or, What the hell is wrong with the people I live with?

“All women are like that, all sluts like that.”

“Government would be more fair if some of us didn’t have to support lazy people.”

“If she didn’t want her body to be used as a sex object, she shouldn’t have become a prostitute.”

Obviously I can’t let these comments pass unchallenged. I have done so in the past — we all have. We all know how bad it feels to ride out a hateful conversation for the sake of temporary harmony. It’s not worth it.

Unfortunately, I’m a stranger in these parts. I’m the new kid. It’s not a big deal when I’m around friends and someone says, “He’s not sexist, more like anachronistic,” and I snap back, “So it’s not sexism if you’re just old?” The conversation may falter briefly, my closest friends look at me with either love or exasperated affection in their eyes, everything is fine.

This is not the case among new acquaintances. I’ve been here for only a month, and the unacceptable remarks keep piling up. The three quoted above are from the last week alone, the final two from the last 48 hours. The heavy silence that descends over a table, the discomfort that seeps out of an authority figure with a horror of stepping outside written guidelines into questions of right and wrong — these experiences are becoming more and more familiar.

As they do so, my understanding of my own personality shifts and shakes. When everyone in the room stares as if at someone wearing a dynamite vest, or when all my dinner compatriots avert their eyes, the solid foundations of my personality seem to crumble. Kind, intelligent, funny, loved? Not now, not in this room, not among these people. My closest friends are becoming accustomed to the question, “I’m not a bad person, right?”

I’m not thrilled at the prospect of having some kind of militant buzzkill reputation within my home, but the common thread of my antagonism is the insistence on universal human dignity. I am willing to stand by that.

Ultimately, I am far more afraid of an environment in which all can comfortably take hatred for granted than I am of the distaste and discomfort of my peers.

Sometimes people say silly things. Breathe deeply and gaze into the blurry daffodils.

When it is ass-stupid.

John Ashbery, in New York magazine, dismissed the entire genre of male nude photography with the same sexist tautology that covertly underlies that Times piece on cultural “overexposure”: “Nude women seem to be in their natural state; men, for some reason, merely look undressed … When is a nude not a nude? When it is male.” (Substitute “blacks” and “whites” for “women” and “men” and you’ll see how offensive the statement is.)

-The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private by Susan Bordo

Ashbery and our old friend Winckelmann should talk.

In not at all stupid news, though I am biased here, Miss Prism has linked to me! As an example of an excellent blog! I don’t know how or why it came to pass that people I didn’t go to middle school with are reading this, but I say huzzah.

Here are my ten, which became twelve because if you know me you know I have a lot of love to give. I refrained from tongue-bathing the favorites I think many people know of, though if you aren’t reading I Blame the Patriarchy, Shapely Prose, and Brooklyn Tweed (for example), you’re missing out.

coloursknits: Gorgeous photos of gorgeous knitting, and the site is so beautifully designed that I swear my heartrate goes down when I look at it.

Flint Knits: If you would like to be overcome with delight, please read about the dog sweater and the monkey.

freaksexual: His posts on gender and sexuality are few and far between but epic in their scope and insight.

The Health Institute of Nutrition: Brilliant satire of the “obesity epidemic” hysteria. How brilliant? This is the tagline: “1 in 100 Girls Will Suffer Anorexia Nervosa. America, We Can Do Better.”

Hillbilly, Please: I don’t remember how I found this blog, but it never fails to cheer me.

needled: Thoughtful commentary on why we make things and what role things have in our lives anyway. If you, like me, stayed up far too late last night, you might find that intimidating, but don’t. There are also extremely pretty pictures.

pepperknit: Food and knitting and beautiful photos of life. I am falling all over myself to try her citrus basil granita.

peskyapostrophe: Politics! And occasional knitting, but mostly smart looks at political trends and events from someone with an unusual perspective (she works in reproductive rights).

Sitting in trees: Kristina is the friend of a friend, and I vote for her blog as “most likely to gain Virginia Woolf’s approval.” If VW hadn’t died before the internet was invented.

Smitten Kitchen: You knew I made the chocolate stout cake, but this past weekend I tried out the chocolate chip cookies too (verdict: delicious but way too many chips; next time I’d cut from two cups to one rather than one and a half). There are no photos of these cookies because they are in our bellies.

Sway Knits: I feel silly because some of these recommendations are just a variation on “this is pretty and makes me like life,” but is there higher praise than that? This blog is pretty, and it makes me like life.

Those Aren’t Muskets!: My favorite sketch comedy group that I sometimes get to hang out with. You may know them from the Digg sensation “Internet Party“? Yes, you should be jealous of me, because they are really funny and charming and attractive, and some of them even know my name and long story short the thought of my high school reunion doesn’t paralyze me with fear and self-loathing anymore.

how orgiastically exquisite this house is?

It activated the lifestyle-fantasy sector of my brain most aggressively, though that isn’t hard to do.

In my off-hours I exist almost perpetually in the state just between reality and realistic fantasy, and it requires only the slightest nudge — an attractive and interesting-looking person, a particularly evocative post on Apartment Therapy — to push me completely into the latter. In this condition, I am liable to make immature notes on flickr.

Likewise, the mere suggestion of insufficient funds* brings about an uncomfortable stay in reality, often accompanied by such an experience’s attendant drop in mood.

*I can’t tell you how long I looked for a clip of the “We — don’t have — this money”/”This apartment belongs to the bank now” scene from the “Stella” pilot. Just trust that it was a very, very long time.

1. Assume people will like you.
2. Expect not to fail at anything you put your mind to.
3. Lighten up.
4. Refuse to let completely useless emotions like guilt and shame take refuge and thrive in your body.
5. Ditto self-loathing.
6. Laugh when people insult you.
7. Stop trying to win over those who don’t approve of you.
8. Trust that you’re worth knowing.
9. Reject nagging insecurity and fear that you’re too un/whatever to deserve success and happiness.
10. Stop depending on lovers to make you feel worthy, attractive, smart, or whatever you wish you were.
11. Set a bold example.
12. Realize there’s not one thing wrong in experiencing pleasure, even purely sexual pleasure with no other purpose of justification.
13. Risk failure. Making mistakes does not equal failing. Not trying equals failing.
14. Reject passivity, defensiveness, humorlessness.
15. Stop blaming yourself.
16. Stop blaming.

-Lesbianism Made Easy by Helen Eisenbach

45. Leave someone a 100% tip (on $15 or more) (3/13/0

She reminded me of my mother. A woman in her forties, probably, waiting tables and good at it, with a kind smile. That’s all I actually know, but I filled in the rest out of my own experiences, like we do.

Though I was really thinking about someone else, still it seemed like a good time for number 45. For my mother, at least, surprisingly big tips make a day much better, even if the actual amount of money is rather small.

Master of seduction.

Also, note to self: When you’ve managed to work up the courage to approach a sweet-looking stranger and say, “I’m sorry if I was staring earlier, but you’re so beautiful. Have a good day,” take a moment first to make sure you don’t literally have egg on your face. And a little bit in your hair.

Good one, universe.

People who ate pastries.

Brush off your haloes, folks, because we are entering the realm of the divine.

If you think food is for fuel and nutrients and pleasure and happiness, you are wrong. Dead wrong, and soon to be simply dead. Food is solely a vehicle for displaying one’s moral superiority.

This nugget of toxic, smug health advice comes from a perfectly nice hippie and former co-resident of mine, through a group email list. Residents were discussing a BBC article about the health merits of tea, and he responded, in part:

Also, I recommend that you minimize or eliminate sugar with tea, or high fructose corn syrup (as in Snapple), to help avoid other health effects such as obesity, diabetes, etc. Fructose (half of sucrose, cane sugar) is toxic to the liver, unless you earn the right to consume a small amount of it through vigorous exercise.

Emphasis mine.

Thing One: Weight itself is not a “health effect” or whatever euphemism you want to use because fat is so scary you daren’t discuss it by name. A lot of people make a lot of money saying it is, but that doesn’t make it so.

Thing Two: “Earn the right.” “to consume a small amount of it.” “through vigorous exercise.” Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.

I’m sorry I can’t discuss that last one intelligently, but bundled up inside it are so many disordered ideas about eating and food I don’t even know where to begin. For my mental health and yours, it might be better to leave it unpacked. Good lord.

I helped make this cake last week, and then I helped eat it.

First, however, I walked through the streets naked but for a loincloth, flagellating myself. I had to earn it.

Here’s the thing: I’m a cat person. I love cats and cats love me. By long study of a very complicated work-to-affection ratio that you couldn’t possibly understand, I have determined that they are the ideal pets.

Any cat my mother raises is automatically more loving and adorable than 99% of the world’s creatures, so the standoffishness I hear of hasn’t been an issue in my experience. Cats in general require less effort than either dogs or children, and they provide plenty of love. Perhaps more importantly for people like me who are powder kegs of affection just searching for an outlet, they love to be loved.

And you don’t have to rush home in the middle of a fascinating dinner party or weekend getaway (ahem) to feed or walk them.

And a cat needs an actual, traumatic-for-all-involved, porcelain-and-hot-water bath maybe once for every five times a dog does.

I don’t intend any cold, mercenary appraisal, just an honest evaluation of how much I really want to be depended on for another being’s most fundamental needs (not very much at all). And yet.

And yet.

You know that familiar story we all hear, truth or propaganda as it may be (probably a little of both), wherein a headstrong, career-oriented woman looks up from her copy of The Wall Street Journal one day to see a baby and promptly feels a switch flip in her mind? That “You know what I want? A baby” switch?

Yeah, that hasn’t happened to me. And I expect if it did, a brief reminder of how put-out I am by having to brush my own teeth every single day (didn’t I just do this?) would be sufficient to cure me of it.

But today I looked around me, and I saw dogs. Dogs everywhere. Corgis and golden retrievers and boxers (O the boxers!) and chihuahuas and mutts with shiny fur and little fluffy specimens I could not identify. So happy to be outside, so happy to be around people, so eager to lick faces and smell crotches and be alive.

MUST HAVE DOG, brain said. I felt it in my bones — if I had my own home, there would have been a fifty-fifty chance of my coming home with a new friend from the animal shelter.

This could become a problem.

24. Go to Berkeley’s Farmer’s Market, and take photos (3/1/0

Done! I took a pass on the worms, free or no, but picked up some Medjool dates that could compete with any candy for sugary-sweetness.

I also finished Liz’s earflap hat (no. 87 on the list) and my contribution to the knitter project (no. 72).

The pom poms I planned to make for Liz’s hat — let’s just say the whole “pom pom” enterprise bested my swordsman. We shan’t speak of it.

Beaufort, the pattern I used for the knitter project hat, has a stunning stitch pattern. Just look at the swirliness. Let it hypnotize you.

So that is three off the list! A week of organic fruit and knitting, gosh. Keep me in your thoughts, won’t you?

Oh yeah, and I made a beret for Natalie as well, in the most wonderful Jean-Pierre Jeunet green. It’s a sickness. If you want me to make you a hat, now is clearly the time to ask.

And finally, Radar Rounds Up the Decade’s Most Misogynistic Movies. I’m glad they did, because just thinking about this stuff makes me tired, and seeing that someone else has sifted through the mess makes me feel a little better. Best quote:

Hostel: Part II: Thanks, Eli Roth, for giving us naked Heather Matarazzo strung up by an evil woman who slits her captive’s throat and then rubs the blood on her tits. Sisterhood is powerful.

The moment I saw this sign in Berkeley I had a vision.

A vision of a kitschy feminist-themed restaurant called: Make Your Own Damn Sandwiches! It’ll be a topsy-turvy world inside this restaurant, owned by women of color and staffed by underpaid white male college graduates*. Wacky!

These are the things I think about.

‘I need some new shit to wear. I hate everything I own.’

‘You look fine.’

‘Right. I look fine. Except I don’t,’ said Zora, tugging sadly at her man’s nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn’t be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman’s magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki’s knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies — it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.

-On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Even if you can’t control it, at least you can have a laugh and a sandwich. You gotta eat, right?

*This is a joke. Like, for humor derived from role reversal. This situation would not represent actual feminism, which espouses egalitarianism, including for white male college graduates. Nobody should use this as so-called evidence for any strawfeminist he or she may be building in his or her off-hours, because that would be stupid.

Boinkology, an entertaining site to which I subscribe (though I don’t always agree with its conclusions, because such is life), was kind enough to feature a link to my first open letter, “you say ‘cocksucker’ like it’s a bad thing,” as one of its Boinkable Links for the day. Welcome, Boinkology readers!

Another link it featured raised an eyebrow over here: “Drew Barrymore Discusses 100th Boyfriend with ‘Vogue.’” I almost want to apologize beforehand for even mentioning celebrity gossip, as god knows there’s enough of it about, but this piece betrays some interesting assumptions. Justin Long is, “by Daily Intel’s guesstimate, Drew’s 100th serious boyfriend.”

And as usual Drew is the happiest and most in love she’s ever been. “My cheeks hurt, I’m so happy!” she says. Aw! She does seem so happy! Almost as happy as she did when she was talking to Bazaar in 1996 about an unnamed suitor (Jamie Walters? Tom Green?). “I’ve been seeing him for about six months,” she said then, “and I’m madly, madly, madly in love. I’ve totally met the person I want to have children with. Without question.” Or even in 2006, after she had been seeing Fabrizio Moretti for several years…

Dig that tone. It almost sounds like they’re accusing her of lying.

I have to level with you. If it is illegal to have relationships run their course, to have them end poorly, to be thrown over, or to have to throw someone else over, I should just turn myself in right now. As I bet most of us should.

(Yes, I am defending Drew Barrymore from my feminist perspective, even though she publicly denounces feminism as being, I don’t know, icky or not going with her dress or whatever. I’m at peace with it.)

How many people end up for eternity with the first person they ever kissed or wanted to kiss? And how many people enter a relationship thinking, “This’ll probably end — I give it a year, year and a half max — but whatever, I’m not that interested anyway”? (I’m talking a relationship, not a one-night stand.) And how sad would that be?

It’s either human nature or a heavy-duty socially constructed behavior to expect that the one right in front of you is the right person, finally, the one up to which all others were leading, and good lord haven’t you earned the payoff after all those broken dishes and lousy first dates? Even if a sadder, wiser voice in the back of our heads, the one that sounds like Dorothy Parker, says, “Have fun with that, dearie, and I’ll buy you a drink once you hit the pavement,” it’s still what we like to think.

Clinging to romantic ideals and ignoring reality to the point of losing self-respect or experiencing abuse is a problem, obviously, but there’s no reason to think that’s going on here.

Even if we’re wrong every single time — no, especially so — there are certainly worse human behaviors and delusions to point to than unfailing romantic hope. In fact, that silly, lovable human tendency is very nice indeed.