an imagined conversation

And no, I'm not having another imaginary Trent Lane conversation -- though I might have to since I've just learned that in the Daria movie finale "Is it College Yet?", TL streaks. Hmm.

No, I had a conversation with myself as I was re-sorting my computer after I reformatted the C: drive and re-installed XP. So this has been sort of a -- well, I hesitate to say thorny issue. It's just come up now and again and it relates to the sorts of misogyny that I feel uncomfortable with in Zf.

Mainly, the libretto takes it as given that women and men are fundamentally spiritually different; that women are hysterical, gossips, can't attain enlightenment, etc., Pamina being the exception. It's like an unfunny "What Women are Like" list that gets emailed everywhere.

So, one might say, why not liberate it and while the libretto calls for "women" just put extras who exemplify the faults as outlined in the libretto: male gossips, male hysterics, etc. (note the use of male vice man), which at least gets into the are of gender performativity.

I'm still not sure how I feel about all of this just quite yet -- I might have to do a little bit more theoretical reading on the subject -- but the root of the problem is that a pejorative term has been made out of a description about someone that that someone, ostensibly, cannot change. Pejoratives like jerk, and geek (and their stronger cousins) at least tend to decry behaviors. It's a similar discomfort that I have with the word gay (or ghey, as some people would have it). I don't know -- I just feel that it's pretty obvious why using that, particularly in this day and age, is objectionable and/or offensive, and that the people I've met who defend the usage of this word by saying others "need to grow up or grow a thicker skin" tend to be those who would have *no idea* what it's like to be an "angry minority" and concomitantly, have *no comprehension* of the technologies in place to gut the angry minority of any sort of legitimacy.

On a lighter note, I'm leaving for my parents' eeeearly Thursday morning until the New Year, so I need to clean the fridge out of any perishables.

This includes:

2 bowlfuls of savory rice congee with sweet potato
2 eggs
2 chicken thighs braised in a soy and sesame oil sauce with garlic cloves
1 quart of fresh chicken stock (to freeze?)
3 or 4 stalks of bok choy
half of an onion

Hmmmmm. Think I can eat through this in 2.5 days?