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April 27, 2011
--There’s a new movie called “Fast Five.”
Several months ago, about half a year after I’d been getting continuously slandered for being slutty, I finally wrote online “I’ve only ever slept with 5 people in my entire life.” It was somewhat against my principles even to say that, since I don’t think that there’s any number of people that anyone, male or female, could sleep with that would cause the person to deserve to be treated the way that I’ve been treated.
Ever since, it’s been “5 this” and “5 that.” Some people and businesses have tried to take over the number 5 and present it in a positive light; I, as is my nature, at times have taken it over and presented it in a sarcastic light. My being sarcastic probably doesn’t always help me much but it just makes me feel so much better that occasionally I indulge myself in it.
I doubt that “Fast Five” is meant to be nice about me. I feel as if I’m attempting to learn an archaic language by saying “Five people aren't a lot of people for a 36-year-old, male or female, to have slept with. It’s just not a large number.”
“Fast.” “FAST?” What YEAR do you think this IS, 1952?
Fast. Whatever.
--All of the following had happened by 9:00 a.m. today:
I went to a small grocery store. In addition to the signs up around the store, ads and so on that have been placed so as to let me know that they support women being degraded, I noticed that recently one of the cashiers has been personally rude to me. A couple of days ago, I went to the manager and I reminded her that even if I use food stamps, it’s still business for her store; I’m still a customer there.
Today, as the cashier was ringing up my sale, she said to another employee “I hate it when my fingers get all oily,” and she made a noise of disgust.
I’m assuming that she was trying to refer to my being compared to the BP oil spill.
(April 28, 2011: I've removed some of what I wrote on this page yesterday.)
--I went to a combination Shell gas station/Champlain Farms. As I’ve said, I can’t spend my whole day avoiding things just because of their names; Shell gas stations were called Shell gas stations long before any of the harassment of me and the campaign to destroy women’s lives started.
As I was making my purchase, I noticed that there was a box in front of the cash register that I’d never seen there before. The box held a bunch of gummy-type candy lollipops. The name on the box was “Fish Kabobs.”
Candy for kids? That’s how the employees of that store amuse themselves, by hoping that people who may or may not know about the store's sick joke will buy “Fish Kabob” lollipops for their children?
---I think that there may be people in the movie industry and in other businesses who might at times have seen my objections to constant references to vaginas as hypocritical prudery from me. I think that there are a lot of ways of trying to understand and interpret women’s lives, and I know from personal experience that it’s impossible for most people who have average-type jobs to get through a work day effectively if sex is getting discussed all day. At the very least, people spending a lot of time talking about something other than work doesn’t help them get through the work day. I realize that for much of the entertainment industry sex is an integral component of the work day; perhaps what happened over the past year was a clash of working backgrounds. People in the entertainment industry couldn’t get through a business day without talking about sex a lot, and people in 90% of all of the other jobs that exist on earth couldn’t get through a business day talking about sex for more than a few minutes.
In most situations, sex is a highly charged issue that can cause endless problems if there aren’t boundaries around how it’s handled. Especially in average work situations, women aren’t being empowered when sex is getting talked about all day. I think the same thing could happen to men; with female managers and bosses becoming more common all the time, male employees can be harassed, too.
I also think that this overall situation has encouraged women to be extra mean to each other. It has given women another weapon to use against each other; a lot of the people who have hassled me in person have been women.
Just before I wrote those last two sentences, one of the female staff members who doesn’t work in this room walked in and said something about “summer rain” to one of the other female staff members who does work in this room. The staff member who made the comment isn’t thin. I don’t know another way to put it than that, and I’m not trying to be mean, but I’ve really had it. Having been overweight myself for a few years in my early twenties, I know what it feels like to want to be thin when you’re not, and I know that this whole situation of women and men being encouraged to be horrid about women has given an outlet to envy that shouldn’t have been given.
People at work or school or anywhere else making constant references to my vagina or to vaginas in general is harassment. It’s not supposed to be happening.
It’s not as if I never make jokes about sex or references to sex; I do. Time and place for that matter; there are times and places where it’s ok to do that, and a male or female staff member whose job it is to help me move on to the next, employed phase of my life trying to get my attention and make a joke with his or her coworkers about me is not ok. I am dependent on the staff here; I am dependent on their help. I don't have a job and I can't not show up here until I have one. This is one situation in which I can't just choose to go somewhere else if I want to accomplish the important goal of getting a nice, steady, workaday job, so for anyone who works here to be spending working hours trying to give me a rough time is wrong; it's an abuse of power.
My issue is not that people shouldn’t talk about sex; my issue is that it’s not supposed to be forced on people, whether the references are meant to be humiliating or flattering.
Copyright L. Kochman April 27, 2011 @ 4:00 p.m.
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April 27, 2011
I'm at the library now, so my time is very limited.
Most people don't have control over much of what happens at their jobs. If they have a boss or a coworker who wants to talk about sex all day and there is nobody at human resources who is willing to put a stop to it, then anyone who doesn't want to listen to conversation about sex all day has either to put up with it or to find a different job. That includes hearing comments made directly to or around the person by people who intend for the person to hear what is said.
That's why I've said that there's nothing liberating about what's happened over the past year. It makes things worse for people who don't have a lot of power in their own lives in the first place.
Copyright L. Kochman April 27, 2011 @ 6:44 p.m.
April 27, 2011
--There’s a new movie called “Fast Five.”
Several months ago, about half a year after I’d been getting continuously slandered for being slutty, I finally wrote online “I’ve only ever slept with 5 people in my entire life.” It was somewhat against my principles even to say that, since I don’t think that there’s any number of people that anyone, male or female, could sleep with that would cause the person to deserve to be treated the way that I’ve been treated.
Ever since, it’s been “5 this” and “5 that.” Some people and businesses have tried to take over the number 5 and present it in a positive light; I, as is my nature, at times have taken it over and presented it in a sarcastic light. My being sarcastic probably doesn’t always help me much but it just makes me feel so much better that occasionally I indulge myself in it.
I doubt that “Fast Five” is meant to be nice about me. I feel as if I’m attempting to learn an archaic language by saying “Five people aren't a lot of people for a 36-year-old, male or female, to have slept with. It’s just not a large number.”
“Fast.” “FAST?” What YEAR do you think this IS, 1952?
Fast. Whatever.
--All of the following had happened by 9:00 a.m. today:
I went to a small grocery store. In addition to the signs up around the store, ads and so on that have been placed so as to let me know that they support women being degraded, I noticed that recently one of the cashiers has been personally rude to me. A couple of days ago, I went to the manager and I reminded her that even if I use food stamps, it’s still business for her store; I’m still a customer there.
Today, as the cashier was ringing up my sale, she said to another employee “I hate it when my fingers get all oily,” and she made a noise of disgust.
I’m assuming that she was trying to refer to my being compared to the BP oil spill.
(April 28, 2011: I've removed some of what I wrote on this page yesterday.)
--I went to a combination Shell gas station/Champlain Farms. As I’ve said, I can’t spend my whole day avoiding things just because of their names; Shell gas stations were called Shell gas stations long before any of the harassment of me and the campaign to destroy women’s lives started.
As I was making my purchase, I noticed that there was a box in front of the cash register that I’d never seen there before. The box held a bunch of gummy-type candy lollipops. The name on the box was “Fish Kabobs.”
Candy for kids? That’s how the employees of that store amuse themselves, by hoping that people who may or may not know about the store's sick joke will buy “Fish Kabob” lollipops for their children?
---I think that there may be people in the movie industry and in other businesses who might at times have seen my objections to constant references to vaginas as hypocritical prudery from me. I think that there are a lot of ways of trying to understand and interpret women’s lives, and I know from personal experience that it’s impossible for most people who have average-type jobs to get through a work day effectively if sex is getting discussed all day. At the very least, people spending a lot of time talking about something other than work doesn’t help them get through the work day. I realize that for much of the entertainment industry sex is an integral component of the work day; perhaps what happened over the past year was a clash of working backgrounds. People in the entertainment industry couldn’t get through a business day without talking about sex a lot, and people in 90% of all of the other jobs that exist on earth couldn’t get through a business day talking about sex for more than a few minutes.
In most situations, sex is a highly charged issue that can cause endless problems if there aren’t boundaries around how it’s handled. Especially in average work situations, women aren’t being empowered when sex is getting talked about all day. I think the same thing could happen to men; with female managers and bosses becoming more common all the time, male employees can be harassed, too.
I also think that this overall situation has encouraged women to be extra mean to each other. It has given women another weapon to use against each other; a lot of the people who have hassled me in person have been women.
Just before I wrote those last two sentences, one of the female staff members who doesn’t work in this room walked in and said something about “summer rain” to one of the other female staff members who does work in this room. The staff member who made the comment isn’t thin. I don’t know another way to put it than that, and I’m not trying to be mean, but I’ve really had it. Having been overweight myself for a few years in my early twenties, I know what it feels like to want to be thin when you’re not, and I know that this whole situation of women and men being encouraged to be horrid about women has given an outlet to envy that shouldn’t have been given.
People at work or school or anywhere else making constant references to my vagina or to vaginas in general is harassment. It’s not supposed to be happening.
It’s not as if I never make jokes about sex or references to sex; I do. Time and place for that matter; there are times and places where it’s ok to do that, and a male or female staff member whose job it is to help me move on to the next, employed phase of my life trying to get my attention and make a joke with his or her coworkers about me is not ok. I am dependent on the staff here; I am dependent on their help. I don't have a job and I can't not show up here until I have one. This is one situation in which I can't just choose to go somewhere else if I want to accomplish the important goal of getting a nice, steady, workaday job, so for anyone who works here to be spending working hours trying to give me a rough time is wrong; it's an abuse of power.
My issue is not that people shouldn’t talk about sex; my issue is that it’s not supposed to be forced on people, whether the references are meant to be humiliating or flattering.
Copyright L. Kochman April 27, 2011 @ 4:00 p.m.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 27, 2011
I'm at the library now, so my time is very limited.
Most people don't have control over much of what happens at their jobs. If they have a boss or a coworker who wants to talk about sex all day and there is nobody at human resources who is willing to put a stop to it, then anyone who doesn't want to listen to conversation about sex all day has either to put up with it or to find a different job. That includes hearing comments made directly to or around the person by people who intend for the person to hear what is said.
That's why I've said that there's nothing liberating about what's happened over the past year. It makes things worse for people who don't have a lot of power in their own lives in the first place.
Copyright L. Kochman April 27, 2011 @ 6:44 p.m.