You're taking up too much space

I take the tram to and from work. It's a lovely, quintessentially Melbourne experience. I get on out in the 'burbs, so more times than often score a seat. One thing I've noticed though, and its been getting on my nerves: men just don't move over. The double seats on the standard and W-class (not the 'new' bullet looking trams) trams are not divided, just a double bench. People generally take up a bit more than half the seat if they have it to themselves, but when somebody sits down next to them I've noticed a marked gender difference. Women tend to pull their bag in closer and scooch across the seat and cross their legs, so the other person has ample room. Men, on the other hand, remain sitting wide legged, taking up 3/4 of the seat. And when you sit down, they stay that way! Like do I have to sit on your lap so you get the message? Well that's what I've been resorting to - when they don't move over, I just sidle up real close, bump them a few times and half dump my bag on their laps. I'm being rude, I know it, I'm essentially shoving them, but seriously, get a fucking clue.

(Of course this is a generalisation, I should take a poll or something).

This whole tram seating thing got me thinking about space in general and I've started noticing a myriad of different ways in which men feel entitled to space, and women feel like they shouldn't take up any...

-Men sit wide legged, women cross their legs (this is of course also because we couldn't have our legs open because you know we have vaginas).

-I feel unfeminine when I sit with my legs wide and sturdy...so I try to do it as much as possible!

-Gee I dunno, the whole women-should-diet-themselves-to-nothing-to-be-attractive, but men get to have muscles.

-A woman wants a dressing table - gah she takes up so much space! A man wants a shed - well that's reasonable isn't it?

-The way women with big breasts tend to slouch.

-The way blokes hardly ever move out of the way when you're on a collision course on the street. If I don't move, we bump shoulders. (Yes I know, another generalisation)

-I'm ashamed to tell shoe sales girls that my feet are a size 9. Big feet = man. Doesn't matter that I'm nearly 6 ft of course.

-Trams again - the way men, and only men (ie not tall women) seem to expect you to duck under their outstretched arm to get out of the tram. Seriously could you let go for one sec so I don't have to stick my face in your sweaty armpit?

And I could go on, but I'm off to purchase World War Z :-)

Nothing like the threat of sexual assault to keep yo ass movin'

This morning I'm at the gym (applause please! thank you!) puffing away on the treadmill. A young woman hops on the treadmill next to me. After a couple of minutes a staff member comes up, he's clearly her personal trainer. They chat a bit, I puff a lot. He cranks up the incline on her treadmill. She's climbing that hill for what seems like forever. She's starting to get puffed and struggling, his job is to encourage her: "Just 60 seconds to go!" - "You can do it!" - "Just imagine there's a creepy guy chasing you down a dark street! He's going to attack you! You can't stop running!"

Wait, hang on. WTF?!?!

Her response was muted by her gasping for breath, but I think she sort of laughed. I wasn't laughing. I was upset. Do I really need to be reminded of threat of sexual assault during my morning workout? And what about the chick?! Does this guy know her well enough to know that she's never been assaulted, or that her sister hasn't been, or whatever? Is the threat of sexual assault a valid personal training method?? Is it something that's ok to joke about?

What a crock.

I told some of my girlfriends, the resident gym junkie in my little possie seemed to think I was overreacting because women getting attacked by strangers is rare...rare I suppose compared to women getting attacked by men they know. Which is true.

But I still don't feel my upset was an overreaction. I told a few other people and they had the exact same response as me. Which felt good. Because I need validation of my opinions.

So I sent the gym a complaint. I figured it was kind of my responsibility to mention that I found the comment completely inappropriate in a professional setting, because other women who may be far more affected by that kind of thing than me might not be in a position to want to bring it up with management. And even not considering that, it upset me as a woman, and I don't usually keep my mouth shut when something bothers me :-D

I have had no response to my complaint as of yet. Now I am worried they think I'm some feminazi freak and that I'll get sniggers and snide looks next time I'm there. But I'm just going to have to believe in myself and be confident in my standing up for what I believe in. And who are we kidding, I am a feminazi freak :-D

My smelly crotch

Panty liners. Talk about a con. This is how it went down at Carefree marketing HQ: "Wow wouldn't it be great if women got their periods all month long!" - "Yeah we'd be raking it in" - "How can we convince them that they need to wear pads even when they don't have their periods?"....

PANTY LINERS!

That's right girls, your crotch is just so gross that you need to protect even your underpants from it! Your normal couple of drips of normal, clear discharge is just sooooo yukky that you need to change your knickers three times a day, you smelly things!

Ok like I can understand using panty liners on a long haul flight, and I'm sure there are other good reasons for them (none of which springs to my mind at the moment). But honestly, what a con. What a waste of money and resources.

Goddamn and don't even get me started on vagina perfume!

*ahem* ok another rather uninteresting, poorly researched and badly written post. But at least I'm getting in the habit of blogging :-)

Bra burning, repair men and rape culture

Bras. I hate them. Wherever they came from, they remind me of something very Victorian and very restrictive. With their nasty little hooks, their inadequate straps, their rigid underwire; yes I have been properly fitted, thanks for asking. My bras are as comfortable as is possible for bras, I just find them generally physically and intellectually unpleasant. Wriggling out from my bra while still fully clothed is the first thing I do every evening when I get home from work.

Bras. Talk about the gender pay gap - $50 for a decent bra! And they only last 6 months. Someone's making a packet here and it ain't the little fingers putting them together in a South Asian factory. Buying bras is one of my pet hates - you're a 10DD? Really? Er I don't think we have anything in that size. You could try a 12D, it's the same - it's not, it's really not, it just means the back strap is too loose and hence stretches out even quicker, and the underwire cuts into some major veins supplying blood to my heart. Because I spent much of university selling swim ware to women of all shapes and sizes, and doing a damn good job of it, I feel particular disdain for unhelpful bra fitters. Apparently to be less of a hassle to shop assistants I should either have some ribs removed, or put on 10kgs and move into the nanna range. And don't get me started on the fact that the types of bras available to women are based entirely on their breast size!

Bras. They make a statement. The story of feminists burning their bras in the 1960s (whether or not its true or was widespread or whatever) has entered the public consciousness. I used to think those women felt the same way I did about bras - that they were uncomfortable and expensive. But the other day I had an experience that deepened my understanding of why bra burning may be a powerful statement. Here it is:

The smoke alarm needed fixing recently, so I got to 'work from home' between 8 am and 5 pm waiting for Warren the repair man to arrive. One of the reasons I love working from home is that I get to sit around in my trackies sans bra. Warren phoned at 9 am (good service!) and said he was half an hour away. I was wearing track pants, slippers and one of Mr T's baggy t-shirts - no bra of course. I looked down at myself, my ample bust hanging the way it does, and it was clear I wasn't wearing a bra. I wouldn't mind opening the door to a repair man while wearing slippers, or even a dressing gown, but the obviousness of my lack of bra set off a chain of thought in my mind that went something like this:

Repair man coming, home alone - risk of sexual assault - do everything you can to reduce this risk (maybe call Mr T while repair man here?) - no revealing clothing - you're not wearing a bra - no bra equals state of undress - state of undress plus tradie equals invitation for sexual assault.

I put on a bra. I felt silly, but I put it on. Why had I thought that not wearing a bra was a state of undress? From head to toe I was wearing baggy clothing, but I felt undressed.

Do we find the natural female shape somehow unacceptable for public consumption? (Eating disorders and plastic surgery anyone?) Maybe what those bra burners were getting at (apart from their desire not to wear uncomfortable and expensive boob corsets) was that bras are primarily designed to squeeze and mold the female form into something more desirable to the male gaze. Even glimpsing the curve of unshackled female breasts is so unacceptable that not wearing a bra felt to me to be akin to not wearing anything at all! When anybody but Mr T sees me without a bra I feel like they are seeing, uninvited, my true, naked form instead of the fantasy that my breasts are perfectly round, gravity defying, and sitting just below my collar bone.

I don't think its quite the same if you have relatively small breasts. Mum loves letting her A-cups free under a skimpy singlet, but I think she'd be quite disgusted, yes disgusted, if I presented my DDs without 'support' - she thinks "big titty wop wops" are gross. No that attitude totally didn't affect me during adolescence, thanks for asking. But I digress. Some women with small breasts don't like going without a bra either because they equally feel that the natural shape of their breast is inadequate. Hum so maybe it is the same.

Bras. Burn em all.

The chain of thought associated with my state of dress and the repair man not only got me thinking about bras, it got me thinking about rape culture. How messed up is it that having a repair man come to my house while I was alone automatically made me go through the almost unconscious reducing-the-risk-of-sexual-assault checklist. I don't assume that every man is a rapist. But I do not walk on dark streets at night, I call friends when in taxis alone, don't drink too much with blokes you don't know etc etc. These things might seem like normal, risk-reduction activities sure, but they're part of a culture where women are repeatedly reminded that they are at risk, and that it is their responsibility, and in their power, to stop men raping them.

How many times have women been blamed for being raped - She walked down THAT street at 2 am, seriously what was she thinking?? Well getting into a cab by yourself is a risk, we all know that!! Well why did she think they were hanging around buying her drinks? Derr!! This is part of rape culture. Where hem lines rape people, not rapists. Rape culture puts the onus almost completely on the victim to prevent sexual assault. I think my putting on a bra was, in a small way, part of that culture. A culture that says that if I open the door to a tradesmen in a state of undress (not hoisted and molded for acceptable public consumption) then I'm pretty much enacting a porno and asking for it, so what the hell would I expect.

I'm not saying that this is what anyone would think, I'm just trying to pick apart my own chain of thought from that morning. And of course there are so many issue here, like how women are far far far more likely to be assaulted by someone they know etc.

First post

Ok, first post. Deep breath. Not that I ought to worry, I don't intend on letting anyone know I'm blogging until I find my feet a little.

I find the concept of blogging to be intimidating, but suspect it will be cathartic. This is really just a substitute for me sending rambling, ranting feminist tirades at my girlfriends while they're trying to work; or getting increasingly heated as I yell at Mr Tesseract over a few glasses (or bottles) of red about what is so damn wrong with the world and why we need another feminist revolution, while he nods and agrees and wonders when we can put on some sci-fi 'cos the converted don't need so much preaching.

Tesseract: a four-dimensional hypercube. The wikipedia entry pretty much sums up the geometry of the hypercube. In particular I was attracted to the 3-D projection of the tesseract performing a simple rotation. The tesseract, for me, is a powerful representation for identify; complex, interconnected, shifting. Similarly, the fourth dimension often represents time, which taps into ideas of personal and societal history and future. For me the personal is the political, and it is ideas about the dynamics of personal identify and larger political discourse, through time, that I like to think and write about. I use the word political loosely here, if politics is power then politics is everything.

[With the linear passage of time my days as a political science major are increasingly distant...as is my grasp of the nuances of the jargon that goes along with it.]

Should I tell you about the set of characteristics that supposes to make up my identity? It's the only honest thing to do I guess, you have the right to know where I'm coming from, where I am priviledged and where I am subordinated. I'm hesitant all the same, because it allows people to place someone into a tesseract, a box within which you believe you understand the linkages; I know because I do it all the time to people. But here we go anyway: female, heterosexual, white, my body operates within parameters that are considered 'normal', middle class, left wing, not religious, university educated, green. I'm 26 years old. I have family (parents) who are stable individuals with disposable income, this provides me with a significant safety net should things ever go ass-up.

So I'm a woman, but not especially good at being girly, apparently. More shoes and make-up are a feminine remedy I'm not interested in committing to, financially or otherwise. My mother finds my opinionated nature rather 'unladylike'.

I'm married to a man and we live in a monogamous relationship. I guess this makes me functionally and socially a heterosexual.

White. But not quite. Whiter than my Asian best friend, not quite as white as my blond cousins. "Where are you from?" is a question I sometimes have to endure, but not as much as others.

According to government records, I do not live with a disability. How long my eyesight will hold out on this count is unknown.

Middle-class. I grew up in a poor, single parent family in a poor neighborhood (it's now trendy as hell). Currently half my income goes on rent. But somewhere in between there I went to a private school and lived in a 'nice' area. My immediate family is middle class. I suspect all this makes me middle class.

My political leanings (left and green) have been driven largely by a sense of social justice, where that came from I'm still discovering.

Atheist on a good day, agnostic on a bad one. Which of course makes me agnostic, atheism is more an aspirational goal.

I have recently finished my masters degree, after doing two undergraduate degrees.

I promise I will never talk about myself so much on this blog again. I just thought it was good to get it out there. Off to see Ms W and the Red Ferrari crew now. Peace out.