Inside Voices

"Convicted in Absentia":

56,383 / 100,000 (56.4%)

That's over 3000 words today. I'm satisfied.

Of course today *was* supposed to be a day of backing off the writing in order to pack for our trip tomorrow. *facepalm* I'm so pathetically predictable sometimes.

I did want to mention a discussion I got into another LJ and some thoughts that other comments stirred up. The discussion was about the feminization of heroines -- specifically a lot of the heroines she listed were media heroines of the 90's and 00's. The question was, are the women disempowered at some point by the audience being reminded that they are women through the process of making them mothers? (I'm paraphrasing, probably badly, but I think I'm getting the point across).

Well anyway, after pointing out that the women cited (specifically Scully, Sydney Bristow, Aeryn Sun, Starbuck, and Xena) in most ways became *more* badass after having a child, I made the somewhat bold, obviously pre-caffeinated statement that "the ultimate expression of our humanity is our ability to choose the direction of our lives. The ultimate expression of our gender as women is the ability to bear children." I did qualify it by distinguishing between ability and the actual bearing of children.

But once the caffeine kicked in (and I read some of the other perspectives), it got me thinking. In making a statement like that, I'm coming from an admitted bias of experience. I have a child.

However -- I have several childfree-by-choice women on my friends list. I have several mothers. I have women who are going through hell in the hopes that they might someday conceive.

In making the statement I did, am I saying that they're "not real women"? I hope I'm not. Intellectually it's not what I intended at all. But in reducing the gender question to an issue of plumbing, am I being shortsighted?

I find myself curiously unable to step outside the bias of my own experience on this one. So I'm throwing it out to anyone who wants to chew over it. What defines us as women? Is this a question that's important to answer? Should it be the same for everyone?

Is woman a word that has to have a specific base definition or it loses meaning?

I also want to chew over the heroine question some more, but whoa-tired and whoa-behind on packing. Will try later -- should be fun after eight hours of driving!

Lots of deep, spiritual thoughts in my head, underlying what was actually a kick-ass evening. Art Walk went *great* -- you can definitely see that we've changed seasons, and I predict between now and Christmas we're going to be back to making seriously good money.

Also, the weather was good, and if the crowd wasn't necessarily in a buying mood, at least they were complimentary.

Coffee kicked butt. *Great* time. The rest of the ABC's have started showing up, which injects a much needed dose of energy into the proceedings. We even ended up getting into a somewhat deep and involved discussion regarding gender roles throughout the ages.

That, and Kodi got to experiment with cookie dough flavored syrup for the coffee. It's actually not bad at all.

And through it all this evening, I have a growing internal voice telling me "pay attention. something seriously important is happening". Yanno, I flat out hate it when the "alert system" is referring to *me*, and not someone I'm connected to. They couldn't tell me *specifically* what I'm supposed to be paying attention to either -- oh *no*.

So I was going to come home and scribble here until I had some form to the vague sense of anticipation.

Nope -- no such luck. First I'm met with minor validation of my decision to stick things out with my folks in the form of the Saturn trunk standing wide open when I pull into our driveway at 1:30 in the morning.

Then I flick on the television to channel surf a bit, and find that TV Land is showing a rerun of SHAZAM! *Yes* -- the old live action Saturday morning show!

I was so ticked that I only caught the last five minutes of it, but there is no prayer of being able to articulate deep spiritual thoughts after being hit with such a pile of kitsch.

And maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. After all, the last great lesson was in giving up control -- maybe what I'm supposed to be paying attention to is making sure I *do* that, that I experience life instead of trying to force it.

Or I could be completely full of shit. It has, after all, been a long-ass day.