From: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
Subject: Re: another poem
Originator: blchapma@c00467-224wi.eos.ncsu.edu
Reply-To: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
Organization: North Carolina State University, Project Eos
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 23:30:41 GMT


In article <1992Sep27.032258.3405@ncsu.edu>, barclay@RAIL9000.gatech.edu (Barclay Blanchard) writes:
|> Ailsa, Janis, and Bekki Lyn:
|> 
|> It's terrible that kids tortured you, especially over superficial stuff.  Why 
|> does our society get so damn hung up on how a woman looks?
|> 
|> (I have The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf but haven't read it yet; it's about
|> the expectations Western society has re: women's appearances.)

I've bought the book too, but like you, I haven't read it yet.
 
|> [apologies for the lost attributions]
|> >>|> > > It took me a long time to get used to the idea that it was okay to b
|> >>|> > > a female.  I had identified myself for so long with males, that I lo
|> >>|> > > down on other girls/women, I guess.  Now, I know that I was terribly
|> >>|> > > wrong to believe that.  I suppose I was just trying to forget the fa
|> >>|> > > that I was one of the "inferior ones" myself.
|> 
|> I relate to that in a big way.  As girls we're taught that it's not good to
|> be assertive, independent, confident about our opinions.  So who wants to be
|> a girl if you can't be strong in your sense of self?

Sometimes I would lie in bed at night and wonder why (in my Christian
days) god didn't make me into a boy.  I'd thought time and time again
that I should have been born a boy simply because my interests
were "boy" things.  Fortunately, I've been enlightened since then.
 
|> >>|> > i still don't like traditional women (but then i don't like traditiona
|> >>|> > men either) and women with those meek little whispery voices very
|> >>|> > nearly drive me to violence.  i always want to slap them and tell them
|> >>|> > to speak up and stop being such wussy little fragile flowers.
|> 
|> I don't especially like traditional women, especially the ones who demure about
|> everything.  But sometimes I find myself doing that (and internally slap 
|> myself and reverse it by putting on a feminist-from-hell air or a very
|> intellectual air).  The meak whispery voice bit... well, I'm extremely soft
|> spoken.  It may have started from my abyssmal self-esteem when I was a child
|> but it's part of me now.  But I'm not a wussy fragile flower, either.  I just
|> don't talk loudly.

Nothing really wrong with a soft-spoken voice.  There is a silent strength
with those who are "quiet types".  It's more the actions of some women
or what they say that bothers me rather than the voice tone.  Well, I'm
not perfect by a long shot myself.  I can think of innumerable situations
when I wished I'd spoken up, but didn't.
 
-- 

Bekki Lyn

************************************************************
"All's well at the midnight hour; you're ready to fly
 Don't think about the darkness, or the rumbling in the sky.
 Somewhere on the morning road just waiting for you
 Some things that just could never be are calling up a
   spell so you can see..
 Dream Evil, the dark that you find in the back of your mind
 Dream Evil Dream Evil -- DIO --
************************************************************