smokingboot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smokingboot) wrote2024-08-05 09:37 am
smokingboot) wrote2024-08-05 09:37 am
Needing the Rain
The house is pleasant with an extraordinary view across to the West, beyond the town and the windfarm, up to the Campsies. I want to go there! Much of the farmland to the left appears to be Doc Holiday's and apparently his house is not so very far away, albeit further up. The bbq was on and all there was to do was eat, drink, and talk while watching the sun lower over the far hills.
A lady in orange joined us. I couldn't work out if she was our host's ex-wife or his sister. She was very jolly until she announced apropos of nothing;
'I'm a total racist. I think we should send them all back.'
'Who?' That was me, taken aback by what I was hearing.
'All of them. All those men coming over on boats.'
'Where to?'
'Wherever they came from.'
Then she started a very familiar shpiel. I didn't know what to do. She was clearly close family to the host. In a bigger group I could have engaged with a little feistiness, or just left , but I wasn't in a position to do either. I looked across at my friends and the others to try to gauge an appropriate response.
They didn't engage on the subject with her at all. They didn't argue, they just brought up new subjects and carried on with those. Someone began a new topic, then someone else brought up a different topic as though each contributor was politely and doggedly adding a paving stone to the path away from her preferred destination. It worked, though I was pleased to eventually be able to change seats.
**
The Khelif controversy is everywhere. Hamori seems to have been posting regrettable stuff including a poster which depicts her facing off against a huge male minotaur in the ring. When I saw it I knew, as surely as I understood mean girls in class, that this wasn't just for the audience. This was a psych-out as overt as Tyson Fury might attempt. Jeering and goading one's opponent prior to the fight can be a big part of the boxing build-up. But girls face extra pain when they are told they are ugly, and whatever the facts of Khelif's eligibility, she has been brought up as a female human in a world where to be a big strong woman is often derided. Most likely she'll have heard plenty of opinions about her feminine attractiveness or lack of it. This was to tell the big girl that she's exactly what all the sneers are for, that they were right all along and she's a monster with its connotations of evil and brutishness. This was to bleed her out before she even got in the ring. It's part of the tradition with extra schoolgirl sting.
There was rain last night, and cooling air while my temperature soared. So much pain around right now. I was sorry to see Carini on her knees weeping, sorry to hear that Khelif was tearful, declaring 'I am a woman'. But I'm glad Hamori lost, same as I was glad to get away from the lady in orange. Life is hard, it doesn't have to be cruel.
A lady in orange joined us. I couldn't work out if she was our host's ex-wife or his sister. She was very jolly until she announced apropos of nothing;
'I'm a total racist. I think we should send them all back.'
'Who?' That was me, taken aback by what I was hearing.
'All of them. All those men coming over on boats.'
'Where to?'
'Wherever they came from.'
Then she started a very familiar shpiel. I didn't know what to do. She was clearly close family to the host. In a bigger group I could have engaged with a little feistiness, or just left , but I wasn't in a position to do either. I looked across at my friends and the others to try to gauge an appropriate response.
They didn't engage on the subject with her at all. They didn't argue, they just brought up new subjects and carried on with those. Someone began a new topic, then someone else brought up a different topic as though each contributor was politely and doggedly adding a paving stone to the path away from her preferred destination. It worked, though I was pleased to eventually be able to change seats.
**
The Khelif controversy is everywhere. Hamori seems to have been posting regrettable stuff including a poster which depicts her facing off against a huge male minotaur in the ring. When I saw it I knew, as surely as I understood mean girls in class, that this wasn't just for the audience. This was a psych-out as overt as Tyson Fury might attempt. Jeering and goading one's opponent prior to the fight can be a big part of the boxing build-up. But girls face extra pain when they are told they are ugly, and whatever the facts of Khelif's eligibility, she has been brought up as a female human in a world where to be a big strong woman is often derided. Most likely she'll have heard plenty of opinions about her feminine attractiveness or lack of it. This was to tell the big girl that she's exactly what all the sneers are for, that they were right all along and she's a monster with its connotations of evil and brutishness. This was to bleed her out before she even got in the ring. It's part of the tradition with extra schoolgirl sting.
There was rain last night, and cooling air while my temperature soared. So much pain around right now. I was sorry to see Carini on her knees weeping, sorry to hear that Khelif was tearful, declaring 'I am a woman'. But I'm glad Hamori lost, same as I was glad to get away from the lady in orange. Life is hard, it doesn't have to be cruel.