Arabella Suicide in Pirate Girl
Get to know Arabella better over at SuicideGirls.com!
by SG’s Team Agony feat. Fabrizia and Morgan
Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.
Q. So my boyfriend and I have been together for almost five months. At first everything was great. He announced us being together on Facebook and all that. But one day he suddenly set his status to single. I didn’t make a big deal out of it because I don’t even have mine up. But then he blocked me from viewing his wall, and when I asked him about it, he lied and said he turned it off for everybody. When I found out that wasn’t true and confronted him, he turned it back on but took away my posting rights so that I couldn’t make comments.
When I scrolled to read old posts he had one that said: “Its about to get cold, I need a nice girl to keep me warm. Is she here?” When I asked him about it, he said he posted it because we had a fight and he felt like I was going to break up with him. I have a decent memory and we hadn’t fought that day, but I second guessed myself and went along with it. Then he told me it was better that we weren’t Facebook friends because I read too much into his cryptic posts and he didn’t want me to think anything was going on just because girls post on his wall.
Despite the online stuff, everything else seems OK. He texts a few times throughout the day and we hangout almost every evening. But he is unemployed, so I am the one doing the driving, the food buying, the entertainment purchasing, etc. My question is: Am I being used for money, sex, and transportation? Or am I seriously being paranoid and over-reactive?
A: I think it would be wise for you to sit down and give some thought as to what exactly it is about this guy that you find attractive. Based on what you have shared, he doesn’t seem to have many redeeming qualities. For one, he is unemployed and you are questioning if you are being used. If you have to question that, I would assume that he is not showing appreciation or making you feel valued for being so accommodating. At the very least, he should be bending over backwards to make you feel cared for, special, beautiful, secure, etc. However, from what you have stated he isn’t even doing that! He’s lying to you, being elusive about his relationship status online, and placing the blame for his shitty behavior on you. The guy sounds like he isn’t worth all of the energy and thought you are placing on him. So to answer your question, no, I do not think you are over-reacting at all. This guy has proven to be dishonest and immature. Please think about what I am saying and try to assess whether or not this is truly worth your energy and your heart. I suspect that you already know that you can do better!
Best of luck to you.
Fabrizia
xoxo
Q. I recently asked a girl to go on a date with me, she said that she was a lesbian, but she would still go on the date with me because I’m a nice guy and kinda cute. We went on the date, got some good food, saw a movie, then came back to my place. She kept reiterating that “nothing is going to happen,” and that she had a girl friend (who I met just a couple days later). We got back to my place, hung out a little, and watched another movie. She got close and touchy, but nothing beyond that happened. We went out to lunch and on a couple more dates after that, with and without her girlfriend. She would get touchy with me at times while holding her girls hand. Anyway, I’m just super confused about what I should do or how I should act and what any of this means. Can you help me?
A: It sounds like your friend has made her intentions clear verbally but is confusing you by getting physically close. Keep in mind that she may just be a particularly touchy-feely person. Some people are affectionate in that way and that doesn’t necessarily mean they have any interest in getting into your pants. Despite potentially confusing physical interactions, I would advice you to listen to what your friend has been saying to you. In your own words she has been reiterating that nothing is going to happen between you two. If her words say, “we are only going to be friends” –– respect those words. Look at it this way: if you assume you have no chance and it turns out that your friend IS attracted to you, it can be a pleasant surprise. As opposed to waiting around hoping you’ll be the dude exception to her rules of attraction and being constantly disappointed.
Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com
What’s Cooking In SG’s Kitchen? Ryker Suicide’s Pumpkin Lasagna
This is my take on a Robert Irvine recipe. I didn’t like his original too much, it did absolutely nothing for me. Tasted like a million other lasagnas I’ve had before. So I made some changes and the result is this incredible fall dish. So scrumptious!
Ingredients:
(vegan eggplant sausage also works terrific!!!)
Preparation:
Sauté onion in olive oil until translucent, add garlic and continue cooking until aromatic (about 30-45 seconds). Then add meat and crumble with wooden spoon as it browns. Add zucchini, cook an additional 5 minutes and then set aside. Season with a bit of five spice (or substitute cinnamon, clove, fennel seed, Sichuan pepper, anise seed, and/or nutmeg).
In a large pot boil salted water and cook lasagna noodles.
In a medium pot combine tomato sauce and wine, bring to a boil then add salt, pepper, and herbs to taste. Set to simmer stirring occasionally.
In a large mixing bowl mix together ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmigiano/Romano cheeses. Add pumpkin puree and eggs and combine well. Season with five spice, and salt/pepper to taste.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Once noodles are cooked and drained, start to piece together lasagna as follows: 1 layer of sauce, 1 layer of pasta, then add half of the sausage mixture and half of the cheese mixture. 1 more layer of pasta, 1 more layer of sauce, and the remaining sausage and cheese filling. Top with 1 more layer of pasta and sauce. Sprinkle mozzarella, and the Parmigiano/Romano cheese blend on top.
Bake for about 25-30 minutes until cheese is melted, bubbly and beginning to brown. Allow to cool about 15 minutes before serving so lasagna can set.
Eat and enjoy!
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What’s Cooking In SG’s Kitchen? Mimmi Suicide’s Vegan Chili With Guacamole
“I wanted to write a religious Left Behind series, but for secular liberals.”
– Chuck Palahniuk
During our previous conversation with Chuck Palahniuk, which occurred shortly before the publication of his Sunset Boulevard-inspired book, Tell All, he spoke about how the ultimate name to drop was God’s. For this interview, we reconvene to discuss the domain of the G-man’s nemesis –– Hell –– which serves as the setting for Palahniuk’s wickedly inspired new novel, Damned.
According to Damned’s canon, evolution is hokum and Charles Darwin is resigned to hellfire and damnation alongside Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, and the entire Kennedy clan. Turns out you can end up there by committing all manner of trivial shit, such as dropping the f-bomb or honking your horn one too many times. Worshipping the wrong god will also land you in the hot spot, as will suffering the inconvenience of being a deposed one (thus the likes of Thor can also be found hanging out downstairs).
The topography of Palahniuk’s netherworld features a greasy Dandruff Desert, Great Plains of Discarded Razor Blades, a Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions, a Lake of Tepid Bile, and the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm (where in Hell, “porn is creating an effect equivalent to that of global warming on earth”). Those that find themselves there have two main career options: pornography or telemarketing.
The narrative of Damned follows Madison Spencer, the somewhat chubby, eternally optimistic13-year old progeny of a self-obsessed Hollywood star and a billionaire businessman. As a reflection of her mother’s glamour, Madison is an abject failure, however, the upside of her troubled childhood is that after a lifetime (albeit a short one) of electrolysis and herbal high colonics, Hell holds little terror for her.
Having been resigned to Hell after inhaling marijuana, and eschewing an eternity being “ogled by millions of men with serious intimacy problems,” Madison finds gainful employment in telemarketing, an occupation that she finds unexpectedly fulfilling. Ensconced in one of Hell’s endless call centers, which has banks of phones that are programmed to auto-dial the earthbound specifically at dinnertime, Madison finds redemption. The question is, ultimately, will she want it?
Being in the business of asking people questions for a living, I felt a certain affinity with Madison. For the start of my conversation with Palahniuk, it therefore seemed only appropriate to borrow a little something from her telemarketing script…
Read our exclusive interview with Chuck Palahniuk on SuicideGirls.com.
Get to know Bob better over at SuicideGirls.com!
by Blogbot
Went down to @OccupyLA for the fourth Saturday in a row.
Again, a lot has changed in a week.
The camp now has a grand entrance, and has expanded to all sides of City Hall:
And the tents have expanded to multi-room bijou residences – welcome to Chateau #OWS West:
Some of the grander dwellings even have sculptures in their “front yard.”
Inside things could do with sprucing up though. While awaiting a major intervention from ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, we’re putting SG in charge of the @OccupyLA interior design committee. Need air beds, fairy lights, shag pile rugs, and disco balls ASAP.
Otherwise, life is good. The #OccupyLA activity schedule is always packed:
There’s lots of opportunities for education (no student loans required!):
A newly established theater company:
The live music is pretty good too (just be wary of the dodgy drum circles, which are currently causing more distress to the #OWS movement than anything the 1% can do).
There’s a pumpkin patch for seasonal fruit — and political and corporate vegetables:
There’s lots of places to meditate on the finer points of campaign finance reform — like here:
And here — though a yoga instructor is wanted:
There’s a creche:
Because it’s important for kids to learn how democracy works:
Pets are welcome:
Though the onsite kitchen is temporarily shut down while awaiting Health & Safety permits, there’s still some pretty stylish dining opportunities. Today, someone donated the remainder of a wedding buffet, which came complete with exceedingly high class waiting staff:
There’s also an onsite coffee truck for latte liberals (like me):
The Bike Repair Shop is apparently where all the cool kids hangout:
And the media tent has gone solar (panels modeled by the lovely Gia):
Just one (minor) criticism: Protesting doesn’t make tie dye OK. You’ll never get taken seriously wearing that shit (sorry!).
Despite the odd dodgy fashion faux pas, every #OWS protester looks beautiful today:
I pity the fool that don’t fight for his [or her] rights:
And for financial reform – such the reinstatement of the Glass Steagall Act:
Many thanks to the fabulous Gia (a.k.a. @MissBrass) and all SG’s friends @OccupyLA for everything they’re doing on behalf of all us 99 Percenters.
Love You
XOX
by Yashar Ali
You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!
Sound familiar?
If you’re a woman, it probably does.
Do you ever hear any of these comments from your spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or relatives after you have expressed frustration, sadness, or anger about something they have done or said?
When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling — that’s inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation — pure and simple.
And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feeds an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It’s patently false and unfair.
I think it’s time to separate inconsiderate behavior from emotional manipulation and we need to use a word not found in our normal vocabulary.
I want to introduce a helpful term to identify these reactions: gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a term, often used by mental health professionals (I am not one), to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they’re crazy.
The term comes from the 1944 MGM film, Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. Bergman’s husband in the film, played by Charles Boyer, wants to get his hands on her jewelry. He realizes he can accomplish this by having her certified as insane and hauled off to a mental institution. To pull of this task, he intentionally sets the gaslights in their home to flicker off and on, and every time Bergman’s character reacts to it, he tells her she’s just seeing things. In this setting, a gaslighter is someone who presents false information to alter the victim’s perception of him or herself.
Today, when the term is referenced, it’s usually because the perpetrator says things like, “You’re so stupid” or “No one will ever want you,” to the victim. This is an intentional, pre-meditated form of gaslighting, much like the actions of Charles Boyer’s character in Gaslight, where he strategically plots to confuse Ingrid Bergman’s character into believing herself unhinged.
The form of gaslighting I’m addressing is not always pre-mediated or intentional, which makes it worse, because it means all of us, especially women, have dealt with it at one time or another.
Those who engage in gaslighting create a reaction — whether it’s anger, frustration, sadness — in the person they are dealing with. Then, when that person reacts, the gaslighter makes them feel uncomfortable and insecure by behaving as if their feelings aren’t rational or normal.
My friend Anna (all names changed to protect privacy) is married to a man who feels it necessary to make random and unprompted comments about her weight. Whenever she gets upset or frustrated with his insensitive comments, he responds in the same, defeating way, “You’re so sensitive. I’m just joking.”
My friend Abbie works for a man who finds a way, almost daily, to unnecessarily shoot down her performance and her work product. Comments like, “Can’t you do something right?” or “Why did I hire you?” are regular occurrences for her. Her boss has no problem firing people (he does it regularly), so you wouldn’t know that based on these comments, Abbie has worked for him for six years. But every time she stands up for herself and says, “It doesn’t help me when you say these things,” she gets the same reaction: “Relax; you’re overreacting.”
Abbie thinks her boss is just being a jerk in these moments, but the truth is, he is making those comments to manipulate her into thinking her reactions are out of whack. And it’s exactly that kind manipulation that has left her feeling guilty about being sensitive, and as a result, she has not left her job.
But gaslighting can be as simple as someone smiling and saying something like, “You’re so sensitive,” to somebody else. Such a comment may seem innocuous enough, but in that moment, the speaker is making a judgment about how someone else should feel.
While dealing with gaslighting isn’t a universal truth for women, we all certainly know plenty of women who encounter it at work, home, or in personal relationships.
And the act of gaslighting does not simply affect women who are not quite sure of themselves. Even vocal, confident, assertive women are vulnerable to gaslighting.
Why?
Because women bare the brunt of our neurosis. It is much easier for us to place our emotional burdens on the shoulders of our wives, our female friends, our girlfriends, our female employees, our female colleagues, than for us to impose them on the shoulders of men.
It’s a whole lot easier to emotionally manipulate someone who has been conditioned by our society to accept it. We continue to burden women because they don’t refuse our burdens as easily. It’s the ultimate cowardice.
Whether gaslighting is conscious or not, it produces the same result: it renders some women emotionally mute.
These women aren’t able to clearly express to their spouses that what is said or done to them is hurtful. They can’t tell their boss that his behavior is disrespectful and prevents them from doing their best work. They can’t tell their parents that, when they are being critical, they are doing more harm than good.
When these women receive any sort of push back to their reactions, they often brush it off by saying, “Forget it, it’s okay.”
That “forget it” isn’t just about dismissing a thought, it is about self-dismissal. It’s heartbreaking.
No wonder some women are unconsciously passive aggressive when expressing anger, sadness, or frustration. For years, they have been subjected to so much gaslighting that they can no longer express themselves in a way that feels authentic to them.
They say, “I’m sorry,” before giving their opinion. In an email or text message, they place a smiley face next to a serious question or concern, thereby reducing the impact of having to express their true feelings.
You know how it looks: “You’re late :)”
These are the same women who stay in relationships they don’t belong in, who don’t follow their dreams, who withdraw from the kind of life they want to live.
Since I have embarked on this feminist self-exploration in my life and in the lives of the women I know, this concept of women as “crazy” has really emerged as a major issue in society at large and an equally major frustration for the women in my life, in general.
From the way women are portrayed on reality shows, to how we condition boys and girls to see women, we have come to accept the idea that women are unbalanced, irrational individuals, especially in times of anger and frustration.
Just the other day, on a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a flight attendant who had come to recognize me from my many trips asked me what I did for a living. When I told her that I write mainly about women, she immediately laughed and asked, “Oh, about how crazy we are?”
Her gut reaction to my work made me really depressed. While she made her response in jest, her question nonetheless makes visible a pattern of sexist commentary that travels through all facets of society on how men view women, which also greatly impacts how women may view themselves.
As far as I am concerned, the epidemic of gaslighting is part of the struggle against the obstacles of inequality that women constantly face. Acts of gaslighting steal their most powerful tool: their voice. This is something we do to women every day, in many different ways.
I don’t think this idea that women are “crazy,” is based in some sort of massive conspiracy. Rather, I believe it’s connected to the slow and steady drumbeat of women being undermined and dismissed, on a daily basis. And gaslighting is one of many reasons why we are dealing with this public construction of women as “crazy.”
I recognize that I’ve been guilty of gaslighting my women friends in the past (but never my male friends — surprise, surprise). It’s shameful, but I’m glad I realized that I did it on occasion and put a stop to it.
While I take total responsibility for my actions, I do believe that I, along with many men, am a byproduct of our conditioning. It’s about the general insight our conditioning gives us into admitting fault and exposing any emotion.
When we are discouraged in our youth and early adulthood from expressing emotion, it causes many of us to remain steadfast in our refusal to express regret when we see someone in pain from our actions.
When I was writing this piece, I was reminded of one of my favorite Gloria Steinem quotes, “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”
So for many of us, it’s first about unlearning how to flicker those gaslights and learning how to acknowledge and understand the feelings, opinions, and positions of the women in our lives.
But isn’t the issue of gaslighting ultimately about whether we are conditioned to believe that women’s opinions don’t hold as much weight as ours? That what women have to say, what they feel, isn’t quite as legitimate?
Yashar Ali is a Los Angeles-based columnist, commentator, and political veteran whose writings about women, gender inequality, political heroism, and society are showcased on his website, The Current Conscience. Please follow him on Twitter and join him on Facebook.
He will be soon releasing our first short e-book, entitled, A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not Crazy — How We Teach Men That Women Are Crazy and How We Convince Women To Ignore Their Instincts.
If you are interested and want to be notified when the book is released, please click here to sign-up.
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