Feminist friends, please help! How do I get past the bothersome cissexist feeling that my womb and ovaries are integral (even fundamental) to my femaleness? Do I need to?

This is something I struggle with: I feel that bleeding monthly, worrying about pregnancy, contemplating abortion, the possibility of motherhood, &c., are major parts of what it means for me personally to feel female. I can’t separate these concerns from my other concerns-as-woman. To be clear: I don’t extrapolate from this that transwomen (or, come to that, women who’ve had hysterectomies, or underweight women who don’t menstruate, or infertile women, or anyone who identifies as a woman) are not “real” women. Every womanhood is different. But I feel strongly that my womanhood is wombed and ovaried.

I’m really not sure if this is okay or not.

Ophelia Xx

Rubbish things:

• Barclay’s Bank deciding to change their closing time to 4.30pm, wtf?
• Being minuscule.
• “Mocha” that is actually burnt coffee with a huge slug of chocolate syrup at the bottom that does not mix in however vigorously you stir it.
• Waiting in the cold for 40 minutes for Tom’s bus to return him to his flat.
• A man on the train falling asleep on my shoulder.
• A different man sitting next to me on a different train who is so broad-shouldered that I only get half a seat, and putting up with him spreading his Evening Standard over my lap.
• Having to get up at 5.45am tomorrow, waaaa.
• LiveJournal increasingly making html editing less accessible and intuitive. >:(

Lovely things:

• Bringing cake to people, and watching them eat it with enthusiasm.
• Cold, sunny mornings.
• Elderly ladies on the train (in the quiet carriage!) teaching each other how to use their mobile phones.
• Apple pastries.
• A cute girl smiling at me on the tube.
• Having Tom warm up my cold hands with his warm ones.
• Surreal discussions about London bears.
• Feeding a turtle.
• Mushroom risotto.
• Being silly.

Ophelia Xx

I’m not feeling very special. Maybe I need a clothesline.

Ophelia Xx

Oh, Hillier Garden Centres… How can I make her feel special this Christmas?


My reaction to this advertisement was to splutter incoherently things like “What… Why… Who would… Seriously?!” for almost a minute, alternately pointing in horror at the paper, and staring, wide-eyed, at my mother and father (who were pottering around in the kitchen at the time) with an expression of total confusion mingled with a terrible but impotent rage.

So I thought I’d share. :)

Still, at least coordinating accessories are available.

Ophelia Xx

Today I saw a huuuuuuge dog pulling along a small child in a little carriage. The dog looked like a brown bear, but cuddlier. I kinda wanted to ruffle its fur and make strange affectionate noises at it, but it was busy with transporting children and I didn’t want to disturb it.

Ophelia Xx

friend_of_tofu alerted me to this work of genius about how (male) belief in the dominance of evolutionary psychology has an evolutionary basis. :D

Ophelia Xx

Spider: A Story of Betrayal

The other day
I turned back my duvet to re-arrange it before getting into bed
And there was a spider on my mattress!
It went
*lurk*
So I blew on it and it ran away.
~ Fin ~

ETA: After discussions with Rob, we have decided that this anecdote should be adapted into a screenplay with David Suchet cast as the spider, and Clint Eastwood as ophe1ia_in_red.

Ophelia Xx

I have a confession to make: I watch Casualty. I have done since I was about 11. (My parents wouldn’t let me until then, deeming that I would be too upset by the deaths to cope with it when I was younger. I cried buckets at E.T.; it was a wise decision.)

Casualty often seems to have a not-so-subtle public service remit; it carries, now and again, an “if you are affected by any of the issues raised in this programme, call…” type message afterwards, when there’s been a discussion of reproductive choice, self-harm, eating disorders, &c. Or at least, it used to. I approved: the way these issues were presented was usually somewhat simplistic, but it was always sympathetic and non-judgemental. Perhaps everyone around the person who wanted an abortion/cut themselves/ate poorly thought they were a loony, but it would eventually come out, usually with the gentle cajoling of a kindly nurse, that they had their reasons, and that those reasons were understandable to anyone with a shred of empathy, even if they were confused or misinformed.

This hasn’t been going so well lately, though. In the last three episodes, a major character had an early-term chemical abortion; a friend of a patient carried in her handbag a pair of compasses with which to cut herself; and a young teenage patient suffered from anorexia. The presentations of all three characters during these episodes—all female characters, incidentally—was unusually faily for Casualty.




ETA: Have written to the BBC. Woo.

Ophelia Xx

I sold something today! Yay!

However, on Thursday I will have to do some customer service roleplay with my manager, which I think I’m going to find really embarrassing…

Ophelia Xx

Clare & The Reasons’ tour got funded, and today I got my gifts for having donated. :)

I have a signed copy of the new album, a hand-coloured lyric book, and a signed postcard. I squeed muchly when I opened the envelope, because, well, yay! However, I did get a little pang of sadness because there was no Lawrence to show them to, and I don’t know anyone else who likes C&TR and who would be as excited about these gifts as I am. Hum.

If anyone would like my other copy of the album, let me know. (The digipak is cracked but the CD itself is in perfect condition.) C&TR are a lovely band; you need them in your life. Also, I need you to love them so that I have someone to see them with when they’re in the UK in March!

Ophelia Xx

Meh, four days of work in a row, starting tomorrow. I am not looking forward to this. It’s not that I have an inherently lazy attitude (although that’s part of it, obviously); it’s that it’s four days of retail work, and that means four days of standing up for seven or eight hours. Sigh.

Maybe I’ll sell something!

Oh, apparently we have a stock check on Tuesday, so at least there’ll be something for me to do that isn’t failing to sell things.

Nothing much to report, except that Christmas shopping continues apace and I am excited about getting parcels in the post, even if they contain things for other people. Parcels! ^_^

Ophelia Xx

Last night was so tiring, argh. I finished at 8pm, caught the train, got rescued by my mother from the torrential rain, got home at 8.45pm, had dinner, tried to stay awake, slept fitfully, and had horrible dreams about being beaten by ninjas for being insufficiently good at sweeping stockrooms.

I’m supposed to be NaNoing today but I’m feeling very lethargic.

However, on the upside, my dad’s company seems to be about to give me some super-fun illustration work! Yay!


Ophelia Xx

Today was my second day of my exciting retail job. I didn’t sell anything, but I almost sold a shirt (£105, gulp). I would have made it if we’d had it in the right size. My boss has promised me that tomorrow he’ll go through customer approach, putting together outfits, the finer details of the collection, &c., which I think will make me feel a bit more confident; at the moment I’m wary of going up to anyone and asking them if they need help, because most of the time I don’t feel capable of actually giving any help if they do need it.

I’m working the late hours tomorrow, so I get a lie-in. Hurrah for me.

Is it me or is iTunes even flakier than usual these days?

Ophelia Xx

Today I NaNo’d as if there were no tomorrow. I’m still behind, but not as desperately behind as I was this morning, and I rather enjoyed myself, so it’s all good really.

I seem to be listening to Snow Patrol. *blames xandratheblue*

Ophelia Xx

Today’s extract:


I like this passage because it pulls together the enormity of what Hannah is facing: a whole living world with an ecology and a physics and a system of ethics, a world that really matters to its inhabitants. Its fate is important, not only because the future of human ideas—and hence, the future of the human race!—depends on it (she doesn’t really understand this yet), but because the creatures in it have real lives and real concerns that are no less significant for being of a different kind.

I’m not fond of Hannah yet, though. I feel she’s a bit flat and barely more than a narrator. I’m hoping that this trip to take the goatfish to a lake will make her feel more solid. (I wrote the goatfish passage ahead of time because it was so strong in my mind, but it hasn’t actually happened chronologically yet.)



Crossposted from blue_sky_and_jam’s latest entry on Dreamwidth.

Another Large Department Store™ has considerably better music than Large Department Store™. At Another Large Department Store™, they actually play different music all day long, rather than having one 45 minute CD (featuring two Cliff Richard songs!) with which to torture their already long-suffering staff.

However, sometimes the music selection is a bit surprising. For example, today I heard Way Beyond by Morcheeba, which goes like this:


Not really a retail-friendly sentiment, is it?

(They also played a version of All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth which was sung without a lisp. “It seems so long since I could say / Sister Susie sitting on a thistle.” YOU JUST DID, vocalist! *facepalm*)

Ophelia Xx

Today I had my first proper day in my shiny new underpaid retail job! It was quite fun, actually, although I have a touch of Retail Worker Foot Ache, which (I shall explain in case you have never experienced it) is a severe aching of the feet that appears all at once the moment you notice that it is past 4pm. However, it’s not as bad as I was expecting, which I think is partly because my shoes are very good (they are Clarks’ Bootleg brand, which you are right in thinking is primarily for school shoes, but for that very reason, they are designed to be comfortable and hard-wearing), and partly because the floor I am standing on for most of the time at Large Department Store™ is covered with quite a soft carpet, and that makes a surprisingly noticeable difference.

Anyway, I don’t know why I told you that. It was extremely dull. More interesting things to note are that today we (and by ‘we’, I mean my manager) took over £3,000; that this job is the perfect outlet for my bizarre compulsion to Arrange Things Nicely With Ridiculous Attention To Detail; and that, while I still feel that fur is far preferable when still attached to a rabbit, I will reluctantly admit that I can see the appeal: I was hanging up some rabbit fur scarves today and they are so soft that you almost can’t feel anything when you stroke them. *begrudging swoon*

The customers seem generally very pleasant and accommodating. And I really like my manager. :)

Tomorrow I have a day off, so I can hopefully catch up with my poor neglected novel. Today I drew the goatfish during my break. I may post a it at some point because I am quite pleased with my drawing; I feel it neatly captures a sense of both goatiness and fishiness in equal measure.

Ophelia Xx

Things I Learned In Battersea:

• It is possible to express jealousy through the medium of firework displays, especially if the fireworks are accompanied by Mr. Brightside by The Killers.
• When my and several_bees’ powers combine, we have the ability to summon Captain Planet four kinds of cupcake.
• It turns out that roz_mcclure has an uncanny ability to recognise dreadful impressions of Nick Griffin.

My text cursor has mysteriously disappeared, so that’s enough lessons from South West London now, because not having a cursor makes it surprisingly difficult to type.

Ophelia Xx

I’ve made carrot cupcakes. They look good, anyway.

On Thursday I went to see Tom, and we had an exciting adventure to Shoreditch, where we spontaneously decided to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Eh, it was okay. (The film, that is. Not the company. The company was excellent! We had a conversation about the Temporal Nature of Consciousness. *swoon*)

Yesterday I met up with tiquismiquis_xx for tasty luncheons and much talking. And then I met prolificdiarist for the first time omg omg squee! She brought me both t-shirts and hugs, and a man in a café tried to convince us to pray that the people of the Grenadines would vote against a return to public hangings, because God had told him that if they didn’t he would kill them all with a tsunami. That was a bit strange. We nodded politely and then ran away.

And today I am going to take up my cupcakes and walk to the train station to go and see some fireworks with several_bees et al. My life has suddenly become busy and sociable. I’m not quite sure how to handle this peculiar turn of events. *scratches head*

Ophelia Xx

Gah. I have just introduced a new character, the goatfish (a fish with the tail of a goat), and now I’m kind of wishing that it was okay to put swearing in a children’s book, because what I would like is if the moment he is plunged into the water for the first time, and is consequently able to breathe, he says, “Fucksticks. I’m a fucking goatfish.”

Because frankly, I’d be pretty pissed off if I were that badly designed.

Oh well, I’ll have to find some child-friendly alternatives. “Flipping heck. I’m a flipping goatfish.” “Baal on a bike. I’m a goshdarned goatfish.” Hmm, actually, I quite like that last one. Problem solved. Thanks, readers!
Today’s extract:




Crossposted from blue_sky_and_jam’s latest entry on Dreamwidth.