"Every woman has these insecurities!"

The headline to this entry represents one of the multiple, highly common, sexist comments that I simply hate. But it is just not something that people say; in general, it is twice as likely that a person of female gender suffer from anxiety disorders, than that one of male gender does, according to AADA.* AADA also writes that "differences in brain chemistry may account for at least part of these differences", which I do not doubt, but as the quote says, it is not the whole problem. So, what is it, more than the possible brain differences, that make women generally more insecure than men?

Well, if you ask me (which I will suppose that you do, seeing as you are reading my blog), I say that if anything, it is because society, in various ways, tells women that they are supposed to be insecure, just because they happen to lack a penis, and that is what other people who lack a penis is. Thou art a woman; therefore, thou shall feel insecure. As with so many other sexist prejudices, it has rather become something like one of the many unwritten laws that for some reason seem to control our lives to a great extent.

But, of course, these deeply ingrained prejudices do not only affect women; what must it be like, I wonder, to be a insecure man in today's society? Naturally, I have no idea, but I thought "Hey, I'll google!". The results I received where merely general tips on how to stop being insecure, but when I performed almost the exactly same search, save for changing "man" to "woman", the results I received mainly consisted of tips for insecure women.

I think that this quick google search rather answers the question I asked at the beginning of the previous paragraph; it is both common and generally accepted to be insecure as a woman (again, because that is what we are supposed to be), but as a man, it is neither common nor accepted, and hardly a part of the male norm (as oppose the female norm).

(By the way, if there are any people out there with both insecurities/anxiety issues and penises, please do leave a comment about what it is like, because I am really curious about it. Do you feel secure confiding your emotions to close friends, or are you afraid to be judged? Do you know any other people in the same situation? and so forth. I will be ever so grateful. (This blog probably has like three readers at the moment, but I figured that I can at least try and ask.) )

And I mean, come on, if women felt secure, they might come and claim their rights and things like that, and we just can not have that, can we? (I used sarcasm in this paragraph.)

*Source
(And yes, I know that there is a difference between feeling insecure and suffering from anxiety disorders, but it was the most accurate comparison I could think of; the google results that was presented to me when I tried looking for research about insecurities and gender were merely depressing.)

How to write "strong", female characters

There are probably plenty of aspiring writers out there in cyberspace, and being an aspiring writer, one can probably use with a couple of nice tips. Therefore, I have completed this list of tips (or, if you wish your piece to be famous, rules) about how to write strong, female characters. Enjoy!

1. Make sure she is rather bad-ass, except when it comes to that one guy (aka the hero*), who makes her change completely, so that suddenly she is oh so weak. It is also important that this guy makes her lose all her bad-assness like *that*. The guy does not necessarily need to have as passionate, or even any at all, feelings for her; in fact, it makes him cooler if he does not.
2. Do not give her a proper personality. She only needs to consist of her bad-assness and passionate love for the hero.
3. This bad-assness must consist of at least 90% sexiness. Ergo, her only power must be to be able to flirt with various male characters (I mean, her flirting with a female would imply some sort of bi-, pan- or homosexuality and that is something we simply can not have).
4. The previous point implies that, naturally, she has to follow media's idea about what "being sexy" means.
5. Whenever she has a conversation with another female, it has to be about one/some of the male character/-s.
6. She must not do anything for her own sake. Remember, it is all about the hero.
7. Giving her a name is not a high priority. The hero could always simply call her "babe", "sexy" and so forth.
8. If you do give her a name, at least make her the only female character with a name.
9. She has to be naked at least once (preferably more than once though).
10. When she is not naked, make sure her clothes are revealing (as oppose to the hero, who should be properly dressed at all times).

*Note about the hero: Make sure that the hero is a male. A female hero would completely brake the norm and it just would not be sane (again, remember what I wrote about bi-, pan- and homosexuality).

There are, of course, plenty of other things (/rules) to have in mind when writing strong, female characters, but I hope that this small guide helped you in some measure. Good luck with your writing!

This sarcastic entry has been brought to you by Hedda, aka panphobic.

Temporary brake of my candy bar-boycott

Yesterday I did something awful and I still feel bad about it; I temporarily broke my boycott of candy bars and bought one. I was on my way home from school, I passed a store and I felt this great need to buy a small chocolate bar, just for once because I have not in a long time. So I bought one, feeling bad instantly afterwards, and it only tasted good for like three bites, then it just tasted like plastic and all the colourants and chemical flavouring it consisted of.

Now, I should explain why I am boycotting candy bars. Well, firstly, I am trying to not eat any of the kind of candy that is plastered with E-numbers, because I have no idea what I am really eating, which merely is scary. Furthermore, I hardly think a large intake of E-numbers is good for your health. (I know, of course, that they are not only found in candy, but candy is what I find most easy to keep away from. I try to cure my sweet tooth with home baked stuff instead.)

Secondly, individually wrapped chocolate bars are not environment friendly what so ever. In fact, according to Jessica Hoppe, "a 49-gram chocolate bar has a carbon footprint of about 169 grams —a ratio of 3.45 grams of CO2 for every gram of chocolate".* And frankly, how can one not realize that small pieces of chemical-plastered candy bars individually packed in plastic packages are bad for the environment?

But still, I shall not sit here and pretend I am some kind of completely organic and environment friendly guru, for oh look at the amount of E-numbers there are in the cookie I am currently eating just because it happened to be in the pantry, and have I yet arranged a system so to sort out and recycle the plastic emballage of the cookies from the general garbage? No, I have not. But hopefully I will in a not-too-far-away future. In the meantime I will keep to environment friendly chocolate and home-made cookies.

At least I got something good out of buying that bloody candy bar; I know now that I will not be doing it again, for I still feel bad about abandoning my morals in that fleeting moment.

*Source

Nice, welcoming entry

It is the middle of the night and I should probably be at least attempting to fall asleep, but I am not in the mood so I thought I would pick up blogging instead.

When I write that, I think I kind of sound like a person who is completely chill with doing it. I am not. I am in fact really anxious about whether I will accidentally wake someone up by with the sound of me pressing the different keys of the keyboard; I am afraid that I will wake up far too late tomorrow due to problems with going to sleep once the computer is turned off, caused by this late night writing; I am afraid that I will become too paranoid to be able to go to sleep in the time I spend up writing, and so forth. And that is kind of who I am as a person.

I do not know what I was meant when I wrote the the title of this entry, because hitherto it has not really been nice and welcoming at all, has it? Perhaps I miscalculated my ability to write such an entry. Ah well.

A basic thing to mention in an introducing entry would be one's gender, and so I will: I am a so-called female. But I really do hope that you do not immediately apply any prejudices just because I wrote that. No, I should not write any prejudices, because, frankly, practically all of us has some sorts of prejudices about everyone; it is more a question of how proud one is of them, and how tightly one clings to them. Just try not to cling too tightly to yours, will you? Unless, of course, they prove to be 100% accurate, in which case I suppose that I was wrong and I recant my previous statement.

Further relevant information about me is that I suppose I could call myself a feminist, I am a Ravenclaw and I enjoy drinking tea and watching Doctor Who. It has hitherto taken be about one and a half hour to conjure this piece of text, and I really ought to get some sleep now (I will probably end up staying up for at least one more hour reading once the computer is off, but ah well), so hereby I will bid thee good night and wish thee a merry welcome to this blog that will hopefully stay updated, despite the not-so-very-warmly-welcoming-entry.~