... I guessed so many questions (more than 2/3 of the ones given). I didn't practice beforehand...

Aftewards, the GRE folk were done much earlier than the MCAT people so we had time to wander around Madison. Needless to say, I and another person I knew acquaintance-like walked down State Street towards the Capitol.

This is my first protest. I've signed petitions before, but never participated in nor observed one. I didn't walk in it, because I wasn't sure how much time we'd have left, but I clapped and hoped having one more body there helped. It was pretty amazing seeing the diversity of people there, and not just from Madison or Wisconsin.

Later in the van going back to campus, some people mentioned seeing a "Scotty doesn't know" sign which was hilarious. Wish I had seen that.

Pictures
( Pictures )

I wish I had a video camera for the chants and songs, too.

And I'm a little pissed the House voted for Planned Parenthood to get its funding canceled. Shit heads.

An article a friend linked to on FB. Completely destroyed the happy mood I was in earlier.

Dear Curt,

I'm a 35-year-old woman, and met a very handsome 43-year-old man named Daniel. We've been dating for five months now and still haven't slept together.

My problem is that in the beginning, Daniel asked me how many men I've slept with. Being a little scared of his reaction, I lied and told him seven. But after a few months, I could not live with the lie and finally decided to tell him the reason why I still haven't slept with him yet.

I told him I didn't want to make love because I was scared that he'd lose respect and eventually leave me like all the other men. At this point he asked me again, just how many men were there, to which I replied forty-three.

His reply was, "Hmm, one for each of my birthdays." And from that day on, I never heard from him again. I don't get it Curt, why is it that when men sleep around, they're studs , yet when women sleep around, they're sluts ? Why can't women have their fun too?

Stacy Jones, TX

I'll agree that she shouldn't have lied about how many partners she's had (or admitted she lied about it) or even shouldn't have answered and said it was none of his fucking business. It is unfortunate if women feel they have to lie about how many sexual partners they've had.

It is silly that they fudge the numbers if the reason is because they're afraid of being called sluts or thought of such. And being 35-years-old and having 43 sexual partners? So the fuck what? It may seem a lot, but if you average it out (assuming she lost her virginity around 17) it's not "promiscuous." (At least without knowing details.)

Excerpts from the article that pissed me off:

"An object that has value is worshipped, respected, cherished, and shared with very few deserving people. As soon as you start sharing that object with anyone and without care, the object starts to lose value. The more people use the object, the more it depreciates and the less bargaining power it has: this is a plain psychological fact of life." [...]

"There was a time when many women cherished their bodies much like a sacred temple. Where only a noble man, one who respected and loved her, had access to her body.

But over time, it seems that women have failed to realize the important role their sexuality plays in finding a long-term mate. Thanks to the women's movement, women are so busy trying to compete with men -- including in the sex department -- that they fail to realize the consequences of their actions.

Today, it seems that women are the ones who are collecting notches on their Prada belts by giving their bodies away too easily. But if women themselves don't value their bodies like they used to, why should men?" [...]

"Think about it for a moment: if men value a woman's purity so much, how do you think they feel when they receive the same gift offered to so many other men? Here's a better example: if I were to offer Stacy the same engagement ring that I once offered my ex-fiancée, would she appreciate it? I'm sure she wouldn't, and it's only a ring. Then how do you think men feel when a woman offers herself once she's already offered it to so many other men?" [...]

"A woman should give the man the test of time and make him wait at least three months before having full intercourse with him. If he can't wait that long, well her life just became a little less complicated because she knows that she's dealing with a man who is just using her for her body. In the end, she'll have peace of mind that she didn't waste her precious gift on a man who simply wanted to use her." [...]

"That's why today, we find a lot of women complaining that men no longer want to commit. This is false; men still want to commit, but women no longer have that special gift to bait men into a relationship."

Wow, love is a game where you bait the other person. And my sexuality is the only gift I can give a man!! WOW!

This isn't the totality of the article, obviously, and as someone who's angry, it's likely I picked quotes that skew things into my perspective of how chauvinistic, idiotic and insulting the article is. I'd recommend people read the article; maybe in my fury I missed something.