A Quiet Intensity

Man oh man (Hey there's an expression that raises some gender questions), I have been meaning to get a going on here forever. So much has happened in the world! I am currently enrolled in a Women's Studies 101 class, and while most of it's old news, it is good to have a more constant reminder to think about the things i love to think about, phew, yeah, weird sentence there. Slight rabbit trail here, but in learning another language analyzing your own native tongue is inevitable. I mean i start to realize that in all my dis-conjointed, broken, pitched, poetic and cryptic ways of speaking i am a master of the spoken english language. Of course with reveling in my own genius i realize it will take just that much skill to acquire another and i am truly discouraged and heartbroken. Okay, moving on, women ... feminism ...

There are many sad things that happen to women, prejudices and unseen, unspoken gender roles, soooooo thought to kick things off i would address something i experienced today and had a large discussion with my sister about later, that is kinda of a plus side to being a women. Thus begins my tale of wonder ;-)

I was to go to my sensei's mailbox after class to pick up an assignment she had so graciously corrected for me when I couldn't be there. I asked the secretary if it was okay to just snag it real quick and she said i needed ID. hmmm, no wallet, shoot. "No bus pass, license, school ID, assignment or books with your name on it?" ummm, it's all in Japanese... luckily my teacher wrote my name on the envelope in Japanese and it looked the same as the name on some old homework and I made it out with the papers and a heap of flusteration and embarrassment.

So I'm not addressing the fact I'm an idiot without a wallet, or that we can't be trusted to leave papers in a safe place and have the right person retrieve them, not the fact that some teachers are just amazing and actually care about your education and will do all they can to help you out ... hmmm now what could it be, what was interesting about this scenario I wonder ...

It's the fact that had I been maybe a little less inclined to smile and apologize profusely, or perhaps if i hadn't been dressed like a bit of a classy secretary myself that day, or hadn't been obviously shuffling through a pile of japanese homework, or, and here it is, maybe perhaps if i hadn't been a girl ...

Sometimes I forgot that because we (women) are thought of, ideally, as nurturing, honest, kind, simple creatures, people assume we are, and are often right, there was no swindling on my part here, an honest mistake.

I've started noticing scenarios in my life that if I replace myself with a boy dressed in dirty clothes with a 5 o'clock shadow and terse tone, it wouldn't happen that way. I start to recall several times in my life when I got treated better just because I was a girl, you respect them because they're ladies, or try to kill them with kindness so you can get in their pants, either way. Once when I was 15 I was getting my picture taken for my permit and the man behind the counter asked me all sorts of questions about my life, thought I was a fascinating young lass, and took my picture over and over until I said I was happy with it. Or men letting me go first in the grocery line, sales clerks offering me samples or assistance in stores, I don't know why these preconceived notions thrive, but what really disturbs me is how much we can get away with. I don't mean just by the flirting and giggling and distracting men with cleavage tactic, because it works with other women too, i mean just by having a vagina.

I recently watched this video

(yeah, this one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg),

and it really got me thinking. A middle-class+ women, of any age, can get away with littering, shoplifting, stealing dinnerware from a restaurant, taking extra free samples, hogging the newspaper at the coffee-shop, leaving the bathroom stinky, being late to anything, burping, farting, not tipping, not putting in enough bus fare, stealing another students homework, cheating on a test, etc. and not get confronted by a man about it, or even noticed doing such things at all, you'd never suspect. While maybe its not for good reason, it is kind of nice to be invisible sometimes :-) Not that i want to get away with such things ... but more often then not in my life i don't get noticed for anything more then my looks until i ask for it ...