I don't really know how to describe the feeling? FOMO somehow, maybe? I don't like it though.

It's like when there's two or three popular anime series and everyone is only talking about them and you just sit there after giving them a try like, "yeah, okay I see the appeal but... *munches on some popcorn while rewatching an anime from 10 years ago*"

I don't hate the series that this applies to. I kinda feel like maybe I just don't get it? I have felt this way even in middle school about books.

This is more about experiences outside of tumblr.

Day 33; No Sleep

Structures. What are they for? Population control? Self-identification?

Most feel more comfortable with the latter explanation. It gives them a sense of control. 

The common man has no control when they see the very structures they’ve grown so accustomed and have abided by are not their own choice. Time allowed the lines of free will to be blurred. Am I drinking this tea because I’m thirsty or someone told me to? Who told me to? Was it me or someone else? How could I know I’m not being watched by someone I can’t see the very same way I do on a television. Watching a character, who’s been given lines of what to say from the minute they were born out of the creativity of someone else’s mind. The character itself was born into a structure. Everything for that character was decided for them; the setting, plot, their dreams, goals and desires. From start to finish, the character has already gotten a fate that’s been decided. In the creative medium, that character thinks all its choices are freewill… not knowing they’re actually a script. When you look at film and media from the lenses of blurred reality, it opens the door for comparisons to our own real life experiences.

From the day you are born, you are given a series of labels, followed by structures you will have to grow to mold yourself in. From day one, you are told your name, that you must live up to the actions of those bearing the same name, and fixated to a cult of family known as a bloodline and further fixated into a religion or lack thereof. You are decided to be poor, or rich. If you’re on the inside or outside of the socio-economic barriers called class. You’re given choices to make with consequences, whether they be dire or not. You grow to find people are easily manipulated, that you can commit acts of dishonesty and they’re none-the-wiser without proof other than your hearsay. It becomes easy to you. You’ve learned how certain people think. You are able to predict how they react in certain scenarios and then begin to craft scenarios for your benefit, hoping to get their reaction to go according to your plan. You’ve now eliminated them of freewill. They think their choices are their own. On a smaller scale, this type of manipulation is harmless. ‘A little white lie’. But on a gargantuan scale, this small like can grow from harmless to devastating. 

Unbeknownst to them that you have been feeding them the very information they believed to have come up with on their own. You allow them to feel that sense of power while simultaneously stripping them of it. You are in control of what they say or do because you have an understanding of structure. How it’s not real. It’s only information you’ve been feeding them and they’re expected to conform because that goes with your plan. You’ve used the very structures that were given to you to keep you in line to keep the ones who’ve structured you in line. Act accordingly while simultaneously observing their nature. If I am dishonest about this and i am not caught, I have outsmarted the system because now, only I know the truth. Have you ever noticed what happens when you hide the truth from someone? They’re blissful until that truth has been unveiled. If you can keep the veil on, there is no other truth to their knowledge. 

Maintaining that hidden truth proves difficult to do amongst a small group of people. They begin to talk and find inconsistencies with one another due to perspective. One’s own perspective influences their interpretation of the truth. Perspective allows for a system of belief. In other words. “I’ve seen this with my own two eyes, it must be true.” But if they’ve been seeing an illusion for most of their lives, they’ve attached themselves to their beliefs rather than their rationality. They become  synonymous with the truth they’ve been fed. Reminding the control of this only reinforces the strength of the veil. Any moment they began to question if the information they’ve been fed is the only truth has been erased because they’re now self-righteous and belief oriented. Humans are very stubborn beings. Once their belief is challenged, they will do anything to convince others of their correctness. Why? The short answer is fear.

Fear of what would happen if they were wrong. That means having to confront a truth they’ve spent so long in the dark about. Not knowing what's on the other side of that truth they’ve been fed. To question one believe opens another door to question everything you’ve been told and have taken as fact. It destroys all your structures. What’s real and what’s not real? You come into this world belonging to someone or something. A structure has been made for you when you are born. 

As I’ve grown older, the lines between fiction and reality become harder and harder to see. I notice the patterns in nearly everything. I try to ignore them and stay blissfully ignorant, but there’s no denying that some things are just… weird.

Some phrases repeated a few too many times, some shapes look a bit too familiar. Deja-vu over and over. I know I've been here before. Have i visited it in a dream? Have I been here in a different timeline and my consciousness is being shared with someone else? Is it narcissistic to think that said consciousness is an alternate version of me? What if it’s a completely different person born to a completely different structure and we synced because of our position under the stars or some bullshit like that. I could never be sure without allowing myself to give up this reality and explore endless possibilities and theories.

It started after I was addicted to playing games that allowed me to be fully in control.Prime example; Sims 4 I was the god in their world. I birthed these characters. Decided what I wanted them to look like, how I wanted them to act how I wanted them to be. Decided personality traits, where they would live, what kind of job they would have. How much money they’d make. Everything they ever did, I was in control of. I told them when to shit, when to eat, when to fuck. Everything. That kind of power allowed me to step outside of being myself and to be someone else. God. I didn’t understand why that felt so freeing. It wasn't until I began to question my own sanity outside the game. What if I don't actually want to play this game? What if I’m the actual Sim thinking i’ve got free will and someone else is controlling what I do or say? Then what? My power diminished. I was nothing more than a vessel. I’d never know unless I sought out the truth past the structures I've been given to live in.

Blurring those lines prove dangerous to me. I’m a black woman. A gay black woman.

These structures i’ve been confined within make it difficult to leave this vessel. They hold weight. I’m expected to live out past my structures. To make something great of myself despite the labels I've been given. These labels are “self empowered” we always hear about a struggle behind these labels. How hard it is to live within them because I live in a system designed not for my socio-economic benefit. An apologetic system that wants to allow a certain percentage of people from my sort of background to be the “token” of businesses. To demand they show a fair balance between me and that of my possibly Caucasian counterparts. Affirmative action-y type of thing. It’s not winning if it’s handed to you, right? But everything has been handed to me. And I don’t mean that in a “my life is super silver-spooned” type way. I mean that in, these cards were not my dealings. I didn’t sit at this table to talk about why I am what I am. Who I am.

I was told this was my name, this was my class, this was my gender, this was my struggle, do something about it. 

It’s almost as is my life is one big test and I'm being monitored by someone i can’t see. Someone who constantly is scripting my movie, making changes to parts of my life. And flashbacks and deja-vu are scenes I've filmed already as this character that are part of the deleted scenes.

The only escape is through dreams. And even then, those contain a whole new take on what reality actually is. I’ve had recurring dreams littered with signs or allusions to my life outside of that realm. I’ve felt the most free in my dreams. I struggle to remember them when i wake up but i always seem to remember the point of them. How they’re messages or sometimes, often times, escapes. 

Then it hit me. I felt free when I was God in that game, not because of that sense of power. But because I could spend time not being binded to these structures that I live in everyday. I could spend time being someone else.

And that’s why writing in first person these stories about Korean performers was so liberating. I was writing as If i was really a Nam Joon or Ji Min. Exploring and observing their personalities on camera and alluding to what it would be like to reduce their existence to characters in a story where I could make them do what I wanted. Feed my own emotions into the piece at the time and make them react to real life situations I dealt with as themselves and instead of me. It fucks with you when you stop writing and you have to go back to being confined in your structures. But it fucks with you more when you work a 9-5 like a zombie knowing this is nothing but another structure where your creative outlet is being muted so you can make time to be someone you are not. 

But is that really any different than sitting at a computer for 7 hours concocting a tale of lust, angst and drama. Pretending to be someone you are not. I am the god in my stories. I am the god in my video games. I am not the god in my present day life. 

Blog Entry #4: Barbie as a Model of a Transforming Society

Mattel’s ability to develop new advertising strategies and react to consumer desires has been a hallmark of the company’s success. Barbie has simultaneously shaped and responded to the expectations of the marketplace. However, Barbie also functions as a reflection of the values of the American popular culture. While the doll has been deemed a poor influence by some and regarded by others as a positive role model, she appears to be less a trendsetter than a mirror in which we can view society’s changing course.

A Working Woman

As Barbie entered the workforce, she modeled an emerging pattern. A new wave of feminism was surfacing. Women were being told that they shouldn’t have to settle for being “just” a housewife. A career promised a woman money of her own and a status that homemaking didn’t, and many women were ready to claim that promise. Although Barbie’s early professions were limited to those considered appropriate for a woman in the early 1960s—fashion model, nurse, ballerina, flight attendant—she represented the power of choice and independence. Since then she has had, by Mattel’s count, over 100 professions, representing various lines of work. Whether a fashion designer, paleontologist, NASCAR driver, pilot, veterinarian or Olympian, Barbie has always been a career girl, and through the years she has reflected the changing nature of career options for women.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun(ds)

With no husband or children, Barbie has instead a world filled with possessions. Her life of glamour and glitz is reflective of her financial success, independence, and material wealth: a ‘dream house,’ a convertible, a pool, a camper, a Jacuzzi, a couture wardrobe, a dog, and so on. Barbie’s accumulation of goods mirrors the postwar consumer lifestyle that had been praised as a method of bolstering the economy. “Mass consumption in postwar America would not be a personal indulgence, but rather a civic responsibility,” according to historian Lizabeth Cohen in A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.

By the time Barbie was introduced to the world, the U.S. economy was progressing and the consumer lifestyle booming. Marketing techniques were being cultivated in a way to not only sell to the most customers, but to keep those customers coming back for more. Cohen notes the potential of advertising to imprint certain desires on the consumer: “Not accidentally, advertisements targeting children as a segment in the 1950s and 1960s sought to lay the groundwork for a lifetime of consumption...Mattel’s teenage Barbie with her closets full of fashionable outfits and accessories taught the importance of how you dressed and what you owned.”

“The Look”

Though its form has varied over time, beauty has always been valued, resulting in pressure to conform to whatever is considered beautiful in any given time. While Barbie has been accused of representing an impossible physical standard for girls, resulting in self-image problems and in some cases eating disorders as they mature, Ruth Handler’s view was that Barbie’s shape actually “typified what the feminine ideal was in the late 1950s.” A glance at popular actresses of the time confirms that a slender, hourglass figure was a popular media image. Through magazines, television, and movies, women were pressured to meet that physical standard.

That pressure has only increased in our media-saturated world. Women and girls are overwhelmed by images and words, telling them what this season’s ideal look is and just how to achieve it. Even Barbie has had her look altered several times over the years to keep up with changing beauty ideals.

Source:

https://www.vision.org/society-and-culture-barbie-turns-50-672

Death by Misadventure: “Russian Doll”

[This post brought to you with major spoilers for season 1 of Netflix’s show “Russian Doll” and the 1993 film “Groundhog Day,” as well as minor spoilers the 2011 film “Source Code.” It also includes mentions of suicide and death. “Russian Doll” is rated TV-MA for mature audiences.]

“Thinking about death without, for the moment, actually dying is heady. Humans must surely be the only animals who contemplate doom, and as long as we do so, we are still human—and paradoxically not doomed.“

- Virginia Heffernan, “The Beautiful Benefits of Contemplating Doom”

I’ve written the intro to this blog post five times.

Two of them were placeholders, representing the various iterations the post went through as it was being written. Par for the course, as every blog post shifts directions once or twice in its lifespan. Two of them were vague and disconnected, a little less graceful than I prefer on average. One was far too short, the other winding in its logic in a way that lost sense even to me early on. And the last one? 

The last one was perfect.

It was graceful, it was anecdotal, it was philosophical. I physically got out of bed in the middle of the night to write it. I had dreams about this intro! It was the best in casual pop culture analysis blog-writing introductions that I had produced to date.

And then it was gone. 

Maybe I saved over it, maybe it never saved to begin with, or maybe it really all was just a very weird and vivid and nerdy dream. But when I logged on for final review last night, it was apparent - the intro was gone without a trace. No proof that it had ever existed except for the disappointment of one unfortunate blogger.

Honestly, there are very few narratives more appropriate for an iterative struggle like this one than the one we’re discussing today. Its characters too are given the opportunity to try things over again - whether they want it or not. Only for them, the thing that has them starting over is a little more dramatic than a lost file. 

In fact, it’s death.

“Russian Doll” begins with the 36th birthday party of software engineer Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne), who begins to experience a time loop of repeated deaths - being hit by a car, drowning, tumbling down stairs - that always lands her back at the night of her party. Perplexed (to say the least) by the happenings, Nadia attempts to break out of the cycle through various means to no avail before encountering Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett), a fellow New Yorker and a friend-of-a-friend who is also stuck in a time loop of the night his girlfriend breaks up with him. Together, they discover how to escape the loop, just before it wrecks both of their lives completely. (If you’ve never seen the show, or don’t want to see it, there’s an even more in-depth synopsis of “Russian Doll” over on Refinery29!)

"Time loops” in narratives often (though not exclusively) go one of two ways: They are a vehicle for self improvement or a vehicle for rescue.

On one hand, they create a sand-box of impermanence for moral redirection, forcing the protagonist to right their wrongs before proceeding with their lives. Nobody remembers the awful things done or said during the time loop; they only witness the reformed character that comes out the other side. In perhaps the most famous example of this type, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) relives Groundhog Day until he comes to respect the residents of Punxatawney, Pennsylvania in the 1993 film “Groundhog Day.”

(In literary/cinematography analysis, this is aspect of repetitive moral rebuilding within a time loop is frequently associated with religious symbolism or themes. That’s a whole other rabbit [or should I say...groundhog?] hole that I won’t go down in depth here, other than to say that “Russian Doll” seems to use this typicality as a misdirection for both characters and viewer. Nadia does investigate whether or not the fact that her loop begins in a former Yeshiva school could have something to do with her entrapment, but since Alan also experiences the phenomenon and starts in a different building, this is proven unlikely.)

When time loops aren’t being used to rehabilitate a morally questionable character, they’re often used as a mechanism for rescue. Whether it’s a specific person in danger or the world as a whole, being stuck in a time loop gives a character the opportunity to try and fail to remedy a situation without immediate consequence. Ultimately, the only thing that could prove a substantial or lingering challenge is the question of futility. Is this something that can actually be fixed, or is there a “destiny” that the situation must conform to, no matter their actions? Whereas in the first example, a time loop gave the character a playground to practice functional goodness, heroism-focused time loops give the character the opportunity to perfect a complex good deed when they are vastly underpowered to do so. “Source Code” (2011 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal) is one such of these films; one man relives the last eight minutes of a stranger’s life in order to determine who has bombed a Chicago commuter train, starting with a grand total of zero clues. The time loop is only broken after he has completed his task. (There are some plot twists in there, though, trust me. A fairly satisfying “nothing on TV” Saturday afternoon movie.)

All of that noted to say that “Russian Doll” doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into either of these categories. 

Neither Nadia nor Alan have significant moral wrongs to right (at least that are shared with the viewer). Instead, both are ignoring major turmoil in their lives - their true emotional states. 

Nadia is ignoring childhood trauma that affected both her perception of herself and those around her, opting for self-sabotaging behaviors as an adult. At the opening of “Russian Doll,” she faces her birthday party half-heartedly, expressing more loving affection to her missing cat than the guests who have gathered to celebrate her. It’s later revealed that she ended a long-term relationship because she couldn’t bring herself to meet her partner’s daughter, though she refuses to acknowledge the emotional block.

While we see somewhat less of Alan’s predicament, in our introduction, he contends with his own fastidiousness in day-to-day life and the betrayal of his girlfriend, who leaves him for her college professor on the night Alan planned to propose. This throws him into a spiral - he gets drunk and, in the first loop, at least, commits suicide in his despair then proceeds to block out the action as he lives through future loops. 

Instead of being the termination of all of these personal struggles, dying gives both main characters a wake up call. Whereas death, in most narratives, is a dreaded obstacle, for the majority of the show, it is actually the impetus for the characters’ movement and growth in “Russian Doll.” It is simultaneously an elimination of the worst-case-scenario, giving them the repetitive space and time to probe old wounds, and a paradoxical resuscitation, breaking them from the habits that they had hidden in for so long. 

Nadia, removed from the boundary of death for herself, reckons with the fact that she does care deeply for the people around her, in various ways: She works hard to ensure her foster mother Ruth doesn’t die in a house fire, she attempts to mend her relationship with her ex, and she comes to care about Alan. Little by little, her closed-offedness falls away in layers leaving her emotionally vulnerable enough to actually be reliant on Alan by the end of the show - a huge step from the Nadia visible at the beginning of the season.

Alan, realizing the loops, has alleviated himself from the burden of perfectionism that he seems to be trapped in before meeting Nadia, abandoning his attempts to reengage with his girlfriend, fighting the professor she’d cheated with, and eventually coming to accept the situation. He embraces messiness and in it, finds release.

Does this qualify as an act of self-salvation (and, therefore, a definitive heroism-loop)? I daresay the answer is no. Neither character went into the loop with the goal of saving anyone, though much less themselves. In the end, they escape the loop (assumedly) with the other’s help. But even this could not have been done if internal changes hadn’t occurred first. Without Nadia’s awakening to her emotional attachment to those around her and Alan’s recognition that his perfectionist routines are weak against unyielding time-space phenomena (and, indeed, other major events in life as well), neither would have come to accept help at all.

The characters in “Russian Doll” are neither immoral nor heroic, in any traditional sense. They aren’t seeking to be taught a lesson, nor are they seeking to teach others. They aren’t immortal in any permanent sense. They’re just people - broken, flawed and affected by circumstance, carrying trauma. Little by little, it’s death that helps them to realize that brokenness, and, ultimately, is what brings them back to life again.

Crux of 'bois locker room' case lies in unpacking link between performance of masculinity and sexual violence

The outing of ‘bois locker room’, an Instagram group allegedly consisting of boys from Delhi’s prominent schools, who reportedly used the platform to sexually objectify young women (including minor girls and classmates of the boys), recently sparked off a row.

The police have since registered an FIR, confiscated the mobile devices of the offenders and have even taken one of the boys into custody. As the criminal justice system is set in motion, it is important that we keenly focus on how notions of masculinity — especially amongst adolescents — contribute to sexual violence, and how societal responses, including legal action against the accused, need to account for these factors.

#MeToo and the inadequate attention to masculinity

The bois locker room incident brings to mind the reverberations from India’s #MeToo movement, which brought widespread attention to the systemic violence that women face on a regular basis. The movement highlighted how entrenched structures of power perpetuate inequality and condone dehumanising treatment. The #MeToo movement thus established that violence against women is not spontaneous or the result of individual aberrations, but is often a result of the deeply internalised inequalities in gender relations.

The movement also brought to attention the need for fixing legal responses. For instance, it highlighted how problems with “due process” make the course of seeking justice a punishment in itself. It also emphasised the need for greater empathy and belief in survivors due to the entrenched constraints which women face in talking about their experiences. What perhaps did not get enough attention in the discourse were questions about the causal factors which sustain the systemic violence that women face. Societal notions of masculinity which impose high behavioural expectations on men constitute one such factor.

The bois locker room incident brings to mind the reverberations from India’s #MeToo movement, which brought widespread attention to the systemic violence that women face on a regular basis. Illustration courtesy Namaah K for Firstpost

The link between the performance of masculinity and sexual violence

Violence against women is widely understood by scholars as not being about sexual desire but as being an expression of patriarchal power. The need to express such power however may often come from the need to express one’s masculinity. An alternative branch of scholarship suggests that sexual violence is used for maintaining power hierarchies between men as much as it is used for reinforcing hierarchies between men and women. Masculinity scholars thus draw links between the performance of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and sexual violence/harassment.

The terms ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ refer to the set of patterns and practices through which gender norms (i.e. what it means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’) are reinforced in society. There can be multiple masculinities, depending upon the specific cultural setting and socio-economic background of individuals therein. Socialisation into norms of masculinity begins from childhood and leads to the imposition of behavioural codes that many men spend their lives trying to conform to. To use a film-based example, men may simultaneously aspire to be like Amitabh Bachchan from Deewaar (angry working class man) or Rishi Kapoor from Bobby (romantic hero). However, some notions of masculinity are more associated with social authority and status than others. Scholars use the term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ to refer to the most culturally honoured conception of ‘being a man’ at a given point of time. In a patriarchal society, the ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is inevitably one which legitimises the subordination of women to men (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005).

Common behavioural tropes associated with hegemonic masculinity include the need to be aggressive, unemotional, and hyper-sexual. This is reinforced by the glorification of such traits by one’s family, literature, media, movies, etc. Of course, an important caveat is that hegemonic masculinity refers to a system of ordering gender relations, not to maleness per se, and hence does not reflect the universal experience of all men. Rather, women may also imitate ideals of hegemonic masculinity in order to assert power (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005) — which explains #girlslockerroom.

However the fact remains that it is disproportionately men who perceive that the best way of proving themselves as ‘real men’/‘asli mard’ is to assert their dominance over women through acts of sexual violence. Particularly in the context of #boislockerroom the reason adolescent boys often derive pleasure in talking in derogatory ways about women’s bodies or fantasising about raping them is because it serves as a device for grappling with their anxieties about ‘manhood’ and their performance of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (i.e. proving they are not ‘gay/feminine’) (Pascoe, 2007). This explains why parents and schools rarely take such behaviour seriously, as they believe that this is ‘naturally’ expected from heterosexual young men who are just gaining awareness of the opposite sex (Robinson, 2006). Hegemonic masculinity also explains sexual and verbal violence against the LGBT community, as homosexual and transgender persons are perceived as threats to the hegemonic status quo of gender relations.

This behaviour gets exacerbated in the company of male peers because men rely upon other men to judge whether they are performing masculinity ‘correctly’. In fact, men often lie about being sexually experienced or attracted to women not because they actually desire such experiences but to avoid judgement by their peers. Many men are compelled into joining locker-room talk out of fear of harassment and accusations of being ‘womanly/queer’ if they do not participate. This explains why some men are willing to acknowledge sexist behaviour by their friends in private, but are hesitant to call out such behaviour when it actually occurs in a group setting (Pascoe, 2007; Robinson, 2006).

Rethinking responses

The existence of hegemonic ideals of ‘manhood’ certainly does not exonerate culpability for the crimes committed by the #boislockerroom group and others. However, mere retributive punishment cannot completely reform the offenders or deter similar crimes until and unless we promote alternative ideals of masculinity. Unfortunately, current criminal justice solutions for crimes against girls and women, particularly those committed by adolescents, do not factor in methods for remodeling the performance of hegemonic masculinity by offenders. In the #boislockerroom case, it is mostly probable that the offenders, if tried and convicted, will be sentenced under juvenile justice law. There is no legal framework for specifically dealing with children accused of committing sexual offences. The offenders may be released on probation, directed to perform ‘community service’ or attend general ‘therapeutic services’ which may not include gender sensitisation therapy. Even if they are imprisoned or committed to observation homes (which often resemble jails) they will most likely be made to undergo ‘vocational training’ which does nothing to address the factors motivating them to commit violence against women.

It is necessary that the State evolves multi-systemic methods for treating juvenile sex offenders, particularly those which encourage the exploration and construction of alternate masculine identities. Outside of the legal framework, it is necessary to have conversations about deconstructing gender norms at homes, schools and workplaces. Sex education programmes should not be limited to explaining themes of safe sex and consent, but should also involve discussing stereotypes and anxieties about the impact of gender roles on sexual interactions. We often condone misogyny in films and literature on the ground that these do not influence people, but the fact that these serve as reference points for idealised notions of masculinity and femininity, particularly for adolescents, can no longer be denied. It is only when the culture around us changes that a new hegemony of equity between genders can be achieved.

Megha Mehta is a judicial clerk at the Supreme Court of India and Akshat Agarwal is a research fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views expressed are personal.

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you have permission to break the rules/social “norms”/social conformity and your peers’ “benchmarks”

photo by Nelson N. Castillo

where do you live? what part of the city do you live in? do you rent? do you own? what do you do? blah blah blah?

recently I was on the beach at an upscale resort. all day sitting next to me was a woman and her husband, and occasionally their 2 children came by their cabana. I had decided to travel alone. significant other or not, I love to travel alone. I need that space to think. to feel. to think and feel what is genuinely only my thinking and feeling. this makes me a better person for those close to me and for my work. anyhow, after blatantly gazing (studying) at me on and off for a few hours as I took conference calls and lay in the sun with full buns out, I was hit with a series of non-stop questions by the woman. at first I was caught off guard, and rested enough to engage with another human, so I just began to answer them. one of the reasons I had chosen this resort in the first place was to not be bothered by anyone the way I often feel bothered in New York City. by “bother” I mean mostly crowds and unsolicited conversation, but also measured, analyzed, compared against someone else’s personal insecurity or measure of what is acceptable or successful or whatever people measure other people by. I also assumed I would be free from all of that because perhaps the people on holiday at this location had absolutely nothing to prove because…I don’t even know.

where do you live? what part of the city do you live in? do you rent? do you own? what do you do? as I began to answer these questions, I realized that the woman asking them was not engaging me — she was like filling out a form and checking boxes that didn’t even make sense to me until hours later when I thought retroactively about the odd interaction. as I gave her simple answers, she began to immediately explain why she lived in New Jersey. I found it odd, at the time of her talking away, that anyone would start to tell a stranger where they lived and why. I had not asked why. nor would I. but I was relaxed, with a fabulous bourbon drink in my hand, and I wasn’t interested in analyzing anything. she asked me if I owned and started to explain why they never bought in New York City and how it was a big regret. she said that like 3 times actually. I wasn’t even sure what she was talking about, where she was going with it or why. she then went on to ask me how I knew of such a resort, because it usually only attracts celebrities and rich people from outside the US. she told me about the yachts resort guests and how they would compete with one another on holidays and how people would try to do business with others on the beach and often used it as a connection-making holiday. she talked about how ridiculous she found it. I had been at the resort for about 3 days and I hadn’t seen any of that. in fact, I saw nothing but people like me (and only one celebrity): unconcerned with those around them, burned out from work, catatonic stares at the ocean, nothing to prove, drinks and buns out. did I mention buns out? some of the middle aged and senior folks were vaping away with their sativa pens all day long, doing business deals on the beach, drinking cocktails, and playing with their children or nieces or nephews in the water. when the woman felt like she had enough information from me, she let me know that I was “still young” as she passed me off, and it occurred to me that, after her assessment, she, with relief, believed I was in my 20s (I can guarantee that we are only about 5 years apart).

I might be wrong, but I’m pretty certain that this woman, although she loves her children (who are beautiful and seem awesome) and her husband, feels unfulfilled and was looking to know whether I had decided or not to play by my own rules in life. had I told her that I’m actually well into my 30s, that my parents or sugar daddy did not pay for my time at that beach, that I am self-made, that I sold the only thing that I ever owned, that I don’t care about buying anything ever but if I do then “fine”, that I haven’t married yet simply because I chose to focus on work and self first and I can get married any dang day I like, that I will also have children any dang day I like (yes – this is my attitude for real, happily discarding norms there as well), I’m curious as to how she would have reacted. I was much “safer” – for her own peace of mind with her lot in life – being seen as a young lucky 20-something who would undoubtedly follow the herd and suffer the same fate of lack of fulfillment and obsessive comparison to others. the fact is, my reality shatters a lot of ego when it comes to women or people in general who have made life decisions from a mostly conforming point of view. because I haven’t. and I reek of freedom. and it pisses people off. but that doesn’t mean I didn’t suffer along the way dag-nag-it. like it was some kind of cake walk for me and I just woke up like this? no. the fact also is, I look younger than my chronological year because I haven’t made decisions that make me unhappy on the inside but conform on the outside. anyway, once the woman had it in her mind that I wasn’t a threat in some way, or whatever, she acted like she didn’t see me and had never spoken to me before. I sat next to her the next day and I might as well have been a ghost as she turned her back to me — direct opposition to her state of fake friendliness and grand inquisition just 24 hours prior. but, she had collected her data, entered it into her spreadsheet of false confidence, and quickly moved onto the next situation that she could size up against her life. I couldn’t believe it! are people really like that? do they know that it is obvious?

that next day, I also had a call scheduled with my therapist. vacations and holidays can tend to be a trigger for me due to some serious early life trauma that seemed to land, without fail, on every single vacation or holiday. as my therapist and I spoke about my week and generally what was happening in my life, I briefly mentioned the woman on the beach — because honestly, the experience was just so ODD. my therapist is at least twice my age. she married super young. she had kids by 21. she has lived and she has experienced the after affects of many decisions in her life, for better and for worse. she immediately jumped to fill in the blanks for me regarding the woman at the beach, and echoed this feeling I had about people and their general desperation to fit in, but then be ok with their decision to fit in by creatively rationalizing the lives of strangers. initially what came up for me during the conversation with my therapist was the thought that maybe I’m like a societal pariah with some kind of scarlet letter, somehow wrong for staying true to myself and not selling out — that maybe this whole honoring myself thing is actually like a punishable crime! I mean, people act like it is. like the woman on the beach. the perceived threat many people feel when faced with someone else’s thinking and doing based on their internal barometer versus some manual of “social acceptance” is like the wrath of hell that they experience and then spit out at you in projection. if I had a dime for each time that has happened to me…

at the end of our conversation, my therapist told me that if she were to do it again, she never would have had children. she did it because, well, that is what you did in the 50s when you wanted to have sex with a man. you got married and then you had children. I don’t believe she regrets anything at all — there is no such thing as a mistake in life. there is only the threat of resistance to the soul once we realize that we are, in fact, not living in personal alignment. that realization is pure opportunity to shift gears at any time.

this little resort experience that I describe here is everywhere! in fact, the woman on the beach reminded me of a relative of mine — this relative of mine, every gathering that was had, would pummel me with these superficially-measured questions (how much do you charge for your sessions? how many do you do per week? — instead of what happens in a session? how do you feel? what’s that like for you?). she married super young, she was very competitive, and unfortunately given her competitiveness created for herself no purpose other than to raise two children and appear full on the outside with help from her husband’s wealth. I knew better. and she was faking a happy life, withering away in her soul, and simultaneously trying to rationalize it by eliminating me as a threat to her reality with analysis and passive aggressive comments any time she had the opportunity. her end game, each time, was to get me to question my life based on my decisions, and based on her “norms”. happy people do not do that. they don’t have to. happy people care about your heart and they talk about things that reflect that. not money or achievement by way of timely relationships.

it’s unhappy or fractured humans who impose these very “norms” that have fractured and dismantled their happiness upon others. when we listen to that radio station, or any station other than our own, we then fall prey to the same fate as those who live in fear and repeat that cycle. then we find it in magazines, movies, advertising and in most social circles (except the art world — God bless the art world! — and generally speaking, New York City — NYC is the one city in which I do not feel any social pressure to do any one thing. and maybe LA too, because Hollyweird). I am here to tell you that if you are falling prey to the above — aka SETTLING — you do not have to. why do you not have to?

first of all, no one cares. seriously. they act like they care, because they care about what people think of THEM. so they pretend to care about you so that they can feel better about their own life. I can’t tell you how many people I have seen marry each other out of “well I guess it’s time” or “we’ve been together this long, so…” or “she’s pregnant!! how did that happen?” (it happens when a woman wants it to happen) or “my family expects me to settle down by such and such age, it’s kind of protocol” or “all of my friends are doing xyz I don’t want to be the outlier” and they are so miserable years later. because they didn’t choose themself. they chose an idea. they chose to “fit in”. and there is a cost when we make a choice that is not actually ours. guess what happens when we make decisions out of conformity aka FEAR? we suffer. when we do this, a piece of our soul dies. we secretly begin to hate ourselves. we look for others who also hate themselves. so what do we do, if we have done this? what do we do if we have sold out?

it is never too late to live the life you have always dreamed of. so, what we do is we act upon our highest integrity at that moment. we get a divorce if that will liberate our soul (I have admittedly bypassed at least one wedding that I knew was not honest, one of a former friend that I knew was a sham and would end in destruction in 2 years flat due to cheating and dishonesty, but their desperation to fit a mold of “wedding” for family and friends was too overwhelming than to simply honor their soul). forgetting about the stupid “financial” consequences associated with separation. we choose our self instead. if we have children, we set the example of personal integrity, not a facade. we leave a job if that will liberate our soul. we leap and the net will appear. we end a friendship if that will liberate our soul. we spend time alone, wondering where our tribe is, and we deal with it. we take any action that we can in the direction of personal alignment (thoughts=words=feelings=actions). “it’s not that easy” — oh really? so living an entire life of lies and resentment is easier? it’s actually much harder. yes, living a life of lies and resentment is surely an epidemic afflicting many. but just because it afflicts many, does not mean that it is easier to join them. on a soul level, where there is intrinsically unlawful conformity, we suffer even when we “fit in”. so if we have decided out of fear to “fit in” and now we regret it, we can do something about it.

when I was leaving corporate America in 2006, I felt like I was dying inside. I was programmed to get a “regular” job and use my degree. which I didn’t even want or care about. I cried on my graduation day from University because I felt like a fraud to myself. this was my soul crying, alerting me to consciousness around my personal truth. I had been urged and persuaded to live a life that other people felt made them look good. so when I finally admitted to myself who and what I was, I knew that I had to do something about that. it was not easy. I turned down a major job opportunity ($$$, travel, fun, “accomplishment”) in finance to wait tables. at first, every table that I waited on, I wanted to tell them that I was smart and I had a degree and I had just turned down this major job. my ego was taking a hit, and I judged myself for that. I didn’t know who I was, at that time, without another title. I quickly decided that I would murder that ego, and simply exist as an energy, not a piece of paper. I decided that those who “saw” me would already see all that I was, no matter the on paper facts. I felt insecure at this table waiting job, I wasn’t very good at waiting tables, I felt old, and people said obnoxious things to me all of the time (like “hey! you look like this famous actress! her face is crooked too!). all of that said, I went through the crushing fear that encompasses taking the alternative road in life. most of us are just never willing to go through that death of self. which, by the way, only lasts in suffering for like a month or two! it’s not worth obliging conformity to end up spending a lifetime wondering “what if?” or “who am I really?”.

throughout my 20s, there were several significant relationships and the men wanted to get married. I felt that to do so would ruin my life. not because the men were bad, but because I knew I was still settling. I couldn’t understand how I, personally, could continue to grow and flourish in my career AND “settle” down at a pretty young age with someone who had a ceiling that I didn’t have in life. so, though I was becoming an old maid by southern standards, I knew that I was about to step into the best time of my life if I went my own way. like leaving corporate, this was also a very hard decision to make, when it would have been so “easy” to marry a nice guy who just wanted to support me and have children. I knew that, once again, my ego would take a hit as I ventured into my 30s as a single woman. but that my soul would rejoice. and oh, did it ever.

it’s not like making these decisions for one’s own soul and well-being are EASY. if they were easy, everyone would make them. but I will tell you what IS easy: the long-term. the short-term, the ego-breaking period associated with dismantling your peers’ “benchmarks” sucks. because we naturally gage differences between our lives and the lives of others. but the way I see it, is why would I decide to live an entire life of lies just to avoid the inevitable short-term ego break, when I could just break that bone from the beginning and then spend the rest of my life healing it? the bone is going to break no matter what, when we are not making decisions for our highest joy.

the same notion can be said for stupid material benchmarks that we find important or “on par” with our contemporaries (or society at large). at what cost do we constantly need to fit in? when the lady on the beach asked me if I owned (who the flock asks these questions to a complete stranger on the beach?), it reminded me of a young woman who had seen me for a session who had noted that I lived “simply” compared to what I was capable of living material-wise. I remember being taken aback at first by her perception or perceptivity, but I also realized that yes: material items and benchmarks do not matter to me. when I began making real grownup money a few years ago, I recall recognizing the fact that I could go buy a house somewhere or stress myself just to own some fancy apartment in the city. but it wasn’t important to my personal sense of luxury or comfort. I, rather, felt more comfortable donating money to animal rescue groups and other charities and projects that build opportunities for humans. I preferred to spend my money on very expensive stones to use in my healing work. I preferred also to boomerang my profits nearly 80% back into my business and hired staff to support me as I moved toward additional goals in the healing arena. I didn’t care about living in the fanciest apartment or buying something that frankly even a fraction of my healing stones and jewelry (which helped to build a sustainable business overseas) could support.

now, regarding all of the above, I would like to say that some of the best couples I know got married in their 20s and have beautiful children and they are also totally in their purpose and happiness! just because someone has fallen into the zone of majority in terms of partnership, family or material staples does not mean they are conforming. I am not, for one moment, suggesting that. it’s just that the percentage of those people, who chose themselves and also falls into the majority, is very small. and you can see it in their faces and in the way they engage. they don’t pummel others with questions to measure their personal situations, and they don’t need to compare or compensate with on paper facts. it’s obvious when someone has not conformed, yet happens to fall into a certain demographic that many people share. the percentage of these non-comformer people is small because it is inherent in the human condition to be like other people. we perceivably suffer when stand like the lone ranger. it’s not a naturally comfortable feeling. but we have a choice: short or long-term discomfort?

I am here to tell you that no matter your placement and timeline associated with partnership, family, career, material wealth or other societal suggested “success” and “norms”, you always have the choice to be true to you. I am here to tell you that absolutely no one cares what you decide to do: they care what they have decided to do. perhaps you can be the one to set the new tone by honoring yourself and breaking the rules. perhaps doing this will give many, many other people permission to do the same. and they will smile with gratitude. perhaps it is your liberation from your own conformity, no matter where you are at as a result from past decisions, that is needed to inspire others. and they will smile with gratitude. what if you are the pioneer that others will thank for lighting the way? you have permission to break the rules. I hope that my share adds to that permission. it wasn’t easy for me. it’s not easy for anyone. but it’s worth it, no matter what. I broke all of the rules that were laid out for me and now things are SO EASY. you can go your own way too — no matter what it looks like on paper, past or present. it’s easier to feel flawed versus bitter.

The post you have permission to break the rules/social “norms”/social conformity and your peers’ “benchmarks” appeared first on The Medical Intuitive Blog: Energy Medicine & Reiki Therapy By Elaine™.

from Trisha Gibson http://www.themedicalintuitiveblog.com/2017/07/23/permission-break-rulessocial-normssocial-conformity-peers-benchmarks/

The outing of ‘bois locker room’, an Instagram group allegedly consisting of boys from Delhi’s prominent schools, who reportedly used the platform to sexually objectify young women (including minor girls and classmates of the boys), recently sparked off a row. The police have since registered an FIR, confiscated the mobile devices of the offenders and have even taken one of the boys into custody. As the criminal justice system is set in motion, it is important that we keenly focus on how notions of masculinity — especially amongst adolescents — contribute to sexual violence, and how societal responses, including legal action against the accused, need to account for these factors. #MeToo and the inadequate attention to masculinity The bois locker room incident brings to mind the reverberations from India’s #MeToo movement, which brought widespread attention to the systemic violence that women face on a regular basis. The movement highlighted how entrenched structures of power perpetuate inequality and condone dehumanising treatment. The #MeToo movement thus established that violence against women is not spontaneous or the result of individual aberrations, but is often a result of the deeply internalised inequalities in gender relations. The movement also brought to attention the need for fixing legal responses. For instance, it highlighted how problems with “due process” make the course of seeking justice a punishment in itself. It also emphasised the need for greater empathy and belief in survivors due to the entrenched constraints which women face in talking about their experiences. What perhaps did not get enough attention in the discourse were questions about the causal factors which sustain the systemic violence that women face. Societal notions of masculinity which impose high behavioural expectations on men constitute one such factor. The bois locker room incident brings to mind the reverberations from India’s #MeToo movement, which brought widespread attention to the systemic violence that women face on a regular basis. Illustration courtesy Namaah K for Firstpost The link between the performance of masculinity and sexual violence Violence against women is widely understood by scholars as not being about sexual desire but as being an expression of patriarchal power. The need to express such power however may often come from the need to express one’s masculinity. An alternative branch of scholarship suggests that sexual violence is used for maintaining power hierarchies between men as much as it is used for reinforcing hierarchies between men and women. Masculinity scholars thus draw links between the performance of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and sexual violence/harassment. The terms ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ refer to the set of patterns and practices through which gender norms (i.e. what it means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’) are reinforced in society. There can be multiple masculinities, depending upon the specific cultural setting and socio-economic background of individuals therein. Socialisation into norms of masculinity begins from childhood and leads to the imposition of behavioural codes that many men spend their lives trying to conform to. To use a film-based example, men may simultaneously aspire to be like Amitabh Bachchan from Deewaar (angry working class man) or Rishi Kapoor from Bobby (romantic hero). However, some notions of masculinity are more associated with social authority and status than others. Scholars use the term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ to refer to the most culturally honoured conception of ‘being a man’ at a given point of time. In a patriarchal society, the ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is inevitably one which legitimises the subordination of women to men (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). Common behavioural tropes associated with hegemonic masculinity include the need to be aggressive, unemotional, and hyper-sexual. This is reinforced by the glorification of such traits by one’s family, literature, media, movies, etc. Of course, an important caveat is that hegemonic masculinity refers to a system of ordering gender relations, not to maleness per se, and hence does not reflect the universal experience of all men. Rather, women may also imitate ideals of hegemonic masculinity in order to assert power (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005) — which explains #girlslockerroom. However the fact remains that it is disproportionately men who perceive that the best way of proving themselves as ‘real men’/‘asli mard’ is to assert their dominance over women through acts of sexual violence. Particularly in the context of #boislockerroom the reason adolescent boys often derive pleasure in talking in derogatory ways about women’s bodies or fantasising about raping them is because it serves as a device for grappling with their anxieties about ‘manhood’ and their performance of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (i.e. proving they are not ‘gay/feminine’) (Pascoe, 2007). This explains why parents and schools rarely take such behaviour seriously, as they believe that this is ‘naturally’ expected from heterosexual young men who are just gaining awareness of the opposite sex (Robinson, 2006). Hegemonic masculinity also explains sexual and verbal violence against the LGBT community, as homosexual and transgender persons are perceived as threats to the hegemonic status quo of gender relations. This behaviour gets exacerbated in the company of male peers because men rely upon other men to judge whether they are performing masculinity ‘correctly’. In fact, men often lie about being sexually experienced or attracted to women not because they actually desire such experiences but to avoid judgement by their peers. Many men are compelled into joining locker-room talk out of fear of harassment and accusations of being ‘womanly/queer’ if they do not participate. This explains why some men are willing to acknowledge sexist behaviour by their friends in private, but are hesitant to call out such behaviour when it actually occurs in a group setting (Pascoe, 2007; Robinson, 2006). Rethinking responses The existence of hegemonic ideals of ‘manhood’ certainly does not exonerate culpability for the crimes committed by the #boislockerroom group and others. However, mere retributive punishment cannot completely reform the offenders or deter similar crimes until and unless we promote alternative ideals of masculinity. Unfortunately, current criminal justice solutions for crimes against girls and women, particularly those committed by adolescents, do not factor in methods for remodeling the performance of hegemonic masculinity by offenders. In the #boislockerroom case, it is mostly probable that the offenders, if tried and convicted, will be sentenced under juvenile justice law. There is no legal framework for specifically dealing with children accused of committing sexual offences. The offenders may be released on probation, directed to perform ‘community service’ or attend general ‘therapeutic services’ which may not include gender sensitisation therapy. Even if they are imprisoned or committed to observation homes (which often resemble jails) they will most likely be made to undergo ‘vocational training’ which does nothing to address the factors motivating them to commit violence against women. It is necessary that the State evolves multi-systemic methods for treating juvenile sex offenders, particularly those which encourage the exploration and construction of alternate masculine identities. Outside of the legal framework, it is necessary to have conversations about deconstructing gender norms at homes, schools and workplaces. Sex education programmes should not be limited to explaining themes of safe sex and consent, but should also involve discussing stereotypes and anxieties about the impact of gender roles on sexual interactions. We often condone misogyny in films and literature on the ground that these do not influence people, but the fact that these serve as reference points for idealised notions of masculinity and femininity, particularly for adolescents, can no longer be denied. It is only when the culture around us changes that a new hegemony of equity between genders can be achieved. Megha Mehta is a judicial clerk at the Supreme Court of India and Akshat Agarwal is a research fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views expressed are personal.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/05/crux-of-bois-locker-room-case-lies-in.html