A Random Drawing

Was feeling bored and wanted to do something with my hands. Been sewing purses for the last couple weeks for my sis’ stall at a cosplay convention so was already tired of sewing (I still have my graduation dress to sew!).

So I took out my sketch book and thought, hey, why don’t you try eyes? Eventhough you have never really drawn humans before? And somehow I thought it a good idea and hence the result above.

Of course it is not my talent that results in the passable eye above, but the many drawing tutorials aimed towards eyes. Thank you to those selfless teachers who teaches without asking for anything in return

Goodnight everyone, I am getting ready for bed.

Shared from WordPress

What you learn doing abortions after 20 weeks – http://wp.me/p13KVf-2wd

A good post on abortions, a look into the procedure aside from the coined terms ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’.

Sometimes……

Sometimes, I just want to sit quietly alone. Not in my room; it is cramped and small. Instead I went out alone.

A meal alone, a movie alone; time to settle down alone. A fast-paced internship left me exhausted; the new attachment have me having to socialize again. I need some alone time urgently.

People like to go out with friends, so do I. But today, it is for me. Quietness to think and let the experiences over the past few months settle slowly. Quietness to think about the uncertain future.

My room is no good place to think; too cramped, too familiar, too enclosed with memories. Leaving it behind I can suddenly breathe easier.

Not that I don’t love my home and my family; I do. But sometimes I just need to get away, away from expectations, from decisions, from everything.

I am tired, and this is what I need to recharge.

Rambles’ Ramblings (5)

Inconsistent. I have been really inconsistent. No excuse for it, really. I mean, exams’ been over for how long? More than half a month already. And yet nothing to show. Perhaps I should have sat my ass down and start writing.

I do think that way. Sometimes. That’s right. But then the malady called ‘laziness’ overtook me and I will think that ‘Well, you started this blog to rant and talk about stuff you like. It is supposed to RELAXATION. If you start to make it into a duty wouldn’t that defeats the purpose?’

Whenever I thought of my original aim when starting this blog I will (almost) immediately stop even thinking about Rambles’ Ramblings. I am really quite irresponsible when I come to think of it. Except for when I first start the blog, I have rarely post regularly. Mostly I just blog when I feel the need or the urge.

At the same time, I always envy people who have thousands of followers and hundreds of comments on each post. So sometimes I find myself reading how to get your blog going. And you know what the first thing they tell you to do? Blog regularly!

Ah well then, I will probably never become an online sensation with my witty (not really) words and creative (you sure?) products. I am too lazy for regular posting and I am not changing that.

What did I want when I start writing this post? Ah! Yes. I was looking through my earlier posts just now and I saw another Rambles’ Ramblings post. Reading through it I realize that although I am genuine and honest about my fickleness, I have not been entirely truthful about not getting followers. Followers, in truth, feed my pride. Every time a notification pinged telling me I got a new follower I got so much more excited.

But then I rarely get followers on this blog. Rather, my Pinterest board has been pretty noisy this few days.

Anyway, to finish things up, a little about my recent life. I am currently halfway through an internship at an old and established law firm. I am seriously thinking of doing my pupillage there as the atmosphere and environment are pretty good, kinda family-esque if you know what I mean. Although the pay is a bit below average, I think the people there more than made up for that.

Let me tell you about my first impression of the firm. On my first day there I went to report at the receptionist’s up at 20th floor (I am sitting at the 19th floor so that it make sense). I was told to have a seat and wait since I am about 10 minutes early (work starts at 8.30am and I want to avoid the traffic). I saw people coming in to work and most of them look pretty happy to be there even at the crazy early hour. None of them look cold or distance, they were all cheerful, and when I happen to catch their eye, they would smile (rather confusedly) at me.

This is a pretty big difference from the last big firm I went to. The other firm was comparable in size, but not in atmosphere and feeling of the crowd. The people over in the other firm feel very tense and pressured and that if you talk to them you are dragging them away from something infinitely more important than you are (although it is true). Suffice to say I did not feel welcomed at all in that firm. For all they pay really good salaries, I am not going to even apply over there.

Coming back to this firm I am currently in now, the people in the firm seems genuinely happy to see interns and any new faces. In fact, when I profess an interest in intellectual property, two of the legal associates took precious time out to teach me the practicalities of IP practice such as the procedure of filing trademarks and drafting a letter of demand aka a cease-and-desist letter. Everything used to teach me were real cases they were handling but already processed. They just revived an old case already done to help me understand the in and outs of IP practice and I am only there for a month!

I am not too bothered that I haven’t met the partner I am assigned to. Apparently he is very busy and even his pupils rarely see him. As long as I can be taught by his legal associates, then it is good enough for me.

That’s all for today I guess. I will see if I have anything else to say in a few days time.

Feminism menism

So, today I was studying feminism when one of my friends (a boy) tapped me and shoved his phone at me. I took it knowing that he wants to show me something every time he do this. A look at it makes me want to throw the phone out of the window – he has the phone opened to a Facebook page on Anti-Feminism knowing full well I am doing feminism and I am a feminist (at least I feel I am).

Now, before anything else, let me say that my friend is generally quite a nice guy. He respects women and girls and would never (I hope!) suggests that women should stay close to hearth and home and that ‘politics, like prize-fighting, are the work of men.’ After all, he admires Margaret Thatcher. But he is also very anti feminism as a legal theory. When I ask for the reason, he says that women have quite enough rights and that men are being cornered at every turn, proof in the Facebook post he showed me:

1. Woman asked for split bill, independent; man asked for split bill, cheap
2. Woman groped, sexual harassment; man groped, indifference
3. Woman hit man, bravery; man hit woman, domestic violence

I told him off for that actually, lectured him a bit on feminism. How can you criticize and ridicule a theory you have not studied before? To describe Feminism in 4 four words: fight for gender equality. To achieve gender equality, feminists are trying to break the stereotypical gender roles and society’s perception of what the roles of the genders should be. The situations he showed me that I listed above? All because of something called gender roles. And what are gender roles? They are roles forced onto men and women due to social norms and social attitudes. This is not only unfair to women, but also unfair to men. Therefore, by the feminists trying to break the restrictions of the gender roles, it also advantages the men as it would have avoided the above scenarios.

Which then leads to the question: are feminism only for women? If not, then why called it by such a misleading name? If not, what are feminism for? This requires a little bit of history as the first organized group of feminists, the liberal feminists, were actually fighting for the rights of the women through the law. Hence, at that point of time, it is indeed for women.

But as time passes, formal equality has gradually been achieved for women. The feminists then asked themselves, now what? Although formal equality has been achieved through legislation, social attitudes are huge obstacles to their implementation. Part of the reason for these issues lies in the trouble with gender roles. From time immemorial women have by and large confined to hearth and home. They were regarded as subservient to men, a part of their property, and had little to no rights, ie they were assigned to a role. To suddenly be told that women are equal to men in every respect except for reproduction of life is a shock to the average man. The average man either did not believe women are capable of being equal to men (DUMB), or felt their position as the dominant family head threatened (WIMPS).

Gender roles not only act as restraints upon the women, but also on the men:

1. Boys are not supposed to cry, even if you are very sad; girls showing their emotions are a ‘wreck’ and ‘too emotional’
2. Boys have to play with cars and guns, too violent; girls have to play with dolls, too girly
3. Boys have to work with science even if you prefer the art of sewing; girls have to learn to sew even if you prefer to experiment with chemicals
4. Men are sexual creatures, they want to sleep with everyone; women are not, they should remain chaste and pure until marriage
5. Gentlemen should pay for the meal even though he might earn less; women should not have to even if she wants to
6. Men cannot be the victims of domestic violence even if he is; women can be and are easily believed even when they are not
7. Men cannot be sexually assaulted, they are but rarely admitted by society and victims alike; women can be, but social stigma silenced them

From the short list above you can definitely see that gender roles are NOT, I repeat, NOT helping anyone. If anything, it just cause everyone (or at least anyone who doesn’t fit into the gender roles) to suffer much like a square peg in a round hole – unsuitable and uncomfortable. Any actions to break gender roles therefore should be, to my mind, be encouraged and supported. Any decisions to the contrary is mind-boggling and nonsensical.

This reminds me of the made up word ‘menism‘. Apparently, this is in response to feminism and is supposed to fight for men’s rights. What, pray tell, are your aims? In what way has the law been oppressive to men? Men’s pay is still 25% higher than a woman, majority of those in the business arena, the politics arena, the legal system, the public sphere are still men. Men are not pressured to ‘settle down’, have children and slow down their careers to have a complete life.

You say it is about the domestic violence? That women hitting men is a sign that feminism had overreached? Funniest joke I ever heard. If you read until here, you would have notice that above I talked about gender roles. These gender roles presumed the women to be the weaker sex and is therefore less capable.

But what most people didn’t realize is that this capability can be for the good, but also for the bad. There are more than enough literature on the capabilities of women in areas such as politics and law. But female criminals, now that is something often overlooked.

The gender role of women being the weaker sex and less capable not only excludes women from the so-called ‘public sphere’ of business, politics, law and etc, but also causes a perception that women are less capable of violence. This is certainly not the truth.

Women may not slit your throat or kill you in a fistfight, but women may murder you with slow-acting poisons. Women may not react violently and immediately to a provocation, but may find a chance to take revenge later. Women may not physically abuse their partners, but psychological abuse may be easily done.

Therefore, breaking the gender roles is also, from another point of view, a way of acknowledging that women are as capable of committing crimes as men. Only when gender roles are broken will the above situations I listed for examples of gender roles ceased to exist.

Society will no longer expect much more out of the men, nor extra effort on the part of the women. Emotions will be seen as normal and so are sex. When social expectations disappear, feminism would have done their job. And if feminism breaks the gender roles, then female criminals will no longer be overlooked as generally non-threatening.

What then, is left for ‘menism‘? What rights that women have that men don’t have? Being that men had been dominant in the legal, political and social arena for so long, it is inconceivable that women have some rights that men don’t have. It would therefore appear that there is NOTHING left for ‘menism’ to do. Therefore, the conclusion would be that ‘menism‘ is something totally unnecessary and merely adds to the conclusion.

Feminism is actually a misnomer; the name implies that it is only concerned with advantaging women and to hell with men. This is so far from the truth that entire galaxies can fit within the gap. Feminism is all about gender equality, not only from the legal perspective, but also from the political and sociological view. It relieves the men of the burden of having to be a ‘man’ in the traditional meaning, and helps the women to release themselves from the confines of the traditional meaning of ‘woman’. It will help to ease the lives of those who do not fit into the traditional images of ‘man’ and ‘woman’.

Motherhood and Marriage

“I want children but no husband.” I said that to my peers, a group of interns during lunch one day. 3 boys and 3 girls, including me. They stared. It is something shocking to them. We have been taught that children are responsibility and we should enjoy our life with our other half before getting bogged down by child-rearing

To tell you the truth, the idea of having SEX is scary to me; the idea of having a penis penetrating my vagina, of someone knowing the inner part of my body better than me is frankly speaking, an unthinkable horror. So even if I am to have children, very unlikely will they be born from my womb. The route I am looking at is adoption.

Heard of that before? Adoption? A process where you take a child that has been abandoned by his/her family and make yourself his/her family? Yes? Then tell me why, as an unmarried woman am I not allowed to adopt.

I have been told that the adoption of success rate for unmarried women and men are very very low. Why? Apparently we cannot give the children a ‘complete’ family life, whatever the heck means. I mean, I have a so-called ‘complete’ family. My mother would not divorce my father when my sister and I were younger because she wants us to have a ‘complete’ family.

But seriously and truthfully? I don’t respect my father as my father, I am not close to him; he has never taken up any of the responsibilities of a parent. When I was having an important exam, he came in drunk and step on my calf at 2 am. Is this the ‘complete’ family life they are talking about?

My mother scraped and scrimped to afford to buy a house (we rented a house for 17 years previously) while he spent all his pay with his friends and went to comfort his (female) colleague because she has depression. My mother had depression when I was eleven and she dealt with it herself because my father didn’t think of it as anything.

If we dispel the myth that only married couples can give a good life to children (personally I think we, that is my sister and I, would be happier if my mother had divorced my father), then why unmarried people are unsuitable to adopt children? Because we have to work? What about couples that both work? Why wouldn’t the arrangement that works for them work for us? Because the children would not have a ‘mother figure’/’father figure’? What father figure I have? A man who is irresponsible towards his family and his money, who has nothing left when he is forced to retire because of a stroke brought upon himself by living unhealthily? That father figure? Really?

I do not want a husband. I have an inherent mistrust of men in my life. I am not a misandrist. I do like guys and actually have a lot of guy friends. I trust them, but not in my life. I do not want to carry a burden called marriage. I do not want to concede to their power, their names. I do not want my children to take their name; I want to take my mother’s name but it is JUST NOT DONE. I want to be a single mother who adopts; I am afraid of the pain of labour. I want to have children who are not mine genetically; I do not mind. But I am not allowed the chance.

Back to the interns. This brings me to the second point that I want to make today: the idea that humans are only complete with a partner. The interns were incredulous NOT because I want children, but because I want children without a man in my life. Most of my friends gave me the same reaction when I told them I want children but no husband. The equation we have been taught seems to go like this:

Married = Children

Unmarried = No Children

But what happen is you are unmarried but you want children? One of my friends suggested an unprotected one night stand. May be a good idea if I am not afraid of the idea of sex. But since I am, well, it seems society has not yet thought of that.

Perhaps one day soon society will realized that people who remains unmarried has the right to family life and the right to adopt children as long as they care for the children. Perhaps by the time I am 35 I can adopt a child. Perhaps…..

Who I fuck, how I fuck and whether I fuck is NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS

My life, my pussy, my choice, my right; and by the way, none of your fucking business.

– Staceyann Chin (via audentes-fortuna-juvat)

Housework is not work. Sex work is not work. Emotional work is not work. Why? Because they don’t take effort? No, because women are supposed to provide them uncompensated, out of the goodness of our hearts.

– Jess Zimmerman, “Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor, TheToast.com, July 13, 2015