Celibacy

Since I was young I have had non-catholic inklings and desires about being a nun, about harnessing the divine powers of an independant, chaste woman. And yet here I am: Julia.

Certainly not a nun, or catholic. But there is something to be said for being wedded to God and/or the energy that you can keep or apply to the world when you are not invested in mating as a rule, or in the very least not invested in reflecting on why we participate in our sexual desires and acts. How come we have become somewhat unthinking in our reproductive activities? I am so enriched by breaking from cycles of desire. It becomes easier to write music often, to self reflect, to operate on a higher level... and historically, through nuns and beyond, it was used as a powerful tool for ladies, and meant you could better speak for yourself and for the people because you were untainted and holy. Because you wouldn't submit to your desires.

Is it the opposite now? Is chastity seen not as a virtue but an affliction? I feel Chastity is not seen as a productive social tool, and would make one an outcast now... so hard to relate to, so urecognized in popular culture. People who are cellibut are thought of as those who simply can't get some. Have the chaste become mythic now? Pegged as insane, deprived, misguided? Part of me feels judged as an old-lady type just for writing this, but I don't think 'abstaining' should be just for right-wing and repressive sorts. And, as it is, they are undiscussed, undervalued Pariahs. Sure, young virgins are covetted sexually, and those who play hard-to-get might win some soial points in the end : But what ever happened to the legitimacy of Cellibacy?

These are the top hits for nun in google images:

Interpreters

Methinks... there are many people undervalued in this world and that one of the best skills to have in our time is to understand human value.

I feel I often spend my life watching whole groups of people who don't get to benefit from friendships with others just because they cannot communicate their sentiments properly or understand the value each other. And individuals that live in the same household, the same block, the same city who decide for one reason or anouther not to associate with one anouther.

It makes your life so easy, though, valuing human lives for being epitome of oddball and normalcy. If you believe that there is an inherent sense to what others are thinking, how they became who they are it becomes so easy to interact in the world. Because everyone's reality is of consequence, every perspective has a purpose. It makes your life so easy, because people know you actually care about hearing who they more than you care for judging them. Joy comes easily from enabling other peoples' stories of being heard at the same time as yours.

The word Networking always makes me chuckle. Before we used the word network, what did we call the exchange of contacts and overlapping of social webs? And what is the value of these current networks if they cannot wholly hear each other? Can you ever really understand each other?

In this era, I think it is evermore important to foster our value for communicators, translators, liasons, and interprettors. Not neccesarily for negotiating between cultures or countries or languages, but between all human interactions. Most families have sets of interpreters, and we all have the ability to understand other human beings-- we just have more skepticism and less patience & compassion for those outside of our families. I think that this is one of the most important virtues to instill in Education too. With our ever increasing social connectedness, we need to have better understanding of what might impede our understanding and of our own context. We need to be able to communicate the sentiments of ourselves so we are better understood, and interpret those of others so that others might better understand them.

We are all hurtin' units. I was watching a TED talk on success, and on snobbery. We like to find excuses to dislike people, when they are lacking in degrees or have a less-than prestigeous job we can be put at ease for disliking them, since they are underqualified for our interest or our compassion. As though we as individuals knew the official measure accomplishment. We lived in caste & feudal systems for so long, and yet we still think and live in a manner which is not egalitarian and define success as something as easily known as nobility... But it seems now we have come to believe if you are poor or unaccomplished, and that it is your own fault and not The King's.

Remember the art of Tragedy: mistakes are important and beautiful and enriching.

You can't be a success at everything. Hamlet wasn't a loser though he lost.

Success is as undefinable and subjective as justice, with strong elements of the haphazard.

And we are all misunderstood.

Is that Neccisary?________________________________________

Nova Scotia

All People are Prophets

Love thy neighbour

It actually drives me a little nuts to not like anouther person. I wonder "what is wrong with me?" and "what is it in them?" in the same breath. They cannot be wholly wrong. There is always a common ground, isn't there? I love a challenge. But more so: I love people.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.

- Galileo

I have met many and disliked few. Me thinks this is the luck of my disposition. But it does not mean some people do not compute to me. I luckily somehow gathered from all the lovely people that raised me that everyone is meant to be and that we are all facets o' God. (whatever you might define god as).

If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further.

- Mahatma Gandhi

{Ah, isn't it cliche to quote Gandhi?}

Even the people who seem the most absurd and most hateful have the largest lessons to teach you about where you stand.

When you enjoy loving your neighbor it ceases to be a virtue.- Kahlil Gibran

Your mechanisms of mind are invisible amoung those who have a similar engine and with whom you easily identify.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adversity in this light is a sort of blessing, eh? But without the patience, respect and will to perpetually attempt friendship with all creatures, especially the strange and seemingly ugly, we will perpetuate that ugliness, misunderstanding and be unkind.

I guess that is why this lesson is old school.

Is that necessary?____________________

Why do racists in positions of privilege rarely see past the image which they and theirs help create?

{Internal} Feminist Study

I went to Mount Saint Vincent, a notably feminist institution, and always found myself defending men for not being inherently woman-hating narcissists.

Yesterday, I was discussing womanhood with my lovely friend Rebecca. We were talking about how confusing speaking about all of those invisible ideologies are. About how limiting language is when it comes to gender. Also: How strange is it that many a lady, to prove she is strong, adopts male values.

I certainly rejected many a thing womanly or girly and considered myself a tomboy in order to be a strong woman. But then it took me a long post-adolescent time to get comfortable with all the facets of being a lady, and knowing when something was a false security or part of my idenity and when I was actually avoiding intamacy. Even know, though I am a powerhouse of a gal, parts of my own 'gender' identity is sometimes hard. I still find it often impossible to know when I need help or when to ask for it, because I was always terrified of becoming a parasitic or weak woman.

I like Charolotte Perkins Gilman, but does that make me a douche to lady-kind?

"When man began to feed and defend woman, she ceased proportionately to feed and defend herself. When he stood between her and her physical environment, she ceased proportionately to feel the influence of that environment and respond to it. When he became her immediate and all-important environment, she began proportionately to respond to this new influence, and to be modified accordingly. In a free state, speed was of as great advantage to the female as to the male, both in enabling her to catch prey and in preventing her from being caught by enemies; but, in her new condition, speed was a disadvantage. She was not allowed to do the catching, and it profited her to be caught by her new master. Free creatures, getting their own food and maintaining their own lives, develope an active capacity for attaining their ends. Parasitic creatures, whose living is obtained by exertions of others, develop powers of absorption and of tenacity,–the powers by which they profit most. The human female was cut off from the direct action of natural selection, that mighty force which heretofore had acted on male and female alike with inexorable and beneficial effect, developing strength, developing skill, developing endurance, developing courage,–in a word, developing species. She now met the influence of natural selection acting indirectly through the male, and developing, of course, the faculties required to secure and obtain a hold on him. Needless to state that these faculties were those of sex-attraction, the one power that has made him cheerfully maintain, in what luxury he could, the being in whom he delighted. For many, many centuries she had no other hold, no other assurance of being fed. The young girl had a prospective value, and was maintained for what should follow; but the old woman, in more primitive times, had but a poor hold on life. She who could best please her lord was the favorite slave or favorite wife, and she obtained the best economic conditions."

And, for a lil' case and point-

“Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.”-Paris Hilton

{Though, as an example on Social Darwinism and the relationship between woman & economics, Paris Hilton probably won't breed for aesthetic reasons but was born and socialized rich, and is a corporation of herself and though she isn't the best example in someways, she is an exemplar in oh-so-many unfortunate ways.}

I remember as a young young lady, playing with anouther little girl named Kate who was helping me build something out of twigs (which was rare, because she didn't much like getting dirty and we were not very close). She was helping me break sticks and twigs, but when the boy that she and I both liked--Jeremy-- came around, she pretended she couldn't break them anymore and got him to help her after attesting her distress. He gladly helped, and certainly felt useful for it and thought she was cute. She was pretty and blonde and dainty (and actually quite a nice gal) but she made me think it was important to reject lots of things that might categorize me as "Woman" if I were to be thought of as self-sufficient or respectable to myself.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

- Virginia Woolf

Womanhood is not synonymous being weak, incapable or a parasite...

I am against things with the attached value of being 'feminine' which I find impractically cosmopolitan and/or dainty.

I just don't identify myself that way.

And I know plenty of fellas who are dainty or cosmopolitan or squeemish who are straight and gay. Those things I rejected along with being a girl, don't fit into some neat box labeled "all things lady."

I am just me

Clearly a woman and happily part o' the big confusing world's family. Why do we feel the need to prove one way or anouther? I am always trying to pick apart what it is that makes me act a certain way and debating what whole or halves were socialized by my context and the surrounding ideologies.

The older I get, the more I identify with mothers as the ultimate symbol o' lady.

They can be full of sass (though perhaps not-so-much in front of their wee ones) but are the ultimate show of strength, multitasking, nurture, stamina & badassery. But they have to ask for help sometimes. And I also know plenty of beautiful non-mothers who are all of the above.

I am notably potty mouthed, sexual and uncensored. But is that unladylike?

I check out ladies all the time, often aloud, and make comments on the majesty and prowess of their physique. I am strong enough to lift things up to 300lbs, and weigh 200lbs myself. But is that unwomanly? I love wearing and looking at skirts ( I think a fella in a dress is sassy too), am surprisingly virtuous, I do --infact-- have a vagina and bosoms, and think that women are champions to be revered.

My whole life I idolized the older, elegant and proper ladies who helped make me, me- Aunt Effie, Grandma, Grandlone & Aunt Maim. I always aimed to somehow eventually be like them-Full of dignity, poised, respectable and approachable. Lately I have been debating re-claiming high heels for the strong lady... and because they are sexy and a challenge and an homage to those older ladies in my life. But... could I run away from a predator in that shat? Is that me trying to capitalize on the sexual powers of my gender or re-claim womanhood for myself? Or would it be fraudulent? Or would they just be shoes...

The whole tale here, is just to draw attention to the fact that we are often just ourselves with a whole pile o' context and socialized wonderment that makes us further define ourselves. Men and women are quite clearly not enemies or opposites. If you think so, you have siphoned yourself into a crippling box where you can perpetuate your own myth and ostracize that and/or those which will invigorate and ease you. I have lived in large groups of just women, and large groups of just men, and they are an important phemenon to observe. They make the social and cultural worth of the balance and beauty we awaken in each other when we are together is priceless and enriching and makes us all better creatures. Aside from simply needing each other to reproduce, we are meant to have and hold each other. And trying to frame the glory of who we are within the restrictions of language, context or polarizing definitions is bunk. But worth perpetually taking a peek at because it shapes who we are and what we make of others.

I'm still figuring it out. I am sure you are too.

Is that necessary?______________________________________________________

Is it "rash, extreme anti-American rhetoric” that could damage the trading relationship."'to have a debate in Canada about whether family planning and sex education in developing countries is consequential to the health of mothers?

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Stephen Harper should pay heed to the voice of women and women's rights.