You know those age old movies with women with big hair in pretty dresses, classical music, gentlemen, and sexist pigs, right? So. The whole idea about women having to be treated specially may not exactly be very common in the US (equality of the sexes, right?) but in Russia it's here, it's there it's everywhere. And driven to a point where it feels ridiculous. I have no issue when old men with giant mustaches and fancy hats behave according to those antique standards, but 17 year olds? Really… that's too much. Some of the stuff that's happened in the short time I've been here:
1. Women are always let though any door first. Anytime. Anywhere.
2. When standing in a group and there are seats. Women get the seats before men.
3. If there is a bag(of any weight) (or anything else weighing more than 500g, for that matter) the man must carry it.
4. When walking together (esp. if the couple is 'involved') the woman must be to the man's right.
5. When it's raining, the man holds the umbrella, and must make sure that the girl doesn't get rained on.
6. If any other unfavorable circumstances exist the man must take the woman home.
But yeah it's not that I mind people being nice, or having been taken home under an umbrella because I forgot mine, no it's great. But these are things that shouldn't happen because women are 'fragile,' but because women are human beings too. No other reason should be necessary.
And as for carrying a bag that contains 2L of milk because I'm a girl and therefore weak, well that's just plain stupid. If it really does look heavy, the sure, let's split the load, but if it's a pathetic 2 milk cartons worth of mass, then that's just laughable. (and yes, that actually did happen. And the only reason why I didn't tell the guy off was because I still lack the vocabulary to properly bash this absurdity.)
So yeah, being nice is great, but being nice because of genitals is just bla.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
fwooosh
I love my little moments of revelation. Out of thin air, the answer to some unformed question, that had been troubling in the back of my mind simply materializes, and I understand both the origin of the question, the complete answer, and all past actions that had been based on that fact, thou I hadn't been aware of it at the time. But it is also in those moments when I can clearly see my life for what it is. And more often than not, during that moment of clearness, the primary question that screams out to my consciousness is: What are you doing all of this for? Is this really what you wanted? And more often than not the nagging answer that slowly but surely comes right after: Because that's what I do. I survive. No other reason. But soon enough my self preservation instinct kicks in, and conjures up the usual foggy mass that hides these things from view, so I can live somehow.
In the past few weeks I've realized that, although I can see so much clearer through people, I don't feel like myself. It's almost like an outer body experience, where the real me is watching this movie play out from a comfy couch with a bag of chips.
But the most odd thing is that. I don't actually feel any different than from when I was in SC. No different at all, which makes me wonder what human existence is like. Last week I read a book about how the brain works, and about all the chemical things and whatnot going on in there. And the general message of the book was this: "All feelings and memories are simply highly sophisticated bio-chemical processes in your brain, but that doesn't make them any less real." Maybe that has given me this sense of flatness in my life, or maybe it's just the lack of actual friends here, the lack of human closeness that's getting to me. It's odd, but I kind of feel like I'm playing a game, and watching the events unfold in real time, but they don't have any actual relation to my true life outside of it. I also have this very weird sense of timelessness: it's like I've always been here somehow, here in this spot, this moment in time, and everything else had been just a colorful fantasy. The more often I see someone the more I'm convinced that I've known these people before I met them. But at the same time they're all strangers to me, all unknown placeholders walking around me, having nothing to do with me other than taking up a certain volume of space.
It's rather surreal here. I can't really describe the way I fell about this whole affair in words. I'd need to send out a telepathic stream of consciousness composed of colors, sensations, and impressions.
PS: The sun is indecently blue here. It's beautiful.
In the past few weeks I've realized that, although I can see so much clearer through people, I don't feel like myself. It's almost like an outer body experience, where the real me is watching this movie play out from a comfy couch with a bag of chips.
But the most odd thing is that. I don't actually feel any different than from when I was in SC. No different at all, which makes me wonder what human existence is like. Last week I read a book about how the brain works, and about all the chemical things and whatnot going on in there. And the general message of the book was this: "All feelings and memories are simply highly sophisticated bio-chemical processes in your brain, but that doesn't make them any less real." Maybe that has given me this sense of flatness in my life, or maybe it's just the lack of actual friends here, the lack of human closeness that's getting to me. It's odd, but I kind of feel like I'm playing a game, and watching the events unfold in real time, but they don't have any actual relation to my true life outside of it. I also have this very weird sense of timelessness: it's like I've always been here somehow, here in this spot, this moment in time, and everything else had been just a colorful fantasy. The more often I see someone the more I'm convinced that I've known these people before I met them. But at the same time they're all strangers to me, all unknown placeholders walking around me, having nothing to do with me other than taking up a certain volume of space.
It's rather surreal here. I can't really describe the way I fell about this whole affair in words. I'd need to send out a telepathic stream of consciousness composed of colors, sensations, and impressions.
PS: The sun is indecently blue here. It's beautiful.
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