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(no subject)
Jul. 8th, 2015 | 10:44 pm
mood: 
amused
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(no subject)
May. 29th, 2015 | 12:00 pm
mood: 
bored
I’ve seen variations of this particular meme floating around out there for, literally, years. So, what the hell. Have set comment screening to “Anonymous Only.”
Leave me an anonymous comment. It can be one sentence [or even just a word], or you can pour your heart out and write me a book. Anything you want to tell me - from what you think about me to what you think about yourself, to a situation you don't know how to resolve, to anything random or pop culture-y that you just want to talk about - venting, squeeing, anything! Don't hold back.
Leave me an anonymous comment. It can be one sentence [or even just a word], or you can pour your heart out and write me a book. Anything you want to tell me - from what you think about me to what you think about yourself, to a situation you don't know how to resolve, to anything random or pop culture-y that you just want to talk about - venting, squeeing, anything! Don't hold back.
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Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro
Nov. 16th, 2009 | 02:29 am
“My mother spoke to me in her grave, hopeful, lecturing voice.
‘There is a change coming I think in the lives of girls and women. Yes. But it is up to us to make it come. All women have had up till now has been their connection with men. All we have had. No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals. He shall hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, a little closer than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. Tennyson wrote that. It’s true. Was true. You will want to have children, though.’
That was how much she knew me.
‘But I hope you will—use your brains. Use your brains. Don’t be distracted. Once you make that mistake, of being—distracted, over a man, your life will never be your own. You will get the burden, a woman always does.’
‘There is birth control nowadays,’ I reminded her, and she looked at me startled, though it was she herself who had publicly embarrassed our family, writing to the Jubilee Herald-Advance that ‘prophylactic devices should be distributed to all women on public relief in Wawanash County, to help them prevent any further increase in their families.’ Boys at school had yelled at me, ‘Hey, when is your momma giving out the proplastic devices?’
‘That is not enough, though of course it is a great boon and religion is the enemy of it as it is of everything that might ease the pangs of life on earth. It is self-respect I am really speaking of. Self-respect.’
I did not quite get the point of this, or if I did get the point I was set up to resist it. I would have had to resist anything she told me with such earnestness, such stubborn hopefulness. Her concern about my life, which I needed and took for granted, I could not bear to have expressed. Also I felt that it was not so different from all the other advice handed out to women, to girls, advice that assumed being female made you damageable, that a certain amount of carefulness and solemn fuss and self-protection were called for, whereas men were supposed to be able to go out and take on all kinds of experiences and shuck off what they didn’t want and come back proud. Without even thinking about it, I had decided to do the same.”
‘There is a change coming I think in the lives of girls and women. Yes. But it is up to us to make it come. All women have had up till now has been their connection with men. All we have had. No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals. He shall hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, a little closer than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. Tennyson wrote that. It’s true. Was true. You will want to have children, though.’
That was how much she knew me.
‘But I hope you will—use your brains. Use your brains. Don’t be distracted. Once you make that mistake, of being—distracted, over a man, your life will never be your own. You will get the burden, a woman always does.’
‘There is birth control nowadays,’ I reminded her, and she looked at me startled, though it was she herself who had publicly embarrassed our family, writing to the Jubilee Herald-Advance that ‘prophylactic devices should be distributed to all women on public relief in Wawanash County, to help them prevent any further increase in their families.’ Boys at school had yelled at me, ‘Hey, when is your momma giving out the proplastic devices?’
‘That is not enough, though of course it is a great boon and religion is the enemy of it as it is of everything that might ease the pangs of life on earth. It is self-respect I am really speaking of. Self-respect.’
I did not quite get the point of this, or if I did get the point I was set up to resist it. I would have had to resist anything she told me with such earnestness, such stubborn hopefulness. Her concern about my life, which I needed and took for granted, I could not bear to have expressed. Also I felt that it was not so different from all the other advice handed out to women, to girls, advice that assumed being female made you damageable, that a certain amount of carefulness and solemn fuss and self-protection were called for, whereas men were supposed to be able to go out and take on all kinds of experiences and shuck off what they didn’t want and come back proud. Without even thinking about it, I had decided to do the same.”