2x11

XANDER: You wanna go to the utility closet and make out?
CORDELIA: God, is that all you ever think about? ... okay!

GOLD. Yay, a mainstream tv show that DOESN'T treat female sexuality as something nonexistent.

The Ted thing is kind of scary, and shows how kids might hate stepparents. I mean Ted doesn't even know Buffy properly, and Joyce isn't even on her side, yet he wants to come in and control her life. It's such a change. He's totally imposing on her.

I think buffy has the best friends ever. They are incredible. I love that friendship is a theme in this series because it's IMPORTANT. Cordelia is wonderful. I like the depth given to characters. Like, it's getting GOOD.

buffy watching.

I'm watching buffy. Right from the very beginning!~~
it's all laura and chloe's fault. Also amber benson at leakycon this summer. No big deal.
(I am eternally grateful for laura and chloe for showing me Once More With Feeling and Tabula Rasa right before leaky. It was only after that could I appreciate amber benson's presence.)

It didn't help that lia and kriise, two people off my old collab channel, are appreciative of buffy as well. They keep reblogging buffy on their tumblrs. So I'm watching it. Peer pressure.

Now I'm on 1x02, The Harvest, and ALYSON HANNIGAN I can't. She is wonderful.
and the cuts! The way they cut it is amazing.
and it's so feminist I love it; it makes me happy ^^

life modeling and weed.

I did my first gig in sg today; it was very surreptitious. 

I don't know how else to articulate my thoughts, but I was thinking that life modeling is legal in the UK, which is great. This means that that demand for life models in London is not that high, and I charge £12.50-£15 per hour if I were to model for a drawing class. There's a "minimum wage" on the life model forum website in the UK; it's part union, part agency, and it's £12.50 per hour for London, so people usually charge that. As a benchmark, the minimum wage in London (it's not the same all over the UK because the living costs in London are higher) is £6.08, and I've been paid £6.50 per hour for a non-modeling job. 

So I come back to singapore, and thought that I'd charge about the same that I charge in London, maybe a little bit higher if I can get away with it-- £20 per hour. I'm going to put everything in sterling for convenience; and you can compare rates between the two cities. I did my first life modeling gig today, and it was a photoshoot. The amateur photographer who's paying me tells me that I should charge a higher rate; £75 per hour. I tell him £20 is what I usually charge in London. This person hasn't hired a studio; we're photographing in the open. It feels a little cheap; most previous shoots I've done have been in photography studios, in private. We end up doing the shoot in a stairwell, and there are noises all around, almost as if someone's going to barge in any moment. 

MY POINT IS. That if life modeling was legal and regulated in singapore like in the UK, I don't think I would feel bad about what I was doing. It's like legalizing weed. Weed is illegal in Singapore, you get the death penalty, hence demand for weed/ any kind of drug is high and terribly overpriced. Weed is technically illegal in London, but people still smoke it and there are ways of getting it, someone told me it was £10 for 5 sticks, correct me if I'm wrong.

Life modeling isn't regulated here, you don't sign any release forms, there's no minimum wage, so demand is extremely high and pushes the going rate to £75. For comparison, you get £2.50 per hour if you work at McDonalds. I got paid £2.75 per hour at my first job, a receptionist gig. 

It's a jump from life modeling to weed, but I was looking at how they were legalizing weed in the states of Colorado and Washington, and it was hard for me to understand why. But I realized people are going to smoke weed whether or not it is legal, just like people are going to life model whether or not it is regulated. When it is illegal or unregulated, people think that they need to try harder to obtain it, so that they won't get caught by the authorities. Because of the perceived "work" they need to do to acquire it and to escape detection, the price of the goods increases. 

I would like it if life modeling was regulated because then it wouldn't push the going rate so high. It wouldn't feel like an underground, seedy thing where people text you in undecipherable broken english in the middle of the night. I've been asked, "Can touch?" "Can come now?" (at 11.30pm) "Can come after midnight?" "Free now?" "Free later?" I don't know what kind of ridiculous unprofessionalism is this. I keep getting texts, one question per text; I've gotten four texts in a row when I didn't respond in 12 hours. It's annoying and disrespectful. It's not just from one person; it's from all the people who responded to my ad. I answer calls, and the caller sounds drunk and his voice is slurred; I can't make out what he's saying and I have to ask him to repeat multiple times. It's not professional at all, and it's frustrating to deal with the lack of discipline, to say the least.

In London, I put up an ad, people email me, I email back, we decide on a time and date that is sometimes set weeks in advance. The shoot is planned for, and I can put it in my schedule; I don't have to drop things I've planned for a shoot that someone has asked me to do the next day. If I'm lucky, the photographer shows me samples of his work, and I can decide if I want to work with him or not, based on the sleazy-level of his pictures. It all feels very professional and over the table. Sometimes at 6th form colleges I have to sign a book to say that I've been paid, or at other places I give an invoice, and it makes me feel better. The transaction has been recorded in writing; there's no need to cover anything up. 

About the legality of goods and services; I'm currently reading an ethnography by Sharam Khosravi for school. In it, he says that authorities have been more severe towards refugees since the early 1990s. People are still going to attempt to move to more developed nation-states whether or not the authorities are strict. The refugees and their smugglers are just forced to use more dangerous routes, now that border crossings are more heavily policed. It's still going to happen, even if the punishments are more severe, and if the likelihood of getting arrested is higher. The only things which change are the market rates asylum seekers have to pay to their smugglers, and the death toll in the inhospitable territory between Mexico and the USA. 

It's a radical argument, but if the borders weren't so heavily policed, maybe less people would die crossing it. Vulnerable asylum seekers would less likely be fleeced by smugglers. If weed or drugs were regulated, less people would get sick because of impure drugs, or overdose by accident. People who need money desperately wouldn't have to risk their safety to become mules and swallow packages of drugs. If the life modeling industry in singapore was more regulated, maybe people would stop treating me like a hooker and stop sending me rude texts, bordering on sexual harassment. 

I just feel more uncomfortable life modeling here than in London, even though I can charge more. 

what I want to do with my life

So. I'm reading Neil Gaiman's tumblr, where a writer asks for advice on dealing with a rejection letter. He answers with a link to a blogpost he wrote in 2004. He talks about how he knew that he was a writer, and how he decided he was going to be one.

I don't really have an aim for my life. I don't have a definite, concrete answer of being a writer. Someone asked me a while ago, what I wanted to do after I finished my degree. (if I ever finish, that is.)  I said I wanted to fuck around. I don't have a clear idea of what I want to do. I remember I wrote a blogpost 2 years ago which listed out the different possibilities of what I could do after uni. Of course this was dependent on which courses I was accepted to, and I'd applied to major in Environmental / Conservation Biology on my UCAS form in addition to Anthropology. I relied on fate to decide what I would get into, since I couldn't make up my mind. My grades ended up deciding what I would study; I didn't have the marks to get into the BSc courses I'd applied to.

This is sounding very depressing very fast.

I mean 2 years ago I had all these ideas on what I could do, but now, if you asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I'd give you a shorter answer with less options. I still have the "let-fate-decide" philosophy, to a certain extent, because I would rather take what jobs I can get, than be picky and stick to only accepting one kind of job. I'm not looking for permanent, full-time employment yet, though. This is the kind of expectation I think I will have upon graduating.

For context! 2 years ago I thought I could be a filmmaker, or a biologist, or an anthropologist. Now I'm thinking that I'm definitely not becoming a biologist because I don't have the training and I don't have the patience & grades to do the training. I'm definitely not doing a undergrad film degree, because I don't like not having material to make films *about*, and I also like spending more time in school faffing around. Studying, mind you, but talking/ learning/ writing about people and how we came to think about things and the systems we created to organise things. "faffing around" because it feels like a luxury to be able to spend time on anthropological theory, rather than learning skills in film/ technical theatre/ arts management that will make you employable.

I also would like to stick to BA Anthropology, because I feel that it's important for me, as a human being, to be able to understand what it's like to be human in different communities. It's my responsibility to understand, as much as possible, the lives of people who are not like me. I know that I cannot completely assume the identity of someone else or assimilate completely into a cultural group which I am foreign to, but I need to know how they live and the challenges they face, and to learn the skills required to do this. This applies whether I'm studying, say, trans* people, Native American Seminoles, or elderly singaporeans. I think there are many different groups that need a more balanced representation. Also I think it would be cool to do ethnographies in singapore, from a "native anthropologist's" point of view. Or of online communities. idk there isn't much literature on queer people in south east asia specifically; there is stuff on people in taiwan and south asia, but I haven't come across stuff on people in malaysia/ singapore. I digress.

So now, if you asked me what I want to be, I will say that I might do a graduate degree in anthropology. Spending a year at uni has convinced me of that. The other career path I'm leaving options open for is arts management. I've been volunteering at events for a while: the first ever thing I did was writers' fest in Oct 2009, and I've been working other festivals and events since. I like doing it, it makes me happy; so happy that I do it for free. The novelty of doing it is wearing off, but I still feel energized by working events and being busy. I like that I'm part of making something incredible happen. I like being the pragmatic side of the team. I like the atmosphere; there's so many things to do at once sometimes, and things are happening all around you, and you have the power to make things run smoothly.

And the experiences you get from working things like leakycon: priceless. I felt so proud working the starkid event this year, and being part of such an awesome team. Getting the chance to work in a whole different culture (american) yet in a place which feels like home. It's not just that; it was also SWF 09 with amanda palmer and neil gaiman. The friends you make while volunteering! Best friends ever. Seriously. I've found out that theatre people in london REALLY know how to party.

If I don't end up doing either of these things after my degree, I'll probably be in singapore (visa issues) and seeing how long I can last at an entry-level, $6 SGD/h admin job while applying for NAC/ NHB jobs and internships. Or I might do life modeling in sg, not sure how the scene is there. All these while my mum laments at me being at home and wonders aloud why I'm not doing a PHD. (Do you see why it's easier to say that I'll be fucking around because it summarizes what I'll be doing anyway?)

psssh in another two years I might change my mind again. I'll cross the bridge when I get to it.

jealousy, turning saints into the sea

Just let that play, I think. That's what I have in my head right now. I think this is a good way of keeping track of what I'm listening to. Because me and volunteer-colleagues were singing this last night, and I kind of think this is mostly universal. I can't remember when I first heard this song. I must have been 12 or something, after checking Wikipedia.

I'm trying to sleep/ trying to get to sleep. I think I have too many words today. I don't know.
Today I had dinner with my mum/dad/sister, and it was uh crazy. I had to walk out for a while in the beginning, because we were arguing, and my dad said "I don't know what she does for 365 days of the year." which was the last straw for me, because I DO DO THINGS like SCHOOL and PRODUCTION RUNNING and WORK, excuse me. Then towards the end my sister kept on talking about how West Croydon was "unsafe" because there were "black people" there. I don't know what kind of privilege is this, and this wasn't the first time I heard this, and every time I hear this I don't know what to say except to refute it, and it makes me angry every time, and this time I lost it and I told my sister what she was saying was bullshit and my dad got mad at me for swearing.

On googlemaps East Croydon and West Croydon stations are a 15min walk apart from each other. According to my sister, East Croydon station is a perfectly okay station to walk to and take trains from. WEST croydon, however, is "unsafe" and she says "my school says it's not safe" "don't go there, there are a lot of black people" and other bullshit. DO NOT TALK TO ME ABOUT RACE seriously last summer I had this whole hang-up and think about it, I'm supposed to think and read and write about race in class this past year, it bothers me a lot, so I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and about what anthropologists think about it. We talk about it in class a lot, I am obviously part of a yellow minority living in a white-majority city, it's not something I FORGET. this whole black people= crime= will get mugged/raped thing is fucking racist, obviously, and is entirely not true, at least in london.

It's horrible. You don't want to be typecast or stereotyped, don't stereotype another race. Just because you're from singapore and there are hardly ever any black people there, doesn't mean that they are Other. Everyone is human. Not being black myself, I cannot claim to understand what it means to be black in the UK. But I've been living on this street for almost a year, and there are black people living opposite me and down the street. I shop on the high street, where it's 60% black people, say 10% yellow people, 10% indians, 20% white on a market day. There are black people living in my neighbourhood. I am still alive, I haven't been mugged, my uni friends who live in the area haven't been mugged. I have black friends, but I don't think of them as black first, in my head, for example, they are [insert name] first, who plays guitar and likes to dress spiffy and is really into jazz. "black" is in my head when I think of them, and I don't think that one can pretend that race doesn't exist. But it's pure ignorance to say that black= criminal.

I'm also angry because there have been countless times where I have been judged based on my appearance and my race, and I don't want other people to feel judged the same way I have been. Other people have assumed that I speak chinese, drunk people have said random japanese or chinese words to me, said "happy new year" in my face, asked if I'm from china. All these things I find insulting and in the same way that black= criminal, yellow= chinese is a simplistic, untrue equation. This equation just says how stupid the person is, that they don't know that yellow people can speak with american accents or british accents, that yellow people can be from California or Vancouver or Vietnam, not just China. Yellow people can speak English, German, Dutch, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, Tagalog, Korean and not all of them speak mandarin chinese.

this is pretty inconclusive but I'm tired now and I'm not meeting my family tomorrow because I would actually go insane and leave the car while at a stop junction or something, and will try to limit family time.

why I don't identify as lesbian

In my process of coming out, I have had a few labels to describe myself. At first, out of necessity: in singapore, the gay people I met would ask me what I identified as, and I would reply, "I'm Q in LGBTQ, questioning." I was questioning for a long time; at least a year and a half. I remember being okay with this, and there's probably a blogpost somewhere talking about it. 

When I started kind of going out with a girl, it convinced me that I was romantically attracted to real-life girls, and not just sexually attracted to them, or to just Tegan of Tegan and Sara or Danielle of everyoneisgay. At this stage I moved on to thinking that I was either lesbian or bi. The choices had been narrowed, so to speak. I remember agonizing over what I "was", and feeling the pressure to decide, just because people ask you what you are. Saying that you're "questioning" has the added effect of sounding naive and stupid, and as an 18 year old trying to fit into groups with people in their 20s, that was the last thing I wanted to be seen as. 

But I was young, at least in my coming-out process. It had only occurred to me that I might be gay in early 2010, when I discovered tegan and sara at 17. Obviously people might not have taken me seriously when I said I was gay then, or identified as LGBTQ. It's easier to dismiss this identifying-as-gay thing as a phase, when you have only so recently discovered that you were queer. I thought it was a phase myself, and for a long time, still thought that I might be straight, and was only attracted to gay-looking girls on the internet. 

Finding a label for myself has been at times, frustrating. For the most part I tried to convince myself that it was okay to be questioning, and it was okay to not know *what* I was. It took a lot of patience, especially when people, both gay and straight, keep asking you what you are. There's also an emphasis on coming out, and to come out, one needs to know what to come out as. A few well-intentioned people have tried to help me solve this question. Hell, a stranger has even told me what to label myself. They go, "oh, you like boys and girls? well then, you must be bi!" and in my head I think "...no." I didn't ascribe to the bisexual label because I wasn't sure if I was into girls exclusively. At one point I even told my therapist that my sexual preference was seasonal; that is, I liked boys before, but now I liked girls,  and I might like boys again.

I still don't ascribe to the bisexual label, mainly because it implies a dichotomy between two genders, and emphasizes the fact that there are two genders, not just multiple ones. I don't think I am lesbian, because I've dated boys before. Identifying as lesbian negates those experiences and implies that I had boyfriends due to the societal pressure to have one. I mean I did feel pressured to "have a boyfriend" but also I felt feelings; not just the butterflies-in-your-stomach feelings but also the "I really like this person but I also hate him/her" feelings that I feel with girls as well. The only kind of hate that you can feel toward a person you've been romantically involved with.

I also don't identify as lesbian because it means that the person you are attracted to has to be a girl; what if I have a crush on a transguy? Does that mean I'm not lesbian anymore? However, if I dated a girl, then I am okay describing ourselves as a lesbian couple, or being in a lesbian relationship. There are also residual things that I learnt as a child that takes time to erase. When I was in primary school, the word "lesbian" was a taboo thing, and had negative connotations. I wasn't taught this by the teachers themselves (they never really talked about gay stuff in primary school) but by the other kids. My conscious self has no problems with potentially identifying as lesbian, but my subconscious still has some unlearning to do. 

A small note, but I still have this hang-up about coming out. That if I identify as lesbian, I have to come out to my folks, so a part of me delayed the declaration of being gay. When I was still questioning, I had this goal of trying to definitely find out what I was before coming out to my folks, so that I could have something concrete to say to them. I'm still not out to my parents, but I have a better picture of who I am now, and I'm very sure that I'm gay.

I'm still trying to find myself out, and I think "queer" is a nice, all-encompassing label to file myself under. I like how it means that one is strange or odd as well; I can relate to the feeling of being weird and alternative. I grew up knowing that I was different, and I don't think that it will change. I like how this word was used in Woolf and Joyce too; that it can mean both "odd" and "homosexual", and it wasn't clear if it was one meaning or not. I feel that I belong to the entire queer fandom (I don't know how else to say this) rather than to a group of lesbians exclusively. This might be in response to the fact that lady-gay groups in singapore are ridiculously exclusive: women ONLY, and one HAS to be gay to attend these meetups. 

One could argue that "pansexual" would be another way to classify me, but I feel that it implies that I am sexual. I'm not even sure that I'm sexual or not; I might be demisexual, I don't have this hot-blooded urge to bone every attractive person out there, or strangers, or people I know in general. As an anthropology student I'm naturally skeptical of forms of classification, while I agree with Levi-Strauss' argument "to be human is to classify", I actively resist my instinct to do so. I identify more with being LGBTQ than being any single letter. "Queer" seems like it embodies the entire spectrum of gay-ness.

SO. I don't identify as lesbian because I've liked boys and I still might like boys, but I like girls, and and I don't mind being called a part of a lesbian couple. Also labels are interesting.

EDIT: This post was spurred by my awesome friend Heather, who introduced me as lesbian. Which I found quite flattering, in fact, because I hadn't been introduced as such before. xD because some people don't believe I'm gay, and I have to tell them, and by introducing me as such I didn't have to go through the complicated awkwardness of telling people I like girls. 

Mad Men Season 5 Episode 12 recap

These past few episodes have been hard to handle. The drama! The revelations! The feelings they make me feel! Spoilers abound.

This episode opens with Don and Lane being congratulated on their respective career successes. Following the signing of Jaguar, Don is not satisfied with the current direction the company is going in. He wants bigger, better, more. With Roger's help, they arrange a meeting with Firestone, where Don gives a pitch that's beyond assertive. It is in a bold, self-assured tone which proudly declares that he "won't settle for 50 percent of anything." There are more than a few references to consumerism in his pitch, which stands in stark contrast to Kinsey's hippie antics in the last episode. This pitch reeks of capitalism; strong ideas unwelcome in today's 99 percent world, perhaps. 

In a dramatic plot point, Lane is called out on his embezzling, and Don forces him to resign. Due to his failure at work and a rather detached relationship with his wife, Lane is pushed to suicide. Lane's marriage plays off Don's rather nicely; when Don comes home from work, he is comfortable telling Megan about Lane's misdemeanour, and she immediately sympathises with Don, to the extent of putting her own grouses on the back burner. Lane's wife, however, has bought him a new Jaguar, ignorant of the fact that Lane was very much in debt. She makes him take her out to dinner, and there is a marked disconnect in the way they communicate. Lane fails to have an open relationship with his wife, and he is unable to confide in her, while she incessantly places demands on him.

There is also a sad irony when Lane initially tries to gas himself out in a Jaguar, the very account that SCDP just signed. He fails at this, resorting instead to hang himself in his office. Work was all he lived for, and yet it was also his undoing. It's a rather macabre, vengeful move of his, to ensure that his colleagues discovered his body. The graphic depiction of his dead body underlies this fact. War veteran Don insists on carrying down the hanging corpse, and Lane's dead body literally physically confronts Don about its death. Obviously Don feels guilty, and it's very rare that this confident ad man shows remorse. He keeps a dead man's secret, though, and does not reveal to the rest of the office that Lane stole from the company. It might be to keep the dignified memory of Lane intact, but it is also partly to save himself from blame. 

Sally also does her share of personal growth in this episode, and establishes herself as a pre-teen who knows how to get what she wants. She stubbornly refuses to get out of a family ski trip and gets sent to her father's house for the weekend, only to come running back home when she gets her first period. Betty tells Megan that Sally "needs her mother" at this time, clearly marking her territorial boundaries. It establishes, for Betty, that there are some things that Megan cannot handle. Betty fulfills her nurturing role quite well, cuddling Sally and giving her daughter a hot water bottle. 

We are nearing the end of the season, and this episode has been pretty eventful. The writers have a lot to live up to for the season finale. Maybe another death? The SCDP offices have been quite the battleground this season.

gay stuff again.

so what that I'm not out to my parents?
why am I made to feel long-suffering and less-than for being closeted? I don't think it's a sad thing. I'm not sad. It's my own bloody decision not to tell my parents that I'm gay ok. It doesn't mean I live any less of a life. Thanks for your condescension.

I hate it when people pity me. Don't do it if you are at all intelligent, please.

Ever heard of cultural relativity?

aka do you know how screwed I would be if I came out to my parents? I don't necessarily want a rainbows and unicorns relationship with my parents. I don't think it'll ever happen. You can't force something to happen even if you want it to happen. The only way I know how to get along better with my parents is to listen to them and argue less and be a "better daughter", whatever the fuck that means. That usually works. This would mean not going to leakycon, taking summer classes in london, not going out with friends, not drinking, not doing anthropology and doing law or medicine or engineering or architecture instead, not reading fiction, applying to every fucking university my mum wants me to apply to, regardless of COUNTRY the university is in, (last week she was like, "oh, why don't you transfer to the university of chicago next year? why don't you transfer to SOAS next year?") not staying out after dark, not volunteering, not life modeling, not uploading videos of myself to youtube.

If I told them about my personal life and if I was gay, they would get angry, it would be something else for us to fight over, = not productive, yes? The less they know about me, the less they would get angry over, and the less stuff in my life not concerning them I would have to compromise over.

It just feels that every little thing that I enjoy doing and I do a lot of, my mum has to step in and tell me not to do it, or that it's bad to do it. Every time I have to make a decision concerning them, I have to have my mum to agree, then my dad. It's exhausting and annoying and troublesome to have to discuss everything with both of them, so I don't.

My therapist has said that like anything, my parents would need time to adjust to a change in my life, if I were to come out as gay. It is true, to a certain extent. For example, my parents took time to adjust to the fact that I'm mostly vegetarian, and six years on, they're okay with it, and my mum even looks out for food that I like to eat. She's tried food that she has been hesitant to try before, and buys food home even if my sister or my grandparents won't eat it.

But for other, I guess more crucial career/academic decisions, my dad especially is stubborn. When he came to visit me last, he kept asking me to "do something professional" and to "do something useful", and hasn't come around to me studying anthropology. I don't think he'll ever come around. It just feels very hurtful when it is implied that what I'm studying isn't useful, or that the 3 weeks of production running and stewarding is useless and a "waste of my time". bullshit. To feel that the hard work you do is seen as "nothing" is horrible.

I hate talking to my parents, now that I don't live with them. It makes me feel anxious and stressed. I don't want to make matters worse by bringing up something that will make conversations even more tense.

I'm also... scared to tell them about my personal life. I feel like I might get in trouble for it, and they'll be mad at me.

I don't want to feel forced to come out; I hate it. It's fucking ridiculous, though. This "coming out" shit is not even brought up when I hang out with other gay people in singapore. It's understood that parents are conservative, and there are just some things that some parents prefer not to know about their kids. Gayness is not usually something you'd talk about with your parents. I only feel forced to come out to my parents here in london/ when I was in the US for a while.

musings

Context: 

1. famous sg blogger xiaxue had haters on her facebook photos, who left typical hater comments.

2. she decides to retaliate by posting their full names and their family photos on her blog, so everyone knows who they are.

3. the straits times (national newspaper) lauds her for doing this, portrays her in a good light

4. People respond.

   a) My friend June writes a blog about it, one of the comments on this blog highlights an example of how xiaxue victim-blames, in terms of rape culture.

   b) I respond! kind of.

First. I read the blogpost where xiaxue victim-blames, and when I first read it a few years ago, I didn't think much of it. Thought that xiaxue was being her usual controversial-opinion-self. That is, she blogs about something controversial just for the sake of it, and to get more hits. 

Now I'm reading it, and I can't have an unbiased opinion on it, because it's triggering for me. This triggering feeling is in relation to the rape discussed, and it just makes me feel really uncomfortable. It's not a detached feeling, it's just that it feels too close to home and I don't like it. (trying to sort out what I think here.) 

So. The commenters on June's blog say that this is an example that xiaxue is really misogynistic, and therefore, the recent action against male haters on facebook cannot be described as "feminist". But I don't get it. In school (literature, social anthropology) if we want to describe something as "feminist", in literature we base it mostly on textual evidence, and we don't say something is feminist just because the author is feminist. In social anthropology, something is feminist or post modern or whatever because of the time the article is written. We compare the text to other texts that have come before it, and to other texts written in its time. The text can be seen as a reaction to what has happened before, or the prevailing mentality during the time it was written. 

Because of this, I find the argument that "xiaxue is not feminist" inherently flawed, because in literature and social anthropology, you judge if a person is feminist based on his/her texts, not his person. There usually is one key text that essay-writers cite a lot that illustrates his stand on the matter, and we don't usually track what this person has said over time. There are exceptions though. Like Mary Douglas was very structuralist when she first wrote her Lele ethnographies but recently she's pulled back a bit, and her stand has become less radical. 

Back to my point! The point is, that referring to what xiaxue has written in the past to help shape our opinions on what she is like now feels like a personal attack. In academia, personal attacks are always frowned upon, are they not? (I've been to lectures where people present their papers, and professional colleagues present their opinions on the paper that is presented in a very civilized manner. Usually.) Therefore, our claim that xiaxue is not feminist is invalid. But this does not mean that xiaxue is feminist. We have to analyze her most recent text to determine if this is so. 

Of course, if the anthropologist is dead then it's harder to make personal attacks, and the attacks are on the argument the person made, not the person. Last I checked, xiaxue is still alive, there are people who know her, and there are people who will go "you know, this one time, I saw xiaxue doing this and this..." All of which contribute to our public perception of her, and in this case, whether she is feminist or not. 

Obviously also xiaxue is not in academia. She's a public personality, and so the reactions to what she says don't follow academic rules, but whatever rules the public sees fit. I brought up academic rules because they are logical, and helps us decide if we agree or disagree to something in an organized way. (I like academia. It mostly consists of smart, well informed, and in the case of social anthropologists, not heteronormative people. But I digress.) Public response to a piece of media is going to be anything but civil and organized. 

hmm. I don't find it logical to pull up something that she's written in the past to contribute to our judgement of the latest blogpost. It's not professional (ok basically I think it's stupid and confusing) to make personal attacks on the person, when what you really want to discuss is the morality of a particular set of actions. 

I'm also doubtful of the fact that the people on the internet who have responded to this incident think that it's okay to take pot shots at xiaxue's morality and forget that she, like any other person, is complex. At this point, xiaxue seems like a straw man. Which is all entertaining and convenient for people, I guess.

the internet and its usefulness

today one of the actresses bought me a drink. ^__^ I guess she just felt sorry for me and I felt so bad. sigh. Like I feel bad if someone buys me a drink because most of the people who hang out with me are just as skint as I am. This is not the point~ the point is.

She asked me what I did in my spare time, and I said I played the ukulele (default answer now. I mean the truth is that I well read and tumblr and cry while watching videos and do the laundry but those aren't interesting things, are they?) Then she asked how I learnt how to play it, and I said the internet. and then I answered her earlier question, "How did you find out about this volunteer opportunity?" by saying that I found it from the internet. So then she calls me an "internet buff". I guess well she's from another generation entirely, or another kind of person entirely... okay well she's not the type of person I'd usually hang out with.

I just feel a little bothered by this. The way she said it made it sound like I was someone incapable of doing anything outside the internet. Now I feel like I have something to prove, that I need to prove that I'm able to do something/ make social connections without the internet. But the truth is, I can't. I literally can't do anything now without it.

I'm searching for directions to get to my mystery shopping job, and what do I use? The internet.
I'm looking for a new flat now, and I use the internet.
I look for jobs? internet.
Life modeling gigs? internet.
Even the place in my uni was done through UCAS (okay, granted, there _is_ no other more efficient way to do this, and *everyone* goes through this system) and where's UCAS? the internet.

I guess I grew up with the internet, and every single aspect of how I live is done through it. It's so quick and easy. The actress asked if I learnt how to play the ukulele from a book, and like. Dude, if I learnt how to play the ukulele from a book, I would have given up by now. I was spoilt and fickle enough to not want to go through strum patterns or ALL of the chords or music theory to learn how to play properly. I just wanted to be able to play along with my favorite songs. I can get the chords for my favorite songs from the internet. I can't get specific chords from a book. During the ukulele society session at my uni which I went to, we played songs that I hadn't heard before, and I wouldn't have played those songs if I were learning the ukulele on my own.

Who wants to learn how to play "Old Jamaican Road" or whatever when they first start? It's already hard to teach your fingers to remember the chords, and for your fingers to grow calluses. You don't want to make the experience more miserable by playing a stupid song that you don't even like, and knowing that there are songs that you like that you could potentially be playing, but you can't, because all you have is this dumb book.

The only time someone in real life taught me anything about the ukulele, when I first got it, were my friends who already had ukes. June (friend in singapore) taught me the chords to "creep", and I think I must have tried it out on her ukulele. Whenever my friends brought ukes to meetings, I was itching to touch them, and that's why I bought one. After that one song, and all I knew were 4 chords, I learnt everything else from watching people play stuff on youtube and from chord fingering lists.

No doubt there must have been ways of finding a job, volunteering opportunities, or a flat when the internet was not as popular, but I don't know them. There's the newspaper. My parents think that networking is very important to find a job, that "knowing people" is important. I feel like such a slimeball when I talk to people with the intention of getting something for myself. I'm rubbish at networking.

I feel there would have been more support surrounding non-internet resources when the internet was not as commonly used. By "support" I mean people whom you could ask, telephone lines which were actually manned by real people who wouldn't put you on hold, things like that.

Let's say I wanted to find a flat without using the internet when I just moved here. I'd go to my uni's accommodation service because I'm a first year, and I'm new to the area. I did that in september, and they were not helpful at all when I asked them about alternative housing since they had run out of space in halls. They just gave me a University of London Housing Services (ULHS) pamphlet, and wished me good luck. The ULHS covers *all* the colleges in London, including King's, Imperial--- colleges that were well within central London and were about 45min to an hour from where my school was. I ideally don't want to live in a place 1hr away from school. And I went through the rooms available through ULHS, and the nearest one was too far away. I would have needed to go to the physical ULHS office if it wasn't for the internet, which is stupid, or call them, which is also stupid, because I'll have to be like, "oh, I need this this and this in this area" and it would be a long phone call that I'm not comfortable making, because I'm not even paying them as agents.

I have to end this soon. Just. What I want to say IS that it's really inconvenient and sometimes impossible to do things without the internet for me. For someone to expect me to find volunteer opportunities through personal connections alone is weird because okay my friends in London are all students who go to my uni. Through them, I can only find volunteer opportunities within university societies. It's very limiting that way. I'm not used to that at all. I do volunteering in order to meet people outside of school, and to get to see free shows. Without the internet I wouldn't have known the show I'm currently working at exists, or if the company producing the show existed. Hell, without the internet, I don't think I'd be volunteering as much.

I understand that people used to be able to do it without the internet, and people still do, but I can't.