I had a fun little Islamic/Lesbian Feminist moment yesterday Downstairs.

I bend over a lot at work loading laundry, cleaning showers, and so on, and I noticed when I first started there that if there were people around, particularly behind me, I tended to squat down or work sideways, as if I was wearing a dress and afraid I might flash somebody. Now I just do my work and don’t worry about my ass sticking out at people all the time. We’re all women and nobody cares.

This intrigued me yesterday because there happened to be one of our males-who-identifies-as-a-woman and a couple of ladies-who-like-ladies present at the same time and my mode of going about my business remained just as functional and unladylike. This implied that my comfort wasn’t because we all had vaginas, and it wasn’t because there was a guarantee of absent sexual objectification, it was because we all had feminine identities. There’s something resembling visual assault when an unwelcomed dude does the leering, but when it’s a woman it merely is what it is instead of carrying all that weight of social power.

That last thought is what made me realize, “Holy shit, I’m experiencing the validity of Separatism!”

Both the Lesbian Feminism movement and Muslim culture preach the empowerment of private all-woman spaces. It’s a connection that amuses me and to a degree they’re right. Living every day in a man-dominated world can be downright exhausting, so a man-free zone provides a sanctuary where one can relax and just be. I see it work for the women all the time, and I am now seeing how it works for me, for after working a shift Upstairs I am often anxious and hyped up on adrenaline, whereas after working a shift Downstairs I feel content and focused.

It’s nice!

Yesterday I was walking home from the bank and passed by The City Church, one of those giant (well not TOO giant, this is in Belltown), pseudo-industrial style brand of Christian worship facilities. There was some kind of function going on, as the parking lot was packed and they had placed a large sandwich board out on the sidewalk that read, “Parking for City Church goers ONLY.” That sign and that parking lot were enough to make me furrow my brow and stomp a bit more huffily, but then I saw a dude and a lady come out and cross in front of me to their car. He was generic enough not to mention anymore. She was wearing a plum colored pantsuit with a high-necked blouse underneath and high heels. They weren’t spiked or terribly tall, maybe 2″, but still the sight of those heels made me furious. You may already be aware of my obsession with heeled shoes (for which I intend to eventually write an explanation/elaboration/rant, but that day is not today), maybe not. Let me summarize by saying it’s a big issue for me, and so when I saw this lady in her Sunday best coming out of a church I already scorned I met with a new revelation/declaration: NO PERSON OF GOD WOULD WEAR HIGH HEELS. I’m sure there are some gods or goddesses out there that are all about the footwear, but the Generalized God of The Book (as in the god of Islam, Judaism and Christianity) is not. Casual practitioners can pull it off fine, of course, but you can’t be righteous AND adhere to all the pettiness of fashion and self-hatred of sexism. That ain’t how modesty rolls.

Speaking of crazy religious stuff, I have decided to observe Lent this year. Never having been involved in any kind of religious anything before, this is a huge deal for me. I’ve played the spectator many times, but that hardly counts. Since I’m not actually Christian I won’t be doing most of the things you’re supposed to do, first because I don’t know what they are and secondly because I don’t want to affiliate myself with anyone/anything. So, basically it comes down to this–I’m going to give up cookies, cake, and brownies (that’s right, my beloved, sweet baked goods) for 40 days, starting this Sunday. I know everybody else started on Ash Wednesday but blah!

You may expect updates.

I don’t find the concept of voting or my ability to vote exciting or comforting. Rather, voting only makes me angry.

I shouldn’t have to slosh through the rain to fill in a bubble that says we shouldn’t give huge pay outs TO property owners who want to break the law. I shouldn’t have to request that we NOT take away millions of dollars from education and give it to our wealthiest citizens. I don’t see why I have to OK every hmm and haw about paying for infrastructure repair, maintenance, and transportation expansion because it ISN’T FUCKING OPTIONAL. And lastly, how is allowing adult entertainers to make money a public issue? I DON’T CARE.

But I also don’t trust everyone else to not be retarded, so I vote anyways.

Funny but similarly cynical side note: the page with Ian’s name on it (and however many other voters whose last names come before Albert) was lost, so he had to fill out a provisional ballot. So ha ha! to Ian for being too much of a hippie for The Man to want him to vote.

A quick qualifier: Family and friends are generally exempt from the following complaints.

A compliment is a judgment, although a positive, appreciative one. When someone compliments me, particularly someone whose sexuality orients them towards me, I feel their eyes all over me. I feel their thoughts and their assumption of power over me, over how I feel about myself. By complimenting me they show me their preconceived notions that I should care what they think and that I will take their words as encouragement, but in reality they make me less likely to continue whatever warranted the compliment in the first place.

Because I have a vagina, and do not go out of my way to make that fact questioned, my value to strangers is primarily aesthetic: le duh. But it is irritating and enraging, as guys I pass on the street don’t stop me to express their appreciation of who I am or what I do, because they clearly can’t know anything about me that they cannot see. What makes them feel entitled to violate my space and consume my time?

A more paranoid but gender neutral issue I have with compliments is when the giver is a person who I perceive takes themselves too seriously. Because they give off the air of somebody who thinks they have everything figured out, I take their praise of doing something right as a backhanded way of telling me that I do everything else wrong, or at least sub-par. I know that this is really stupid, but mostly I just don’t like cocky people.

Good night!

This makes me so drunk with anger that I can’t think straight.

I don’t generally participate in the video game brand wars, but this seals Playstation’s loss in my mind.

Why is there so much importance placed on “being” a woman and what does that mean practically instead of conceptually? Not according to society or even my own gender identity, but what my actual—whatever that means—womanhood means to me.

I think it is only my body.

Comparing my physical trappings to my most familiar male encasement, although there seems to be many differences, I see only two that hold different meanings. Mine is well-suited for child-bearing and his is slightly better-suited for manually killing things. But we have no desire to have children yet, the grocery store provides us with all our food and we aren’t soldiers, so I guess functionally I don’t have womanhood and Ian doesn’t have any manhood.

Huh.

there was a massive march downtown last night basically protesting the widespread hatred against non-legal U.S. citizens with sun-tanned appearances. Since I was working in the vicinity I got to witness the prolonged traffic jam and correlated grumpiness of everyone affected by it and a part of me thought, “gosh, if I wasn’t at work I’d love to be out there with them!” because it was heartening to see such a large turn-out of people who aren’t crazy or apathetic. But then I realized that a bigger part of me thought the whole effort was just funny and sad. Of course people shouldn’t be felons just because they happened to be born outside our borders and of course everyone ought to be given equal chances and blah blah blah. But the idea that all those people actually think the white guys in D.C. care AT ALL what anybody thinks or feels, well, that makes me want to cry.