Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Surf, Mirth And Neurotics

Every now and then, usually during an insomnia bout, I head to Wikipedia to learn something I didn’t know before.
I don’t have a specific subject or idea in mind. I just follow links.
It might be a word I’ve heard on TV or something I read in one of the papers.
Today I surfed into a page on Feminism. Did you know there are 16 subtypes of Feminism? 16! For fuck’s sake! BUT, get this, there is one called Cyborg Feminism! Now there was a link I had to follow.
These are the first few lines that greeted me:

“Cyborg Feminism is a sub-movement of feminism that uses the notion of a cyborg, a machine-organism hybrid, to explore feminism. It is often used as a metaphor for female identity and feminist thought or as a thought experiment (eg. To investigate what happens to gender in a dehumanizing body)”….

What the fuck!?
Maybe it is my lack of sleep, sporadic pain and Diazepam but I was seriously expecting to see a picture of Seven of Nine!
Would I be alone in expecting that?
When I did my degree I took the Gender and Sexuality option. It was that or the French Revolution, we all know about my ‘Franco-hatred’, so that was an easy choice.
I learnt about Ruskin’s pubic hair phobia, Aphra Behn, Camille Paglia and Monique Wittig. I could barely get my head around Postmodern Feminism.
Cyborg feminism? Not a fecking whisper.

From there I followed the link for Human Sexuality, ideal for a good chuckle. The pictures are ‘Arty’ and from ancient texts, The Karma Sutra or something Japanese. Where the ‘Golden Rule’ didn’t apply when it came to depicting male genitalia.
Average sized man, but a dick that looks like a baby’s arm holding an orange.
Mmm.. Drawn by a man methinks.
Female artists appear not to feel the need to whack enormous tits on their women subjects. Or labia like a Bassett Hound’s ears. Well, not that I have seen, but maybe I’m not going to the right galleries! (I must look in to that!)

Surfing on from there I found myself reading up on Personality Disorders.
It’s quite amazing how many different ways a person can be fucked up!
In fact, they are arranged into clusters.
I’ve had diagnoses of a myriad of disorders in my time, but I don’t think about it anymore.
No point trying to work out what or who made you like you are. You just 'Are'.
The main point is trying to understand how you impact on others and work at adjusting that.
I embrace my fucked up-ness, in fact I positively enjoy it! There's no other way.

3 comments:

Schneewittchen said...

No, I think it's like one of those e-mail tests you get that are based on us all thinking of a carrot when we hear the word vegetable, or hammer when we hear the word tool (although personally that word makes me think of Tom Cruise) Say Cyborg feminist and seven of nine is just there.

Sleepy said...

Thank you! I knew it wasn't just me!

Sassygril said...

Oooh, if you're into personality disorders, don't go into the usual sexual or psychopath ones...for a really creepy experience, I found looking at some borderline cases really fascinating. A lot of borderline personalities can keep their daily shit together, but the personal life is a right can of worms. I'll try and remember to dig out a case from my classes last year. There was one that was a right classic...