Monday, February 21, 2011

It's Time to Talk About It...

This is the theme of the 2011 NEDA (National Eating Disorders Awareness) week. The idea of talking about it is a complex and difficult thing for me. I found it easier to come out in the LGBT community than to tell people about my eating disorder.  Mostly because I dont fit into the stereotypes of someone with an eating disorder. I have never been underweight or even close to being underweight and I fluxuate between disorders. I have many characteristics of anorexia such as preoccupation with weight, contstantly weighing myself and being able to calculate calories in my head, but I also have a tendency to binge eat when I am stressed out. I eat emotionally to cope with whatever and then later on I hate myself for it and restrict caloric intake.  Sometimes to make it simple I just consider myself a bulimic because of the bingeing and occasional purging.  I also have/had a problem with eating in front of people, being that I am obese, I constantly feel that people are going to judge me if I am seen eating. I feel like to be accepted I am supposed to be anorexic and losing weight and to be seen eating means I'm okay with being fat.

This all started to change around the end of January. In January my life started to fall apart; I wasn't graduating on time and I felt extremely alone, like no one in my life cared. But then during the very long decision making process I was going to minor in Mass Comm and make my dad proud...so on and so forth. Then I met this guy, he commented on my "got consent?" shirt and I was smitten. Ok, not quite smitten but intrigued by him. He got me involved with lighting in theatre, which is not really my thing but I got to play with tools, hangout on a catwalk and spend time with him. Seemed like a total win. And then it happened, we went out for dinner one night and I ate in front of him. I admit it felt a little awkward, but the point is I did it.  Then a couple days later on my birthday, my friend Sam, aka: the greatest person alive, took me out to lunch for my birthday and I ate without question. I even shared a sundae with her, a huge rich sundae. And though I felt like I might die from all the food, I loved every minute of it. [Plus I beat Sam at Skeeball]

I know that may seem like a long tangent, but my point is I feel I am now in a place in my life where I can move passed my bulimia. It will always be with me but it doesn't have to consume me. I have people in my life who are making this possible because I dont believe in therapy and rehab. The most important thing you can have is an awesome support system. [Addy Rose, Sam, Kayla, Angie and all the other people who also dont have a clue how they may have helped me]

Misogynistic Men on Mondays: Justin Bieber!

Everyone should've known I'd be doing a piece on him after that Rolling Stone article he did. It's sad to see hair that good on a head that stupid.
If by some act of "god" you haven't heard what the 12 er 16 year old popstar said about abortion and rape and sex before marriage:

 "I don't think you should have sex with anyone unless you love them," Bieber says. When asked if he believes in abstinence until marriage, Bieber – who is reportedly dating fellow teen star Selena Gomez – seems wary: "I think you should just wait for the person you're...in love with."

So...the Biebs doesn't believe in waiting for marriage, which I can accept. But honestly just page through the Rolling Stone article and "god" comes up a lot. Which makes this viewpoint rather convienent especially since he has a girlfriend.

"I really don't believe in abortion," Bieber says. "It's like killing a baby." How about in cases of rape? "Um. Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I don't know how that would be a reason. I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."

I don't know many people who believe in abortion, I may but I'm different. "It's like killing a baby," No, its like extracting a tapeworm. "Baby" is an abstract concept of a post-natal fetus and is not a technical medical term.  But hell, he did have a song called "Baby" and it did repeat the word rather frequently, maybe its all he knows. But really the tapeworm is a parasite much like a human embryo or fetus and cannot survive outside of a host.

J Biebs says that rape is really sad.(na duh) But then "everything happens for a reason." WTF! Yes, I am a strong believer of Fate, but for someone to pretty much say that god decided you needed to be raped so that it would further his plan is bullshit! And I agree Bieber hasn't been in that position, he doesn't (as far as we know) have a uterus and vagina which could be raped and impregnanted. He also gives us no clear indication that he would never rape or hurt a woman, for all we know it would be god's plan for something like that to happen.

So yeah, I'm not all that happy with Justin Bieber. His songs are alright, I guess. But he has what the Virginian Pilot called "unpopular opinions." It's not that these are just unpopular, they are uneducated. I don't believe that we should discount a 16 year olds opinions because of their age, but I doubt he really has opinions.  It feels more like he is repeating what he has heard and doesn't know how to comprehend the complexities of his answers. He's against abortion and wants to portray being against it, but few Lifers will even say they say pregnancy as a result of rape is "meant to be."

My issue is really he's a guy thinking he has a say on women's bodies. I dont care if the kid was his from the girl the thought he was in love with and subsequently coerced into sex, he has no right to tell her she can't abort it. Plus Bieber has a huge teenage girl following and many of these girls do not have the own opinions either and he has most likely influenced many of them to believe that abortion is wrong and that rape isn't a crime. The day he became an icon, he was given a huge amount of social responsibility and he's not using it the way he should.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

When Do You Own Your Own Body?

I was walking through Walmart yesterday, trying to find cheap sunglasses, when I hear the scream of a small child. Normally this really doesn't bother me but this kid was in serious pain and I feel that its an American injustice on little girls.  This kid was hardly past being a fetus! She was tiny and screaming her head off while her mother(I assume) is holding her and the Walmart lady with the ear gun is puncturing her small lobes. The reasons this bothers me moves far past the little girl's pain and into my feminist realm. First, she was just born! She can't speak her wishes or express her desires in any other way than crying. Second, why would a woman work so hard to birth and child and then cause it pain, this doesn't make sense to me. Lastly, this has a connection to the motivation of FGM. Yes this is a less sexual version of a sexualized mutilation, but it is still a female child being mutilated for appearance and later attractiveness. The pierced ears on female infants is a marker of femininity. Pain is femininity? So how does this not fuck up society?

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Hunter-Abuser Connection?

So I am a firm believer that hunters are evil. I may have a friend or two who hunt, but I cannot understand how someone can go out and plan to attack a helpless innocent creature, without its knowledge and not be a little fucked up in the head. First I have heard the 'just animals' arguement and its bullshit. Humans are 'just animals' too or did we forget that because Pope-whats-his-face decided that humans are better than animals. Well many people believe men are better than women, so does that make it right for men to kill women or to beat them as they like because again Pope-whats-his-face said that women are less than men. 
Women and animals are often placed into the same brackets of activism and 'sensitivity.'  Lies are told like with any other oppressive nature that there is something about them that makes them deserve that type of treatment or that they dont matter in the world as it is.
Now the reason for this rant: the guy messing with my happy man-hating feminist world 'confessed' to being a hunter.  This is complicated because he's one of those use everything hunters, but the way he was talking about it and some of the gruesome detail makes me wonder what he could do to be. Would he hurt me or another woman for that matter?