Welcome To The Hellmouth
Opened: August 8, 2008
Welcome to Emily The Vampire Slayer, my name is Emily (surprised?) & this is my personal webspace that is free for me to say as I like in. You don't agree with my ramblings? That's fine, leave. I'm not out to offend or upset anyone but, like most, I'm very opiniated... that can often get in the way of my desire to be friends with everyone I meet because I won't drop my beliefs for anyone. Why should I? But feel free to take a look around and comment my blogs. Any questions, issues or complaints can be addressed here.
The Female Of The Species
28.06.09
Essentially, they are one half of the population (myself included as one of them) and also a well-known poem by Rudyard Kipling:
So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of abstract justice - which no woman understands.
And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern; shall enthrall but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him and Her instincts never fail,
That the female of Her species is more deadly than the male!
I've had a weird weekend. If sometimes you have come upon me before when I am having a rant at men and their general ignorance and stupidity, you will understand what I am like and how strongly I feel about certain issues relating to men, women and ties between them or whatever. Am I feminist? I doubt it, I do not feel I care enough about men and their thoughts to be a feminist - feminism most definitely seems to require a lot of that. But then maybe I am because I recall the anger and indignation I felt upon discovering that some ignoramous in the 19th century wrote a book called 'The Mental, Moral and Physical Inferiority of Women'. It's a funny thing though, as Virginia Woolf would, and did in fact, say: the fact that some guy said that wise men do not say what they think of women, as Woolf puts it, it actually would appear that they say nothing else. Rudyard Kipling, for example, born and raised in India before later becoming a valuable and very proud member of the British Empire and a man, no doubt. And yet, he dedicated a rather long poem all to women. It seems a rather popular topic amongst men for centuries. For were not Shakespeare's plays often drove on in there plot by women with incredible strength of character.
This stems largely from a weekend spent reading Virginia Woolf's 'A Room Of One's Own', which is based upon a series of feminist lectures that she gave at Cambridge University in 1928. Much of it is rather sad. She talks in a past tense about the struggle of Women in literature and the famous imaginary sister of Shakespeare and her inevitable fate; but though Woolf talks in the past, she herself knows that much of it is valuable to her present and to the future, for these lectures were given at a time when things were improving: after the suffragette movement, after Jane Austen and the Bronte Sisters and George Eliot, nearly a hundred years after these great female novelists were published, and yet it is clear that she still lives among a patriarchy as she talks of how she was forbidden to enter the library as a woman. She gave the advice that above all else women should learn to put aside their anger and passion at being subjected to such treatment for so long and seize with both hands the new opportunities that were beginning to open up and write for art, not for their own personal need and fulfillment. And now it's weird... to look back at nearly another hundred years later and see how far the human race has come... and how much it still needs to improve. In the UK alone in 2007, nearly 400,000 women were victims of domestic abuse. Even today, as in right now as I type, women earn far less than men; some women performing exactly the same jobs earn up to 60% less. Why? I am stuck for an answer.
I think there is so much to be said and a person could find themselves going on forever. And there seems so little point in doing so. I have no doubt that the only people this kind of thing will affect is the women; men could read this and will think "this doesn't affect me, at least I'm getting more" so we are stuck in a rut when half the population is more than happy to see us paid less. We could protest, of course, we did it before and we have every reason to do it again... but there just isn't enough backing for it right now, feeling isn't quite strong enough to cause an uproar. I like the government's plan for businesses to post salaries for men and women to show the real loss a woman is making next to her male colleagues. It may shock a few people into action, because it is a ridiculous fact that a penis should be paid more, I've never known one be anything but an unnecessary handicap.
I shall stop here, I promise that is it about that.
This week I made my first steps with the International Baccalaureate by presenting my ideas to Mr Daly, he said it was a massively interesting topic and that the website was a great idea. Excellent, I am happy now. By the way, I checked out Manchester and found it will probably be even tougher than I thought, I'd be looking at 3 A's to get in and even then it's not guaranteed... plus, I'm not a huge fan of the city of Manchester. Ones I'm maybe considering applying for are: Glasgow or Edinburgh (but not both), York, Lancaster, East Anglia... and some others I've been thinking about. To be honest, I still don't really know. An awful lot will depend on my AS results, I can then start thinking about what is a realistic target. In my own life, though, I visited Lindisfarne which is actually known as 'The Holy Island', it's up near Scotland and was used as a lookout in the 16th century so that the English knew when the Scots would attack. And it was also apparently the first place the Vikings arrived in England. And I went to see the gorgeous Angel of the North so I have included a picture.
9th July - Trip To Howarth
26th August - Lancaster University Open Day
1st September - Work Experience Meeting
6th October - York University Open Day
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