Not having an internet connection at home is really starting to stunt my creativity – well, sort of. I spend my 8 hours a day at work thinking about what I want to write, but once I get in front of a computer, it’s all gone. This week, though, internet! Yay!

I’ve been limping through a cold this week. I’m not sick enough to miss work or stay home, but I’m coughing and miserable. The cat is quite bothered when I interrupt his sleep with my coughing; he lifts his head up and looks at me, bending his ears back in annoyance. Then he’ll turn, knead my blankets (or sometimes me) with his claws, and then settle back in, tucking his paws under him.

Carlos has settled in really well. He hardly leaves me alone. I wake up with him next to me, or on me, or at my feet. He’s adorable, furry, perfect.

We’re really loving the new apartment – it’s so big! I can hear the traffic on 17th constantly; it rocks me to sleep, reminds me of Chicago. The neighborhood is great. It’s crazy and wonderful – this morning I saw a woman with a mullet walking across the street while talking on her bluetooth ear piece. Love this. Love my life.

I’m slowly losing South Africa.
Today, I got an e-mail telling me that I’m no longer the mayor of Wynberg Train Station.
I loved sitting there, waiting for the train, sticking my pale legs out so they might catch some afternoon sun, watching, always watching.
And the train going toward Cape Town would come and suddenly the train station would become a blur of activity and when the train pulled away, the platform was empty except the thick line of people streaming out into Wynberg.
Minutes later, my train would come. I’d stand, deciding whether or not I should move one way or the other to get a better spot on the train. You always had to stand toward Cape Town when you were riding the MetroRail – that’s the first class spot – that’s where you’re less likely to get robbed.
Clutching my backpack (with computer in it), I’d stand, holding onto the warm metal pole, lurching as the train started moving, trying not to make too much eye contact with anyone. You sit, and you watch, and you wait.
Steurhof slid by. Priscilla worked at a hospital off that stop.
Heathfield, Retreat.
I always got up too fast after the train left Retreat station. Then everyone would stare at me because I was the white girl standing. I think it made me look lost.
In the beginning, before I had affected the causal swing the locals did, I would stand straight, stiff, staring ahead. Later, I’d wait until the train had nearly pulled into the station before standing, shouldering my bag and stepping off the train to go jump off the tracks.
I always loved the shocked way they’d look – especially days when I was in something like my business dress. I’d daintily put my hand on the concrete, bending my knees slightly, and then I’d jump, gingergly step across the tracks and continue home. I don’t think they ever got over that one.

I miss the bricks, I miss the train, I miss the graffiti.
South Africa, don’t ever leave me.

Oh, my college friends are lovely people, but their blogging platforms are just so inconvenient.

They’ve all started blogging on Tumblr, and to make things easy, I decided to start using mine again as well. My one loyal Tumblr fan, Grandma Mary, will be excited by this news, as the Tumblr has just been overhauled to include a new layout and some fancy poetry (but I think it’s poetry I already posted here a long time ago).

Anyway, since you have a bunch of iPads and some spare time (hubris forced me to make that comment, I swear…I’m not assuming you have spare time at all, really, because no one does), save this address http://katiebarry.tumblr.com/ and then go to it periodically.

I’m hoping to integrate a more personal look at my life here and then thoughts, links, my rantings about feminist news there.
Or whatever.

In theory, there will be a link to this post over there so you’ll be able to tell when I’ve been updating.

Blah blah blah, anyway, I’m just super jazzed on the layout. It’s not something I’d normally pick.

No, no, no, no, NO!
Duke student makes PowerPoint and then the world goes wild and some people hail her as a feminist, which is utter bullshit.
If you’ve got some time today, read those two articles.

Perhaps you’ve seen the longer article on my Facebook page; Madeline posted it there earlier this week. It’s about how a female student at Duke made a PowerPoint presentation about her sexual encounters throughout college and is now being hailed as some sort of feminist.
In actuality, there was nothing inherently feminist about her behavior.
Yes, she had a lot of casual sex. That in itself does not define feminism at all. She was used by these men, none of whom seemed to have any respect for her.

Respect is the key to this sexual equality idea. Without respect, there can be no sexual equality. Even if someone is under the impression that they’ve somehow been sexually liberated by their attempts to chronicle their college days and rate the men they’ve had sex with, they’re not equal. This was a sad attempt at taking back power, power that Karen Owen never had. Why no power? No respect.

Karen Owen, the girl who made the PowerPoint, was not engaged in equal sexual activity. She was used by men and then tossed aside. One guy wouldn’t even open the door for her to give her back her earrings, instead telling her that he’d leave them outside his door. Instead of being wildly offended, hurt, disappoined, even, she just gave him a lower score on her list.

And self-respect?
None, apparently, as evidenced by her PowerPoint presentation. She might be blind, but it’s so obvious. Her own words have sold her as nothing more than a drunk girl desperate for love but looking in all the wrong places. I don’t go to bars so that I can stand in corners and take shots and wait for men to prey on me. I go to enjoy myself, regardless of whether or not there are going to be men there.

There are a ton of definitions for “feminist,” but Karen Owen fits none of them and I’m ashamed that women everywhere are proud of her, praising her actions. One woman quoted in the first article says that she wishes she could have been as brave as Karen when she was younger.

Brave?
I hesitated to use this word earlier, but I’m so annoyed that I’m just going to have to call her “slutty.” No part of her experiences could have been positive for women. One nights stands with thirteen men? It’s not the number that bothers me, it’s the fact that she seems so okay with the way that she was treated. It’s one thing to be actively engaged in a female-positive sex life (which can include multiple partners) so long as proper consideration and consent are given.

And the article goes on to blame alcohol for the way that women are acting. Ha, women? Alcohol? Maybe we are abusing alcohol at 4 times the rate we used to (men’s abuse has remained stagnant) but that’s all part of equality and we’ve got to accept it. I don’t think that our drinking is making us more sexually pliable by any means.
We’re trying to level with men. But we’re not succeeding, certainly not if we continue to let ourselves be used the way that Karen Owen was.

I’m out of time and will have to edit this later, but here’s what I put on Facebook:

Wow – read the article and the PowerPoint. I’m incredibly annoyed by both.

No part of me thinks that her sexual behavior should be linked in any way with feminism or equality. She’s no Tucker Max (don’t get me started on him). She’s just som…e dumb girl looking for love in all the places.

She’s no feminist, no poster child for sexual liberation. No one should be championing her cause, putting her up on a pedestal of bravery. There’s nothing wrong with being half sex kitten, half soccer mom, but there is a problem when there’s no respect behind all that and Karen Owen obviously doesn’t have a strong-willed bone in her body.

It should be noted that when you are intoxicated, you can’t legally consent to sex.

And the whole rough sex bit – everyone has rough sex. Rough sex done right won’t leave marks. Yeah, dominance has its place but that place is not in public. It’s not at a college bar and it’s most definitely not in the bedrooms of these athletes. Clumsy attempts at masculinity should not be allowed to give rough sex/dominance-submission play a bad name.

If I engaged in sexual activity (I was going to write “fucked” but my grandma will read it) with a man who wouldn’t even open the door to let me have my earrings back, I’d be beyond furious and I’d reevaluate who I was banging. But Karen Owen doesn’t even seem to think that’s a huge problem. Yeah, it results in a lower score, but it should have resulted in a swift kick to the nuts as well. (Yeah, I just advocated for violence, whatever. You can send Tucker Max after me if you want.)

She’s obviously intelligent enough to go to Duke (I wouldn’t go to Duke if they paid me) so she should have been intelligent enough to make better decisions – that being said, better decisions are sometimes not fucking everything that moves and demanding respect from dudes you bang. The whole home-from-the-bar-and-straight-into-bed move is done, it’s played out.

Grow up, Karen Owen, and keep you sexual exploits to yourself. It’s one thing to be sexually liberated with a pinch of slutty, but it’s downright embarrassing to have no self-respect. Maybe discretion comes with maturity.

I was browsing the New York Times over lunch today when I came across a debate about parenting styles. Amy Chua, a Yale professor, published an article talking about a very strict, regimented parenting style that was effective, which has spurred debate.

I know that I come from a generation that is constantly needing hand-holding and guidance, because we were raised in a very everything-you-do-is-wonderful-and-so-are-you sort of environment. We’re incapable of self motivation and are nervous and shy about approaching authority figures. We have a sick sense of entitlement, but that entitlement isn’t deserved.

But at the same time, some of us flourish in that free-space. My creativity and self-awareness stems from having the opportunitites to grow on my own and being given the space to test and define limits and boundaries.
I may have tattoos (read the text below), but they weren’t gotten because of the need to be rebellious or the need to expose myself as an individual. Thanks to my parents (Mom, mostly), I already knew who I was as an individual and I already knew how to get myself in enough trouble without having to go too far.
In high school, during those few rough years where boundaries blurred with angst and self-esteem was below low, my mom was consistent with her actions, supportive when she needed to be and mean when that was required, but she was never unfair.
She never took away something necessary (like a ride to school) because of something I’d done to upset her (like talk back or fail to clean my room). She did take away my car when I snuck out, but even then, I was allowed to drive it to work. I was able to keep work and school away from punishments, something Dad never figured out how to do.
You can take away earning power and expect your children to grow up as successful, independent adults capable of entering the work force.
It was up to me to flex my independence within the set boundaries, and in doing so, I was able to “live dangerously” (every teenager’s real desire) without actually putting myself in harm’s way.
That, my friends, is expert parenting.
I graduated from a private college in four years and have entered the moderately corporate world with no arrests on my record and no major slip-ups to report.

When Parents Feel Out of Control

Updated January 14, 2011, 02:01 PM

Karen Karbo, a novelist and memoirist, is the author of “The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman.”

When my daughter was born in 1992, the late great Portland cartoonist John Callahan made her birth announcement. It was a drawing of her father and me peering into her carriage and exclaiming, “Maybe she’ll be a doctor, a lawyer, or Japanese!” We liked how it poked fun of our parental expectations, which were so ridiculously high they included our kid’s possible transformation into a different (stereotypically driven and successful) nationality.

It’s true that we, as parents, have erred in downplaying how competitive life is, and how difficult it is to truly excel..It’s hard to accept that by bringing a child into the world we’re creating a hostage to fortune. We live in impossibly difficult times. I don’t think I need to make a list. Amy Chua’s child-rearing manifesto speaks directly to this fear. It claims, in essence, that if we follow her draconian regimen — refuse sleepovers, enforce hours of violin practice that makes elite Romanian gymnasts look like nose-picking slackers — we, too, will manufacture happy, secure summa cum laudes who never rebel, suffer an existential crisis, or spend their allowance on an unfortunate tattoo. It presumes that we can prevent our kids from hurt, harm and disappointment. It’s a fantasy of control and protection in times that seem out of control and scary.

That said, a pragmatic philosophy offers some much-needed correctives to a culture of parenting where our children’s every random scribble and shoe box diorama is lauded as pure genius, where trophies are awarded simply for showing up. We have erred in downplaying how competitive life is, and how difficult it is to truly excel. One of the toughest lessons I tried to impart to my daughter is that you need to work as hard as you possibly can to achieve excellence, and sometimes even then you fall short.

Our daughter has not shown any interest in becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but she’s attending a college she loves where she gets good grades and has made good friends. Recently, she said, “I’m so happy. Even the worst day is the best day.” That’s about as good as it gets in my book. But then again, since I was the mom who hosted the aforementioned ruinous sleepovers, my standards are pretty low.

Pharmacist Refuses to Fill Anti-Bleeding Drug

This article discusses an incident in Idaho where a pharmacist denied a woman her prescription because it wasn’t clear if she’d had an abortion or not. (The drug in question stops bleeding after childbirth or medical abortions.) The pharmacist apparently called to specifically asked if the drug was need for post-abortion care and due to privacy laws, wasn’t able to find out the answer. Apparently, the pharmacist refused to fill the prescription and then refusecd to direct the prescription elsewhere.
Disciplinary action has been taken, but I sincerely hope that they fired that pharmacist.

Seriously?
Anti-bleeding? Becuase bleeding, no matter the cause, is usually a bad sign. Sometimes it leads to death. Whatever the motive behind the denial, I think it’s irresponsible. Don’t become a pharmacist if you can’t dish out what’s prescribed, be it anti-bleeding, antivirals, whatever.

I’d also be curious to find out the gender of the pharmacist.

Apartment hunting is hard.
Basically, we need: a two bedroom that allows cats.
What we want, however, is a different story: two bathrooms, dishwasher, washer/dryer, parking.
But, living in that very first apartment taught me a lot about “necessities.” You can actually live without most of them. In fact, sometimes it’s easier. Although, I will say that having a washer/dryer would really make my life a lot better.

We have our first showing today.
Located at First and Logan, this 550 square foot (yes, I did say 550) charmer is two bedrooms and comes with everything (EVERYTHING – cable, internet, heat, trash…etc.) included except electricity for $950 per month. It has parking, though.
But seriously? 550 sq feet?

Tomorrow, I have a noon appointment to view a Capital Hill 2 bedroom that’s 800 square feet (more my size) and $965 for two people with gas/electricity/cable/internet extra. And no parking.

I’m also looking at a place off of 11th in Lowry – SPACIOUS (double the size of the first one) 2 bed/2 bath (a bathtub, oh my) with walk-in closets, a patio, washer/dryer, and parking. But, this place is kind of far away from everything and is $950 per month with nothing included.

So….we’ll see how this goes.

The options have begun to lay themselves out and I think it’ll be interesting to see where we end up. Right now, I’m very excited about the 10th Ave Cap Hill apt. But we’ll see.

I’m going to address two things today, the first being occupation-related and the second being women related.
Of course.

I’ve been put to work, officially. I’m now sitting in my office (a converted conference room with a clear view of the front whole bit of the office) making quality assurance calls to existing customers. But I have my own computer, my own email address, my own phone with a direct line, and my own space. I’m quite pleased with it all.
I got gas station coffee on the way to work this morning. It’s been a constant reminder all day that perhaps the nightlife doesn’t mix as well as might be anticipated with the working life. That alarm is a harsh reminder of the real world.
My first few calls were a bit rough, but I was practicing on all of the people in the office. They were making up ridiculous problems and laughing as I verbally stumbled around them, but in the end, all has gone smoothly.

But on to real things, really.

Yesterday, I came across this article and thought it well worth commenting on.

 Women Really Want to Marry a Rich Man
Wow.
I had a discussion with a few people about it yesterday, but I’m under the impression personally that the reason many successful women might want to marry a rich man is because of the implications of intelligence and motivation, desirable qualities in a partner. If a woman sees herself as intelligent and successful, she will obviously want to find herself an intellectual equal. Generally, you have to smart to get rich. (This is not to say that there aren’t smart people who aren’t rich, it’s just that few people can maintain a successful career trajectory without some semblance of intelligence.)
I want to marry a rich man, that’s not a lie. I don’t want to struggle financially as we navigate our lives, but if he’s only rich in monetary value and not in character, then the marriage would never survive.
However, I see that there are possible advantages to having one person working in the house, be it the male or the female. Marriage often results in children, and if one parent’s salary seems to only cover external household labor expenses (childcare, cleaning, general upkeep, etc), then it might make sense that that parent would stay home to do those things rather than contracting them out to other people.
Conversely, I believe that if one parent is constantly at home doing family labor and the other is out in the corporate world (or some other type of business setting), the marriage might also suffer as a lack of commonality between the two. With less to talk about and less in common, the two people might begin to pursue other interests or activities separately rather than being able to maintain a working dialogue stemming from a single experience set.

I guess in the long run, what I really want is to marry a smart man.
Idiocy is such a dealbreaker.

This is my first blog from work!
(I don’t know if there will be many to come, but perhaps, so we’ll mark the occasion just in case.)

I’ve been getting settled in the past couple of days, and so while things are still new, I’ve got some time on my hands. It does remind me of African time, though.
My capacity as telemarketer will lead me into unknown territory but I do believe I shall manage. There are a bunch of trade shows coming up, so after those, I’ll be busy attempting to manage the prospective clients.
But for now, I am content to be employed.

Soon will come the apartment; the hunt has already started.
And after that will come the second job, to make all those loose ends meet.

One day, I’ll be salaried somewhere, reminiscing about those days post-college, when I was dirt poor and loving my life. I often wonder if that nostalgia will happen, although I certainly hope that my life only increases in wonder as I age.

But it begins slowly, without fear, and for that, I am also grateful. It will blend into a routine and soon enough, it will be the daily grind. The commute, the coffee, the dry-clean only clothing piling up somewhere. All of that, and hopefully a lot more.
I hope to learn a lot while I’m here about office structure, information systems, law software, and everything else I can take. It’s going to be a grand adventure.