I don't get the Anglosphere, part 2 in an ocassional series
"But why must you English be so clean?"
I wondered as I wandered.
(This mostly applies to Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders as well as everyone on the island which started it all. It may not apply to Indians, South Africans or other people in the Anglosphere by language and culture but not by economy. My rude and crude definition of 'the Anglosphere' is anyone who isn't European).
Of course ten years ago the question might have been: Why are Russians so dirty?
In ten years time: Why is the very idea of clean or dirty so culturally constructed? Which is a Stage 6 (per Kohlberg) understanding of the problem. I'm getting there ...
A period, especially for a young girl, is one of those visible invisible disabilities.
We try to help her through it.
Overall, it seems Europeans have a far healthier attitude to this sort of thing than Americans do. I know this is a gross overgeneralisation! (And do excuse the pun).
I must admit I cannot always change my menstrual wear at earliest convenience. Which is why I prefer to either wear white things where I can see the blood, or black things where it's invisible but feelable.
And I so rarely wear skirts and other things that it matters little how it looks. I rarely do get blood on what I do wear, but I did last period.
I need to have my periods 'visible' to believe in them, and I do not like the idea of stuffing up something in my vagina. Because of my memory deficits and other factors I do not like tampons. Never did.
If I were to bleed every day instead of five days in each month I would not feel nearly so dirty as when I do have my period. This 'dirtiness'/'cleanliness' fluctuates according to how I may be feeling on that particular day. Sometimes urine is just like blood and I miss it. And very often I drip my remaining drips on the toilet seat. This is not particularly disgusting; it is a fact - and sometimes a way - of life.
I change whenever I need to change, not some arbitary time. And very often I run out my supply in a month. What am I to do then, without spending money or energy which I may not necessarily have? I have not got an attendant carer to help me in that regard.
If you were a male in a service industry, I wonder if you would sometimes get turned on by authentic menstrual blood? Would your pheronemones get going at the smell and feel? Would you decide you loved that girl forever and ever, death without part? Perhaps you might.
And I tend to bleed the most in the evening. Very often I surprise myself in the morning, when I wake up, at how much blood I have been making.
Seeing as I am not (currently) sexually active (and most probably will not be until I formalise my committed relationship), I do not know how menstration will affect me. I do not always feel like doing energetic things because of the pain. And sexual intercourse is one of the most energetic human activities out.
I had my last period during the Easter break and until the 20th. Truly, I could not avoid going out during that period, so keeping me at home would not have been the best strategy.
And here I am advertising my pride in not being a particularly dirty-minded woman! I think, though, it's not so much purity as that I have rescinded/transcended many of the pettier social conventions. I love menstrual smells; they are of the earth. And you would not convince me with Eve's curse. I have deinstituionalised myself over the past five years. The less connected I continue to be with harmful and abusive institutions, even those to which I would otherwise feel a loyalty, the more tolerant and broad-minded I become. And that is the thing which really hurts my reputation; that and not speaking out.
I do believe the vestiges of the Cold War can be found in teenage panties. (And never mind that the girl was born AFTER said Cold War. I didn't realise the Cold War was over until 1995, and perhaps the Cold War will never really be over until - the European part of Russia at least - is accepted into organisations like NATO and the EU. Why no to Turkey, but yes to Russia, particularly when there's still all this antagonism? Well, the Soviets were on the Allied side in the Second World War, after all. Her birth parents were born IN the Cold War and therefore still hold these attitudes. I don't know how progressive politically the birth parents would be or otherwise ...)
I could never ever support such an assimilationist attitude. My strategy is and always has been to accomodate. Perhaps this makes me an anti-Piagetian, but what would Jean have known about adolescent women, not least his daughter Jacqueline? Is there anything about Jacqueline, in the books or on the Net, about her in her own right? She has fascinated me ever since James Britten, my hero in psycholinguistics, mentioned her and her innovations in language development. The woman must be 81 now if she is still alive.
Embarrassment and jealousy are essentially feelings of adolescence. One legacy from the Anglosphere way of thinking is that embarrassment is somehow unworthy of adults - or at least the adults I admire and look up to. Certainly this is not a normative expectation I have ever held. And embarrassment and jealousy are somewhat permissively applied - if you love someone enough, you're welcome to them - whereas if you don't necessarily have that relationship, then it is sort of unwarrented and unworthy.
"Nothing human is foreign to me," - Montaigne.
I love the way this pioneering French essayist wrote about things which before him we would have considered disgusting. He's the best in that regard. And he opened up the way for the fairer sex too.
And I would say, with Montaigne, nothing human is disgusting to me.
Except that which leads to the acceptance of the inhuman, but that is worthy of a more major human emotion than mere disgust.
Join me in appreciating this first great humanist who belongs so fully to the world.
Okay, it was Terence who said it first.
Here is a searchable copy of The Essays in English.
And finally something nice about postmodernism especially through the works of Kristeva.
I wondered as I wandered.
(This mostly applies to Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders as well as everyone on the island which started it all. It may not apply to Indians, South Africans or other people in the Anglosphere by language and culture but not by economy. My rude and crude definition of 'the Anglosphere' is anyone who isn't European).
Of course ten years ago the question might have been: Why are Russians so dirty?
In ten years time: Why is the very idea of clean or dirty so culturally constructed? Which is a Stage 6 (per Kohlberg) understanding of the problem. I'm getting there ...
A period, especially for a young girl, is one of those visible invisible disabilities.
We try to help her through it.
Overall, it seems Europeans have a far healthier attitude to this sort of thing than Americans do. I know this is a gross overgeneralisation! (And do excuse the pun).
I must admit I cannot always change my menstrual wear at earliest convenience. Which is why I prefer to either wear white things where I can see the blood, or black things where it's invisible but feelable.
And I so rarely wear skirts and other things that it matters little how it looks. I rarely do get blood on what I do wear, but I did last period.
I need to have my periods 'visible' to believe in them, and I do not like the idea of stuffing up something in my vagina. Because of my memory deficits and other factors I do not like tampons. Never did.
If I were to bleed every day instead of five days in each month I would not feel nearly so dirty as when I do have my period. This 'dirtiness'/'cleanliness' fluctuates according to how I may be feeling on that particular day. Sometimes urine is just like blood and I miss it. And very often I drip my remaining drips on the toilet seat. This is not particularly disgusting; it is a fact - and sometimes a way - of life.
I change whenever I need to change, not some arbitary time. And very often I run out my supply in a month. What am I to do then, without spending money or energy which I may not necessarily have? I have not got an attendant carer to help me in that regard.
If you were a male in a service industry, I wonder if you would sometimes get turned on by authentic menstrual blood? Would your pheronemones get going at the smell and feel? Would you decide you loved that girl forever and ever, death without part? Perhaps you might.
And I tend to bleed the most in the evening. Very often I surprise myself in the morning, when I wake up, at how much blood I have been making.
Seeing as I am not (currently) sexually active (and most probably will not be until I formalise my committed relationship), I do not know how menstration will affect me. I do not always feel like doing energetic things because of the pain. And sexual intercourse is one of the most energetic human activities out.
I had my last period during the Easter break and until the 20th. Truly, I could not avoid going out during that period, so keeping me at home would not have been the best strategy.
And here I am advertising my pride in not being a particularly dirty-minded woman! I think, though, it's not so much purity as that I have rescinded/transcended many of the pettier social conventions. I love menstrual smells; they are of the earth. And you would not convince me with Eve's curse. I have deinstituionalised myself over the past five years. The less connected I continue to be with harmful and abusive institutions, even those to which I would otherwise feel a loyalty, the more tolerant and broad-minded I become. And that is the thing which really hurts my reputation; that and not speaking out.
I do believe the vestiges of the Cold War can be found in teenage panties. (And never mind that the girl was born AFTER said Cold War. I didn't realise the Cold War was over until 1995, and perhaps the Cold War will never really be over until - the European part of Russia at least - is accepted into organisations like NATO and the EU. Why no to Turkey, but yes to Russia, particularly when there's still all this antagonism? Well, the Soviets were on the Allied side in the Second World War, after all. Her birth parents were born IN the Cold War and therefore still hold these attitudes. I don't know how progressive politically the birth parents would be or otherwise ...)
I could never ever support such an assimilationist attitude. My strategy is and always has been to accomodate. Perhaps this makes me an anti-Piagetian, but what would Jean have known about adolescent women, not least his daughter Jacqueline? Is there anything about Jacqueline, in the books or on the Net, about her in her own right? She has fascinated me ever since James Britten, my hero in psycholinguistics, mentioned her and her innovations in language development. The woman must be 81 now if she is still alive.
Embarrassment and jealousy are essentially feelings of adolescence. One legacy from the Anglosphere way of thinking is that embarrassment is somehow unworthy of adults - or at least the adults I admire and look up to. Certainly this is not a normative expectation I have ever held. And embarrassment and jealousy are somewhat permissively applied - if you love someone enough, you're welcome to them - whereas if you don't necessarily have that relationship, then it is sort of unwarrented and unworthy.
"Nothing human is foreign to me," - Montaigne.
I love the way this pioneering French essayist wrote about things which before him we would have considered disgusting. He's the best in that regard. And he opened up the way for the fairer sex too.
And I would say, with Montaigne, nothing human is disgusting to me.
Except that which leads to the acceptance of the inhuman, but that is worthy of a more major human emotion than mere disgust.
Join me in appreciating this first great humanist who belongs so fully to the world.
Okay, it was Terence who said it first.
Here is a searchable copy of The Essays in English.
And finally something nice about postmodernism especially through the works of Kristeva.