Of all the things to be annoyed by

It suddenly ticks me off that in Discovery Channel shows about sex and sexual attraction, hetero sex is always man-on-top.

Seriously?

Sooooo...

I decided upon graduating to take a year off of school.

That year is up.

Now what?

Man, a BA in Literature gets you nothing.

Anybody have any ideas on how to become an editor?

Anybody have any advice on getting really awesome recommendation letters for gradschool?

Anybody know if you can put a key back on a keyboard when even the little squishy doohickey underneath is gone? My quotation mark key popped off...more than a year ago and I'm sick of it. I managed to write a thesis without it, too.

In Which a Hobby Reinforces Harmful Gender Policing

I love it when blogs I would categorize as "fun" cover topics I call "serious." So imagine my delight upon finding The Studioist, and this post:

Thoughts on Man Caves, Mom Caves, and Gendered Space

As the Guiness scientists would say, BRILLIANT!

The comments continue the goodness, with such snippets as:

"When I commented that “I think this personal space arms race is often a sign of culturally-reinforced familial dysfunction”, what I meant is that there are strong cultural narratives about how families should work that undermine families."

"...the “caveman” image insults everyone–it suggests that in the home or family sphere, men are incompetent, monosyllabic oafs, leaving women to be the Responsible Caretaker 24/7."

"I also found it strange that they call it a mom cave. As if women in general can’t have a place to themselves, unless they are a mom."

"Ready"

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Quibble

A number of blogs I read are written by women who are pregnant. Most of these are my cotton-candy blogs, that talk about clothes and jewelry and interior design and have pictures of cats. So I guess I shouldn't have particularly high expectations about this kind of thing, even when said bloggers are open about considering themselves kind of liberal, and mostly it's just a mistaken misuse of the word--

But I hate it when they refer to a fetus's "gender."

I mean, the kid is still a cashew-shaped blob with a tail, floating about in your amniotic fluid, and you're already talking about how it will conform to societal pressures and expectations about its appearance and behavior.

You mean your baby's sex, people. SEX.

Word to the Eyeball-Wise

Contact lenses are a prescription device.

It is federal law that you cannot be given contact lenses without a valid prescription. Contact lens prescriptions, according to federal law, only last one year.

No, you cannot "OD on a contact." We know that. But it is still a prescription device that comes into direct contact with your eye.

SERIOUS SHIT can happen when you wear your contacts incorrectly. If we give you contacts when your Rx is expired and you come back with a scratched cornea and an ulcer that cause you to lose your eye (YES THIS IS POSSIBLE, dumbass) that would be all our fault because we broke the law, and people would lose their licenses and it would be very, very bad for all of us.

So no, we can't "just" give you contacts, any more than we can "just" give you, say, a pacemaker.

PRESCRIPTION DEVICE, people.

When I was your age (a blog review)

This girl reminds me just a tad of...well, me.

I've never decided if telling someone that is a compliment or not. I suppose it just is what it is. I mean, she's so very earnest and ambitious and thoughtful, but at the same time some things she says are irritatingly maudlin. It's a teenage thing. And a girl-who-thinks-too-much thing, most likely.

This post is especially apropos.

"i've been thinking about thinking and i've been thinking that i think a lot."

Ain't that the truth. And I feel like I'm intruding on her privacy sometimes when I read her blog, like I snuck into her room and picked the lock on her diary. Or maybe like I'm overhearing a conversation, or the way you feel sometimes when you notice something someone is doing when they don't know you're looking, like staring at someone else or picking their teeth or trying to hide an emotional reaction, and they suddenly realize that you're looking at them, and then you both feel embarrassed. It's like she's writing a journal more than a blog with some posts, and then in some posts she's updating her Etsy or talking about photography. It's a mixed internet bag. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's really annoying. I think she has a lot of growing to do, but she seems like she could grow in really good ways.

"i've been thinking about what it means to be both a christian and a feminist."

Oh look, a can o' worms. Though as one commenter says, "doesn't being a christian automatically mean being a feminist? how could it not?" From where I stand, that sounds about right. Christianity can be about the last being first and the first being last, and about living justly and loving mercy, and about maybe one day the whole world being united in love. Another commenter quotes Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

And then there is what the church seems to have become, an excuse for the powerful to remain in power and for women to submit to their husbands and shut up in worship and dress modestly and be valued mainly for their reproductive systems. And as a mode to shame those who are not "moral"--not immorally power- and money-hungry politicians and business men who make people miserable through irresponsible decisions and a desperate clinging to their own special snowflakeness, but mostly people who have sex. No, mostly women who have sex. (More on that in another post).

So yeah, can o' worms. But a good can to open anyway, I think. I wish I had gotten around to that can by the time I was her age. Not that I'm so much older, just the end of adolescence is a jam-packed few years with a whole lot of changing and growing and decision making squeezed into a short time, and a time when our minds and bodies seem most prone to doing weird things and knocking us off track.

When I was eighteen, I remember crying a lot by myself because I'M JUST EIGHTEEN DAMMIT, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT TO DO? Anyway.

"i don't know how to tell them that i don't care about who they want me to be, but that i do care about them."

I would like to second yet another of her commenters in wanting a paraphrase of this on a poster.

So yes, this concludes the first ever Six-Winged Confessions blog review! It's like a grade school book review, only more like thinking about what you've read instead of proving to your teachers that you like to read, really. No really, this book was great. Like, I really liked it?