Portrait

its official. its decided. after one more time of seeing them, (or seeing one of them, i still dont know) i have come to a decision. it’s decided. for sure. i absolutely have to have one (or both!) of the twins.

is it legal for them to be so damn desirable? and it most certainly cannot be legal for there to be two of them, that look indentically hot. the only worrisome thing is that they, too, will turn out to be the type of guy that gets dressed up every friday night, and goes to glow and then to blue with his equally well dressed and well groomed girlfriends and boyfriends, to ‘hang out’, bust their rich parent’s money on getting hideously drunk and then go home once they know for sure everyone there has seen them and noted their presence. that they too will turn out to be generally boring guys that i will not be so thrilled about seeing after i’ve lost the initial thrill of chasing a face which shadows a mysterious personality that i know really nothing of. hopefully they are not. tell me they are not.

for me, when i say ‘have’ i dont mean one of them in bed, i mean simply the opportunity to make them (or one of them, id settle for that) aware of my presence, although ive been told that one of them (god knows which one) already probably is aware i exist. not by name, but atleast by face. im not willing to vouch for that, and i know my adraneline will always ask me ‘what if?’ if i dont just go ahead and associate with one of them or both of them soon. does anyone know what i mean? to be young, and impulsive, and unable to rest till you’ve done something you set your mind on? well this is my latest such ‘thing’. and this is just the way i function, when it comes to situations like this. sooner or later, you’ll get used to it. when i determine that something has to be done, i will not be bored with it till it IS done. i just need to know. i know this will go nowhere, and that it will end in a dead end with me facing a brick wall, but i need to know. after having done this for myself, and after having experienced this for myelf only will i give in, give up. because then i’ll know. then there wont be any ‘what if?’s.

its a small world, right now i can think of ten different ways to get to know them. but that’s sad, even for me. maybe next time i see them i’ll make my ‘move’ (i cant believe i actually have a ‘move’ to make). mean while, anyone out there who knows them, drop me a line. you’re my new best friend.

a simple question asked by a rather annoying commentator named savithri on indi’s blog. savithri is just that kind of person that has some dumbass retaliation for everything anyone says. she knows better, she is always right, and she always has something to say. she attacked me for no apparent reason, she cut in on everything i said with lame comebacks like ‘you’re just a little bitch who needs to run along and do her homework’ and of course, ‘who cares what you think?’. i’m not going to leave links to all the little nide remarks she made to me and ruwani, because i simply cannot be bothered. she leaves no link, so i assume she has no blog. she’s just an annoying spectator who likes standing on the sidelines and heckling the actual players. anyway, im not dedicating an entire post to this poor, attention starved soul. i’m blogging about the question, ‘who cares what i think?’

its a strange and uplifting revelation, that point in time when you’re finally old enough for people to begin to take you seriously. when you’re small, you await that day when people stop baby talking to you, and freely have an adult conversation with you. the day you’re allowed to chip into the conversations of your parents and other elders without being laughed at and having your cheeks pinched. the day when you form opinions that are worth the time of the ‘higher authorities’ in your life. when you’re about 12, you’re forging your way ahead, fighting to be recognized, fighting to be heard as a voice that is talking sense, hoping that you will be discovered as your own person and stop being your parents child or your older sibling’s kid sister, or brother.
when in school, i think thats half the magic of coming into the higher grades. there are real juniors really looking up to you, teachers really telling you to behave in an exemplary manner, the more senior seniors start entrusting various tasks to your care, they start believing you’re responsible, they ask yor opinion at meetings, and they seem to care what you think.

is this an illusion, though? that we care what others think? absolutely not. but when it comes to making decisions, do we really give other’s opinions a whole lot of bearing? not so much.

a lot of us really care what other people think, but mostly what they think about us. people that we are not all that closely associated to are in no way capable of directluy affecting our lives, but at the end of the day, we care quite a bit about what the world in general thinks about us. and this includes those people that we are not that closely associated to. we dress, talk, act and work in caution about how it makes us look to an outsider. an outisder who will judge (and we know this fact well) us without knowing the details of the entire picture, like our friends would. why we care so much what they think, i know not.

in a more personal context, up to what extent do we take into account what someone else thinks when making a choice or decision? sure, when working in teams or having a discussion with people and a so called joint decision is required, it is protocol to make sure everyone’s ideas are presented and brought forward to an open forum. but does one individual really care about someone else’s opinion as much as they care about their own? would that individual work equally hard to bring someone else’s idea to light as they would with their own?

sure, maybe we’re willing to budge a little and make room for another idea or two, but in most cases we’re rarely willing to allow someone else to share their opinion freely. we drive our’s forward louder and stronger than anyone else’s. we vehenmently and violently make sure we’re heard, fogetting that people are entitiled to their own opinion. we enforce our opinions on others, and dont back down till we’ve gotten atleast a few others to agree we’re right.

and thus, who cares what i think? um…what does it matter to me who cares and who doesnt?

i honestly dont give two hoots about who cares what i think and who doesnt. i am entitled to my opiion, and i believe everyone is. i try not to be a hypocrite, i try to practise what i preach and hence make a valiant effort to refrain from judging people unfairly or unnecessarily, and also from shoving my opinion down someone else’s throat.

strange. why has it always been so difficult to see an abused woman as a victim? now you many think we live in a modern, broad minded world, full of modern, broad minded people, and since most of us are indeed surrounded by people willing to take an unconventional stand on conventional issues, we rarely see the injustice. the fact is that the majority of people, not just in sri lanka, not just in asia, not just in devloping, third world countries, but all over the world, still think some things are better left undiscussed. they still think that life is more pleasant when you conveninetly turn a blind eye to the harsh realities of life.

i’m not going to go on some feminist trip, and throw a bleeding heart argument at you. im just asking how many of you have come across situations in which the victim, the woman, goes disbelieved? or somehow, in some roundabout way, she gets blamed for whatever happened? how many of you have come across a girl who was raped and impregnated, thrown out of her house and disowned by the village community, forced to find her way in the tough city, simply because they cannot accept the fact that the girl did not invite the trouble? simply because the family could not deal with the shame she would bring upon them by giving birth to a child conceived out of wedlock? simply because they could not relate to the fact that she was the victim, and not the victimizer?

ever been felt up on a bus and made a fuss about it, only to be ridiculed by mostly the whole bus amongst whom there would be people saying things about what you are wearing being the cause for the man to rub up against you, or that maybe you should travel in your own car and not in public transport if you wanted trouble-free rides home? apparently, either you dress like a ninja, or you buy your own car. thats the drill. its too much to ask that you have the freedom to wear what you want and the freedom to use public transport without being harrassed for it. has it ever occured to anyone that men piss by the side of the main road in this country for the whole bloody world to see, and no woman ever feels the urge to be turned on by it, and if she is (god help her) never feels the need to act on this barbaric impulse? but if a girl shows some skin…oh, she was asking for the attention. why else would she dress like that, right?

have you ever come across a girl who had a horror story to tell in which she was relentlessly abused by someone her family trusts, someone who probably lives in her home, and has a lot of direct influence on her life? not only must she deal with the trauma and the shock of having been used and humiliated by someone she once thought she knew, she must also deal with the fact that no one, not even her closest family or friends believe her.

the lack of credibility in such nightmares isnt something we should be shocked by. anyone would take a moment to believe something as wild as that. i mean, how quickly would you believe me if i said i know an eleven year old girl who gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby last june because she was raped and impreganated by her own grandfather? oh, true. its hardly believable. its downright absurd. but if it came right down to it, its alarming how few of us would actually take her word to be true and defend her.

so many people are just so scared. scared of being on the wrong side, scared of being in the wrong camp. so many people are just simply uneducated, and out of sheer ignorance do not see an alternative that will help protect the victim in such situations of extremely life changing circumstances. they will do what is easiest. they will do what rama did to sita. to erradicate the problem, they send the problem away.

when we hear of a woman being beaten up, raped, abused, harrassed or discriminated against, most of us, almost out of habit, rush to justify it, so there will be no issue to begin with. life is so much easier that way. to pretend that everything is ok. lest we find no rational way of justifying it, we will strive to make the weaker party look at fault. generally, the woman. the victim. she is frightened, disheartened, traumatised. she will most probably go with anything her elders tell her. what was she wearing? what did she say? did she respond to his advances? did she like him? did she ask for it? what we fail to see, is that no matter what she was wearing, no matter how much she liked or disliked him, no matter how many times she welcomed his attention, no matter what she told him or did to him to make him force himself on her, if in that moment, that second, she changed her mind due to some rash whim and said ‘no’, she sure as hell meant ‘no’.

she will be told that it was her fault, and she will be made to feel guilty. for the rest of her life, she will be branded as the slut, the whore. she will find it difficult to get married, she will find it difficult to bring up her children in her home town. her life will be undoubtedly reassured difficulty.

i’m not talking off the top of my head here. i know cases in which a girl tried to stand up for herself, assuming that she being the victim, would get all the moral support she needed from a world of modern, broad minded people, and she didn’t. i know cases in which a wife who was getting beaten up by her drunkan husband every day could not return to the home of her own parents because they thought that if the husband had reason to beat her up, she probably deserved it. i know cases in which a raped girl has failed to get the attention of the police and other authorities regarding pressing charges on her attacker because according to the people that mattered, she was dressed inappropriately. i know cases in which a girl slapped a guy for feeling her up at a popular night club in colombo, and got punched right back by the guy, believe it or not.

this is something that has bothered me for a long time. i guess my sentiments on the whole thing were fired up by a post and a few comments following it i saw on indi’s blog. indi wrote an interesting post on bollywood, terrorists, and UFOs, and received many comments that were interesting as well as mildly pissing off.

i would like to hang around and give you some statistics on woman beating and the abuse of women around the world, but i think the reality you will find if you bother to look in the newspapers or read a few magazines will be far more startling than numbers and figures. its a strange but humane psychology, that i understand and condemn, that makes most people turn the victim into the victimizer. do we ever stop to think why any woman in her right mind would lie about something as hideous as that? although there may have been cases in which a woman has lied to gain the attention of the world and her loved ones, most often a woman who is saying she’s being abused IS being abused.

maybe if we listen a little more carefully, it will be all too apparent that there is enough real violence going around. one need not lie about it.

finally. life is good. like pretty damn good.

the middle of last week was a disaster. from wednesday through to thursday, i was suffering in sickness, having caught a bad cold and cough. iroms (and her concerned family) kept telling me that i was in danger of having tubercolosis! help. anyway, i DON’T. so there. i was drained of the usually bottomless pit of energy i’ve been blessed with. the heat and the cold just made me crabby and tired. i snapped at a lot of people, and made a pain of myself to those who really care. everyone (including the choir teacher) at choir was surprised at how low i was, because they know me to be constantly hyperactive and super enthusiastic all the time. anyway, come thursday night, i went for this show at the wendt. the show was nothing much, it was of dancing and drumming. the drumming was great, the choreography was average, the dancing was pretty much shit, but thats not the point. the point is i went with venuri! venuri is family, friend, sister, nutcase. she’s been away for a long time, and seeing her again is so cool. we’ve been anticipating her return for quite some time now. i almost forget what an insanely good time we have together everytime she’s around.

then on friday night, we all went out and had nothing short of a BLAST. V, D and i have always managed to steal the dance floor between the three of us (although its mostly V doing the actual stealing) and friday night was no different. i have a feeling the rest of the people at MKOP though we were on LSD or something, which might be a good thing, considering i wouldnt want anyone to think we behave like that on a normal day. and it was NOT a normal day. we were charged up, the music was good, and i think we scared away anyone who had any idea of taking even a little but of the dance floor away from us. then we took off to the rowing club, because a few of our friends were there. by the time we left MKOP, it was starting to get crowded, mostly with large groups of large men who were there for the alcohol and the hookers. went to the rowing club. the people who were supposed to take us home decided they weren’t ready to hit the sack, and decided to go to the blue elephant. and this was at about 3 am. so we went. and danced some more, and scared away (and attracted, i admit) some more people. there were some friends from school, which was also nice. i spent a fair bit of the night ogling the hottest twins around town. jehan and jeevaka. gosh, they are miracles. does anyone know them? somehow what attracts and intrigues me most is that there’s two of them. WOW.

came home at about 4 30. iroms, V and i ate cold doughnuts and drank flat sprite and went to sleep. V and i stumbled out of bed at 7 and went for dancing. how we did it, i know not.

last night was a hell of a saturday night because it had the best surprise ever in store for me. i venture into green path, to find a happy reunion of all our immediate family and closest friends, and to find that my cousin nanda has returned from the states. now, i knew he was going to surprise us all, but i had no idea, and when he was there, i had a heart attack and cried a bit and everything. YIIIPPPPPEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! this is going to be SO much fun. it takes N to be here in the flesh, stupid hair and all, to make me realize how much i’ve missed him.

the down part is that iroms is going to india for a week tomorrow, which kind of cements her leaving for three years in june. such little time. as promised, i will not blog about it.

tomorrow morning, we are making use of the holiday and what lazy bums sri lankans are and going biking around town. we did it on new year day in april, and it was lovely. the roads were deserted.

anyway, this must be the stupidest post in the world. the end.

this is the problem with living on a tropical island. the world’s most unpredictable weather.

in this country, the met department doesnt need to worry about getting their forecasts right (they probably wouldnt anyway, even if it mattered), no one needs to worry about umbrellas for the rain or white shirts for the sun, because no matter what precaution you take, you’re probably going to be surprised during the course of the day anyway, and no one needs to pretend to know the seasons and the monsoons. you can count on the weather to be what you expect it to be just about as much as you can count finding marilyn monroe at your doorstep tomorrow morning. and she’s DEAD. sheesh. the best thing is how people always manage to complain about the weather. when it’s raining, and the roads are blocked with traffic that can’t pass, and children get sick dancing in the rain and in roadside puddles, and the drains in the neighbourhood start overflowing, we want it to stop and we want the sun. when the suns out, and the heat is just too much for your body to take without getting dehydrated, and its too hot to really get any work done, and its unimaginably still so that not one tree in your garden is moving in the wind, we want the rain. i wonder what sri lankans would do if they had to endure those nasty canadian winters, or those heat waves in india that people actually died from.

the heat is abnormal. extraordinary. absurd. and by all means, unbearable.

i live quite a bit away from colombo, or any of the main cities surrounding it. i live in a large, otherwise dangerously open house, with no front door, no front gate, no walls surrounding it, and hardly any walls within or around the main building/s. it has clay tiled floors under which there is a steady floor of water going from one paddy field to the other, high ceilings, loads of corridoors and loads of large windows (where there ARE walls). the house is smack bang in the middle of three lucious paddy fields, and has a big garden with lots of green including large, shady trees. and it’s HOT. 24 hours a day, even in the early hours of the morning or fairly late into the night, times at which on any other day you’d find me freezing my butt off and sneezing me head off, it’s HOT, and i’m pouring with sweat. i go to sleep uncomfortable. the sheets stick to me, and even my own skin on skin adds to the heat. i wake up in sweat, my hair stuck to my neck and face in perspiration. i toss and turn through out most of the night trying to find a more comfortable position that doesnt boil me half to death. and this is after i have resorted to sleeping in minimal clothing. everytime i step of out the shower, i feel refreshed, rejuvinated, cool and clean. HAH! what a joke. not fifteen minutes after having coming out of the shower, i’m heated up all over again and ready to take another bath. and this is after i have resorted to taking about three showers a day. scourge is another one of us affected by the heat, it seems. he still manages to find the enthusiasm and energy to work, and indeed, engage in other activities.

the heat is smouldering, smothering. and it’s turned up, full throttle. it’s too hot to do anything. you get tired easily, you get thirsty often. its too hot to work, to read, to write, to watch TV. all i do is dream about pools and showers, and any iced liquid. today, after class, i went to roots with a friend and downed three glasses of watermelon juice. it’s annoying. it SO hot, all the bloody time. it just takes away so much energy, and leaves you irritable, hot, and tired, and just waiting, waiting, waiting for a passing breeze, a rustle of a branch, a cloud in the sky indicating impending rain.

here is a health tip, as this heat can be detrimental, i’m sure.

drink lots of water all the time, and keep your body from getting dehydrated, and mark my words, it WILL have the tendency of doing that quite conveniently in this heat. keep consuming liquid, but most importantly, water, so that your body does not have the opportunity of overheating and dehydrating. fruits like oranges and watermelons (yum), or juice made from them can be especially thirst quenching and healthy in this weather condition due to the large quantitiy of water and liquid body in them.

those of you do believe in divine intervention, pray for this to pass. the rest of you, just do a rain dance. maybe it will work. one can always hope.

my blog is the only place in the world in which i can write what i want, and not have to worry about what anyone is going to say or think. of course, the anonimity the internet offers is vital to this, but there is somehow a feeling that ‘this is my blog, and i have the freedom to say what i want’.

almost everywhere, you’re bound to be under certain restraints when writing or talking, or basically expressing yourself. you have to think. who can you trash? who cant you trash? what can you say? what cant you say? it all requires some hesitance, some pre meditation. you’re very rarely bound to come across a space as open as you’re own blog. and i believe in appreciating this.

i’ve been noticing that on a few blogs, including my own, some of the readers come across things they dont expect. on indi’s blog, someone was questioning his affiliations to the LTTE, simply because he chose to write about tharaki. chandare too, felt the need to explain himself when he wrote about the sitcom that was coming to a close, everybody loves raymond and not some profound political matter. sometime ago, leakymemory wrote this post on exactly what i’m trying to say, and named it ‘say what?‘. only a few days ago, someone asked me why i was writing what i was writing when the country is in turmoil. a certain ziyan m, declared what a small minded fuck i was to be blogging about immaterial things when the country was going down the toilet. what does he want me to do? what does he expect me to do?

those of us who own our own blog space reserve the entire, unadulterated liberty to blog about whatever we want to blog about, and say what we wish. blogs are an interesting and effective way to express your opinions minus the usual drill of worrying about what’s going to happen to you, to share your views on various matters including music, movies, politics and other blogs, to debate, argue and learn about perspectives varying from your own. its a community in which everyone is entitled to their opinion, and to feel to free to think what they think.

this blog is my space, my room, my sphere, my cubicle. i will blog about whatever i feel like blogging about, whenever i feel like blogging about it. what i blog and my opinions expressed here may not always cut it for those of you who come here expecting five star political journalism, because i’m interested in neither politics nor five star writing. it may not always be the kind of writing you expect, and i may not always tread upon the subjects you think should be discussed. if i constantly disappoint you with my mindless banter, maybe its best for everyone if you start up your own blog and quit bitching about mine.

everyone HAS to check this out.

when someone told me about this blog, i didn’t really believe it was everything that person made it out to be, but it churned my curiosity enough to make me to check it out. when i did, i found one of those things that simply no one will believe exists until they have experienced it first hand. i mean, you will not believe me (just like i did not fully believe my source) if i were to tell you that someone out there honestly believes he is darth vader, and that this blog is a detailed elaboration of darth’s life and acts as a personal diary.

this blog just has to be the best, craziest, most profound blog ever. this guy (or girl, who knows?) is either truly gifted, or truly disturbed, or like most who are credited with the creation of ingenius things, a whacky combination of both. whatever said and done, this blog is worth a read. and an award.

here is the darth side : memoirs of a monster.

ps - take a look and let me know what you guys think. seriously.

not much to say right now, and the only things that are playing a big part in my life right now can’t be blogged about. (iroms has specifically instructed me not to blog about her leaving…!) but i made an observation. i guess its been happening for a long time, and it’s always talked about by various people, but maybe out of ignorance or down right denial, i failed to see it in the people i associate with. and usualy they, no, WE, are the ones accused of this certain mindset : thinking that english and ‘western’ things are cooler somehow. by ‘english’ i dont mean the english of england, but a more generalized concept. you know what i mean. we’re the ‘posh ones’.

we use english profanity, we interact in english, watch the english shows on ETV, MTV and ARTv, ripped off from cable TV, watch english movies, listen to english music, and wear westernized (and heavily so) clothes. and we quietly, maybe not violently or blatantly, but quietly judge and dismiss those who dont. ever heard that term ‘goday’? thats a term used quite often by quite a few people i know, a term used to describe the style or way of someone who doesnt wear the same clothes as we do, listen to the same music we do, or dance the way we do at parties. its a term we use to describe someone less ‘cool’, someone less ‘in’, someone less in touch with our way of life.

some of us even barely know that other different worlds exist right outside our own. we pay so little attention to anyone who doesn’t travel in the same circle as we do, we pay such little heed to someone who didn’t go to a ‘leading school in colombo’, we’d never bother to keep in touch with someone who doesnt own a mobile phone simply because then, we wouldnt be able to sms them.

there seem to be certain trademark qualities and habits that the ‘posh ones’ possess, and the ‘goday ones’ seem to have their own trademark qualities and habits. or so it seems. most often, the most commented upon thing, for obvious reasons, are clothes. because there are a few things that those of us who do judge people observe, notice and pick at. like ‘ah, he wears his pants at his waist, how goday’. or ‘ah, she’s wearing platform shoes, that’s so goday’.

at the end of the day, i dont see how it affects anyone what anyone else wears. where he wears his pants, how she ties her hair, what colour her slippers are, how long his hair is…what does it matter? for all i know, people might just be talking about me, and my friends in the same way. since of late, all of us have gotten into this habit of dressing ‘down’. it’s super convenient, super comfortable, and super fast. what more is there?
this to me means jeans, kurtha top (if it requires SOME dressing up) or a t shirt, slippers, and at best, my hair untied.

sometime ago, i went to this rock concert at the bishop’s college auditorium organized by the thomian interact club. now those things are usually nothing short of a disaster, and the only reason all of us dragged ourselves down there was so we could laugh at our friends (thomians) , who happened to be performing. the sight that met my eyes was both shocking and outrageous. there were LOADS of girls, many of whom i know were from ages 12 - 15, dressed to KILL. tiny leather skirt, spiky heels, backless tops, matching belts, handbags, hairbands, eye shadow, the works. i used to like dressing up. that day, i realized i really shouldnt bother. i’d never ever see the point in colour co-ordinating my handbag (hell, i’ve never even carried one) and belt with my top that didnt have enough strings to make a string hopper out of, i’d never ever see the point of wearing a skirt up to my eye balls, i’d never ever see the point in mustering up enough patience to get my eye make up just right. especially not to a rock concert, held at a school auditorium, organized by a school interact club. maybe to the oscar awards. NOT to a rock concert.

however, what i’m trying to say is, sadly, there are innumerable people who will go to these great extents to look fabulous, which in their opinion is an equivalent to how beyonce looked in last months vogue. but they will most probably be the same people that diss anyone for looking, or indeed being, different.

all this dissing comes from insecurity, in my theory: the inability to be comfortable with yourself and who you are and how you were born, and then the desire to crush anyone else just because it kills you to see them happy and content with not being a follower of the same trend you hero worship. all the dressing up to unbelievable fashion - magazine levels are also results of insecurity (in my theory). who are we trying to impress, and why? why is it so crucial to wear the right thing, even when we’re amongst our so-called friends, ones who aren’t supposed to judge you at all? why does it matter so much to dress like they do in hollywood? what would be so horribly wrong, if for once, you wore something normal?

i sometimes find it difficult to relate to the importance people place in these so called trends one must be ‘in’ with. they are temporary, they come and go, and it shouldnt be a crime to be out of touch or not in the know about when what comes and when what goes. i mean, they are just CLOTHES, and no matter what, they serve the same purpose. to everyone.

achala says -

“women are naturally intuitive, sensitive, emotional, impulsive, subtle, romantic.” says electra . Well, are these natural? These are culturally conditioned phenomena but most of us do take them for granted. Girls are taught to be sensitive, emotional impulsive ..etc… When ever then go “beyond” that here comes the parental “advice”: behave like a girl! Of course boys are also taught to be “boys”. that is also a cultural construt. Some thing far beyond and above biological aspects. In the end you begin to see through the glasses “they” gave you.
“I am a women. I must be snsitive, consoling….ect. I must dream of my marriage and looking after my huband’s children”
And “I am a man. I shoun’d behave like a women. I need to be tough…etc.”
But we all know that when we were kids these things try to get blended. But we are not allowed. We gat the perfect training as we grow up. That’s the point. Ok. women…(and of course men)speak up, am I correct or wrong?

how did my posts on weddings and cattiness turn into an argument in which someone thought i was challenging gender roles that are allocated for women and men, and why we abide by them?

society, over the thousands of years in which humans have been the pre dominant species on this planet, has created something we call ’social norms’ or ’stereotypes’. with allies like religion and culture that differ in various societies and amongst various people, social norms have come into being, to teach people how to behave in a socially ‘acceptable’ manner. don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal…those are the very basics with which the formation of these norms probably began. socially acceptable meant, and still means to many, behaving in a manner that doesn’t harm anyone else, or bring about disruption to the community with which you live. it’s about thinking about others, and not behaving in a manner that is selfish and self centered. they were expectations of us, as living, feeling humans, to act in a way that benefits our family, society and state. however, these social norms have become a frame into which we are all expected fit. or else.

achala talks about gender roles, which is only one of the issues we modern people have with these age old social norms. what about all the other social norms, which even the smartest most broadminded people expect their friends and families to live by? what about the boxes and frames that we’re constantly putting people into, because who they are and the way they behave is simply ‘abnormal’ to us? from the moment we’re born right up until the moment in which we die, we’re being watched, observed, judged. boxed, caged and framed.

everything we do, everything we say, we do and say with caution. why? because we care what others think about us. we care what people say, what people think, how people feel towards us. it matters. some of us try to be indifferent and pretend that we simply do not care, but at the end of the day, it’s probably impossible to be completely indifferent to what people’s opinions on us are. and maybe that’s a good thing. if we totally ceased caring about what kind of impression we make on others, would we be driven to do things well, to the best of our capacity, and to avoid doing horrible things? if we simply did not care, that would emotionally enable us to do whatever we want, whenever we want.

we’re constantly labelling people to be ‘fast’, or ‘easy’ based on how many people they’ve gone out with in how a short period of time, to be ‘blonde’ on what kind of humour they display, to be ‘intelligent’ on how many A’s they get for their o/l exams. those are ALL roles we expect people to fulfill, just like gender roles, and there are reasons, real reasons, for wanting people to fit into all these roles we’ve formed. judging a person on how well they fit into our requirements for that role or not is simply what we do. it may not be right, or wrong, but at the route of all those social norms, there are probably perfectly logical reasons as to why they they are social norms in the first place. most often the problem we have with those roles, is that those reasons are just not applicable or relative to TODAY, even if they were a long time ago. few of those social norms have changed with the times, especially in this country, and adapted to present day.

do gender roles have anything to do with biology? i think so. not everything to do with biology, but something. have we ever wondered why gender roles are as they are? why were women expected to stay at home and why were men expected to hunt? why was the woman better than the man at staying at home and taking care of children, why was the man automatically the one to go on to the outside world? does this have absoloutely nothing to do with nature, the way we’re built? defined gender roles are EXPECTATIONS. like achala says :These are culturally conditioned phenomena. so why then, did the world expect women to be so more than men? could it possibly be, because they NATURALLY were?

loki said -

I hope electra is generalising there because I’m nowhere close to most of those things. Actually that’s why I cant seem to get on with most women, I tell things as I see them, lack sensitivity, no subtlety or intuition, need things spelled out etc hehe.

and also -

I think its upto you to take those glasses off, if you want to. Its not easy to fight conditioning but its a battle worth fighting. People tried to make me “a typical girl” too and I quite simply refused. I strongly believe that the degree to which you display masculine or feminine traits has a lot to do with what you really want from yourself.

firstly, thanks loki. you’re entire comment was useful and interesting.

moving on…here’s a little something i found here -

To some scientists and theorists, the biological differences between men and women make their gender roles inevitable. These “essentialists” contend that gender behavior is coded in the brain and in the chemistry of the body. Brain structure is cited as a key reason for gender differences. For example, neuroscientists have discovered that women’s brains have a larger corpus callosum, which serves as the bridge that carries messages between the right and left hemispheres. Some theorists believe this difference in structure explains why women are more intuitive and better at expressing their emotions—the two hemispheres communicate more in women’s brains, so information flows more readily from the emotional right hemisphere to the verbal left hemisphere. In addition to differences in the brain, other biological factors may play a part in shaping gender behavior.

as much as loki says she is a tomboy, i’d assume that there is SOMETHING in the way in which she reacts to certain situations etc that is not similar to the way a boy would react to it, and that displays aptly the presence of her female hormones, and feminity. being a tomboy doesnt make her a lesser ‘girl’. i believe there are innate, ingrown things that make us different from boys, and that no matter how ‘un feminine’ one is by usual standards, she is still nothing close to being, feeling or acting like an actual boy would. thank god.

achala, it is true that many so called female qualities are gender roles pre concieved by society, but being naturally maternal, emotional and such things are not social norms like ‘women have to be able to cook and clean’. they are quite different. while society can tell you how to act and how to behave, they cannot tell you who to really be, or how to feel. and in that aspect, women are still different, less tough and more emotional. women tend to admit their feelings more, and are more comfortable with expressing them. i’m not saying men are unemotional totally, or are insensitive. but just that you are probably more likely to find a woman telling you how she feels than a man doing so unhesitantly and articulately like a woman would.

so should we, as modern feminists, strive to be tough, insensitive and emotionally guarded SIMPLY because we MUST defeat and defy the gender roles defined for us by our ancestors, in which women are expected to be sensitive and emotional?

i’ve been called many many things. but never been accused of having male chauvinistic ideas…

wtf?!

here is the comment someone left on my post, the wedding dream -

every gil does NOT dream of getting married. It is unbalievable to here such a thing from a girl! You always tend to have male chauvinist ideas - I remember your cattish post

many girls, and women, have ideas on feminism that differ from mine. recently i was accused of being male chauvinistic by achala, (who left no link, sorry…) who said that it was unbelievable that i claimed that all girls dream of what their weddings should be like. pray, correct me if i’m wrong, but she obviously totally missed the point. when in my post did i say it was stupid or wrong of us as girls to dream about our own weddings? when did i condemn the activity? why does it make us lesser beings, or lesser females if we admit to having fantasies of having a perfect wedding? why, and HOW, does it make me male chauvinistic if i’m not ashamed of admitting i have silly, romantic dreams of getting married on the beach?

she obviously does NOT know me. anyone who knows me well will know that i’m a staunch feminist. i was brought up by one, and to me, feminism comes naturally. i’ve seen women who get beaten up by their drunkard of a husband, i’ve heard stories of women who get raped on a regular basis by military personnel, i’ve talked to an eleven year old girl who was impregnated by her grandfather, and mind you, gave birth to that child. i’ve seen strong women pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and fight injustive and ignorance while being wonderful mothers. i wonder if achala has taken her feminist self anywhere important and done anything productive with her fantastically feministic ideas to actually change the life or lives of women right under our noses who get treated like shit.

male chauvinism to me are ideals that imply men are superior and women are inferior. feminism to me are ideals that imply both men and women are equals, and therefore deserve equal respect, dignity, and opportunity.

that’s it. it’s that simple.

being a feminist doesn’t mean i hate all men, and love all women. there are men i love, men i hate, and likewise women i love, and women i hate. how i see a person, and my judgement of them is not influenced by their sex. at the same time, there are some realities that everyone needs to face, even achala. realities like there are qualities and things about women that only women possess, and qualities and things about men that only men possess. mark my words. men and women are different, and there is nothing wrong with that.

how can there be? its nature.

for this reason, there are things about being a woman that i love, just as much as there are things about it i hate.

women are naturally intuitive, sensitive, emotional, impulsive, subtle, romantic. these things can both be good and bad, blessings and curses, just like everything else, depending on each situation. men are not these things to the extent that women are, besides the few exceptions, the one’s many of us brand as ‘gay’ because it’s unusual for a man to be those things. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT? what’s wrong with being romantic, idealistic? what’s wrong with a teenage girl talking about her fantasies of getting married? how does it make her male chauvinistic?

nature has a balance. ying and yang. night and day. men and women. we have to accept the fact that our feminine qualities are there for a reason, and be proud of them, not deny them because we think it makes us look like the less tough, more vulnerable species.

going on to my ‘cats’ post, achala either can’t read, or didnt read that post carefully enough. never once did i mention that i thought women being catty was bad. i made no judgement on the matter, only put down my theory and observations. frankly, i think catty is just another quality that is endemic to us females, and i see nothing wrong with it.

she seemed to be almost disappointed by my words, because she thought i let the female kind down. if freely admitting to be a soppy romantic, and not being ashamed or afraid to admit that women have ways of being mean implied that i have no respect for women (which is what i think a male chauvinist is), i beg to differ. isn’t it far more of a let down when there are women who deny the fact that all the wonderful things about being a woman are things to be proud of?