Not Anonymous

I will not be fasting this year.

I'll be going to Koll Nidrei, as I do every year. But I won't be fasting.
It took me a long time to figure out why, as a non-believer, as someone who would more often than nor buck tradition than follow it (or at the very least, update it to fit the times and my personal philosophy), I'd felt the need to fast in previous years.

Nostalgia.

Pure and simple, nostalgia.

I go to hear and sing along with everyone Koll Nidrei, because it moves me, I feel the water in my body vibrate along with the congregation that repeats, repeats, repeats the Hazan (Cantor) as he sings and dirges the words of the Book.

I don't think I need to deny myself anything in order to make visible the repentance (that I don't feel).
I have no soul that needs purification.

I've been losing weight and that's been weighing on my mind. I hate that as I get thinner I think more about how fattening things are and I've not even been trying to lose weight.
I was happy where I was.
It's been a tough week, month, year.
It would have caught up with me I suppose.
If I don't see myself fattening up after the Holidays and during Uni I'll go see if there's an actual problem with me.
I am looking pale.
Because I'm tired; I've not caught up on the sleep I've lost over the past couple of days.

I will not be fasting.
With any luck I'll make myself a cup of coffee at a friends house this evening after prayers and catch up on True Blood tomorrow... maybe I'll watch an ep or two of Torchwood.
Or Life on Mars.

Definitely listen to Leonard Cohen... my lovely man.

Just this evening, at the Berlin World Track and Field Championships, Caster Semenya of South Africa won the 800 metre distance run.

I saw it on teevee and I was amazed.

She left them all in the dust, a few of the other athletes were utterly bewildered.

Now she faces a gender probe, more info here.
That is, she's going to go under the invasive procedure of "making sure" she's female, because she did too well in her field.

Such is the fate of female athletes who are too successful.

I don't know what how Semenya ID's, nor do I care, however, her appearance is butch... too butch for the comfort of the athletics committee.

Diversity within female "sex" is verboten, obviously.

I'm smelling the misogyny, transphobia, homophobia and racism from here, in my little dusty room.

Maybe one day athletic categories will be divided through comparative abilities, rather than through gender segregation.

I saw this graph* this morning.
Just a few days ago I was talking to some friends about Watchmen and one of the things everyone agreed about was how hilarious it was to see Dr. Manhattan's, well, schmuck.

Nobody cares about tits any more.

Mainly because tits are there for the looking. Women's fashion is designed to accentuate the curve of ones breast, bras are there to support as well as to enhance, cleavage is the monetary unit of the tits.
They everywhere.
And thus they are no where.

The penis in our culture, as XKCD put it succinctly is obsessed upon.
It's put on a pedestal, without it sex isn't real, in fact without it there is no sex.
That is what is called phallocentrism, that is to say, the cultural narrative focuses around the image which the penis evokes.
Penis origionally meant "tail", a "shcmuck" is a snake, in Hebrew the slang word for penis is "zaiyn" - זין - which, among other things, means weapon.

In Watchmen we see Dr. Manhattan's penis sway as he walks. But Dr. Manhattan himself is the phallus.

I was shocked to see it.
I knew there would be nudity in the film, after all, the comic book isn't shy about the Doc's nudity.
But comic books are not that easily translated onto the big screen. That dick may be blue, but it is looks real.
For many, this is probably the first non-pornographic penis have ever seen on screen and in the cinema.
Tits, very likely, the average viewer has seen aplenty on screen, on teevee etc.
Seeing a dick on screen is rare and special.

The cock, despite being a sex organ, is not defied as a sex object.
It is the thing through which sex is made.
Sex is of course power.
Seeing the source of power on screen, in all it's banal "glory" is not the way we - boys, girls and others - are used to thinking about it.

Which is why every body is talking about it.
We are seeing the source of cultural power.
The female body is invisible to cultural power, because it is by default powerless by virtue of being a sex object.
As I've said, we usually do not see the penis itself, we see the phallus - that would be a gun, a suit, a cigarette, etc.

Personally, I think the more male full frontal nudity the better.
Not because I want to see more naked men - but because it can be a way of levelling the image playing field.
If nudity is something that equal on screen, then maybe phallocentrism won't be such a huge burden on us.

*( Graph image under the cut )

I was sent a link to here and had to repost it on my own.

Because of various issues people have with the human body this is probably considered not work safe, but there is no way this is going behind a cut.




In addition, the genocide in Darfur must be stopped.

וכמו כן, צריך לעצור את רצח העם בדרפור.

It's been a while since I wrote something of "importance".
I suppose it's because I've taken a break from the news and all the things that cause outrage are out of my scope at the moment... that and hagar_972 reads the news and writes about it, so it seems a bit redundant to write about it myself... which is odd since our readership is not the same, though we share quite a few readers they're friends we know IRL.

One thing I did a couple of weeks ago and didn't tell any one and those who've seen me have seen it and that is that I bleached my hair.
Yup I'm a blond and no, I'm not having any more fun than I was before. I do, however, got a boost in my self image which I hadn't had in a couple of months, the amount of time I hadn't been shaving my head.
I think I got tired of my Mother's disappointed gaze every time she looked at me, she really hated the fact that I shaved, she felt I was taking away from myself.
It appears that very few people actually like my shaved hair... which shouldn't really bother, since I didn't do it for other people, I bleached my hair for a change, not to make myself look better - it's just that, I hate the fact that my hair has this much of an affect on my self-esteem and image.
I really liked having a shaved head and will most likely shave it again once the weather is more stable and not so chilly. But again, I'm not sure I can handle my mother's gaze again, I mean it's not like I looked bad (I looked great!) and besides I'm pretty, it'd have to be a disaster to look bad, because if you're good looking, or feel good about yourself there isn't much you can do to yourself that will looks bad.

But enough of that, this isn't the place for shallow pondering and self pity. Then again this is LJ, where "Drama are us".
I like drama.
I like making waves, I enjoy making a slight difference and seeing people's reaction, I like making a whole lot of difference.

I suddenly know what I want to write a post about.

There is suddenly a trend of bi-phobia going on in many of the communities I'm a member of.

Indeed there is a problem of visibility when one is Bi, since western culture is so effing obsessed with duality and binary thought.
If you are a woman and are desiring a woman (in abstract) you are homosexual.
If you are a woman and are desiring a man (in abstract) you are heterosexual.
And of course, if you're a woman who desires women and you are currently involved with a man, you are what?

According to our enlightened culture, I am, as a Bisexual (for instance): 1) confused, 2) "just curious", 3) a slut and 4) giving a bad name to the queer community.
Those are the 4 most common epithets given to Bisexuals from both ends; the Hetero-normative and the binary gay and Lesbian society*
(*I'm making sweeping general statements for arguments sake.)
And these thoughts are internalized by everyone including bisexuals who are just being who they are.

I first came out at 15 to my mother (which looking back was a mistake, since why should parents, especially parents who have gone through the whole Teen thing, take their 15 years old daughter seriously) I remember she said; "why don't you try being hetero first", and while I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt me by saying this. After all, all she wanted was for me to be happy and by adhering to hetero-normative behaviour I would be happy.
That was not the case.
I kept silent for five years.
Five years of feeling invisible to my family, of being afraid to even contemplate dating a girl, and settling for boys who I dated because that's what a girl does in her teens does.
But I never went back to being straight.

I was always Bi.
It's only during the army that I became queer.
Make sense?
No?
Well, in the army you find a niche, a clique I lacked in high school (since there was self consciousness, self loathing and other lovely things teenagers go through) and became friends with a bunch of queers (Yo "Gang"! I love you!), so I decided to be visible (not in the army, didn't need the heat), but I decided to come out again, since 19 is more stable than 15!
My father was very blase about the whole thing is a kind of "I'm your father I don't want to know things about your sex life!" which was a nice normal reaction I suppose.
And my mother asked me "Why do you insist on advertising your sexuality!?"
Because if I don't how will people know? And besides it's not like I walk up to people I just met and introduce myself as "Melody the Bisexual" and then go and ask them their sexual orientation
"Why must people know?"
Because people assume upon meeting anyone that they are like them. Meaning, if I went to a private gathering of people both old and new, the new (having never met me before) will assume that by my appearance (shaved head and all), that I am a straight woman.
Why?
Because that's what "normal, heterosexual" people do.
They assume that everyone is the way they are.
This is not always the case and it is hetero-normative brain washing that is causing the pain and confusion in many people with non binary sexualities - I don't even want to get into gender issues, because despite the fact that I was born a grrl in a female body, that doesn't mean every one was. It also doesn't mean that because I'm a girl (Grrl) I want to do what is traditionally expected of me.
I do not want to have children.
I do not wan to get married by the time I am thirty.
I do not believe in watching what I eat in order to lose weight (though I am currently struggling with my body image)
I believe make up is not necessary to accentuate your features.
I do not believe high heals are necessary in order to look sexy.
I think men in women's clothing is hot
I think women in men's clothing is hot.
I think women and men are hot in general.
I want to change the world.
I am a die hard sarcastic, cynical bitch.
You wanna contradict me!?
I want to be controversial.
I want to be a role-model to my nephews and niece (all of them have kick-ass Mothers, my very Feminist Big Sisters).

My stream of consciouses seems to be sliding away from the subject matter which is bi-phobia.
In essence bi-phobia is a symptom of a society unwilling to break away from it's own subjective norms and agendas.
There is no Black and White. Good and Evil - certainly good and evil actions, but the abstract concepts of Good and Evil do not work in our ambivalent, far from perfect world.

Yes we're Bi.
Yes we're Queer.
But are necessarily here?

What I'm trying to say is that we, those in between, those who are not the "Default" on either side of the spectrum, but rather are a part of the spectrum, must shrug off these self imposed criteria which only cause suffering and confusion.


I hope this wasn't too random and illogical.