Aquest tema està marcat com "inactiu": L'últim missatge és de fa més de 90 dies. Podeu revifar-lo enviant una resposta.
1LolaWalser
Dammit, that thing I've been doing since I was twelve is now "in"... but others are writing about it... :)
A tribute to female flâneurs: the women who reclaimed our city streets
The street is where you first meet the world (clearly I speak as a child of the city, to whom "the world" means humans and culture, not nature), the place of immediate, physical contact (and combat). It's not a deferred image, a thought, a souvenir, an idea, it is the reality you are swimming in. Being in the street is being public, being present, giving yourself up for counting in and with. The body speaks already, soundlessly.
And even that simplest fucking thing, that basic, fundamental way of being alive, in public, in the world, was--I gradually understood--a male prerogative and me being female in the street in the city strolling and striding along as if I had the right, as if I had parity, as if I were equal, as if I were human like men are human--that was something outright transgressive, impolite, unheard of--who-do-you-think-you-are, little girl, woman... As-tu chaud au cul, ants in your pants? Selling it, so young? Who's cooking lunch? Did your husband send you out to fetch him cigarettes? Looking for a fuck, a lesson, wanna see something? How dared I claim such liberty, and for myself!!!... not in the name of servitude to some shithead male?
A girl, a woman, young, pretty, or older, not so pretty anymore--either a whore or a mother on errand, in any case only a SERVANT, is admissible on the streets. Paying dues to the macho, lord and master, father, son and even fucking holy ghost! See those fuckheads in Ruth Orkin's famous photo, getting off on making a woman squirm? See how they simply WON'T. GIVE. HER. SPACE? For decades I walked the cities in a strange double mode: hyper-alert, AND pretending to be deaf and blind.
If you only knew the pain I wished on you, you pigs, as I hurried past your bullying, harassing, rapist gauntlets, how much I hated you, you shit-encrusted mangy dogs in pathetic love with your dicks, you'd have died of fear on the spot.
Nothing chased me off the streets, ever. Not disgust, not intimidation, not well-meant advice, not the hundreds of incidents large and small, the humiliations, the attacks--I wanted this freedom and I took it, and I'm not giving it up to tanks and bombs, let alone the shitty men. Me on the streets was ever me saying "fuck you" to every one of them; to all the prophets and messiahs and their handmaidens too.
A tribute to female flâneurs: the women who reclaimed our city streets
The street is where you first meet the world (clearly I speak as a child of the city, to whom "the world" means humans and culture, not nature), the place of immediate, physical contact (and combat). It's not a deferred image, a thought, a souvenir, an idea, it is the reality you are swimming in. Being in the street is being public, being present, giving yourself up for counting in and with. The body speaks already, soundlessly.
And even that simplest fucking thing, that basic, fundamental way of being alive, in public, in the world, was--I gradually understood--a male prerogative and me being female in the street in the city strolling and striding along as if I had the right, as if I had parity, as if I were equal, as if I were human like men are human--that was something outright transgressive, impolite, unheard of--who-do-you-think-you-are, little girl, woman... As-tu chaud au cul, ants in your pants? Selling it, so young? Who's cooking lunch? Did your husband send you out to fetch him cigarettes? Looking for a fuck, a lesson, wanna see something? How dared I claim such liberty, and for myself!!!... not in the name of servitude to some shithead male?
A girl, a woman, young, pretty, or older, not so pretty anymore--either a whore or a mother on errand, in any case only a SERVANT, is admissible on the streets. Paying dues to the macho, lord and master, father, son and even fucking holy ghost! See those fuckheads in Ruth Orkin's famous photo, getting off on making a woman squirm? See how they simply WON'T. GIVE. HER. SPACE? For decades I walked the cities in a strange double mode: hyper-alert, AND pretending to be deaf and blind.
If you only knew the pain I wished on you, you pigs, as I hurried past your bullying, harassing, rapist gauntlets, how much I hated you, you shit-encrusted mangy dogs in pathetic love with your dicks, you'd have died of fear on the spot.
Nothing chased me off the streets, ever. Not disgust, not intimidation, not well-meant advice, not the hundreds of incidents large and small, the humiliations, the attacks--I wanted this freedom and I took it, and I'm not giving it up to tanks and bombs, let alone the shitty men. Me on the streets was ever me saying "fuck you" to every one of them; to all the prophets and messiahs and their handmaidens too.
2southernbooklady
>1 LolaWalser: See those fuckheads in Ruth Orkin's famous photo, getting off on making a woman squirm? See how they simply WON'T. GIVE. HER. SPACE?
What I've always loved about that photo is how the woman is the epitome of "human" whereas all the men around her, desperately pushing their masculinity at her, devolve in comparison into a pack of sub-creatures, monkeys. They slouch, they leer, they make faces, and basically announce their own pathetic-ness. Each and every one of them is utterly forgettable, irrelevant. impotent. I bet if any of them ever saw that photo they hated it.
What I've always loved about that photo is how the woman is the epitome of "human" whereas all the men around her, desperately pushing their masculinity at her, devolve in comparison into a pack of sub-creatures, monkeys. They slouch, they leer, they make faces, and basically announce their own pathetic-ness. Each and every one of them is utterly forgettable, irrelevant. impotent. I bet if any of them ever saw that photo they hated it.
3sparemethecensor
I thought this recent post by Roxane Gay seemed apropos:
"This world is a hard place for a woman. We’re supposed to be quiet and polite and feminine and demure. When we don’t fit into that mold, we are judged and told that we need to correct our presentation and our personality. That judgment makes us shrink and doubt and diminish ourselves until we start to believe all the terrible things we are told.
"The best thing you, or any of us can do, is try as much as we can, to just be ourselves out in the world. The more we are brave enough to be ourselves, the more those who would judge us will have to get their shit together and get on board or get left behind."
http://roxanegay.tumblr.com/post/148125938395/hello-i-am-struggling-lately-with-...
"This world is a hard place for a woman. We’re supposed to be quiet and polite and feminine and demure. When we don’t fit into that mold, we are judged and told that we need to correct our presentation and our personality. That judgment makes us shrink and doubt and diminish ourselves until we start to believe all the terrible things we are told.
"The best thing you, or any of us can do, is try as much as we can, to just be ourselves out in the world. The more we are brave enough to be ourselves, the more those who would judge us will have to get their shit together and get on board or get left behind."
http://roxanegay.tumblr.com/post/148125938395/hello-i-am-struggling-lately-with-...
4southernbooklady
In the struggle for survival we tell lies. To bosses, to prison guards, the police, men who have power over us, who legally own us and our children, lovers who need us as proof of their manhood.
There is a danger run by all powerless people: that we forget we are lying, or that lying becomes a weapon we carry over into relationships with people who do not have power over us.
--Adrienne Rich, Women and Honor, Some notes on Lying
5Jesse_wiedinmyer
"We take so much of the universe on trust. You tell me: “In 1950 I lived on the north side of Beacon Street in Somerville.” You tell me: “She and I were lovers, but for months now we have only been good friends.” You tell me: “It is seventy degrees outside and the sun is shining.” Because I love you, because there is not even a question of lying between us, I take these accounts of the universe on trust: your address twenty-five years ago, your relationship with someone I know only by sight, this morning’s weather. I fling unconscious tendrils of belief, like slender green threads, across statements such as these, statements made so unequivocally, which have no tone or shadow of tentativeness. I build them into the mosaic of my world. I allow my universe to change in minute, significant ways, on the basis of things you have said to me, of my trust in you."
The same.
The same.
6LolaWalser
>2 southernbooklady:
Each and every one of them is utterly forgettable, irrelevant. impotent. I bet if any of them ever saw that photo they hated it.
You may find them so, but trust me, nothing could be more foreign to those minds. It's inconceivable to them they could be shamed for machismo--that's their great distinction, the basis of their self-worth!
I don't think it's possible to describe, if you haven't lived it, the privilege conferred on the male in societies like that, the absolute dominance of the male point of view imposed on everyone. (It's not just men who think only sluts walk the streets. Moreover, I recall an Argentinian study showing local women assess other women in the same way Argentinian men do--not because they are latent lesbians, but to assess competition in terms of men's criteria. Tits-ass-age=overall sex-appeal etc.)
The other day I was reading something about cinema, there was a reference to some groundbreaking essay from the seventies that explored the male gaze and its dominance in film--how everything, in short, is made for men (or at least doesn't stray for long from servicing the male subject. Heterosexual implied, of course...) But it's really true about much more than the screen--everything we see as spectacle, every space that is used for spectacle, serves above all men.
The stage; but so of course the street, and by extension all public space. All space belongs to men. Female presence is understood only in relation to some male need--for male titillation, male gratification, male validation...
Each and every one of them is utterly forgettable, irrelevant. impotent. I bet if any of them ever saw that photo they hated it.
You may find them so, but trust me, nothing could be more foreign to those minds. It's inconceivable to them they could be shamed for machismo--that's their great distinction, the basis of their self-worth!
I don't think it's possible to describe, if you haven't lived it, the privilege conferred on the male in societies like that, the absolute dominance of the male point of view imposed on everyone. (It's not just men who think only sluts walk the streets. Moreover, I recall an Argentinian study showing local women assess other women in the same way Argentinian men do--not because they are latent lesbians, but to assess competition in terms of men's criteria. Tits-ass-age=overall sex-appeal etc.)
The other day I was reading something about cinema, there was a reference to some groundbreaking essay from the seventies that explored the male gaze and its dominance in film--how everything, in short, is made for men (or at least doesn't stray for long from servicing the male subject. Heterosexual implied, of course...) But it's really true about much more than the screen--everything we see as spectacle, every space that is used for spectacle, serves above all men.
The stage; but so of course the street, and by extension all public space. All space belongs to men. Female presence is understood only in relation to some male need--for male titillation, male gratification, male validation...
7southernbooklady
>6 LolaWalser: You may find them so, but trust me, nothing could be more foreign to those minds. It's inconceivable to them they could be shamed for machismo--that's their great distinction, the basis of their self-worth!
You're right, of course. Machismo is a kind of self-defense mechanism against doubt and insecurity. A crude, destructive, and ultimately self-defeating one, but also an easy one.
The stage; but so of course the street, and by extension all public space. All space belongs to men. Female presence is understood only in relation to some male need--for male titillation, male gratification, male validation...
This must be why I instinctively prefer outdoors and natural spaces to cityscapes, as a rule. Nature remains gloriously apathetic to the needs of the male gaze. :-)
You're right, of course. Machismo is a kind of self-defense mechanism against doubt and insecurity. A crude, destructive, and ultimately self-defeating one, but also an easy one.
The stage; but so of course the street, and by extension all public space. All space belongs to men. Female presence is understood only in relation to some male need--for male titillation, male gratification, male validation...
This must be why I instinctively prefer outdoors and natural spaces to cityscapes, as a rule. Nature remains gloriously apathetic to the needs of the male gaze. :-)
8morwen04
>6 LolaWalser: I wish I wasn't at work and so could actually look this up/get a source for it but I read an article several months to a yearish back about the cinematography in Mad Max Fury Road about how the director had to keep reminding the guy doing the camera work to not put the women's T&A in the golden ratio formula but rather you know their faces or the action. The article I read had a bunch of examples of how women vs men are typically framed and then compared them with how Fury Road was framed and it was pretty eye opening to me as I don't watch many films and had just absorbed that that was just how women were shot and that women would just always be framed as nothing but body parts (which is part and parcel with why I don't particularly care for movies in general)
9MarthaJeanne
I need to get the Mamma Mia DVD out and look at the interviews again. With director, producer, and writer all women, both Meryl Streep and one of the men comment on how it felt to have the women lead the action with the men taking the parts of the 'bimbos'.
11LolaWalser
Is it foolish for a woman to cycle alone across the Middle East?
Presumably she got back okay so all's well that ends well...
Presumably she got back okay so all's well that ends well...
12southernbooklady
>11 LolaWalser: It sounds like she was more physically unprepared than culturally unprepared.
this though: "the world should not judge us by our politics. we hate our politics. they should judge us for ourselves."
politics isn't like the weather. it doesn't just "happen."
this though: "the world should not judge us by our politics. we hate our politics. they should judge us for ourselves."
politics isn't like the weather. it doesn't just "happen."
13LolaWalser
Honestly, I don't know what it would even mean to be physically prepared for something like this... I mean, where's the limit, when do you know you're prepared enough?
politics isn't like the weather. it doesn't just "happen."
No, but it's interesting, anywhere I've been people typically feel they have no impact on politics at all. You'd think somewhere like the Middle East it's more understandable, but I found it very common in the US too. Just ask a few Reagan or Dubya or Trump voters whether they feel responsible.
politics isn't like the weather. it doesn't just "happen."
No, but it's interesting, anywhere I've been people typically feel they have no impact on politics at all. You'd think somewhere like the Middle East it's more understandable, but I found it very common in the US too. Just ask a few Reagan or Dubya or Trump voters whether they feel responsible.
14southernbooklady
>13 LolaWalser: anywhere I've been people typically feel they have no impact on politics at all. You'd think somewhere like the Middle East it's more understandable, but I found it very common in the US too.
I suppose it is a kind of psychological survival tool -- disassociation. But it isn't very useful for effecting change. Consider the reputation of Americans as gun-toting, right-wing, materialistic, hedonistic, anti-intellectual bullies: Insisting "we're not all like that" doesn't really address the fact that many of us are indeed like that. That enough of us are like that we elected the epitome of that stereotype as our president. Clearly, being in denial about our, "national character," isn't a useful or practical way to live.
I suppose it is a kind of psychological survival tool -- disassociation. But it isn't very useful for effecting change. Consider the reputation of Americans as gun-toting, right-wing, materialistic, hedonistic, anti-intellectual bullies: Insisting "we're not all like that" doesn't really address the fact that many of us are indeed like that. That enough of us are like that we elected the epitome of that stereotype as our president. Clearly, being in denial about our, "national character," isn't a useful or practical way to live.
15sturlington
>14 southernbooklady: This is what has been irritating me about the rash of writing about Trump voters since the election, most recently kristof's in last sunday's NY Times. It treats these voters as children, infantilizes them. Oh, they are not responsible for what they do, they don't know any better, poor things.
I've been thinking lately that I would respect republicans more if they would own their assholery instead of constantly playing the victim while they smash everything to bits.
I've been thinking lately that I would respect republicans more if they would own their assholery instead of constantly playing the victim while they smash everything to bits.
16southernbooklady
>15 sturlington: Oh, they are not responsible for what they do, they don't know any better, poor things.
I'm tired of the "oh, they aren't bad people" refrain. So what? They still did a bad thing. If you are a mature adult you admit you did a bad thing and you work to undo the harm you caused.
I'm tired of the "oh, they aren't bad people" refrain. So what? They still did a bad thing. If you are a mature adult you admit you did a bad thing and you work to undo the harm you caused.
Apunta-t'hi per poder publicar
