Butter side down has butter side up beat.
‘Lending Out Books’ by Hal Sirowitz
You’re always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she’ll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn’t have the time
to read them, & she’s afraid if she sees you again
you’ll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.
“You know a white person took this picture.”
The giant golden-crowned flying fox (Acerodon jubatus), also known as the golden-capped fruit bat, is a rare megabat and one of the largest bats in the world. The species is endangered and is currently facing the possibility of extinction because of poaching and forest destruction. It is endemic to forests in the Philippines.
‘It is not so much that I miss you’ by Dorothea Grossman
It is not so much that I miss you
as the remembering
which I suppose is a form of missing
except more positive,
like the time of the blackout
when fear was my first response
followed by love of the dark.
I think I like GIRLS now, mostly because of this scene.
I came here to say that I don’t think we should see each other anymore. I don’t think we should see each other anymore and it makes me feel stupid and pathetic to get a picture of your dick that I know was meant for someone else that you didn’t even bother to explain because I made you think you don’t have to explain…I’m not asking anything. I’m really not asking you for anything. I’ve never asked you for anything. I don’t even want anything, okay? I respect your right to see and do whoever you want. And I don’t even want a boyfriend so…I just want someone who wants to hang out all the time, who thinks I’m the best person in the world, and wants to have sex with only me. And it makes me feel very stupid to tell you this because it makes me sound like a girl who wants to like go to brunch. And I really don’t want to go to brunch. And I don’t want you to like sit on the couch while I shop or like even meet my friends. I don’t even want that, okay? But I also don’t want to share a sex partner with a girl who seems to have asked for a picture of your dick. And also I don’t want a picture of your dick because I live very near you so if you wanted me to look at your dick I could just come over and look at your dick! And I don’t really see you hearing me and I don’t really see you changing so…I just summed it up. And I am sorry that I didn’t figure it out sooner and you must think I’m stupider than you thought I was already. But consider it a testament to your charms because you may not know this but you are very, very charming and I really care about you. And I don’t want to because it feels too shitty for me. So I’m gonna leave.
“
| — | Girls, HBO |
The problem with men being offended by women not automatically trusting them is an issue of entitlement as well as an issue of who gets to define reality and for whom. No one is entitled to another’s trust. This is especially true when the person who is distrustful is a member of a class that is disproportionately affected by harassment, violence and degradation and the person who is not being trusted is a member of the class that most often perpetrates that degradation. In addition, when men claim that feminists have no reason not to trust them, they are erasing lived experiences and realities as well as the fact that in some regard they benefit from the privilege that this systematic degradation perpetuates.
