Skirts, dresses, long hair, and being a woman

"If you were really a feminist, you would cut off your hair and stop wearing skirts!"

I choose to wear either a skirt or a dress about half of the time, and more often than that in the summer. Most of these are well past my knees in length, and the rest are right about knee-length, and many of them are in "girly" colors such as pink (I won't even start with how pointless it is to assign a gender to a color, but the cultural stereotype remains, at least in the West). I find it much more comfortable to wear a skirt than I do to wear shorts, especially in the Texas heat. A skirt is going to be, by nature, cooler than shorts of the same length- and trust me, when the temperature outside hits the triple digits, this becomes important. 

Long hair does not necessarily have the same advantages. In fact, long hair can be uncomfortably warm, leading most people to wear their hair in either a ponytail or some form of bun if it's long enough to be uncomfortably hot. My reason for having long hair has nothing whatsoever to do with comfort. I have it this way because this is how I like it. 

Actually, a large part of why I choose to wear skirts so often is the same, because I like them. Believe it or not, I like to feel pretty, and the fact that skirts are comfortable is a very nice bonus.

The argument that feminists should all conform to a male standard has long been a relatively disturbing one to me. Despite claiming that it would be representative of ultimate equality, people who say it are consciously or unconsciously assuming that men are the norm and that women are the ones who deviate from it, and thus to make ourselves truly equal we must assimilate. To do so would not be a symbol of a progressive society at all, but would instead be just as biased as what exists today and perhaps more so, only hiding the bias under a facade of sameness.

While there are many types of feminists, and not all share the same views as me, I think that I would be correct in saying that most do not wish to eliminate differences, but would instead celebrate those differences. It is indeed true that I possess mammary glands and the capability to bear children, just as it is true that men are, physiologically speaking, more inclined to have a greater muscle mass than women do. These differences do not make masculinity inherently better than femininity, just as they do not make the opposite true. They simply make us different.

This is, additionally, the root of my problem with supposed chivalry. It's not the actions themselves--after all, opening the door for someone who's carrying a small child or bags of groceries is only polite--but rather the reasoning behind them. Insisting on opening doors or pulling out chairs for someone because she is a woman is just silly, given that most people who do that would not do the same for a man. Even such seemingly innocuous actions exhibit a belief that women are somehow "less" than men, that they either cannot or should not be allowed to do those things for themselves. 

Wearing a skirt or having long hair does not debase women. It's a choice- and one that should be available to men as well. Due to simple facts of biology, men and women are never going to be physically equal. Equality is not in appearance or biology; true equality is found in treatment and opportunity. 

I know this is two posts in a row about feminism. It wasn't intended, I had just had these particular thoughts on my mind this weekend. I promise I'll talk about something else next time.

To Boldly Go

"Thank you for choosing [coffee shop], this is Wesley and Beverly Crusher, what can we get started for you today?"

I was working as a barista the other day, wearing the second drive-thru headset so that I could start making drinks as soon as the customer ordered them. It's an efficient system, and listening to people make up names is always entertaining. One of my coworkers, especially, never actually uses our real names; one day we were Timone and Pumbaa, another day we were Calvin and Hobbes. As soon as he finished that order though, I had to ask him, "Why Wesley of all characters?" For those of you unfamiliar with Star Trek, I'll note that Wesley Crusher is quite possibly the single most universally-hated character in that series.

He looked surprised when I asked that, and the ensuing conversation quickly turned to science fiction. If you don't frequent coffee shops, or perhaps have never paid attention to the people behind the counter, we tend to talk a lot while working, it helps to relieve the tedium of making the same four or five drinks a couple hundred times a day. What stood out to me most about that conversation however was my coworkers' surprise at finding out that I, a woman, love science fiction. How could I not? The sense of discovery and adventure have always appealed strongly to me, and exploring the universe is a logical extension of my early love of the great explorers such as Magellan and Cook. For one who generally finds history tedious, I had a remarkable love of the explorers. It's not a subject that one would expect to interest only males, and yet I have repeatedly encountered incredulity that I love it as I do.

It's something that has never made any sense to me, this illogical assumption that all or most science fiction fans are men. While much early science fiction writing did tend to objectify women and cast them almost solely as either damsels in distress or objects of desire, that has long since changed and strong female characters are written often and well. It is, therefore, a genre that should in theory be equally accessible to both men and women, though the majority of the fans I meet tend to be men. This could be due to two things: either the majority of fans are men, or I expect them to be and therefore do not speak to other women about science fiction as often as I do men. Bias is perhaps most difficult to detect in yourself, and therefore I can never really be certain if I am guilty of the latter.

Either way though, the disbelief that I am faced with when expressing my love of science fiction is a reality. A nonsensical one, but a reality nonetheless. What I fail to understand is why it happens. Why do people assume that science fiction fans are men, and that women who enjoy it are an aberration?

The same thing happens with video games, especially of the shooter variety. I'm particularly fond of Team Fortress 2, a game which, as the name implies, relies strongly upon teamwork in online games. Much of this is coordinated via team voice chat, and a reaction I hear all too often is "Where did the girl come from?" "There's a girl here?" "Make me a sandvich!" (The "v" in "sandvich" refers to one of the characters, which can regain health by eating a "sandvich".) Gamers are already an often-marginalized group, and to be further marginalized by them is a rather disheartening experience. I tend to keep quiet now, speaking only when necessary or when I hear another female already in the game.

Both science fiction and video games should appeal to women as strongly as they do to men. They work on ideas that are universal aspects of humanity, not just masculinity or femininity. Despite this, the core fan base is assumed to be male, whether or not it's actually true. I hope that this changes within my lifetime, because men and women alike can look up at the stars and dream of going there themselves. We can look at the Moon and wonder what it would be like to actually live there, or watch a rocket launch and wish that we were on board.

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Perhaps my dream is best exemplified by Commander Shepard, the main character of the Mass Effect video game series. Man or woman, Shepard is a strong leader who commands his/her ship, bringing his/her crew through the most difficult of circumstances to eventually save not just Earth, but the entire galaxy. If Shepard happens to be a woman, not one person comments on her gender with any surprise that she is doing what she is doing; her competence is simply accepted as fact. While this was originally an accident of script-writing, most scenes changing nothing but the pronoun with which people referred to Shepard, it served to create one of the strongest female characters ever seen in a video game, and that is a very good thing.

I work again tomorrow. If I have a different drive-thru pseudonym, I'm hoping that this time it's Zoe Washburn, though I wouldn't object to Kathryn Janeway.

I feel I must confess...

I am not a girly girl. Most of you who know me should be aware of this fact. I like my video games and action movies, and my preferred genre of book is science fiction. Though I am a feminist, I am a feminist in the "we are all the same so why differentiate ourselves" manner. I regularly open doors for men, carry my own propane tanks out to the car, and generally conform to few of the expectations we have of women in society today. 

But, I confess, there is one glaring exception. 

I love costume dramas, especially those set in Regency- or Victorian-era England. I love North and South and Pride and Prejudice. If I'm feeling down, I can watch Wives and Daughters or Jane Eyre. They are girly in all of the ways that I usually hate, and I love them nonetheless. 

Of course, they are usually done incredibly well, especially if the BBC had a role in their production. The acting and casting are usually phenomenal, the scores are simple enough not to detract from the acting but still beautiful, and the behind-the-scenes set and costume people do a marvelous job. They are, in fact, usually among the best-produced shows on television, HBO's massive-budget affairs aside. 

And really, I can't help but love the scripts. "I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell, and it is white, snow white." People don't really speak like that any more. A few might write like that, but it's certainly not the norm, and hasn't been for some time. I speak and write more formally than some, and I still don't even begin to approach that level of eloquence. Though of course, it's sometimes the shortest lines that have the most impact. "Look back at me... Look back at me." One of the best scenes in all of North and South.  

If you can't tell, I've just gotten through rewatching that particular miniseries. It truly is one of the best costume dramas around. I can't find fault with the acting, for even the most ridiculous characters are like that on purpose. It's also one of the few I've seen that deals with laborers in that time period, and the only one that wasn't written by Charles Dickens; though to be fair, he was Elizabeth Gaskell's editor. Either way, it is both a wonderful defense and a condemnation of unionization, which is a theme rarely explored. 

I suppose, in the end, it's all because I'm a bit of a romantic. Not necessarily in the most modern sense, because I truly can't stand romance novels or supposed "romantic comedies", but in a sense that is perhaps a bit older. I believe in the triumph of love over initial prejudices, in second chances, in imperfect people, and that "nice guys/girls finish last" is a load of bologna. Some of us just take longer than others. 

Texas Spring

I drove home from College Station earlier this afternoon. The drive lasts an hour and a half, and is usually not a pleasant trip. Cars go too fast, other cars go too slow, and farm machinery occasionally clogs up the narrower roads along my way. I usually just have to bear it with the help of some good music and, so long as I'm in range, KUHF, Houston's NPR station. As I drive through Magnolia, I am forced repeatedly to see the destruction wrought by last summer's wildfire, blackened trees, skeletal and bare. I am reminded of the horrors that Texas' fickle weather can cause, and just what can happen when there is no rain. 

 But then there are days like today, gorgeous spring afternoons without a cloud in sight. The fields have returned once again to green, and they are dotted with wildflowers in vibrant yellows and reds and purples. The bluebonnets are starting to bloom, and the land is starting to recover from last year's drought, though the burnt forests are as desolate as ever. Their time will come again. 

 Today's drive was actually rather pleasant. Highway speeds are too fast to enjoy rolling my windows down, but it was nice to see the sunshine and the flowers and the thankfully green grass. Sometimes, it's good to be in Texas.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview

I was honestly a little excited when I got to installing the new preview of Windows 8. It's like that with any piece of software I install though, I become like a child getting a new toy, I want to play with it and discover all of its functions. An operating system is on a whole other level though, because it just does so much more than any other piece of software. It's rare that I'm honestly disappointed when I first start messing around with a new operating system.

This was one of those instances, at least at first glance.

Windows 8 seems like it'll be brilliant on tablets and tablet PCs, but it's optimized for those at the expense of those of us on a regular computer, and more so for those of us who are either on a desktop or use a regular mouse with a laptop.

The system is set up like I've come to expect from an operating system that's used on touch-based devices. The old Windows start menu is completely gone, replaced with a brand-new start screen that seems to want nothing more than to make you use nothing but Windows products (though at least the Mail program supports Gmail, I'm not sure about others). Of course, this may be due at least in part to the fact that the Metro apps bundled with the preview are all Windows-owned, and hopefully this will change in the future. It is, thankfully, somewhat customizable, so anything you don't use can be moved to the side and more frequently-used programs can be placed in prominent positions.

Presumably, you can swipe to the side on a tablet or possibly on a laptop with mouse gestures in order to display more programs. On a desktop, this can be controlled with the scroll wheel on your mouse, as well as by dragging the scrollbar. The setup seems like a good idea in theory, until I realized that I have forty-two different program folders under my Win 7 start menu, and many of these contain multiple programs. The start screen is going to get clunky and crowded, fast.

It probably doesn't help that I find it one of the ugliest operating systems I've yet seen, and I'm accounting for Linux distros in that. The colors just seem strange, don't coordinate well, and are frankly just unattractive. There are a few other things that are a bit off-putting. There is a desktop, but I can't quite divine its purpose. I know that non-metro apps will exist, but you'll still have to go to the start screen to get to them. The desktop should be familiar to anyone who's used Windows 7, with one glaring difference: there is no start button. At all. It's gone. Instead, to get to the start menu, you have to click the bottom left-hand pixel.

Settings are also in a strange place. The Control Panel of old is gone, and the settings are now in a hidden menu revealed by moving your mouse to the screen's top or bottom right. It sometimes took me a couple of tries to get to items on that menu without the menu inexplicably disappearing on me. It's not a system that's intuitive and easy to use, at least not for someone who's grown accustomed to the "old" Windows.

On the other hand, is it fast? Yes. I was immensely pleased by the start-up time on my computer. In technical aspects, Windows 8 excels. It used less memory than 7, and supposedly uses less processor power, though Task Manager so rarely shows mine going over 0% that it's hard to tell. For all its aesthetic flaws, Windows 8 is a bit of a technical marvel.

The changes will be difficult to get accustomed to. I'm sure that updated drivers will help immensely when the full release arrives, since I couldn't get my video card to work properly due to lacking one. Will I probably buy 8 when it's released? Yes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go boot back into my Windows 7 partition.

Beginnings

Hello world.


I'm not much of a writer. To be frank, I'm not much of anything. I'm starting this little project to humor a friend who thinks that my writing could be "entertaining". Though in all honesty, it's also to satisfy my own curiosity: can I manage to write anything worth reading? Do I have thoughts that translate into words and fill pages?


I can't be certain, but I suppose I'll find out.