Stingray and the Old Bat

I should add that I recently visited your fair city and found it truly delectable, with special thanks to your restaurant reviews

my mother considered herself quite the open-minded bon vivant, and used to brag about having gay male friends. however, she became totally unglued when she encountered lesbians, especially in restroom situations. we couldn’t figure out if she felt she was so hot that she was certain to be ravished in the stall, or if she was just so freaking offensive that she caught some glares and sharp remarks. possibly both.

Can humans avoid categorizing and avoid reactions to broken categorizations?

I read and post to a New Orleans food board, “Mr. Lake’s Nonpompous New Orleans Food Forum”. I am still surprised by people who feel somehow betrayed when they learn that Mr. Lake is in fact, a woman. The idea it’s deceptive to host an internet board using the “Mr.” amuses me every time. I thought we were to assume everybody at their computer out here in cyberspace was a dirty old man sitting in his underwear.

I must say that I also spent the day in the company of fried oysters and taking pictures of them for the above mentioned board. Mine were at Casamento’s on Magazine St. in New Orleans, a place covered inside with old tile, some decorative, some plain. In fact, the whole freakin place looks like a bathroom, but my mother went to the can and reported back that it, too was all tiled. Perhaps I should have taken a picture of that as well. I will also mention she encountered no lesbians there, only two large black and white cats who are said to eat shrimp all day. I cannot comment on their sexual preference, only their dining preference.

Um, no, Pony – we’re talking outside here.

I hate it when I find spatters – I usually declare loudly (while the offender is still around) “My, SOMEBODY here never learned HER proper potty manners!”

I will also mention she encountered no lesbians there, only two large black and white cats who are said to eat shrimp all day. I cannot comment on their sexual preference, only their dining preference.

Somebody should tell those cats that eating shrimp is an abomination! Read The Bible for details. (It’s in Leviticus, too!) http://www.godhatesshrimp.com

Forgive me if I can’t stop laughing long enough to contribute to the blaming banter, but your relay of Stingray’s trip to the crapper is just way too funny.

Here’s something which I writt elsewhere. I do suspect though, that Aussies are more concerned with body language rather than dress, comparative to ‘Merkins.

Most women *don’t* strike such head-tilting submissive poses naturally, in fact; they’re highly learned behavior.

I am sooo inclined to agree with this, mostly because I find that the converse is true, too. Let me explain.. .

I am now at a fairly advanced stage in martial arts and have been doing it for a while. We are trained to adopt a very forcible strong stance at all times during training — even and especially when we are not feeling like it due to fear (or, more commonly), fatigue.

I find that the routine practice of this kind of strong demeanour has now sunk into my unconscious mannerisms and entrenched itself there. It unsuits me to certain vocations which require a female suppliant for the job (also, mostly an unconscious requirement of people).

Stingray must have substantial sprezzatura, as evidenced by her willingness to have her food photographed at regular intervals. Traveling with a camera as the constant companion of your companion is no small business. In my life, the commands, “Wait” “Stop” and “Move” “Shh” get more air time than they probably should.

I don’t know about that scratchy888. I have seen such behaviour in very young children, babies.

Fitting blog entry for the against heteronormativity date.
Also very much enjoy the Wooster allusion.

And scratchy888, stop it or you’ll go blind mate.

Yes. Head tilting poses. Submissive is your word.

I’m told that I tilt my head a lot and it irritates relatives of mine (which is how I know I do it, I don’t notice it myself).

Twisty: I know how you feel about fried oysters, but what about raw ones on the half-shell? Yummy, or no?

I’m assuming they come from the Gulf of Mexico but I have no idea whether anything oysts there.

Speaking of body language…

I’ve recently been experimenting when out in public. I read somewhere (possibly here) that men, especially white men, expect women to move aside when crossing paths. So I’ve made a conscious effort not to do so. I’m obviously third-trimester pregnant and having trouble moving as well. I have found that when I just keep on my path and don’t get out of the way, nine times out of ten, white men will walk right into me and looked shocked that such a thing has occurred. Women almost always and non-white men more often make way, but white men rarely do. I usually look pointedly at my large belly and say “Excuse me!” in an annoyed voice.

I meant, BitchPhD’s was the comment which suggested that we all learn this head tilting stuff to soften our demeanour and appear less threatening .

Re: the head tilting etc. Long before the fabulous Bitch PhD, Erving Goffman wrote a pretty revolutionary book, Gender in Advertising (1979), in which he systematically showed how women are “posed” in submissive, helpless, subordinate, child-like positions in ads (“displays”).

Using anthropology, sociology, etc., he also debunked the idea that these poses are somewhat a “natural” occurence, that is, rooted in biology. Instead, he argued that biological differences between sexes do not “naturally” evolve displays, but rather become an imagistic reservoir, a “cultural resource” that such displays draw on.

Another source that gender relationships draw on is the parent-child relationship; he writes that “in our society whenever a male has dealings with a female or a subordinate male (especially a younger one), some mitigation of potential distance, coercion and hostility is quite likely to be induced by application to the parent-child complex. Which implies that, ritually speaking, females are equivalent to subordinate males and both are equivalent to children”.

Such gestures (tilting of the head, for instance) are highly conventional and symbolic gestures that facilitate social interactions (as defined by patriarchy, of course); he also argues that they “may provide a very poor picture of the overall relationship between the sexes”-in fact reducing said relationship to a bunch of ritualistic, schematized behaviors which, you guessed it, perpetuate the patriarchy. He stops short of talking about such patriarchal perpetuation, but the implication is pretty obvious.

Other such gestures he catalogued (with rich instantiations in advertising) are: relative size (women have to be [represented as] smaller than men), the “feminine touch” (women are more often represented as “touching” something with their fingers, somewhat suggestively; by contrast, men hold, manipulate, etc. but never ‘touch’), and licensed withdrawal (women are often represented as shielded from the environment, or unoriented in the particular social situation they’re in, making them vulnerable and dependent, so to speak, on the kindness of strangers–they cover their mouths with their finger, gaze abstractly into middle distance, concealing their face momentarily, averting their gaze from an anchor in their surroundings, etc.).

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea that women find the idea of women who look “manly” threatening. I think it’s because to them all men are threatening, and the momentary presumption of lurking male presence in one of the few male-free zones available could give them one of those nasty startled flashes that seem so much worse than the circumstances that caused them.

Generally in case where I am startled, I instantly blame whatever I can think of for what seems like an overreaction on my part, for which I also feel a concurrent flash of guilt and a need to deny or exculpate myself somehow.

So a normal woman — who has never even given a thought to the possibility of blaming the patriarchy — would be shocked at finding a human being who is not advertising herself as blatantly female and is therefore, by standard definition of appearances, a male, in one of the places she had hoped to be safe from male presence. Unable to blame the patriarchy for her error, she of course, blames Stingray for not playing the game. So even though she was a twit, I still blame the patriarchy. It’s just like the matrix!

Ideas like the sex class and the default human being is male seem really radical and unprovable when a man first hears them, but daily examination of this blog reveals through countless examples just how universal and deep seated such truths actually are.

Twisty, if you ever make it this far north to the Boston area, you simply must visit the Diesel Cafe in Davis Square.

Not only is one of the owners a ringer for Stingray, the bathrooms are painted in heavy colors and equipped with any manner of industrial hardware crafted into functional holders for sinks, tp, the works. Very photogenic. Then there are the vintage gas pumps and signs, the coffee tables full of washers and bolts and stuff, and the 60s era black and white photo booth. On warm days, they pop open the giant garage door and open the front area to the street.

As the restrooms are one-seaters on a gender-neutral first come, first serve basis, there will be no cutting in line.

You are right, Pony. I had to come to somewhat of an understanding of it when dealing with my mother’s aging and decline. I say “somewhat” because I think it was so frightening and final to me that I couldn’t really grasp all of it but once I accepted it as simply true, and stopped waiting for her to change back into the mother I remembered, it made dealing with who she had become much easier for both of us.

That’s hilarious.

You know what’s weird about this sort of thing though? I’m not sure men have this problem, this terror of sharing a public restroom with the opposite sex. I have been known, when there is a line for the ladies’ room but not for the gents’, to just use the gents’. I have startled more than one man upon exiting, but I’ve never encountered outrage. In advance of such circumstances, when I’ve told men I was with what I planned, they just shrugged and said, “Well, of course. Do it.” (or words to that effect)

On the other hand, I do remember when I worked at a law firm in San Jose and a guy who worked for the city on another floor of our building started on a gender transition. He got to a point where he was ready to start dressing as a woman — or at least femininely — all the time, and began showing up to work that way. The men wouldn’t let him use the men’s restroom anymore. The women on his floor wouldn’t let him use theirs. He — who was by then being referred to as “she” — had to come up a few floors to our office, borrow our key, and use our women’s restroom.

I wonder whatever happened to her. We moved here, and I never heard from her again.

In France they don’t have men’s vs. women’s restrooms — or at least they didn’t. The whole institution is bizarre.

Oh, and Erbie (#32), I’ve been doing that, too, and had the same experience. I can’t remember what got me started doing that — something I read that pissed me off. But ever since, I’ve been unyielding. When I wear shorts in hot weather and my clearly artificial leg is plain for everyone to see and a man still plows right into me, I’m afraid I’ve been known to be even more openly derisive than when a man plows into me just because he expects me to step aside.

Tsk tsk. The language I am sometimes tempted to use is not ladylike at all.

Another thing which kind of boggles me is the effect of makeup alone, on women or men. Way too many people are shocked, of course, if they detect cosmetics on a man. But not wearing cosmetics while being a woman can apparently render a person invisible and even unworthy of the mildest amount of compassion.

I am, as noted elsewhere, big, blonde and bosomy. I’m a real blonde, too, so my eyelashes and eyebrows are very, very pale. Most of the time, not to make a point or anything, simply because I cannot be bothered, I don’t wear a lot of makeup, just mascara and, on a strictly as-needed basis, something to cover what the fashion industry coyly refers to as “blemishes.” Still, I did an experiment once where I went several months without any cosmetics at all. I wanted to see if people would actually treat me differently, or if it was just an irrational fear I’d gotten from the fashion media and kept since teenage. You know what though? Yes! They did treat me differently! I got terrible service at the various businesses I frequented. When I put mascara back on and visited the same places I got better service. Without mascara, the male and female bank tellers at Wells Fargo couldn’t help me when I got into a jam, and also couldn’t possibly be nice about it. With mascara, they were totally at my service, no matter what happened. It was the same in restaurants, convenience marts, the grocery store, riding the bus, everywhere.

This was probably close to twenty years ago, and I was probably as close to “hot” then as I’ve been since attaining voting age. I’m rather far from that description now that poorly restrained gourmandizing and gravity have begun to take their respective tolls. Now I’m a bigger, even more bosomy blonde. But you know what? Regardless of my shape, if I go out with my hair pulled back and no mascara, people often mistake me for a man out of the corners of their eyes. I can tell because I’m often called “Sir” until the person speaking looks me right in the face. This amuses me no end.

It also confuses me. What oh what is it that makes one lump of flesh feminine or female and another masculine or male? I really thought the big tits made it kind of a no-brainer. I guess not. And in any event, heaven help a woman who might go out in public without seeming to care whether she looks “pretty” or not.

I have found it absolutely unbelievable to hear my mother speaking a language she hasn’t spoken since she was 6. Not all the time, but here and there, to her surprise to sometimes, and other times, not.

Sara I don’t dispute your experience. Mine is different. I’ve never worn make-up until recently, lipstick. I’ve never been anything but a babe. And I’m not apologizing for it either.

But back to the original post; age and it’s losses yes. But probably yes, prejudice too if that means to judge before you know.

Twisty, I fucking love you.
I have toyed with the idea of gender bending, but the most blokish I can get is 13-year-old boy. Chubby 13-yr-old boy, actually, since I my tits are reaching epic proportions and are not easily concealed. And 13-yr-old boys, while sinks of entitlement, are not exactly the ruling class in our great society! Ah well.
People love labels, though, don’t they? If you’re a het girl, you better look like a het girl. If you’re a dyke, you better look like a dyke. I think what makes people the most uncomfortable isn’t people who are obviously different, but people who can’t be easily pegged as this or that identity. Good post.

Lavalamp I am also keenly aware of how cruel older people can be. Some use age as an excuse for bad behaviour. Some use age as an excuse for everything, and are quite willing to be a wobbley duddy old senior in order to get freebies. Makes me sick. And I also remember that the white haired old man down the street might be the white haired old pedophile who was just released from prison in my city. Never sentimentalize aging and the aged.

MsKate! I knew I liked you. Are you a regular denizen of the Deisel? Hooray!!! Twisty, if you are ever in the Deisel, I think it will be a Deisel holiday – and I hope you make it known so that your fans can all come and buy you an “8-Ball”, which is a scoop of yummy homemade ice cream floating in a tall glass of hot coffee. Mmmmm.

Well, Joolya, I used to hang there quite a lot until I changed jobs and don’t commute through the area anymore. Then True Grounds popped up in Ball Square, closer to home, and set up free wifi. They also have the really good Terroir coffee.

I’m still mourning the Someday as it once was, early-mid 90s, before it shifted to the corner – back when the staff turned the abandoned area upstairs into a basketball court, ala Clerks. Mourning Jeff too, who actually first met in high school, as he was a major Portlandizing influence on the scene. Way too young to die.

I do the Diesel now and then, particularly when I want food too or want to sit half-outside or have the kids along. I love that place.

There is nothing quite so amusing as watching someone who’s just mistaken you for a man . . . especially when you’re on the way to the bathroom. Been there. You can see the wheels turning behind their little beady eyes — or more precisely, you can see the wheels start to turn, and then the little motor in there just throws a rod. People who have a big investment in gender dualism (and is that not the bedrock of Patriarchy?) really flip their shit when they find out they just Got It Wrong.

Pony, #46: No one sane would ever expect you to apologize for being a “babe.” Honey, enjoy it! As to my own experience, while I — unlike Stingray and, apparently, you — have been a lot of things but never really “hot,” per se, I put it to you to make up your own mind. Here are two relatively recent (within the last two years) pictures of me:

http://movingrightalong.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/ski3_2.jpg

http://movingrightalong.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/digging3.jpg

In neither of these photographs am I dressed “femininely.” Hell, I’m not even wearing makeup. However, in spite of the fact that I had to PhotoShop the second one for modesty (there’s a reason I only garden in that T-shirt), I still think I look like a chick, not a dude. Having seen photos of Stingray here, on this very blog, I also think she looks like a chick not a dude and, like Amanda (#55) am startled and amused that anyone would be confused about this — unless that person was really, really drunk.

Nevertheless, many people mistake me for a man, and I really can’t figure out why. But when it happens, it is, as Nolo says in comment 56, really hilarious to watch the aftermath.

The only thing that ever upset me about any of this was people treating me badly when I didn’t wear mascara back when I actually was far more attractive with or without it than I am now. It wasn’t about being attractive. It was about people making assumptions about me that had to do with things like whether or not I deserved consideration if I didn’t seem to care about my appearance because I had neglected to draw on my face before leaving the house. That was unsettling.

Maybe people are better about that sort of thing outside of California. I certainly haven’t experienced anything like mascara prejudice here in New England, but then I’m so much older now, and people seem to expect less of me appearance-wise on that basis alone. And here a lot of people seem to think I’m a guy, anyway, at least at first.

Puzzling as I find that, it doesn’t bother me at all. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to experiencing life as an oyster.

Scratchy888: because it perpetuates the image of the woman that can’t be/won’t be/has no place being involved in reality, with all that it involves (politics, social issues, etc.), but rather has to be shielded for (by keeping her preoccupied with either the home or with shiny glittery things to distract her temporarily from ‘rea’ life). As such, she can never be in control of reality–of the world–she is perpetually a subordinate.

In licensed withdrawal, writes Goffman, “women more than men … are pictured engaged in involvements which remove them psychologically from the social situation at large, leaving them unoriented in it and to it, and presumably, therefore, dependent on the protectiveness and goodwill of others who are (or might come to be) present”.

Typical gestures: covering one’s face or mouth with one’s hands (even though there one single finger brought to the mouth—indicative of anxiety); finger-to finger holding of one’s hands-“dissociated self communication”; turning one’s gaze away from the other; head/eye aversion (lowering of head, momentary concealment of one’s face—and feelings, plus height is reduced); withdrawing one’s gaze from the scene as if psychologically removed from it (middle distance look, looking at one’s hands—again emphasizing submissiveness); women are shown “mentally drifting from the physical scene around them (that is, going “away”) while in close physical touch with a male, as though his aliveness to the surround and his readiness to cope with anything that might present itself were enough for both of them” —Goffman calls these “anchored drifts”; sometimes women look at small objects; in ads, “women more than men appear to withdraw themselves from the social situation at hand through involvements, including emotional response” (such as laughter, glee, delight, pleasure, being transported by happiness).

Shielding is used sometimes to express that the woman “is looking in on a social situation from a distance or behind a one-way panel—a ‘participation shield’” (behind objects—hair, flowers, clothes etc., behind persons, animals, etc.); snuggling and nuzzling—withdrawing from a social situation; women tend to lean more on men’s bodies than the reverse; in the grief embrace—usually the soothing shoulder belongs to a man; arm support, indicating commendation or moral approval—again, offered by men rather than women.

By contrast, men tend to be depicted much more present, in “control,” in the here-and-now, masters of reality, if you will. When they’re not, the images are startling, ironic, ‘funny’ because they contradict ‘the norm.’ See the web essay Bitch PhD linked to (now I see she delinked, for some reason–but anyway, you can find it here: http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/powerpose/index.html).

Sure, these are generalizations, but they keep being supported again and again, in large numbers, by the majority of media images we are surrounded with.

Which media images, no doubt, also informed the Weltanschauung of the Old Bat in Twisty’s story.

Hi Scarpe — I did see the photo-essay!

I’m just curious (still) why it is that when women infer by their body language that they are not entirely mentally present, that this is seen to defer to the patriarchy.

Yes, I understand implicitly, that this implies a certain weakness or dependency on their parts.

It could also imply a rejection of their social and physical circumstances and a desire to stand apart from them.

And yet, interpretations of this alternative nature are not drawn.

“Stingray is quiet and steady, unflinching and bold. Stingray is, as far as I can tell from the dozens of times I have shared a room with her, the strong and silent type, though exactly how strong she is has always been hidden by virtue of tact and seemliness.”

Well fer cryin’ out loud, she associates with a knife witted, kick-ass woman who feeds her oysters and fine wine. Damned if I wouldn’t be all that too. Or die trying.

As for this post, which seems to segueway nicely with the ‘blog against heteronormativity’ thing which has been going for some time around some time this week or something, I posted elsewhere.

Might I add that although I can’t hide by boobs, my dress in no way follows the norm. It is sometimes funny, oftentimes irritating and a few times damn insulting the way other women treat me resultant my eschewing of feminine identity markers, aside from the physical ones which i cannot be rid of right now. And yes, in my experience it is women predominantly who are more outspoken about my defiant ways, as if I am in need of a correction from the enlightened.

I don’t think men bother as they could give a shit what I do anyway, I’m not sexually desirable, so not worthy of their time in any sense of the word — unless I have money for them.

And I have made the same speeches about gender identity markers and their meaning and necessity in a patriarchy to my two girls. My older daughter wears heels alot. Oh well, i tried.

A few years back my brother and I used to have really long hair and baby-smooth chins.

Every once and a while we’d get somebody who’d tell us, “Hey, this is the boy’s room!”

I’m not sure that that adds much to the conversation. Let me try again:

Oysters? Eeeeeeeeew, blechy. They don’t taste nearly good enough to offset the fact that they’re giant boogers.

Wait, that didn’t add much either. I give up.

Scarpediem. You get no disagreement from me. Advertising is over the top femme. I saw a Vogue (or Vanity Fair or one of those) mags recently with a full page ad pic of Kate Moss sitting on one hip. The down hip. The other was up so her whole vulva area was facing the camera. Her plumped up, pulled out labia were front centre and the focus of the picture. Which was selling perfume I think.

Men however are not exempt from this silliness, just different. We do see them stricking those fey poses in fashion mags. But in men’s mags, and real life, stance walk and facial expression are very “guy” hard.

This is different in ads for mature adults, where product is pitched to the over 50 . Both men and women are childishly goofy. Fully clothed. Demure. Asexual, even in the Viagra ads.

I don’t doubt the retardation of the elder female subject in your story.

But, context is everything.

She probably doesn’t remember it, but I’ve bumped into her in situations where I was not ‘with’ you, Twisty. There was a big difference in her response to my salutations. Understandable. I mean, here’s some average late-30’s white guy… whose physical appearance is about as common as the budweiser he’s ordering… balding, slight gut, with the requisite black glasses… easy to imagine how she forgot having met me at a gig. I was sad that I hadn’t left a meaningful enough impression to have been granted the pleasure of recognition. But, I didn’t bring it up because I was intimidated, thinking maybe she had remembered me, but didn’t like what she remembered.

Stingray can be kinda intimidating. In her (ironic?) Bruce Springsteen t-shirt, keeping bar at the Royale, my friendly salutations were met with the slight disdain one might express for a fly speck in the black pepper.

One more similar story…

Through my bass playing in a band with Twisty, and the necessary decompression-session post-practice beers at the WayOutClub, I acquired a taste for the band The Star Death. The Star Death’s rock is worthy of an entire column, so I’ll stay off that for the moment. What’s relevant is that having become a convert to their religion, I spent several post-set conversations with the band, extolling the virtues of virtually every aspect of their awesomeness, not the least of which is the bass playing of Toby.

However…

I once bumped into Toby at a Cardinals baseball game. I was there with my two kids, in khaki shorts and an embarrassing jersey of some sort and a ballcap to keep my bald head from getting sunburned. She, of course, looked as cool as she always does… and was there with another rocknroll friend or two. When I waved and said hello, I got looks as though I was a pedo rapist on furlough and they kept on motoring by.

Context is everything, I guess. Crushed, I chalked it up to the costume of the moment… turns out everybody’s capable of misjudging someone based on their “look.”

The bathroom seems to put people even further into a heightened sense of anxiety.

People behave crazy and our reactions are heightened because it’s the bathroom.

Over the weekend, I took my 9-yr-old daughter fishing. When we stopped in to a restaurant to use the bathroom, we were confronted with the same old conundrum. Do I take her to the Men’s room or let her use the Women’s room alone? Either way, I get looks of disapproval from someone in the place.

In my previous post, I didn’t mean to make it sound like I doubted the original story. I was only hoping to illustrate how context can play a role in identification and miscommunication.

To finn-

As for my poor recognition, it was never intentional. I do remember liking you and your bass playing, but obviously I lack the recall. Never meant to be an intimidating ass.

The thing is that there are languages which don’t express gender grammatically and still people’s behaviour is highly binary-gendered.

Hey, no apology necessary, Stingray. I totally understood how it could happen, took no offense, etc.

As for intimidation, I think I misspoke. I was mostly embarrassed for assuming that my typical ass would be recognizable.

can we get back to oysters here, people? The two best places for fried oysters in New Orleans, pre-Katrina, were Zeke’s on Metairie Road and Bruning’s on the Lakefront. I love a crunchy wee oyster with a cornmeal coating. Anyway, does anyone know if Zeke’s or Bruning’s are re-opened?

I refuse to eat oysters in Mississippi. And I’m still traumatized by the gooey gloopy fried oysters I ate in Daytona Beach in my youth, so I will never, so help me, order oysters in Florida again.

HI Scarpe.

I take your point as it applies to women. There are negative practical consequences.

However, I was actually considering the same dynamic of standing apart, and appling that to a situation of kind of postmodernist dissent. I’m not convinced that the consequences of not being attached to the dominant dynamic of a dominant social paradigm (even if that paradigm is conceptualised as entailing forcefulness)is always and ubiquitously negative. Think of George Bush’s America, or various forms of ideologically unifying behaviour, and suddenly, standing detachedly apart seems like a very good thing. But this is more of a symbolic take..

I understand that what you are concerned about are the unfortunate practical effects of this type of advertising on the psyche of many women.

Nothing high falutin’ here, but I need to say: Twisty, my crush on you now has another wonderful facet: Stingray. I’m afraid you both might be too cool for me, but I’ll let myself imagine.

Annie, sweat it not. Treat your neighbor like he’s from a foreign culture. In the meantime, continue with the power tools. This has been my approach ever since 1979, when I got my certificate in auto mechanics from the local JVS.

But someday, if we are lucky, we may all be old bats.

Dear Stingray,

You win some, you loose some. I would have invited you to share a stall with me.

Annie, sometimes that is less patriarchy and more simple attraction to somebody who shares interests.

When I was in high school, I had occasional boyfriends, but mostly ran in a pack. One day in the locker room during gym I overheard some cheerleaders talking about “how come Kate always seems to have so many guys around her?” in their “it’s not fair” voices.

I was kind of stunned by that. They were half right – I always had guys around me. But they were my friends. We played sports together, sat together in Calculus, took the same shop class, made bongs in ceramics. If I had lots of male attention, it was because I did guy stuff.

Ya, Ms. Kate true enough in many circumstances of my life, but not with the neighbor (though I do sense a touch of fascination). He has a very nicely domesticated wife. She’s a very nice person and all, but she definitely does the stay at home obedience trip, and would never be caught outside performing a manly task like grilling while sucking down a Tsing Tao, or dressed in a braless tank and shorts sanding a piece of furniture from the garbage, or power hosing the patio. The husband always asks, “Why don’t you get Al to do that for you?” and then he wonders both what kind of woman I am and what kind of husband I have. Of course, the judgment always comes down in his mind, I suspect, that I am one of those recalcitrant women who doesn’t know her place and has hen-pecked her husband. Good grief!

I think oysting is more like silently brooding.

Lawyer ‘collected skirt images’
A barrister accused of making indecent images by covertly filming up girls’ skirts has denied getting any sexual gratification from his “habit”.
Simon Austin Hamilton, 35, of Haringey, north London, told Canterbury Crown Court his pleasure came from collecting and cataloguing the images.

Mr Hamilton denies charges of outraging public decency and possessing indecent images of children.

He said he stopped “upskirting” when he joined the Bar as it was inappropriate.

Collecting is something my family is very prone to

Simon Austin Hamilton

Mr Hamilton denies six charges of making indecent photographs of a child and two charges of possessing an indecent photo of a child for show, all between January 2002, and July 2003.

He faces a further charge of taking an indecent photograph of a child on 10 September, 2001.

Mr Hamilton told the jury that his actions in filming up skirts had been about getting the image and accumulating a collection.

‘Inappropriate habit’

“Collecting is something my family is very prone to. We’re collectors of pretty much anything you can imagine,” he explained.

He added that he would spend most of his time cataloguing the images as opposed to looking at them.

“It was the sort of gratification of a job well done,” he said.

At the time of the offences, Mr Hamilton lived in Bosham, West Sussex, with his fiancée whom he later married.

The court heard that he had started “upskirting” when he worked part-time and had “too much time on his hands”.

He said: “In 2001, I came back to the Bar and it was no longer an appropriate or convenient habit to indulge in.”

The case continues

Yeah, Pony, he’s right; I’m much too pretty for my life. Good one, eh? (Jeez! If these guys weren’t so consistently unbelievable they’d be absolutely unbelievable!) I’m sure you’re right and there’s a “fuckability” factor at play. Moreover, I have the feeling that there’s a bit of inward questioning over how Al ended up with a slender, pretty, and feistily fuckable wife who cooks life a French chef. Well, cheer up Peruvian neighbor man, the answer to that question lies solely at the doorstep of your beloved patriarchy…and if it is any consolation, I’ve had my own room and a celibate life for quite some time. But then again, Pony, as we all know that just makes me all the more “mysterious” and “desirable” right? Good grief! What a world!