Author's note: Many of the posts contained within this blog are personal memoirs. They are mine. They are real. I wrote them as I experienced them. If any story is at all fictional or needs to be attributed to someone else, I will state that firmly in the first paragraph.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Fearsome Feminism

Yesterday a friend of mine stopped by my place.  She’s an avid feminist, be that for better or worse in your opinion.  Last night we found ourselves in an interesting predicament.  One of my roommates, a tall Catholic hailing from Cameroon, asked her what she is studying.  She told him, and also mentioned that she’ll be graduating this summer and then heading off to grad school.  I sat back to watch the conversation, not really expecting what was to come next.
“But if you go to grad school in the fall, won’t that be a lot of school without a break?” he asked.
Casually, she replied, “Sure, but I love studying.  I wish I could keep studying forever.”
“Yes,” he said, “but you know you have other things to think about.”
At this point I nearly choked on my drink.  Knowing her opinion on such things, I placed my chin on my fist, grinned as cheesily as possible, and asked her, “Yes, don’t you have other things to be thinking about?”
She easily heard the thick layers of sarcasm in my voice, cast me a hellish glare, and instead of giving me my sought reaction, proceeded to respond to my roommate.  Looking again toward him, she asked one simple question, “What do you mean?”
Rarely have I seen someone as confused by a woman as my roommate was last night, and never before had I seen my friend even remotely as angry as she was on this occasion.  Suffice it to say that their conversation ended a short time later in an uneasy stalemate.
The reason I bring this up is simple: obviously we are all biased.  I am definitely biased, my roommate is biased, and my friend is equally biased.  You, reader, are too.  Bias is a word today that has inherited an extremely negative connotation.  When we watch the news, listen to politicians, or hear about outrageous court decisions, we also often hear angry tirades accusing one source or another of being biased.  Biased has come to be an insult which leaves an utterly bitter aftertaste in the shadow of today’s polarized political and religious climates.  I suppose this insulting nature almost makes a certain amount of sense, seeing as how being biased has unfortunately become synonymous with being uninformed in one way or another.  Of course I’d like to think that I’m fairly well informed, but I suppose there’s plenty of room for debate on that point.  If my education so far has left me with anything that I really value, one of those things would be the realization that there is no such thing as an unbiased view, and another would be that one of the most important things we can do is recognize and come to terms with our own biases.
While my friend and my roommate were having their discussion, I struggled with what to do.  I thought about intervening on the side of my friend – with whom I strongly agreed – but then held my tongue in order to let her defend herself, for I knew that she would have little trouble doing so.
This is my blog, and I reserve the right to state my biased opinion without having to write down the biased opinion of anyone else.  I respect feminism, and I truly believe that no one should feel restricted in their possibilities due to their sex or gender.  If yesterday’s conversation did anything for me, it reminded me how strongly biases can affect our lives.  I fear that I associate so often with like-minded people that I may be losing touch with that fact.  Bias is alive and well, so do what you will about it.  Fight it, embrace it, or try to ignore it.  Either way, we all have to move on at the end of the day and get up again tomorrow.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

There are no intersecting patterns

Towering high above the pavement of the street just outside my door there is a surprising number of trees.  The shade of all the trees makes walking along my street the perfect temperature during the summer.  I must either walk or bike at least six blocks of my street every day, and yet it never ceases to amaze me how much things can change in a short period of time.  Each time I see another intersection approaching, I try to remember whether this one has a sidewalk that ends at a curb, or one that slopes down into a crosswalk.  Every time.  Every time I find myself second guessing as to which sidewalk is which, but slowly I'm starting to remember with more surety.  It's just one of those things that I forget to think about until I'm anticipating each intersection, and that I forget immediately after leaving the street.  It never feels important until the sun sets.  It's something so simple, something so brief, and yet something I do so often that I'm ashamed to say that I still can't remember exactly which sidewalk belongs with which intersection.
It seems as if things would be better if there were some semblance of order to the whole thing.  To the structure and order of sidewalks intersecting the perpendicular roads.  Maybe they should all be the same, either all descending into a crosswalk, or all being cut off by a curb.  A pattern would be fine too, making it so much easier to remember.  Every other sidewalk ending in a curb, and vice versa.  But of course it doesn't really matter.  The sidewalks are just fine the way they are, and only the few of us who bike along the sidewalk in the dark would find reason to give it any thought.
This is not meant as any kind of complaint or manifesto.  In fact, when I'm walking and it happens to be raining, I much prefer the sidewalks which end in a curb.  With a curb there's only a narrow gutter stream which I must vault across instead of an entire puddle which has pooled up where sidewalk meets road.  The majority of the sidewalk I like, with its cracks and crumbling sections.  When it's light outside I bike on the road anyway, and all I have to pay attention to are the stop signs and cars.  And yet even while biking on the street with all the trees just outside my place I still find myself examining and slowly memorizing each sidewalk's manner of intersection with the street.  Maybe I'm just anticipating something.  The darkness is always going to return, and until I buy some clip-on lights, I must again relegate myself to the sidewalk.  Thankfully, the days are growing longer.