From: amadeus@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Castrating Bitches (was Re: another poem)
Date: 2 Oct 92 16:41:25 GMT
Organization: University of Texas at Austin

Bekki, Ailsa, Janis --

Wow, it was really good to read all that stuff you posted.  Not good
in the enjoyable sense, of course, but good in a "ping!  I know that
feeling" sort of way.

The best thing about school, especially high school, was leaving.  We
never moved or anything, so I graduated with many of the same people I
started first grade with.  Boy is that hell -- they remember
everything.  They remember that you read faster than they did in
elementary.  They remember when you had that ugly haircut (where is
Dorothy Hamill these days anyway?  She's got a lot to answer for...)
and those little glasses.  So by the time you're in seventh grade,
things are set for the rest of the time.  I mean, I wasn't even
funny-looking or anything like that, but that hurtful label "dog"
applies to more than just looks, that's for sure.  It's those who
don't fit in.  Plus, I was one of those "band fags," and, double plus,
I actually took it seriously (in my other life I got my undergrad in
bassoon performance and was going to be a musician, but that's another
story).  The graduation from junior high to high school did change one
thing: I was a more specific type of dog.  I was a bitch.  Me, a
perfectly nice little four-eyed mouse who wouldn't even be late to
class until she was a senior (of course, perhaps that's why).  By the
time I was a senior in high school, it was accepted that "Susan was
weird," but it was almost a good kind of weird, like something that
gave me personality, which of course almost makes up for not being one
of the normal people.

And I always did still read faster than they did.  :)

When I came to Austin for my freshman year, I went out the Friday
before the semester began with my roommate to see a movie (Desperately
Seeking Susan, what irony!).  Any road, I ran into these two guys I
had known since second or third grade.  I was wearing a straight skirt
and a sleeveless sweater, and I had on a little makeup -- not the kind
of clothes I usually wore to high school, but it wasn't like I was a
totally different person either.  So I ran into them at an
intersection, they saw me, and they did a double take.  "Susan?" they
said.  I nodded.  "Susan *Harwood*?" they said.  I nodded again (even
though I'd known these guys since playground they had never looked at
me quite like that before, so I was embarrassed).  The light changed,
and we crossed the street in silence.  At the opposite corner, they
went one way while I went the other, and I heard one of them say,
"Boy, you sure didn't look like that in high school."

During college I discovered something.  All those years in school when
I desperately tried to fit in, have the right clothes (which were
never quite right), be interested in the right music (my Goddess, this
was the age of DISCO!!  I was supposed to pretend to like this
garbage?!?), and be one of the Right People -- it was useless.  Better
I should be myself, which is a little eccentric, a little flamboyant,
smarter than lots of guys and not afraid of that fact, and, I
realized, a lot happier.

Now I like dressing up, or dressing to look good (which may or may not
be the same thing).  But I do it for myself, *not* to fit in or to get
someone's attention.  Anybody else around here read _The Beauty Myth_?
I just finished it, and boy did it hit home.  I just wish it had been
around when I was growing up.  It *will* be available for my daughter
when she can read... of course that's a few years down the road yet.  :)

>Blessings,
>Janis the Castrating Bitch

And this is why I saved this part, and changed the subject line.  Any
other women here, straight, lesbian or bi, actually *enjoy* being
called a bitch now?  It may sound strange, but I do.  And I especially
like being called a castrating bitch.  Bitches are women who won't
take shit; bitches are women who don't fit into the male order, the
patriarchal machine; bitches are women who have power.  

(Plus which, for a long long time, whenever I've been taken on any
sort of power-animal visualization, it's always been either a dog or a
wolf, usually the former.  And she's always female.)

So if someone (usually a man) calls me a bitch, I just look him in the
eye and say, "Why thank you."  :)

Enough; I have to go tend my pup.  Thanks again, ladies, for sharing
your stories and making me think about some things.

-- 
-----Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik-------------------------------*<:-)-------------
"Queens never make bargains."  -- The Red Queen, _Through the Looking Glass_
-----amadeus@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu--------------The University of Texas @Austin---