A feminist rant.

I was flipping through channels and came across a show on Spike TV. I have no idea what made me stop, but the question was posed, "How do I make my woman less bitchy?" The answer? Have sex with her. Not only that, but they said that women who have sex without a condom are generally 30% happier, unless they get pregnant, so you should keep it on so you don't have to deal with THAT bitchiness. Yes, they did say that.

This ignorance is what keeps men sexually objectifying women, creating hostile environments which lead to degradation, harassment, and even rape. Saying that sex is what "fixes" women leads men to believe they have power over women, because men provide women sex, of course. This is a TV network dedicated to men. If men watch this, although I'm assuming only a certain demographic of less educated men would be watching to begin with, they will believe and follow the ideas presented to them.

What I find is that women are so desperate to please men (we are socialized to do so) that they put up with this garbage and treat other women, and themselves, as objects. To quote Mean Girls (yes, I went there), "If you call each other sluts and whores it only makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores." It is so true. Women truly need to come together in order to make a serious effort. That being said, while men still hold the majority of the power, they need to be educated as well. Let's start with removing the name calling of women, and thinking they need sex to solve their "bitchy" problems, on male-geared TV. Although it's not much better on female-geared TV either. In those shows women fall head over heels for the jerk too. The only difference is that these shows lead women to believe that men will change for you. How about a show that promotes the nice guy that doesn't have to change so you can live happily-ever-after with him?

If I were treated in an objectified way, I'd be a bitch too. Actually, I'm probably considered a bitch for writing this. How do we solve this bitchiness of mine? Not sex.

Butterflies

As I was walking to Shilling so I can fulfill my job as "data enterer" (which apparently isn't working out so well, as I cannot get into Dr. Collinsworth's office...), there were butterflies flying around the sidewalk. One landed a few steps in front of me. I walked past, and the butterfly didn't move.

I was reminded of my kid days, when all I wanted to do was catch butterflies. I never did catch one. Then I thought this was probably a good thing since that'd be like getting kidnapped to a human. It doesn't make it ok if you release the kidnapped after you scare the living hell out of them. Those people go through serious counseling, I'm sure!

But then I think that this isn't like kidnapping at all. Me capturing a butterfly would be parallel to getting abducted by aliens (the different species thing). Now I've never been one to care about aliens to gather an opinion of whether they exist or not, but now, my experience of contemplating the butterfly is telling me it's totally plausible. We don't believe these people, and I bet the friends and families of the captured butterflies think it's an insane notion that humans kidnapped them.

I think I'm sleep deprived.