Being Amber Rhea

Today I had a rather lengthy email exchange with Christopher Penn about sex work, economics, financial aid, and stereotypes. (Yes, all of those things together!) I was frantically typing away in multi-tasking mode while at work, and somehow my replies ended up being longer and smarter-sounding than I’d expected, so I figured I had blog material on my hands. (I did some minor editing to fix typos and such in the parts I wrote.) Hence:
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I don’t have time for much of anything other than work today, but I do want to post something real quick in response to a discussion at Ren’s place. Over there, I said:

Octo,
As I said before, I agree w/ a lot of what you are saying re: the gendered tilt to “sex week” being problematic. In fact, we agree on much more than we disagree on here, so I don’t want it to seem like I’m nit-picking. But this did irritate me a little:

And “age is just a number” notwithstanding, college girls and guys aren’t that savvy about longer term issues.

Now I realize I have this thing where I personalize everything. I’m not sure how to stop doing that, or even if I *should* stop - but what it boils down to is, when I see a general statement made that doesn’t apply to me, a little red flag goes up, because that means the general statement isn’t so general. And sure, I could be an outlier, and there is value in speaking in generalities if they apply to a large majority - I certainly understand that. And yet, that statement rankles. When I was in college, I absolutely was savvy about longer-term issues, and I was very annoyed and insulted by people assuming I wasn’t, simply because of my age or because I was in college.

I really like and respect Octogalore and so I didn’t snap at her or anything. I want to understand where she’s coming from. But it might end up being a fundamental difference in perspective, and I do take umbrage at the suggestion of college girls being “impressionable” and, basically, infantilized.

This is something that always bugged the shit out of me in college, the way some people insisted on treating college students like high school students in slightly bigger bodies. (I saw more of this at UGA than at NYU, but I have no doubt it happens to a degree at every college.) I was always like, goddammit, college students are adults! We are over 18. Hence, ADULTS. So fucking treat us like adults!! If you continually treat college students as NOT adults, what good does that do? It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yeah, some people come from sheltered backgrounds. But you know what? They’ve gotta grow up and learn how to deal in the real world at some point. So quit with the coddling, because it’s fucking offensive!

I may have even blogged this sentiment when I was in college, because I’ve had my blog that long.

As for this Yale Sex Week business, hey, Gail Dines, did you even bother to look at the schedule? The “Who Looks Most Like a Vivid Girl” contest contest is one part of a full week of diverse programming. As in many situations, parts of the programming might not be nearly as “progressive” as they are marketed to be. Color me skeptical. And yeah, if I were at Yale, that contest would likely stick in my craw. But as far as the actual women involved, it all boils back down to a pretty simple concept for me. I don’t have to like or endorse or sing the praises of every woman’s choice. DUH. But see the thing is, other women don’t NEED my approval to do whatever it is they want to do, and vice versa.

I just finished my 3rd fuzzy navel. They ordered me a shot of vodka and red bull. (ANd I ordered water so I don’t get sick.)

Now I feel like I should talk about some history of me and drinking. Watch out, I may start to emote all over the place. The first time I got drunk was when I left my old/new job the first time - Oct. 7, 2005. I blogged about it … Im too lazy to link to the post tho, so if you just search the archives you’ll find it. Since then I have been drunk maybe 3 other times… actually, Ryan was invilved in all of those, ha! He is a bad influence! (Or a good one?)

In college at UGA, I once wrote a letter to the student paper about why it’s possibl;e to have fun in college without drinking. I always felt uncomofrtable around drinking, actually. This is, I’m sure, largely due to the firsthand experience I had wuith it since I was a little kid all the way thru my life… bc my dad is a serious alcoholic. And it took years of therapy for me teven to be able to SAY that! Even though I always knew it in my heart, saying it, admitting it, somehow makes it “real”… and I couldn’t do it, for the longest time. I never really had a model of healthy drinking. And let’s be honest, the way college students binge drink and all that shit is not healthy. And it never appealed to me anyway… who wants to puke all over the place? That does not sound fun. Maybe if you grew up in a really religiouslly moral household or something, where there was NO DRINKING AT ALL, then aybe you would need to let off some steam and indulge in all that shit? But it kind of seems like acting out, but whatever, who am I to judge… people need to do what they need to do… but I still don’t want to be around it, and people should’t try to make me feel weird becayse of that (like some of them did in colege). I say FUCK THEM!

So now that I’m in a more supportive enviriboment, I can have fun with it, but I still don’t drink very much AT ALL, nor do I want to. And here’s the other thing! I don’t like the taste of most alcohol! It’s disgusting as far as I’m concerned! Beer is gross, I cannot drink it. And the kinds of drinks I like, they have to have enough flavor in them to MASK the taste of the alcohol itself. Hence fuzzy navels, amaretto sours, hell even screwdrivers…

And now the glass of vodka on ice and TWO cans of redbull has arrived… oh god. We’ll see how this goes, won’t we!

once I get to my porn rant (that’s coming soon), i hope I’m still coherent enough to make sense and not make too many typos. I know I’m already making typos, but I’ve decided not to go back and correct all of them bc it would take too long… and for some reason using the ‘backspace’ key seems to take longer than regular typing. I don’ tknow what that’s about.

Stay tuned, I hope my rant will at least make some sense and not just be stupid idiotic drunken jibberish. :P

This quote from an AJC article (login) about a new “career-oriented” high school in Rockdale County disturbs me:

“Too many kids throughout the state have been going to college when they didn’t need to,” [Mike Lott, Rockdale's economic development director] said. “A career-oriented school like RCA gives them another option for finding a meaningful career.”

I guess he has a point, though; why focus on such pointless endeavors as higher education, when our military needs all the money it can get?

Required reading for anyone about to graduate from college/grad school/whatever.