The humble (?) bra.

Well. Today I am sitting in a position of excited inspiration! I am looking to create a celebration of the strong feminist women working in the human services in my home town, Launceston.

I am sitting at home, listening to jazz women of the 1920s (Ruth Etting, Billie Holiday and such) while rearranging my lounge room.

I am using the active time to think of ideas for my celebration; Could the CWA cater? Is the CWA a feminist supportive organisation? Are there hidden agendas there I don’t know about? Thank god I have a good bra for activities like moving furniture!

…. Wait… I remember my mum talking about bra burning feminists… I have heard the bra was designed by men for men’s appreciation of the female form…. Oh lord, oh LORD it is a contraption of containment and control of the female spirit!!!

But really? I am glad I have bras. I am a bigger laaady (favourite word at the moment, must have 3 ‘a’s) and my bewbs need some help. I would chafe, sweat and get a sore back without this lovely pink lace. BUT, some ways I choose to stick it to the capitalist/corporation include;
❤ Washing them careful in the shower after 3 – 4 days wear, this keeps them nice and there is no need to pay corporations $60 or more too often – for bigger laaadys the price is astronomical and choices are limited!
❤ I will start to shop ethically – research brands, look for local and spread the word (http://www.ethicalclothingaustralia.org.au/accredited-brand/underwear-basics/ and http://www.earthfirst.net.au/lingerie.html)!
❤ Love myself – shop for comfort but treat yo self to pretty.

Really feminism isn’t about whether or not you wear a bra but the fight for peoples rights to choose (yes people – lots of boys like some lace!)

Okay… *How* are people graceful??

I have a few people who inspire me very much. I want to call them ‘idols’ or ‘gurus’ but I feel like those words are too gendered so I follow my rule and just use more words to explain my meaning.

Okay, so some people who have inspired me include; Jeremy Ball (who was our deputy mayor and a major social justice campaigner until his death recently), Susan Neighbour (social worker, spiritual healer), Laura Kay (creative feminist, writer and so much more), Lee Hodge (social worker, my best friends dad!) and Bel St Clair (holistic social worker, friend).

All five of these people, in my experience, have been able to express levels of frustration while remaining positive and really still holding a position of love.

I want to find this grounded-ness, this grace and dignity (always dignity). I feel like I just get hijacked by anger. My amygdala goes into overdrive and I want to jump up and down and yell, make a scathing comment or run away and hide.

Does everyone feel that or do people generally grow out of it? Am I terribly immature? How do I waft through life being nonplussed but passionate (oxymoron?) changing the world with love? Do I need more incense? Maybe I need some spiritual healing?

Self care is my journey.

I have been aware lately that I am feeling like I will break down soon. This has mostly been to do with work which is a bit of a shift for me. I generally feel like work is the ‘control’. There are rules, the most significant being if I am not being paid, I don’t do work stuff. In the past I have struggled with this, as a new social work grad I wanted to save the world and I burnt out, albeit with me in denial and arguing with people that it wasn’t burn out.

But the last year, in my current position I have felt much more clear about the personal/professional boundary. Well. I thought I was. In actual fact, I have still been bringing home and holding onto and even transferring the frustration, anger, annoyance, and so on to my personal world. Rather than thinking ‘work is work’ as an objective entity I have been thinking of it subjectively, as me. If a day was frustrating I am frustrated. If a situation is sad, I am sad.

It doesn’t have to be this way. I recently went to a conference where Dan Siegel spoke and he spoke about objectivity at work. I have always though objectivity is a dirty word in social work, it is impossible to be objective, we always have our own lens when viewing things and we must be aware of this. But what Dr Siegel spoke about was an objectivity of self and situation. I am not experiencing someone’s sadness, I am seeing it, I can empathise with it but I am not feeling it. Just as I can be frustrated with a situation and want to advocate against injustice but that situation does not have to be a part of my whole being.

There is still a part of my heart that resists this. I am a social justice warrior, that is my identity, not just a work thing but I need to work on a balance otherwise I will become a husk.

What do you do to leave work at work? Do you have rituals, habits, rules that work for you?

I am so annoyed and hurting a little in a empathic way.

I work out of an education program for young people effected by trauma, poverty and often experiencing mental health concerns, drug and alcohol use, chaos and crisis driven lives.

The first thing that really got me today was a ‘colleague’ saying; “If a person is stupid enough to meet someone online and then go and get drunk with them, they can’t complain about what might happen to them.”

Second thing was, when I was explaining about an organisation providing services to people identifying as LGBTIQ another colleague said disparagingly; “Oh surely there has to be an S for straight in there somewhere”. When I said “Um, no actually”, there was just a silence and a bit of a laugh.

THEN the third thing was when my colleagues were talking about teen pregnancies. One staff member shared that a young woman had miscarried and now has the Implanon (contraception). The colleague spoken about in the first scenario said; “Don’t you wish you could line them up and shoot the Implanon into them?” To which the others laughed and agreed. He then said; “They put something in the water of one town so they didn’t inbreed”, to which I said; “Sounds like eugenics… You know, like what Hitler did?”

He said “…oh don’t get upset”.

I felt like I could not respond in an articulate way. It was just awful. If is usually much better than this but something is slipping and these people are EDUCATING our most VULNERABLE young people.

Friends with benefits.

This is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard.

It’s like calling beer ‘drink which also quenches thirst’. All drinks quench thirst, stupid. Some taste good too, some make you act funny, but they are all liquid entering your body *sigh*

All my friends benefit me on some way. Let’s be honest. That’s what friends are for. They love you at your worst, they make you laugh, they listen to your ranting.

If you are sleeping with someone and calling them a friend with benefits really you are diminishing things. If I call my current sexual partner that I feel so disrespectful. He is my FRIEND. He makes me laugh, he challenges me, we watch movies together and debate the meaning of it all. He cooks for me sometimes. We also have sex. Neither of us want to label and call what we have something that society tells us we should.

So many other people though, feel the need to label and define us! For their own comfort.

I hate terms like friends with benefits. They are just words that people use to try and feel that they have control in a world of chaos.

Two things annoyed me today but an innumerable amount of things made me glad.

1. I was given another 2 days off work because my throat is still infected. My tonsils may have to come out and I am more scared of that than I ever thought I would be about something like this.
2. A man said ‘good girl’ to me when I gave him directions. I hate hearing that bullshit. I hate it and I want to say ‘NOT OKAY’ but which battles do you fight, really?

I am so sick of being unwell. HOW do people with chronic illnesses do this? I have been sick on and off for maybe two months but seriously I am hating myself so much which leads me down a very dangerous path of self hate. Like, if I was successful and useful I would look after myself better and not get sick. I was so emotionally run down that my immune system has taken a holiday WHY did I not listen to people yelling at me to take it easy?? I don’t listen, that’s why. I am still 5 years old at heart and FAILING at life and so on and so forth.

So then there is the feminist stuff. I fail on that too. A friend told me to be more well read and study stuff and enable myself to articulate and explain my theoretical stand points. So I fail even at what I am passionate about! Should I say something to that maintenance guy who is like sixty years old? I don’t fucking know my brain hurts and I don’t want to live in 2014 any more.

But I laughed and laughed with my niece (I made her laugh so hard she almost choked!), I saw my nephew and his girlfriend and took them to school and I gave him $10 for food. My cat loves me and so many friends and family contact me to see I am okay. It rained a few big fat drops on my windscreen which was so lovely. My landlord mowed the lawn and, yes, it smelled great.

So it is good to remember and focus on the good stuff, but in the words I heard in American Horror Story that I watched with my niece today;

“And the only way out is through. So feel the fear. And the pain. Let it all in and then let it all go.”

The power of Hollywood…

I loved both ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘American Hustle’ but I am still really struggling with the portrayal of female characters.

Is it strength or subjugation?

Is it up to the individual? When does the best interests of the group come into it?

Don’t say shit about them just being movies, this is where dominant discourses and ideas can begin or be confirmed.

Maybe Amy Adams and Margot Robbie felt they were strong women in these roles.

IDK. I just know it pokes at me and I am left a little uncomfortable.

On being a social worker.

I am so mad. So upset. I work casual shifts at a shelter for women and there is a young girl, 13 years old, who is addicted to the drug ice staying with us at the moment.

She has just moved onto the needle.

When she isn’t with us she stays at a seedy dive with a man in his late 20’s most possibly being passed around sexually as payment for habit.

The police and child protection services are vaguely interested. That is better than usual when they tell is teenagers can protect themselves and select their own accommodation. These are often young people who have grown up experiencing abuse, trauma and neglect. They have not had the life experience some of us have had to develop health self image, to know that sex isn’t for anyone and to be used as a commodity.

I fucking hate this drug. So many drugs I do not see as the big social issue that people make out, but ice needs to be eliminated from this world.

I am really sad and some days I feel like chucking in the towel and being a hermit who lives off the land.

Isn’t it 2014…?

Isn’t it 2014…?

I am so ashamed that this news story is from my home town.

1. WHY the hell do they feel the need to show pictures of her dressed in a nurses outfit?

2. WHY the hell is her sex life discussed AT ALL!!?

3. WHY is the defense lawyer blaming the victim for staying in the relationship!!!? A defense lawyers job should not be to discredit and shame one person for the benefit of another. The legal system obviously needs a fucking shake up.

How, in 2014, are we not a more socially and emotionally aware society? Domestic violence is an incredibly complex and difficult situation. Most women don’t ‘just leave’, even those who have been saying since they were 10 years old ‘If a man ever hits me I am going’. Do you know what? Men are abused in relationships too and they don’t ‘just leave’ either.

I will find ways to fight this or I will die trying.

Banging the feminism drum again….

So I call myself a feminist. When I say that and people do the squished up nose look I explain that I like wearing a bra as my boobs chafe if I don’t wear one, I like men and will fight for their rights too and I hate patriarchy and the subordination of any group based on a false sense of inferiority based on a ridiculous set of criteria.

That’s where I often get a little stuck. I find my passion often stops my ability to articulate what day it is let alone a cohesive argument. So when a guy says to me “women have as many options as men” I tend to see red and herp derp all over the place rather than eloquently saying “Not only are women’s options constricted but the resources to address this issue are also limited by the idea that women are less reasonable and rational due to their bits being innie rather than outie…”

*sigh*

Anyway I saw a thing today. I was driving out to see my sister and down the road from my sister’s house I saw my sister’s mother-in-law who is almost 70 out mowing her lawn. I know that she could dig a hole and fix a fence and she knows to take her car to her son if there is something wrong. I think she would hit me with the shovel if I called her a feminist but I thought to myself “HA! And I call myself a feminist!”. She lives alone since her husband died 16 years ago and I swear she is just so kick arse. She has her sons scurrying around building her a deck, she takes care of her own business and I just admire her so much.

I struggling with the idea of getting to know my inner workings, those that drive my passion and action, as I wonder; do I need to label them? But in naming myself a feminist (or the plethora of other models, theories and ‘ists’ I am inspired by) I know there are an army of like minded people I can fight with, something to lean on and learn from in times of confusion….

I want to fight the good fight in the best, least oppressive but most productive way possible!