Courage

Declaration: I am a feminist.

I. Am. A. Feminist.

I am a radical feminist. I believe with all my being that all women are human beings, inherently worthy of all the rights and dignities that other human beings (men) enjoy.

I have been hesitant to ‘out’ myself to certain people I know; mostly conservative men, all of whom have no actual authority over me, some of whom are relatives, all of whom I consider to be friends. I have been afraid of losing their friendships and love because of my beliefs.

No more.

If I can remain friends with them, despite having serious objections to some of their beliefs, then they can remain my friends, if they don’t agree with me. If they can’t they were never friends to begin with. If they can’t love me and know I believe these things, they cannot really love me.

We women are asked, every day, to be silent about disagreeing with others so that we don’t upset them, so we don’t ‘rock the boat’, so we ‘aren’t a bother’.

No more.

Listen up: I am a radical feminist.

I don’t believe in limiting a woman’s control over her own body; I don’t believe any man has any right to exercise any control over a woman’s body, mind, speech or actions; I don’t believe any woman has any right to control other women either, whether of her own choosing or in the name of a man.

I believe anyone who attempts to control women’s bodies, minds, speech or actions are misogynist: including rape apologists, rape celebrants, Men’s Rights Activists, promoters or supporters of pornography, promoters or supporters of prostitution, people who seek to limit or obstruct women’s access to health care, contraception, safe and legal abortion, STD prevention, higher education, a living wage, food for her children, her choice of partner(s), her choice of clothing, her choice of sexuality and sexual expression, her bodily autonomy.

If any of these terms or concepts are confusing to you, or if you aren’t sure what I mean by any of them, you may read for yourself at any of the sources listed below. I will be happy to have a civil conversation with any of you about any of these things, where ‘civil conversation’ means you listen to what I have to say, and I listen to what you have to say, and we respond to each others’ concerns. Basically, all the caveats of this blog apply.

If you cannot understand, that is fine. If you will not try to understand, or will not read those things which I suggest that might help you understand, I will have neither sympathy nor time for you. If you cannot treat me like a human being, I will not stay around for the abuse.

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Places to Learn:
Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog
Official Shrub dot com Blog (right hand menu)
Andrea Dworkin, I Want Twenty-Four-Hour Truce In Which There Is No Rape

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

I know what I want to do.

I want to become a translator.

I went to talk to the M.A. adviser today, who, when we got on the subject of translation work, said “You know what might be very useful? Energy efficiency. This is becoming a very big deal, and there might be a call for translators in this field.” This caught my attention.

And the thought that cemented this idea was this: All during the M.A. program, what has kept my attention in every subject has been translation. I took myriad (almost literally!) courses that involved translation, and those were the classes I looked forward to the most. Old Saxon, Yiddish, Old French, Middle High German, Old Norse, Latin: They all got me, every one, and the other classes did not, with very very few exceptions.

So: Do What You Love. –> I Love Translating. –> Become a Translator.

That switch in my head went off today, and it said: “This is the difference between hoping I’ll become something and purposefully setting out to become something.” I am purposefully setting out to become a translator. For now I have a part time job, which will give me a place to be about half of the week, and get me out of bed early in the morning, when I’m at my best. On those days I’ll get physical work, be around people, and earn enough to live off of; the other days I’ll be dividing between my night gig (web design, because it’s fun) and Becoming a Translator.

I even have a plan on How to Get There:

1. Continually improve my general vocabulary.
2. Begin reading articles on renewable energy/energy efficiency.
3. Collect subject-specific terminology with annotations and sources (see also, writing a dictionary).
4. Stay abreast of demand in the translation market (starting with places like ProZ dot com.
5. Translate articles (German English) for practice + portfolio
6. Begin submitting quotes for translation jobs as I am able.
7. Go from there.

I should reasonably be able to spend one day a week translating, even with a full time schedule. When my job goes back to official part time (after the woman who’s job I’m covering comes back from maternity leave), I should be able to up that to two days.

This feels right. This looks like a good plan, and what I need to do. More, as my father says, will be revealed.

Blog Against Sexual Violence Day 2007: The Linkage Version

I hope to have the presence of mind to write a thoughtful, provocative post for Blog Against Sexism Day today, but just in case academia takes over, here are some excerpts and links from the gems I have been reading lately.

How to Prevent Rape:
     ”As long as we keep having these conflicting definitions and ideas of rape, we can’t talk about rape. It stays undefined by society. The law may say one thing, but people say and feel and think and believe another. All the “no means no” advertisements in the world aren’t going to make a difference when we don’t even agree on what ‘no’ is. What I think is important if we’re going to move forward on this is to discuss what we’re taught about rape, and how we’re taught it.”
[Feminists Don't Bake Bread, Blog Against Sexual Violence, 4/5/07]

On being a feminist:
     ”[Don’t] be shocked when you don’t even qualify for a feminist lite label because you’re on the right side of no brainer issues like domestic violence and rape. Those are givens. You don’t get gold stars for that.”
[Ginmar, "Pussycat Feminism", via The Margins]

On not being a rapist:
     ”…I can’t be proud of not raping people anymore than I can be proud of not shitting on myself whenever I laugh. Not being a rapist is the default fucking setting.”
[The Talent Show: I Am Not My Cock, 6/17/05]

More later.

Prepwork for something Important

Thursday, April 5th is “Blog Against Sexual Violence” Day. I’m planning on participating. I missed Blog Against Racism day (by finding out about it the day of) and I’m not going to let that happen again. Not for something this important.

General warning: Things may get a little up-close and personal with this project; I’m not sure yet. I have some personal experience with this, and I’m not sure how much I’ll share.

We’ll see how it goes.

Oh, and did I mention feminism?

So I find out, belatedly, that today, March 8, was Blog Against Sexism day.

And I realize I didn’t include feminism in the blog description. Silly me.

Many of my geeky posts here will touch on feminism, but I do believe I will reserve the more serious rants (when they are articulated) for my steadfast Blogger account (i.e. Now This).

But in honor of Blog Against Sexism Day, I present to you three links in the right-hand column.

Crimitism I found through a circuitous route which undoubtedly originated somewhere either on Girl-Wonder.org or Feministing.com. Richie had a MySpace Blog that has hopefully found a more accommodating home in the general blogosphere.

Found today were two blogs, both via a comment by the first on Ye Official Shrub.com Blog. veravenom of Feminist, Unmodified had smart things to say, and I followed her link to a post where she said more smart things. Open your mind and enjoy. Thinking Girl comes recommended (as she was the impetus for aforementioned smart post by veravenom), although I haven’t had the chance to read much there yet.

I wish I had time for thinking now. Exams are 18 (really 17) days away though, so my concentration level is at an all-time low. I hope to recover by April or so.

EDIT: And Karen Healey participated in BASD (no surprise there) and, as usual, her post was both insightful and thought-provoking. Thanks, Karen.

Haloo wurld!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Or, in this case, continue blogging. Yep, another spot on the web for me-me. This might actually have a purpose (as potentially indicated by the blog title) of housing discussions of all things geek (at least the ones I give a rat’s petard about).

Topics likely to arise: use of language, Battlestar Galactica, comics (especially webcomics), podcasts, Civ, games and game consoles, academic garbage, movies, Star Trek (but only if provoked), Firefly and many other things scifi/fantasy.

impending redesign, and possible organization

It’s time again for my semi-annual redesign, and I’m going to go both brighter and simpler than this one. I’m going to base it off an old site, which is inexplicably still online, more than three years after I quit working at the university that hosts it.

We’ll see if it’ll translate to Blogger well enough.

Also, I’ve begun taking stock. I have so much random web presence, and so little actual use for it. I’m going to at least make an attempt at collecting all the designs that I have created myself, and perhaps build a bit of a portfolio out of it.

Kit was here this weekend, and was asked if she had a site to show off her design work — something I’d promised to help her build, with what little HTML skills I had at the time (which was probably something like five years ago). I’m still committed to that promise.

With those thoughts come these: “What about your sites? What about getting your work together?” Not that I have ever been a web designer in a vocational sense, but even in avocational interest I have offered my help to various people, and have so far not come through. It’s high time I made the commitment to myself that I have made to others, and keep it.

So, I might actually have a site sometime in the future, not just full of links to my various sites with nothing in them, but with a bit of purpose as well.

It’s time to start taking myself seriously, and, as Alice says, just DO something.

1 weekend + 3 hours of writing = 93%

I rock. No, really.

I got my midterm back from Dr. Taleghani today, the take-home one that I dreaded for a few days, then got over and finally, wrote.

I’m sitting here with a mad grin, just ’cause I done good.

Needless to say, the general academic outlook is on the upswing, so of course I’m thinking of the post-semester pleasures that await:

• catching up on Sinfest
• reading for fun again*
• sleeping past 6:30
• getting back to the gig
• getting back on the Gigcast
• getting out of Wescoe
• spend more time with joel that doesn’t involve me reading for class
• having a clean apartment
• having time to actually cook
• naptime, anytime!
• working on Blue Canary with Kit (inasmuch as I help anyway)
• playing around with random languages (this this or this) because I CAN!

That should do it. For now. I could go on and on (really) but unfortunately, there’s a lot left to be accomplished before I get started on that particular to-do list. Hopefully this will serve as a motivator, instead of a procrastinator.

*at least one of these will be Terry Pratchett. Who else?

spectating

There are some days that I understand my purpose in life to be that of observation. Not that I am somehow prevented from or unworthy of participating in life, but that I am there to witness the small moments, to see the unnoticed, to note the minor but noteworthy occurences in the lives of those around me.

Last night a small Tibetan monk smiled and bowed to my sister, who smiled and bowed back. I did not see his face - I saw hers.

There was a glimmer of the magical in her eyes, an awareness that in one small glance, her humanity had been recognized, affirmed, appreciated.

As we were leaving the lecture, she said, “He smiled at me.”

I don’t know how much that moment will touch her life to come, but I am certain of how much it touched her that night.

Whether or not she will remember it later, I shall.

falling into place

Once upon a time, during high school, I think, I took one of those daft personality quizzes, or birthday personality profiles or something equally as doubtful, which described me thusly:

“…If you’re looking for hidden motives, you’ll be disappointed. Underneath Jocelyn’s care and concern for others is more care and concern for others.”

I don’t remember my reaction at the time. However, looking back from almost 10 years ahead of that time, I find myself agreeing with that sentiment.

I have always been asked why I learn languages, especially when I show interest in obscure ones or older forms. For years I have wavered in my explanations, wondering myself where this fascination comes from. The best (i.e. shortest and most coherent) answer was always “because that’s what I do. I learn languages.”

I have an answer now.

Of all places, the final realization came from Star Trek. I have been watching Enterprise lately, and have found myself most identifying with the character Hoshi, Com officer and, you guessed it, gifted linguist. In one episode it is mentioned that she has learned 38 languages. My instant reaction to that was “man, I would love to do that.”

On my way home tonight, I got in front of two young men who were speaking in their native language, something like Hindi. As I walked, listening to them, I was imagining what it would be like to be able to understand them, when a not-so-errant thought dropped into my mind: I learn languages because I want to reach people where they are. I want to understand them on their own terms, with their own words.

Every impulse I have to learn a language, no matter how obscure it may be, or how useless the pursuit may seem to others, is important to me because there are people who speak it, or in the case of dead languages, people who wrote in it. I have dabbled in Icelandic, a language with only 300,000 native speakers, and a friend told me how to pronounce a few words of Turkish when we were out eating döner a few days ago. She was amazed, in an almost skeptical manner, that I could be interested in learning her language. She says, it’s not practical, it’s not useful, why would anyone who speaks English want to learn it?

And those thoughts never once entered my mind. They never do. I want to learn languages because I want to learn languages.

But it doesn’t stop there. I would like to think that it’s a purely academic matter, that I am simply fascinated by and drawn to languages for their own sake, but that is not so.

I love people. Of all races, creeds, stations and nationalities. And what better way to be close to those people than to talk to them using words that they truly understand. Language is not just the expression of a thought, but it instructs thought. Understanding a person’s language can give insight into the very formation of thought.

What more intimate, loving gesture could possibly exist than to seek to understand people in the way that they understand themselves.