Conservative

I have heard this said many times: "I'm conservative", or also "I'm traditional". This has been said to me by both men and women - though mostly men - in a way to excuse or give an acceptable veneer to behaviors, attitudes and words that are downright misogynistic, aporophobic (fear of poverty or poor people) among other forms of discrimination now widely recognized and denounced. In this occasion, I will talk to you about this traditional or conservative stance regarding women and the veiled, beautified misogyny.

The traditional or conservative being - not all, but in the cases where this is used to excuse misogyny - can take many forms, many of which might be hard to identify. It goes from simple things like letting you know that they like your hair better when it's longer, because then you look more feminine, to things like comments on the line of which career choices are for women or men, or refering to women as if they could all be defined by the same rule: all want to be mothers and wives, all are happier with a husband by their sides, all seek only (romantic) love, and all are happy (only) when they tend their house.

This year, as in previous years, women have been raising their voices stronger and stronger, demanding justice for the ever climbing femicide rates. Crimes against women are particularly hineous because they are not only murdered, they are tortured, and oftentimes, they are revictimized. Nearly no case of rape commited against a woman goes without a part of the society automatically thinking she did something to deserve it. This year a young, lovely woman was killed by her partner, and buried in a backyard. The press and people online said she had it coming for going out with someone belonging to a criminal band. Something kind of like what happened to Breonna Taylor.

These are all acts of violence in greater or lesser level, but acts of violence nonetheless. This is not being "sensitive" or "delicate" or "bitchy". This is calling things by their name. This is not "not being able to take a joke". This is serious and shedding the light on injustice, on discrimination.

When a friend makes a sexist joke and you tell them "that's your daughter. Think of it like than and then laugh. Your daughter will grow up to be humiliated by her partner, because you find it funny and approve of it.", they usually are taken aback and often start thinking about it. But when a person has this mentality so ingrained they actually think this is how the world goes, you can't make them see the light so easily. It doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it "an opinion", but yes, it is harder to make people realize the damage they are causing.

A conservative could react to the greater acts of gender violence with comments like "we care for women" or "we guard women". This goes much in the line of those sugary phrases that says "women are so wonderful, so superior, so strong, that they are the only ones to give life and feed others from their own bodies". The issue? It's a patronizing pat on the head for being genetically capable to become mothers. As if that's the ultimate goal of all women. 

Just take a moment to go through a message of this type. Notice that all those superior qualities allegedly exclusive of women (another lie, for it denies that men can be nurturing, and a lot of them are), have to do with motherhood and being housewives. Aside from all the nurturing and caring, there are also exclusive alleged magical powers to cure (so, if a women fails to kiss away a serious illness, she's defective?), sixth sense to know when her loved ones are in trouble (so, if a loved one is kidnapped, hurt, is it her fault for not using her magic?), superhuman strength to deal with stress and household issues (so, is she less if she has a nervoud break down, or can't have an instant solution to a problem that surpasses her?). Not only are these not real qualities of pretty much the average human being, praising unrealistic qualities puts a weight of expectation that can't be fulfilled, on top of reducing all forms of allowed personal development, discovery and expression.

On top of all that, evidently, any woman who either can't or decide not to have children are either not living to their full potential (the nice explanation) or are just flawed (general consensus). So neither the "guarding them like a treasure" (thus reducing women to the status of an object) nor "superior because they are mothers" (reducing all of their goals and aspirations to a utilitarian purpose: produce children) equate women to men, and since they are not equal to men, then there are no grounds to grant them what women do deserve: respect.

I have this friend (unnamed, yes, and they do exist, and some of my penpals know exactly WHO am I talking about), who exhibits a clearly misogynistic attitude, and explain it away as being conservative and having had a conservative upbringing. He is not the kind of person that makes crude misogynistic jokes, and thus he does truly believe he is not misogynistic. Furthermore, he has these impulses to sort of take care of women, or make the attempt to, though more often than not expressed in words rather than actions, and often talks to women in an infantilizing manner.

His conservative attitude makes him automatically place women and men in different worlds. For instance, more than once he has told me that I'm the most intelligent woman he has ever met. (This is supposed to be a compliment). I asked him why woman? If he is somehow gauging my intelligence (however subjective that measurement might be), it should be against the entire portion of the population he has met. If a subcategory should be set, then it would mean that it's a part of my mental capabilities that would be considered. For instance, the most intelligent economist, the most intelligent grad student this year, etc. Subcategories define a scope, a particular form of intelligence (in this case) or a set of variables to be considered, and thus define only a part of the meassured skill or capability.

Kind of like at school when you get your grades, in Math you get your grades based on how you perform in Maths, not how you perfome in everything related to your mental capabilities. Yeah, I know, I would have done so much better with a general grading for math... and physics... and chemistry... and biology...

He said nothing the first time, but then several weeks later repeated the "compliment" a second time. I again told him why "woman", and he said "because you are a woman". So, it seems he does believe that the brain and mental functions of men and women are not only different, but can't be compared. To believe so, you most think men and women can't possible function the same way or do similar things at all. If female and male mental capabilities can't be compared then there is no way they could possible overlap in any area of life. This even though we speak the same language with the same fluidity, we are capable to do the same jobs, studied the same career and our achievements were graded in the same fashion, thus debunking with ample empirical evidence that male and female mental capabilities are not only comparable, but equal, and the differences perceivable are only at the individual level, and not at the gender level. And yet he can't bring himself to say "you are one of the most intelligent people I have met".

A comment such as on the lenght of hair as a qualifying asset, or a comment on physical measures, attractiveness and that being not only a measure of beauty, but a measure of personal worth for a woman, are elements of misogyny. These concepts and their further propagation reduce a part of the population - all the women in the world - to objects, devoid of any humanity, any will or self power. This sort of stance towards life turns humanity into a world of men surrounded by self propelled, willess dolls. And this is not the case.

Admitedly, I am not conservative, though I do have an idea of things that were better in the past - I'm 44, it is natural that I prefer the days when there was no internet and people burrowed in libraries for research, where sometimes old books contained loose leafs with anotations left by an anonymous hand - but even if you are conservative, there should be things that you should be willing to improve as the world grows and learns.

If conservative means that you will keep up with the microviolence, the discrimination, the objetification, the dehumanization of a part of the population, you should strongly consider changing your ways. Yes, there are things that were maybe better, more thoughtful in the old days, such as a stronger sense of community - one could argue, though that it was also in the past when dozens of people were accused of witchcraft and 19 were hanged by their own neighbours, based on the psychotic shreeks of children, and the envy of their peers... in Salem, Mass. - but a lot had to be let behind, improved and illuminated. We understood that slavery is wrong, we understood that all human beings are equal and all religions are valid, and all sexual orientations are perfectly fine.

If conservative means not to be able or willing to learn and adapt, then how long can life be made in a conservative fashion in a progressive, dynamic world, where Nature, people and even the gods constantly show motion and evolution? If conservative is fixed, stuck, unmoving, unlearning, unable to adapt, it will force the conservative person to face each day a world that goes more and more against them, making life and surroundings more and more agressive, engaging the person in a fierce battle, where their place in life will become more and more threatened as days go by. Because the individual goes older, but Nature and the World and the whole of Humanity, just like the Gods, remain eternal, strong and moving in their constant evolution.

But that's not anymore what conservative means. The world has moved, Humanity has moved, and "conservative" has been emptied of most of its elements up to the point where the only things left seem to be the beliefs, among which discrimination is interwoven. Steadily, "conservative" has become a lable to be ashamed of, as it is equated no longer with positive qualities, but with brute, retrograde, ignorant positions and a marked uncapability to move from them, to evolve and recognize the worth of the hard wins many oppressed minorities have managed to carve in the body of an ever evolving Humanity that has been struggling to become more equal, and yet still manages to unfairly oppress a part of it.

If you are conservative, please take stock of your values, of what you really hold dear and please work hard to sift through it, rescue the good, and allow new things in. Adapt. Let's learn from the good of the past, instead of turning the past into something to be ashamed of.

This is how I journal now

Picture property of Stormberry

I found recently a picture of how I used to manage my planner some years ago. Oh boy, kids, this is from 2017! And back then I still used filofax inserts (Wo2P - week on two pages). I think this is the one that came... no. The one that came with the planner were the Wo2P in columns (it is an A5 Malden after all), and since I've got my planner in Europe (it was too expensive to have it shipped to the American continente), and I think I shortly after visited my friend Tina and we switched inserts because she loved the vertical distribution, while my way of planning (appointments to the left, tasks to the right) works better on a horizontal set up. I was crazy for color (as I still am, mind you) and back then I used frixion pens because they allowed me to write in ink and erase the notes when something needed to be rescheduled. Before that I tried using colored led mechanic pencils, but colored led was hard to come by (and then I've got a shipload of them, and now I have them here to use, and haven't used them in quite a while. This is how I function.).

I still remember my boyfriend from back then, who was mindblown that I had spent about 180,- € (including the shipping) for a planner. Three-four years later I'm still using that planner, and am completely in love with it. One of the best investments I've ever made, if you ask me.

I no longer use inserts, but I get dotted paper (have stocked up on a few of them... several times, so I think I'm safe to go through the quarantine for a while solely on my stock), or cut graph paper to size, punch it and use it for bullet journaling, which is how I plan today. Curiously, I migrated my appointment/task setting to my bullet journal, and I don't use indexes, but instead keep on using the sections all filofax lovers adore, and fitted both worlds to my personal need. As everybody should.

Property of Stormberry.

Something else that has been changing is how I journal too. And when I say journal, I mean that sort of sit down and write your thoughts, impressions, events, personal analysis of what goes on, gossip you don't want to forget... or whatever you write in your journal. And yes, not all of us are Anaïs Nin's (I know, I LOVE Anaïs Nin. Deal with it.), but our thoughts and impressions and experiences are all valid and all deserve to be recorded.

In my earlier journals - you can find pictures, I believe, if you go back far enough - I used less media and more text. Here and there I would paste a news clipping, but it was all mainly text written in a single color ink. I wasn't much of a spread creator or a visual arts enthusiast, nor I consider so myself up to this day, but I have been starting to cut and paste more and more pictures from magazines or pictures I print out from photos and internet searches, and add them in.

Washi tape sometines also gets involved in my entries. And now sometimes I draw too, or do some lettering, or add an extra page in this baking-sheet-like paper (this translucent, resistant paper, like the one you can see in this second picture, from which I folded a simple envelope to keep some of thsi cut out and clipped pictures), on which I paste whatever memento in order to save pages I can use for writing.

Property of Stormberry

I have always been one to keep souvenirs and either I collected them in a box (or more than one. Don't ask.), or just put them between the pages of my journals. It was through the influence of my friend Tina, who does a lot of art journaling. I started experimenting more and more with this sort of journaling, and then tried to scale it back, because I am not an art-journaler or an artistic-spread-making kind of journaler. I don't think I would ever try to make whole artistic spreads in my journal, for my way of journaling is through words, and I strive for all pictures to have something to do with the entry. Or so I try. ^_^

In my last journal book (a Leuchtturm 1917 A5 Copper), I tried to regain the old style, minimizing as much as I could the use of art, with not much avail. It did was significantly reduced compared to my previous one, an A5-ish, jaw-dropping Bomo Art plain paper journal of absolute beauty. Yes, I'm adding the link and I'm promoting it shamelessly (but not being paid in any shape or form by them or any other company) not because they are a Hungarian company I love, but mostly because the product is GORGEOUS and the whole universe should know about them.

So, that Bomo Art journal was my most artistic so far. Now I'm writing in a HEMA, which was gifted to me by my friend Arjen. This notebook has been in my collection for a while - as about 10 others, I gather - and though I wanted to start another Bomo Art notebook, my hand went to this one.

Lined Paper, which is not my preferred, and a cover/inside combination that I LOVED when I first got it because it took me from light to darkness - the hearts desire of many a witch ^_^ as we don't fear darnkess but learn to work with its power - and yet now, with such a hard 2020 under way, I needed to find light in me, and so I changed the cover. And what to know something? HEMA notebooks are sooo cooperative! Even an unskilled person like me (yes, I am actually quite clumsy, but fix all mistakes with washi tape and good attitude) was abe to change the cover so that it looks like that was how it was originally planned to be. And this forgiving, yielding, happy, considerate, ample notebook has tapped again my visual veins and I've started perusing Pinterest and clicking, printing, cutting and pasting again.

The point, my dearest Reader, is that when it comes to journaling, all you have to do is just do what you want to do. Just that. Journal for yourself, and if you are proud of it and want to share it, share it! Hey, and if you need some encouragement, write to me ^_^ or just link here the pics of your journal entries or your journal book, and I'll go and give it some love. Because whatever you do, for yourself, it is BEAUTIFUL.

The Work and the Artist

Photo poperty of Stormberry

It's not uncommon now to see boycott movements against a given brand based on an economic practice, or a social position the owners of the brand take on a given subject. We have seen this with different brands and different stores and companies with different degrees of success. One could say this was an early form of Cancel Culture, where people - depending on their believes and the values they uphold - would choose to stop buying something or start buying something depending on how the behavior or the believes of the company or brand alight with theirs.

The point behind of these acts of boycott or support are based on the idea that the most effective way to protest in today's world it's through our money, specially when it comes to companies that sell us things and services, or people who need us in a way to make money.

With some things it might be easy to express your support or to withdraw it, because there are many other options. For instance, when I withdrew my support from Starbucks because of their horrendous online Customer Service, I took to look up other coffeeshops and I also returned to my previous favorite coffee brand, and thus left my Starbucks days behind. We also see this sort of behavior when people pointedly choose to consume locally produced products or small business products or even buy as much as possible black owned brands or so.

Things get more complicated when the brandor company you wish to no longer to support belongs to an industry or branch with little other options, such as mobile telephones. For instance, what would you do if the company that makes your favorite mobile phones turn out to be involved in employee exploitation, or employs child labour, supports slavery, or corrupt politicians, or the deforestation of the Amazonas, or so on? Sure, you can say you will buy your next mobile phone from another brand, BUT what if the other brand is also sketchy? What if this given brand you used to support has a whole linking of products and you would have to replace everything? It makes it more sketchy, right?

It may happen also that there are brands you really, really love, that have a superior quality or the kind of service and attention of detail that really makes the difference for you, and so leaving them becomes hard. What then? Morals over utility? Are you ok with something that involves something you disaprove of just because the service or the product is really good? Can you make a separation between the product and their politics or the CEO's personal believes and/or behavior?

Well, and what happens when it's an artist whose work you really love, but the artist stands for or has done things you condemn? Is it ok to keep consuming their work and keep loving it even when what they have done or said is henious?

The usual way to put it in context is: if Hitler would have written a really awesome book or made the best movie on the planet or composed the best song ever, would you still consume the piece of art even if he was who he was and done what he has done?

This is a question that has hit many fans for a time now. The discussion also tends to be twisted a bit - in my personal opinion - by  saying "if the artist was someone awful, shall their art be also considered awful?". 

Here are my two cents in this discussion.

Property of Stormberry

There are levels at which the Art and the Artist are separate. The artist ca be a jerk, but the art it creates can have a high artistic value. It's the same way as a nice, good person who is also an artist doesn't necessarily makes good art too. Talent isn't correlated with morals, goodness of heart or values upheld.

Now, unlike the products and services normally traded, Art tends to carry a part of the moral world of the Artist. It might be more subtle in plastic arts or music, as it can be in literature and poetry, but as an Artist creates, they translate part of their world vision into their art, so chances are that the message is somewhere there. With the consuming of the art, you are also consuming the message, and it might be a message you don't approve of. Yes, maybe it's not so easy to see or perceive, and it might be that the point of discord in question doesn't even appear at all in the art. So what then?

This is a personal call, something you will have to decide now and again, each time to face such a situation, but what I believe is the following:

In the end, the Artist lives out of the money they make with their art, just like a company lives out of the products and services they make. Yes, one singer can't justbe replaced so easily with another, nor a painter so easily with another, and even less a moviemaker with another or a writer with another, BUT you can stand for your believes and choose to stop buying their art. It doesn't mean you have to burn everthing you have of them, or necessarily give it away, but you can choose to show your disappointment by no longer acquiring their work.

If you consider that their transgression isn't so bad, or you are not sure they did do what they are being accused of, by all means, keep supporting them. Because when you pay for their work that's exactly what you do: support them. Art isn't (usually) for free: it has a price so that the artist and the indstry behind it can make a profit and a living out of it.

In today's world much has been taken from us, this very blogpost means sweet nothing in the great scheme of things, but the coin? The coin we spend or save are the one powerful voice we have left.

Quaratine Diaries and Journals

Property of Stormberry.
From my own journal.

Maybe you have heard of these diaries and journals, but the first time I did was throught an article in the New York Times published on March 30th, 2020. The article spoke about how people around the world has been turning to pen and paper in these days of staying at home and isolation to record the flow of their days, their thoughts, their fears and their experiences.

Some people has taken pen and paper for the first time to write about what goes on, making do with the art of journaling or keeping a diary as their days stretch into weeks and months in confinement, with fear of the outher world while at the same time yearning for it. Others have already been journaling ad have now turned to their trusty pages to record their experiences or find solace to the angst and burdens that now bend their backs and hearts.

I do not know of anyone around me keeping such journals, though I do know of people who journal. I am, for one, the kind of diary-keeper that would be considered the most unreliable one for recording events that happen around me or in the real world, to call it some how. I journal about my feelings, about intimate recounts of happenings with a handfull of people from my environment, with usually no information that might help place these events in any sort of social or historical context. For the love of the Gods, I just spent four months recording the events of a single day spent with Fritzl!

Property of Stormberry
From my personal journal

And yet still...

And yet still, I have found that I want to record some things that have been happening, that have affected the general tide of the society in which I live, and thus affecting my relationships with others as well as my state of mind. I'm certain my journal won't be listed in any book of history, nor it is my intention to record anything in it for anyone but myself, if I ever decide to go back and consult it, but I do find it important to try and illuminate in my notes the fact that there is a pandemic swirling around the world and upending life as we know it.

Things change, human contact change. I find myself wondering whether I'll be able to experience a long, sustained hug again, if I'll be able to hug, to feel against my arms the sure warmth of and solidity of someone I love. If I'll be able to kiss again, burry my nose in the crook of the neck of someone and breath in their scent, feel their hair against my face and between my fingers.

I'm still moved to write about my feelings and their evolution, collect and systematize my memories in the minute dissection of someone, holding their actions between the steel tines of my nib, beating softly as ink pours over them and cut them into tiny pieces with my words as I find new and new meanings of every action, every word and every gesture, combined with the yuxtaposition of other collected memories and experiences that help me draw parallels.

I change. We all change, and our old coping mechanisms might have been compromised. Mine have, as I can no longer drive to a coffeeshop, order a specialty coffee and claim a table for myself to write and sometimes also do some people-watching. We must adapt, and quarantine journals or diaries, or just our regular journals and diaries can help us navigate these new waters.

The Unspoken Worth of Silence

Source:  The Period of Silence

A time of quarantine due to the current pandemic might be a curious time to talk about the value of silence, and yet this is the time when I feel more need of it.

The world is being called to stay at home and practice social distancing, and though this happens in the physical world, the virtual world is exploding with more and more content, more and more chats and messages and calls. I would not call myself an introvert - people who know me know I am more of an extrovert - but I have never before more than now have felt just how much the contact with others overwhelms me.

In normal circumstances, I have several periods during the day that allow me to be entirely alone, undisturbed and able to be with myself. During this period, I have found that people keep reaching to me throught different means and for different reasons. Thus, though I am at home, isolated from others, I am not disconnected. This has been affecting my mood.

I could feel I was getting more and more irritated, and there was no way for me to stop it. Even after my working hours where over, and I turned off my computer, people kept talking to me, messaging me, wanting me to fill their idle, alone hours with conversation so they wouldn't feel alone. Yes, I can understand that, but they thing is that I need to feel alone. I need that silence to retrieve, to regroup. Curiously, during meditation I also have found that imagining a white light or any light for that matter bothers me, but if I imaging enveloping, soft twilight or darkness, filled with the sounds and scents and textures of old forests, that achieves to calm me.

These times are hard, but are not impossible on us. Let's find ways to adapt. I'll try to find a schedule to silence my phone after work, disconnect at all my meals, stand up more often from my chair, play a few minutes with my cats, write a line or two in my journal. Do you have any ideas? :-D

Update and Question about a Thorny Situation

Long time no see. How you've been? I've been doing fine, or sort of fine. Since last time I wrote, I defended my last thesis (Marketing), which went fine (of course), and I've got FINALLY out of that circle of studying! For those who know, I was also in a hurry about all those diplomas because these were loose ends for me, open cycles I wanted completed. There was this nagging thing about them, also because they appeared in old CV's of mine and always as unfinished, and some people seemed to believe that that was just like "finished" and so expected me to be able to do stuff I was no longer updated with or didn't actually had the certification to do them. But now all that is behind me.

However, never be said that I stay idle about anything, and so I enrolled into a Masters Degree program with my old Alma Mater. Yes, I am back to Economics, and in an Academic Program, not a Professional Program, because - though I am not in the Academia - I don't like pre-chewed and easy stuff. Will I regret it? Stay tuned.

If you are wondering now why can't I be normal? my answer is: Why would I? Normal is boring. I tried it once, you know? It made me want to kill everthing in site. I didn't, of course, but I quickly veered back to crazy. It's better for all of us. Trust me.

My house is still in process, and with serious delays. There have been issues and my dad keeps picking up fights with the foreman, and the foreman has also been doing somethings wrong and trying to hide them, and so that ensures more fights and... I will have to burn massive amounts of palo santo, sage, sandalwood and rosemary to chase out all that negativity. The house itself is looking wonderful, and different issues are being addressed. I'm getting my bathtub the way I want it and currently my only worry is how are they going to solve my hot water, since I want it made with a gas boiler because - in my experience - that's the only one that gives me water as hot as I like it, which is scalding hot.

So these are the important events of my life up to date.

Property of Stormberry

Regarding my situation with that friend of mine, yesterday I was finally able to write down in my journal everything that happened and was important on November 17th of last year, which was when we met at our old University and he told me he had left his wife. This was a very, very important day in my life, and this whole experience was life changing for me, because him and me got so much closer together, and from that day on I felt I had earned a brother, and my heart exploded for him.

It was hard, and I was so afraid of forgetting the details and letting his day and this experience slip through my fingers as my memory is famously bad. It was a long process and one through which I had to struggle a lot. The final part, that last mile, started on Saturday (two days ago) and I decided to write and write and keep writing until all was finally on the paper. And so I did, and so yesterday, after about seven or eight hours of continuos writing, I managed to get it done.

I'm not done just yet, as there is one other very significant day to our story and our friendship/brotherhood, which I also want to record, but at least this one is already on paper.

Though I have bitched quite a lot about him through the years - and boy, I have bitched! - at the end of the day it's plain to see that I do care a lot about him, that I do love him and love him deeply and carry his fate close to my heart. He's currently the only one of my friends I keep close tabs on, pretty much acting in a mother hen fashion - which I know I should be stopping because he is an adult and capable of making his own decisions and facing his own life for himself - because I have this imperative need to make sure he is well and happy. The gods are wise they removed the desire of being a mother from me. I would have probably raised the next Norman Bates!

The thing is - and here comes the topic of the post - that I have made friends with a girl who suffers from a mental disease. Her situation is complicated and I have the sense that she's very fragile. Up to my ability, I have tried to understand her, give her her space and be there for her as a friend when she needs it. My discomfort has begun when I've realized that she's in love with me, and has been trying to push herself more and more into my life, which I don't want. I'm truly scared to hurt her, but I do not want to upend my whole life supporting someone who will expect things from me I can't give her. I've tried my best to be gentle, friendly, and let her know that I've other priorities.

From what I gather, I've seen her plan to move into my house, or at least spend long seasons there - even though I have never made such an invitation - and then suggesting I should stop talking to my friend, because he's toxic for me. She's been falling more and more into crisis - or maybe that was always here regular rate and only now I know about it - and what bothers me is that her family is there, and I know they care, but it's almost as if she were expect me to take care of her situation.

I do like her, and she can be a great friend, but right now I don't know how could I backpedal this whole thing. I've already stopped telling her a lot of things about my life, stopped mentioning my friend to her altogether, and have been telling her less and less, keeping the conversation more and more superficial.

However, I could use advise if anyone has some to give. How can I be suportive of a friend with a mental disease, prone to hurting themselves while keeping my own independence and my own life?