Anti-Feminist Bullshit Day

Oh. My. Goddess. When the bar is only 1/8 of an inch above the floor, you should be able to get right over it. It’s not asking too much.

In a writers’ group this morning, one member, a white cisgender male in his sixties or seventies, shared a piece he’d written that listed off bullshit stereotypical descriptions of feminists. No, feminism is about dismantling patriarchy, rape culture, and systemic oppression such as misogyny and racism and gender binary. It’s not about hating men and wanting to have “test tube” babies. Patriarchal males are so narcissistic that even their made-up version of feminism is about them. (Since the 2016 election, I’ve repeatedly noticed patriarchal/misogynistic males wave narcissist red flags.)

As for bra-burners?! That was a misnomer invented by patriarchal mainstream media. Atlanta had a city ordinance against burning trash. Therefore the feminist protestors in question tossed oppressive, sexist things such as girdles and Ladie’s Home Journal into a trash can without actually burning them. Stop repeating a lie that has been repeatedly disproved… and read feminist books and blogs.

Later, I logged onto Facebook and visited a group that I usually enjoy. It’s for participants in National Novel Writing Month. But a female posted, asking if she must have “strong female characters” in her novel (because of something someone, maybe a friend, said) and if this is some “feminist agenda” or a requirement. She said she has a male protagonist and no “strong female characters.” Really? Not one single character in your entire novel can be described as a “strong female character”? She seems to think that because it’s medieval historical fiction, that she shouldn’t have to include strong female characters. This presumably means that her novel will have no major, three-dimensional female characters.

I was utterly flabbergasted, twice in one day (and I don’t even work in customer service anymore–heck, I’m somewhat reclusive nowadays). And I’m not going to read anything by her. Even Joss Whedon has no trouble creating strong female characters. It’s such a low bar. No doubt if she learned about the Bechtel Test, she’d have a heart attack or piss her pants or post about this “feminist agenda.”

Both situations reminded me of what a friend recently said in a feminist discussion: that people really hate us feminists. She’d dropped out of an atheist organization for this very reason. I’ve repeatedly observed that the only people with whom I enjoy socializing are feminists.

Yeah, and I’ll keep writing unabashedly feminist fiction. The funny thing is, this was a NaNoWriMo group, and my NaNoWriMo novel for this year is Feed Misogynists to Dragons, a novel so feminist that the title indicates it. I mean, it’s in your face. I’m going to soooooo wallow in the feminism of this novel and my “feminist agenda.”

Downton Abbey and Pixies

I dreamed that the people of Downton Abbey were immortal. I had the perspective of someone in the kitchen, near a long table, and astonished to see these people in modern clothes, even t-shirts. There were many, bustling around and heading for the table, where a lot of people sat down.

I don’t know if this was the same dream. It was an old-fashioned kitchen, and there were several people, mostly sitting at the long table and chatting. But there were tiny pixies, too.

One pixie, mostly green, was lying barely conscience on a pan on the stove. A human walked up to her and helped themselves to a piece of… her outfit? Like it was a slice of pizza or lasagna. The pixie groaned, and nobody paid attention… except pixies across the room who may have been plotting her rescue.

Last Night’s Unsettling Dreams

I’ve started reading Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Rucculia. So… I had a dream inspired by it, in which I was someone like Tuesday and was participating in a scavenger hunt inside a huge and dark mansion. It involved wandering around. It’s pretty vague. I woke before I got as far along as I would’ve liked. Vita was lying next to me, so we did a lot of cuddling. At first I thought she was in the dream.

I had a dream in which a sorceress or such had a pixie in captivity, on a wooden table behind her house. She kept the pixie in captivity by keeping her wounded, stabbing her in the shoulder with what looked like a sword and leaving it in for stretches of time. She kept the pixie wrapped in what looked like a huge pink petal.

At the end of the dream, a man, maybe a prince (he looked like a fairy tale prince) was in her house waiting for the … drugs the sorceress supplied him. She went out back, removed the “sword” sticking out slightly from the pixie’s shoulder, unwrapped the petal, and sprayed poison from a pink thing. She sprayed it at the pixie’s face. This was the process, and I think she was somehow extracting a “drug” from the pixie…unless what was poisonous to the pixie was a hallucinogen for humans, and she was using it for two purposes.

Just before that, perhaps the same dream:

I had a gay male friend who was in on this weird thing. Apparently, snails or slugs were part of my herbal medicine. I was accustomed to putting one tiny slug in the bottom of the mug before putting in the powder and pouring the hot water.

This friend had a glass jar that had one of those glass lids that slip off when you shift a wire contraption. He put sand and a bunch of snails in it and gave it to me. It looked pretty. I took this home and was in a basement and opened the jar. Snails began growing… and kept growing… until they were at the top of the jar.

Panicking and not knowing what to do, I took the jar out back and placed it on my dinner table, which for whatever reason I now kept outdoors in the back yard, along with some other furniture. The tabletop was somewhat wet from rain, and it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.

 

I dreamed I was a young woman with a group of female friends; one of them may have been closer than the others. I had trouble parking in an urban area and came into this (perhaps Moroccan) restaurant where the others were. They may have been part of a larger group, and I showed up—perhaps with a passenger—and was feeling very out of place and self-conscious, since I was so awkward. Also, I’d left the car in an illegal spot.

We talked for a bit. Shoes and other clothing were scattered around a section of the floor. While we talked, with me standing, I said I’d try again to find legal parking.

The front of the restaurant was mostly glass windows, and I looked toward those windows and noticed a parking garage across the street. I’d been so set on parallel parking that I’d ignored the garage, and even now spoke as though the parking garage would be a last resort, like I didn’t like parking that way.

As I headed for the front steps, my cat Virginia joined me, and she was carrying in her mouth two pairs of ballet-like shoes for me, one lavender and the other red, and she dropped them onto the concrete stoop. I was barefoot and concerned about that, so I eyed the shoes, which looked too small.

Next, I was in a big room with other people… and walked toward the back and entered a dark basement. Or mostly dark. This was my workplace, and I think I waited on tables. I was accustomed to people showing up for an event in this room at about this time, but most of the lights were out, and nothing looked ready. One other person was there, a woman. In front of me, at the far left end of the room, was a rectangular table with a bunch of stuff on it, mostly glass containers such as bongs.

The other person may have called to me or vice versa; we were plenty of feet apart. I was bewildered and didn’t know what to do, because things were different than usual.

For the Snark was a Boojum, You See

I dreamed I had the perspective of someone hanging out with a small group of friends. I think I was a snarky jerk, like so many people I’ve disliked over the decades.

We were inside a building. There was a room where most of us were, and it had a large glass window facing the hallway. The door was wide open. Early in the dream, for whatever reason, I said to one of these friends, “Let us know what it’s like to be eaten by a [?].”

Later, a blob-like monster, something like Tenniel’s illustration of the Snark, stood in the hallway just outside the room. I went into the hall and stood beside the creature.

The snark opened its mouth wide.

A friend said, “Let us know what it’s like to be eaten by a snark!”

My right hand was in the snark’s mouth when I jerked it away…. and woke in the acupuncture clinic, having really jerked my hand, which had a needle in it.

 

My first night at the bed and breakfast, I woke from a nightmare at 4:50 am. It was vivid, and I should have written it down then. It had something to do with being a social pariah. Not the most unusual thing for me. Yes, sometimes I have nightmares about my past, because it had nightmarish times.

Nightmarish Dreams

I dreamed I was at a large, very plain and white library… or museum… with s female friend. For a library, it certainly didn’t have many visible books.

In a large white room, I was standing in front of something like a white podium, and it was my intention to be doing research. But I didn’t like how this library worked and complained aloud, in a moment of exasperation and impatience.

Suddenly a male voice over an intercom—the staffer whom I’d met in the front lobby—was verbally attacking me over an intercom or PA system. He was somehow able to hear me. I replied in kind, and he replied and proceeded to shower me with nonstop insults, accusations, and threats over the PA system for all to hear.

I needed to leave immediately. The friend and I were going to slip out a side door. She reminded me that he had my keys—you hand them over when you show up at this place—and according to her, I needed to go get them myself… although I wanted her to get them for me, so I wouldn’t have to see this verbally abusive asshole again.

And that’s how the dream ended.

 

I dreamed that I was supposed to meet up with a queer Latinx male friend, a petite guy, at a restaurant. So I was in a back room of this restaurant waiting for him… and he didn’t arrive. I felt abandoned.

Eventually, I went to the front of the restaurant… and to the front door… and he was out there waiting to meet me. I was so appalled that it didn’t occur to me to wait out front instead of in back. We talked for a bit, but the hour had passed, and he couldn’t stick around.

 

In another unpleasant dream, I was across the street from a low, glass, L-shaped 1960s building. I recognized it and associated it with the Buddhist book discussion group from which I recently dropped out, thanks to a bully. This gave me aversion. As I watched, I spotted both the organizers of the Buddhist book group approach the building’s door. I froze. They spotted me and kept looking at me. I felt dread and aversion, maybe even panic, although emotions are generally muffled in dreams compared to real life.