Age of consent

I've been reading debates about the age of consent recently. How young is too young?
The age here is fifteen. Which is the age at which I started.
The average in France is seventeen.

I hear fifteen is too young. Depends for who.
I don't regret it. Was it shameful? Not for me, although I acquired a slightly slutty reputation. Cause yeah, not being a great believer in love and all that when I was a teen, I slept with a friend, who was seventeen and a virgin, one night. Did I want to ?Absolutely. Did he pressure me? No. He'd have been in too much trouble, I had protective friends. If he had, I wouldn't have done it. I'm impossibly contrary.

I didn't subscribe to all the fairytale loving,waiting for true-love-and-prince-charming schools of thought.

Does that make me stupid?

I'd like to think not. Something I've always felt is that those stories are very much used to keep a tight grip on female sexuality, which seems to be something menacing, for some reason.
Oh, I've watched the Disneys and read the Hans christian Andersens, but I didn't want to be a princess. It seemed so goddamn boring.

The only thing I ever did believe in was having sex for your own reasons, for yourself, because you wanted to. Not because everyone else was doing it, not because your boyfriend threatened to leave you if you didn't, not because people called you a prude. Stick to your guns, and you'll feel all the better for it. And don't let anyone tell you how you feel is wrong. But don't tell anyone how they feel is wrong, either.
Really, it's no-one's business.

As to statutory rape laws, they punish anyone having sex with someone under fifteen, and anyone over eighteen having sex with someone under eighteen, even though the age of consent is fifteen.
Although--prosecution, for consensual sex, is just about inexistent, as far as I'm aware.

I think this has a very strong link to control.
I've had many friends going out with older boys/men, depending on the circumstances.
When I was in high school, when you heard about a girl of fifteen going out with a man of thirty, everyone went "eeuw!"
But there's more than just "eeux" behind these relationships. They're downright creepy. It is not normal for a man of thirty to date a fifteen-year-old. What has she got that a woman closer to him in age doesn't?
One of my close friends in high school dated a guy who was eight years older than her from the time she was fourteen to last year, when he wanted them to move in together and have children, and she opposed a very definite NO. So he left.
The Best Friend has been harassed recently by a thirty-year-old she dated for about ten days, when she told him she didn't want to see him anymore because she was tired of his mood swings and his insulting her when he was in a bad mood. He went crazy after that, she had to go see the cops.

It all comes down to control.
You want someone easier to manipulate, who you can convince that things are meant to be this way, that this si how it happens, that this is how sex should be, that in a relationship a woman should be subservient, that she should make all the effort and beg for the few scraps of love he deigns give her?
Take a younger girl.
This kind of shit makes me sick. This is how you get people who're totally confused, and I've known my share.
But oh, the arrogance of them!The self-satisfaction! Of course a fifteen year old is easier to manipulate than a twenty-five year old, however mature she is. She's less likely to have fallen prey to someone like you before.

I met my first and only manipulative boyfriend at sixteen. Never slept with him,and only dated him for two weeks,but he just got off on keeping me running. Thankfully, after a couple months of stupidity, I came back to my senses.
And this is a happy outcome. I know why this happened then, but still, I was silly.

But it all goes with the flow in a male-oriented culture.

You're so angry women your age won't look at you, you go and find a younger girl who can be subservient.
This is why the Best Friend got harassed. That crazy dude expected a twenty-year would just put up with his shit, would give in to him again someday-because she dumped him, but they stayed in touch, and he spent a while pressuring her to come back. Arrogant, entitled jerk.

And this justs goes on, and on, and on.
Control and entitlement.

I could apply this to the Ex. We both knew I was never under his control, thank goodness, but he was entitled to my time. He had to be more important than my studies, which was just not happening. So we broke up.
Funny thing is, he's the sweetest, gentlest person ever.
It's so pervasive..I'd better stop, this is making me sad.

Better but not perfect

Thank God for JJ. He's definitely useful for when I'm having an irrational moment.

I've missed Lulu so much, and she's back, and I get depressed because I don't feel good enough?
Pshaw. How perfectly idiotic.

I've been totally off-radar for the past week, haven't been reading, haven't been writing.
I've discovered some great new posts, and some terrifying news from the last days of the Bush administration, covered by Feministe.

I don't really have much to add on this, except that I find it absolutely fucking amazing. Incredible.
How can you create a law that allows anyone to refuse, BIRTH CONTROL?

I get the morning-after pill if the condom splits from the first pharmacy I see. And when i was still on the pill, it happened that I left the box at my parent's, or forgot my prescription, and I'd just turn up at the pharmacy, tell them, and give them the name of my Pill, end of story.
I'm so happy I live here.

But I just don't understand. How is birth control wrong? It stops abortions, after all. People aren't going to stop having sex just like that. It's not going to bring back some so-called morality.
It seems so logical. No birth control = more unwanted pregnancies.
Please tell me how that is good for anyone.

But the ramifications go so much further. I'm just going on right now, the Feministe post is excellent, but I just can't get my head around it. It's not as if I lived in a society that has no need for feminism. We make less than men, we get raped, men are Don Juans and girls are sluts, men have the better jobs, all that.
But this? Is just unthinkable. Unfuckingthinkable.

Feminist is a dirty word in France as much as in many other countries.
But whatever happens no-one is dreaming of taking away abortion or birthcontrol or allowing doctors to not treat people because of moral reasons. Doctors can be crazy and a fucking pain in the ass, in which case you change. But this kind of shit is just illegal.

I just wonder if I actually live on the same planet as these people.

Holidays

...And man did I need them.
Exams, etcetera, left me in a pretty exhausted state by the end. Plus I went Christmas shopping with my mother Friday and Saturday, which tends to be a pain in the ass.

So I'm back home. Friday night went out with JJ and his mates, and yesterday went out with Best Friend, Foufoune, Flo and two of their Marseille mates, one of which is sooo sexy :D
I got absolutely hammered on white sangria and it was freezing.
We ended up at Foufoune's, where he and Flo had a moment of revelation "Froufrou, you've slept with more people than we have!" Duh, yeah, so?

Tonight my lovely Lulu got back from Cadiz, and she and Best Friend came over and we gossiped for about three hours.

I feel like such a loser right now.

Lulu was telling all her stories of parties and surfers and English mates and all the foreigners she's met, and how much fun, etcetera.

I feel...boring. Settled down, which is not an aim of mine yet. Yeah, boring.
And it doesn't feel that good.
Yeah, I'm moaning about nothing.

Rain, rain, rain

It's been pouring here.
JJ's house is flooded.
My parent's house has a leak in the roof. It's a mess.

A rainy Sunday, in which I did nothing useful, instead of working, and am feeling kinda down.

I live in a fucking sick world

Linking to the most disturbing ad of the year at feministe.
Better put a trigger warning, since the picture made me sick, and I don't have anything to be triggered by.

Seriously, what fucking world do I live in when this is fucking normal??
I'm so fucking angry it's not even funny.

So I sent a message to Duncan Quinn ( info@duncanquinn.com ) detailing how vile I thought they were, and that's all I can do.
I am so fucking thankful that ad won't be plastered all over the place here. I'd never even heard of Duncan Quinn before.

And to the fools who say all publicity is good publicity : WRONG
I know I shall be staying far far away from anything with a Duncan Quinn label for the REST OF MY LIFE.
I have a good memory.

I'm not a violence survivor and I found it painful.
My heart goes out to all those whose memories might be triggered by this.

Fucking hell, I'm incoherent with rage.
I could go on about how anger is only positive for males (I'm "scary") but I'll say my anger is perfectly rational and by god could I explain it for a long time.

I shall go throw up now.

On Ageing and why I love internet :D

This post in yet another that makes me love internet.

I had to post a comment thanking her for it.(And blathering on a bit, but I can't help it, I'm textually incontinent, it's a terrible syndrome)

I'm young. That's a fact. I don't have to worry about aging just yet, although my cigarette consumption (BAD!BAD!) is supposedly going to kill off all my skin cells in five years, or something.
Problem : I knew girls when I was in high school who already used antiwrinkle cream. That's something that definitely had me stunned. Girl in question was twenty, because she wasn't that good at school and so was three years late, but even so. Twenty? Are you kidding me?

I mean seriously. Youth might be pretty, but it's kinda dumb. Not always, of course, but I'm not reading all these deconstructions of the world around me by people my age.
I'm immensely thankful for all the blogs out there that put words on what I'm feeling, because I can't say it.
I haven't the experience. I haven't been thinking about it all that long. And it's not the kind of thing I discuss casually with someone while having a cigarette in between classes. I talk about it with my roommate, with JJ, with my closer friends.
I already have a reputation for being kinda intense,for taking some things seriously, this just makes it worse :D
And I'll argue forever the fact that being intense was ever negative.

I guess I'm trying to get to the fact that our cultures have to be totally and completely fucked-up for people to put youth as such an ideal.
Youth doesn't know. We're taught things, but haven't always experienced them. Often haven't experienced them.
I'll seem to be putting my peers down, but I'm not. We're not dumb. Well, not always. But in some things, we haven't been fighting for them long enough, haven't actually started fighting yet because we've haven't realised they were necessary, haven't actually opened our eyes to the world around us.

After all, youth is the time for selfishness. Many of my peers have hardly left home yet. Many don't live adult lives. I don't yet. My parents pay my bills, although I've left home. I couldn't get an education here otherwise, and would be left learning in the second-grade university at home, with all the losers I grew up with.

On the ageing part-I don't want to be afraid of getting old. I guess I'll see when I come to it. Time goes far too fast in any case, I'm turning twenty in a couple months.
But I'm not scared yet. I have good role models around me.

My mother turned fifty this year, and despite her self-proclaimed fat (my mother has spent her life since I turned up dieting and putting on weight. I find it infinitely depressing. Luckily she's reasonable about it and doesn't go nuts, which has helped me have a semi reasonable stance with food-basically I just eat what I want and to hell with it), she's an attractive woman, who does so fucking much, it's just not funny. I'd like to see someone tell her life at fifty is over. The woman does more than I do, puts me to shame.
My godmother is the same age. Put them together and I'm the one who feels old :)
My best friend's mother is forty. She's an incredibly attractive woman, like every woman in that family,that includes the Best Friend, who's twenty, her mother's two sisters, and her grandmother, who's fifty-eight and amazing.

They're all active, fun women who happen to be attractive. And that shouldn't be the most important thing a woman should retain as time passes.
What's the point in beauty if you can think behind it? If it's just an empty shell?
I guess that's all too easy for me to say. After all, I get to be young, slim, and conventionally attractive.

I'm not special. I'm not different. I just want to able to grow up in peace, and that's not likely to happen.

Funnily enough, I don't feel that pressured by magazine girls. And me and Roommate dearest have a good laugh every month with Glamour and Cosmo who are the root of all evil from what I've understood, but I think the French versions are slightly different, and they're the best thing to empty your head, and why on earth am I justifying myself?Tsch.

I'd feel more pressured by the girls around me.
I live in a upper-class town. half is money, half is students. Expensive. Quality. Lots of southern bourgeoisie.
I'm in a Humanities university. That means the ratio of girls is about sixty/seventy percent.
My classes are full of girls. So competition is high, which is why two strangers call me "that kinda intellectual, stuck up bitch who thinks she's all that", I suppose.
And France is a VERY fattist country. Remember that book "French women don't get fat" ? French women aren't supposed to get fat. It's unfeminine.
Also, the food helps, but that's a whole different story.

Back to the story, since I rather look towards the girls and women around me, it's incredibly reassuring for when I get older. I don't feel that I'll be worthless at thirty.
My teachers are all over thirty. Ms L, one of my chinese teachers, was at least sixty, and she was amazing. Every one of her students loved her.
I watch TV. I follow mainstream media. I read blogs. I read magazines. I'm that common. And I'm cursed with an amazing memory for all things pointless, so I remember stupid details about celebrities.
But I don't feel pressured to fit in to their world. Also because it's perfectly impossible, but primarily because they're too far-off.
We have very beautiful celebrities of our own, who occasionnally turn up here because it's one of the main Southern towns, but they're a lot more real, and they're freaks of nature :)

Look at Catherine Deneuve. She's said to have been under the knife a lot. She still looks pretty natural, pretty good for a woman in her seventies.(I think she's 71, but I'm not certain)
Brigitte Bardot was insanely beautiful, and gave up on all that to fight for animal rights (and become a right-wing nut, but that 's a whole different story). She maybe didn't "age gracefully". Point of the story? She doesn't give a fuck, she's far too busy elsewhere.And she did so much during her acting career!
Line Renaud turned eighty this year and most of French TV celebrated her birthday.

Come to think of it most popular French actresses are forty or more.
Emmanuelle Béart,Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye, Emmanuelle Seigner, Juliette Binoche, Catherine Frot, Jeanne Moreau.

Some of them are notoriously insane. Not all are amazingly beautiful. But they all seem comfortable in their own skin, even though I suspect Emmanuelle Béart of having had her lips plumped up^^

Shite, this is far too long.

Trouble ahoy

...Smells like more demonstrations.
We heard the high-schoolers chanting outside uni yesterday morning. Protesting against the changes they're trying to make in highschool and their getting rid of approximatively 13000 teachers( numbers probably incorrect because they keep changing).
I don't know much about this reform. All I know is that less teachers is less help for students, which is bad. As for the changes made to high school, I've heard that instead of trimesters the year will function in semesters like at university, and the core knowledges will change, apparently history might not be compulsory or something.

France has one of the most demanding high-school systems in the world; I had between thirty and thirty-five hours of class per week throughout my three years.

It's divided in three main sections : S (science) ES (economics) and L (litterature). Next to that there are sections that deal more with management or electronics, but they're rather overlooked. You want to get anywhere in France? Get a Bac S.
Bac in Baccalauréat, the end of high school exam. Can't do anything without it, really.

So classes in your last year of high school :
In ES (this was my section, so I know it best): Economics, History, Geography, Language number 1, Language number 2, Maths, Philosophy, Sports, and an option (extra maths, extra english, or extra economics)
In S :Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography, Languages 1 and 2(2 not being compulsory if I remember right), Philosophy, Sports
In L: Litterature, Philosophy, History, Geography, Sports, Languages 1, 2, and often 3 (and Art could be an extra, if I remember right)

So in common we all had History, Geography, Sports, Philosophy, and Languages. Which is already pretty good.

Plus, in your first year of high school you all do the same except for one option which will determine which section you choose the next year : ISI (initiation aux sciences de l'ingénieur-for the math types, they fiddle around with machines from what I understand) Economics, or a third language.
So at the time we all had biology and physics and math and French.
In your second year you get to choose your section and things change ever so slightly; I got to give up Physics, to my greatest joy.
Everyone gets a French exam that year, those of us in the ES section also have a biology exam, and the Ls get French, biology, and math. Which is why they don't have those subjects anymore afterwards.

It's a complicated system, especially when you're not French, I remember how complicated my mother found it, but it seems to sort itself out pretty much for most of us.
Any meaningful changes to the system make us all very insecure.
The baccalauréat is a venerable institution, one we're used to and comfortable with. Every year it's the same shenanigans.
A month or two before, the news starts talking about it, about the latest revision methods, private courses, how much kids are working, how many parents are paying for private tuition. And after we get the age of the youngest bachelier(=person who obtains the Bac) of France (every year there's some kid of thirteen or fourteen who gets it when usually you get it the year you turn eighteen. I'm already an anomaly because I got it at seventeen. I always feel sorry for them), the person with the best grades, the percentage who got it, all that.

It's habit.

Every year we're told that the level has gone down. My history teacher used to tell us that we were asked harder things than he and his peers ever were, but thatour exams were graded accordingly : that is, they went easy on us.
An experiment was done a few months ago, when the same exam copies were given to something like fifteen different teachers, and the grades of each copy went from 5 to 15 out of 20.
It's kinda subjective^^
But real failures are few. In 2008 I think 83% of kids got it.

We're asked to know a lot, about a lot of things. There's a verb "bachoter" which has come to mean cramming for exams, which comes from the word Baccalauréat. Cramming for the Bac.
But that's the way things are.
Now I can appreciate being made to learn all that because it gave me a solid background knowledge. Even though I was crap at math then and I'm crap at math now.
It taught me to logic, and to argue my way through things, especially in philosophy; in essence you could write what the hell you wanted as long as it was logical.
Not saying that I was very good at it, but it does help :)

Slightly annoyed

...by a couple of girls I can't place who told a mate of mine "oh yeah, she's that kinda intellectual, stuck up bitch who thinks she's all that"

Oooohhh, nice.

Tried to figure out who it was. I got a succinct description, and I still have no idea.
Puzzled. Why on earth would someone go out of their way to belittle me to a friend of mine?

Said friend is male and got into one of France's big schools, Sciences Po, this year. To impress him?
Still bizarre, and a bad move, since he kicked their butts.

I just don't get it.

How does it make you feel better? I mean, I hope it does, because otherwise it's even more pointless. It makes me so confused.
Telling someone who is certainly going to tell me? Are you aiming to hurt me?
Thank god I'm not that insecure.
But if this was the point, I'm sorry for you. Seriously. I'm happy I'm not in that place.

I guess I could find out who you are, and with little effort build your reputations as bitchy insecure fools, but that would be a waste of time and effort, however small.

Utterly and totally puzzled.

Dum dee dum

new blog discovery: the F word.
It's the first time I encounter a british blog that deals with feminism, and it's a pleasant surprise.

I must admit to a somewhat stereotypical image of Britain in this respect, because I seem to get only negative echoes.
I don't see how going out and getting drunk, going out half undressed, aspiring to be a WAG or an X factor contestant is in any way feminist or empowering.
And of course there is the small matter of the ever-dwindling rape conviction rate, which makes me want to cry, but that's a whole different story.

I try not to give in to stereotyping, but I get so much of the French-bashing from Brits that it doesn't make me want to cut my homeland any slack.

But if you wish to know, the French think that the British women are sluts just as any French girl gets called a slut in Britain. And that's all I'll say for now, because i'm in a bad mood.

I'm a pain in the ass (and I have a one-track mind)

JJ was commenting on how much sweeter I am as a girlfriend than as a friend.

Then he realised that actually, no : I just soften my acid/bad/burn jokes by being a cuddly Carebear.

I met his two of his stepbrothers this weekend and the older one (15/16) found our verbal exchanges extremely entertaining. Apaprently he's not used to seeing someone laugh the shit out of his big brother.

I'm terrible like that. It just spouts out because I find it funny. People have been offended, which is not my intention AT ALL, and it's not very feminine (bwahahahahha), but the rest of the world seems to find it funny.

Well, my friends do :D.
Guys tend to find me a bit of a shock at times, because I don't fit into the persona they attribute me, which is also something I find terribly funny. (i was going to say droll but that would come across as pretentious).
So yeah. I'm a pain in the ass.

I know I've scared dudes away like that, and man could I not give a damn :)
I mean, seriously. I don't want to be Cinderella, she's too boring for words. Very Lily White, as F would say.(Percival's loved one, always passive, waiting for him, BORING)(this is a translation from the French Blanche Fleur, I don't know her name in English).

On another note, MC turned up unexpectedly so we celebrated her birthday last night, and the conversation turned to that. She's in a city further up North, near the Alps, and she says that they don't deal in double-entendres half as much as we do. So she comes home, sees us, and it takes a couple hours for her to get back in the swing of things^^

I must admit, I can often be found giggling to myself until someone goes "oh for FUCK'S SAKE" and then laughs too.
I think that I'm not all that different from the rest of the world, only I just can't help laughing and then I have to explain why. I don't mind people knowing I have a warped mind^^
Of course, that too is not feminine and all that, but a lot of the girls I know are just as bad as me, so maybe the attribute never was unfeminine to start off with^^

Another myth!

blablabla

Wish I could think of interesting titles.

I was thinking earlier how much I enjoyed food.
Roommate dearest finished at 8pm this evening, so I was pottering around cooking for when she got back.
I like cooking, I like the smells and the changes and most of all the result^^
I don't bother obsessing over food. It's there to be enjoyed, and man is it enjoyable^^
Roommate dearest and I eat together nearly every night, except when one or the other eats out, or when people come over of course, so pottering in the kitchen together making food is something we do very often, and have fun doing^^
It's just nice, enjoying the smells as they come along, and tasting little by little, and twirling around flipping stuff with a cigarette in my other hand.
(I'm very talented at smoking and doing things at the same time)

I guess I just like to enjoy things in general. I spent an hour in the bathroom this evening, washing my hair, and covering myself in cream, stuff I don't have time to do in the morning but that is sooo enjoyable.
And I don't give a damn if it's antifeminist of me :D

Seriously I've read that women who wanted to look nice were colluders and sluts that worshipped cock.
Some people seriously need to see a shrink about their sexuality hang-ups.

I like feeling good about myself, and that includes agreeing with who I see in the mirror.
I don't see why anyone else should care.

As to worshipping cock...I think that has to be one of the most vile things I've ever heard from a woman^^ No seriously, slut-shaming is, like, sooo new, no-one's ever done it before. Really original.
I like the company of men.
I like sex.
It doesn't make me any different. I'm just as vulgar (which has shocked some), just as forthright, just as annoying.
And strangely enough some men find that attractive. Quite a few, come to think of it.

Men can find the eternal stereotype of a girl annoying too. Me and my bad jokes don't quite fit in to it^^

Other pointless things to say

The first years have obviously decided that all us chinese students were nutters because when we were waiting for Ms F to turn up for chinese lab, Lola had african/latino music blaring on her phone and was dancing around the corridor, it was sooo funny, and F was singing along to japanese songs on her mp3.
I think I nearly killed myself laughing at their faces.
Other highlights of the day: JJ came around after we had a resounding argument last night, in which he compared me to his guitar and I blew a fuse.
If anyone is interested, I might have to explain this a bit better because JJ is in no way a dick.

He's a musician (this year at least, he graduated from the same course as I'm doing but last year, and in English-Japanese) and yesterday he finally got the seven string guitar he ordered, so he was a happy wee bunny.
I sent a teasing message saying that he'd better not forget me for his guitar, he teasingly answered that there were things I could do better, I asked what, and that's when it all went awry.
Because to annoy me he pretended not to be able to think of one (I know, we're kids but it's fun) and I pretended to sulk, so he asked what he could do to redeem himself, and I suggested giving me more value than to his guitar (does this sentence make sense in English?I'm tired)

That was the point where I blew a fuse.
Because he said he couldn't, he could only give me a different value.
JJ is a bit strange at times. His elder brother OD'd a couple months ago, and he hasn't really faced it yet, and he knows it. So as soon as he got it, he gave his guitar his brother's name, and it immediately took on a different value to him.
He loved his brother.So much. He doesn't talk about him that much, or tries not to maybe, but there's something of the hero worship about their relationship, and a refusal to believe that his brother could have left him.
And the fact that the last time he talked to his brother, it was angry words, saying that he was sick of his nonsense and it was time for him to get clean.

As I'm writing this, I'm so happy I don't have any readers. I'm thinking that if JJ ever saw this he'd know it was him, and I'm wondering if I can really write this. If it isn't somehow...wrong?

But JJ's brother is such a part of him. It's something I always found incredibly touching about him, how connected he was to his brother, even in death.

Back to the story. I got mad, and had to explain how humiliating I found it to be compared to a guitar, however important the guitar might be.
After all, women as objects are shown daily. I definitely didn't need it shoved into my face anymore than it was.

Well, he apologised, and said it had come out badly, and that of course I was more important than a guitar, which wasn't exactly what I was looking for. So he apologised again.
I think he didn't quite get where the anger came from. He's not used to that side of me.
Well, now he knows, and since he didn't run away screaming feminist, I think things will be fine. I know he didn't mean it. But he doesn't quite get the privilege ey, although I've been pointing out to him pretty regularly^^
Poor guy, he doesn't know what he's let himself in for.

Class debate

In chinese conversation today, we had the choice between two subjects to talk about : romantic gestures/places/whatevers, and homosexual marriage.

Our teacher is a lovely chinese woman who likes to find out what we all think and so tends to give us interesting subjects. She wants to find out about our culture, our opinions, while we get better. It's her first year teaching here, and she's excellent.

Class is mainly girls, and has a few foreigners with weird backgrounds dotted in; me, Victor who is chilean-french, landed in France four or five years ago and spent a year in China last year, and Paul who is german, and has lived here,in Germany, China, Romania, and England(i'm not sure about the england part)(he's older than most of us, thank god, I'm starting to feel inadequate :P) and of course my lovely F who is half-tunisian and always has a lot to say about women's rights and Islam.

Point number one : it was a lot easier talking about than I thought, especially once I'd learnt the words for homosexual and heterosexual.
Point number two : we ALL spoke about homosexual marriage, which puzzled the teacher since she thinks France is supposed to be a very romantic place; the rest of us told her romance as it's usually considered is too boring and commonplace. It doesn't feel special. But I digress.
Point number three : everyone argued in favour of it.

It's suuucccchhh a damn no-brainer sometimes :D
(most said thing : if we can, when we don't care about it, why can't they, when they obviously want to? Of course all this was developed a lot, but I can't be bothered to lay out my and their reasons for supporting gay marriage)

Aids a day late and contraception stories

So yesterday was AIDS day.

I belong to a generation who grew up with AIDS. Safe sex has been rammed into my head since I was about ten. (Anti smoking stuff started earlier but I can't say I followed that :D)

Well, it worked. I've never had unsafe sex. No condom is a no-go, even during the periods I'm on the Pill (I stopped it four months ago because I was tired of it-yes I was still with the Ex at that time and no he did not get a say in it.), except when we've both gone and been tested.
I don't make compromises with my health, or with someone else's for that matter. After all, I'm a slut! (irony inserted).
Truth be told, sex without a condom has only been suggested once, i think. Maybe twice. So the guys aren't too bad about it :D

I hear a lot these days about the younger generation being the most careless about that, and it drives me crazy. I don't understand how we can be less careful. After all, it's not as if anyone had found a vaccine or a cure(I shall celebrate that day).
My mother once told me she'd been lucky to grow up without this fear, although she didn't really. She had a few years, but she was still pretty young when it was made "official".(I wasn't around in any case).

We're lucky here, I really do think.

We're taught about reproduction early. This tends to include how one can fall pregnant, and no, not by giving blowjobs.

You can get contraception and a visit to the gynaecologist for free at the Planning Familial (I guess that might be something like Planned Parenthood?) as well as help to secure an abortion or simply a visit with a counselor. Especially if you don't want your parents knowing about your sex life.
Otherwise you can simply go and get it reimbursed by social security. Most contraception methods are reimbursed, except for the patch if I remember rightly, and how much you're reimbursed depends on the pill you use. In high school I used one that was 10 euros a month (that's REALLY expensive, but I was in high school, what did I care) and last year I was taking one that cost 1,30 euros for three months.
My roommate has one of those blue implant thingies but her dad's a european civil servant so she's under european social protection, it's not quite the same.
You can get the morning after pill free if you have a doctor's presciption, and it costs 7/8 euros over the counter.

Condoms of course are a lot more expensive, and not paid for, unfortunately^^But there are condom machines all over the place, and they give them out a lot. They gave them out in my high school every AIDS day, during the concerts and shows that were organised, they give them ou at concerts, as samples...Best Friend used to have a collection of them^^We'd get really funky ones with the name of the band we'd just been to see on them, that's always funny.

We had sex ed in middle school (~~12,13 years old if I remember right), and some doctor came to talk to us about AIDS, and I still have the poster I stole(actually, they were all stolen becaus ethey were so damn funky that year) from high school for AIDS prevention. It's bright pink and has "oui, oui, oui, ouiiiiiii" a zillion times on it and the "o"s of the "oui"s (that's yes, but I assume you know that) are made with condoms still in their packages, you know when you can see the circle? It's hanging in my kitchen, I should go take a photo.

They've a lot of special ads on at the moment, but they're on pretty often really. Nearly part of the background.

Although apparently there are less people in France contaminated this year. Which is some good news.
And our First Lady's brother died of Aids, so she has an interest in the problem.

I really do ramble.

harassment thread

I know, I spend my time reading old blog posts and threads but I need to educate myself :)
although this isn't really an education.
It's life, and it makes me so fucking angry.
I want to cry.
Talking to JJ on msn and he wondered why I'd gone so quiet, so I directed him to the thread. Now I'm waiting to see what he'll say, although I have faith-he's no idiot :)

I'm safe enough. I live in a safe town. Mine is a place where I can walk back home at two in the morning and nothing has ever happened to me **touches wood**.
I hate feeling like public property because I'm a girl.
Although I'm not sure it's quite the same in France as in the Uk or the US. I was fifteen when I went to the US, so I didn't really notice, and in the UK I've always been out in groups, so I don't know.

But I'm still worried about going home alone. I walk around with pepper sray ever since I ran into trouble at university last year. Before an ex got it for me because he was worried about the nasty turn things between the people blocking uni and those against it (ie, me for example) were taking, I carried one of my brother's knives around.
I always wear headphones so I can ignore the guys calling me out. If I do hear them I tend to have insults spout out before I can stop them. Last time in Marseille I told them to fuck off and die. When i was sixteen some arab dude in the street stopped in front of me, leered and said "hey, let's go to a hotel", as if it was something normal. Told him to go fuck himself.
I fucking hate having to be careful.
I give out very strong leave me alone vibes, which tend to scare people off. In first year, I never got chatted up in the bus, when my roommates did. Around the end of the year though, some random guy in my neighbourhood stopped me in the street and insisted on talking. He was nice enough, but he was creeping me out, he was too old, saying how he'd been seeing me around for a couple months, blabla, could I give him my number. Said no. Tried to make me take his. Said there was no point, that I wasn't going to call him, and shot off.
I hate feeling I owe these cray dudes something, when I don't. I hate being afraid of offending them, that they might take it out on me, and I won't police my behaviour for them. When I really can't do it, I give a fake number so that they leave me the hell alone.

**update**JJ is shocked.

I just get so tired sometimes, and I'm in a safe place. Why should I have to hide beind my sunglasses and headphones?
Why do men feel entitled to shouting their opinion at me, and what, think it's flattering?
Fuckeeerrss

I know men can't comprehend it at a female level because they're not going to experience it, but Christ, is it that hard to grasp?
AAARRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I just want to scream.
I'll feel better in the morning.

Privilege

Privilege is a concept that occurred to me only recently. I mean, I knew I was lucky, but I'd never actually defined it this way.
But as time goes on, I see how privileged i actually am, and I find it crazy.

I'm white.
I'm young.
I'm slim.
I'm conventionally attractive.
I'm straight
I'm smart enough.
I'm middle-class.
I'm from what they call a traditional nuclear family.
I live in a country that pays for my education and health care.
I'm confident enough.

I'm comfortable enough in my own skin not to feel threatened by what is different from me. And I think that's the mother of all privileges, although many probably won't agree with me.
I was brought up to be tolerant and not dismiss what I don't understand.
I lived in a safe environment, where I wasn't belittled overmuch for being a girl, although it has happened, of course; where the gay people I knew weren't attacked, and where the probability of my being mugged was fairly small. Case is, I've been harassed but never attacked, and here's hoping it stays that way.

Racism though was rampant because in the south of France there are large muslim/arab communities-well this actually goes for the whole of France but we're near the sea and Morocco and Algeria are very near. It's hard to be Arab or Black in France.

It's funny how where I lived it was rarer to meet homophobic people than racist people, especially in my generation. After all, we don't listen to only-white music or watch only-white movies.
I could try and explain it. I could try and justify it, but it's just wrong.
I could tell you that whenever I've been harassed by unknown men in the street in my short life, they've all been Arab, strangely enough. I could tell you about how this experience is common to most of my friends. Not three months ago, two friends got beaten up by five arab dudes.
I could tell you how we've all come to associate violence with Arab youths-and older men, for that matter.

And it's just terrible.

These kids have been discriminated against for years, of course they're angry, and all this leads to violence and the 2005 riots.

But that's not what you think of when you've just walked past a group of them who whistled at you and called you a fucking French whore because you didn't respond.

I can try and understand the anger. They're screwed over. You're soooo less likely to get through school, to find a job, to be able to rent a flat if you're Arab or Black, it's insane.
If you're young, it's no point even thinking about it.
That's why people like Rachida dati are set up as an example. She was the daughter of illiterate immigrants, she managed, being a girl, she got out of an arranged marriage, she managed.

But these kids, they mainly have footballers, rappers and singers to look up to, and that isn't much.
So I'm angry at how screwed up they got, so that they got so angry, so that I have to take care to avoid looking at them so as not to get "who you looking at, you French ho, what you want?".
I'm angry at the system that taught them it was no point fighting back.
I'm angry that I don't know what I could do.

Roommate dearest has some voluntary work to do to get her degree. She's going to tutor a kid from one of the less favoured sides of town, which is great. Seriously the Law uni is so much better than ours, it's crazy^^

Sexuality musings

This post made me think a lot, especially the part about male sexuality.
Male homophobia stemming from their insecurity. Which is, actually, obvious, but needs to be spelled out more often.

I'm actually surprised at how unfamiliar this can be. Maybe I just didn't mix with the very macho guys, although I frequented a lot of rugby players during my high school years-talk about homoeroticism :D.

But I have so many friends and guys I've dated who have kissed other dudes, sometimes while drunk, sometimes not, who questioned their sexuality to come to the conclusion that they were straight, without worrying more than that.
JJ for one wrote a song about his best mate's body that's inherently sexual. Which doesn't stop him from dating me :). My ex sometimes kisses his best mates when drunk. It doesn't mean anything to them, maybe just an over the top expression of their friendship :)

When I was in my senior year of high school, we had this class called civic education. It was a load of bollocks and our economics teacher cut it every three weeks so she could make us sit out a four hour exam.(french school can be very demanding^^).
But basically she made us all do small presentations of about half an hour, with another half hour of discussion. It usually made for lively arguments, including my accusing my class of being French chauvinist idiots when we discussed Europe ^^.
But I digress. The Best Friend had homosexual adoption as a subject.

See, in France it's a bit strange. You can adopt as a single parent, which is what most gay couples do, because you can't adopt as a couple in a civil union, if I remember right (PACS), although the European Human Rights Court has stated that refusing adoption on the basis of sexuality is illegal, it's all a bit complicated. Anyway, this was in 2005/2006, back to the story.

Best Friend hauled me in to go around and question the school pupils on what they thought of adoption by homosexuals.
A resounding number didn't give a damn. A few worried about the effect on the kids. And then of course there were the radically opposed, but i don't remember many, I only remember a group of five or six guys saying "well look at my buddy here. He can/could be gay, I don't care. I still don't think it's right if he adopts, I mean the poor kid would be singled out like, forever, it's not normal."
I don't remember actively arguing with anyone, just pointing out that homosexual couples already had children anyway, and that not being able to adopt just made things a lot more difficult for them, because surrogate mothers are banned in France, it's considered selling your body, which is banned, like for organs, blood, and sex of course!

But all those who were against it were guys. Funny, isn't it.

There were quite a few loud and proud gays in my school, boys or girls. The loudest of them, Flo did get quite a bit of flack from the rugby players, which led to a hell of a lot of arguments, mainly my screaming in the middle of class for them to STFU! He was-and is-my friend. He was everyone's friend really, he was a popular guy.
The other one who really struck me was Erica, but that's because she scared the shit out of me^^ She was very strong, did a lot of boxing, and was certifiably insane. And she got angry very fast.

Saturday scrolling

I wish I wrote down ideas for posts when I get them, because then life gets in the way, and I forget.

This has not been a good week. Those bombings in Mumbai...still not clear, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Two Frenchies were killed, apparently the founder of Princesse Tam Tam, an underwear brand and her husband (I haven't checked this, read it in the paper).

The Socialist's warfare seems to have abated for a while, they elected Martine Aubry, and now I'm waiting for the next self-implosion. The state of the left in this country is pathetic. They just fight for power all the time, and none of them seem to realise the consequences. I mean, I'm nineteen and I could tell them that they're just making themselves ridiculous and completely discrediting whatever they could do.

One thing I've been thinking about is power in France. We're often told there aren't enough female politicians in powerful places, but A) I'm not sure that's true, I don't have the statistics, and we do have a lot of female names cropping up every day in the news, the most common at the moment being Segolène Royal and Martine Aubry, and B) I don't think that's the point. No-one in France could do an Obama, ever : what, eight years of politics, and becoming president?
No fucking way.
Sarkozy presented himself as a reformer when he turned up : what a lot of foreigners don't realise is that he's been in politics for thirty years.
A job in politics here is all about the game. We're so very stuck in Machiavel. Many politicians, most politicians tend to use their power for themselves a lot.
Which I think is why they don't want more rivals. Things could change a lot if more female politicians, powerful ones, spoke out for the cause of women in general, had female protégées, thought about sharing even a bit-but it doesn't work like that here.

Sarkozy has female protégées, more than male ones come to think of it, such as Rachida Dati and Rama Yade. Has he furthered their careers? Hell yeah. No-one had actually heard of them before he gave them their jobs.
Not that it protected them.
I have little respect for Rachida Dati. She has no idea of what compromise is, and seems to prefer showing off in tabloids than actually working. But as she whines a lot, she's the daughter of two illiterate Algerian immigrants who became a lawyer by herself. That commands my respect, whatever happens.
Rama Yade is the daughter of an African diplomat. She seems intelligent, but her job doesn't allow her to show it at all. She's a political prop more than anything else, unfortunately. I'd like to see what she's capable of, and I'd love to see her prove the naysayers wrong.

But she's put herself in the power of a very dominant man, and sarkozy is not going to let anyone steal his thunder, not that a state secretary could, but he will do anything to keep the useful people and get rid of the deadweights. Rama is still useful; she does what he says, she doesn't create scandals or controversies, and she looks good as a young black woman in his government.

She isn't a Segolene Royal, who for all her craziness these days has been a very strong woman through her life; she got away from the dominating influence of her military father in her late teens, and became the first female candidate to the presidency to get to the second round.
Here's the thing. I don't like Segolene Royal, she acts strangely and goes with the flow, uttering a few crazy things along the way for shock value.
But she earned what she got, and she fought all the way, all the way to the primaries for the Socialist candidate for the presidency in 2007, when some of the left candidates asked "but who will take care of the children?" disparagingly.

Hmmm

Keyboards for girls

Why does this strike me as sexist, and am I overreacting?
A lovely pink keyboard, with musical notes instead of numbers, "XXL letters" for caps, and a whole lot of other "easy" functions, like special keys for "OMG".

I find this extremely annoying. And the first comment on the page is already moaning about how SOMEONE is going to complain about this.

I mean, duh, it's so hard to use a normal keyboard when you're just a silleeee girleeeee. After all, all a girl uses a computer for is to chat, isn't it?Msn and the like. Ooooh,and to look up things about popstars.
Musical notes instead of numbers? I mean, seriously?

This is the kind of thing that really annoys me. GIRLS ARE DUMB,YOOHOO!We need pink and things made easy!
Just fuck off already.

Just great

Holy shit T.I. and Rihanna have sampled Ozone.

I think I just did mysef an injury laughing.

(Ozone are some eastern Europe band who had a hit years ago with a song that ges "Numa Numa yeah. Unintentionally hilarious.)