QuoteYou. Yes, you. The mess. You in the corner with the bottle of whiskey. Your life is a mess, and you know whose fault it is? Yours. That's right. YOU'RE the one who picked that asshole in the first place, didn't you? So it's your fault he cheated on you. The divorce is your fault, because you should have stuck by your man no matter whose unhappiness it entailed.
Shut your whore mouth. Don't try to talk to me about "rebuilding" or "holding it together after a divorce". We're talking about blame here, and I am placing it squarely on you. Why? Because I want you to suffer for what you've done. You are a bad, bad woman; a slut. A loudmouth slut who uses foul language. SHUT UP, BITCH. Listen to me; I've said it once and I'm going to say it again. Your life is a mess, and it's YOUR FAULT.
It's your fault you lost your job, too. Yes. I don't care if it's because the company went bankrupt; it's still your fault. Because I don't like you. Yes, that's why, you nasty whore! Your fault! I said so! And your heart getting broken the way it did, that's your fault because you cruise the internet looking for dicks to suck. That IS what you're doing, because I said so. If you were a proper lady and didn't use internet personals to meet people, you wouldn't have gotten hurt, so you deserved it.
I got green and I got blues
and everyday there's a little less difference between the two.
So I belly-up and disappear.
Well I ain't really drowning 'cause I see the beach from here.
-Drive-By TruckersYou know, there's an interesting thing that happens when people get divorced. Their whole future, everything they planned for, falls apart, and they usually fall apart too, for a while. They flail around looking for ground, trying to find something by which they can get their bearing in this new, frightening world without a future. They might drink too much or sink into depression or get into bar fights or fuck the next warm body that comes along, or do all of the above. And then, gradually, they come out of it, and look around at what they still have, and start building a future from that. Sometimes there's a whole lot left.
I'm sick of this sanctimonious idea-gone-memetic, started by damned-if-I-remember-who, that my life is a mess and it's my own fault. My life isn't any more of a mess than anyone else going through divorce, and it's a damn sight less of a mess than most. I have a house, three beautiful healthy well-adjusted children, steady work I enjoy, and caring friends. I have virtually no debt, and perfect credit. I show regularly in a local art gallery and I have a fair body of poetry to show for my experiences. I get along with my exes and am close friends with almost everyone I've dated.
Where's the mess? My heart? Show me someone going through a divorce after seven years whose heart isn't a mess. Fuck that, show me someone going through a breakup whose heart isn't a mess. My heart is in surprisingly good shape, actually; it's a hopeful heart, and I will continue writing about what I do with it. If you don't like it, don't read it, and please, keep your smug-attempts-at-karmic-rationalization-for-your-own-life-disguised-as-armchair-psychoanalysis to yourself.
:thumb:
I look forward to more because I can relate.
Squid- twice divorced.
Thanks Squiddy! It's interesting to me that divorce, single motherhood, and female sexuality are still so stigmatized that people will try to use it in arguments as ammunition.
Who did that?
ETA: Liked the post!
Yeah, whoever wrote that needs to be gagged with one hundred gangreneous cocks.
Like straight from my own experience Nigel. Well stated!
Quote from: Richter on March 25, 2010, 05:32:00 PM
Yeah, whoever wrote that needs to be gagged with one hundred gangreneous cocks.
I wrote the quoted part; it's part composite and part exaggeration. Also, thanks!
Also, if you want to listen to the song from Drive-By Truckers I quoted, it's fucking excellent and really sums up the post-divorce feeling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYdiAz4ddIg
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on March 25, 2010, 05:25:04 PM
Thanks Squiddy! It's interesting to me that divorce, single motherhood, and female sexuality are still so stigmatized that people will try to use it in arguments as ammunition.
If you're referring to me calling you out on stirring shit, you're out of your fucking mind. What I said has absolutely nothing to do with divorce, single motherhood or female sexuality and everything to do with how you're treating people here. If you're messed up from a nasty divorce that really sucks, but if you start taking it out on people who have absolutely nothing to do with your personal problems then you'd better expect some fucking backlash.
Some people may be too timid to say anything about it, but I'm not.
That said, if this isn't about that then good luck recovering from whatever you're dealing with regardless of the cause.
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on March 25, 2010, 05:36:14 PM
Quote from: Richter on March 25, 2010, 05:32:00 PM
Yeah, whoever wrote that needs to be gagged with one hundred gangreneous cocks.
I wrote the quoted part; it's part composite and part exaggeration. Also, thanks!
Also, if you want to listen to the song from Drive-By Truckers I quoted, it's fucking excellent and really sums up the post-divorce feeling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYdiAz4ddIg
I gotcha, collected impressions / insinuations. The first quoted part sounded VERY real.
I'll have to check the song later. Work :sad:
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on March 25, 2010, 05:25:04 PM
Thanks Squiddy! It's interesting to me that divorce, single motherhood, and female sexuality are still so stigmatized that people will try to use it in arguments as ammunition.
And in court no less!
Quote from: Ten Ton Mantis on March 25, 2010, 05:41:08 PM
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on March 25, 2010, 05:25:04 PM
Thanks Squiddy! It's interesting to me that divorce, single motherhood, and female sexuality are still so stigmatized that people will try to use it in arguments as ammunition.
If you're referring to me calling you out on stirring shit, you're out of your fucking mind. What I said has absolutely nothing to do with divorce, single motherhood or female sexuality and everything to do with how you're treating people here. If you're messed up from a nasty divorce that really sucks, but if you start taking it out on people who have absolutely nothing to do with your personal problems then you'd better expect some fucking backlash.
Some people may be too timid to say anything about it, but I'm not.
That said, if this isn't about that then good luck recovering from whatever you're dealing with regardless of the cause.
I don't think that's what she meant. I saw it from a completely different angle.
Quote from: Ten Ton Mantis on March 25, 2010, 05:41:08 PM
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on March 25, 2010, 05:25:04 PM
Thanks Squiddy! It's interesting to me that divorce, single motherhood, and female sexuality are still so stigmatized that people will try to use it in arguments as ammunition.
If you're referring to me calling you out on stirring shit, you're out of your fucking mind. What I said has absolutely nothing to do with divorce, single motherhood or female sexuality and everything to do with how you're treating people here. If you're messed up from a nasty divorce that really sucks, but if you start taking it out on people who have absolutely nothing to do with your personal problems then you'd better expect some fucking backlash.
Some people may be too timid to say anything about it, but I'm not.
That said, if this isn't about that then good luck recovering from whatever you're dealing with regardless of the cause.
1) I really liked this, especially the optimistic tone. I'm a sucker for optimism.
2) Jesus, TTM, shut the fuck up already. It's not about you, and this thread seems like an inappropriate place for shitflinging.
3) I fucking LOVE the Drive-By Truckers.
Dear Nigel,
I think I may have identified what initially has spurred my reactions to *some* of the posts you have made here.
And I'm pretty sure that a lot of my reactions have been twofold: One is my own personality, and one is the tone of the PD.com with which I have been previously familiar.
As an introvert, I have made it a habit of stewing on external experiences, chewing them up, parsing them, and relating them to other experiences, and then holding them up to the light of my philosophies, my desires, and my education. That's me. That's who I am.
My experience with PD.com in the past has been that a raw exposition of experience does not further the collective forums, especially if those experiences are not available to be picked up and torn apart by others in an interactive collaboration. Posts like that, I personally feel, are best left to journals and other media that are to be passively experienced. I have, previously, never considered anything posted at PD to be a passive offering; everything I have ever posted here is something to be held over the fire. For me, there are plenty of online outlets for passive writing, many of which I use.
I fully recognize that your life is going through major changes. I am sympathetic. A human experience can go through serious trauma, and needs room to breathe, to adapt, to grow.
I feel my error has been this: You have often posted your immediate experiences, and I am not going to assign a reason for it, because I will be wrong. My post here is not to tell you why you are doing things.
But you have been posting *some* experiences, in a way that seems to indicate that they are being posted prior to examination, dissection, and contemplation.
(Again, you are free to post what you wish, for the reasons you wish to post. I am not telling you what to do, or how to feel.)
And *some* of these posts that you have made seem to be presented in a way that both eschews personal analysis, and precludes analysis by other members of the board. This presumption is solidified when you respond to any observations from the board with hostility. Of course, this being PD.com, and the internet in general, escalation is inevitable.
Given the history of PD.com as I understand it, it becomes obvious why some of your posts have had the reaction that have had, and why I may have reacted to them in the way that I did.
So, in conclusion:
I appear to be wrong. And the tone of PD.com may have changed since I joined. I will not tell you to stop posting in the way you choose; and to smooth situations, I will try to ascertain intentions of your posts before commenting.
LMNO
-it actually took me about twenty minutes to write this. I hope I was clear without being an asshole.
Quote from: Emerald City Hustle on March 25, 2010, 06:04:40 PM
Jesus, TTM, shut the fuck up already. It's not about you, and this thread seems like an inappropriate place for shitflinging.
I'll say whatever the fuck I want wherever the fuck I want to say it, but I wrote a qualifier in because it could have been a passive aggressive dig at me or it could have been about something else entirely. My intent wasn't to fling shit and if it was it would be pretty blatant.
The title of her thread is clearly related to the statements I made calling her out the other day and any reasonable person would have made the assumption that there is a pretty good likelihood that this was a passive-aggressive jab at me. I got PMs about this thread pointing it out to me. What's up your ass lately ECH?
Thanks you guys.
LMNO, I tend to write, then read what I've written, then digest, then read again, then write more. Sometimes eventually it leads to a good story, more often it doesn't. Much of what I write about my personal experiences is written as a series of emotional impressions, rather than an analysis. I think that's one reason I am a better poet than essayist.
ECH, yes, my OP is about optimism. It's about looking critically at my life and recognizing that, as lives go, it's pretty fucking tied together. It's also about fighting off pessimism and blame and assumptions. The name-calling, the automatic conclusion that because I'm a divorced mother and I'm actively dating, I am a desperate slut whose life is a mess, and that is the root of any conflict I may have.
I find it interesting because I went through hell with my husband, and I'm happier now than I was then. I'm also friendlier and less abrasive, but it wasn't until we split up that the assumptions and name-calling began. An unhappy, angry, abrasive married woman is still a respectable woman.
We women just need to stay in our safe little kitchens, and if we do that everything will be ok. Let the real men sort out all the important stuff like politics, religion, and when we should have sex. If we just stay at home, and make sure a warm dinner is fresh from the oven when out husbands get home, everything will be ok.
Quote from: Sparkley Pink Shit on March 25, 2010, 07:25:23 PM
We women just need to stay in our safe little kitchens, and if we do that everything will be ok. Let the real men sort out all the important stuff like politics, religion, and when we should have sex. If we just stay at home, and make sure a warm dinner is fresh from the oven when out husbands get home, everything will be ok.
If you want to be sarcastic, you should probably go all out; the above post reads like an indictment against the men who post here.
And if you want to call the men here a pack of sexist misogynists, it would be best to do so directly.
LMNO
- IN THE BED OR IN THE KITCHEN, AND I COOK BETTER THAN YOU DO!
Most of the men and women here, are not sexist misogynists. I think that what SPS was referencing was the cultural subtext (general Western culture, not this board specifically) that leads to assumptions like the ones I spoke of in my OP.
Perhaps I am letting separate threads merge in my head, but weren't you saying that your posts here were being flamed because you were a woman, and men here didn't approve of your posting style?
Quote from: LMNO on March 25, 2010, 07:47:12 PM
Perhaps I am letting separate threads merge in my head, but weren't you saying that your posts here were being flamed because you were a woman, and men here didn't approve of your posting style?
Nope. Although issues of femininity and cultural approval are part of it.
If you would, could you please speak more on that, in relation to the culture of PD.com?
I have been under the impression that gender identity meant little on PD.com other than the fact that more women than men are asked to show their tits.
If you have identified a trend that the majority of women's posts are treated in a different manner than the majority of men's posts, irregardless of content, then I would very much like to know about it.
Quote from: LMNO on March 25, 2010, 07:55:03 PM
If you would, could you please speak more on that, in relation to the culture of PD.com?
I have been under the impression that gender identity meant little on PD.com other than the fact that more women than men are asked to show their tits.
If you have identified a trend that the majority of women's posts are treated in a different manner than the majority of men's posts, irregardless of content, then I would very much like to know about it.
One of the things my OP, and one of my follow-up posts, spoke of was the phenomenon for some people to make different assumptions about women who are divorced than they do about women who are married. It's painfully (and I do mean painfully) obvious when it happens, because words like "bitter", "slut", "desperate" and "whore" are used, and disparaging references to dating and/or sex life come up in completely unrelated arguments. It is reflective, IMO, of a general cultural tendency to view divorced women in a negative light. Fortunately that tendency seems to be relatively uncommon here, but it happens nonetheless.
Not sure what else you're digging for here.
And you know, not just divorced women, as Ratatosk said. I think the social stigma may be heavier for women, but it is applied to men as well, especially men whose wives cheat. "He must have done something to drive her into the arms of another man". My post was about the experience of a woman, because I am a woman. But I bet the divorced men here have also experienced similarly unpleasant social fallout in the forms of assumptions made about them, their emotional state, and their motivations, simply because they are divorced.
In relation to PD.com, do you find that these words are being used as honest epithets, or as trolling ad hominem attacks because they tend to be hurtful?
I ask this because I feel there is a difference between what one truly feels, and what will be used to injure another during a fight.
Quote from: LMNO on March 25, 2010, 10:19:41 PM
In relation to PD.com, do you find that these words are being used as honest epithets, or as trolling ad hominem attacks because they tend to be hurtful?
I ask this because I feel there is a difference between what one truly feels, and what will be used to injure another during a fight.
I think there is some difference as well. Nonetheless, I think that there are certain boundaries that people cross in the heat of argument that really reveal who they are, but have been concealing due to social taboos. Bigotry is one of those boundaries. Family is another. If someone used your recent unfortunate personal experience as a weapon to hurt you in the heat of an argument, unless in retaliation for something equally personal you launched against them, it would, IMO, reveal something pathological about the way that person thinks.
Generic name-calling like "asshole" and "fucktard" are not quite the same level of malice as name-calling based on an element of someone's personal life. It takes a certain level of either actually believing what you're saying, or simple wanton disregard for other people in general, to cross those boundaries, because regardless of how you feel about the person you're addressing, insulting someone based on their sexuality, gender, or race implies a value judgement against anyone else who might happen to fall into that category. It also perpetuates the idea that the person being insulted actually is doing wrong by being, for instance in my case, a divorced woman actively seeking a partner.
When I hear it enough times, especially paired with the "Your life is a mess, and it's your own fault" meme, it does start to form a pattern, and that pattern is that A. people are assuming that my life is a mess, and B. people feel comfortable with, perhaps even comforted by, blaming me, because they do actually on some level believe I am doing something badwrong.
The interesting thing is that my life is not, in fact, a mess, so this assumption is being cut out of whole cloth. It's been in a state of uncertainty for over a year as I've transitioned through a complicated divorce, but now that's almost over and I've come out of it with pretty much everything intact, and I'm doing pretty fucking well. So then the question is, from whence stems the desire to believe that my life is a mess, in order to be able to blame me for it?
Quote from: Ten Ton Mantis on March 25, 2010, 05:41:08 PM
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on March 25, 2010, 05:25:04 PM
Thanks Squiddy! It's interesting to me that divorce, single motherhood, and female sexuality are still so stigmatized that people will try to use it in arguments as ammunition.
If you're referring to me calling you out on stirring shit, you're out of your fucking mind. What I said has absolutely nothing to do with divorce, single motherhood or female sexuality and everything to do with how you're treating people here. If you're messed up from a nasty divorce that really sucks, but if you start taking it out on people who have absolutely nothing to do with your personal problems then you'd better expect some fucking backlash.
Some people may be too timid to say anything about it, but I'm not.
That said, if this isn't about that then good luck recovering from whatever you're dealing with regardless of the cause.
Actually, you referred to her as a whore, which had nothing to do with the argument in question.
You also agreed with Net, and endorsed his position, which makes you culpable for what he said.
So it did have to do with female sexuality.
Quote from: LMNO on March 25, 2010, 10:19:41 PM
In relation to PD.com, do you find that these words are being used as honest epithets, or as trolling ad hominem attacks because they tend to be hurtful?
I ask this because I feel there is a difference between what one truly feels, and what will be used to injure another during a fight.
I don't see a difference. In either case, the intent was the same.
Quote from: Sparkley Pink Shit on March 25, 2010, 07:25:23 PM
We women just need to stay in our safe little kitchens, and if we do that everything will be ok. Let the real men sort out all the important stuff like politics, religion, and when we should have sex. If we just stay at home, and make sure a warm dinner is fresh from the oven when out husbands get home, everything will be ok.
Also, no shoes. Or you're a desperate whore.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 25, 2010, 10:46:12 PM
Quote from: Sparkley Pink Shit on March 25, 2010, 07:25:23 PM
We women just need to stay in our safe little kitchens, and if we do that everything will be ok. Let the real men sort out all the important stuff like politics, religion, and when we should have sex. If we just stay at home, and make sure a warm dinner is fresh from the oven when out husbands get home, everything will be ok.
Also, no shoes. Or you're a desperate whore.
:lulz::horrormirth:
It was sarcasm, and was meant to be read as such.
An example of sexist views manifested on the other side of the spectrum, towards doting and patronization, would be the girls in my class talking about how they can "get away with murder around men" and being able to get special treatment solely because of their sex. I mean, I can't blame them for taking advantage of it, but I would also hate to be treated as some kind of weak princess were I in their places.