bad mood

deep sigh. I've had this rant building up for a while, and now i kind of feel like getting started on it, but now i'm listening to wheat - don't i hold you and feeling all apathetic and I think it might come out more like wistful, mildly angry, rambling.


I think it started to settle when i was in Spain, although there were inklings of the ideas before. Getting whistled and called at in the street daily for half a month for no crime other than just being there really got me annoyed.

It's not a compliment. I assure you. I stepped off a 5 hour train journey on an unconditioned train, was taken to the end of a bus route by a jackass bus driver who didn't have a decent cell in his body, and had to walk back into town in 100+ heat, was obviously looking like the back end of a lorry... and a guy in a cafe still found it necessary to yell something. It has nothing to do with how a girl actually looks as far as I can see. It's just that, to these guys, that's what you do with women.

To be honest, it's not even the yelling that annoyed me that much. I think it just subconsciously got me thinking and now I can't stop. I never thought I'd be bothered by things like this at all, but i kind of feel like I don't have a choice.

I was idly looking up things about storm chasing, and saw that just 2% of storm chasers are women. There was a link to a rant by a female storm chaser about it, and it seems like she's saying that even if you put yourself in the man's world, as she has done, she's never going to get treated the same. She asked why it was that there were so few women... less desire for danger/excitement, less competitiveness, more responsible... but I don't care about any of that. I'm more bothered by the fact that even though she's gone for it, ignored what her gender dictates and done something dominated by men, she feels that people don't value her opinions or work as much because she's a woman.

Like I say, I didn't think this would ever bother me, because it never occured to me really. I just didn't realise that there were such gender issues going on. I thought we were past that?

Another thing is, (I feel like I'm writing a debate speech, but i don't know who I'm trying to convince of what), that I was thinking about... well I don't know how to start. It just seems like women are much more expected to change themselves to be what a man wants, than the other way around. Men do whatever they want, and girly things are looked down on. Yet at the end of the day, on the whole, women are expected to be "feminine". I know guys are expected to be masculine and manly just as much... but no ones ever gone "urgh football, that's so guyish" in the same way that they've said "urgh shopping, that's so girly." It's a weird paradox (is that the right word?) of femininity being looked down on... but also required.

Oh god, this too. Yesterday due to speaker breakage, I was listening to local radio, this talk show that I hate, and the DJ was doing little clips of people phoning in over the past few days. So it was kind of an advert. They basically let any nutter on the air to blabber on about whatever for as long as they want. They have callers on for half an hour at a time, just talking about nothing. (kind of like a blog :)) Anyway, they were playing clips. One about a ghost story, one about some woman felt stabbing pains as her brother was being stabbed, then he said "ooh and we've also talked about sex"... and this is transcript (from memory but i have a pretty good memory with this kind of thing)

DJ: So you just kept on peeling the potatoes? (at this point I thought it was a story about a rape.)
Caller: Yeah.
DJ: woa..
Caller: Just kept on peeling.
DJ: (bursts out laughing incredulously)
Caller: (Laughs along)
DJ: so.. so what happened?
Caller: (at this point it becomes apparent that she's just talking about a normal encounter with her husband) I just kept on peeling...
DJ: Ha ha, good woman.
Caller: He... did what he had to do and went off to have a shower, and by the time he came back I had his dinner on the table.
DJ: (Laughs again) Ah brilliant, just like a woman should, after all, a womans' place is in the kitchen.

Now, I know that last bit is the DJ him deliberately being inflamatory but my god. I don't even know where to begin. It's utterly disgusting that a man could have such little respect for his wife, his wife could not care (because after all, what more can she expect?) and phone into a radio station about it, some fucktard DJ could *laugh* about it, and then they'd use it as an *advert* for the radio station. I hate people.