I'm A Woman, Dammit!

I used to say I was the perfect girlfriend...love drinking, sports & sex.  I can talk Red Sox and Bruins better than most guys, and am perfectly comfortable in a sports bar.  While moving I was shocked to find I own a dress, since I'm happiest in my jeans and Converse.  But lately I've found myself wanting to be seen as a girl.

Don't get me wrong, I love my sports.  With the Red Sox headed to the playoffs, the Patriots undefeated, and the Bruins season about to get underway I love it.  But when I get a message from Nothing that just says "did you watch the game" it sometimes annoys me.  My friend wrote "thank you, gorgeous" when I did something for him at work.  Now I'm not saying I'm gorgeous, but it's much more ladylike than "it was a great game".        

At my second job I usually worked in the tool and lawn & garden department.  I'm seen as "one of the guys".  Which isn't always a bad thing.  I now know my way around power tools and lawn equipment.  I'm actually quite handy.  I'm also kinda shy, so sports can sometimes help break the ice. 

But I realize I want to be wooed.  I've never had flowers delivered to me (oh wait, I did once, when my friend felt bad that nobody had ever so she sent them herself).  I want to be wined and dined, I want to feel special.  Don't get me wrong, Nothing has never made me feel unattractive, but I want more.  I guess I want to be treated like a woman.  I'm pretty independent, but I'd like someone to take care of me for a change. 

I'm fairly independent, but I'd like someone to take care of me for a change.  Someone to hand me the tissues when I cry at a sappy movie, to buy tickets to a show just because they know I want to see it, to bring me soup when I'm sick.  Maybe I need a me.            

But if you want to talk about my "tight end" that's okay. 

Blame Someone Else Day

Today, Friday the 13th, is also Blame Someone Else Day.  So I thought this was a good time to start blaming the people who deserve the blame for shit in my life.  And if they don't really deserve it then that's too bad.  I blame them anyway.

• I blame my heart for leading me down the wrong path time and time again, my brain for being so screwed up and imbalanced, my procrastination for taking so long to write this.
• I blame my school counselors, who decided I had a learning disability even though I'd always been in the "gifted" programs.  It made me grow up feeling stupid, even though I wasn't.  It set me up for failure, made even worse when my high school guidance counselor decided it should be hidden from my school records.  That led to me being thrown into a deep pool without a rope, with nobody realizing I couldn't swim.  It wasn't a learning disability, it was ADHD.
• I blame the university where I made my first attempt at college, who brushed me off when I went to them to report that I'd almost been raped by 3 guys in a dorm room.  Apparently the fact that I was drinking made me misinterpret the situation.  No, it didn't.
• I blame Nothing, because he made me believe it was "inevitable".  For telling his friend I'd be the one to save him.  For making me think things will be different each time.
• I blame my parents for oh so many things.  They broke me down and took the only thing that mattered in my life. 
• I blame the only thing that mattered in my life for being so self-centered that she made things up to suit her own wants and that she didn't care enough about anyone else to realize actions have consequences.
• I blame my friends for being stupid enough to love me even when I shut them out, for supporting me through all my shit, and for even keeping me alive.
• I blame the first person who thought cutting themselves was a good idea.
• I blame my ability to trip over flat surfaces for the screwed up knees & ankles.
• I blame my job for making me exhausted enough to sleep way too late on the days I don't have to work and need to get things done.
• I blame Disney for making me believe in happily ever after.
• I blame my New York Yankees for, ummm, because I can.
• I blame John Hughes for making movies that made me think that the chick who wasn't the popular one could come out on top. 
• I blame everything and everyone else who I couldn't list here because the post would be 10 pages long.
• I'd blame myself for a lot of things, but I can't do that today.

And most of all...

• I blame Zeno.

I Found Her Blog

I found her blog.

It was a Tumblr blog belonging to a teenager whose life I had been pushed out of.  There were pictures of her.  She’d grown up into a beautiful young woman, almost 16 years old.  There were lighthearted pictures that she had reblogged.  Her sense of humor was so familiar.  Darker posts about sadness and depression sprinkled in.    Not a surprise, long family history.  I really started scrolling through the images she’d posted.

“No one cares unless you’re pretty or dying.”

“Once upon a time there was a happy little girl.  Then she grew up.”

“People don’t die from suicide; they die from sadness”.

From there it got worse.

“Self-harm is no joke.  You always hear how self-harmers are ‘emo’ or an ‘attention seeker’.  But self-harm isn’t a joke, it takes a lot to get to the point of turning mental pain into physical pain.  When you sit there, and make fun of them, you’re just making them pull down their sleeves, put on a pair of pants, and hide their skin even more.  You’re pushing them further and further into a hole.  And if you don’t be careful with what you say, that hole will turn into their grave”.

I wondered if these posts were in support of a friend who was cutting.  There were posts in a series called “Instead of cutting”.  I couldn’t see her, but I also couldn’t imagine that she was harming herself.

“When I was 8 I would never have imagined my life would turn out like this.  A depressed, self harming teenager.  What went so wrong…”

I was terrified.  It seemed like she was confessing that she was doing this to herself.  And I felt so hopeless because there was nothing I could do.  All I wanted to do is hug this young woman and help her find her way back to being 8 years old.

Then I saw this and I knew this beautiful girl was harming herself.

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30 Days?

Sometimes I come across a story that really gets to me.  Have you heard the name Stacey Dean Rambold? How about Cherice Moralez? If you don't know the names you may know the story. A 14-year-old girl is raped by her 49-year-old high school teacher. As the criminal case drags on, the girl, now 16, kills herself. The teacher pleads guilty and is sentenced to 30 days in jail. 30 days. His lawyer said, “he lost his career, his marriage and his home and has suffered a "scarlet letter of the Internet" as a result of publicity about the case. The judge, who never met the victim, said she “as much in control of the situation” and that she was “older than her chronological age.” Never mind that the rapist was her teacher and that under Montana state law anyone under the age of 16 cannot consent to sex. Cherice committed suicide just weeks before her 17^th birthday, and her mother said the relationship was a “major factor” in her suicide.

That's horrific on it's own. Then I came across an opinion column published in The Washington Post. The title of the piece? “Sex Between Students and Teachers Should Not Be A Crime”, or at least it was until the title was changed days later (the original title is still in the link). It was written by former lawyer and author Betsy Karasik. She wrote “I don’t believe that all sexual conduct between underage students and teachers should necessarily be classified as rape, and I believe that absent extenuating circumstances, consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized”. Wow. It's the “you can't get pregnant if it's a legitimate rape” argument all over again. Is it worse because the author is a woman? It is to me. She talked about knowing classmates from high school thru law school who slept with their students, that no one she knew “was horribly damaged and certainly no one died”.

This paragraph is from her article, and I don't want to paraphrase. So here it is...

If religious leaders and heads of state can’t keep their pants on, with all they have to lose, why does society expect that members of other professions can be coerced into meeting this standard? A more realistic approach would be to treat violations in a way that removes and rehabilitates the offender without traumatizing the victim. The intensity of criminal proceedings, with all the pressure they put on participants, the stigma, the community and media scrutiny, and the concurrent shame and guilt they generate, do the opposite of healing and protecting the victim. Laws related to statutory rape are in place to protect children, but the issue of underage sex, and certainly of sex between students and teachers, may be one in which the law of unintended consequences is causing so much damage that society needs to reassess.

I won't go down the “religious leaders” path other than to say that one of the priests in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal was the priest at my church growing up. Two of them, actually. One was there when my classmates were serving as altar boys.

Kids are stupid. Yeah, I went there. Their brains are not fully developed, so it's not completely their fault. That's in part why they act impulsively and are more emotional. (Have you ever seen a teenage girl who couldn't find the right shoes to wear with an outfit? Drama!) Adults are not supposed to be that stupid. Their brains are developed. And for the adult to be in a position of authority is inexcusable. There are double standards when it comes to teacher/student sexual relations. When it's a female teacher the boy is often seen as “lucky”, at least when the teacher is hot. Most don't see a girl being “lucky” because she slept with a teacher. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

I actually started writing this because Ms. Karasik tried to use a Louie CK joke as the basis for her argument. And she got it all wrong. Just like the rest of her piece.  Here's the link, if you want to read it for yourself. 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sex-between-students-and-teachers-should-not-be-a-crime/2013/08/30/dbf7dcca-1107-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html