I Need To Have Another Little Rant...

I have a realtively new friend here, we get along quite well, but sometimes she has the ability to irritate the living crap out of me. Interestingly though this is not due to a clash in personalities as it is in 99% of the cases. I am generally a very patient person who rarely fights with people and even people that are very different from me, once they are my friends, almost never get on my nerves even if we go on vacation together (I can't say it's also true the other way around, who knows, but you get the idea). This case is different, however, and I realized that the fundamental problem lies in the inability she has to see things from a different perspective than her own combined with a child-like naivete, something I have never encountered in a friend before, and occasionally she can drive me up the wall. Let me elaborate.

The initial irritation, though not the one that made me need to vent about it, starts with the fact that she needs a constant validation despite the fact that she was an only child in an extremely loving family and has always had all the validation and cuddles and kind words she's ever wanted. She will constantly ask me "so, how would you evaluate this friendship? Do you like spending time with me? Are you just saying that because I ask you? Now that we took this trip, do you think our friendship is better, or stayed the same? Why do you think that? What makes you think that we're closer now? Can I give you a cuddle? Why don't you ever spontaneously give me a cuddle? On a scale of one to ten, where would you rank this friendship?" Yes, we are both 24 and have known each other for nine months, no she is not a closeted lesbian with a crush on me she is in fact in a loving relationship with a man. I give her the answers she wants and I do find the questions slightly irritating especially since they are pretty much weekly, but I can let them pass.

But then something really got under my skin.

We were out one night and for some reason we started talking about our friends growing up. It came out that I was the bodyguard for a few of my friends. It came out that we had a teenage support system, as we all had different problems so we could support one another and because our parents would never understand, they'd freak out and pull us out of school and stick us in an institution with group therapy (as they threatened many times, ew) because they wouldn't understand that these things happen and pass with teenagedom. Two of my friends began their battle with anorexia at age 12. Suicidal thoughts and half-hearted attempts, severe depression, bulimia, overexercising, parents who occasionally became violent and/or abusive, not seeing a parent for eight years and then running into them on the street, possible pregnancy and heartbreak, getting dumped after losing your virginity and cheating, self harm and cutting, across the approximately ten of us we saw all of this between the ages of 12 and 17. It was spread out, the afflicted would call one of the others to know they had support, if need be they'd move in with that person for a little while until the bad part past. Our love for each other kept the bonds and pacts were formed (Every time you cut yourself, I'll throw up my meals for the day!) and we stopped our self harm out of love for our friend we didn't want to see harmed, and the episodes came and went on the tides of teenage hormones.

It's life as a teenager, but she had never lived it, hearing that, she was almost in tears. "I just want to go back in time and hug 13-year old you! Oh that's just terrible! Admit it, you were far too young to deal with all of that! Admit it! You were TOO YOUNG! Admit you would have much preferred to NOT have to have gone through all that!"

Undertone: "Admit you would have preferred to have had my childhood".

That was strike one. No, fuck you, I'm not going to admit that "I was too young". First of all, my life made me who I am today. Secondly, I always had a good and cushy life. I had food, I went to great schools, I had two parents that loved me even if they didn't live together, I got to go on vacation to the US, to India, to Spain. I was allowed to express myself and dress the way I wanted and make my own mistakes. You want me to feel sorry for myself?

To this she rolled her eyes, which to me was strike two. Undertone: "Yea, well, apart from all that, your childhood sucked".

You think I take this stuff for granted?! Do you have any idea how lucky we both are? Do you want to know what's really "too young" at age 13?

Being forced into marriage and being a mother
Having already lost your virginity for the past 8 years
To be beaten every day
Having lost one or both your parents 
Seeing the death and destruction of war
Being forced to commit those acts as a child soldier
Having acid thrown in your face and told you are unclean and unworthy
Being tortured
Having to work as a prostitute
Being raped
Having your breasts ironed so that no man would want to rape you 
Having to raise your siblings and not eat to give them food
To be always hungry
To be always thirsty
To not have access to health care of any kind

And you think that I'm just going to ignore all of that, ignore the conditions in which the majority of children in the world live in, and cry about having to deal with a bit of depression and eating disorders? How selfish, how self-centered, how obtuse is that?  No, I don't cry about having lived a life that was not in a little pink bubble floating over the real world. I'm glad, because it means that at that age I knew how to talk someone off a ledge, I knew how to keep my head in a crisis and find the way out of it. If something bad happens to me I don't panic, I'm logical and pragmatic to a fault, and I don't think that there is anything remotely wrong with that. 

To that she thought, and then she realized hey, in all of those things you listed, were you affected by any of them? Well yea, obviously, we all were. 

"Which ones? What did you feel? What did you go through? Don't tell me it's none of my business, I'm offended by that! You have to tell me! It's not that I'm just curious, it's not that I want to pity you. It's about intimacy, it's part of friendship, and I want you to tell me everything. So when are you going to tell me your life story? When are you going to tell me your life story? When are you going to tell me your life story? You know I haven't forgotten, you still owe me your life story you know!"

That was strike three, and I fucking lost it.

Who the fuck do you think you are? What are we married that you come to me talking about intimacy? I don't have any demons to get off my chest, I am perfectly happy and content, so it's not for me that she wants this information (and she admitted as much), it's purely to satisfy her own curiosity. It's not that there's anything that I'm ashamed of, but these are things that come up in conversation. If you come to me and say "oh my I have a friend that is going through this or the other", I might say "well, as someone who has been through that, let me give you some advice". But I'm definitely not going to fucking sit down and say right, here's every hard time I've had since I was 10, nor to you have any right to demand that of me.

It's like I come up to you and ask you about whether or not you felt shame or exhilaration the first time you masturbated. It's nothing to be embarassed about and I would think it silly if you felt ashamed, but it's not information that I would expect you to just volunteer without it coming up in conversation, and I most certainly wouldn't demand that information as a fucking condition of our friendship! I'm not going to be offended unless you tell me every little detail about the first time you discovered your clit, and say that the friendship is actually going backwards a little bit because you don't feel like sitting down out of the blue and going into it!

I was profoundly irritated, and remained so for about a week. I'm still friends with her, although I am trying really hard to make her see outside her little bubble. She grew up in a very sheltered life and, giving where she grew up, it is already amazing that she is not a complete racist and catholic nutjob. There is hope for her yet so I will be patient with these epsiodes, even though they can occasionally make me irritated beyond belief. 

Given my last story about profound irritation, I guess my weakness is a bona fide lack of perspective, or not being able to think about something in any way other than a completely self-centered one, a lack of logic. 

What do you think? Am I exaggerating, or excessively cold? I can't even tell anymore.
 

The Torn Biologist

Sorry about that absence guys, yesterday was the last day of the week-long conference I was at and I am BEAT! But now it's back to work as normal and hopefully the inspiration I felt at the conference will carry me along until I can catch up with my sleep. 

So on the last day of the conference I go to get on my bike to go home, and I was faced with an extra passenger trying to hitch a ride on the back. This is where my human side and my biologist side come head to head in a battle most people do not think should exist within me given my line of work.

So my first reaction was ah cool NO WAY! I didn't know we had praying mantises in Italy! TAKE A PICTURE! 

But then my second reaction was... eeeewwwww. It's a bug. It's longer than my palm, that makes it a big bug. I don't want to ride home with a big bug behind my ass. How do I get rid of it?

Biologist pipes up: Don't kill it!

Human side retaliates: no no, squishing big bugs is just as eeewww-y as having them around, it solves nothing. But I don't know how mantises react when you swat them. Do they fly? Do they fly at you? Do they start freaking out? I don't like bugs that stay perfectly still and then freak when you try to get rid of them. Eeeeew, what do I do?

Fortunately for me a male colleague of mine chooses that minute to walk over as he had parked his bike right next to mine, at which point I find out that this interior battle is not as uncommon as I would have thought.

His first reaction: Crap do I have one on my bike?!
second reaction: hey, would you look at that, I've never seen one that wasn't behind glass!
third reaction: eeewww, I don't like bugs, sorry, don't know if I can help you.

But finally he couldn't say no to me, so what ended up happening was him taking out the cord attached to his keys, standing as far away as possible, swatting at it and punctuating each blow with "Go away! Go away!"

In conclusion? Turns out Italian mantises don't fly, nor do they jump, nor do they freak out. After the fifth swat it just kind of plopped to the ground and assumed what my colleague referred to as the thriller pose

Some kind of reaction to a perceived threat perhaps? We asked ourselves as we watched it being perfectly immobile again. There's our biologist showing again.

The Fear of Street Harassment

I just got home from a very late night in the lab, after having myself quite a scare. 

At around 10pm I finally managed to finish up my work, after a stupid experiment was refusing to go as planned, and exited the main building of the Biology Department into the fenced area where my bike was locked up. Through the chicken wire fence a group of six men on bikes spot me, and one of them comes closer to the fence to whistle at me. The first and only thought to enter my head: Shit

Something you have to understand about where I work is that it is in an area that is only populated during the day, surrounded on three sides by office buildings and banks, on the fourth by a canal and pedestrian walkway. It is because of this that it is a notorious area for drug dealers at night, which in this part of Italy consist largely of North Africans, infamous for their distaste of women. There has been more than one woman beaten, raped or violently mugged on these streets immediately surrounding this building either at night or on Sunday, when no one is around.

My brain immediately went into survival mode. I can't go back inside, like hell I'm sleeping in the lab tonight. I can't call anyone, everyone I know well enough to have their number is on holiday. I stand no chance if they intend to chase me and catch me, I might have a shot if there was just one or two of them, but six? My chances plummet to zero. I can loop around the back, exiting the side gate, which would give me enough of a head start to either (a) not be seen by them or (b) having a good enough chance to out-bike them to the nearest street with the highest possibility of traffic and make my way home from there. So that's what I decide to do, and as I leave I see in the distance a few people walking back up along the canal. Phew, people! And that's when I remember: the kiosks. There's kiosks set up along the canal for the summer that are open all night. They must be full of people, I'm safe. Those men that freaked me out were probably just pumped about going out for a night on the town, not spotting and pointing a possible target. Crisis averted. And then I started to get angry.

Those men probably have no idea the sheer panic that they put me through. They were at best blissfully oblivious at worst wholly indifferent, and all for what exactly? What do men expect women to do when they whistle, make kissing noises or vulgar gestures? Am I supposed to swoon in delight, run after your car or bicycle and beg you to take me home with you? Am I supposed to be impressed or flattered by this cowardly gesture of vulgarity after which you run away lest you have to confront the inevitable rejection? Are you just trying to make me uncomfortable in my own skin as a way of dealing with your own sense of inadequacy? For what fucking reason do you justify putting women in this position day after day after day?

I used to get a little annoyed with the direction the conversation of street harassment inevitably took: that women never know if the person harassing them means them harm and having to live with the insecurity of their physical inferiority. I thought and still think that it is justifiable in such a small portion of cases of harassment to be condescending that it is constantly brought up. No, I don't think that the construction worker that whistles and licks his lips at me as I walk to work is going to hop over the rail and rape me in broad daylight in front of all his coworkers, and if there are women who are afraid every single time a man makes a rude gesture their way they have their own problems and do not represent the majority. Street harassment is annoying and represents a cultural acceptance of the lack of respect and value that women still have in our society, first and foremost, the "fear factor" is a very distant runner up.

However, after what happened tonight (as well as what happened to me once in college, walking the far more dangerous streets of Dublin one night, having to defuse a potentially devastating situation in which a car full of five obviously high guys were aggressively trying to convince me to get in the car with them to go to a party), I realize that the fear that street harassment can inspire in women, while not being the central problem, is still one that is important to discuss.

The end point is this: at best, harassing a stranger in the street will make them feel annoyed and angry, as well as a little uncomfortable. At worst, it can cause them to panic and fear for their safety or lives. Considering all of this, what reasons do you have for harassing people on the street? Do you think it's just harmless fun, a dare amongst your friends? Are your reasons for doing this worth what you are putting them through?

Or perhaps are your reasons for doing these things precisely to passive aggressively cause these emotions in women? If so I have to ask, why?

What the fuck is your problem?

Thoughts On: Babies and Drunks

This has been a theory that I developed on one of those long college nights, and I thought it was worth sharing. As the combination of alcohol, very little sleep and good company tends to do, my and my roommate's humor threshold was becoming surprisingly low, and thus he came up with the idea of watching youtube videos of people falling down. I have to say that I will never understand why we as human beings find it to viscerally funny, and maybe a theory to that effect will enlighten me on another night. However, on this night my roommate made the keen observation that babies and extremely drunk people fall in a very similar, very distinct way. 

As soon as he said it I understood exactly what he meant. Usually when people fall down we expect some kind of reaction: arms flaying, bracing the fall, even a wince would suffice. When it comes to these two groups of people on the other hand there is none of that, they just seemingly fall in slow motion and just let it happen, and therein lied my theory as to why.

Small babies still need to learn that falling down hurts. The normal reflex reaction to feeling yourself fall is something that is not yet instinctive in babies, because of the fact that they have not felt that pain enough for it to have developed. This is why I think they just fall over, it never occurs to them to brace the fall because they have yet to learn what falling means.

Alcohol, on the other hand, is known to slow the reflexes, and being seriously drunk slows them significantly. Because of this, my theory is that drunk people may know that falling hurts, but they don't realize they're falling until it's too late. By the time their brain has processed the information that it is falling so they should do something about it, they have already smacked the ground.

Of course when I first came up with this in the wee hours of the morning my roommate thought it was genius! By the light of day it seems far less so, although I do not see an evident flaw in my hypothesis. What do you think? Any conflicting ideas to put up for debate?

Tough Questions: Are You Allowed To Be Insensitive?

I feel like weighing in on this Jesus and Mo debate, because I think that it is indicative of a larger question that I would like to discuss. While I've seen the cartoon and have decided that I don't think it's inflammatory, racist or insensitive at all, that is my personal opinion and I understand that there are some people that may disagree. I thought it was funny, others might think it was in poor taste, but whatever. Compounded with the fact that the cartoon itself was on the London School of Economics Student Union Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society's Facebook page, not even tacked up all around the university (so if you don't like it, don't go on their facebook page right?) it seems a little ridiculous that the Uni's Student Union would call an emergency meeting over it or have any case to call it "bullying".

But let's put all that aside. Let's say the cartoon was a little more insensitive and racist. Let's say the cartoon was tacked up on campus and not displayed on some Facebook page that many of the people it would be likely to offend would never visit anyway. The issue that is worth discussing is whether or not such things should be allowed. Are you allowed to offend people based on their race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion or political opinion? If the answer is no, where do you draw the line between good natured satire and banned offensive language?

I'll give you an example from my own college years. I started college in Dublin in 2005, and as I've told you before I was a bit of a stranger in a strange land, considered by most to be an annoying American girl and didn't really have that many friends. Also remember that Hurricane Katrina had hit only a month before, I had friends there for the cleanup efforts and what happened was just settling in. My first week in college I, along with all the other First Years, got a free copy of the student-run magazine. On the cover was a picture of the University, almost completely under water, and the title was "Fuck America. We're Fucked Here". Wow. Bad fucking taste, not to mention the fact that it made me feel even more self conscious about my accent, and it made me think that people were going to be even more hostile towards me because of it than they turned out to be. I thought it was insensitive, not to mention completely misdirected. If you're upset with the US government's actions why are you making jokes about the poor peoples lives that were lost in a natural disaster, people that were also foresaken by the US government? I thought it was stupid and they should have picked a better cover, especially for the very first issue given out free to the new students.

Here's the thing though, should they have been allowed to publish it? I vote yes. Sure it affected me in some way or another, but I understand that while I reserve the right to be offended, others reserve the right to offend. I don't think that any club should not be allowed to display or say anything about anyone, even if it is racist or whatever. Let public opinion tear them down and let the racists declare themselves. I never bought a copy of that magazine throught my entire college career. If I was part of a club that displayed something that I thought was racist or homophobic I would no longer be a member, and neither would other students such as myself, until the club would only contain other racist people. If that number is large enough for the club to continue at least everyone knows that they are a racist bunch. If it is not the club is cancelled, but not because they were not allowed to express their racist thoughts.

What I am saying is that, even though I don't think the Jesus and Mo cartoon is racist, or bullying, or insensitive, or anything like that, even if it was I would tell the London School of Economics Student Union to grow the fuck up. You're in college now, get rid of the baby blanket and get ready to step into the real world. There are people that you're not going to agree with, and there are people that are going to be extremely vocal about what it is they are not agreeing with you on. Deal with it.

It's The Streisand Effect MotherFuckers!!

Merry Xmas everyone!!

What better way to celebrate this day than a reminder to everyone the reason for the season from the fabulous Tim Minchin

Since this video was cut from the Jonathan Ross show by a freaked out overreacting asshat it has been featured on numerous blogs as well as mirrored repeatedly on youtube and making Peter Fincham look like a complete tit. I'll lel Tim Minchin explain the whole story, but in the meantime enjoy my new favorite Christmas song: Praise Be To WoodyAllen Jesus!

Another Horrific Story of Child Abuse

Reading this story about the Penn State scandal (doesn't it seem to diminish it by calling it that? Like Anthony Weiner's cock pics were a "scadal", this is a horror story) made me feel physically sick and stuck with me for a few days later. I still don't really know what to say about it. 

A Penn State graduate assistant coach shows up at the football locker room unexpectedly, and hears slapping noises from the shower. Here’s what the report said:
“As the graduate assistant put the sneakers in his locker, he looked into the shower. He saw a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky.”
The assistant fled in fear and confusion. Much the same way a janitor fled after allegedly witnessing Sandusky engaged in a sexual act in the showers with a “young boy” — Victim 8, later described in the report as being “between the ages of 11 and 13.”

 Although this may seem to be the worst part, what's much worse in my mind is the following handling of the situation

If the report is right, Paterno, leader of men for the past half century, simply called his athletic director and passed on the information of the rape his graduate assistant described to him; like telling your boss on a co-worker who is stealing staples from the supply closet.
No, Paterno, and the other school officials, did nothing to help the boys, or to help any other boys in the future.
They actually told Sandusky that he couldn’t keep bringing boys from his charity onto the Penn State campus, into the football facilities, according to the grand jury findings.
Not that they told him to stop doing to those boys what is alleged.
Just stop doing it here.

Superficially, it may seem that someone who actually witnessed the attack is more culpable in this case, seeing as he was confronted with the shocking truth, while the bureocrat simply did what bureocrats do, pass the buck without fully acknowledging what it was that happened. I could not disagree more.

I am going to be completely honest here. If I had been the person in that locker room and witnessed such a horrific scene, I think the shock would have made me flee too, shortly followed by me throwing up. However, upon clearing my head in such a way, I would be so overwhelmed with guilt at such a cowardly escape on my part, when that little boy had no such means of escape, that I would have cast about for something heavy to hit that bastard over the head with and take that child straight to the hospital. If I had not made it back in time to stop what was happening I never would have forgiven myself.

You never know how your body will react to shock. Some people spring to action without thinking, others freeze up. I know I freeze up initially, because as a child I was a "punch first ask questions later" sort of bully-protection patrol kid (which is why my mother was never informed by my teachers of my frequent fights at school). However this also lead to my intervening in situations that I had misjudged, gotten yelled at by the kids I thought I was protecting, which lead to my doubting myself. I thus developed a new rule that I had to be asked to intervene before I would let myself go like that again. Years of this restraint became a freeze-response, which can only be unblocked by my mind overcoming the shock and looking at things clearly and rationally.

I know this about myself, but many people don't, couldn't possibly know, until they are confronted with something that shocks them to their core. This is why I cannot blame anyone's impulsive reaction to anything that they witness. However, once the dust has settled in your mind, you have absolutely no excuse.

I blame the people that did not call the police after the fact. I blame the administrators that shrugged their shoulders, and somehow figured this to be acceptable collateral damage in protecting this man's name, fame and charity. I can't call them outright evil, because that would almost be too easy. I don't think their intent was malicious, but rather the adult version of plugging their ears and hiding under the covers so that the monster in the closet, which they deep down don't believe exists anyway, will just disappear and leave them alone. It is the complete and utter incapability of relating to the pain and horror that this monster caused others. I am aware that I have a particularly overdeveloped sense of empathy, but the complete lack of it in these people upsets me more than I can describe.