Friday, February 08, 2008

and me, incredulous

i have been accused, more than one or two times, that i speak condescendingly, that i am patronizing and arrogant. my usual response (mentally) is that i can't help it if everyone around me is stupid. sometimes i'm not kidding, sometimes i am. i don't necessarily think that everyone is dumb, but i do think that most people suffer from not-paying-attention-itis, which gets complicated when i am and i expect that you were, as well, so when i go on to start a lively discussion about what just happened, or what happened three hours ago, or what happened six months ago, i am frustrated when met with blank stares.

this is quite frustrating.

i also usually remember, verbatim, what so-and-so said during an argument or conversation. it really doesn't matter to me if the conversation was three years ago or three minutes ago; usually if i remember a conversation, i remember it and that's that. so it puzzles me when people aren't the same way, or worse, they start arguing in contradiction to what they were arguing about previously. i don't understand how you can have an opinion about something to the point where you are representing one side of a debate, and next time 'round you suddenly do the 'ol switcheroo and are on the other. that doesn't work in my world. does not compute.

i have also never really understood mainstream feminism (this is going somewhere, i promise. bear with me). i studied feminism in college, and found it baffling and alienating because of the rage and divisiveness in the rhetoric. it seemed unreasonable and self-limiting. this may be why i make a damn poor activist. i remember one girl in a social movements class, taunting some guy who didn't understand some point or another about cesar chavez, but making it a gender-based taunt. something about him being a man and life being so easy because of it. it seemed unnecessary, forced, and honestly a bit beside the point. to be filled with that much rage about him being a guy and being somewhat lame didn't fulfill a purpose. moreover, cesar chavez was a man. so what the fuck?

that said (wait for it...), i am finding that the older i am, and the more experience i have with interacting with the opposite sex, that i am starting to draw broad conclusions about the simplicity and somewhat low-IQ behavior of most dudes. sorry, guys, it blows my mind as well. i actually found myself on the verge of shouting, 'what you don't know could fill a book!' i am turning into that girl in my lecture.

seriously, tho. i am met with behaviors that make me want to beat my face against the wall and make those 'donk donk donk' noises. the gender divide just gets wider and wider the older i get. is it me? i know i had a hard time accepting that i was a girl for maybe the first 25 years of my life, but that was mostly because i had and have a thing about emotions, and expressing them, unless it included rage or ego. emotions were for girls, so count me out. but the older i get, the more i learn about guile, and the more i associate it with females, and the more i understand that guys don't have a goddamned clue. you could club them over the head with the reason that their ex-girlfriends thought for 11 months that they would be getting back together and still get the blank stare. some even have the nerve to argue.

pshh. please. i am surrounded by fools.

No comments: