So. When my mom and I were in London we did a lot of shopping.
Well… We bought 15 books. At a lovely bookshop called Daunt Books in Marylebone.
Highly recommended.
Month / November 2012
“I find it hard to believe many little girls grow up wanting to shoot people.”
Dear Lord…
I’m sorry, but there are a lot of idiots in the world.
Like Thomas Pascoe who blogs for the Telegraph.
He wrote a post today called “Sweden’s insane anti-discrimination laws have created a generation of lost women” so I’m sure you can tell what kind of man he is… (*cough* sexist bastard *cough*) and in the post he gives us lovely lines such as:
the result of stripping women of their social roles as mothers has not been the development of a new balance in society which still respects women, but rather a sexual nihilism with which most women are instinctively uncomfortable
and
we see a rise of a tits-and-ass culture that emphasises the physical because there is nothing else left
and my personal favorite:
No boy grows up dreaming of being a princess. I find it hard to believe many little girls grow up wanting to shoot people.
And why, you ask, did he write this blogpost?
Because he’s upset that Toys R Us’ Christmas catalouge is gender-netural this year. In it, little boys occasionally push stollers and little girls play with toolkits. Gasp, sigh and the world is obviously ending.
Not only does Pascoe seem to lack any sort of analysis capabilities or abilities to look at broader social movements, he is also abysmally bad at statistics.
He claims, for example:
Women face the highest rate of rape in Europe and a high rate of domestic violence
But he doesn’t stop to think about what he’s actually saying. In fact, Sweden has a much broader definition of rape than most countries, since a law change in 2005. Immediately afterwards, rape statistics increased.
He also seems unaware of the fact that 75-95% of rapes are not reported to the police, either due to fear of reprisal or because of shame. One reason that more rapes are reported in Sweden might simply be because of those “insane discrimination laws” making it easier for women to escape the social stigma of rape, and actually daring to report the rapist.
But apparently, women in Thomas Pascoe’s world are empty, meaningless shells because society has taken the mother role from them and little boys grow up wanting to shoot people.
I think I’ll stay in my world, thanks.
“Prosecutor, judge, executioner and gravedigger.”
I’m back from London and have had a beautiful time (it’s impossible to not have a good time in such a city! ) but I wanna make a quick post about something else first.
The Stockholm School of Economics, or rather the student association, SASSE, is entering a special time of the year. Not the holiday season, but the election season.
Every year, we elect the new association board, the student council and some other positions, after a month or so of campaigns. Since the student association has so much power, both over education and entertainment, this is an essential process and a lot of fun.
It’s not all fun, though, at least not in my opinion. A tradition we have is the hecklings, where candidates are questioned on stage about their candidacy, personality and so on. While it’s a good way to get an impression of a person, it’s very biased towards charismatic people who are funny on stage, which doesn’t necessarily mean one is better suited for a position.
I also have an issue with the public humiliation aspect of it. Hecklers’ duty are to be funny and illuminating, but there are definitively instances where it has gone too far. And suddenly, it’s not funny anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I love hecklings, perhaps a bit hypocritical of me, but sometimes I leave them with a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.
“The virginity myth”
There is no such thing as a hymen.
When a girl has sex for the first time, it hurts. She might even bleed a little. That’s because the hymen, the barrier blocking the vagina, breaks when she has sex. It can be broken earlier by tampons, or horseback riding or biking.
Right?
No. It’s a lie.
IT DOESN’T EXIST.
I hope that this is common knowledge today, but I’ve realized that maybe it isn’t. Time and again, I see books that have scenes with girl losing their virginity, and the hymen almost always features in some way. Pain, blood and so on.
The hymen was “created” as a way to control women’s sexuality. There’s no way to tell if a girl has had penetrative sex or not, just as there’s no way to tell if a guy has. If sex hurts the first time, it’s usually because the girl isn’t wet enough, or because you’re going too fast.
Please, please, don’t spread this lie to people anymore.
More information: In Swedish: Ungdomsmottagningarna, RFSU In English: ScarletTeen, Huffington Post
(Disclaimer: I don’t think I’ll write a lot about sex on this blog, simply because I’m a bit of a prude. But this is important enough that I don’t care about anyone’s sensibilities.)
“All of time and space, everywhere and anywhere.” Now at IKEA:
From All Things Funny Doctor Who.
I thought it was funny, ok?
“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me.”
I’m off to London today, with my mom.
We will drink tea, go shopping, see Phantom of the Opera, enjoy the sights… London’s such a easy city to visit.
Unfortunately, this will put damper on my blogging for a couple of days, but I’ve scheduled a few blog posts until I’m back on Sunday. Don’t miss me too much!
“A New Argentina!”
The glorious diva Patti LuPone in the original Broadway production of Evita. I’d never understood what was so special about her, or even thought she was very talented until I saw this. The amount of things she can put into one tiny flick of her wrist… Astounding.
Evita is a musical I can talk about for hours, but that’ll have to be in a later post.
“We need a witness to our lives.”
This blog has existed for around five days or so now.
It’s been fun to write again, since it’s something I don’t get to do a lot anymore, other than in an academic context.
However, if you allow me to be a bit philosophical: why blog?
It is obviously not only because I like to write, or because I want to document my life; in that case, I could simply have kept a diary.
It’s not really a career thing either, if I’d wanted to write professionally, I’d probably not have started with an obscure blog.
Is it about attention, then? Not purely, I don’t think, because if I just wanted attention, I’d post naked pictures of myself someplace.
Recognition? I want someone to recognize that I write, and what I write. Not only out of vainty, I don’t think, but because I think (very modestly…) that maybe I can make someone think, just a little.
And I like the feeling that the words are out there, for anyone to read. Just as it can be a relief to put pen to paper and get thoughts out of your head, knowing that someone can read them and observe them is gratifying.
“Stories we tell our children.”
When you’ve known someone for a long time, after a while we know most of the stories they tell. And in this, I actually mean that in a non-poetic, literal way: the stories tell they at dinner parties, or when mingling or simply when getting to know someone closer.
We all have them, a certain few stories that work well in different contexts.
I usually tell people about the inefficiency in Germany, about when I lived in the US, when we almost got lost in the Turkish countryside…
Some people tell the same stories a lot of times. My dad is one of them, and my mom usually rolls her eyes when he tells a story she’s heard 43 times already. i’m pretty sure I’m gonna be the same when I’m older. If I’m not already.
(Today’s my birthday. I’m 23 years old.)
“The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”
I have a mentor.
I “got her” through a program called Headstart which is aimed at women at SSE, the Royal Institute of Technology and Karolinska Institutet. A girl I know nominated me for the project, and here I am.
We’ve met around three times now, and we… talk. A lot. For a few hours, about everything and nothing, from things about her career, travels, my schoolwork, families, everything. I’m not sure if that’s exactly how a mentorship is supposed to work, but… It does.
If you think about, it’s so rare that you actually sit down and just talk with someone, without distractions, for hours on end. I love it.
And I can’t be certain, of course, but I’m pretty sure my mentor feels the same way.
The Light Bulb 