Purity, Abstinence, Morality and Lack Thereof

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The Social Network (Love or hate or a bit of both?)

I keep going back and forth on whether or not I actually like The Social Network. Before I get into the detail, let me first say that it was an incredibly enjoyable movie. Witty, fast paced, rude and completely unapologetic, its characters were completely unlikable in all the right ways and there was hardly a dull moment. It won me over in the first scene, where Mark Zuckerberg the asshole is dumped by his girlfriend with the qualifier 'it's not because you're a nerd, it's because you're just an asshole'. (Nerd boys, there's a lot of truth in this. If you're complaining that you can't get a girlfriend because you're 'nerdy', ask yourself first, are you just a dick?)

But here's the thing: I can't guiltlessly like it, because it was also unapologetically sexist. I don't find that as bothersome as a lot of the blogosphere does and I certainly didn't ruin my movie experience by sitting there analyzing all the ways that it was an inaccurate and offensive portrayal of women, but it was there and it can't be avoided. Aside from the intelligent and fed up girlfriend that appears in the first scene as the catalyst for Mark's creation of facebook (by first inspiring him to create a site where girls at the school can be compared side by side and rated) the only girls to appear in the movie are mindless objects for the enjoyment of the male dominated cast. To the extent that they have any influence over the main characters, it is negative.

It's one thing to say 'the main characters of this movie are male because the creators of this company were male', the main defense I've seen bopping around the few negative reviews of The Social Network, and another thing entirely to say that it's justifiable to have treated every single minor female character as a sex object. Even when the company has expanded to include dozens of workers and interns the only girls who get screen time are having lines of coke snorted off of their stomachs and personally delivering things to the main characters so that they can be ogled and cat called. In the background the male interns are shown writing code and doing meaningful tasks for the company...with no women among them. Aaron Sorkin's defense that it's just a reflection of the reality of the techworld doesn't really hold water. There are women doing meaningful things in that environment, they just didn't fit into his storyline so he didn't mention them, even in passing. Alright, whatever, but at least acknowledge what you're doing.

At the same time, at least the sexism wasn't portrayed as a good thing. It just was what it was. The characters were clearly assholes for a whole slew of other reasons and no one was jumping to the defense of their treatment of the women around them.

So...I still don't know if I like this movie or not. I like asshole characters in general. I appreciate portrayals of the more negative side of human personalities and interactions, without a hero or a villain. Frankly, I like seeing people screw each other over and treat each other like shit and, well, act like real people in real relationships. Because real people are generally kind of assholes. Even the nicest ones fall into that trap from time to time, and most of us aren't the nicest that we could possibly be.

So what I think it comes down to is this: I would recommend this more as a source of great amusement, it's far more well written than most anything else I've seen all year, with great pacing and decent acting. But take it with a grain of salt. Realize it could be better and take it for what it is, not what it could be.

NaNoWriMo Is Coming

The site (nanowrimo.org) has been reset for the year, the forums wiped clean just to be dirtied by our rambling minds again. It's a fresh start! I'll win this year, I swear!

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and takes place every November not just nationally but internationally. It's a challenge to write 50,000 words in a month (which is short, as far as novels go). No, there's no prize if you win. But you get stickers!

It's an exercise in just getting words on the page. Quantity, rather than quality, is what matters. Save your red pen and editing for December! Or January, when you're not quite so sick of what you just wrote. Being a perfectionist about writing and also awfully lazy, I've never managed to win, though one year I came close and it was only due to an evil conspiracy hatched by my computer and flash drive that I lost (a previous copy of my novel, backed up on the flash drive, was copied over all other existing files at four in the morning, erasing around fifteen thousand words and brutally murdering my motivation).

I'm going to win this year, though. Really I am. Surely it will be easy to write 50,000 words about impossibly adorable genetically engineered pocket sized dragons eating faces, wreaking havoc, and causing moral quandaries, all with a side of questionably motivated genocide and corruption.

Right? Right.

I'm still nervous.

Finding the Words

There are so many things I want to talk about. I am nearly overflowing with topics, with thoughts that would do better on a page than in my head. But...I don't seem to have the words. Anyone who knows me can tell you that that's a rare thing, I can talk about nothing forever, and when I actually WANT to talk? You've got no chance of getting me to shut up. I'll tell you what I'm thinking whether you like it or not. Apparently I intimidate people with how vocal I am about...just about everything (pardon me if I think that, perhaps, those people NEED to be intimidated, so that maybe they'll learn to speak up, too).

But today I just don't have the words. Today I'm tired. Two weeks ago I fell off of a horse, all that remains as evidence is a scar on my face and a lingering sprained ankle, but healing is tiring. My heart hurts, because caring is tiring. People are strange and complicated animals and understanding them, or at least trying to, is tiring. (I don't think I'm ever going to perfect that skill, but maybe I'll learn to find an off button for whatever makes me want to understand people.)

If I was going to try, I could write about: the mustang roundup (though I already did that, and I just need to edit it from an essay into a blog post), my accident and how much I hate hospitals and bitchy ER nurses, the damned horse that hospitalized me and how much I love him, or how much fake concern from people who hate me annoys me and has made me want to hit something in the past few weeks. If not those, then I could write about how I've been reminded lately why I haven't consistently watched the news in years and why I stick to abstract concepts of social justice rather than current events, because the world makes me sick and I like to cling to what little faith in humanity I have left. Or I could be a bit less tragic, a little more hopeful, try to remind myself that there are things worth paying attention to by talking about the It Gets Better Project (and how much I sometimes love Dan Savage) and all the amazing people who have already participated in it and who are spreading it to reach those who need it. I could say that sometimes Violet Blue, or maybe The Rejectionist, say really cool things.

Perhaps I could try grounding myself in real life instead by writing about Beth DiCaprio who runs the Grace Foundation and continues to give me amazing opportunities to do inspiring things (and has really cool dogs that I want to kidnap).

I could meander into discussing music and how much I love it and need it and really need to acquire more of it. I could tell you how cute my puppy is at great length, because she's damn cute and and a really good foot warmer to boot. Had I the words, I could probably go on about books forever because, you see, I have so many and they're all pretty wonderful. Maybe even a mention of Banned Book Week and how ridiculous banning any form of literature is, though I haven't bothered to read a banned book this week even despite having meant to.

But, see, I don't have the words. I have all these really cool words, strung together in sentences and mashed up into paragraphs, but I don't have the right words. I can't find the ones I want. So I guess that will all have to wait.

How I Got To Where I Am (or My Journey to Unschooling)

College is the goal, the motivator in everything we do from kindergarten until high school graduation. To have attained that goal in some small way by entering the Freshman English classroom is, or should be, the end of a journey from point A to point B and therefore a success story. For me, in this English classroom, it is not. Traditional schooling has always proved to be a stumbling block for me; from the first grade public school class environment to what is referred to as a school-at-home curriculum I have not fit the expectations of the system and have sought alternative educational options, in the process abandoning the idea of completing my entire college education at a four year university for the sake of convenience and monetary constraints.

In a system that teaches to the middle in an attempt to average out the success of all its students there is no place for those who excel or fall behind. If you require any special attention you are pushed aside to be dealt with later, with whatever small amount of energy or resources might be left over after the majority is pacified. At least, that was my experience in the public education system starting at a very young age. Having finished my work early I would be punished for trying to otherwise amuse myself. Misbehaving because of boredom or disenchantment with underpaid and undereducated teachers who had little to no passion for their subject, I was sent to counseling. If I could not conform I must be labeled in a way that could be more easily handled by the administration.

On one particularly memorable occasion the school administration tried to tell my mother that I had Tourette’s syndrome. Well, yes, I did have several motor tics as a child—coping mechanisms developed to help me deal with an environment that made me nervous and uncomfortable. I cycled through bouts of habitual eye blinking and throat clearing, two main tics used to diagnose people with Tourette’s, as well as other twitches, though I can’t ever remember manifesting all of them in the same time period. I suppose I could have had/have Tourette’s, but these were not the reasons that they brought up to defend their opinion. No, they had no real concern for my mental health; they simply wanted to diagnose me with something, anything, to makes their lives easier. If I could be put into a box and medicated then their lives would be simpler. If they could say I spoke out in class and had no respect for them because I was somehow damaged as far as they were concerned then I wouldn’t be back-talking for any legitimate reason like oh, say, they can never given me any real reason to respect them. (On an interesting side note, I have never again experienced any of these tics after leaving school.)

After having completed fifth grade, using a curriculum that I had finished through a brief stint in independent study two years previously in third grade, my parents removed me from public school to use a homeschooling program with course work modeled off of the public school standards. That worked little better than public school had in the first place and was quickly abandoned and followed by a descent into the little known but much despised practice of Unschooling. I spent several years going through a process commonly referred to as ‘deschooling’. I don’t remember much of those years. I slept a lot, I sat around and ate junk food, I watched a lecture series on Ancient Egypt and tried NaNoWriMo for the first time. During that time I refused to go out and socialize or talk to people, especially people my own age. A lot of people would classify that as highly unhealthy, but I’d say they’re wrong. I, as a person who was really fucked up at the time, needed to take that time to get my feet back under me. Trust me, when I came out the other side of that I was a much happier and more functional person than I had been for years before.

As my family got the hang of the lifestyle of Unschooling we discovered that it fit our interests and goals far better than public school ever had, mine especially. For the past four years I have studied what I was interested in, pursued my passions, and learned far more about a broader range of subjects than my friends in public school have ever dreamed. I’ll be the first to admit that there are some subjects that I’m more than a little behind in, but I have every confidence that I’ll easily catch up just as soon as it’s relevant that I apply myself to them. I think the fact that I easily tested into a college freshman English class, scoring nearly as highly as you can on the test (though they wouldn’t let me test OUT of the freshman class, sadly), after having had absolutely no formal English curriculum for the past five years, just goes to show how very little you really need to follow school standards to get the education you want and need.

Next semester I’ll be taking a full course load at the local community college as a highschool graduate, though in some respects I’ll still be taking highschool level classes to catch up, but for now I’m doing what I love: playing with horses, volunteering at The Grace Foundation of NorCal (these first two things tie into each other, which makes me very happy!), reading, writing, having interesting discussions with interesting people, and going on as many adventures as I can while I’m young enough to drop everything and run off to have fun.

Tell me, how is that a less valid way of getting where I’m going? College is still a goal, but it isn’t THE defining goal anymore. I’m partially there already. I’ll make it the rest of the way eventually.

Amid Weeping There Is Joy (or HSC Conference 2010)

I find that it becomes infinitely easier to look back on things and find the good in them after a few days. The same is true for looking back and seeing what truly was as bad or worse than you thought it was at the time and figuring out how and why it went so wrong. It's somewhat therapeutic, after an event such as this, to lounge and think about the whys and the hows and pick apart the stresses, fights and failures.

When you put 25 teenagers together and deprive them of sleep, feed them junk food and put them under stress breakdowns will inevitably happen. Adding in 150 of their peers relying on them for amusement doesn't help anything. As well as things went (and most of them went wonderfully) bad things do happen. Things that could ruin the truly unique experience of the conference as a whole if you are willing to let them, and I almost did.

I've come to realize that there were a lot of tears shed in vain and perhaps some words that would have been better off left unsaid, but many things were justified even outside the heat of the moment. There are some people that will never be likable, actions that are unforgivable, trusts that won't reform. Those things won't change even after the initial bursts of anger and betrayal have passed. Nothing will make false rumors less biting or lies less hurtful, and they can't be taken back.

But there are also just people who made silly mistakes and said stupid things to the wrong people and never really thought about the consequences. Forgiveness isn't really in my nature but when it comes down to it well intentioned ignorance is not the same as idiocy and has to be forgiven. And the upside is finding out that what you thought was malicious really wasn't, which kind of brightens things up. :)

So when it comes down to it...conference was pretty good. A lot of the people were really awesome, and really gorgeous, and I wish I had been in a better mood to enjoy their company. We put together a few supercool parties and dances that were totally worth all the effort, and arranged way more workshops than I want to think about.

But my favorite part was probably Sunday night, hanging out and detoxing and letting go of all the things that had been stressing me out.

I'm still exhausted. I'm still kind of upset. But I'm actually pretty happy. Looking back there's always joy amid the tears.

I can't wait for next year. <3

Conference Countdown

This summer has been crazy: beautiful places, beautiful people, adventures, drama, sickness, parties, my 1 year anniversary with my boyfriend, and a new puppy, just to name a few of the things that have happened in the last few months. It's been pretty epic and I've hardly been home at all in the past month. I think my family is starting to wonder if I'm trying to abandon them.

But August is drawing to a close, school is starting (for you conformists who attend XD), tons of people I know are being eaten up by Community College, the awesomely hot weather is going to fade...

But we're going out with a bang because the HSC Conference is this weekend!!! I'd have a hard time thinking of a better way to say goodbye to summer then this. Parties (SUPERHERO THEMED, WOOOOO! the nerd in me can't stop grinning), dances, crazy workshops, not to mention tons of awesome people in one place. And all the weekend before I start class (only one, damn them) at Sierra community college.

I can't wait! Only a day and a half left until it starts....