amaranth

     To prove that I actually have something up-to-date-ish to share, I discovered this article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/09/ashley-judd-slaps-media-in-the-face-for-speculation-over-her-puffy-appearance.html?fb_ref=article&fb_source=home_multiline . As successfully academic as the articles we’ve read, and have access to, have been, Ashley Judd has the presence of mind to retranslate some of their most potent and immediately-useful messages into language that almost anyone can understand, if not appreciate. For us, it serves as a reminder: of the communal and often subconscious nature of social privilege and disadvantage, of the myriad and miniscule details of everyday interactions carrying with them heavy interpersonal consequences, and, to reverse my reversal or her argument, the disproportionate effects of social subjugation, by probably 1% of the population, on the rest of the “weird”, meaning women, “indeterminates”, and men who don’t wear jeans, play rugby, or belch in public (from the preface to “the Kaleidoscope of Gender”).

     Moving right along, and to be even more flat and academic, I thought I’d bring up the general concept of virginity, a concept well-reported upon in the “Women’s Voices | Feminist Visions” textbook I’m supposed to have ditched by now. As much as the word is used, to ask an individual its exact meaning is generally impossible. It’s not even so simple as saying that it simply cannot be defined, like the word “is”, for instance: virginity is a word whose meaninglessness and variable ability to be misunderstood empowers its users to either damage themselves or the women around them. (I say women because, unfortunately, except in stupid jokes about pubescent boys, virginity is only ever used in reference to women.) As was well-stated in Leah’s posted image about the damned-if-you-do/don’t paradox, virginity is another means by which women can be judged and stunted unnecessarily by undefined degrees of sexual contact.

     My posts are always unhelpfully entropic. Perhaps not. Anyway.

     By the way, all the indentation and paragraph spaces are where I’m invisibly ranting about my unpopular opinion regarding hypersexualization in America. I find it rather annoying, but I can afford to let the opinion live unseen. Oh wait . . . .

     Then there is sizeism. What does one do with it? Who is allowed to make a call about whether someone’s BMI is culturally unusual or personally unhealthy? How do we raise awareness of the fact that some people BMIs are genetically predisposed to be culturally unusual? How do I escape the dreadfully uninvolved it’s-not-me-judging-people-here tone of this paragraph?

     And I really like, or rather try as hard as possible to acknowledge, the fact that we’ve been putting women’s and human’s and environmental issues all together: as I think Enei has mentioned, environmental disrespect and destruction has the closest possible connection to human well-being and equity issues (the TEDx talk about Pono was cool too).

     Now the rest is all gone. Hope it was good enough. P.S.: I hope none of you mind Amanda Palmer, because she did a really neat music video in beautiful defiance of spousal abuse, found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzek4sHZp-c .