... If only I had the skills, opportunity and dedication required.
(Quite likely essays on these topics already exist. I don't care)
Crass Charmers and Foppish Professors: a study of the portrayal of American and British characters in the popular culture of both nations.
A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar, and Tell Jokes: a study of the way that gender norms dictate the observation of, and participation in humor by men and women.
The Internet as a Third Space
(I realize this has almost definitely been written about a thousand times by now, but when I argued about this with my disbelieving professor in my first year of Uni it was a more revolutionary idea, and I am clinging to that.)
What Freedom Means: an analysis of the divergent, historical and current, attitude towards authority in Australia and America.
If my Room is Blue Does that Mean I'm not a Girl? Childhood development and the construction of the gender binary.
Will add more as I think of them!
Tuesday 24 August 2010
Sunday 4 July 2010
On dating
I am no good at dating. I even hate the word. I hate how it sounds like any other pastime. Like martial arts or cooking or crochet. The asking out, the picking the place, the predate stress over what to wear and say, how could that be enjoyable?
I also find that its as if the other person involved is just a prop. As if there are many boys milling about and if you just grab one, he'll do. This hasn't been my experience. My friends from high school seem to have this knack for finding suitable boyfriends. I am never quite sure how they do it, but there they are, suddenly a part of things. These boys are all suitably social and groomed. They tend to have non-descript jobs, they like music and a beer. They can fix a shelf. They're good blokes and your dad likes them too. They also seem to genuinely like my friends.
This is not what I do. Generally I do long-term unrequited love. I wouldn't recommend it. You sound like an emo kid if you go on about it, you spend your time daydreaming about what-ifs and at the end you have nothing to show for it except whole albums by Death Cab you can't listen to because they remind you of him. Also sometimes it means you don't get any sex. Perhaps my brain was muddled by too much Jane Austen and Anne of Green Gables* in my formative years but somewhere along the way my brain decided romance had to be epic and tragic or it hardly counted at all. Luckily by my early twenties I had decided that I could both have the epic romance and the friend with benefits, and while this worked out rather well for me it didn't help with the dating.
I realise none of this is revolutionary. Difficult relationships are everywhere, as are difficult almost relationships. The latter, which I have actually experienced, I find even more annoying because you can't smugly answer the "any men in your life?" question without getting a bit TMI and then having to explain that Orthodox Jews will barely shake hands with goy girls (ahem, just as an example). So this is all perhaps an elaborate way to explain away my lack of dating experience. I tend to either sleep with the guy straight off or endure a year of longing.
Perhaps I am using this as an excuse. Is dating always stressful? Would I be feeling exactly the same about it now at 23 even if I was one of those girls who always has a boyfriend? I think my wariness of comes from reading Dolly and Girlfriend when I was 14 and there were always these stories about the boy picking you up and then going out for dinner. As I was almost entirely reliant on my parents for transport dating seemed very much like something that grown ups did.
*Of course, ironically, the whole point of Anne of Green Gables is actually that Anne has to give up on grandiose ideas of romance.
I also find that its as if the other person involved is just a prop. As if there are many boys milling about and if you just grab one, he'll do. This hasn't been my experience. My friends from high school seem to have this knack for finding suitable boyfriends. I am never quite sure how they do it, but there they are, suddenly a part of things. These boys are all suitably social and groomed. They tend to have non-descript jobs, they like music and a beer. They can fix a shelf. They're good blokes and your dad likes them too. They also seem to genuinely like my friends.
This is not what I do. Generally I do long-term unrequited love. I wouldn't recommend it. You sound like an emo kid if you go on about it, you spend your time daydreaming about what-ifs and at the end you have nothing to show for it except whole albums by Death Cab you can't listen to because they remind you of him. Also sometimes it means you don't get any sex. Perhaps my brain was muddled by too much Jane Austen and Anne of Green Gables* in my formative years but somewhere along the way my brain decided romance had to be epic and tragic or it hardly counted at all. Luckily by my early twenties I had decided that I could both have the epic romance and the friend with benefits, and while this worked out rather well for me it didn't help with the dating.
I realise none of this is revolutionary. Difficult relationships are everywhere, as are difficult almost relationships. The latter, which I have actually experienced, I find even more annoying because you can't smugly answer the "any men in your life?" question without getting a bit TMI and then having to explain that Orthodox Jews will barely shake hands with goy girls (ahem, just as an example). So this is all perhaps an elaborate way to explain away my lack of dating experience. I tend to either sleep with the guy straight off or endure a year of longing.
Perhaps I am using this as an excuse. Is dating always stressful? Would I be feeling exactly the same about it now at 23 even if I was one of those girls who always has a boyfriend? I think my wariness of comes from reading Dolly and Girlfriend when I was 14 and there were always these stories about the boy picking you up and then going out for dinner. As I was almost entirely reliant on my parents for transport dating seemed very much like something that grown ups did.
*Of course, ironically, the whole point of Anne of Green Gables is actually that Anne has to give up on grandiose ideas of romance.
Tuesday 23 March 2010
On being bullied
I was bullied when I was in school.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently because of my Teaching course. At Uni we've been talking about how to mitigate against the effects and at my placement I see a little bit of it. I think as a teacher it can take a while to notice bullying, it's pretty insidious especially when perpetrated by girls.
I don't think anyone really loves the person they were in school, regardless of bullying. Time plays strange tricks on your memories too.
I'm not sure how you gauge bullying, what's really bad? Is some bullying OK? Or if not OK, inevitable?
I can say easily that it was not physical, it also wasn't racist or homophobic or sexist. It was primarily by girls and it was for 'reasons' that are completely unimportant now. Also, I was lucky. I have really loving, caring, concerned parents so home was always a nice place. Although school was where the bullying took place it also had a library and if I had a book I was happy. Teachers generally thought I was smart. These are all things that my lecturers would say gave me resilience.
So my point is, it wasn't terrible. Well that's a silly thing to say, at the time I very much experienced it as a terrible thing. Children aren't great on perspective and being bullied is never really going to be anything but terrible. What I mean was it wasn't that bad, it could have been far worse.
There are a lot of things that happen to you at school, at home during those years which probably irrefutably change you. As completely nerdy as it is to acknowledge this, if Mr. Martin hadn't noticed me walking past the classroom when he was holding the first debating meeting of the year (a meeting I had said I was going to attend, but forgotten about) and told me to come in my life would, I feel fairly confident in saying, be very different. It's kind of terrifying to think of.
My point is that a lot of things change us and it's impossible to measure the subtle how and whys of it all. Regardless, I think being bullied changed me, particularly how I interacted with others. I'm pretty sure (and this is where your memory can trip you up) I was never anything but shy, so it's unlikely I was ever going to be incredibly outgoing.
Being bullied divides the world up into enemies and friends, and the first camp is much bigger and cooler. Enemies aren't just the bullies themselves, it's also the people who give tacit approval, like I said, there's a lot of them. When I meet people there is still a part of my brain which wonders "where do you fit into the hierarchy?" and "can I trust you?". This makes me sound horribly calculating but it's the truth. I think the really scary part is that a lot of bullies pretend to be your friends, to begin with.
The more I write this stuff down the more I think these are issues that a lot of people have, regardless of bullying. It does always surprise me how few people were bullied. Perhaps as a way of overcoming my general distrust I often assume that people who I like must have been bullied. Because you must have been, right? Because otherwise you're in the enemy camp.
The other thing is, if you acknowledge (as I find it impossible not to) that bullying made you who you are then how can you be so negative about it. Part of me thinks of young, defenseless, naive me and, well, I even annoy me. How could I have continued in life like that? Perhaps they were doing me a favor. I'm not sure how much of this is concerning self hatred and how much is amusing "oh shucks, wasn't I a loser?" backward glancing.
Anyway, the main point of this is:
THE END.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently because of my Teaching course. At Uni we've been talking about how to mitigate against the effects and at my placement I see a little bit of it. I think as a teacher it can take a while to notice bullying, it's pretty insidious especially when perpetrated by girls.
I don't think anyone really loves the person they were in school, regardless of bullying. Time plays strange tricks on your memories too.
I'm not sure how you gauge bullying, what's really bad? Is some bullying OK? Or if not OK, inevitable?
I can say easily that it was not physical, it also wasn't racist or homophobic or sexist. It was primarily by girls and it was for 'reasons' that are completely unimportant now. Also, I was lucky. I have really loving, caring, concerned parents so home was always a nice place. Although school was where the bullying took place it also had a library and if I had a book I was happy. Teachers generally thought I was smart. These are all things that my lecturers would say gave me resilience.
So my point is, it wasn't terrible. Well that's a silly thing to say, at the time I very much experienced it as a terrible thing. Children aren't great on perspective and being bullied is never really going to be anything but terrible. What I mean was it wasn't that bad, it could have been far worse.
There are a lot of things that happen to you at school, at home during those years which probably irrefutably change you. As completely nerdy as it is to acknowledge this, if Mr. Martin hadn't noticed me walking past the classroom when he was holding the first debating meeting of the year (a meeting I had said I was going to attend, but forgotten about) and told me to come in my life would, I feel fairly confident in saying, be very different. It's kind of terrifying to think of.
My point is that a lot of things change us and it's impossible to measure the subtle how and whys of it all. Regardless, I think being bullied changed me, particularly how I interacted with others. I'm pretty sure (and this is where your memory can trip you up) I was never anything but shy, so it's unlikely I was ever going to be incredibly outgoing.
Being bullied divides the world up into enemies and friends, and the first camp is much bigger and cooler. Enemies aren't just the bullies themselves, it's also the people who give tacit approval, like I said, there's a lot of them. When I meet people there is still a part of my brain which wonders "where do you fit into the hierarchy?" and "can I trust you?". This makes me sound horribly calculating but it's the truth. I think the really scary part is that a lot of bullies pretend to be your friends, to begin with.
The more I write this stuff down the more I think these are issues that a lot of people have, regardless of bullying. It does always surprise me how few people were bullied. Perhaps as a way of overcoming my general distrust I often assume that people who I like must have been bullied. Because you must have been, right? Because otherwise you're in the enemy camp.
The other thing is, if you acknowledge (as I find it impossible not to) that bullying made you who you are then how can you be so negative about it. Part of me thinks of young, defenseless, naive me and, well, I even annoy me. How could I have continued in life like that? Perhaps they were doing me a favor. I'm not sure how much of this is concerning self hatred and how much is amusing "oh shucks, wasn't I a loser?" backward glancing.
Anyway, the main point of this is:
- OMG I'm perfectly fine now, fuck you bullies! There are people who think I'm cool, not many, but some! (If I wanted to rub it in I would mention our comparative life trajectories, how is Coles, Susan?)
- Also: It's totally the fault of the above mentioned that I get nervous going to parties where I hardly know anyone.
- Plus, let's also blame the school yard bullies for all those perfectly nice people I'm not friends with because I pre-screened them out.
- I also blame my parents. Obviously.
THE END.
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