bktheirregular

I was thinking, a while back, about a nasty rhetorical trick some dishonest people use to demonize others: pick a label that has multiple definitions, sweep their "enemy" under one definition of that label, and then attribute to them a set of highly undesirable characteristics associated with that label - but under a different definition of the label, one which would not have included the target.

One label that's been abused in that way is "liberal"; another is "conservative". I've been called both; in fact, my parents still believe that I'm both conservative and liberal at the same time. How's that possible? Simple: the definitions they use aren't the ones used on talk radio.

That brought me to the navel-gazing question: am I a feminist?

My initial gut response was that I'm not, for the simple reason that I didn't feel I met the qualifications. From discussions all over the political spectrum, I'd developed a (likely flawed) sense that "feminism" had a component of activism to it, one that disqualified me from claiming the label - even though I believe that women should have equal opportunities to men in society, and be equal to men before any civilized law, I hadn't put myself on the line for that belief. Ergo, as I understood it, I couldn't call myself a feminist.

Then I started reading a little deeper. I saw a simpler, broader definition of feminism, which was simply that if one believed the genders should be treated equally in society and before the law, then one was a feminist, pure and simple.

Simple enough, right? But then again, movements change, and definitions change, especially over forty-plus years. And I hadn't dug into the topic when I was younger.

I've done a bit of digging now. And the closest I can find to a generally accepted definition seems to be the one from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Feminism: 1. The qualities of females (1851). 2. [After French feminisme] Advocacy of the rights of women (based on the theory of equality of the sexes) (1895). (Cf. Womanism).

Advocacy. That seems to be the key that my mind's been stumbling on: making an effort to advance the cause.

It might make a good New Year's resolution, in fact: become an advocate, in some small way.

So here goes:

===

I believe that women should have the same opportunities in society that men have, and the same rights under the law that men have.

We're not there yet. Not in America, not in Europe, not in a long list of other places I could name.

===

Somehow it doesn't feel like enough. It feels ... presumptuous, to claim a label based on simply stating a sensible belief.

Then again, I've generally been content to do my own thing, without worrying much about trying to fit into a label. This is who I am, this is what I do, this is what I believe, and if it's not a neat, clean fit into a label or set of labels, so be it.

...I had a point when I started this, I swear. Whether it was presumptuous of me to claim to be a feminist, whether it was counterproductive of me to ... well, not deny that I was a feminist, but to say that it wasn't up to me to make that call.

This is who I am, this is what I do, this is what I believe. What does that make me?

Random stuff, I suppose.

Spring's coming, but the climate-control systems in the office all too often seem to be set on "heat". I brought a little clock/thermometer from home which consistently reads 27 degrees C - that's eighty degrees Fahrenheit - in mid-afternoon. And the switch for getting cool air instead of hot from the climate-control system seems to be centrally located, so at this point I think I may need to beg for A/C in the early afternoon.

The interim solution was to throw open the windows in the office adjoining mine, which revealed that there was a protest going on down on street level. We're on the sixth floor - which would equate to the eighth floor in a Stateside building, because (a) the lobby counts as floor zero, not one; and (b) there's another floor, officially a mezzanine, between the lobby and the first floor. Upshot: they were pretty loud.

I realized that for all my immersion in the culture and the language, when I hear those chants, I can't understand what they're saying. It's probably exacerbated by the fact that I can't bring myself to care enough to strain to decipher the chants. It's reduced to gobbledygook to me. At least there weren't any firebombs, just some gathering that broke up after a little while.

Apparently they're going to start repairs to my apartment's outer walls on Monday. First the outer section with the nook where the rainwater leaks into the wall has to be fixed. Then the inner walls need to be re-done. Re-plastered. Or something. I don't quite know. My limited command of Greek means that the contractors speak to me like I'm an idiot, and I have to rely on my aunt for the technical language.

Hoping for a relaxing weekend. With no rain, thank you very much.

The disk crash the other day is, I think, solved. Full disk-image backups are fairly awesome that way, though not everyone would be as lucky as me this time around - managing to get a good boot after the first hint of drive failure, and then making a point to image-backup the failing disk while it was still functional.

The repair process basically went like this:

1) Buy new disk at lunch break.
2) Get home at eight PM and take three minutes to pull failing disk from the desktop PC chassis and screw in the new disk.
3) Boot the PC from the emergency rescue CD I was prompted to burn when I made the image backup.
4) Tell the rescue CD to format the new disk and copy over the image backup.
5) Putter around the apartment for four hours, doing laundry, finishing unpacking my suitcase, cooking dinner, watching the Yankees.
6) Check to make sure the machine's behaving when I hear the logging-in tone at about midnight.

Now if I could just get my body re-adjusted to waking up at quarter to eight in the morning...

1) More and more, I'm feeling the urge to offer my colleagues in the adjoining office a nice piping-hot cup of Sierra Uniform, liberally sweetened with Tango Foxtrot. (Anyone who's been following me for any length of time probably knows that I generally shy away from profanity unless I've blown a gasket.) Getting to the point where almost every day now, I find myself halfway into the windup for throwing something at the non-sound-insulating glass door, either a high-lighter or the wrist-rest bean bag for my mouse hand.

2) After pounding my head against a mouthful of Katharevousa Greek (which I'm more and more convinced is only still in use so that elder statesmen in the profession can make neophytes look stupid), I asked a couple of colleagues for help. When I drew the parallel of (God forbid) asking them to read Shakespeare in the original Elizabethan English, I was greeted with a stereo wince.

3) Picked up a new laptop to replace my smashed machine last night. Gotta say, they're making those suckers light in the modern age. And since the old laptop can be re-purposed, and I'd been planning on investing in a low-power home-theater PC anyway ... could be worse. Only major down side is that the machine didn't come with an optical drive. Hopefully that's no longer the killer issue it was ten years ago.

4) Finally, finally over the flu. Now I've just got to finish kicking the jet lag.

"So what else did you have plugged into the socket [besides the 12000 BTU air conditioner]?"
"Nothing. Just the air conditioner."
"You're sure?"

Turns out the building's wiring is really old. (First hint: having a light switch burn out and fuse shut my first month in the place.) In order to get things up to something the electrician would feel comfortable with, they'd have to rip open the walls or something, which is a little over my head as a year-to-year renter.

On the bright side, replacing the fried wall socket with a new, grounded socket was ten minutes' work, and I've got my A/C back.

Yesterday was pretty much a write-off, thanks to interrupted sleep and a very very long day at work, ending with me trying to translate something on the fly at someone else's desk while the words in front of me kept blurring and deforming. A full night's sleep last night should hopefully help some.