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| 06:16pm 20/11/2007 |
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A lot of people are for some reason shocked that I'm taking a women's studies class this term. They always ask "Why?" as if it's horribly unusual for a guy to care about women enough to give a shit about their rights and roles in society. The sad fact is, it IS horribly unusual.
It shouldn't be TOO surprising though that a guy raised by a single mother would see a problem with the state of how women are often treated in the western world. Without going into the complex social workings of ants, bees and spiders, there is no such thing as a matriarchal culture where you find women harassing, abusing, and raping men. Obviously, I don't blame every male in existence for these atrocities, but the sad fact remains that we are not a safe or fair civilization for women by any stretch of the imagination. The rough estimate is that one in four women experience completed or attempted rape in their college years. It's a scary fact to face, both for men and for women. We try to find ways to blame the victim's irresponsibility, because we're downright terrified to admit the possibility that this could ever touch our lives personally. Logically, we should know this is ridiculous; a rich man in a business suit walking late at night won't get mugged unless there's a mugger, and a naked woman passed out in a frat house won't get raped unless there's a rapist present. We KNOW that the responsibility is entirely in the hands of the perpetrator, but we'd rather believe the victim can be responsible to prevent it from happening. The truth is terrifying, that it's our sisters and daughters and friends and significant others that could face assault and lose no matter where they are and what they do.
What further blurs the issue is the vast gray area of consent, and mixed signals. But that's a non-sequitur for me at this point; I can't advocate for women about throwing blame cards and speaking up to men, but I CAN advocate for men about being responsible and respectful.
What some of you may or may not know is that I got into the study of criminal justice with women's rights being my primary motivation. I can only watch bad things happen to decent people so many times before I just can't take it anymore. Misogynist disrespect toward femininity has to be stopped, and I'll do whatever I can about it.
So for this class I am required to do a project called a "liberating act." Being one of two men in the class, and the only straight one, I was a little worried that it would be difficult to find something I could personally do on campus to "liberate" the feminist movement. Fortunately for me, the scope of the project simply involved liberation from gender norms and stereotypes.
Taking note of that, I decided to work on something very personal for me. You see, for as long as I can remember, I've had an insatiable alpha-male instinct. That is, to clarify, that I seek to be dominant in my "pack" of other males. On the playground of elementary school, I brawled my way to the top. As life progressed, my methods became more sophisticated. I'd use humor, wit, argumentation, or whatever else to take apart the people that challenged my stature (granted, some have been more aggressive than me in various ways). Other boys and men weren't really FRIENDS the way most people think of them, but rather COMRADES who supported me. And if I wasn't dominant, I kept very close to the person who was. My brother demonstrated to me very early on that submission was physically and emotionally painful; in some cases, potentially lethal.
So my act of liberation, as I've defined it, is to disregard the part of me that seeks to dominate men, and to see my fellow males as what they are: People, like me but unlike me. I listen to them now, really listen when they come to me with a problem, rather than simply offering them a solution and letting them get on with it. And what's more, I talk to them about my feelings in a constructive way. The more I put this into practice, the more I find that it enriches my friendships. In a movie I recently saw, someone said that the beauty of humanity is that we don't simply survive, but we discover, we create. This concept should apply to our social lives too.
When the subject of male activists against sexual assault came up in class today, I paid a little more attention than usual to the discussion. It was mentioned that 85% of polled male college students said they would intervene and stop a rape that they knew was occurring. That statistic was put on fliers and posted around campus, most likely to promote the thought process in young men's minds: Would I really? It seems much easier to say you would when a vast majority of your fellow men are in agreement. It's a paths of least resistance principle.
I wouldn't REALLY expect 85% of the men I know to intervene if they saw misogyny of any kind happening before their eyes. Why not? Because the almost universal fear for humanity is confrontation with another human being. In World War II, they found that maybe one in every nineteen American soldiers even fired their rifles at the enemy. In the American Civil War, they found dead soldiers with several musket balls loaded into their rifles, jammed right on top of each other. The poor bastards were too scared to shoot, but they just kept loading because that's what they trained to do. To confront, to fight, to kill a person is just about the most terrifying thing a human being can face, but military science in the last century has revealed how this effect can be reduced. Squad-operated weapons, such as cannons and heavy machine guns are effective not for the amount of damage per-second they can cause, but because the man at the trigger ACTUALLY FIRES. The way he sees it, he's just pointing the gun, and the guy who's loading it is just as responsible for the killing as he is. They're in it together. As a team, they overcome this ultimate fear.
An even more powerful factor in combating the fear of combat is the concept of leadership, and it's here that I found the true meat of what was going through my head in class discussion today. A team effort will work both ways, and if one man freaks out, it's all the more likely that his partner will too. Put an officer behind them though, have him order them, DEMAND that they keep firing, I'll bet you dollars to donuts they'll hold together. It takes the courage of a charismatic, authoritative, dominant superior to ultimately tip the balance in a squad of stressed individuals to help them overcome their fear. If it works for killing enemy soldiers, it can work for confronting misogyny.
"But, wait, Owen. Aren't you trying to REJECT the part of you that seeks to be dominant?" You're right, but there is an enormous difference here. I'm suddenly aware of a truth that I seem to have been overlooking until now: the difference between being a leader and being an alpha male. You see, the alpha takes power as a matter of survival. A leader comes to power when his actions inspire those around him. In particular, a GOOD leader steps up to become an example of courage on behalf of what he knows is right (not simply what he's been told is right, but what he's reasoned and come to understand on his own terms). That's what I have to will become. What kind of man would I be if I settled for anything less?
I'd like to hear anyone else's thoughts on the subject, if they have any. |
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| 08:25pm 18/07/2007 |
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On the bus back to Eugene yesterday, I watched a pick-up artist in action. The guy was a regular (name deleted). First, he hit on the girl sitting in front of me relentlessly. She got off the bus before it got dark though. So his next mark was the fat girl sitting across the aisle from me, who moved up to the previous girl's seat to have a closer conversation with him. Within a half hour, they were making out. Honestly, of all places.
I have to say, that if that kind of superficial charm is what passes for charisma these days, I have to say that I'm glad not to have much of it.
I was reading On Combat, and thinking about the things I read in it. Two stories were told that really reached out to me. One told of a rookie cop who, during the briefing for his first day on the force met the role model that everyone else in the department looked up to. The guy was 6'3", 230 lbs. of pure muscle, one of the most seasoned, tough, and intelligent cops around. Everyone felt honored to be around when he told his stories of situations he'd been in. Whenever a rookie would ask him if he had any tips for them, he'd respond with, "So you want to be a hero? Do what you do, but you're never a real cop until you know what they taste like." All of the rookies had bets on "what they taste like" was referring to. About a year went by before one of them walked up to him and mentioned his record of hundreds of arrests, plenty of fights, and said that he'd proven himself out on the streets well enough that he thought he deserved to know what the saying meant. The older cop responded that if he didn't know, he still wasn't a real cop.
So the next day, the rookie was out on his shift, and with fifteen minutes left before he had to go home, he thought he saw his daughter standing on a porch. He backed up to check again, and it definitely wasn't his daughter. But he still felt it was strange that a young girl (about seven) would be standing on a porch alone at 11:45 pm. He walked up to talk to her, and asked her what she was doing out there. On his approach, the little girl looked at him like he was her knight in shining armor. She said that her parents had gotten in a fight, and now her mother wouldn't wake up. The rookie moved around the house and approached a window to see a man standing over an unconscious woman, blood all over his hands. He kicked in the door, and pushed past the man to try and resuscitate the woman, but it was too late. She was dead. The man said he didn't know what happened, they were just fighting over his drinking, and he pushed her and she hit her head. The officer called for EMS and back-up, and on his way out, he had the father in handcuffs. He now knew that he had gone from being the little girl's hero to a monster, who had now appeared to take both of her parents away from her. He tried to approach her to say something, he didn't know what, and she turned away and ran back into the house.
Later, the rookie sat in the locker room, running over the whole situation, wishing he would have been there sooner, wishing there were something he could have done differently, and he began to weep for the little girl. A big hand settled on his shoulder, and he heard the veteran's voice say "Now you know what they taste like." The rookie realized that the veteran's saying referred to tears. "Sometimes, you can do everything right and the outcome doesn't change. You may not be the hero you thought you'd be, but now you're a real cop."
It was a story told to illustrate the difference between the sheepdog and the wolf. They are both blessed with the gift of aggression, but the sheepdog loves his flock and weeps for their every moment of pain.
The other story wasn't quite so dark, nor so long. A police officer was out with his wife shopping at a grocery store. He knew that if anything should happen while she was with him, she would react by grabbing his arm, so he always made sure she was on his left so that his right arm would be free to draw his gun. Wherever they went, he was ALWAYS on the right. This day as they were shopping, a young man came around a corner and drew a gun on them. The young man was someone the officer had put in prison, and wasn't happy about it. Everything happened so fast, not a moment's hesitation to even have to THINK about what they were going to do. The wife grabbed the officer's left arm, and he pulled her behind him while drawing his weapon, and he dropped the assailant before they could get hurt.
This senior officer bought himself and his wife twenty more years to live that day, by being prepared. If he'd drawn one second slower, their grandchildren would have never known them. But he knew that being a police officer was to train and prepare, and to always be alert, always be aware for that one day when something would go terribly wrong, and he would have to take a kill shot. He didn't stop to think about having to kill another human being, and he suffered no adverse psychological effects afterwards, since he had made the decision in advance. He didn't deny that when it came down to it, he could only rely on himself to save his wife's life, and his own, and since he never had any delusions that it could never happen, since he knew his profession meant gambling with his very life, he wasn't inhibited by fear in any way. As I said, there is no safety in denial. The worst will probably not happen, but it can, and I know there's no way I could live with myself if it happened and I neglected to be prepared for it.
I'm not sure why I'm telling you all this, you're probably getting more skeptical about me by the minute. Maybe because I want you to understand some things about me better. It's not that I don't know how to take care of myself. I'm not planning to die, and when my time comes, heaven knows I won't go down easily. But I am prepared for the very real possibility that I may die a young death; there is no safety in denial. And maybe one little thing I do makes someone happy just for a moment, or gives them hope when they need it most, or buys them twenty more years of their life. Is that not a cause worth living for? It may sound like some adolescent fantasy, but I guarantee you, it's not. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's maintaining a sense of logical reality. There is nothing morally superior about what I am, or what I choose to be. I simply could not be anything else.
--excerpt from letters to Aubrey, 7/18/2007 |
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| He lives? |
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| 09:55pm 25/06/2007 |
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Well then. I think I'm going to start using this again, just for the hell of it. It's summer, what better things do I have to do?
An update on the life of Owen, since you've all been missing for awhile:
I'm still going to SOU and doing just dandily there (especially now that I've passed CORE and don't have to sit through another term of it). The more I've studied the legal systems, the more I've decided that I would rather go into the public sector than just be a private investigator. For one thing, the benefits are better, as is the pay. But it's not just a materialist thing. I have a lot of principles invested in the work that the police do, and a lot of my physiology and psychology seems hard-wired to do just that work. So now I'm looking into becoming a police detective. Probably. If that doesn't pan out, I may try to get a position with a K-9 unit.
In the more personal aspects of my life, I met a girl named Aubrey in the early fall, and we developed a very strong, healthy relationship together. I never realized just how close two people can be, but nearly every aspect of our lives was intertwined together to create something more intimate than any relationship I've ever been in before. All of the others, the most often we'd see each other was maybe a couple times per week. Whether it was a lack of personal compatibility or anything else, those previous relationships all had such an enormous distance in the middle, steadily driving them apart. I'm glad that I made sure to spend plenty of time being single in the middle there before I got back into dating again, because living a very neglected life for eighteen years made me entirely too eager to latch onto people, and I needed to stop and figure out exactly what I wanted.
But I did what I always do, I was stupid. About halfway through the relationship, I turned 21, and what previously classified as a drinking problem for me became a drinking dependency. People who know me well enough know that ever since I was nineteen years old, if alcohol was available, I was drinking it. For better or for worse, I wouldn't stop until the booze ran out or until my brain started to shut down. I had black-outs. More severe as time went on. Early in our relationship, drinking caused me to do something that greatly hurt Aubrey's feelings, and we determined that I should try to be more careful when I drank.
But a couple months of drinking responsibly went by, and I started to get careless again. One night, she found the switch to hit when I was entirely over the edge that'd demonstrate how truly manic depressive I can be. She found out more about my psychological disorders, and became even more afraid of me. I decided that I would make sure from that point on to be careful about not drinking too much. And once again, it was only a matter of time before I would lose focus and become irresponsible again.
I love to drink. I very truly LOVE it. I love the taste of a good bourbon, a beer that's brewed with the right kind of love, even some wines can really hit the spot and complement a good meal. I love many, many cocktails. When I reach a healthy buzz, I come to a very happy place. You see, I hate other people. I have my reasons. I loathe all of them, as well as myself. When I reach that good buzz though, the feeling reverses. Every person I meet, I feel like they're my best friend in the world. If I already DID like someone a bit before, they were even better than best friends. In a world that, from my perspective is very hostile, alcohol was one thing that permitted me to simply live. To laugh and grin and be content in the company of others.
But for me, a drink is like a potato chip: I can't just have one. I'll feel my brain starting to shut down, and I'll still ask the barmaid for a double-shot of jaeger with a pint of beer to chase. I will absolutely gorge myself on it, as much as I can, until it kills me. I am a glutton for alcohol. And I'm sad to say that it had to go to the point where I lost the best relationship of my life, where I'd down eighteen glasses of wine before class and be drunk by noon, before I realized what all of these things made me.
"My name is Owen, and I'm an alcoholic." It felt really weird to say that the first time. I'm starting to get more comfortable at the meetings, though. I need to quit drinking, and this time, it has to be for real. I have to go beyond whatever I tried before, because none of those other things worked. I love drinking, but I love Aubrey a hell of a lot more. I hate having black-outs, I hate not being able to remember what I did the night before, if I did something that would hurt her. Or something that would hurt myself, or anybody else. I'm going to attend AA over the summer, and if all goes the way it ought to, I should be able to make right of my situation with Aubrey. There are couples with worse problems and incompatibilities than anything we have, and I know that this is something worth salvaging.
This does not, however, mean that other people have to be weird about drinking around me. Quite the opposite. I love you guys, and I know that's what you love to do. I'll be right there, laughing with you, helping you with whatever it is you've temporarily lost the coordination for (as long as it doesn't involve holding your dick while you pee). One of the first things I plan to do when I get back is get my driver's license, so I can be the DD for you clowns when you go out to bars or just get tanked at a friend's place. Don't worry about me getting uncomfortable or wanting to leave just because you guys are having more fun than I am; I'm not drinking anymore, but I'm not an asshole either.
In other news, I've discovered one thing that's very wrong with my writing. It may seem obvious, or stupid, or whatever, but I was reading Tucker Max, and it suddenly clicked as to why I had so much trouble with writer's block. See, Tucker can write fantastically about his own ridiculous experiences. But when he tried writing fiction, he failed. Why? Because it's easier to write something that actually happened to you. For whatever reason, I've been experiencing the story the way my character sees it, and describing that. What I should have been doing was RECALLING these events as memories from the character's mind. Those don't even require me to translate it to words, the character does that themselves. It's so fucking simple, but it means the big difference between the pure, genuine writing that pours out of Tucker, and the stiff crap that I can barely even wring out.
Anyway, I'm sure there's more to be said, but this entry is long enough. I'm writing letters to Aubrey daily, so if anything said seems to be pertinent enough to go here, I'll probably copy/paste it over. But, it feels good to be putting my thoughts down again, as random and silly as they may be. |
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| poop |
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| 09:42pm 25/06/2007 |
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poop |
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| 11:48pm 24/09/2006 |
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"Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck. When that happened he knew that he too would be branded with the deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost: the acceptance of fallibility."
Ian Fleming is the fucking man. |
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| 10:44am 13/09/2006 |
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Last week, I started the practice of running/bike riding/anything to keep my heart rate up for half an hour, every morning. This is immediately followed by a typical routine of crunches, push-ups, and pull-ups. I'm not entirely sure why I started doing this. Sometimes it just feels good to completely burn yourself out on physical activity when you're stressed. When you get so mad over something so stupid that it's all you can think about, and you just want to throw a fist into everybody you see. You'll start with the utmost intensity, and push yourself until your legs won't carry you anymore, until you can't get yourself over the bar, until your chest gives out and you could almost swear you're going into cardiac arrest. And you take a second or two to breathe, then do it again.
I expected to be exhausted when I got to work after I began doing this. I wasn't. Instead, I had even more energy than usual for the day, and I slept better at night. I guess my new stress release has all kinds of benefits. I used to smoke to cool myself down, but lately, it's stopped working. So I really have no reason to do it anymore, but I still do when I drink. For now.
But this is only temporary. I know I've said it before, and I know I've tossed the idea to the garbage several times, but when I turn 22, I realy am going to give up drinking and smoking for good. I'm not a good guy when I drink. I have fun, sometimes, sure. But for the most part, it's just an unnecessary crutch, and a highly unhealthy one to boot. I'm only staying on the stuff for another year because it occurred to me how ridiculous it is to give up drinking before you're even allowed to legally. So, here it is, the final countdown; it'll all be straightedge from there on out. If my lungs or my heart kill me, it won't be the cancer, or some drug I don't need constricting my arteries so hard I get a stroke. It'll be because I pushed myself harder than I ever could have when I was on that stuff. |
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| 03:20pm 08/09/2006 |
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Alright, so it's been awhile since my last update.
I still don't have anything useful to say.
Neither do you.
FIN |
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| 10:37am 09/07/2006 |
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I've come to the conclusion that I like Wicked. It's a fun little show. Intensely overrated, and far from being anything genius, and I won't pay buttloads of money to watch it in Portland, but it's a fun little show. Even if most of the music is the same basic template with a slightly different melody over it, and almost ALL of the lyrics are plain and uninspiring.
Urinetown beats the shit out of Wicked any day. |
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| I have had a revelation |
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| 03:24am 18/06/2006 |
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I, Owen Douglas Keali'inuimahi Lee, am not an asshole. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If you fail to see this, pull your head outta your ass and try to recall the last time I ever truly did anything malicious to anybody. |
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| Back in Black |
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| 04:02pm 14/06/2006 |
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So, guess who's done with finals and back in the Eugs? Not a lot's changed here since I left. For some reason though, Junes seem to always be a time when I receive a phone call from a long lost friend who arbitrarily decides to contact me at the exact moment I return from being away for awhile. This time, it was my first girlfriend, Ari. Which is really weird, and kind of awkward. Bear in mind that in four months of a relationship, we said about two words to each other. What's more, we haven't so much as breathed one another's name in two years. Something's not right about this. I don't trust it.
I smell a duck. |
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| 09:47pm 06/06/2006 |
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( BTW ) |
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| Oh, I see how it is. |
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| 11:34am 31/05/2006 |
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Any of my normal entries, people barely glance. I post a dumb meme that verbally handjobs you, suddenly everybody shows up to comment. Fatties. |
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| I roll 20's |
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| 04:10am 29/05/2006 |
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Leave your name and:
1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours |
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| 04:27am 30/04/2006 |
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If I cut a rectangle in half, could I make a square? |
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| 04:27am 30/04/2006 |
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Emily: I can write one-liners too. |
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| 10:24pm 22/04/2006 |
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General Patton once said that men go to war with each other because every man is at war with himself. And it's true. We're all made up of a hundred different conflicting sides, different perspectives we have of things, and they are constantly battling over which one is right. One side may believe that vengeance is justice, while another believes that everyone, regardless of their sins, deserves a fair shot at life. One side may feel that God has forsaken them, while the other simply finds that it's all a part of his master plan, or his unwillingness to interfere with free will. What your moral and philosophical stance is at any given point in time is entirely dependent on which side is winning the war within your mind and heart. And, like real wars, no one stays on top forever. The advantage in these grand battles depends heavily on resources and reinforcement from the environment around you. At some point, I can't help but worry: By surrounding myself with this pretentious irresponsible college kid atmosphere, have I or will I become a pretentious irresponsible college kid myself?
On an unrelated note, I awoke early thursday morning to the gentle sounds of some kid phoning in to a radio talk show. I don't know Ashland stations, so I haven't bothered re-tuning my alarm since I got here. See, I was about to face my first exam of College life. Unlike what I had expected, the exam was online. This was a plus. What was a minus, was that I have not bought any textbooks yet this term, and thus didn't have anything to study. I came to this realization at around 11pm the night before, and my choices were obvious: Either I fail miserably and ultimately become to the PI world what Kenan Thompson is to the acting world, or I facebook someone who has the same class, snag their AIM name, and get the information I need out of them. After about an hour or so of going over the dilemma of whether or not this would be crossing the thin line between innovative and creepy psychotic, I finally buckled and did what I had to. It paid off.
So, this brings us back to 8:30 am. I spent the next three and a half hours drifting between reading crucial chapters and nodding back into a dream that involved a bondage experience with Carrie Williamson and a roll of shrink-wrap (Tangent: This adds yet another chapter to nonsensical dreams about girls whom I've never been attracted to in that way before). When noontime hit, and the test was posted, I went to work. I got a 72 out of 100.
However, my level of being pleased with myself quickly dissipated when I looked to my clock and discovered that I had half an hour to shower and get my ass to US History. What did I do? I figured fuck it. Ella's in the class, she can update me on what I missed. This was a time to reward myself for a job well done. And, I almost wish that I hadn't skipped that class, because the end result was me being very, very bored. I sat in my boxers for some time, bored of tv, of videogames, of the internets, and in a moment of scratching my armpits, my eyes fell across my Gilette Fusion, and I got an amusing idea.
Yes, boys and girls, after much effort, my armpits are now hairless. I have to say that I kind of like it. The deoderant goes on much smoother now, though it certainly didn't do anything to sate the sting of razorburn.
Kids, next time your teachers try to tell you that college is HARD, and that you need to study harder than you do in highschool for it, don't buy into their shit. It's really quite boring.
On that note, I'm off to fap at a close-up of John Travolta's chin, using anti-bacterial hand sanitizer as lube. |
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| 11:45am 03/04/2006 |
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Smells like vagina in here! |
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flyingharmonica's journal
