Heritage and Immortality

When we die, what remains is our stories and our children.
In this way we all live on after death, regardless of belief in an afterlife. Everyone lives on for some time after death in the way we have touched the lives of others, even if they don't remember our names. The homeless woman with two dogs that I shared lunch with one afternoon in Golden Gate Park will be alive in my memories until I lose them, and even then anything I do that is slightly affected by her will affect others who will then interact with others until this one woman whose name I can't even remember will have touched the world.
When we are born, we are made of the genetic information of our ancestors and shaped further by their stories.
My understanding of human behavior is that some part of our personality is born with us, as a part of our brain's "factory settings" if you will, and our responses to the world are caused by these "factory settings" and other experiences which constantly develop into our fuller personality (fuller because it is never complete and is always changing a little from experiences). The "factory settings" must come from genetics, then (but probably from a combination of several genes rather than a simple-punnett-square-able process) and our initial and most influential interactions with the world are usually connected to our family. To me, heritage is a part of who I am, both sentimentally and logically.
There is such a thing as psychological hand-me-downs. I have a stubbornness that I learned from my mother, who was told what she could and could not do on account of her gender, and I picked this up from her before I was fully exposed to gender-based discrimination. It is also possible for fragments of these "psychological hand-me-downs" to be conserved for generations and centuries, so that we don't know it, but we have a trace of our ancestors thinking. Perhaps I have a trace of the Celtic warrior woman, the Viking shield maiden, the Sioux woman, the Amazon hiding in the recesses of my mind.
And now I am here in this America, living in the world built on the corpses of my ancestors killed by my ancestors trying to escape the persecution of my ancestors. Or famine or somehow else they were trying to find something better, and by all accounts took the Better from the people already here.
Heritage is important to me. It is an extension of the importance of family boosted by a desire to know where I came from. Oh, and let's not forget my addiction to stories. Let me tell you the stories I have been told as long as I can remember, any time we pass a certain stretch of train track or a significant place. Let me learn the stories my parents have forgotten, let me try to piece together the little stories that have passed out of living memory, or perhaps just out of the family mythology. Let me tell you about how my ancestor fought in the Texas Revolution and others left Oklahoma for California in the Dust Bowl. Let me learn how much my family is tied up in history.
*This rambling is brought to you in part by thoughts I had while reading Linda Hogan's People of the Whale*

The Problem with Skinny, By a "Twig"

*Disclaimer Time* Before I start in on this, I want to make it clear that here, I am discussing problems I have had because I am skinny. A lot of these problems come from the glorification of thin-ness, the same place as other, more threatening problems than mine. This does not make my problems more serious than others, but it does not invalidate them either.
I had been thinking about writing this for a while, and recently I came across this video which helped me get around to it.
I have been skinny my entire life. As early as elementary school I can remember being told that I could be a model. That didn't seem right to me. I was told I could be a model more than I was told I could be a scientist. I was being told (in elementary school) that my weight was more important for a career choice than my intellect, mostly because I was a girl. The thing is, I couldn't be a model. Besides my uneasiness at promoting a franchise that makes people I love uncomfortable with their own bodies, I twitch when I put on makeup, I wouldn't be comfortable in some things, high heels would kill me, and I wouldn't be willing to ensure that my body continues to conform to waist-measurement standards.
When I was in middle school, the doctor decided that I was underweight and needed to make some changes to my diet in order to gain weight. I had not gotten to that point by starving myself, I had gotten there by eating relatively healthy food and minimal exercise (muscle weighs more than fat so...). I was skinny, I was not healthy. I started drinking 2% milk and I was finally weighing in over 100lb.
I have had people joke about how my parents starve me, how I have a hollow leg, how I'm skin and bones, how I weigh like 20lb. I have learned to brush them off, especially from friends. I have seen an organization that is supposed to focus on promoting health rather than appearance post a picture of a girl from a magazine and ask "is this a healthy image to be showing girls?" The comments flooded with "she looks sick," "somebody get this girl a hamburger." I thought she looked like me when I'm a little tired. I get self-conscious in my Karate class because the uniform shows off my collarbones but it's obvious by my push-ups that I don't work off my food on a regular basis. Do they think I throw it all up? I don't. That's right, the twig feels uncomfortable too.
If you feel like you need to be shaped a certain way, allow me to throw you a few reasons starving yourself is not worth it. You might not have heard some of them before, and even if you have, here's me affirming them:

• Clothes will not fit you. It may be hard for you to find clothes that fit you right, and it's hard for me too. I am shaped like a mannequin, but they don't make clothes for the mannequins. They make clothes for more common body shapes, and pin the clothes on the mannequins to make them look better. So yeah, they push for a certain body shape, but don't actually make clothes for that body shape. (actually, the stores that actually sell clothes that might fit me tend to be the kind of company that burns out of season clothes rather than donating them)
• It will not make everything better. I have been skinny my whole life, but I have not been popular. I have only had one boyfriend (and it's debatable whether that one really counts?) and generally not the girl the guys fight over. Thinness is not a magic solution to social problems, no matter how often people pretend that weight is what pushes people out.
• You will always have something to pick at. Even if you can completely change your body type, there will always be that thing that stands between you and perfection. Me, I feel like I have a mountain range on my forehead (which I have been told no one notices), and funny-shaped thighs (which have never been commented on). That insecurity is never going to be gone.

A Room of the "Geek Girl"'s Own

Yesterday I read the entirety of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own for my Women Writers class. Being the kind of reader I am, I immediately connected some of Woolf’s thoughts to the recently amplified discussion on the idea of “fake geek girls” (particularly the ones who infiltrate conventions to seek out their prey… or something).

I, like many of the female-lead discussions I have seen, attribute this assumption of the “fake geek girl” a continuation of centuries of misconceptions about the differences between men and women. The situation referred to in A Room of One’s Own concerns the idea that at that time men were more literate than women. At that time there certainly were more literate men than women, not because men were inherently smarter, but because men had more access to education. What was really caused by an element of society was attributed instead to inherent characteristics. Perhaps this is part of the reason some people have difficulty accepting that a woman can appreciate, say, Lord of the Rings, in the same way as a man. Perhaps when they see more men showing their enthusiasm they think first of an inherent difference, “women don’t enjoy epic fantasy,” rather than a social difference, “women are typically excluded by the male members of that group.” They are not kept out of the “club” by their disinterest or incapability; they are locked out, as Virginia Woolf’s character was kept out of a library, because of their gender.

Woolf observed “the history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.” It is interesting to look at how women have been “locked out” of opportunities, hobbies, and communities. We have been kept out of writing, voting, and even, in some sense, women have in the past been “locked out” of thinking. We have been breaking down the walls of what was once considered exclusively male. Could there be some particularly territorial men who see this as a threat? Is that where this harsh exclusivity comes from? Perhaps such men feel that they are running out of territory that is separated from this alien species that is “woman.” The best way to fight these alien invaders is to maintain that this isn’t their “real” interest. Or perhaps they don’t have interests besides interacting with men. Virginia Woolf observes that male writers, prior to the outbreak of women writers, never wrote of women outside of their relationship to male characters. Perhaps some men are stuck in this thought process that women who show interest in something do so to attract the attention of men who are interested in the same thing.

These are the only ways I can begin to understand this backlash against any woman who dares to consider herself a nerd. I also have difficulty comprehending the idea that the opposite sex is so different that we need guides to understand each other, as attested in magazines like Seventeen or the men of varying qualifications in A Room of One’s Own. “Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men?” Why is there so much effort and confusion involved in understanding the opposite sex? My theory is that they are trying to reach across differences that don’t exist. Perhaps people are forgetting that social factors divide us more than inherent differences. I have had the good fortune to live my life knowing that I am as good as a man. I have also had luck in knowing many men who are not threatened by this fact. I do not feel like I need to speak differently to my male and female friends, other than that one half might feel awkward when I start talking about my period. I have not, as Virginia Woolf says of Lady Winchilsea, grown to perceive men as the "opposing faction.” I learned to laugh at any assertion that my sex prevented me from doing anything; while the prejudice still stings, I know that they cannot take what is mine.

Perhaps the “attention-seeking fake geek girl” is a thing, but men have been known to do the same. There are worse things to pretend to be for attention. Should we encourage people to be themselves? Absolutely. But if the poster boys of nerdiness are the ones who would get beaten up and ostracized for being different, shouldn’t nerds and geeks accept people who can’t seem to find friends another way?

Virginia Woolf encouraged female writers to be encouraged by female writers of the past, citing Austen, Behn, Bronte and others. I encourage any woman who is told women cannot have certain interests to look at Hillary Clinton, Mae Jemison, Felicia Day… whoever is relevant to you. Find a room of your own to read or write or build in. Do something. Be you.

In which Kay rants about a stingy pastor and the face of Christianity

You may have heard the story about the pastor who refused to tip his waitress because he "gives God 10%." If you haven't, here's a link to one of the many articles.
Okay, so I have mixed feelings about the whole concept of mandatory tipping, being a college student who sometimes cries because life is expensive. But as a fairly progressive Christian, I'm pretty decided on the idea of people using Christianity to be (to avoid harsher words) jerks.
It is not acceptable. It is not acceptable when a pastor refuses to help a low-paid worker get by and it is not acceptable when a group of people yell at grieving families and it is not acceptable when one faith declares war on another. Why? because the basis of their actions is (vaguely?) derived from the teachings of the same man who placed only two commandments on his followers: to love their God and to love their neighbors (including the icky and different ones you might not like very much). It seems to me that the loudest voices of Christianity have forgotten about that.
Actually reading the New Testament makes it hard not to notice the theme of Love. There's the aforementioned "Love Commandments." There's the calling to love each other to "prove to the world that you are my disciples" (John 13.35 NLT). In every one of Paul's letters he stresses the importance of loving one another. So it seems to me that the most mainstream portrayal of modern american Christianity has misplaced it's emphasis.
As to the more specific issue of this particular pastor, I'm guessing he missed the bit about giving your money away. I don't even understand. Okay, let's go through the good ol' NT: well there's the entire Gospel of Luke, with it's emphasis on hope for the poor, never mind various stories in the three other gospels (including the "rich young ruler" who shows up in Mathew, Mark, and Luke). In Acts, one of the main concerns of the early church was to provide for the poorer members (darn socialism-esque organisation .. also there was a bit of what could be called affirmative action but I digress). Then there's Paul. Paul took three missionary trips around the eastern Mediterranean while collecting funds for the Jerusalem church's services for the poor (if you aren't familiar with the Bible, Paul's letters to various churches make up a good portion of the New Testament). Giving away money is kind of a big deal and pretty hard to miss. If this pastor has a problem with parting with his money, he really ought to reread the book he's supposed to be teaching people about.
Nowhere does Jesus or his first followers teach to hate, but hatred seems to be the new face of Christianity  and that makes me sad.