Coming to Feminism

I went to college/university and got degrees in physics, math and computer science, and although there were not many other women in my classes I didn’t feel singled out or special.
But in one computer science class the guys couldn’t figure out a solution to a problem, I told them, yet they said no, I have no idea why, but they went to the teacher asked him and he said what I said. Perhaps I should’ve said: I told you so, at the time but for whatever reason I didn’t. I knew I was right because I’d already tried what I told them and it worked.

I took a job and was told by a Greek male working there he told his wife he was smarter than her and if I don’t tread on his toes I’d be alright.

Later I got a different job at an extremely testosterone based corporation, and then the fun and games really started, but that is a completely different story and for another time.

Fast forward to my retirement. I retired in my early 30s. I got sick of the sexism. Retiring came with other benefits too, it gave me time to think.

And of course this is the essence of sexism, time. Men have more time on their hands. Too many women throughout history have died early because of how dangerous birthing is. But because becoming a human being is really an apprenticeship, many women have had to apprentice too many children. Then there is all the ‘make work’ as George Orwell called it in ‘Down and out in Paris and London’. ‘Make work’ keeps you busy so you aren’t doing other dangerous stuff like: thinking. Of course too many women were never even given the tools to use their spare time usefully anyway, these tools are the tools to read and write. Women have all this 'make work' of making themselves thin and attractive as possible, thus exercise. Shopping for food and clothes, getting their hair fixed and done, managing a household, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes and cleaning, planning and preparing food, then monitoring and managing the mental health of the household, which is largely dealing with her apprentices and her husband and other sundry family members. 

In retirement I discovered the internet. The internet was wonderful because I finally made a real friend. And it didn’t matter what I looked like, people could only see what I showed them.

My friend was into alchemy, a science he might say is about the transmutation of symbols. I’d say everything is a symbol and the way we differentiate between symbols is by the symbols they are stored with. And all learning really is: is adding symbols and building indices between symbols. There seems to be neat distinct symbols, but they really might be seen as blurring together, the math end of the Tao of physics? (as in the dance of Shiva, the wave like nature of photons… everything becomes a wave, de Broglie). I digress.

Because my friend was into alchemy, a woman who wanted to do a radio show on alchemy turned up and wanted us to audition for her show. During my audition she asked why very few women are interested in alchemy.

She didn’t like my answer, but it did start me thinking.

First of all I thought the question was rather sexist, did she ask men why so many men get into alchemy as opposed to women? When and why had I been elected as spokesperson for my entire gender? And why don’t we ask men ever things like ‘why did he rape her’? Or why didn’t he leave her instead of beating her? Yet we always ask what was she wearing and why didn’t she leave?

I think my answer was kinda sexist at the time because I didn’t really seek out women as friends. Men seemed to do and think on more interesting subjects than which guy they liked, or how their relationship was progressing, if they had apprentices, their kids…

Over time my ideas of feminism changed.

It started in the beginning with all these viagra spam ads. I guess the people selling internet viagra suspected most people on the internet were male, men have the most money to spend, especially old men. The kind who are most likely to need viagra. Perhaps the kind of man too embarrassed to get a prescription and then get the prescription filled.

I don’t know.

I know there were rumors of breast enhancement creams, the kind that enlarged your boobs by rubbing them with this cream. Apparently this didn’t sell nearly as well because these ads were extremely rare. Perhaps they thought only men used the internet.

Anyway the viagra ads always talked about babes in bikinis.

It seemed to me that the dominant member of our species needed something very important from the least important, and do women need men at all?

In our society women very much need the protection of men from men. Yes I know the refrain, not all men. But the reality is men can go nuts and it’s just like trying to figure out if this snake is venomous or not. It is vital before figuring out if this guy is safe or not; besides a snake says it’s a snake upfront unlike men, dangerous men can hide how dangerous they are for a very long time. So even the safest of men benefit from the violence of the dangerous men, and this is where men get their power, we have no idea which are the dangerous men waiting to become extremely dangerous and those who are safe. So women and men go about trying to please all men.

And for every dangerous woman, there is an insanely dangerous man somewhere in her history. In Eileen Wuornos’ case it was her grandfather. And perhaps he had a dangerous mother or father, I don’t know. But violence begets violence and it takes determination, hope and options to get someone out of the cycle.

Besides some men are raised to feel entitled to all that free labor that comes with the way most daughters are raised. I know I was raised to believe men were entitled to ogle me, fondle me, and I was not allowed to complain about it. Thank the goddess for #MeToo.

I was raised to make sure the house was clean and if it is to be clean it was my responsibility. Perhaps I was raised to bring children into the world, be a stay at home mother and cook and clean and do all those miserable chores women are supposed to do. I could do it too. I found I kept my apartment clean and neat when I lived alone.

But men feel entitled to leave their stuff wherever and I blame a man’s parents for this.

Also I have no idea how men become so fragile, does no one say to males as they grow up, deal with it, like they do to females? Instead we maybe let in on this grand secret somewhere around prepubescence that every month in our lives we will suffer from PMT and then bleed and we will do this every month unless we get pregnant or die. There are no vast industries trying to solve the issue of PMT. I found the trick later on, for me anyway, was no gluten. I stopped eating gluten and all my problems with hormones disappeared instantly, I am not certain it would solve any other women’s hormonal problems but it definitely worked for me. There are massive industries behind our daily bread and who cares about women anyway.

Yet I still see these articles telling me that unless you have celiac disease there is no reason not to eat gluten. I don’t have celiac and yes not eating gluten worked for me.

So what if it potentially inconveniences about half the adult population of the planet, thus turns women into a stereotype that allows men to scoff at. Indeed turning women into jokes is the way men deal with women. And thus they keep us separated and talk about how putting women together causes catfights, whatever.

And women believe this because this is what they hear men say so it guarantees that catfights ensue. And if they don’t then it’s ignored and the stereotype remains intact.

Every now and then I hear of places were men are banned but those stories in the news are quickly erased. These places sound very nice.

Briefly women have all the power in the universe, somewhere in their late teens if women want moon rocks, men start building rockets. No one tells these women to expect it or what to do about it. and it’s only been very recently that women were allowed to build their own rockets.

But do men go about trying to keep women in place? No. I don’t think men decided to, but I think it’s been a creeping status quo. 

With more and more men making names for themselves in the list of social accomplishments, i.e., writing books on … whatever, men telling us everything, men running most countries, men doing everything, and women trying to attract a mate, after all men even have to do all the work there too, except she has spent her days trying to be as pretty as possible to make herself appealing to as many men possible and she has to be young so she can survive child birth as many times as needed. But in the end she might possibly die in childbirth anyway. Besides not every woman who lives, like every man who lives wants to write books based with important ideas. Some men do, most men don’t. Some women might but have to fight even harder to have those ideas heard. After all, which great luminary was a female? Too many people want to line up (namely males) behind great men, and then think of why J K Rowlings was told to publish with initials rather than her first name, male publishers just knew boys would never read what a woman wrote. 

Perhaps this is hangover misogyny from the previous generation of men onto the next generation of males, creeping status quo. Look at the problems Katie Bouman endured when she lead the team to make an image of a black hole. Trolls all over the place were trying to diminish her achievement, with nonsense like she didn’t make as many saves as other team members.

Thus was there a need to educate women, worry women with politics and the need to vote? She only had to be around long enough to pop out some kids, raise/educate/apprentice them until she died. Either because of childbirth or a beating at her husband’s hand.

And I’ve heard men say such things as that a woman is basically a rubber band, babies basically just slip out of women. (I dare you to read this link.)

Essentially a woman’s primary purpose is to advertise her DNA by being an ornament. She was never raised to showcase her intelligence, intelligence is the domain of males, writing brilliant books on the thoughts of man was what men do, women’s thoughts are pretty much forgettable. Unless a man claims her thoughts and then they may be good after all. Think of Emmy Noether (who?) basically fixed relativity which Einstein made famous or Rosalind Franklin (who?) yeh I had to look her up too, she found the structure of DNA but fortunately some guys got the Nobel prize for that (because fortunately for the Nobel prize committee she died, unfortunately for us because who knows what else she’d have found if she’d lived longer). And these are just two women. 

All the time women think and say things that men steal. Like the concept of equality. Equality is the thing of females, women think of themselves as equals, men do not. Men are always looking to where they fit in a power structure, they never/seldom see themselves in an equality, they are too busy looking up and down. Yet men cleave to this concept of equality and put it up front in their countries constitutions, and while its may be in the countries constitution it is seldom practiced. 

I will continue my quest to understand the problems of the patriarchy.