My scrap of dirt

Okay. So for some reason instead of jotting down the beginning of some notes for my Buffy paper I've been read these excellent (because funny) summaries of Twilight, with actual quotes! (As seen on TV.)

Well. Twilight has just turned into more than an idiotic, backwards book series. I'm officially terrified. This is an excerpt from the book. For real. (For those of you who are lucky enough to not know, the books are narrated in the first person by the female protagonist, Bella.)

( Assault and all that good stuff. )


On a nicer note, ( I went to see Madagscar 2 tonight )

This reminds me, I can't remember if I said, but man, how much do I wish the people who made Wall-E had not felt the need to give Wall-E and Eve gendered voices. It would have been so awesome, had both their voices been neutral. They wouldn't be coded male, female, gay, straight. They would just be robots in love and we would have no words to talk about that story. I love the thought.

So, despite every single professional body in the field having concluded that abstinence-only education does not prevent unwanted, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, the United States of America is still proud to have morons like this gentleman:

Rep. John Duncan (R-Tennessee): "It seems rather elitist to me that people who maybe have degrees in this field would feel that, because they've studied it somehow know better than the parents."

(Jon Stewart's commentary, to lighten up the mood: "And I don't like these elitist airline pilots with their locked door and their ability to fly planes... I think I know how to fly my own children!")

I so don't have the brains to rant about this tonight, but it just makes me so mad that people would willingly ignore all scientific and social evidence and make decisions that we know are dangerous for their children's health and future. Especially dangerous to girls because they're the ones who suffer most from unwanted pregnancies and the ones who get the most shit for getting STDs because no one's ever told her or her boyfriend how to use a condom.

All of this because they can't fucking deal with the fact that sex can and should be about pleasure one's self and one's partner and that there is nothing wrong or dirty about that or the human body.

Just did a school debate that was very tiring, the kids (well, a few guys anyway) monopolized questions and it was all very chaotic. I'd never had to yell so much at a class so they woud calm down. It's not necessarily a bad thing, means what we're talking about interests them and makes them react, but it remains really tiring.

And as much as I try and often manage not to take what they say personally, after two hours like that, where some kids maintain that homosexuality is wrong/unnatural with a victorious grin on their face till the end, it's really hard to go down to the nurse who organized the debates and basically be told that you're a liar.

She accuses me of lying to her about our "aggrément ministériel" (ministerial approval), saying that I said we had it from the Education Nationale whereas it's not true. Which I fucking know because I'm the one supposed to write out the request for that approval. And I would never lie about something like this when I present the debates. What probably happened is that I said we were approved by the Ministère de la Jeunesse et des Sports, which is true, and she heard "agrément" and "Ministère" and got confused, and that's all right - but that she would say right out that I'm a liar? I feel so insulted, because I would never lie about something like that and it's something I feel strongly about, and it really shakes me that she'd say that of me.

She also expressed not very nicely that she was disappointed that our debates weren't more about sexism. I explained that we never pretended to intervene specifically about sexism, that we mention sexism when we present the interventions because homophobia is, in our opinion, deeply rooted in sexism and the two notions are linked. Whatever, she wanted to hear about sexism, boys calling girls "slut" and stuff. Yeah well that's not us and don't get annoyed because we didn't do that. It pisses me off all the more that, a couple of months ago, I already spent like two hours with her (well first trying to find her because she couldn't give me the right address) talking about our debates and stuff, and I'm certain I never implied they're as much about sexism as they're about homophobia because I've presented those debates so many times for the past 7 months and again, I wouldn't lie about that.

And she made remarks about the way we handle the post-debate questionnaires, which is not a problem in itself but once more it's the way she expressed it, like gee you're really not doing this well.


Urgh. Makes you feel so great about what you're trying to achieve. Thank Joss the teacher was actually nice.