Remembering When the Conservative men had their way.
Our group presentations finished up yesterday. I was the 2nd one to go and everyone said I did well. Blue Veined Breasts, who if you all remember drove me nuts to change places with her, didn’t show, didn’t email the professor, and didn’t come. I’m thinking she got a big fat F. She, according to all the other graduate students, hasn’t turned in one paper or done one presentation in any of her classes, and she has a coveted TA position. Do you know how that pisses me off?
On a better note, they said I did really well. So, three of us from the group took off to have a reward ice cream but became side tracked by Chinese food. We spent the entire afternoon from 2 something until almost 5 eating and talking and drinking tea. I know the staff was happy when we finally ran out of stories to tell and left, we did, however, leave a huge tip. Most of the time, I forgot that I was decades older than they are but every once in a while we would have a huge communication gap, like 9 inch nails. Well, to me they are really large nails that might be used in big boards. Not so. But most of the things that we were gapped about were things like days before computers, hell, I remember days before there were electric typewriters, wrote my first novel on a really bad electric one, turned in many research papers using a non electric portable typewriter that I carried around like kids today carry their laptops. They just couldn’t picture it. HA! I told them that I remember before checking accounts had numbers on the bottom of the checks identifying them to a certain account, before ATM cards, before ATM machines. And when we talked about birthcontrol and I told them that my first trip to the gynecologists to get birthcontrol pills, I had to have my future husband go with me and sign a form that it was okay for me to take these pills, they almost died. I told them about my two older sisters who each had five children because their husbands wouldn’t sign the birthcontrol permission forms, that one of my older sisters had two miscarriages before she finally got her husband to sign for her to have a tubal, only after she almost died and the doctor said one more pregnancy could kill her and I, by that time a teenager, stood in the hospital waiting room screaming at my dumbassed brother in law telling him that if he didn’t sign that paper, I was going to talk her into running away with me and hide her from his dick. Yes, I said that and my family scolded me for interfering in their bedroom affairs. HELLO he was killing her. Yes, I remember when women could be beaten, children could be beaten, could be raped and no one did anything as long as the man who was doing it was the acting man of the house. They just couldn’t imagine a society like that and I told them if the conservatives have their way, women everywhere will be right back where we were in the 60s barely able to get out of the bedroom or kitchen long enough to take a breath. In addition, I told them about all white schools and how the first African American that I ever saw frightened me and not because he did anything wrong, but my family had told me awful stories of razors and lusts and all sorts of nonsense. Imagine how surprised I was when years later in a small college in Bakersfield, Ca. I learned in a Black History class that the murderers of children were not the African Americans but the white heathens and bankers and mayors of our fine cities across the South, men by the way, like those sitting next to me in church on Sunday morning. I can not tell you how angry that I was to learn that I had been duped by my family. All those news reports, and there were plenty, were not about protecting the virtues of white women and children, it was never about that, it was about conservative ass hole men wanting to keep everything in their possession.
But, I’m happy my presentation is over. YEAH! I think I did a good criticism of Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet. A good book if you are in to ScFi. Reall good.
On a better note, they said I did really well. So, three of us from the group took off to have a reward ice cream but became side tracked by Chinese food. We spent the entire afternoon from 2 something until almost 5 eating and talking and drinking tea. I know the staff was happy when we finally ran out of stories to tell and left, we did, however, leave a huge tip. Most of the time, I forgot that I was decades older than they are but every once in a while we would have a huge communication gap, like 9 inch nails. Well, to me they are really large nails that might be used in big boards. Not so. But most of the things that we were gapped about were things like days before computers, hell, I remember days before there were electric typewriters, wrote my first novel on a really bad electric one, turned in many research papers using a non electric portable typewriter that I carried around like kids today carry their laptops. They just couldn’t picture it. HA! I told them that I remember before checking accounts had numbers on the bottom of the checks identifying them to a certain account, before ATM cards, before ATM machines. And when we talked about birthcontrol and I told them that my first trip to the gynecologists to get birthcontrol pills, I had to have my future husband go with me and sign a form that it was okay for me to take these pills, they almost died. I told them about my two older sisters who each had five children because their husbands wouldn’t sign the birthcontrol permission forms, that one of my older sisters had two miscarriages before she finally got her husband to sign for her to have a tubal, only after she almost died and the doctor said one more pregnancy could kill her and I, by that time a teenager, stood in the hospital waiting room screaming at my dumbassed brother in law telling him that if he didn’t sign that paper, I was going to talk her into running away with me and hide her from his dick. Yes, I said that and my family scolded me for interfering in their bedroom affairs. HELLO he was killing her. Yes, I remember when women could be beaten, children could be beaten, could be raped and no one did anything as long as the man who was doing it was the acting man of the house. They just couldn’t imagine a society like that and I told them if the conservatives have their way, women everywhere will be right back where we were in the 60s barely able to get out of the bedroom or kitchen long enough to take a breath. In addition, I told them about all white schools and how the first African American that I ever saw frightened me and not because he did anything wrong, but my family had told me awful stories of razors and lusts and all sorts of nonsense. Imagine how surprised I was when years later in a small college in Bakersfield, Ca. I learned in a Black History class that the murderers of children were not the African Americans but the white heathens and bankers and mayors of our fine cities across the South, men by the way, like those sitting next to me in church on Sunday morning. I can not tell you how angry that I was to learn that I had been duped by my family. All those news reports, and there were plenty, were not about protecting the virtues of white women and children, it was never about that, it was about conservative ass hole men wanting to keep everything in their possession.
But, I’m happy my presentation is over. YEAH! I think I did a good criticism of Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet. A good book if you are in to ScFi. Reall good.
posted by zelda1 | 5:08 AM
1 Comments:
I don't remember any of that :)
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