Lolita's Fist

Teenage movies back in the day were about how we felt different to our peers, we were each unusual and didn't fit. The movies were about how we tried. The films were highly inappropriate, but we were so normalized to inappropriate that we didn't notice. Rapey, racist, sexist, were normal. Grease (1978) was chock-a-block full of sex talk - I didn't notice - children ignore what they don't understand and fit what they do into a world that normalized what they did. Girls getting tossed aside if they didn't put out and accepted if they look like sluts. Normal. But to grown men our ignorance of what we were looking at looks like consent, acquiescence, flirting. "Young girls come on to me." Olivia's pants were fashion. Slut pants were fashion. Even now I am deeply uncomfortable with using the term 'slut'. And does my discomfort systemically play right into the patriarchal agendas depicted in Grease. And movies work like history does. When I lo...

Stewart Granger. Mommy curated my (and her) idolisation of Granger. In my head, I know that actors in the 1930s were not like today. Then, the actors belonged to the studios, on contract, in breach of contract if they didn't make the movies assigned by the studios. He would not have been able to say No, and I know what that is like. What a moment to see a fresh-faced young Granger say the N-word. I am shell-shocked. It's a moment where you have to say "I am looking at history with contemporary eyes". A raw case-in-point.

War and Peace (2016) ~ Just as I am about to ask if 'Leo Tolstoy' is a pseudonym of Jane Austen, a hunt and a wolf murder. I was never inspired to read the 'canon' as it's all animal murder, war, and duels. And when they do another version of it in GoT, the man writes women characters in such a way that all that distinguishes them from men is that they are frequently naked and variously raped, wars still in place. Am I unnecessarily suspicious? For whom did Tolstoy and Lawrence write? Women were forbidden educations, and wealthy women who had a version of education had to spend morning noon and night going to fittings and dressing for meals and events. Was Tolstoy interested in love? Have I lost a grasp on my brain?  

  Source: NoFilmSchool.com

#Movies ~ Free Guy (2021). Another spend-the-budget-on salaries-for-men, all-guy movie, with a couple of scenes with a sexy-lamp-called Millie. Traitorously speaking, this scene with Channing Tatum is movie-stealing. Never liked him, especially when he woke Jennifer Lawrence up in Passengers (2016), the last straw. But this scene is classic. Classic I tell you. NSFW.

The Forest and the EcoGothic: The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination Book by Elizabeth Parker (webinar) "Inside us is a child that is afraid of the wildwood". Why does the forest manifest. Seven elements of the forest: Fear of the forest. Forest is against civilization. Forest is associated with the past, going back to nature. Forest is a landsape of trial. Forest is a setting in which we are lost, decentred and uncertain - we should walk in a straight line to get out. Forest is a threat of being consumed by something in the forest or by the forest itself - I will meld with it. Forest is the site of the unconscious - ego above ground and the darkness below, forest as shadow to civilization. Forest is an anti-christian space - sacrifices, domain if the devil, temptations in the forest. How does fear manifest. The trees are alive. The wolf and the witch wait for you in the forest. The monsters in the forest are us. 'Backwoods' and 'back to the woods...

I found this article's bias interesting. Can 'signalling' not be the same as, 'Hey, buddy this is what I am up to', for the same reasons one might do it in real life? I know why I do things, to attract like-minded people - who might hear of a nice project and know they should include me so that I can find more like-minded people. I know I let people know about nice opportunities, and they let me know. The circles grow. And non-like-minded people would wonder, in their silence, if we were taking over the world. When people say the k-word, they're signaling. I know what to do with that signalling. In the age of communication, this kind of bias about signalling is a signal. I know what to do with that signalling. Aeon:  https://aeon.co/ideas/is-virtue-signalling-a-perversion-of-morality

You know one of my jobs is I teach ordinary people to work on computers, right? For many years, people have said to me, why don't you do it for yourself? You don't need your boss, you can do this, why let him take a cut? And I don't see it like that. He's a drummer, warm, personable, loyal, reliable. He also provides services to me as my manager. He deals with the client, sets up the online meetings. He makes sure the payments happen from the client and to me. And... here is the epiphany about interdependence - he provides momentum. Doing things alone is much more difficult. Interdependence means he comes to me for stuff, I go to him for stuff, he can jump in when he has time, I can jump in when I have time. And when I jump in I learn what he knows to pass that on, and then I have another skill. And he comes to me. He doesn't think he can do it all, and so I am responsible to him and him to me. That is impetus. That is momentum. I don't want to be splitting my a...

If you prod me in the mornings, this pops out. Someone with a lisp sent me a text about Thamus and Theuth. This was my reply: I don't agree with Thamus who says to Theuth that writing will make people stupid and lazy because they won't use their memories. I think those people are speaking about knowledge and not ideas.  Knowledge is just the sticky stuff (giggle) of ideas. Knowledge is the least important because you can Google it. Ideas are the precursors to knowledge. Ideas are unique and specific to each person. Ideas are what we reach towards when we reach towards people. In community. Ideas may or may not make their way to Google. Ideas live like butterflies.  Ideas float in the ether. The more ideas you are exposed to the more you create. If you had to go speak to Socrates and Plato and Sappho and Steinem and Peterson and Larsen and Hite and Faludi and Ehrenreich every time you wanted to swirl in the world of ideas you'd have to invent time travel an...

" The broad agenda of any feminist project is to understand the sources of male power and to liberate women from its effects." http://www.screeningthepast.com/2014/12/a-pleasure-to-watch-jane-campions-narrative-cinema/

  In watching #BlackLivesMatter I see how dismissive the term 'identity politics' is. "We can't talk about anything or get anywhere in discussions because of identity politics." Who is 'we'? 'We' who have the privilege to decide what is important and when someone is allowed to speak and what they are allowed to speak about.  When 'we' perpetrate violence by holding a (figurative/virtual/literal) bat over someone's head to say 'shut up', that is not conducive to them hearing the content of anything you have to say anyway. An inclusive and welcoming environment does not have to be crashed or boycotted or protested or derailed or identitypoliticked. These actions are your flag that your house is not order. Identitypoliticking is striking against 'we'. I believe in the people's right to strike. It is in their solidarity with each other that they are effective against 'we'. It is in their numbers th...

The next time you're tempted to think that women's choices about subjects to take or jobs to apply for, think about these subtle signals that we are peppered with daily that underscore the message "We don't want you here." The subtle ways that discrimination works https://www.economist.com/business/2019/04/20/the-subtle-ways-that-discrimination-works

Quillette:  https://quillette.com/2018/12/20/feminisms-dependency-trap/ I don't agree with this article. The article is written by a woman raising issues about how feminists define themselves in the negative against their issues with men and saying that's a problem.  That is how the world changes its ideas. Oh gosh, I hate the capitalism stuff - it's greedy, it prevents creative solutions, it tends to the lowest common denominator... What would world look like without it? People would would work because they want to, they would be paid within an equity scale. That is how ideas happen. They examine what is wrong with the world and come up with alternate ideas. And the people with power and things to lose resist the ideas and the changes. And then there's a revolution.  I don't think the author understands the process of world change.  She sneers at women driving cars their fathers bought and receiving education from the pockets of their fathers' ...

I am loving it. The photography is spectacular. The framing of the movement is like an actor. So slight. Almost imperceptible, and yet planned so carefully, chock-full with content.  Trivia alert. However, the eyebrows of the lead character are driving me mad. Why do I alway feel eyebrows are over acting. They should have a show where all the eyebrows can go and act in. They need their own series.  Actors, in general, seem to be chosen on their left-handedness, and their ability to slant their eyebrows up in the center. I think this is not an expression the people in my country can do. It's genetic I guess. So when I when I see it, it seems extreme. An overly overt expression. Annoying. Strange.  It's a tidbitty observation.  

Clitorises come in many forms. I read about women in a part of Africa, back in the day, when women couldn’t own land, have a bank account, a house, a garden. They also could not have a clitoris. If they had a clitoris, they could not get married, because no man would want them. So, if your mother didn’t excise your clitoris, she doomed you to no land, no bank account, no house, no garden, no man to feed you. Essential joys-choices are taken from us. Nowadays, our clitorises are ‘you have to be the secretary’, ‘you have to wear dresses’, ‘you have to wear high-heeled shoes’, ‘you have to give me a blowjob’. The currency changes appearance. The currency used to be clitorises, now it’s heels. Audre Lorde says you can’t use the master’s tools, and I think some women can’t recognise the tools. ... Reference: Lorde , Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Pr...

I attend these diversity dialogues. And I am the worst dialoguer. Mainly because I am not the girl to describe-the-problem. Going over and over stuff and exploring feelings over and over is just not me. I went to a psychologist once for many months and was annoyed that I had suspended my disbelief in the process and found that psychologists are trained to describe-the-problem using variables from a pathologising formulaic book that rarely gets updated (DSM). I can think of a few other examples of books that rarely get updated. Problem describers. I love The Dreaming . A part of the dialogue is imagining what the world would look like without that problem. People try to imagine the world, smell it, breathe it, see it. They are so tentative, so hesitant, so bound to reality. People of privilege often don’t know words like ‘the Geni coefficient’ or ‘the Copper T’. I don’t mean to use these obscure terms, I hate people who try to baffle others and I rephrase if another opportunit...

#Movies ~ Handmaid's Tale series (2017). The most ominous thing I have ever seen is Hannah's pink dress.  #NoteToMy13yoSelf 

To all the people who know that Blade Runner is my favourite movie of all time. I was 19 when I saw this movie, and I was mindbound (like footbinding, see Mary Daly). The patriarchal narrative enveloped/s me. Even after 30 years of my own feminism. The patriarchy is insidious and systemic, and I have to work daily to find the nooks and crannies it lurks in. I was so in love with Harrison Ford. He was an embodiment of the men in the Mills & Boon I was reading. Craggy, bad-tempered, masculine. Ooh. And scifi was new to me. New on film to everyone. It was shiny, it was intellectual, it was engaging, it was Mills & Boon antidote. From when I was five (or that’s when I remember), I have been protesting the advances of men. I still did not see Sean Young protest. When I started to feel horny when I was young, I saw that women were NEVER allowed to want sex, NEVER ask for fingers in your vagina, NEVER ask for hands to touch your breasts, NEVER ask for a kiss, NEVER...

#Feminism #Racism  Fridging ~ female or black characters who are injured, raped, killed, or disempowered sometimes to stimulate protective traits among men or whites. The fridging is a plot device intended to move a male or white character's story arc forward. (From a comic book story where a female character is killed and stuffed in a fridge.)

Charlotte Alter writes "As soon as the world perceived them as male. They gained professional respect, but lost intimacy. They exuded authority, but caused fear. From courtrooms to playgrounds to prisons to train stations, at work and at home, with friends and alone, trans men reiterated how fundamentally different it is to experience the world as a man." Source:  https://time.com/transgender-men-sexism/