I had a few different viewpoints of women's liberation when I was younger. I feel like listing random shit off.
I remember seeing a nude mag in a gas stop in Kentucky when I was in first grade or primary at oldest. It was one of those ones with fake tits and cowboy hats and a flannel shirt with one button and bra ETC. The reason I describe those details was because I felt such an aspiration to be as pretty as her. I went home and found a flannel shirt and did one button, got a hat and everything and then realized for the first time I didn't have boobs. haha. But I wanted to be a special as she seemed.
I remember as well when our nun principal sister Kathy would come into the room asking for some strong boys to help her lift things, when my mother had told me females tended to have better developed strength in fourth grade.
I remember in second grade hearing a friend named Houston and another friend named Doug talking together about watching some show where women ripped their shirts off and shit, and they were really excited. And I wondered why a fully grown adult woman would entertain anyone, even a small child, on the television by exposing herself. Why, I guess, she felt she had to do that. And that was the first time I think I was scared of boys.
I remember really believing in spice girls and thinking what made them so special was that they wouldn't be nice and quiet for anyone- they were always breaking down respect that is held for upper class etc. I didn't really catch the whole constant nips and constant unnecessary petting of strangers, haha. I just thought is was amazing how fearless they were, how they treated everything they met like a toy. And then bein' all pissed when people went for N*Sync after, feeling like they were traitors of our gender. >.< At a spice girls show I saw (!!!), I encountered my first transvestite that was obvious, an adult male dressing as baby spice. What it showed me was that some people WANT to be women and that there is an inherent benefit in being female that was separate of male benefits.
I remember some priest teasing and chiding me in third grade for not wanting to get married.
I remember loving gwen stefani in third grade for being this dress up queen who didn't try and make her voice conventionally pretty in any form, finding her power in yelps and fucked vibratos! Hooray.
I remember watching Wrong Way by Sublime's video on repeat in third grade, watching how some 12 year old could be made into such a target for the others around her because of the fact she was a woman, leering clown dads w/ stogies, horny brothers, prostitution, never okay even after away from the crap.
I remember I used to tell people I wanted to be a belly dancer in first grade and i'd lift up my shirt and wiggle my belly and say it was my aspiration when I grew up. Then we went to Disney World and saw a belly dancer and I was sad and disgusted. She wasn't belly dancing in some performance atmosphere but over people's meat with docile eyes, simply there to be whatever the audience of the restaurant wanted to leer at. So no more belly dancing aspirations.
I remember beauty pageants
and girl scouts gettin' their hair did
and fundamentalist brothers and sisters playing house by having the male direct the caring woman
and one of my girl scout leaders believing women shouldn't vote since they might just choose bill clinton cause he's hotter
and prepubescent girls doing those weird chair humpy dances to britney spears
and telling people my natural home was the woods
Apparently when I was four I did a strip tease for my brother's little soccer team because I wanted attention or something.
Apparently I was insanely crazy.
Female liberation when I was a child was more of a reaction against everyone wanting me to be sweet while the boys were boys. I wanted to freak even the boys out, be a confident wild thing and have any admiration come instead from respect for my crazyness. haha
I remember regretting that in kindergarten I didn't have fangs and a gothy school girl outfit. OHhohohohoho nineties.
I remember feeling superior to the tiny sixth grade girls doing cheers on the parking lot during recess because in kindergarten I could go hoist them up in the air.
I went to an all girls summer camp and never experienced more bizarre festering psychological cases
at the summer camp, we had a day with a dance that involved the all boys camp. the day of, classes were cancelled and girls shaved and styled and dressed and sang ridiculous songs solely for the boys and painted and such
I remember being pissed the boy camp had water slides and they could run around in bare feet.
I remember freaking out when I was in first or second grade because my voice teacher was leaving and came around with presents- she gave me an angel decorated box with mirrors inside and her husband gave my brother a huge bag of cinnamon gum and a tennis ball in a panty hose and my brother got to be physically active and I was left with this useless relic of old time ladylike behaviour and I freaked out because of the injustice. whoooooops spoiled
I also really liked sunflower dresses. I just think I would have really dug some leopard print spandex and sparkly unisuits.
I had blue suede shoes and would try and sing elvis.
I remember crying in third grade because I started realizing the pressure there was to follow a passive domestic lifestyle. I was slouched on some couch and started crying at my mom. Something like, "I hate being a girl. What am I supposed to do. I'm just supposed to lay around and have sex and then have babies and die." and I pictured being the queen ant of some hive and how horrible that role is, being the sacrifice.
And I would try and be a "skate rat"
aaaaaaaand
then there was all that avril lavigne hubub.
Anyhowwww.
I remember in seventh grade, my parents started trying to suggest female vocalists for me to listen to. And I started getting really mad and told my parents I wouldn't pretend to respect women because they hadn't given me a reason to respect them. They hadn't fought hard enough, and if I didn't listen to their music it was their fault since they hadn't tried hard enough and had enough talent to entice me. I didn't want to baby women because I felt like they got babied all of the time and all it had done was cripple their abilities and motivation. I had a lot of hate for women for letting everything that had happened to them happen to them. Why would they take the easy route out and choose so little claim to everything I saw every day? I wanted women to prove themselves to me, and I myself did not feel like I wanted to be a woman if I had to be with all of these women who had given up or been so weak. I felt disappointed.
I carried that sentiment for a long time.
How many women vs. men told you your place as a child?
I don't know about you, but my dad made me feel like a superhero
and my mother wanted to,
but really she just told us about her weight watchers regimen
and how she used to be skinny like us
and the underlying statement was that she was worth less now.
and that we could be worth less based on the physical state of our bodies
our bodies felt instead like they were the society's to judge and determine was is best for.
it's so easy to become disconnected and resentful of the body.
any, how.
I was mostly raised by women at school, punishing my boisterous behaviour, finding the boy's boisterous behaviour more cute.
christian elementary school female teachers can be amazing
or a little misleading
the ones at our school were always pregnant
they were sweet, but you could see the difference in some of their behaviours if they were talking to your mother or father. the respect they would give my father, acting like little girls themselves.
I never felt like that was my dad's fault
I felt like it was my teacher's fault for deciding to do that.

But it's not always a decision
and it took me a while to realize that men don't always get a decision either in this weird cycle we are conditioned into.
and i know all of this is vague and fragmented

I feel like I'm just trying to, even now resolve my anger with women. I have anger with the emotion unpredictability I have linked women to. I have anger with their tactics they use to help oppress each other. I have anger with their taught aversion to adventure. I have anger with the passivity I was taught the women's sexual role in. I have anger with girls playing dumb, or coo-ing their voices, though I find myself doing that a lot.
I do these things.
I can be emotionally unpredictable, to say the least. I can be tactic yet illogical, I can be afraid of taking control of my life path let alone others, I can play dumb and make my voice high and pleasant.
My mom also encouraged mistrust of femininity.
She would tell us how estrogen rotted her brain, making her overemotional since her first child in a way she had never been. She respected her emotion's validities very little if she ever linked them to estrogen, pms, etc. She got us on pills so we couldn't ovulate so we couldn't perpetuate falseness through our femininity. We were free of emotional tears and those moments when introspective behaviours begged for our attention. We were free of desire and unbased ecstacy during ovulation. We would have less pimples and bigger boobs and be prettier and more real.
But how often do neurochemical predispositions affect everyone? People will have their own mood swings from sunlight, from sugar, from temperature, from stress, from anything really.
But I ended up feeling like my emotions were invalid since I was a woman. This made me sensitive, susceptible.
Recently in the car, my mother talked about the good old days again of having the brain of a man when she was younger.
So here is the deal. What if I don't think desire and mood swings are wrong? Why do I have more blame in irresponsible decisions than my brother might?

There are so many things I want to reclaim of being female
I want to reclaim the right to desire, to be an idiot and not feel like I've let down my gender race, to be emotional, to be obnoxious, to love children, to deny people, to deny people, to deny people, to not seek approval in all choices i make, to smile and be a ditz or to sulk and scowl or to be blank. i want to only worry about health and not weight. i want to not have more fear of men than i do of women. i want to continue to act the way i was with a child or fellow female or male if a male enters a room. i don't want to feel like it is my fault if people do or don't like me romantically or feel attracted to me. expressing my sexuality is not always being a tease. i can change my mind, i'm not a mother giving out candy, i'm another pair of eyes and another mind in the room. i want to be able to stand in a kitchen with bare feet and a pregnant tummy and talk about gardening and cooking and child rearing, or go into that other room with the smoking pipes and talk about literature.

my mother never was welcome in that situation i just mentioned, where she was not doing the primary child rearing and did not have a cock. what use was a gynecologist with vigor and tears and strong opinions and ambitions and arrogance and sweetness? what gender does my mother fill?
my dad would make me a costume for a play and the other women of the school would tightly smile and ask if my mom had made it
they respected my mother as they respected a male
but they thought she knew better than her male doctor counterparts in terms of social politics within the hospital, community, etc.
my mom would plumb and my dad would cook
my dad would sit at the head of the table
my mom would decide where we lived
and my dad would sulk and appear castrated.

gender made for role confusion so often when applied to the realities of my two individual parents and the context of our individual situation.

my interest in any female voice other than avril lavigne started in seventh grade with the yeah yeah yeah's master EP and stair step exercise exercises with my sister. the sensual wild yelps were so confident and RIGHT! hoorah!
but i wouldn't tell boys at my school that- i would only listen to ACDC or led zeppelin or dr. dre at school so i'd appear hardcoar
i think tori amos followed because of my interest in NIN
and then.. metric and such and now I don't really worry about listening to female music but it's more than I would have expected upon further study.

one thing that's cool about old time stories like the wizard of oz is the female protagonist
or the madelyn l'engele series did insane spiritual journeys with a mopey girl named meg.

books really are so cool when you're a kid

i remember realizing the violence forced upon boys, and how they're exiled too for not complying to gender expectations with that Wringer book, where he has to wring pidgeon's necks for the community traditional celebration and has hidden a pidgeon friend in his room.

i hid from ever considering males as real approachable people again for a while until i read a book i originally had thought was from a female's perspective- tricked! he felt guilt if he made girls uncomfortable by not controlling himself, he was also hiding ways he was freaking out and could get his heart broken. egads!

i think the first time i had a guy friend i was comfortable around and not manipulated by all the time was probs erik

isn't it cool
how in a few years

or even months
suddenly i have male friends
and don't consider every interaction with a male some underlying sexual attempt

or i like that now i will admit to wanting children
or get trashed and pee on things
and the balance is so good

i think about feminism a lot

and i think the disappointment i felt as a kid with women was just because i knew how strong the women around me were. i knew they had crazy awesome potential and was just confused as to why they weren't listened to with as much respect when they spoke or felt they had less chance of success with things that didn't involve female charms. And I think i actually thought girls were really competent and were just being lazy.

It's nice to see now
all of the vigor and attempt and strength in fellow ladieezzzz
and the amount of respectful males there are in this town
and those who are just themselves
whatever gender those actions are given
just chooses what they wish.
that's wonderful


/huge ramble with no point