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Archive for Deborah Lipp
I got tagged with the Pivot meme
Tom done gone and tagged me with the Bernard Pivot/James Lipton/Actor’s Studio questions meme.
What is your favorite word? Serendipity.
What is your least favorite word? Screw-head. I used to have a different least-favorite word. Then I went to the orthopedic surgeon and asked him about pain and swelling in my knee and he said it was because that was the spot where the screw-heads poked out a little. Instant new least-favorite word.
What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Passion and arrogance. I am excited by those who care deeply about something, and have a glorious self-confidence that they are right.
What turns you off? Bad breath. The ultimate dealbreaker.
What is your favorite curse word? Rat bastard. You have to say it right, though.
What sound or noise do you love? When Arthur was small, his laughter was the greatest joy of my life. I would stand outside the living room to listen to him laugh while he watched TV or read.
What sound or noise do you hate? Screaming babies.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? You mean, other than Personal Assistant to Mr. Banderas?
What profession would you not like to do? You know what a honey-dipper is? It’s what they call the guys who empty Porta-potties.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? “There’s someone who’s been waiting for you.”
Update: I’m tagging Arthur, since he says he can’t think what to blog about.
Phew, I’m back
Site was down yesterday. Hope the three of you didn’t miss me too much. 😉
Girly Girls
In a post that is not about girliness, Shakespeare’s Sister describes why she isn’t girly:
I have a filthy mouth, a dirty sense of humor, an aesthetic lack of girliness (as in no make-up, no skirts, and perpetually untidy hair), and a collection of attributes which men and women alike deem “boyish???—namely, a fondness for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, video game junkitude, the ability to correctly distinguish between DC and Marvel superheroes, and a pathological aversion to shopping.
I thought that was interesting. I have some of her “boy” characteristics, and some of her “girl” characteristics.
When I was younger, I thought I wasn’t girly because I’m loud, awkward, and socially agressive. I liked hanging out with the guys. I thought makeup was boring (I do wear makeup sometimes, not daily, but I find talking about makeup excruciating). Feminists talked about how men dominated conversations and silenced women in mixed groups, and I thought, uh oh, I guess I’m not very female, because that never happens to me. I prefered boisterous man-talk to retiring to the kitchen with the ladies and the babies. I forget to look in the mirror so if my lipstick goes haywire or my hair stands straight up, hours could pass before I notice. I sit large and have never managed any sort of ladylike posture. And yes, I like science fiction and Star Trek and men just cannot believe they are meeting a woman who loves James Bond.
But then some people in my life started telling me I was very girly. Very. I couldn’t understand that at first. Ultimately I could come up with a list of girl characteristics: I love to shop. I love pretty colors and pretty things and I like to wear pink. I like fairies and flowers (my tattoos are ultra-fem). My flirtation style is coy and girly. I blush. I like girl-chores better than boy-chores, and would much rather clean the kitchen than take out the garbage. I am confused by hardware and I think cars and electronics are extremely dull (Unless James Bond is operating them). Duller even than makeup.
Then, last summer, talking with some female friends, I discovered we all had, at some points, doubts about whether we were “real girls.”
I am gradually getting it through my head that I am girly because I am a girl. Womanly because I am a woman. Feminine because I am female. There doesn’t need to be any other test.
So ‘fess up. In what ways are you, and are you not, typical of your gender? What characteristics caused you to doubt yourself? What affirmed you? What’s your list?
Friday Kittenblogging: The Birds
At the head of my bed is a window. Outside the window is a tree. In the tree are birds. » Read more..
Saying “religious,” meaning “Christian”
Jason has an interesting post about an article purporting to analyze religion in American politics, but utterly omitting minority reilgions.
Why does this matter? Isn’t it all demographic crystal-gazing? It matters because when terms like “religious left” (and “religious right”) become defined as “lefty Jesus vs. righty Jesus” or even “lefty patriarchal sky father vs. righty patriarchal sky father,” then the voices of the faithful who don’t hold those views are shoved out of the big tent.
I think Jason might be missing the bigger problem. We’re not just shoved out of the big political tent. We’re being shoved out of the language of religion at all. All the time, I hear people say “I don’t like religion” and when asked why, they elaborate “I don’t believe an omnipotent force controls the universe.” People literally don’t know that there is such a thing as religion without an omnipotent and controlling force. They don’t know that there are religions without a complex maze of sin to navigate. They don’t know that there are religions that celebrate all forms of adult consensual sex. They don’t know that there are religions that ask people to think for themselves.
And more than that. Whenever someone says “religious” but means “Christian” (or, in a burst of ecumenism, “Christian and Jewish and perhaps, maybe, a little, my personal distorted idea of Muslim”) the idea is reinforced that the rest of us don’t have “real religions.” People still think like Sgt. Howie; we have “fake religion.”
Language (says the writer) shapes what we know. When we say “religion” but mean “majority monotheistic religion” we continue to know only those majority monotheistic religions as the real thing. We reinforce the notion that Wiccans and Hindus and Native American religionists are fluffy, or odd, or primitive, or flaky, or otherwise just not right.
Bitchin Insight Into Brokeback
Bitch, Ph.D. lends considerable insight into Brokeback Mountain and Westerns in general. An excerpt:
Brokeback, like every other Western out there, is about the suppression of male emotion for the greater social need. Will Kane just got married, but no mind: he has to take care of the bad guy, all by himself, because he is the hero, and he understands that his personal emotional needs are less important than the Greater Good.
Being Real
When I was a li’l baby Pagan, my High Priestess was constantly tinkering with the ritual we used. It had started out as a standard Pagan Way type of script, but she kept throwing more stuff into it.
At one point, she explained that a lot of people kept the Pagan Way really light, so light, in fact, that it wasn’t very magical. People running a Pagan Way tended to be initiates who were using the Pagan Way structure as a way of training potential initiates. Since the ritual was not for initiates, they didn’t consider it “real,” so it didn’t have a lot of juicy stuff in it.
But, my teacher explained, she didn’t want to be in a ritual that wasn’t real. So she kept putting more and more juicy stuff in. No secrets, but material more resonant with what we learned from the secrets.
It should be real.
I was so profoundly influenced by that, and I still think about it to this day. It applies not just to Wicca, but to life. What we do should be real, it should count. The Pagan Way is an external, or exoteric, reflection of an internal, or esoteric, state of being. But it isn’t a fake. It isn’t a dummy. It isn’t, “let’s play the first hand without keeping score so you can learn the rules.” The Gods are real, we are real, so let’s be real.
Eligibility
I’ve seen a lot of headlines like this one in the past 24 hours:
Jury: Moussaoui is eligible for death
My co-worker, for whom English is a second language, pointed it out to me: Doesn’t “eligible” mean something good? he asked.
According to the dictionaries I checked, usually. You find the words “worthy” and “desirable” in there, and even though those words aren’t necessary to all uses of “eligible,” the connotation lingers.
But I can’t think of a substitute. There’s no opposite of “eligible.” Okay, wrong. There’s “ineligible.” But there’s no word meaning “qualified for a negative distinction or event,” which would be opposite eligible’s connotation of “qualified for a positive distinction or event.”
If a movie is excellent, you might say it’s Oscar-worthy. If it sucks, do you say it’s Raspberry-worthy? Isn’t “worthy” also implicitly positive?
Innocent Until Proven Guilty
Ampersand has an excellent post up about the Duke rape case. In it, she discusses the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and has some very smart things to say:
But “innocent until proven guilty” is a courtroom standard. My opinion is not the same as a courtroom, and blog posts don’t put anyone in prison. Nothing about the American system of justice requires ordinary citizens to refrain from having opinions; and it’s not inconsistant to want Courts to adhere to “beyond any reasonable doubt” while holding my personal opinions to a less stringent standard.
Some time back, we (my then-husband and I) were aware of a member of the Pagan community who had been accused of child molestation. The case was working its way through the courts and no verdict had been reached. We found out that the accused was going to be at a Pagan event during which children were ordinarily given a lot of freedom to roam. We contacted people in charge of both the event and the property, asking that this person be banned from this event. We were refused, and what the people we spoke to all said was “innocent until proven guilty.”
I was furious. Livid is a good word. If you’ve ever seen me mad, you might have come up with livid as the right word.
And what I said to my husband is “innocent until proven guilty” is for courts. For parents, the rule is dangerous until proven safe.
Pagans are so pluralistic, so free, that they sometimes fail to see danger in their midst. They bend over backwards to be fair, because we are a people who have suffered too much unfair treatment. But as a mom, I don’t bend in that direction. I bend over forwards, in a protective huddle. I make my child, and my community’s children, safe to the best of my ability. That’s my job.
The accused was convicted, and served some years in jail. He is now free and again has access to Pagan events. A glitch in the registration system causes him to show up on some sex offender lists but not others, affording him more freedom of movement than I, for one, find comfortable.
But again, the law is not community. People feel they have to make him welcome at events, because he served his time, and is legally able to attend the events. But legal is not personal. He’s still dangerous until proven safe.
