Redundantly Paradoxical

I have BEEN doxxed. I have been stalked online. I have had people go through my journals and my pictures to try to identify me for malicious purposes. I have had people search me on court websites to try to find the charges I filed against an ex when he stole from me, for the purposes of trying to humiliate me about an online roleplaying game. (No, really.) I’ve had people try to match up pictures of the flowers outside my synagogue and the building in the background with pictures of synagogues in the Philly area to try to fuck with my life.

So I know the kind of gut-clenching, cold down the back of your neck, hands-shaking fear that comes with being doxxed. I do. It’s happened to me more than once. It will probably happen to me again, because I’m a loud fat queer femme Jewish disabled activist, and boy does that piss people off.

But let me be clear: I was existing as a person that someone else didn’t like in those cases. I was existing as queer, I was existing as ‘someone I don’t like on a game.’ I was not showing up in public, carrying a torch, and advocating for the massacre of millions of people. When you show up in public carrying a torch, you are not being doxxed.

I saw the latest Blade Runner movie and I was bored to tears yet on the movies subreddit, everyone said I either didn’t get it or didn’t give the movie a chance. And when I gave my reasons as to why I didn’t like the movie, I was called close-minded. The movie wasn’t just dull but it had this creepy obsession with women yet didn’t respect women in any way and I found it ironic that a movie all about women and their rights to reproduce had the main character be a male. But obviously, I’m not smart enough to understand this movie.

Now with Wrinkle in Time, I enjoyed this movie and I do honestly feel like a lot of white, male critics are tearing the movie apart because they don’t get it or don’t try to get it. There is also a lot of callous talk concerning this movie.

“Oh, it’s too emotional! It’s too focused on self love!”

How…how are those bad things!?

Like I’m sorry but I am tired of every movie that is dark and gritty being hailed as something thought provoking and deep. Not every single piece of entertainment has to be depressing 24/7. I’ve also noticed that when it comes to movies that are dumb fun, if it doesn’t feature a man, it’s torn apart too. I liked Maleficent. It’s fun but if I like it, I’m an idiot apparently.

What I’m getting to is this. The job of the critic is to tell people if they would like a piece of media or if they would enjoy it. I’m able to see a movie and sometimes say, “This movie was not meant for me but someone else might like it.” I feel like a vast majority of today’s critics can’t do that and I think it’s important that critics be made up of more than just white dudes.

Likewise, if men moved en masse to bedeck themselves in sparkles and make-up, then suddenly you’d get a bunch of editorials talking about how classy they look.

People want to say misogyny doesn’t exist, that male privilege doesn’t exist. Look beyond “living memory” and you’ll find that’s what drives the “inexplicable reversals” society seems to make on many things. Hell, just look beyond your own society, and you’ll find out that what’s considered “for men” elsewhere is held in high esteem while here it’s scoffed at purely because it’s “for women”: 

Skinny jeans are the height of masculinity in several east Asian societies, rather than being seen as “gay” in the USA because of their association with femininity. 

Medical fields in Russia are valued like kindergarten teachers are here, because it’s women who are the doctors instead of men.

Significantly higher proportions of females compared to males are currently entering the fields of archaeology and biological anthropology, and as this occurs, the prestige, funding, acceptance as valid kinds of science, etc, are fading quickly.

One of my lecturers at university once presented us with this thought exercise: why are doctors so highly paid, and so well-respected? Our answers were predictable. Because they save lives, their skills are extremely important, and it takes years and years of education to become one. All sound, logical reasons. But these traits that doctors possess are universal. So why is it, she asked, that doctors in Russia are so lowly paid? Making less than £7,500 a year, it is one of the lowest paid professions in Russia, and poorly respected at that. Why is this?

The answer is crushingly, breathtakingly simple. In Russia, the majority of doctors are women. Here’s a quote from Carol Schmidt, a geriatric nurse practitioner who toured medical facilities in Moscow: “Their status and pay are more like our blue-collar workers, even though they require about the same amount of training as the American doctor… medical practice is stereotyped as a caring vocation ‘naturally suited‘ to women, [which puts it at] a second-class level in the Soviet psyche.”

What this illustrates perfectly is this — women are not devalued in the job market because women’s work is seen to have little value. It is the other way round. Women’s work is devalued in the job market because women are seen to have little value. This means that anything a woman does, be it childcare, teaching, or doctoring, or rocket science, will be seen to be of less value simply because it is done mainly by women. It isn’t that women choose jobs that are in lower-paid industries, it is that any industry that women dominate automatically becomes less respected and less well-paid.

Most Avatars are informed of their newfound destinies at the age of 16 to begin their training. Because of the approaching war Aang was told of his status at the age of 12. He had already mastered airbending, and in the span of a year he mastered the other three elements, the avatar state, and energybending. He also learned lightning redirection and seismic sense (a technique no previous Avatar had even encountered). In the span of a year.

1. 12 Years old was the youngest anyone has ever mastered Airbending.

I wish I could be more accommodating but I’m super ADHD and even when I try rly hard I just,, keep forgetting

“Oh I’ve had to fight since I was five years old. I haven’t had anybody approach me like that since I’ve been in the music business, but ever since from five to 17 I’ve been going through hell with sexual harrassment,” said the nine time Grammy Award-winning singer.