"Choose or be a victim"...

...my dad's words, said to me and my sister from a very young age. Little did he know that his way of getting us to pick a flavour of ice cream/what to have for dinner/what to watch at the cinema would have such a profound effect.

Since my 'Girl Talk' post I have been reading and researching on the topic of gender. The lecturer I emailed with my thoughts basically hit the nail on the head by suggesting that not being marginalized by gender takes a big dose of personal accountability and a huge step away from 'victimhood'. The words ‘personal accountability’ and ‘victimhood’ seem especially relevant given the latest happenings in the U.K. don’t you think?

This notion of personal accountability seems an important idea within the writings of existentialists in that the individual is responsible for giving their own life meaning and, therefore, living ‘authentically’: a word seen time and time again within existentialist writings. An example of this comes, again, from Simone De Beauvoir - I've developed an obsession for various reasons. Her fiction and non-fiction work is permeated with ideas on what it is to be a 'woman'; one of the main ideas seems to be that a major thing us girls can afford ourselves is choice; not to live one way or another but to, instead, choose how to live as it suits us. Lucky for our society the majority of people have not yet cottoned on to this and still turn up for work and await instructions, it’s ‘safer’ that way, for all involved.

Personally, I love this idea of choice and freedom and I don't mean the hegemonic freedom of the weekend I mean the knowledge that it really is all on your shoulders how you live your life which brings with it the responsibility to give that life meaning before it gets snuffed out. I discovered the extent of my freedom – which, curiously, actually feels a lot like abandonment – at a young age resulting in most of my life being punctuated with bouts of depression and anxiety: like I said, it’s safer on the other side. That said, I would never return to 'bliss'; I’ve made my choice in that respect. In terms of being a woman, my main anxiety in both everyday life and the more specialist areas of academia involved knowing where I should ‘stand’ and what I should say in order to assert myself and be seen as equal. I.e.: “do I need to mimic the men I encounter or do I need to be ultra 'girly' in a bid of irony…make up or no make up?” The answer: do what the fuck you want to do you idiot! Think about how you want to live your life as ‘you’, not a gender and disorganize this means of organization. Of course, years of 'conditioning' via the media and various discourses floating around makes taking responsibility difficult, i.e. I am taking responsibility for my life!...or am I? Are the choices I make my own or have I been influenced? The answer: yes, of course we have all been influenced but doing nothing for fear that it is not really your choice or moaning that there’s no point in even trying seems to be verging on victimhood once again.

If I write it, will it come?

My 'silence' of late is a product of a little back and forth I've been having with myself with regards to the inspiration/work dynamic; in other words: can you force inspiration and, if so, does doing so only produce work of contrivance and, worse, inauthenticity in that it was not born for the sake of itself but instead to satisfy something else? This question seems to highlight, perhaps, an irony of creativity in that it should not actually be 'created' but instead create itself. This line of thinking reminds me of a conversation I had recently concerning an artists work assuming it's own meaning and identity once it is offered to an audience. For example an audiences interpretation of an artists work can be the complete opposite of the artists initial intention see South Park's 'The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs' for more on this topic.